[3.16] Dark Pact Totems | The smoothest spell totem skill around, now post-nerf updated

Yes I noticed your Assassin's Mark. POB says its more DPS compared to Despair. Do you feel that it casts and hits reliably off of the Wither CWC? Because Despair is massive and almost impossible to miss.

The shield, I got lucky on trade for 3EX, right place right time. I'm still laughing how 'cheap' all these items are, compared to me kitting out my Burning Arrow Elementalist.

Yup, when there is a boss Assassins mark is on him as soon as I start channelling Wither.

I have removed Trigger craft from wand and now have a Double DMG while focused on my shield and wand. So its a few more buttons to press, but nothing overwhelming.

More importantly, now I have Storm brand that is applying Despair constantly without me having to press wither!! And that makes a noticeable different in how fast rares die in Ultimatums. So the Awakened Hextouch was a good investment!

I will probably remove Stone golem for a Culling link to storm brand, I rarely find myself in a situation where I need high regen.

Any time I take a big hit, I can press my Low-Life life flask and im back to 100% instantly. I strongly recommend the instant at low-life flask, since were already at LL, its just way stronger.



I am considering using Supreme Decadence. Because we end up with around 1k Energy shield, with 0 ways to recover it while getting hit. This makes our life flask top our energy shield instantly, and actually gives us an effective extra 1k HP. I strongly recommend playing around with 1 of these, as these Elegant Hubris jewels are ridiculously cheap (under 10c), since they give very odd keystones indeed! The Issue with these is they will take over Wither nodes on the left, and Crit Multi nodes on the right. But I think one of these with correct rolls would make up for it.

With this Keystone, some notables can be very powerful and cheap, like the Attribute nodes for 1 point. It can roll 80 Spell damage or 15% cast speed, for 1 point each!!!!



Currently I am using Militant Faith in that slot, and it provides about half a mil DPS per totem with some mana regen, but 0 survivability bonuses, and also 0 benefits from Devotion passives, as I haven't allocated enough points for the required devotion.

Still trying to craft my shield, in PoB i checked and a T1 spell damage roll vastly outperforms +1 Chaos gems, but I will be happy with either so long as I get to craft Double dmg while focused! For now I will use a high HP shield.

I found a good one here, on the left side, this jewel turns the DEX and STR nodes into 80% Spell dmg and 40% Crit Multiplier.

But it is on the left side, which means it nullifies the Wither nodes. I checked PoB numbers. At 0 Wither stacks, there is a very small DPS loss. So for general mapping, using Elegant Hubris can be a huge EHP upgrade, because now your energy shield bar is instantly refilled every time you press your flask!

However, for bossing, at 15 Wither stacks you lose a maximum top end 1 mil per totem. Except that usually by the time you have 15 Wither stacks the boss is usually very, very dead.

Differences in my PoB are:

Millitant Faith - 6.3 Mil per Totem (15 stacks) , 3.1 Mil per Totem (0 stacks) , 4.3 Mil per Totem (6 Stacks from incidental Withering Step)

Elegant Hubris (80 Spell dmg, 40 Crit Multi, left side) - 5.1 Mil per Totem (15) , 2.8 mil per Totem (0) , 3.75 mil per Totem (6)

The difference in dmg comes from the fact that there are no other overpowered nodes left on the tree for us to grab since Wither is nullified. So, I picked up some Life and Mana. I got 100 more life, 400 more mana and some regen, 150 more ES, and 8% cast speed. I could have also taken Whispers of doom with the spare points, for a 3rd Curse (Enfeeble?)

But if you can find an Elegant Hubris that has OP nodes on the right side of the tree, you get to keep the Wither nodes. And then this jewel becomes very strong for us I think!

Edit: Just realised Id my PoB awakened gems were not set to lvl 5, so can bump all those numbers abit

@Bobirobsan1, I don't want to lose anymore jewel sockets and passive points for more DPS. Would have to give up EHP, sustain, etc.

I know there's a certain fun in trying to find ways to increase DPS in every corner of a build, and it makes POB/ninja numbers look sexy. But man the opportunity cost associated with that!

Now that I made the Soul Mantle switch, the DPS feels plenty good, I could not imagine losing more EHP just to gain more DPS. Maven deathless, The Feared almost deathless except for an invisible attack. Phasing tier 16 conquerors before they finish their first attack. A9 Sirus dead in his last phase, before finishing his first spinny quad laser thingy.

"

BlueeGreg wrote:

I know there's a certain fun in trying to find ways to increase DPS in every corner of a build, and it makes POB/ninja numbers look sexy. But man the opportunity cost associated with that!

Post above was about getting more EHP not dmg lol. We have 1k Energy Shield (in your case more) which alot of the time sits at 0 during Ultimatums. I use Frost shield which needs ES too..

I wrote a long post there about Elegant Hubris, because Supreme Decadence lets you refill that 1K ES when you use your life flask. That way this 1K EHP is not wasted.

I got excited because this jewel is very cheap, under 10c. I spent less than 100 chaos before I found one with amazing DMG rolls, maybe I got lucky, dunno.

So, for 6 passive points I gain 1K EHP, 80% spell damage increase, 40% Crit Multi. Well rolled timeless jewels are so strong, this one can be stronger as I explained. I did dmg comparisons to show its worth it to use this over more dmg options. Could be another timeless jewel is even better, I know Wallach suggests the yellow one. These jewels can be a lot of fun too.

I can count on 1 hand how many times I've died the last 2 lvls, my char isn't squishy. But I've also helped carry a friend in 2man HP U.Atziri and Sirus (9), both deathless. I haven't done 2man HP Feared yet but I know I can.

If I wanted to PoB warrior this I would Dual Wield wands rather than a Shield with 1 crafted dmg mod, and I wouldnt use a Rumi's. I look for ways to make things more efficient. The jewel is just a strong option I found. A lot of the times when ppl want to configure their build they browse the thread and look for ideas, I'm not saying my way is how it should be.

I like trying to add Supreme Decadence, I just don't see an efficient way to do it. There's no natural jewel socket for something like that, so we have to add extra pathing to grab the converted keystone, or extra pathing to move our Cluster setup. That's what I mean by opportunity cost.

If we didn't take the Low Life keystone... then things would be easy :)

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BlueeGreg wrote:

There's no natural jewel socket for something like that, so we have to add extra pathing to grab the converted keystone, or extra pathing to move our Cluster setup

You actually save 1 skill point and gain 8% Mana by going around the Mana cluster jewel. You lose 8% life and 10% ES by skipping the small nodes next to Written in Blood. Of course since we have no ES recharge investment its really mostly 8% life ( for 2 points ).

I save 7 skill points using a different starting path from Templar and using Intuitive Leap. For that I pay 10-15% life and some life/mana regen. But our biggest life recovery tool really is the huge life flask anyways. If you fit in the jewel the value of the life flask goes up tremendously. Im considering moving away from intuitive leap for a gg rare jewel when I get 100, maybe kill all bandits too.

Elegant Hubris has the option to roll 'Frenzy on hit'. Its possible to craft Endurance charges on jewellery, maybe even Warlord/Shaper shield, get some power charge on crit with storm brand and take the full Mana as ES Ascendancy path. If more EHP was the goal, this would be a massive win in Mana and ES, with up to 100% bonus AoE so you could even map with Concentrated Effect.

With normal ascendancy path, from my perspective there is little cost being paid here because u end up with a functional ES pool, and that has a much higher EHP value than 20% increased life, this being on top of more dmg.

The kicker really, and I recognise this is a big problem, is that it requires a very good Elegant Hubris which could take time to find. And also a high level character, so its just an end-game consideration.

Recently hit Level 99! Deathless from Level 98, which was a refreshing change from the gauntlet that was 97 into 98. Here is the POB of my char as he was at Level 98:

https://pastebin.com/z6KwDDRz

I cycled between 5 or 6 regions on the Atlas, trying different masters and farming strategies. Ran plenty of Jun, Alva, Niko, and Einhar. One Mastermind, at least two cycles of A9 Sirus. At about 85%, I 'treated' myself to a Legion rota to finish off the level :)

Some things that helped with not dying! I stopped Vaaling my maps, though maps were otherwise juiced (4x Prime Sextants, chisel+alch, relevant Scarabs when convenient, always a Zana mod). I never ran maps with Cannot Regen, 100% Monster AOE, or Multi Proj. Would also reroll maps that had two enemy DPS mods combined like attack/cast speed and 100% phys as element.

Without the combination of dangerous mods, Ultimatum content becomes much less threatening, and this is after losing Life + Mana for the Soul Mantle switch. Ultimatum also doesn't seem to scale rewards with the mods and quantity on your map, and it barely scales with map tier. So there is little reason to push the limits, in Ultimatum league.

Since my atlas was fully complete, I didn't have to run bad maps anymore, which the game has no shortage of. I was able to focus on maps like Atoll, Canyon, Park, Mesa, Beach, Shipyard, City Square, Mud Geyser, Estuary, Racecourse, Cemetery. Generally open maps that feel good with totems, and inherently are good for Ultimatum.

Week 4 of Ultimatum is about halfway complete. Best of luck to all who are still grinding, and who are still giving Dark Pact Totems a chance!! <3

"

BlueeGreg wrote:

Recently hit Level 99! Deathless from Level 98, which was a refreshing change from the gauntlet that was 97 into 98. Here is the POB of my char as he was at Level 98:

https://pastebin.com/z6KwDDRz

I cycled between 5 or 6 regions on the Atlas, trying different masters and farming strategies. Ran plenty of Jun, Alva, Niko, and Einhar. One Mastermind, at least two cycles of A9 Sirus. At about 85%, I 'treated' myself to a Legion rota to finish off the level :)

Some things that helped with not dying! I stopped Vaaling my maps, though maps were otherwise juiced (4x Prime Sextants, chisel+alch, relevant Scarabs when convenient, always a Zana mod). I never ran maps with Cannot Regen, 100% Monster AOE, or Multi Proj. Would also reroll maps that had two enemy DPS mods combined like attack/cast speed and 100% phys as element.

Without the combination of dangerous mods, Ultimatum content becomes much less threatening, and this is after losing Life + Mana for the Soul Mantle switch. Ultimatum also doesn't seem to scale rewards with the mods and quantity on your map, and it barely scales with map tier. So there is little reason to push the limits, in Ultimatum league.

Since my atlas was fully complete, I didn't have to run bad maps anymore, which the game has no shortage of. I was able to focus on maps like Atoll, Canyon, Park, Mesa, Beach, Shipyard, City Square, Mud Geyser, Estuary, Racecourse, Cemetery. Generally open maps that feel good with totems, and inherently are good for Ultimatum.

Week 4 of Ultimatum is about halfway complete. Best of luck to all who are still grinding, and who are still giving Dark Pact Totems a chance!! <3

grats on 99! from this leveling experience did you prefer any particular master missions? i originally thought Jun would give lots of exp comparatively but it turned out that it was not that much better compared to alva and even Einhar. not sure if i was 'doing it right' or if it was just how the atlas regions ends up balancing out as.

I just reached 99 this morning and it was so much easier and less stressful than i thought it was going to be. The fact that we can ccompletely ignore curses and just about every map mod except no regen just feels so damn good. This build is one of the best i've played in a long long while so here's a big THANK YOU to you, BlueeGreg.

ps: are you gonna go for 100? ;D

@ciggaro

I'll hit Level 100 for sure, just no rush. Real life commitments and winding down POE playtime altogether. I wish my 2nd character, Burning Arrow Elementalist, felt fun to play, because that would give me something else to look forward to. I am open to more build ideas to try!

Jun can give good XP if you rush her missions/maps really quickly, because each encounter and choice gives a good chunk of XP. The safehouses also give really good XP. But everything averages out in the long run, and Jun can be a little bit rippy depending on map mods and general circumstance.

I did test the XP option for Breach on one of the regions, using Zana and Scarabs. That was a letdown!

Canyon with Zana Harbinger felt good for XP, especially since it was T15. It's too bad that the Scarabs are too expensive for general use, because that would also help with XP. And keeping a supply of Canyon is hard too. Using unique watchstones that boost area level should also help with XP, but I haven't tried that and it involves extra trading.

Good luck on your grind to 100, Ciggaro! I recommend taking a break to help reset your mind, play a different game for a week or two. Or at the very least, play a different character to freshen things up. That helped me a lot back in 3.12 Heist.


edit: oh and taking a closer look at your Agnostic variant. I really like it. If I were to do it, I would change my Anoint to Arcane Swiftness, get boots with Ailment Immunity, so I could keep that. I'll do a closer look later in the league!