[3.5] Soul Mantle Dark Pact Totems - League Starter - All Content

"

Janu4ry wrote:

i have a question, why cant we build item to all to cast speed ? and use flame dash , more cast speed more damage ?

Cast speed is a good stat on items and you should get it where you can (Shield and Amulet).
Most of the time, you'll get more DPS from increases to Crit and Damage. Cast speed also tends to make your totems die faster which is a minor drawback when comparing the stats.

"

OTazMan wrote:

How are you jumping so far on the passive tree map. I don't see how you are getting the Jump with a Jewel?

He's leaving out some passives elsewhere if I remember correctly, which means he gets more points.

"

Mattar10 wrote:

1st. Why both kikazaru rings ? I though 1 kikazaru(-40%) + shaped ring(+/-20%)+ temporal chains (-40%) makes 100% red curse effect and you can get better mods then just a kikazaru. I just wanna know if it´s like that or not.

2nd. You´ve used only 2L - Cast When Damage Taken (Level 20) - Summon Lightning Golem (Level 20) why not add something like Molten Shell or even Vaal Haste in this setup?

3rd. I know bisco´s the best amu for farm even if you cap ur resists using it. but what if i want to get a dps bust, which amu do you think is better for me to get ?


Obs: ATM my gear follow as you can see below, do you have any suggestions ?

1) The -40% from temporal chains is only for itself, meaning other curses will only have 60% reduced effect.
(You can test this by cursing yourself with ele. weakness while having temp. chains up, your resists should go down)

2) If you have space, you can do that. There are lots of things you could add there (Vaal Haste doesn't trigger though).

3) The best for that is a rare amulet with high crit multiplier and cast speed rolls. Spell damage/crit isn't that strong, but a nice bonus aswell.


Your gear looks pretty good actually, apart from just getting items with higher rolls (I hate saying that), I don't think there's much you can do on a budget.
I think the cheapest things to upgrade would be your Abyss Jewel and Amulet.
I guess you also want a second Kikazaru now.

Great to know, ty

is this still playable?

"

monsieurmagz wrote:

is this still playable?

For 3.1., yeah.
For 3.2., there's been no real information yet. But probably, unless Soul Mantle/Kikazaru gets a nerf.

Any advice on how to advance this gear. PoB says I have about 225k effective dps with all my totems up (no curses; 270k with 5 curses), but I know that Shaper (and even Guardians) would be better with a bit more.

I know that I should replace the helm with the 40% increased damage enchantment, and that I should get a 21/20 Dark Pact gem. I suspect that my amulet and weapon could both be substantially improved, but I'm not sure exactly how. Any other small changes I could make?

"

Aquadrizzt wrote:

Any advice on how to advance this gear. PoB says I have about 225k effective dps with all my totems up (no curses; 270k with 5 curses), but I know that Shaper (and even Guardians) would be better with a bit more.

I know that I should replace the helm with the 40% increased damage enchantment, and that I should get a 21/20 Dark Pact gem. I suspect that my amulet and weapon could both be substantially improved, but I'm not sure exactly how. Any other small changes I could make?

Spoiler

Your dagger and amulet should be good enough for endgame, an upgrade is possible, but would probably cost a bit.
On the amulet you'd ideally want at least Life, crit multi and cast speed.
On the dagger: at least attack speed, then high stats in crit chance/multi and spell damage. There is no ideal stat, so you should use PoB to compare them.

You don't need a 21/20 DP, a 21/0 does the same because the AoE gets rounded down. Leveling your other gems is also a decent damage boost.

Cast speed enchantment is ok, too.

You have a lot of resists on your shield. If you want more damage, you should get a shield with damage stats. This obviously means that you'll have to get more resists on your other gear.
A good shield can give you more damage than a dagger, but is also really expensive.
You should be able to get 1-2 damage stats and life relatively cheap though.

You should be able to do shaper/guardians with your current gear. You're at a stage where practise would help you more than gear upgrades (Assuming you're not knowledgeable about the fights). Otherwise, there's always the option to respec into Hierophant and use a Wither Totem to make the fights easier.

Thank you for the advice.

I realized that part of my problem was that I had been neglecting to use Conc. I also regret'd a few 5% life nodes to grab the last 3 nodes in the Shadow section (specifically Assassination) and grabbed a new amulet with 38% crit multi and 13% cast speed. Between those three things, Path of Building now lists my effective dps (3 totems; 5 curses) at just over 500k dps. it really is the small things I guess...

Anyway thanks for this build, it's the most fun of any build I've played, and definitely the one I've gotten the farthest. Having both curse immunity and effective reflect immunity makes this so much more flexible than other builds I've played.

Final verdict:

Okey, so now I've played with this build for about a month, reached level 95 and I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out. I started off dualing Void Batterys, but found myself not wanting to sacrifice either life pool (shield) or whirling blades (defense). So I turned to a dagger and shield. When it all came together it just melts away. I've had zero problems with any up to T15 maps/bosses, Shapers guardians worked OK (this build is at its worse when enemies are moving around). Did a bunch of Shapers and a couple of über Atziris and they were really no problem at all. Same goes for Red Elder which I don't really see as an end-game boss.

This build is really strong, lvl 21 added chaos damage / Conc effect adds alot. I did respec into Doom Cast and Atrophy just for fun after I reached 95 and the dps were even more insane (but I would never recommend it since both you and your totems needs those life nodes and resist which you have to sacrifice if doing so)

The only problem I had with this build was its clear speed. Sure I'm used to fast clearing bow builds and often found myself really struggeling with the pace and became bored sometimes, especially when leveling. Maybe it's because of Dark Pact in general where you can't really visually see its AoE (compared to shockwave totems that is). But overall it was fine, it worked.

Thanks alot for this, it was fun, I've always wanted to play another good Totem build and this turned out great. And thanks for sticking around and still answering questions +1 to you.

Looks like there was some brief 3.2 updates here.


It feels like the buffs are going to make this build as viable as it was in 3.0

maybe its just me but also felt extremely viablein 3.1?

@op you rock for staying active in this thread and answering questions, really appreciate it.

I think i will play this again next league pending final ascendancy changes, but im looking for some ways to spice things up to keep it kind of refreshing/new. Now that im used to curse immunity and not having to worry about reflect mods on maps, i just cant give that up anymore lol

I was wondering if there was at all a way to make this a low life/ES build with pain attunement? see any viable way to make that happen in the tree?

i cant think of any thing besides shav's or that other body piece that does the thing wiht chaos damage not bypassing es, so it would need another item slot that allows that. no idea if that exists