[3.11] Apep's rage self cast Dark Pact Pathfinder

Build concept

I've allways wanted to do an Apep's rage build and there was a small change this league (instead of a 40% increased mana cost it has a +40 flat mana cost to your skills).

That means that any skill with two Apep's rage is going to cost us more than 100 mana per cast (80 mana from apep, probably more than 20 from the skill + support gems). And that serves my ambition to use the Kitava's thirst helmet.
Spoiler

Unlike other items, Kitava's thirst triggers ALL the socketed spells unless you've duplicated spells in your helmet (let say you have two soulrend, only one can be triggered, but if you have one soulrend and one essence drain, both of them are going to be triggered)

We do have one drawback, it costs us a lot of mana to cast a skill. That's not enough, what about spending all our life while losing all our mana ? Dark pact here we go.

Pros
Spoiler
- Really good clear
- Engaging gameplay
- Original I guess ? (at least not meta)
- Not expensive (if you don't do it at the start of the league)


Cons
Spoiler
- Flask piano (if you don't like that)
- Not HC viable (or maybe it is but not if that's me playing this build)
- Squishy
- You'll have to think in boss fights (when to dps, when to move to regen your life/mana)


Defensive layers
Spoiler
According to my Path of Building I'm casting 5,6 dark pact per second, it costs me 122 mana to cast (i'm using echo, so the mana cost is only 2.8 * 122 per second) and the life cost is 6% per cast.

We are losing :
33,6% of our life per second
341.6 mana per second

And what do we have to handle that :
- evasion,
- dodge,
- immortal call,
- stun immunity (kind of),
- a "lot of" life and mana regen
- flasks up all the time
- that's all


Skills mechanics

Spoiler
- Cast dark pact, trigger your helmet spells(soulrend + essence drain for me)
- link immortal call to arcane surge and bind it to your movement key. Immortal call is going to cost at least 100 mana, triggering lvl 12 arcane surge and while walking you have a 50% chance to trigger your helmet spells (50% on a 4 second cooldown is not that much but it's honest work)
- link flame dash to arcane surge and repeat above tactic
- essence drain in the helmet helps us with life regen

the other mechanics are pretty straight forward, wither totems, herald of agony, despair curse.


Unique items mechanics
Spoiler
- Apep's rage*2 + Kitava's thirst for the mana cost fun
- Chaos Impresence amulet so despair is mana free
- Garukhan's flight because life regen and I wanted to test it



Must have rare items
Spoiler
The only must have items you should have are cluster jewels which means

- 1 large cluster jewel (added small passive skills grant 12% increased chaos damage) with two sockets and the Unwaveringly Evil notable.
- 2 medium cluster jewels (added small passive skills grant +4% to chaos damage over time multiplier) with one socket and the Circling Oblivion notable

- Unwaveringly Evil grants us our kind of stun immunity
- Circling Oblivion is very important because with apep's rage and our passive tree, our poison duration is very short, we need to increase it.


Flasks
Spoiler


Apart from the hybrid and quicksilver flasks, the rest is up to you. I've crafted the aformentionned flasks, got a bit lucky. Can be quite expensive to buy or to craft.

Try to stack evasion/dodge flask because that's our only defensive layer. Phasing is important to me because you can rush into a pack of ennemy and cast dark pact.


Pantheon
Spoiler
- Soul of Ryslatha
with this build and this soul, you're going to get 8 flasks charge every 3 seconds for your life flask. Our life flask is hybrid so it helps us with our mana too. Since it's an instant hybrid flask, the recovered amount is very low and the Gorulis soul is very good in case of panic flask usage.

- Soul of Lunaris
we are getting close to ennemies with dark pact. This is a good defensive layer for us. Don't capture Hallowed Husk it is useless since we do not have any minions on which projectiles could have chained (the only use could be against ennemies that are using magma orb since bouncing is a chain effect)



Full build
Spoiler

items:
Spoiler


There is a missing enlighten lvl3 linked to Herald of agony and clarity. (don't mind the gems lvl in the helmet)

for path of building:
https://pastebin.com/dSsJA678

I'm not a pob warrior, so here is a disclaimer on the number you're going to see,

- 845K shaper dps (sounds good)
- keep in mind that you're never going to do full dps because in less than 3 seconds your life reaches 0 with dark pact life cost
- I've only ticked 'do you have a flask active' because yes you are going to have one all the time (pathfinder + passive tree perks + pantheon)
- I've not configured the number of wither stacks on the ennemy
- arcane surge is ticked (because you trigger it by just walking every 4 seconds or doing a flame dash)
- my gems aren't quality 20 nor level 21 (apart from dark pact lvl 20 quality 20 because my vaal orb was a bitch)
- my gear is self found and I was too lazy to craft or buy better gear (i really wanted to test this build without investment apart from the mandatory uniques)



Build Cost
Spoiler
- Chaos impresence : 50c at the time I've bought it, 2 or three weeks after the start of the league. (10c now, 500c at the start of the league). Keep in mind that if the flavor of the month build is chaos based, the price of this amulet is never going to be so low
- Garukhan's Flight : 1c or self drop (not that rare)
- Apep's rage * 2 : 5c each if you want good rolls
- Kitava's thirst : we need good mana roll, 5c (I don't mind having 48 mana on it and not 50)
- 6l random evasion based chest : 20c
- 1 silver oil to get Dirty techniques notable on the amulet : 15c
- rest of the stuff was self found or self craft, I don't know how much my cluster jewels would cost, they aren't that hard to obtain if you stack some alteration orbs.

TOTAL : 101c. Add to that my flask and cluster jewel, maybe it's going to cost you between 1 and 2 exalted orb






I'd like to improve this build, let me know if you have any ideas like how to make it safer, how to improve the DPS. Keep in mind that Apep's rage and Kitava's thirst are mandatory uniques even if they are not best in slot for a dark pact build.

Feel free to tell me how to improve this guide too.
Last edited by tanguyvda on Aug 22, 2020, 4:30:28 AM
Last bumped on Sep 11, 2020, 3:14:53 PM
This does sound very interesting. I've been looking for a good self-cast dark pact build for some time.

How come there are no comments here yet?

How far did you push this build?
Hello,

"
How come there are no comments here yet?


this is not a build that is going to one shot end game bosses and it is hard to play, you're going to die a lot if you don't know what you're doing

"
How far did you push this build?


I've done shaper and guardians, but in my opinion they are easy fights because you can easily think about your position and just let your life regen do the work with your flasks. Also, you can dodge every single attack so even if your life pool isn't huge, it's not a real problem.

On the other hand, couldn't do Sirus. because
- you lose too many hps when casting dark pact
- you can't (well, I can't) run around to get my health pool back, there are too many mechanics that kills your regen
- flasks weren't enough to counter that
- got one shot too easily

then again, with proper investment, more optimized gem setup (lvl 21 gems, helmet gems tuning like bladefall for poison stacking on boss) this may become a very good build.


betrayal missions were painfull too
Last edited by tanguyvda on Sep 11, 2020, 3:36:02 PM

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