[3.0]BLAM - Dark Pact Totem Ascendant Uber Atziri, Eternal Lab, Shaper and mapping viable.

INTRODUCTION

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Welcome to My guide for the Blood Magic, Life, Armour and Modular Dark Pact Totem Ascendant
This build takes advantage of the recently buffed Soul Mantle and the powerful Dark Pact skill to create an incredibly versatile endgame character on a fairly decent starting budget.

VIDEO
Guides:
Base/Budget version guide
Upgrading for Endgame
Tweaks for Bosses/Clearing and Rarity

Gameplay:
Taking on Merciless and Eternal Labyrinths at 50/61
Guardians
Shaper
Timestamped Stream consisting of 4 Eternal Labs and Uber Atziri
Xoph, Tul, Esh, Uul Netol and The Pale Council
OVERVIEW

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Pros:

+ Decently Fast.
+ Incredibly Versatile(Able to do all endgame content without changing much)
+ Relatively inexpensive to start with decent scaling.
+ Curses have no effect on you.


Cons:

- Totem Build which can hurt clearspeed.
- Leveling to 49 can be a pain.
- A lot of our damage comes from self-cursing so there is some wind up time.


SKILL TREE

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Ascendancy Points:
Templar-Guardian (Cruel)
Gives us the last little bit of curse effectiveness reduction causing curses to do nothing to us.

Witch-Occultist(Merciless)
Gives cursed enemies 15% reduced chaos resist.

Path of the Witch(Eternal)
Lets us come through the witch start for our last nodes instead of through stat nodes from the templar as well as granting us an additional 2 passives.

Bandits: Kill All(+2 Passives) or Help Alira(Large resist boost and minor damage boost).


LEVELING

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Level with whatever spell you're comfortable with(frostbolt if you happen to have 2 Frozen Trail jewels), once you reach 49 Equip Soul Mantle and spec Ancestral Bond to trivialise the rest of the story mode.

SKILL TREE EXPLANATION

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We start by leaving the Scion through the resist nodes granting us a massive 28% resists and gives us easy access to Totemic Zeal(huge placement speed boost) and Arcane+Profane Chemistry(massive boost to flask potential).

We then head up through Constitution for extra life nodes to take later on following on to the entire Totemic Mastery cluster for Totem Life, Damage, Placement speed and Defenses also grabbing the Jewel socket above for the Spire of Stone Unique Jewel.

From there we head up into the Templar for some Life, Area of Effect, Spell Damage and Resists coming out the left to pick up more life, a jewel socket for the Energised Armour Unique Jewel and Faith and Steel which will grant us a large armour boost and some resistances.

Now we are at Ancestral bond, we take the entire cluster as well as potentially picking up Purity of Flesh for some life and chaos resist.

Following that we head down towards the Marauder area to grab Blood Magic, Mortal Conviction, Soul of Steel and Bloodless stopping along the way to pick up Warrior's Blood and Heart of the warrior, this path grants us a lot of extra life and physical defense. Since our endgame build forces blood magic we aren't really losing much.

Lastly once we've picked up Path of the Witch in the Eternal Labyrinth we grab the spell damage and cast speed coming up the left of the witch as well as Occultist's Dominion for some cast speed and spell damage, then heading to the left to grab our last set of Totem Damage and Totem Placement Speed nodes at Shamanistic Fury. We then head through Heart and Soul, Deep Wisdom and Blast Radius for some more Area of Effect as well as some life.

JEWELS

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We use Primarily unique jewels consisting of:
Socketed in the Scion start is Self-Flagellation granting us up to "20% increased damage per Curse on You" on average this will grant us about 160% increased damage
Next Socketed into the node above Totemic Mastery we have Spire of Stone which grants us 15% totem life as well as making our totems immune to stun.
Lastly socketed into the node between Faith and Steel and Devotion we have Energised armour which coupled with Faith and Steel grants us 96% increased armour.

The socket between the Scion and Marauder can be filled with a rare jewel with the following attributes in order of usefulness:
Life
Totem Life
Totem Damage
Cast Speed
Poison chance and duration
Chaos Damage
Resists





GEAR EXPLANATION

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FLASKS

We use 1 healing over time flask with increased Recovery speed to help deal with Damage over Time as well as remmove bleeds.

We use 1 Seething divine life flask for emergency recovery, the suffix is player's choice, I went with poison removal.

We use a Quicksilver for movement with Reduced Charges used and % increased Movement Speed for a total of 5 quicksilver uses.

We use a Basalt flask to stack on top of our physical damage reduction when we're in dangerous physical situations, Again we use Chemist's to gain an extra use and Iron Skin for another decent armour boost.

Boosts our cast speed for Dark Pact as well as making our Lightning Warp even faster.

LINKS AND GEMS

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Main DPS Setup
5L Chest : Dark Pact + Controlled Destruction + Void Manipulation + Added Chaos Damage + Faster Casting.
6L Chest : Dark Pact + Controlled Destruction + Void Manipulation + Added Chaos Damage + Poison + Vile Toxins.

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Boss DPS Boost
4L Helm: Wither, Cast While Channeling, Temporal Chains, Molten Shell.
Since our wither reaches 20 stacks fairly quickly in the default setup we instead augment it with utility skills like Temporal Chains and Molten Shell linked with Cast While Channeling, once you acquire Temporal Chains on hit Gloves you can switch Temporal Chains for Summon Lightning Golem and skip the golem setup in your weapon.

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Mobility Setup
4L Boots: Lightning Warp + Less Duration + Faster Casting + Rapid Decay
We use Lightning Warp in a 4 link because we have the sockets and we are wielding a wand limiting our movement skill options.

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Golem
3L Weapon: Summon Lightning Golem + Minion Life + Minion & Totem Elemental Resistance
Cast speed is a massive damage boost for us so lightning golem is probably best.

Once we have Tukohama's Fortress and Temporal Chains on Hit gloves we can swap this for
Endgame 3L Weapon: Searing Bond, Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance, Increased Duration.
We cast this totem away from us before entering combat for some extra armour.

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Extras
3L Shield: Cast when Damage Taken, Immortal Call and Increased Duration
We have a Cast When Damage Taken, Immortal call setup to help with rapid burst damage and labyrinth style traps.

FOR ADDITIONAL TWEAKS YOU CAN DO TO OPTIMIZE FOR SPECIFIC TASKS SEE THE Tweaks for Bosses/Clearing and Rarity Video


THE END

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Hi ! Thank you for this guide, the build itself looks pretty cool, and the guide is very well-written, pleasant to read, and I like the frogs in the videos. :D

I'm thinking of trying it out. Would you happen to have a Path of Building project for the build ?

Also, with the two Kikazarus and the Guardian ascendancy, you reach 105% reduced effect of curses ; how is the curse effectiveness on you computed then ? Are you immune to curses (while still being curse-able, they just have no effect on you), or are you still affected in a heavily reduced way according to a lengthy and scary equation ?

One last question : how necessary is Tukohama's fortress to the build ? At the time I'm writing this it's 550c first price in Harbinger league, and I won't be able to afford it for quite some time :3

Cheers !

Hey, the curses should have no effect even though they are on you, so your game should feel no different and there should be more damage.

Also, the shield is a more QoL than anything

"

Vatinas escribió:

Hi ! Thank you for this guide, the build itself looks pretty cool, and the guide is very well-written, pleasant to read, and I like the frogs in the videos. :D

I'm thinking of trying it out. Would you happen to have a Path of Building project for the build ?

Also, with the two Kikazarus and the Guardian ascendancy, you reach 105% reduced effect of curses ; how is the curse effectiveness on you computed then ? Are you immune to curses (while still being curse-able, they just have no effect on you), or are you still affected in a heavily reduced way according to a lengthy and scary equation ?

One last question : how necessary is Tukohama's fortress to the build ? At the time I'm writing this it's 550c first price in Harbinger league, and I won't be able to afford it for quite some time :3

Cheers !

As the person above me wrote, you are immune to curses with the guardian and take 20% effectiveness with the Hierophant(which is why this is only mentioned during the optimisation video as it takes some getting used to)

The Tukohama's fortress only becomes a requirement for consistently killing the shaper(although it could potentially be possible with the blight and wither totem optimisations, I have yet to try) everything else is just fine with a Lioneye's Remorse/Wheel of the Stormsail. In fact! I take off my tukohama's fortress for a Wheel of the Stormsail on maps below T14 simply because Wheel doubles the duration of curses on us making for a smoother clearing experience.

Edit: I have My level 92 PoB Pastebin
https://pastebin.com/XZKVFzaz
Also threw together one for around level 70 without everything mentioned in the endgame upgrades video.
https://pastebin.com/gDSrE23L

Thank you both for your answers! I'm actually trying this build, and even though leveling until 49 was indeed tough, it's incredibly smooth past that point.

Also, thanks a lot for the Path of Building code! :D

"

Vatinas escribió:

Thank you both for your answers! I'm actually trying this build, and even though leveling until 49 was indeed tough, it's incredibly smooth past that point.

Also, thanks a lot for the Path of Building code! :D

After playing this build leveling to 49 always feels tough :D

I just came up with one more question (yes, another one! :p)

In the skill tree, we go near Sanctuary, focused on increasing resistances from shields. So far I've felt like I have more than enough damage, so I'm wearing Lioneye's Remorse for more tankiness, and Lioneye's Remorse and Tukohama's fortress would greatly benefit from increased resistances from shields (90% armor increase with 4 of the 6 nodes, which are 2 nodes away from the closest allocated passive)

I intend to try it out myself, but I'd like to know what you think about it; is the 90% increased armor from Lioneye's Remorse or Tukohama's Fortress worth the 6 passives (which would also grant 20 strength, 2% additional chance to block, and 12% elemental resistances, which can be comfortable considering we can't use huge resistance rings)?

Thanks a lot for your answers! :)

"

Vatinas escribió:

I just came up with one more question (yes, another one! :p)

In the skill tree, we go near Sanctuary, focused on increasing resistances from shields. So far I've felt like I have more than enough damage, so I'm wearing Lioneye's Remorse for more tankiness, and Lioneye's Remorse and Tukohama's fortress would greatly benefit from increased resistances from shields (90% armor increase with 4 of the 6 nodes, which are 2 nodes away from the closest allocated passive)

I intend to try it out myself, but I'd like to know what you think about it; is the 90% increased armor from Lioneye's Remorse or Tukohama's Fortress worth the 6 passives (which would also grant 20 strength, 2% additional chance to block, and 12% elemental resistances, which can be comfortable considering we can't use huge resistance rings)?

Thanks a lot for your answers! :)

The sanctuary nodes are great for boosting our resistances, they were in my original planned build however the +300 per totem from Tukohama doesn't seem to be affected by it and I felt that I had enough resistances already. If you needed more resistances without gear I think the thing to do would be to go with Alira or go for Diamond Skin by the marauder as both of those would grant us 15% all resist for 2 points.

It is however also worth noting that if you did grab even more resists from the tree you could equip something like Allelopathy over rare gloves and have a nicer AoE and a bit more duration on your blight setup. or alternatively allowing you to switch to a worse pair of Temp Chains on Hit gloves. Also if you don't intend to ever upgrade to Tukohama's fortress its also a very solid option since it gives us an additional 3-5% block and quite a bit of armour.

Another option would be to come out through the life regen of the scion instead of the resists at that point for a bit more life regeneration. (this also allows for a very easy Spreading Rot jewel placement for our blight setup later on)

There are so many options to consider that I think everyone who follows this guide will end up with a slightly different tree.

is the Arcane Chemistry notable worth it?

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deo_thegod escribió:

is the Arcane Chemistry notable worth it?

Only if you're using a reduced flask charges used belt as the more reduced flask charges used you have the more effective it becomes.

the pair grants me a total of 5 uses out of my eternal and divine life flasks, 5 uses out of my chemist's quicksilver and 3 out of my chemist's basalt and silver.

Since my eternal restores practically all my life over 2.7 seconds and my divine restores half my life instantly I would definitely say that the cluster is well worth it, we end up losing a bit of potential life by going down there and picking up Arcane/Profane Chemistry but since we are already there and the build has a moderate dexterity requirement I don't feel that this is wasted.

In addition to this, since this build doesn't bank on not being hit(so that we can run ahead of our totems) having a reliable and efficient source of healing is a must.

If you have a look at the Uber atziri in the timecoded stream or the shaper fight you can see just what a difference the combination of bloodgrip and the 2 chemistry nodes makes.