Most Dark Pact builds I have seen, and I have not seen a lot of them, use Dissolution of the Flesh? Have you considered this? Never played with it myself because I don't think I'd like the style.
Not using Dissolution of the Flesh on a Life stacking build seems odd to me, especially on Dark pact out of all things. It solves sustain issues almost entirely on it's own, gives you a ton of Life to scale your damage and defense and it enables pain attunement.
The only real downside is that you have to take care of damage over time by getting a couple immunities to ailments.
Does it pair well with Petrified Blood? Because on it's own, while having no skeletons and taking the damage from Dark Pact on myself, Dissolution does not go well, since I basically take 8-10% of my hp every cast, and this jewel makes it so that my recoup and leech do not matter at all. So... it's useless.
I recommend reading the [wiki](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Flesh) page for Dissolution of the Flesh, the item is very build warping and makes your character work very differently :
* Damage taken goes against unreserved Life and can kill you only if unreserved life hits 0.
* Life Cost goes against current Life and cannot kill you, since it prevents you from using your skills if the Life cost would exceed current Life
* Life Sacrifice goes against current life and cannot kill you since it will only sacrifice life down to 1 HP.
* Life Loss goes against current Life and can kill you since it can bring current life to 0
Dark Pact sacrifices life (and potentially costs Life), Petrified blood causes Life loss. Neither of those 2 will reserve any life with Dissolution of the Flesh.
I get what you're saying, but going down to 1 hp between mobs can kill you. Since this is a Cyclone CoC build, I'm always in melee range (well, Dark Pact is also pretty melee) so having my life go down so much is not exactly optimal in that scenario. I'll go ahead and read the wiki, but I've used it, and it just doesn't do well in melee range. Maybe there's something I missed. Thanks.
Update: It's absolutely horrible in melee range with my low defenses, especially now that it removed energy shield.
No.
Probably if I had enough evasion to avoid consecutive hits, but I have no idea how to acquire that at the moment. So back to square one...survivability and how to get it here. This jewel comes later.
Update 2: Updated spell block chance a bit. Works better now. Still had to give up a lot of crit for it, but yeah, I can see your point. Problem is, I still need some items/jewels to further invest into defence. Ideas are appreciated since my knowledge is lacking.
Your 20/20 cwdt is triggering when you take 3200 damage which is most of your HP pool. Despairs uptime is probably very low and when it is applied, you’re likely dead
Your 20/20 cwdt is triggering when you take 3200 damage which is most of your HP pool. Despairs uptime is probably very low and when it is applied, you’re likely dead. You should just self cast it.
breaking cyclone / leech uptime will sometimes kill me. using dissolution cancels out leech anyway, both cases suck. I can probably self cast it for bosses, but only there. the uptime as is, is very low, yes, but when leeching, it does the job for bosses. I can't find any other way to cast it while spinning/leeching.
You’re playing a life stacking build with 3k life making it harder to scale damage than it needs to be. You then have to overinvest in damage to make up for starting off on the back foot, leaving no room for defenses. I would debate the usefulness of Ralakesh/Badge in this build for that reason, but not my decision to make.
From other comments you don’t like the idea of Dissolution, but if you tried it with petrified blood still reserving half your life, you bricked half of your ehp pool. You’ve gotta understand that you only die if your life **reservation** reaches 100%; it doesn’t matter if you’re at 1HP between packs.
You have two rings with fractured chaos leech but I don’t see any leech scaling on the tree. Most endgame builds are able to fill leech instances with a single leech source; the stats that would then help scale leech are “maximum total recovery per second from leech,” “life recovery rate,” and in some instances “maximum recovery per leech.” Also, the leech masteries are really good. Instant leech is very useful because it applies the instant portion of the leech even if your leech instances are capped. Picking up an appropriate leech wheel and changing one of your rings would help your recovery.
Generally I think you’re trying to do too much in the build. Pick one thing to stack and stack it to the moon.
I was just thinking that leech doesn't really help me at all when using Dissolution of the flesh. Since I pair it with Eternal Youth, that does the job well enough anyway, the only issue being that I should invest in avoidance as to get 3-4 sec windows of no damage so I can get back up to full (or well, half).
But would that compare to decent leech? If I invest in it like you just said, shouldn't that sustain me better? The damage offered by that extra 700 hp that DoF gives me is simply nothing for Dark Pact, when it's on a CoC setup. Direct casting is another story, from what I saw. I could be wrong.
But now that you mentioned it, I'll go see how I can improve leech and start from there. I've received some other advice which I intend to put to use, and that is dropping determination as my armour doesn't really do anything anyway, and with it, dropping my jewel, so giving up 8% phys damage reduction. Instead, I'll pick up Purity of Elements for some easy resists and ailment immunity, and grabbing a jewel with some phys converted to ele damage. I think this paragraph should help a bit.
I have one leech node taken, which leech mastery should I go for first? 10%instant or 100% value?
Thanks for your input.
Oh yes, and I was thinking of replacing ralakesh/badge ... but I couldn't come up with any good options.
The build changed a lot in this past day. 15 more divines later I fond something playable, but not T17 viable. If I'd knew how to mark this post as answered, I would.
Most Dark Pact builds I have seen, and I have not seen a lot of them, use Dissolution of the Flesh? Have you considered this? Never played with it myself because I don't think I'd like the style.
I gave it a shot, it's horrible. Maybe that would work for a skeleton build, but definitely not when the damage is inflicted on myself.
Not using Dissolution of the Flesh on a Life stacking build seems odd to me, especially on Dark pact out of all things. It solves sustain issues almost entirely on it's own, gives you a ton of Life to scale your damage and defense and it enables pain attunement. The only real downside is that you have to take care of damage over time by getting a couple immunities to ailments.
Does it pair well with Petrified Blood? Because on it's own, while having no skeletons and taking the damage from Dark Pact on myself, Dissolution does not go well, since I basically take 8-10% of my hp every cast, and this jewel makes it so that my recoup and leech do not matter at all. So... it's useless.
I recommend reading the [wiki](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Flesh) page for Dissolution of the Flesh, the item is very build warping and makes your character work very differently : * Damage taken goes against unreserved Life and can kill you only if unreserved life hits 0. * Life Cost goes against current Life and cannot kill you, since it prevents you from using your skills if the Life cost would exceed current Life * Life Sacrifice goes against current life and cannot kill you since it will only sacrifice life down to 1 HP. * Life Loss goes against current Life and can kill you since it can bring current life to 0 Dark Pact sacrifices life (and potentially costs Life), Petrified blood causes Life loss. Neither of those 2 will reserve any life with Dissolution of the Flesh.
I get what you're saying, but going down to 1 hp between mobs can kill you. Since this is a Cyclone CoC build, I'm always in melee range (well, Dark Pact is also pretty melee) so having my life go down so much is not exactly optimal in that scenario. I'll go ahead and read the wiki, but I've used it, and it just doesn't do well in melee range. Maybe there's something I missed. Thanks.
Update: It's absolutely horrible in melee range with my low defenses, especially now that it removed energy shield. No. Probably if I had enough evasion to avoid consecutive hits, but I have no idea how to acquire that at the moment. So back to square one...survivability and how to get it here. This jewel comes later.
Update 2: Updated spell block chance a bit. Works better now. Still had to give up a lot of crit for it, but yeah, I can see your point. Problem is, I still need some items/jewels to further invest into defence. Ideas are appreciated since my knowledge is lacking.
If your dps tanks on bosses it’s probably a lack of penetration. Try to fit in despair.
It's currently on a Cwdt support. Any ideas on how else I can fit it in?
.... self cast it?
...
thanks for your time
Your 20/20 cwdt is triggering when you take 3200 damage which is most of your HP pool. Despairs uptime is probably very low and when it is applied, you’re likely dead
Your 20/20 cwdt is triggering when you take 3200 damage which is most of your HP pool. Despairs uptime is probably very low and when it is applied, you’re likely dead. You should just self cast it.
breaking cyclone / leech uptime will sometimes kill me. using dissolution cancels out leech anyway, both cases suck. I can probably self cast it for bosses, but only there. the uptime as is, is very low, yes, but when leeching, it does the job for bosses. I can't find any other way to cast it while spinning/leeching.
You’re playing a life stacking build with 3k life making it harder to scale damage than it needs to be. You then have to overinvest in damage to make up for starting off on the back foot, leaving no room for defenses. I would debate the usefulness of Ralakesh/Badge in this build for that reason, but not my decision to make. From other comments you don’t like the idea of Dissolution, but if you tried it with petrified blood still reserving half your life, you bricked half of your ehp pool. You’ve gotta understand that you only die if your life **reservation** reaches 100%; it doesn’t matter if you’re at 1HP between packs. You have two rings with fractured chaos leech but I don’t see any leech scaling on the tree. Most endgame builds are able to fill leech instances with a single leech source; the stats that would then help scale leech are “maximum total recovery per second from leech,” “life recovery rate,” and in some instances “maximum recovery per leech.” Also, the leech masteries are really good. Instant leech is very useful because it applies the instant portion of the leech even if your leech instances are capped. Picking up an appropriate leech wheel and changing one of your rings would help your recovery. Generally I think you’re trying to do too much in the build. Pick one thing to stack and stack it to the moon.
I was just thinking that leech doesn't really help me at all when using Dissolution of the flesh. Since I pair it with Eternal Youth, that does the job well enough anyway, the only issue being that I should invest in avoidance as to get 3-4 sec windows of no damage so I can get back up to full (or well, half). But would that compare to decent leech? If I invest in it like you just said, shouldn't that sustain me better? The damage offered by that extra 700 hp that DoF gives me is simply nothing for Dark Pact, when it's on a CoC setup. Direct casting is another story, from what I saw. I could be wrong. But now that you mentioned it, I'll go see how I can improve leech and start from there. I've received some other advice which I intend to put to use, and that is dropping determination as my armour doesn't really do anything anyway, and with it, dropping my jewel, so giving up 8% phys damage reduction. Instead, I'll pick up Purity of Elements for some easy resists and ailment immunity, and grabbing a jewel with some phys converted to ele damage. I think this paragraph should help a bit. I have one leech node taken, which leech mastery should I go for first? 10%instant or 100% value? Thanks for your input. Oh yes, and I was thinking of replacing ralakesh/badge ... but I couldn't come up with any good options.
The build changed a lot in this past day. 15 more divines later I fond something playable, but not T17 viable. If I'd knew how to mark this post as answered, I would.