# Forbidden Rite Forbidden Rite is a chaos spell that fires a projectile near your cursor, as well as additional projectiles for each enemy within range. Casting this spell deals a Chaos Damage hit to you based on a percentage of your maximum life and energy shield. This includes when the spell is triggered. ## Skill Functions and Interactions **Taking Damage**: Whenever the spell is used, including via [[Cast when Damage Taken Support]] or [[Cast On Critical Strike Support]], this spell will cause you to take a hit of Chaos Damage equal to 40% of Maximum Life and 25% of Maximum Energy Shield added together. This damage is considered secondary damage and will trigger on-hit effects and [[Cast when Damage Taken Support]], unlike [[Dark Pact]]. This does not count as a cost. You will take a hit for each repeat of the skill when used with [[Spell Echo Support]] or [[Unleash Support]]. **Life Scaling**: Forbidden Rite deals additional damage based on the Maximum Life and Energy Shield of the user of the skill. Temporary buffs to Life or Energy Shield such as Massive Shrines or buffs from [[Headhunter]] will also boost the damage. When used with [[Spell Totem Support]], the damage will scale off Totem Life instead. **Projectiles**: By default, Forbidden Rite fires a projectile near your cursor, as well as additional projectiles for each enemy within range. This means that on single target, two projectiles will hit the enemy. Sources of additional projectiles will only add projectiles to the initial cursor-targeted projectile, and not the extra projectiles fired towards nearby enemies. The projectiles appear to have an expanding ring-based hit distribution, and it is recommended not to get more than +4 additional projectiles from various sources due to the tendency for projectiles to miss on smaller single targets. The projectiles appear to have a homing behaviour and will bend towards targeted enemies. The projectile is ground targeted and does not benefit from Chain, Fork, Split, Piece, or other projectile behaviour modifiers. However, Projectile Speed will greatly reduce the time between casting the skill and the impact of the projectile, improving the clunkiness of the projectile targeting against moving enemies. **Totems**: The totem playstyle is currently very popular with Forbidden Rite because it has several mechanics that bypass or mitigate the downsides while being able to efficiently scale the spell. For example, the unique [[Soul Mantle]] acts as an effective 7-link, and scales Totem Life very well in addition to [[Torchoak Step]], with much higher achievable Life values than self-cast. [[Rain of Splinters]] adds 2 projectiles for lower opportunity cost than [[Volley Support]]. Because the self-damage applies to the totem rather than you, you can also scale Totem Chaos Resistance with the Ancestral Preservation node on Totem Damage [[Medium Cluster Jewel]]s.