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

Thanks for the guide and ongoing advice.

I have reached L40 leveling with flameblast totem and self cast firestorm (both 4L). I'm wondering whether to take ancestral bond or wait until a bit later. I guess for 1 respec point I should just try it.

I have just started act 4 and the first couple of areas, while a bit more challenging, have not posed too much difficulty. I did read in the leveling notes that "once you get ancestral bond you can throw away the firestorms" but that was a note for act 5. Any thoughts?

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BlowFish wrote:

Thanks for the guide and ongoing advice.

I have reached L40 leveling with flameblast totem and self cast firestorm (both 4L). I'm wondering whether to take ancestral bond or wait until a bit later. I guess for 1 respec point I should just try it.

I have just started act 4 and the first couple of areas, while a bit more challenging, have not posed too much difficulty. I did read in the leveling notes that "once you get ancestral bond you can throw away the firestorms" but that was a note for act 5. Any thoughts?

I'd say it's easier/safer to level with Ancestral Bond because there's less your characters needs to do in combat.

The note is in act 5 because most players get AB around that time.
I highly recommend dual Flameblast totems socketed in a Nycta's Lantern (lvl 41).

So, another noob-ish question as this is my second character ever in this game.

I'm having issues getting the right gear/stats, mostly because of bad rng luck, so I thought that I could share my PoB link for my current status and get a feedback on how I am doing because I feel a little bit underpowered (dying sometimes in T1 maps, slow clearing overall).

Here's the link in case you'd like to provide further help: https://pastebin.com/sCycAyV9

Thanks again for your time :)

EDIT: improved my playstyle and went up to T3 maps, still I'd like to have some feedback on my current status.

I'm still level 51, I followed the guide but I only have 1k dps on dark pack for now it's normal?

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StepT wrote:

So, another noob-ish question as this is my second character ever in this game.

I'm having issues getting the right gear/stats, mostly because of bad rng luck, so I thought that I could share my PoB link for my current status and get a feedback on how I am doing because I feel a little bit underpowered (dying sometimes in T1 maps, slow clearing overall).

Here's the link in case you'd like to provide further help: https://pastebin.com/sCycAyV9

Thanks again for your time :)

EDIT: improved my playstyle and went up to T3 maps, still I'd like to have some feedback on my current status.

The build is made with specific (but cheap) uniques in mind. If you don't get those, you'll be a lot weaker.
I'm not sure if you're playing SSF, but I don't recommend the build there until you've found the items. If you're not playing SSF, you should follow the gearing section. Decent starting gear shouldn't cost more than 1c per item.

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Libard wrote:

I'm still level 51, I followed the guide but I only have 1k dps on dark pack for now it's normal?

Yeah, the tooltip for DP is wrong because it doesn't account for totem life and the selfcast damage bonus.
For accurate numbers you have to get PoB.

these are my weapon and shield i currently use and am trying to improve on them. i know theyre pretty good but is tehre anything i can do to make them better or get better without breaking the bank?

according to tooltip that shield gives me a bigger dps boost than my dagger or even a divinarius

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SHEPUUURD wrote:

The build is made with specific (but cheap) uniques in mind. If you don't get those, you'll be a lot weaker.
I'm not sure if you're playing SSF, but I don't recommend the build there until you've found the items. If you're not playing SSF, you should follow the gearing section. Decent starting gear shouldn't cost more than 1c per item.

I'm not playing SSF so I can trade, but I'm a little bit lost now on what you mean with "decent starting gear".

Are you talking about the "Unique Options" section of your guide?

I tried getting some basic gear following your suggestions, for example these are my weapons:



and I got them from what I could afford with the stats you mentioned in the guide

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Stats (Dagger): Attack speed, spell damage, crit chance, crit multiplier, mana
Stats (Shield): Life, spell damage, crit chance, cast speed, resists, mana

I don't think I can get all the mandatory uniques in a short timeframe, as the Soul Mantle sells for 8EX and I barely have 1, but I'd like to know if there's something else that I can improve while farming currency to get the chest.

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rozakk wrote:

these are my weapon and shield i currently use and am trying to improve on them. i know theyre pretty good but is tehre anything i can do to make them better or get better without breaking the bank?

according to tooltip that shield gives me a bigger dps boost than my dagger or even a divinarius

Yeah, that stuff is pretty nice. Shame the life roll on the shield is so low.

I don't think there's any easy way to improve them.
You can:
1) exalt mana on the dagger
2) exalt mana or hybrid life/es on the shield
3) craft ES or resists on the shield
The chance for getting something good with an exalted orb is pretty low though, so I'm not sure if you'd want to do that.

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StepT wrote:

I'm not playing SSF so I can trade, but I'm a little bit lost now on what you mean with "decent starting gear".

Starting gear would be this (from the guide):

1. Get the mandatory flasks and unique items.
2. Cap your elemental resistances (75%).
3. Try to get a good (at least 40) life roll on every item that can have one.
4. Get a spell dagger/unique weapon that fits your budget.

I don't recommend using any optional uniques until you have all of the above.

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StepT wrote:

I don't think I can get all the mandatory uniques in a short timeframe, as the Soul Mantle sells for 8EX and I barely have 1, but I'd like to know if there's something else that I can improve while farming currency to get the chest.

A Soul Mantle costs 1 alc, you don't need to have it 6-linked, a 4/5 link is just as fine.
Your shield is ok for the start, but I think you can get a better dagger. (or just use a Divinarius for now)

Hi all,

I was looking for some improvements and as a beginner, I have some questions to the more experienced players, hope anyone can help with this.

- Is there a cap to the global and local crit chance and crit multiplier?
- How much crit chance, global crit chance, crit multiplier, global crit multiplier, spell/totem damage should we aim for?
- What's the best/usual way to calculate how much I have?

I ask this because I was looking for some jewels upgrades and was wondering if I didn't have enough chance and multiplier, so I could search for defense only stats.

I am aware that this can be build related, but let's assume the ideal numbers for this build in particular.

TY!

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fladsongomes wrote:

Is there a cap to the global and local crit chance and crit multiplier?

Crit chance on your character is capped at 95%. Your chance to crit a monster can exceed that, for example with a diamond flask or assassin's mark.

Local crit chance is only found on weapons and limited by value of the modifier on them, it's not relevant for this build because this only increases your attack crit chance.

There is no cap on crit multiplier.

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fladsongomes wrote:

How much crit chance, global crit chance, crit multiplier, global crit multiplier, spell/totem damage should we aim for?

For crit chance: anything higher than 75% is likely a waste if you can invest the stats somewhere else.
Using a diamond flask with 75% will already put you at ~94% crit.

For crit multi/damage increases: as much as you can get.
+Crit multiplier is the best stat if you already have a good amount of %inc crit chance/damage to back it up.
This means the better your gear is, the more valuable it becomes.
Jewels are a very good way to get crit multi.

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fladsongomes wrote:

- What's the best/usual way to calculate how much I have?

You can see this ingame in your character tab (C). Click on the dark pact icon and you'll see the crit chance/multiplier of the skill.
Crit chance is calculated by: base crit * (1 + %inc crit/100)


This is all assuming you're using dagger/shield. If you use other weapons, certain stats can become more valuable.
(I.e. Void Batteries give you so much crit chance that it's worth swapping the crit chance gem for the crit multi gem)
If you want to see which stat is better for your current character, I recommend Path of Building.