[3.0] Xendran's IW Crit Dark Pact Berserker

Pledge of Hands
Level 100
Level 96

Dagger
Level 100

I've only provided a level 100 tree here as you're free to choose either the Chaos cluster at the top right as your 95-100 or the life cluster beside vaal pact as your 94-100

Minotaur on a 5 Link

More coming soon, I've been upgrading my gear lately and haven't recorded much.

Dark Pact
Staff:


Swap out Increased Critical Strikes for Concentrated Effect against bosses.
We gain a level 30 Spell Echo by socketing this into Pledge of Hands.

Dagger:


Wither Totem

This more than doubles our single target damage by causing enemies to take increased Chaos damage.



Movement
Staff:

Flame Dash gives us a speed boost and lets us cross gaps, while Arcane Surge provides a free 7-second buff to our damage and speed.

Dagger:
(Links Soon)
Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Fortify - Culling Strike

This provides us with a quick movement skill that also culls bosses, helping to close the gap between Pledge of Hands and a very well rolled Dagger/Shield combo.

Auras and Curses





Gem Swaps:


Blasphemy with either Enfeeble or Temporal Chains provides a very large amount of defense on top of our life pool. If you feel comfortable in the content you are running you can swap this with Assassin's Mark, providing a nice boost to damage.

Arctic Armour adds to this, further mitigating Physical and Fire damage while we facetank bosses, and Vaal Haste gives us some extra speed for clearing maps and killing bosses.

In addition, we have space for one utility mana reservation.
Purity of Elements caps resists for Elemental Weakness maps, and can fill out missing resistance.
Any of the individual Purity auras can be used on dangerous content if you feel it is necessary.

Finally, Righteous Fire lets us activate Yolo Mode. If you want to burn down a boss quickly, activate Righteous Fire once you start attacking them and leech through the damage. I highly recommend that you bring a Dousing flask if you do this. Stacking this with Vaal Haste can lead to some intense damage. If you don't feel safe doing this, you can use Vaal Lightning Trap, but I find the effort to really not be worth it to go from 240% to 260% damage.

If you upgrade to a +1 Curse Amulet, you have the option of getting Temporal Chains on Hit on your gloves to add a layer of safety to bosses. This helps escape things like Phoenix's explosion by slowing it down. You also now have the option of using Assassin's Mark alongside Enfeeble instead of a utility purity aura, or use blasphemy to permanently run Enfeeble + Temporal Chains.

Ideal socketing Notes
A 5L6S Cherrubim's Maleficence with the god-awful colors of BBBRG G Will allow you to socket Vaal Haste alongside your Flame Dash, so it can benefit from Increased Duration. This is not be a pleasant thing to try to achieve, so don't stress over it.

Dagger Note
The dagger setup has some differences.
Your Wither Totem loses Faster Casting and is placed into the weapon or shield.
Your aura setup is moved to the weapon or shield.
Your gloves setup becomes Vaal Haste - Flame Dash - Increased Duration - Arcane Surge 7
Place Shield Charge in a helmet type that can easily roll the colors.
You must give up the Increased Duration on your Vaal Haste and Arcane Surge if you wish to use Righteous Fire.

https://pastebin.com/KtdHLZD3

While the armor and accessories on this are rolled perfectly, it is not using 4 Mod Jewels or Labyrinth Enchants. Expect to take about a 15% hit to the DPS here with gear that is quite good, but not perfect. If you get 4 mod jewels and labyrinth enchants, you can take the build beyond what this Path of Building shows.

Additionally, the rings are not minmaxed fully. Because of these factors, it is reasonable to expect to get near the PoB numbers with very good gear unlike the majority of ultra-cheated Path of Building characters that you see.

Righteous Fire is not active by default.

Pledge of Hands offers an obscene damage bonus for how easy it is to get.

(Dagger / Shield Link Here)

Once you have the currency, you'll be looking for a rare Dagger and Shield combo.



Repentance allows our melee damage bonus from Strength to also apply to our spells. Strength also increases our life, which is increasing the base damage of Dark Pact as well. This ends up being quite a nice boost to the damage.

Try to get a pair without Reduced Spell Damage.

Be aware the Intelligence requirement on this is quite steep, and requires every node in our passive tree to meet if you want to use Bisco's Collar or a +1 Curse amulet.



Belt of the Deceiver offers a nice damage boost through Intimidation, while also providing some protection against being one shotted by Critical Hits. Once you have a really nice Rare Belt with a lot of Life and Strength, you can go ahead and replace this.

A note about Intimidate, while it will act as a 10% More Damage multiplier against trash mobs, it will not be as effective against bosses since it will only take your 240% damage against them with Wither up to 250%.



Your Accessories should have Resistances, Strength, and Life.

If you are doing well on resistances, you can use a Diamond Ring.
If you are wealthy, you can instead use Two-Stone rings with essence crafted multiplier.
Unfortunately there is no way to fit multiplier onto a diamond ring without either having to always run a purity or using absurdly expensive 4 mod jewels.

A +1 Curse amulet is a high-end investment you can make if you decide you really enjoy the character and want to take it to the max. It is almost exclusively used for applying Temporal Chains to guardians and the shaper, because if you can afford this kind of amulet you will be using Bisco's Collar for all other content.

Gloves with Temporal Chains on hit give us this second curse for free, not interfering with our utility mana reservation.



Bisco's Collar lets you gain extreme amounts of currency very quickly with a massive boost to item quantity.



Your Helmet needs Life, Strength, and Resistances. Nothing complicated here, just try to get it in fairly high numbers.




Cherrubim's Maleficence provides a significant amount of chaos damage while maintaining a high amount of life.

After testing with Kaom's Heart, I found that the extra life offered by it did not outweigh the loss of Stun immunity, Freeze immunity, Temporal Chains immunity, and 2 extra sockets. I found that I had a much less enjoyable time while running with Kaom's Heart, which is why I've actually removed it from this guide.

If you want to, you can choose to use Kaom's Heart and a pair of rare boots with Life, Strength, Resistance, and Movement Speed.

For the Dagger/Shield setup, The Covenant is your best option. This adds an extra support gem for damage, while also giving a respectable amount of life.

Level with Sunder using a unique weapon like Limbsplit
You can take nearby melee and two handed damage nodes temporarily while pathing towards all nearby life.


This is a rough guide of what order you want to be picking your nodes up in.
Prioritize the stats you need, mainly Life.
Once you have completed the first labyrinth and grabbed Pain Reaver, you can consider moving into Dark Pact.

Dark Pact can be dangerous to use during boss fights while levelling. It may be worth still upgrading your Sunder setup to deal with certain situations. As you grow in level, you will be able to deal with bosses with Dark Pact more consistently.

Ascendancy: Berserker
Pain Reaver -> Crave the Slaughter -> Aspect of Carnage -> Cloaked in Savagery

The massive amount of leech and damage combine very nicely with our large health pool to keep us alive, and enemies dead.

Bandit: Alira, then change to 2 Passives.
20% Multiplier is worth around 1.33 Passives
0.66 Points for 10% all resist and 5 mana regen is a solid rate, and often allows you to run a Diamond Ring when you otherwise could not. Effectively 2 points on 30% Crit and 20% Multiplier if this is the case for you.

Once you reach higher levels, respec this into Eramir's 2 passive points to be able to complete the passive tree.

Pantheon: Lunaris & Ryslatha

Soul of Lunaris offers some nice movement speed around enemies, as well as some dodge that has almost no requirement.

Ryslatha offers a massive buff to flasks when used on low life, and passively restores your flask charges. This restores much faster than you think, and is quite handy (especially in Uber Lab).

These four flasks cover all of the necessary ailments and leaves you space for a 5th flask of your choice.
I personally like having a second life flask, especially if you can upgrade it to Blood of the Karui.
We don't gain much benefit from offensive unique flasks, however defensive ones such as Rumi's Concoction can be useful.

You're looking for Life and 2 damage mods.
If you can get a 4 mod jewel, especially with resistance, that is amazing for the build.
If you need to fill out resistances, find the best balance between using Jewels and Gear for resistances based on the slot.

Amulets are the place you want to be able to give up your resistances on most, because 30% resist on a jewel freeing up an amulet suffix for 38% Multiplier is much better than having the resist on the amulet and another 12% multiplier on your jewel. Additionally, it allows you to safely run Bisco's Collar in maps with Elemental Weakness.

Spell Damage / Cast Speed / Multiplier are your best options in terms of damage.