This is the corrected version (in text form) of an old video guide i made years ago for this mastery. In that video there are a couple of mistakes i did back then and they have been corrected in this version. Also, this version includes the 2 skills Atlantis dlc brought to the game, the video guide was older than Atlantis and it didn't include those. Still, if you want to take a look at the video, it is still 90% valid and at least you can see some gameplay of the skills there. If you want to check out the video, please CLICK ME!
TERNION ATTACK.
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This is a skill that can be used only with a staff type of weapon. It uses your staff directly and it is possibly one of the most powerful skills in the game. This skill affects the projectiles of the staff you are using but it doesn't change the type of projectiles, if your staff deals cold damage, this skill will be dealing cold damage. The only way this skill is affecting projectiles is by providing 3 projectiles per staff attack instead of one but now each projectile deals much less damage than the one of your basic attack.
When you put one point to Ternion attack, it reduces the damage of each projectile by 75%. But for each point you invest into this skill, the reduction of projectiles' damage is getting reduced meaning you increase the damage of each one of the 3 projectiles. If you take this skill to its cap which is level 12 then you end up with minus 20% damage for each projectile. Keep in mind that all skills in this game can get increased by up to 4 levels after their maximum so if you get this skill to level 16 then the damage is reduced to 0% meaning that each projectile now deals the same damage as the basic attack of the staff. So, your Ternion Attack becomes even more powerful.
To use this skill we assign it to the left or right mouse buttons. In one of my builds i'm using it to the right mouse button while the left mouse button still uses the basic attack with the staff. The reason is this: The level of this skill in this build is 14 out of 16 meaning that each projectile deals -10% damage compared to the basic attack of the staff. So, sometimes when enemies are far away and I want to use my staff on them I use the basic attack because this one deals 10% more damage compared to Ternion Attack's per projectile and when we fire staff projectiles on enemies far away then depending on the distance, only one projectile hits an enemy. In this case, the basic attack projectile deals 10% more damage than one projectile of this skill. Of course if I had the level of this skill at 16 I would be using this skill all the time in the left mouse button because in that level there is no reduction to the damage of projectiles.
ARCANE LORE
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And now we come to the addon skill Arcane Lore. This skill increases the meter radius of effect of your staff attacks and also it increases projectile speed of your Ternion attack skill. Having an increased radius of effect means that you will be able to hit more than one target (sometimes) with one projectile only if those targets are next to each other and increased speed means that your projectiles travel faster and hit your enemies which is very helpful against enemies that keep moving because if you shoot a projectile and the enemy starts running away then your projectile's increased speed will make it reach the enemy faster, so, essentially it gives more "chances" to hit moving enemies. For builds that use Ternion Attack skill, this add on is mandatory.
One last thing is that if you increase your projectile speed by using this skill you can still increase your projectile speed even more by using items that provide buffs to projectile speed. To get the best performance possible out of Ternion Attack builds, you would need to increase your attack speed, projectile speed, max out these 2 skills and get them to plus 4 levels and of course to use the best possible Staff weapon for your build. But it is not necessary to get the best out of this Skill, you can still beat the game if it is in a very good state instead of a perfect one.
DEATH WARD
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This is a skill that can save your life and give you a chance to escape tough situations. When this skill activates it restores a portion of your life and also it gives you a big amount of damage absorption for 3 seconds.
Keep in mind that only the damage absorption is active for 3 seconds, the health restored effect is an instant effect, it works like drinking a potion for example.
The damage absorption of this skill can go up to 94% if you take the skill to plus 4 levels at level 12. Remember that this "damage absorption" effect works against all types of damage for 3 seconds and that we can not increase the duration of this skill, also we can not increase the minimum health requirements for triggering this skill.
So, this is how it works. Lets say that we have 100 health points and the enemy hit us with 85 points of damage. Then our health drops to 15 which is of course 15% so this skill triggers. If the enemy dealt 99 damage and we had 1 health point left then the skill would still trigger. But, if the enemy dealt 101 damage, then the skill would not trigger and we would have died. So, we have to remember that this skill does not work always but only when our health drops below 15% without the hit that reduces our health, being powerful enough to reduce the full amount of our health points.
The good thing about this skill is that it works always against damage over time effects we get from enemies, meaning: if for instance we bleed and our health goes down to 15% then the skill will trigger and save our life.
So, to get the most out of this skill, we would need to have the biggest amount of health possible, because this is the only way to improve the low health requirement for triggering this skill against powerful instant hits.
For example: If you have 10.000 health points then 15% of 10.000 is 1500. If an enemy hits you for 1000 damage points when your life is already at 16% meaning 1600 life then your life will drop to 600 and then the skill will trigger.
If now your life is 6000 points then 15% of that is 900 points. If the enemy hits you with the same 1000 damage hit when your life is at 16% of 6000 which is 960 health points, then your life will drop to zero and of course the skill wont trigger and you will die.
One of the best skills to help the performance of this one, is the Heart of Oak skill of Nature mastery.
DEATHCHILL AURA
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This is a great skill, it reduces the health of enemies affected and also it reduces their total speed which means their attacks and movement speed. The percentage of Reduction to enemy's health is not just an instant effect but it hits once per second, so enemies receive this effect once per second. Of course increasing the meter radius of the skill is even better because more enemies are affected and battles become easier.
This is an aura skill, it remains active until you die or until some enemies deactivate your skill by using the spellbreaker skill on you. If they do that, things become hard so you need to reactivate it fast enough to survive (in some occassions at least). But the problem is that they can use the spellbreaker immediately after you reactivated this skill and terminate it again, so having a very low recharge time on this skill can become crucial in some battles. So, if you get some items that provide a reduction to the recharge time of your skills it could help against spellbreaker enemies.
RAVAGES OF TIME
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This addon is a debuff for enemies. It reduces all types of damage dealt by enemies and also it reduces their armor absorption. With their armor absorption reduced enemies would take even more physical damage, other types of damage do not work with armor absorption. This skill would be great especially for melee builds that deal physical damage because when you get it to level 12 it cuts down almost half the damage of enemies and their armor absorption, so these enemies would die very fast if they didn't have any physical resistance buffs.
NECROSIS
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This is an amazing skill, one of the most powerful debuffs in the game. It reduces the resistances of enemies of 3 different types and if you use these types of damage then you will be able to obliterate your enemies. Keep in mind 2 things:
1. percentage Reduction to enemy's health is a Vitality damage type and it deals even more damage on enemies affected by Necrosis and having their Vitality resistance reduced. So even Deathchill aura skill deals more damage as reduction to enemy's health when Necrosis is active. Remember though that in Anniversary edition version 2.10 the stat "x% Reduction to Enemy's Health" doesn't deal more damage to Hero and Boss enemies that get their Vitality resistance reduced by your attacks. This effect deals more damage only to regular enemies that get Vit. resistances reduced. Hero and Boss enemies have very high resistances to "x% Reduction to Enemy's Health" that can not be reduced.
2. If you have another skill or item that provides reduction to any same one resistance of Necrosis, then the numbers will stack and you will reduce their resistances even more. Even by having an effect of % reduced resistances over time, which reduces all resistances of enemies at the same time, would help this skill reduce the respective resistances even more. So, this skill is awesome and you want to be using it, unless you don't care about increasing the reduction to enemy's health effect (for regular enemies only) of Deathchill aura and you don't play with any of the respective damage types of these debuffs.
SUMMON OUTSIDER
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This is a pet skill, it summons this big guy which deals good damage to enemies. Unfortunately this pet has a long recharge time of 6 minutes, so it would be better to use this pet only against bosses or on some very tough battles. Of course if you had 80% recharge time reduction you would be able to summon the pet every 72 seconds which would give you the ability to have the pet alive half of the time.
One other thing to remember is that this pet also deals a percentage of reduction to enemy's health so it would deal even more of this damage type to enemies affected by your Necrosis skill which reduces the vitality resistance of enemies (only for regular enemies)! And last but not least, all pets including this one can have their performance boosted by items that provide bonus to all pets!
ENSLAVE SPIRIT
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This is a nice skill that can make some of your enemies to start attacking your enemies for a few seconds. It can work only against enemies less than 5 levels above your own and it doesn't work on bosses (of course). Also there are some items that come with this ability of Mind Control, this ability does not stack with the one from items meaning that if you have an item with this effect equipped and you cast this spell on enemies then the spell will apply only its own numbers of effect, this ability on items works only when we use our weapon attacks on enemies.
This skill is awesome but there is a downside to it, after this works on your enemies and they become your allies, you can not kill them, if they kill all your other enemies and then you want to kill these charmed enemies you will have to wait for the mind control effect to wear off. So, you should be careful where you use this skill because it could wear off during a new battle against tough enemies and in that case those now free from your spell enemies would add to the damage against you because they would now start hitting you. So, keep in mind these details.
LIFE DRAIN
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This skill is a great skill that can save your life many times, it is not the skill that would deal huge amounts of damage to take down big bosses though. It deals vitality damage and attack damage converted to health. The more points you invest here the more you increase both of these stats. There are a couple of ways we can increase the vitality damage of this skill. One way is of course to cast it against enemies affected by the skill Necrosis which reduces vitality resistances of our enemies.
The other way is to use items that provide more vitality damage but keep in mind that when an item provides a flat number of vitality damage, that number is not working with this skill, only items providing a percentage of vitality damage work with this or any other skill, so you would need to stack percentages of vitality damage to your items to increase this damage. Of course your vitality damage increases also by putting attribute points to Intelligence.
One more thing to remember is that the attack damage converted to health of this skill increases only by putting points to this skill, it does not stack with the same stat we get from items and there is no other way to increase it, although if we get this skill to level 16 it gets to 300% which is a huge number. The great thing here is this, since this skill converts the damage done by its own vitality damage if you use it against enemies affected by skills that reduce their vitality resistances such as Necrosis, then you will get back even more health meaning that this conversion benefits from reduction resistances effects against enemies, not only by this skill but also by any other way possible to reduce resistances.
CASCADE
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This add on skill does the same thing as Life drain but it does it only on secondary targets, meaning if there are 4 enemies in front of you and you use Life Drain on one enemy, then Life Drain works only on that enemy and then the Cascade triggers and works on the rest 3 enemies, it does not affect the primary target. So, this skill turns Life Drain into an AoE skill, lets not forget that whatever said about Life drain applies also to this skill. Btw, the numbers of Life Drain do not stack with the numbers of Cascade, these are irrelevant to each other.
SOUL DRAIN
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This is an Atlantis' dlc skill. It works every time you use Life Drain since it is an addon of that spell and also it is an area of effect skill, it has an 8 Meters radius of effect.
This addon is very deadly when it hits enemies that don't have immunities to Vitality damage or Life leech and especially to Ghosts that have no immunities. Some ghost enemies will not receive damage from this one because of their super high resistances/immunities (for example some mage ghost zombies in Epirus in Epic/Legendary) but they will still get their energy drained by this skill. This energy drain effect is different than the other one that also deals damage for an amount of the energy drained so it deals no damage at all.
If you want to play with Life Drain skill tree then this addon is a very powerful one and it's a good idea to max it out. At level 10/6 the numbers are 66% Reduction to Enemy's Health, 33% Energy Drain. All other stats of the skill are fixed and don't increase by level ups.
VISION OF DEATH
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This is a nice crowd control effect, it deals no damage but enemies affected have their physical damage reduced, they get scared and try to run away which helps if you are close to dying and those who do not run away have a good chance for their melee attacks and ranged attacks to miss. The chance to fumble attacks works against melee attacks and the Impaired aim works against ranged attacks.
This skill would be very useful for melee builds because if you fought a tough battle and you were going to die, you could activate this skill, maybe cause fear to the enemies and while they run away you could also start running away, to recover life or for any other reason.
Of course it is also useful for ranged builds, because if enemies come close to you and you use the skill and they run in fear, you don't even have to move to hit them, while they run you just use your ranged attacks and kill them easier. Of course it helps greatly against melee attackers when you fumble their attacks while you play ranged builds because you don't receive that many hits and you don't die that easy.
DARK COVENANT
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This skill works like an aura, you activate it, it lasts for a few seconds only, it provides a great amount of energy regeneration if you increase its level and also it gives a boost to your total speed. The total speed and meter radius numbers of this skill are fixed and do not increase with levels, only energy regeneration and duration of the skill increase along with the active health cost per second.
So this is a nice skill but comes with a cost that in some cases can kill you. But if your build is using some items that provide flat numbers of health regeneration or even the attack damage converted to health ability which we find on many items or even "life leech per second" ability, then this health cost could become no problem.
You would need to be using this skill if your build needed more energy regeneration and more total speed or if your build could utilize the addon of this skill, Unearthly power.
UNEARTHLY POWER
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This addon works of course only when we activate the Dark Covenant base skill. It adds buffs to 4 different types of damage as a percentage. When buffs to damage come as a percentage, it means that it affects all skills – spells and weapon or shield attacks, so for example if you were playing with the Lighting Bolt skill of the Storm mastery, that skill would deal more damage when you had the Unearthly Power active because it buffs elemental damage of all types. This is a great skill but it also comes with the active health cost per second which adds its number to the base skill and becomes even more dangerous.
It should be wise to try and get very good flat health regeneration numbers from other skills or even better from items if you want to use these 2 skills, these are very powerful and this is why they come with life cost.
SPIRIT WARD
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This skill works like an aura. It works only against undead enemies, all kinds of undead and it provides more damage as a flat number which means it is only physical damage and also it provides a percentage of less damage from undead, the percentage means it reduces all types of damage from undead.
There are too many undead enemies in the game so this skill is great, if you play a caster build though and you want this skill to increase your spells' damage you need to use the addon Spirit Bane.
SPIRIT BANE
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This one again provides a flat number of more physical damage to undead but it also provides a very good buff of a percentage of damage, which means this buff works with all types of damage that affect undead enemies. What you should remember is that the flat physical damage buffs from these 2 skills work only with the attacks we deal with our weapons and shields, these numbers do not increase the physical damage of other skills like for instance the Distortion Wave of Dream Mastery or the Eruption of Earth, they do not stack with any skills at all. Also this physical damage will not work with your elemental staff attacks so you will need the percentage to damage that Spirit Bane addon provides. CORRECTION: When you see Flat numbers of damage to specific races of enemies, these numbers of damage will be applied by all offensive spells you use in the game to those specific races of enemies only! For example, if you use Eruption spell from Earth mastery then the flat numbers of damage to Undead from Spirit Ward/Bane will also get applied by Eruption but only when Eruption hits Undead enemies. This is a "hidden" mechanic of the game!
Also let's not forget that aura skills like these 2, cost energy per second and if your energy depletes then the skill gets terminated and you have to reactivate it. A good amount of energy regeneration would be a huge helping hand for keeping your auras up and running all the time. You can get energy regeneration from skills, many items and of course by spending more point to Intelligence attribute.
CIRCLE OF POWER
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As the description says you put a totem in the ground, it has an area of effect and for this one to work you need to have your character inside the radius of this skill, it doesn't require the enemies to be inside the radius, only the players' characters.
This skill is great for the buffs it provides and it has a fixed life time duration. But it also has some health points which means that if enemies reduce the health points to zero before the life time duration of the totem ends, then it gets destroyed and you don't get the most out of this skill. Even though against bosses it is hard to protect this totem, against smaller enemies you could try and use crowd control methods such as, stunning effects or freezing effects or slowing effects or confusing effects that you get from skills and items.
The bonuses of this skill are great, the bleeding, vitality and life leech damage buffs have fixed numbers that do not increase by level but the casting speed, minus recharge and energy cost reduction increase by 3% per level and the maximum they can go is 60%. This number is a huge one, especially for the minus recharge and the energy cost reduction. Everything you do that costs energy now costs much less energy and the minus recharge reduces the cooldowns of all your skills meaning that you can be using your skills more frequently. To reach the maximum 60% though you need to get this skill to plus 4 levels after its cap which is level 12. Of course for all of these buffs to work you need to be standing inside the radius of this totem.
So, to give an example of this skill, when you receive the buffs of this skill and you cast the Life Drain skill, then Life Drain deals plus 100% vitality damage because this is the type of damage of this skill and this buff comes for Circle of Power.
SUMMON LICHE KING
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This is one more pet of this mastery. This one stays alive until enemies kill it or you exit the game. It has 2 abilities, each one is a different type of attack. Keep in mind that when you summon this pet you pay with your own energy but when this pet attacks enemies it pays energy of its own so its attacks do not affect your energy bar. The damage types it deals are of elemental and vitality damage. This means that both Circle of Power skill and Unearthly power will increase the damage of this pet, but also lets not forget that we can increase the damage and defence of our pets with items that provide bonus to pets. It would make more sense to use for example a ring that provides elemental or vitality damage to pets with this one because these 2 are already the types of damage this pet deals. Physical damage bonus to this pet would be mostly "useless" because it would not scale well with the damage this pet already does.
This pet can be very powerful if you max it out for one more reason. One of its abilities, when maxed out, applies a huge amount of percentage of Reduced Resistances to enemies which reduces their resistances and now enemies receive much more damage from the whole party! This is a multiplicative effect of reduction though and it can not stack on enemies with other multiplicative effects but it can stack with absolute effects of reduction to resistances and when this happens, your damage against those enemies becomes much higher. Use it against bosses and see what happens!
DEATH NOVA
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The first addon skill of Liche King is the Death Nova. The great thing about this skill is the fixed 50% attack damage converted to health because when the pet uses this skill it gets back a greater amount of health than when it uses its basic abilities. Keep in mind that there is no way to make the pet use one specific skill at a time or all the time, these abilities of Liche king are being used randomly by the pet.
WRAITH SHELL
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The Wraith Shell is a skill that will increase the survivability of the pet, the description is very clear and simple and you need to max this skill out if you focus your build around this pet. You want it to be nearly immortal if possible. This skill is always active and the energy cost of this skill affects your pets energy bar only.
ARCANE BLAST
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The Arcane Blast skill is one more attacking ability of Liche king, it can release up to 6 projectiles if you get this skill on plus 4 levels after the maximum lvl16 and again, it eats energy from the bar of the pet, not your owns. It also stuns enemies and slows them for 1.5 seconds.
Again, lets not forget that this skill also would benefit from skills like Unearthly Power and Circle of Power and other skills or bonuses to pets from items that increase the respective types of damage.
Last but not least lets not forget that both of the pets of this mastery can benefit from skills like Necrosis or other similar that reduce the resistances of enemies and this way we can increase the damage of our pets against enemies affected by those skills.
SOUL VORTEX
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This is one of the 2 skills that come with Atlantis dlc. It is a spell which works like an aura but it has a limited duration of effect. Leveling up the skill increases only the energy cost, Life leech and Energy leech amounts, the other stats are fixed. This is a very good one if you are surrounded by many enemies and you feel like you need more survivability and energy regeneration. Of course the low duration and a bit high cooldown of the skill doesn't make it an ideal one to totally be relied on but if you have some recharge reduction to reduce the cooldown and find yourself in a tough spot, this one can save the day.
One important detail to remember is that the Life leech effect doesn't work on enemies that have immunities to life leech such as Undead ones. Energy leech though works against all types of enemies.
At maximum level 14/10 the numbers will be 192 Life leech, 64 Energy leech and 185 energy cost to cast the spell. The "per second" stat means that for every second the skill is active you leech the full amount of these numbers, 192, 64, not one third of the numbers as would happen if the stat was "over 3 seconds".
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