Dark Pact

Dark Pact is a chaos spell that removes some life from one of your Skeleton minions near you or the targeted location to deal chaos damage in an area around it. This effect will chain to your other nearby skeletons. If you have no skeletons near you or the targeted location, it will sacrifice your own life to deal damage instead.

Skill Functions and Interactions

• Life Removed: If self cast, Dark Pact will sacrifice 6% of the player's maximum life in a manner similar to spending life with the Arrogance Support or the Blood Magic Keystone. Since this sacrificed life is not considered damage, it cannot be mitigated with chaos resistance and will not trigger Cast when Damage Taken Support. If 6% of maximum life cannot be removed (for example, maximum 1 life due to Chaos Inoculation) the spell will continue to function but with a smaller damage bonus.

• Life Scaling: Dark Pact deals additional damage equal to the amount of life removed from the target of the spell. This means that Minion Life nodes and the Minion Life Support will increase the damage dealt when cast on skeletons, while self-casting scales with the player's maximum life. Since the spell does not know whether a skeleton is in range until the moment of cast, the in-game tooltip will only consider the spell's base damage and any external sources of damage.

• Spell Totem Support: Dark Pact can be supported by spell totem and will cast whenever there is an enemy in close proximity. The totem will first attempt to target any skeleton in range. If none are found, the totem will sacrifice 6% of its own maximum life. This means that in order for a totem to cast on Skeletons effectively, the skeletons, totem, and enemy must all be in close proximity of one another. Totems that self-sacrifice will receive the more damage bonus.

• Minion Instability: Dark Pact can be used to forcibly lower the life of your Skeleton minions to low life. Doing so will trigger the effect of the Keystone passive Minion Instability. Using Spell Echo Support can effectively speed up the rate at which skeleton life is removed, in order to trigger this effect faster.

• Minion Supports: Despite having the minion tag, there are no minion specific support gems that impact Dark Pact. However, the Reanimator's and Summoner's mod found on helmets, as well as uniques that raise the level of socketed minion gems (The Baron, Chober Chaber, Femurs of the Saints, etc.) will increase the level of Dark Pact.

• Chaining: Dark Pact will chain from one skeleton to other nearby skeletons the designated number of chains. Each Skeleton used to chain Dark Pact will suffer the 6% life sacrifice from this skill. Additional chains can be added to help cover a larger area or return a chain to a previously targeted Skeleton using Chain Support, Ricochet from the Deadeye Ascendancy, or items such as Mjölner. Note that Dark Pact is NOT a projectile and is not affected by projectile speed or other projectile modifiers, including the quality properties of Chain Support. Also, note that it is impossible to chain to or from the player in any way using Dark Pact as the chaining property of Dark Pact only triggers with Skeletons.

• Divine Shrine: As Dark Pact sacrifices life rather than deals damage to the player, being affected by a Divine Shrine will not prevent life loss.