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

Hello. I have a question about helmet. What is better: +2 lvl to minions with about 20% increased life or 3 lvl? Also, does "minions deal #% increased damage" implicit affect dark pact damage?

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What is better: +2 lvl to minions with about 20% increased life or 3 lvl?

+3 lvl is better.

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Also, does "minions deal #% increased damage" implicit affect dark pact damage?

It doesn't affect DP damage as it refers only to the minions itself. Dark Pact however does benefit from '+# to level of socketed minion gems'.

Few questions about gems. Why do we use devouring totem? I didnt quite understand why do we keep bodyswap and dedecrate at low lvl, what are the reasons? Thanks in advance

As it has been written in a theory section, Devouring Totem is for life and mana leech in unordinary situations. It's very helpful on no leech / no regen maps as well as in addition to the life flask on regular maps and lab.

Bodyswap and Desecrate are at low level because of lower mana cost and lower dex requirement.

What do you think about The Aylardex Agate Amulet with additional curse corruption?

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What do you think about The Aylardex Agate Amulet with additional curse corruption?

Don't use it. 40% reduced Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge would significantly lower the dps.

I have been working on your build for some time, and modified it a bit to suit my taste (you use way too much spell ;_;)... Here's the links I use:

Flame golem - Faster casting - Flame dash
Blasphemy - Assassin's Mark- Warlord's Mark
Dark Pact - Conc. Effect - Controlled destruction - Added Chaos Dmg - Void Manipulation -Spell Echo
Vaal Summon Skeleton - Minion Life - Arcane Surge - Empower
(Dark pact bounce on the skellies that are close to your target and bosses are completly blocked by the sea of skellies)
Wither - Spell Totem - Increased Duration - Faster Casting
Immortal Call - CWDT - Increased Duration - Enfeeble
(Wither doesn't actually count as a curse so with tree + ascendancy we can use enfeeble)

And with Gloomfang, you can use Despair (only just noticed you used a flask for that)

For the gear, I guess there isn't better weapons than Void Batteries but Apep's Rage is good too... and way cheaper xD so I use them at first
And I'm not sure that Bloodbond is really usefull... From my test, I found out that increased minion HP is the "worst" bonus to our damage, so I haven't taken any node for that on my tree yet.
So my Skellies are kinda... Squishy. How much HP does Bloodbond give you ?

Thanks for your comment Furaribi, I'm also using Flame Dash now. :)

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Dark Pact - Conc. Effect - Controlled destruction - Added Chaos Dmg - Void Manipulation -Spell Echo

Added Chaos Dmg isn't worth it. It gives +19.3% to total dps while Power Charge On Crit gives +37.6%.

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Increased Duration - Enfeeble

Doesn't Increased Duration make Enfeeble reserve more of your mana?

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And I'm not sure that Bloodbond is really usefull... From my test, I found out that increased minion HP is the "worst" bonus to our damage, so I haven't taken any node for that on my tree yet.

With my current setup my peak dps is 8.4m and my skeleton hp is 15210.

10% increased spell damage gives me 100k dps.
10% increased cast speed gives me 330k dps.
10% increased crit multi gives me 190k dps.
10% increased crit chance gives me 44k dps.
10% increased minion life gives me 218k dps.

So not only it's not the worst bonus but it's almost the best one (cast speed bonuses on a tree and gear are usually lower than minion life ones).

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How much HP does Bloodbond give you ?

482 total life. For comparison, rare body armour with +163 to max life gives me 480 total life.

What do you feel about using Spiritual Aid on the passive tree

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What do you feel about using Spiritual Aid on the passive tree

I just made some tests in PoB and that's how things are:

Peak dps with my current tree - 8.6m

Traveling to Spiritual Aid requires 6 points so I respeced:

-Nimbleness cluster (3pts)
-Death Attunement leading nodes (3pts)

Crit clusters are too powerful to be worth respecing.

With 6 points gained I made to Spiritual Aid and now the peak dps is 8.9m. In terms of not-dps aspects, I've lost 4% movspeed which I think is worth mentioning.

Things went better after I've added 40% bone helmet to the setup. The dps became almost 9.3m.

So the conclusion is the Spiritual Aid is a no brainer if you have a bone helmet but it's still good if you don't.