[3.13] Dark Pact Necromancer - leaguestart friendly, melts bosses, all map mods viable

Patch 3.13 left us completely untouched and offers in addition the alternative to go for Occultist with similar end results.

We took some minor hits, but I still consider the build strong.

Mistress of Sacrifice is now weaker, but still usable.
Glancing Blows might be out of our reach, but despite that, our survival will be fine.

Assassin's Mark only applies to rares and bosses while being weaker, but we can live with that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTTMq8hHkJQ

Dark Pact is a fast spell, which causes a series of explosions that chain between your skeletons.
If there are no skeletons, the explosion occurs at the player's position. Obviously without chain in that case.

The unique part is, that Dark Pact sacrifices a set percentage of your skeletons (or yours, in case of no skeletons) maximum life and gains that as extra base damage.

A necromancer benefits from that kind of scaling, as with little efford your skeletons can reach over 30k life.

Given the explanation of Dark Pact above, we have the following attack vectors to scale our damage:

1. Minion Life
2. Cast Speed
3. Crit Chance and Multiplier
4. Spell Damage (and Minion Damage with Spiritual Aid)
5. Gem Level (of Minion Gems) as Dark Pact is classified as Minion spell
6. negative Resistance (e.g. curses, hunter helmet)

1. Life and Energy Shield
2. Block Cap (+ Bone Offering)
3. High Leech and Life/Es on Hit
4. Overleech with Glorious Vanity
5. Skeletons blocking projectiles
6. Blind + Fortify

The obvious choices for Dark Pact are Necromancer, Occultist and Assassin. Each focussing on different aspects.
In my opinion the Necromancer is well rounded, easier to scale and has the least weaknesses. But due to their popularity, she might be a target of nerfs, so keep in mind that alternatives are existing.

We mostly use the Ascendancy to push our skeletons life pool and get access to Bone Offering and Bone Barrier as defensive option for ourselves.

I suggest the following order:
1. Mindless Aggression - Except for the Minion speed not too beneficial, but we have to go through it.
2. Unnatural Strength - Since Dark Pact is a minion skill, we benefit from the extra damage and from the increased skeleton life.
3. Bone Barrier - A nice boost to defence and it pushes our damage by increasing the life pool of our skeletons.
4. Mistress of Sacrifice - We get in combination with a trigger wand, Glancing Blows and Bone Offering block cap.

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/axM5PceZ

All in-between steps are in the PoB.

We start with taking by personal preference either spell damage or cast speed nodes and work our way over the minion life node to the upper part of the tree.

Here we take the chaos damage node, which are the only ones, not polluted by damage over time effects, and while we are here, we can take the minion life nodes to get some nice base damage for our Dark Pact.

Work your way towards Spiritual Aid and decide for yourself, how many Life and Crit cluster you want to pick up on the way.

Now work your way to the Shadow area of the tree, aiming for the crit nodes.
If life is a problem, pick the nearby life nodes up.

Work your way to Doom Cast.

At latest now you need to get a minion life cluster jewel in, that has Blessed Rebirth.

Fill up the rest of the tree with life and jewel nodes and try to score a Thread of Hope.

Example Tree @ Level 93:

The Pantheon is always a situational thing. In the beginning Soul of the Brine King works well against stun locks.
Later you can consider changing it to another one, should you prefer.

As minor pantheon I highly recommend Soul of Abberath. Immunity against Burning Ground is huge.
Soul of Rhyslata might be useful for an early Uberlab or bossing in general.

We help Alira!

In the beginning the all resistance helps us out a lot and the mana regeneration is a nice feature.

Later the crit multiplier is the main deciding factor.

Chest 6-Link


Helmet 4-link


4-link


(2+1+1)-Link


3-Link


Trigger Wand (3-Socket)


CWDT Alternative (3-Link)


Ring (1 Socket)

We do not need any mandatory uniques for this build. Since crafting after havest league is again more limited, I thought is is best to provide for each slot a set of desireable stats.

In general we want the following stats:
1. Minion Life
2. Crit
3. Cast Speed
4. Resistance Cap
5. Life/ES

Weapon


Helmet


Body Armour


Boots


Gloves


Belt


Abyss jewel


Amulet



Flasks:


Jewels:



Anointment



My Equipment at end of Harvest (3.11)

The equipment of the animated guardian is aimed to make it survive and support us even more.

boots
victarios flight
those boots provide more movementspeed for nearby allies of the guardian. that includes us.

a hunter influenced helmet with
-# chaos resistance for nearby enemies
and life + resists

alternatively you can get started with a leer cast to gain a little bit of damage by that aura

a redeemer chest with nearby enemies are blinded.
if you are rich, you can combine a chast like that with an awakener orb with a hunter base that has Every 5 seconds, Regenerate 15% of Life over one second on it.

the gloves are just to fill up life and resistance

Since we gain Dark Pact in Act 3 from killing Gravicious, we need a way to bridge the gap.

My recommendation may not be the fastest in the first levels, but it catches up.

We start with Blight - Infused Channeling at level 1 and Contagion at level 4.
Our goal is to be slightly above the zone level, that one cast of contagion kills everything. You might want to ignore rares.

At level 8 you get
Blight - Void Manipulation - Infused Channeling
Contagion - Void Manipulation

You might want to pick up Skeletons, but mostly just to level the gem already. Same for Increased Critical Strikes Support.

At level 12 you want to pick up in addition to your existing setup
Essence Drain - Void Manipulation

Now a combo of Essence Drain and Contagion spreads fast through packs and you get a lot of exp just by running by.

In Act 2 the Heralds are useless, but Summon Skitterbots can at least provide shock. Arctic Armour is a defensive option, but not necessary.

At level 18 you want to include at least one Controlled Destruction
Essence Drain - Void Manipulation - Controlled Destruction

You can already pick up Power Charge on Crit to level the gem, if you have space.

At level 24, you want to have Zealotry and Discipline as Auras.
If you have too less mana to play in a fluid way, turn of Discipline. Skitterbots and Arctic Armour can be discarded.

At level 28, switch to:
Dark Pact - Void Manipulation - Power Charge on Crit - Increased Critical Strikes
Summon Skeletons - Minion Life - Minion Speed/Feeding Frenzy

Alternatively, you can stay a bit longer with ED/Contagion, as Dark Pacts Damage starts to come, when you picked up the first ascendancy points.

Q: Do you have other guides?
A: Yes, my video guides are in this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHs1z6wAbUQCyZaJnoWYoJ80tHxWA89FA

Q: My question is not (yet) covered here?
A: Please ask your question in this thread. While I currently do not play a lot, I still have a look in here and try to catch up with questions.

-deleted the Assassin alternative version
-checked 3.13
-PoB updated to 3.12
-PoB added
-some formating changes in equipment
-released initial version (draft)

-insert items
-finish writing the guide