[3.16 updated] BRO, DO YOU EVEN SUMMON? Life/ES Dark Pact Skeleton Caster League Starter

Updated gear and stats.

Hello! great guide, i tried a dark pact necro, skelies+zombi, but cuz i am a novice to PoE, i had done a lot of mistakes, then i found your guide, liked the idea and i am following it now.

But i have a question about the tree. You are using whispers of doom and malediction, and, imo, whispers of doom (+2 points to go there) are ”dead”. Also the cast speed points from the start of the tree, curious if they bring more then, lets say,some minion life points? And taking ”Puppet Master” is a must, i think (+16% minion life, biggest on the tree).

After all, what do you think about a passive tree like this (Alira for bandits):

?

Hey! I even haven't noticed that Puppet Master isn't speced on my passive tree, good you noticed that, it's of course my mistake. Whispers of Doom and Malediction are important since we are using 3 curses - Warlord's Mark, Assasin's Mark and Despair from Witchfire Brew.

Your tree looks good, however I recommend you to grab the 4% increased damage per power charge node next to the Instability. It gives 36% increased spell damage with all 9 power charges (+4.4% to total dps).

I've also checked how dps changes if one bypasses spell damage and cast speed nodes at the start of the tree and go right instead like you did and it's -7.5% less damage for saving 2 skillpoints. Path of Building doesn't auto calculate the dps after making any changes to minion life so I manually calculated it after I took 7% and 10% increased minion life nodes like it's on your tree and it turns out that dps is a bit lower in that variant. Cast speed is not only for dps but it's also a nice boost for clearing and even a defensive mechanic since when your cast speed is high the animations expire faster and you are able to pretend any actions in time. Builds using Spell Echo feel very clunky without good cast speed and dodging things like Shaper's balls became challenging with these.

I'm thinking of getting a helm with the following stats:

+2 to socketed minions
Socketed gems are supported by minion life
Minions have %health

This way I can remove mionion life and add zombies. I'd be getting some extra zombies in return to act as a meatshield while mapping. I reckon it's quite nice.

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I'm thinking of getting a helm with the following stats:

+2 to socketed minions
Socketed gems are supported by minion life
Minions have %health

This way I can remove mionion life and add zombies. I'd be getting some extra zombies in return to act as a meatshield while mapping. I reckon it's quite nice.

Yes it could be a great choice if you decide to play on hardcore. Placing a golem into such a helmet also would be a good option. However, you would lose some dps since 20% quality minion life provides slightly higher bonus to our skeletons life than t1 minion life elder mod. Also a good helmet could be difficult and expensive to get. As for me, I'm sticking with the one I have since it's actually good enough and there is a Dark Pact enchant on it.

Hi, I've been playing a CI version of this build for some additional defenses and I've really been liking it. Thanks so much for the awesome concept! The damage is nuts and I don't have level 20, much less quality gems yet. My tree/ascendancy is somewhat less offensive but I'm not having any problems with dps.

If it's possible to fit into the life based version I'd recommend using Darkness Enthroned as a belt because I don't think any other belt can give anywhere near as much offensive power given decent Ghastly Eye Jewels.

I was wondering if it was better to use Minion Life/Cast speed on death/Es jewels or Flat Chaos to Spells/Crit Multi/Es jewels for the slots in the tree, but I feel like it's hard to get away from the cast speed offered by the ghastly eye jewels.

sounds great.

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If it's possible to fit into the life based version I'd recommend using Darkness Enthroned as a belt because I don't think any other belt can give anywhere near as much offensive power given decent Ghastly Eye Jewels.

Yep, I've been also considering Darkness Enthroned but I ended up with a rare belt because it was easier to optimize my char around that one. And it's a good belt too.

"

I was wondering if it was better to use Minion Life/Cast speed on death/Es jewels or Flat Chaos to Spells/Crit Multi/Es jewels for the slots in the tree, but I feel like it's hard to get away from the cast speed offered by the ghastly eye jewels.

I haven't been doing any detailed math but from my experience crit multi and minion life jewels grant the highest damage bonus. I don't have any good jewel with high flat chaos roll and I'm pretty much done with this league so I won't be doing any comparison between all of these.

I've been doing some more character optimization and messing around in PoB. Here's my gear and you can look at my profile, character name CalciumBringerDOOTDOOT. While its working for me I would not recommend going CI unless you have at least 15ex to burn and enjoy gambling with essence.

First of all blasphemy assassins mark is a waste, my PoB has it as a 3% dps increase not counting 80% Boss Curse Effect reduction. Between ascendancy and the Brinerot Flag weapon swap the power charge generation of assassin's mark is unnecessary and didnt work against bosses anyways.

Next up, elder ring bases can roll 'Curse enemies with level 8 or 12 Warlords Mark on Hit'. Getting one of these rings frees up our mana and let's us leech far outside of blasphemy range, basically offscreen depending on where we put our skeletons.

Freeing up our mana gives us several options for rounding out our character. Running haste is a ~10% dps increase for me. Replacing Assassins Mark with Temporal Chains or Enfeeble would noticeably increase survivability. One could also just drop the nodes for the third curse and use those points elsewhere. By forgoing the blasphemies you could add at least 2.5k ehp to the build by speccing into Mind over Matter because of all the int we path through. If you find yourself missing the instant regen of Vaal pact one attractive (if expensive) option would be to run Vitality and a Watcher's Eye with the mod 'Gain 20-30 life on hit while under the effects of Vitality'. Because of Dark Pact chaining, spell echo and high cast speed this ends up being a huge amount of life gained per second.

Between all of these options it makes the most sense to do one of two things. You could go Haste/Vitality with relevant Watcher's Eye and respec the curse wheel and maybe the chaos wheel to get to the scion life wheel. Alternatively Blasphemy Temp Chains and MoM for better defense and less investment.

The other improvements I would suggest require significant investment but if you have the money they might interest you. %Chaos damage or Crit Multi rings are decent upgrades. Shaper chests can roll 1.5 base Crit Chance to spells which will far outstrip any amount of minion life you can get on a chest in terms of damage. Ilvl 85+ helmets can now roll +3 to minion gems for more skeleton health.

Hopefully some of these ideas help people make the build work because it's a ton of fun to play. I welcome any improvements to my build or gear and I think this build can be made to be solid for all content as well as a fantastic bosser.

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RonBrogundy wrote:

The other improvements I would suggest require significant investment but if you have the money they might interest you. %Chaos damage or Crit Multi rings are decent upgrades. Shaper chests can roll 1.5 base Crit Chance to spells which will far outstrip any amount of minion life you can get on a chest in terms of damage. Ilvl 85+ helmets can now roll +3 to minion gems for more skeleton health.

I believe its ilvl 86+ that has +3 levels on it