Skill Preview: Dark Pact

Neat. Easily the most interesting skill reveal so far. Give that skeleton love.

So like a chaos righteous fire, i doubt many people use summons skeletons other than vaal skele for the boss burst. Seems pretty op as a berserker

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KaféNoar wrote:

Morning ... This spell only works with the Skeletons? Are Zombies and Specters not concerned? It's a Pity ....

Skellies are only one of those with a duration. [aka you gotta keep casting] And with The Baron and Mon'tregul's Grasp, a zombie fed Dark Pact might be nigh eternal.

Looks really cool.
I like skill combos, and I think they should be rewarded.
I hope the damage is high enough to make this viable.

I do have concerns about boss fights - skeletons don't live long enough in those.

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xSeraphielx wrote:

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Jackalope_Gaming wrote:

Considering the mechanical questions coming from this skill reveal, hopefully there will be some sort of manifesto or Q&A explaining how it works in certain situations."

This probably is needed.
Got a few questions myself.

1. How will Dark Pact interact with Life leech linked to skeletons/Dark Pact?
2. Will Dark Pact trigger Severed in Sleep/United in Dream if used with skeletons?
3. Will Dark Pact use a flat amount of life?
4. Will skeletons finally see a buff in 3.0 whilst you are at it since they are the weakest summonable minion(based on life/movespeed/dmg) right now?

1. The skill itself is what does the damage, not the skeletons. So linking skeletons with Life Leech won't do anything for you casting Dark Pact on them, based on what they've revealed so far. I'd be extremely surprised of minion leech worked with it to give you the caster and leech. As far as linking Life Leech to Dark Pact itself, hopefully it'll give you the leech since it's something you yourself cast and not a totem, trap, or mine. And it's not a DoT effect (based on them not saying it's a DoT effect which they certainly would say if it was, plus it chains and only hits can chain) so leech would work.

2. Very doubtful. It's the spell causing the damage, not the skeletons. Using the skeletons to cast the spell is basically the same as using one enemy to get Arc to go to another enemy. Since it's not the skeletons hitting the enemy they aren't the ones doing the damage and they won't cause the poison.

3. I have a feeling they'll prefer to have it take away a percentage of life instead. In the third paragraph they say "Because the damage dealt by the skill is based on life..." which would make sense as another way to scale its damage a la Righteous Fire. Continuing that sentence is "... the skill has a unique build setup, involving specializing in minion life or player life and maximizing chaos and spell damage." so it seems almost certain to me that it's percent life.

4. No idea on this one. I think I remember GGG saying they were buffing skellies, but that might have already happened.

wonder if it would work with Vaal Summon Skeletons :O

I'm guessing it won't work with MoM since it's stated that it can't be mitigated?

Will be interesting if it does though!

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Arkangel720 wrote:

wonder if it would work with Vaal Summon Skeletons :O

Would be fun if it did, though maybe "too fun" for GGG... Summon vaal skellies, get on top of boss, use Convocation, then Dark Pact and hope you live?

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Bnethor wrote:

I'm guessing it won't work with MoM since it's stated that it can't be mitigated?

Will be interesting if it does though!

MoM only applies to damage taken and the devs specifically said the skill does not cause damage. Thus, there is no way it would work with MoM unless they made a special exception.

Also of note is it passes through energy shield as shown in the vid. Granted, that could be explained as it being a chaos skill thus chaos damage going through ES, but combined with them saying it doesn't do damage that means it will only ever take away life from you or your skellies.

:3

can you make sure it is a more multiplier for self cast like reeve/flame-blast, want the build style to work

also giving the self cast aoe for totem cast(if possible) could break self cast viability. because rf totems are great atm and the aoe of self cast looks larger than rf, so full screen totems that stack damage and deal great damage, would be strong.

Note: i think the skill has a no good aura/curse problem/blessing.