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

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za6i9ka wrote:

Assassin vs Occultist ascendancy
While Occultist provides about 5% more damage, it only works against cursed enemies, wheras the Assassin's critchance is always active.

This means that:
1. Occultist is useless against hexproof enemies.
2. We would need to selfcast curses, which we simply can't afford to do because we already use Wither.

About this, you can just use gloves with TC curse on hit corrupt.

And you can then add controlled destruction to whirling blades to have lower chance to crit when whirling on mobs, because we can still crit even if its no damage(not sure if its true, but here what wiki says about Ancestral Bond: "Effects that require hitting or critting can still be used directly, such as that granted by Blind Support or Power Charge On Critical Support, so long as the effect is not scaled by damage. Elemental status ailments will not be triggered by direct skills for this reason.").

Yeah that seems good if you can manage to get corrupted gloves. I think it's a bit worse during mapping because the crit rate becomes a bit unconsistent and the curse is applied after the damage is dealt (so you might end up taking 2 hits to kill mobs instead of 1).

You would replace the Enfeeble with Controlled Destruction, correct? I think I would still keep enfeeble, as it mainly protects against non-unique enemies that you haven't killed yet.

I you really want to replace it, I'm not sure if I'd use Controlled Destruction. The reduced crit chance is definitely useful, but our chance to crit isn't that high anyway, since you roll your critical strike per attack, not per enemy hit. There are some other useful skills, like Vaal Haste, Vaal Lightning Trap or Vaal Summon Skeletons. Controlled Destruction would be the laziest choice though :p. Also, you can support your Immortal Call with increased duration.

I always thought that curse on hit corrupt procs before actual dmg so even on 1st hit it counts as if mobs are under curse.
P.S. From what i see, you'll have like 13.6% crit with whirl. Controlled destruction can push it down to 5.6% then.

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za6i9ka wrote:

I always thought that curse on hit corrupt procs before actual dmg so even on 1st hit it counts as if mobs are under curse.
P.S. From what i see, you'll have like 13.6% crit with whirl. Controlled destruction can push it down to 5.6% then.

I can't find a source for the corruption but "on hit" effects are usually applied after the hit is dealt.
If there's an exception with the corruption we should probably ask Mark.

Yeah, you can use CD if you want. It just doesn't seem worth a Gem slot in my opinion.

And also lvled with MoM since 5 act, it saved me so many times, could be added to lvling section since its beginner-friendly guide, and beginners usually dont have alot of hp gear to survive. MoM+Kikazaru+clarity+good/instant mp flask felt megasmooth to me.

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za6i9ka wrote:

And also lvled with MoM since 5 act, it saved me so many times, could be added to lvling section since its beginner-friendly guide, and beginners usually dont have alot of hp gear to survive. MoM+Kikazaru+clarity+good/instant mp flask felt megasmooth to me.

Yeah, the flat Mana from MoM seems really strong early on. Did you follow the guide (without tabula)? How was the damage without Anger?

I might add a FAQ later

I used tabula and goldrim/wanderlust, without that jewel for magic gear. Tried dark pact totem on 28lvl and it was pure trash dmgwise, had to lvl with firestorm(6l)+pd totem(4l). to something around 40lvl. Only after grabbing totemic mastery nodes and getting 2 totem life jewels DP got half-decent and i went ancestral bond. And starting from 49lvl with 6l(with inc aoe gem) mantle it just rips every pack with 1-2 hits, dont even need to summon 2nd totem in same pack, even rare monsters melt like its nothing.(60lvl so far). Using only clarity aura.

I'm also thinking about swapping 20lvl CWDT for Decoy totem on tough bosses(decoy+2dp totmes). Less dmg but more safety and can always summon golem myself when it dies. Plus it'll allow easier usage of wither.

And you'll have like 22% crit chance with whirling blades (because of that 100% global crit for totem, forgot about it) and controlled destruction will down it to something around 14%, dont know if its worth tho. Its like every 4-5 vs every 7th whils critting. Maybe its better to just put decoy totem instead of controlled destruction and dont bother with swaps.

And then again, we have low accuracy so actual crit chance must be lower. But we're using Diamond flask on other hand and i don't know how accuracy checks and lucky crit chance interact. Need to call some1 who knows this mechanics to do math lol.

Good luck have fun with the build
Test

Ps

Is there anyway to do this on any other character other than Scion.
I get that the Scion has the optimized build, but I just can't stand her as a Character (I know this sounds silly, but that's me, Path of Fashion for life).

Thanks for the alternative suggestions!

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NaarJitsu wrote:

Is there anyway to do this on any other character other than Scion.
I get that the Scion has the optimized build, but I just can't stand her as a Character (I know this sounds silly, but that's me, Path of Fashion for life).

Thanks for the alternative suggestions!

Read Ascendancy part of guide.

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NaarJitsu wrote:

Is there anyway to do this on any other character other than Scion.
I get that the Scion has the optimized build, but I just can't stand her as a Character (I know this sounds silly, but that's me, Path of Fashion for life).

Thanks for the alternative suggestions!

If you want to stay curse-immune, the safest choice is a lowlife Guardian, but that's reeeeeaaaally expensive and I'm not sure if it would work. It's also a bit complicated to make the build since you need to factor for a lot of things, including capped chaos resistance (can't use Shav's).

Assassin with dual Void Batteries does insane boss damage (more than Point Blank Doomfletch with perfect gear) but you need to generate Power Charges with Orb of Storms and also spec for them in your skill tree.

Berserker goes with anything. Don't skill the leech nodes and go for Warbringer/Rite of Ruin instead. It's maybe a bit squishy though, but the attack speed is nice for mobility. It's also really good with MoM because War Bringer can easily do no regen maps.

I think Occultist would be the second-best choice. You can run dual/triple-curses with Blasphemy instead of Haste and still use Wither, but have to stay near the enemies.

If you choose anything other than Guardian, make sure to overcap your resistances by 15% to counter the level 20 elemental curses.