GhazzyTV's Dark Pact Necromancer Build Guide (PoE Settlers of Kalguur 3.25)

July 25th, 2024, 03:36

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Disclaimer!

This build comes with a very unique play-style and is a bit more advanced than most other league-starter viable builds. Due to the increased complexity of the build you should watch the videos listed below under the Introduction which covers gear progression and proper explanations of how the defensive & offensive scaling works in this build.

Introduction

Now I have told you this is not an easy league starter build, I do want to tell you it’s an amazing build. Before you consider playing it, have a look at the below video’s.

Gear progression: https://youtu.be/aqatHI1wKeQ
Defensive scaling: https://youtu.be/YYC24zu-VF0
Offensive scaling: https://youtu.be/sQh5G1D23W8

Below, you can see the build in action from my YouTube guide. Do note that the video might be outdated in terms of information, you should always look at this guide to make sure you have the updated information.

Build Overview

In this section, I will outline the pros, cons, and general playstyle. This will allow you to determine if this is the right build is for you!

Pros

+ High Sustaining – We are setting up the build to essentially passively counter damage taken by recoup by boosting regeneration of our Life pool and benefiting from Energy Shield leech mechanics to sustain our Energy Shield pool.

+ League Starter – The build lacks specific mandatory unique items and therefor works very well in league start scenarios as well as in SSF.

+ Bosser – The damage output this build can achieve even in low budget is completely absurd.

+ Unique Play Style – You will summon skeletons and then cast Dark Pact which is chaining between your skeletons offering not only an unique playstyle but also a unique approach to gearing.

Cons

– Unique Play Style – Due to the nature of this build’s playstyle, it is a build that not everyone will find enjoyable. I strongly recommend watching the gameplay video before starting this build.

– Cluster – For endgame, it is crucial that you get yourself a medium cluster jewel with minion Life to get the node Blessed Rebirth, which is very easily crafted and/or super cheap to purchase. This jewel is absolutely required for the higher endgame content to avoid having your skeletons die before you get to dish out some damage with Dark Pact.

– Limitations – The build is very fast and generates an insane amount of sustain via sources of leech. Despite this the build is not a raid-boss and you should avoid face-tanking enemies if possible. Skeletons become immortal against enemies thanks to a medium cluster jewel but this does not prevent the skeletons from taking damage from the Dark Pact skill itself. This results in skeletons dying on boss fights and will require you to re-summon them.

Playstyle

The playstyle is based around summoning your skeletons on the field and then directly connecting them by casting Dark Pact, chaining between your skeletons and dealing massive amounts of damage.

Damage Scaling And Defensive Layers

The build uses the new mechanic that recoups damage taken from hits. We will have 50% of incoming damage taken recovered as life back to us over a 4 second time frame which we will combine with the effects of Petrified Blood. We will also leech our damage dealt to our Energy Shield to properly sustain a high amount of both Life and Energy Shield. On top of this, we have a layer of skeletons in-front of you that enemies will target rather than yourself. Our primary damage is dealt by casting Dark Pact on our skeletons causing the spell chain between them. Each chain can hit the same target(s) per chain making Chain Support an incredibly strong support gem. Since Dark Pact deals a base chaos damage based on the max life our skeletons have, we will want to ramp up minion life across our skill-tree as well as via support gems and gear.

The defensive layers on this build are VERY tricky to grasp. The easy part is building for high block chance against both attacks and spells. Chaos damage over time can be especially scary with low chaos resistance making that a desired stat to have if possible on your gear. With this build, we are using Petrified Blood which works in this way:

Our Life is cut in half putting us at “Low Life,” allowing for the use of Pain Attunement and increasing our damage dealt. The only way we can go above 50% of our maximum Life is with the use of a Life flask. Upon doing so, all of our spells gain a Life cost on top of the mana cost to cast. This requirement is removed when we are back down to 50% of our life.

While Pain Attunement requiring Low Life may seem daunting, Petrified Blood allows us to hit that benchmark while maintaining a similar effective health pool by preventing a portion of damage from hits and transferring into a damage over time effect. Thanks to our build recouping 50% of damage taken from hits as life, though, we can easily handle the degen. Combined with high Energy Shield, which we sustain with Energy Shield Leech, we end up with a very high effective health pool despite our Low Life status.

PoB And Passive Skill Tree

All my guides use Path of Building. We have a simple guide for you that shows how to import my build into Path of Building, you can find the guide here

Below you’ll find a couple of different PoB links, it is strongly recommended to start with the low budget PoB, it includes leveling sections throughout the acts as well as skill-point progression.

Here’s the low budget Dark Pact PoB: https://pobb.in/cevRJgHIzxig
For higher budget here’s the most optimal and well rounded beast: https://pobb.in/LpkfbL3A7F1l

You can find more information on our dedicated page, along with all the recommended gem links.

GhazzyTV's Dark Pact Necromancer PoB, Passive Skill Tree & Gem Links (PoE Settlers of Kalguur)

Gearing

A lot of the endgame gear can easily be crafted.
You can read more details about our gearing recommendations on the dedicated page. You’ll find a summarized version below.

GhazzyTV's Dark Pact Necromancer Gear, Jewels & Flasks (PoE Settlers of Kalguur)

Item Slot	Item Name	Rarity
Head	Life then Res/Attributes as needed (For high budget you can get a helmet with “+ level of all minion gems)	Rare
Amulet	Life then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Chest	Life then Res/Attributes as needed (or a Tabula Rasa	Rare/Unique
Gloves	Vaal Caress	Unique
Boots	Life then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Belt	Darkness Enthroned	Unique
Rings	Life then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Weapon	Rare with + level of minion and/or spell skills	Rare
Shield	High life, ES base preferably with Spell crit chance	Rare

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Recommendations

You can read about the Ascendancy, Bandit choice, and Pantheon Power recommendations for this build on our dedicated page.

GhazzyTV's Dark Pact Necromancer Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Powers (PoE Settlers of Kalguur)

Levelling

You can easily level with generic spells until you reach level 28 and gain access to the Dark Pact skill. While levelling, be sure to complete Siosa’s quest in the Library of Act 3 to purchase Feeding Frenzy for our skellies and then start casting that on your skeletons instead. An important note to remember when playing this build is that mana problems are very common and there are a few solutions to this that are both easily accessible and cheap. One solution is to use a mana flask during the campaign acts and later get an “Enduring” prefix rolled mana flask. It’s important to point out that levelling with Dark Pact can be very clunky at first and quickly becomes smoother and smoother as you progress. However, for new(er) players it can in many cases be smoother to stick to Absolution all the way till level 60-70 even before switching. In the PoB the Dark Pact leveling can be found in the skill-section whilst the Absolution is generically listed below here in the written guide. It’s fair to point out that I personally prefer to level with the ability I’m expected to use in the end-game, but, Absolution is considered better & faster if speed is what you’re looking for to level with.

Act 1 – 3

A baseline effective way of levelling in the early acts is to utilize Freezing Pulse, Stormblast Mines, Frost Bomb, Frost Blink and Orb of Storms. A useful method of dealing with tougher enemies, such as Brutus, is to include a Holy Flame Totem which not only deals damage but also works as a decoy for the boss(es) to hit rather than yourself.

For levels 1-8, you will use the following gems:

Stormblast Mine for single target.
Freezing Pulse for clearing.
Frost Bomb for clearing when you get it instead of the Freezing Pulse.
Frostblink
Holy Flame Totem

Once you reach level 8, you are able to get support gems in the form of Added Lightning and Added Cold. This is where Stormblast Mines starts to take over and become the main source of your damage as you progress through the Acts.

Added Lightning Damage Support
Added Cold Damage Support
Flame Dash (After Brutus we switch our Frostblink to this instead.)

When you reach level 12 and have entered the caverns leading to Merveil you can grab Absolution as your main source of damage with the following links:

The Absolution will carry you to maps if you wish but it’s way more fun to use the ability the build is supposed to use for the end-game so you can switch to Dark Pact after reaching Act 3, level 28. The Aura decision comes in Act 2, which is when we can enable Herald of Purity & Summon Skitterbots.

Act 3+

In Act 3, you’ll want to reach Siosa in the Library, who allows us to purchase any and all gems we might lack from previous gem vendors. This allows for the purchase of Physical to Lightning Support which we’ll use for our Absolution but also adding Feeding Frenzy Support to our golem or zombies to give ourselves more minion damage.

Later you can switch the added damage support gem with Spell Echo Support (LvL 38)

The Aura changes will be to remove all heralds and replace them with Zealotry. In some cases, you might want to consider still using one or two of the previous heralds if possible with your mana. Opening up your mana pool helps a lot to sustain the mana problems normally solved with mana flask(s) (preferably with an “Enduring” prefix). Avoid reserving too much mana and preventing your ability to effectively deal damage.

At this point of your progression, you simply just need to follow the endgame tree and gem links to further enhance your character throughout the Acts and into the hardest endgame content.

For more general levelling advice, we recommend the following guides:

Our step-by-step levelling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the levelling process.
Our guide to Unique Items for levelling, which helps you gear up your characters for the levelling process.

Questions?

To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, you may have questions. Please join the PoE Vault discord and they will attend to them as soon as possible.

Final Notes

As much as I love making build guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. With that said, if you’ve made any tweaks to the build compared to what I’m showing in this guide I would love it if you share my discord! It’s an effective way to show other approaches and it helps me grow as a build guide creator!

I hope you found the build guide useful and I wish you all many Divine Orb drops!