Blood Sacrament
Ascendant Build

Updated for Patch 3.24

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Blood Sacrament is a Channeling Spell that Reserves your Life with each stage. You can release it to stop and deal damage based on how much life in total you have Reserved this way. That's why it's a life-stacking build. Channeling is not an optimal strategy because it requires you to stand still and waste time, so the objective is to reserve more than 50% of Maximum Life at the very first stage of Channeling. The Spell will then recognize it cannot be Channelled and stop immediately, allowing you to cast it many times a second. The closer you get to 100% of Life Reserved per stage the more damage it will deal, but at the same time leave you vulnerable to damage received from enemies during that brief moment your Life is Reserved for Blood Sacrament. With Dissolution of the Flesh, taking damage from enemies can put you on a 2-second Cooldown, as any damage you receive will reserve Life instead of damaging the character as expected. The Blood Sacrament cannot be used if you Reserve more Life than the first stage of this skill requires. That's why it's not a great build for mapping - it's used primarily for dealing with pinnacle bosses.

This objective is set to gain absurd amounts of Maximum Life - over 20k. It's possible to reach over 30k with expensive gear and The Adorned setup. The bulk of Maximum Life is sourced from the Passives Skill Tree, The Apostate, and The Adorned. Gear pieces usually grant flat Maximum Life, Passives and Jewels provide you with increased Maximum Life. More Maximum Life is gained from the Dissolution of the Flesh and Blood Magic. That leaves you with no Energy Shield and no Mana.

The build is not particularly tanky, but it can still take a lot of damage. Its Resistances are capped and it has some Armour. The Armour is almost useless against the most powerful Hits anyway and this build is suited to fight pinnacle bosses. You can try to shift incoming Physical Damage to be taken as Elemental with a proper Helmet and Taste of Hate. Eternal Youth Keystone is employed to Recover Life - around 33% of Maximum Life a second. You don't technically take any damage (you Reserve it instead) so the Life Recharge (which is based on % of total Life) will never go on cooldown. To take less Hit Damage you can go for Petrified Blood instead of Pride. The DoT from Petrified Blood will not Reserve your Life.

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1. Gameplay

It's very simple - just use Blood Sacrament. The Curse can be cast, but it may also be applied automatically with Flask or on-Hit. For a Reservation Skill use Pride or Petrified Blood. The more Skills you decide to implement the less damage you will deal because of The Untouched Soul.

2. Build's PROS & CONS

3. Leveling tips

There is no easy way to smoothly transition into this life-stacking build. You may as well level up with anything you're familiar with and swap to this at level 90. The Skill Tree is completely alien to any other build and the final version is not even good at mapping. You can use our Scion Leveling Guide which uses Caustic Arrow. Combine it with the current leveling Atlas strategy.
 

Bandits:

When dealing with the bandits, kill all of them for two extra Passive Skill Points.

4. Final Skill Tree, Ascendancy Points, and Pantheon

Final Skill Tree:

123 Points Final Skill Tree (doesn't include Unique Jewels)
123 Points Path of Building (PoB) link

Ascendancy points:

Preferably in that order:

1. Saboteur
2. Path of the Shadow
3. Slayer

Pantheon:

Major God: Soul of Solaris: 6% additional Physical Damage Reduction while there is only one nearby Enemy; 20% chance to take 50% less Area Damage from Hits

Minor God: Soul of Abberath: 60% less Duration of Ignite on You

5. Final Gems links

[DPS] Blood Sacrifice setup socketed in Relic of the Pact
	Blood Sacrament - Channel it to Reserve Life and deal Physical Damage. Deals more Damage the more Life you Reserve with this Skill. It should Reserve most of your Life on the first stage of Channelling. You actually need only around 10% of your damage for mapping. Consider removing Second Wind and Lifetap to Reserve less Life and still deal over 10mil Damage per cast.
	Second Wind Support - It has a huge Mana Cost Multiplier - the Spell will reserve more Life faster.
	Lifetap Support - Big Mana Cost Multiplier as well. It also grants more damage.
	Brutality Support - Use for more Physical Damage. It may be swapped for the  Increased Area of Effect Support when mapping. You can use two weapons and swap them mid-fight with a press of a button.

[UTILITY] Pride socketed in Essence Worm
	Pride - Enemies near you take increased Physical Damage After 4 seconds, they take even more. It can be swapped for  Petrified Blood if you need to be more tanky. The Life Loss from this Skill won't disrupt Dissolution's 2-second cooldown nor will it interrupt Eternal Youth's Life Recharge.

[UTILITY] Other Gems (optional)
	Assassin's Mark - Use it if you have yet to reach 100% Crit Chance by default. It increases Crit Chance and grants more Critical Damage. It can be swapped or  Vulnerability if your Crit Chance is capped. Vulnerability can also be found as a Corrupted Gloves Implicit or gained via Replica Witchfire Brew.
	Frostblink - Used to move around. You will probably end up with one additional blue socket as it's hard to color all the gear red, so you may as well get this movement ability.

6. Gear Setup

The goal is to get a lot of Maximum Life. All your damage is sourced entirely from this one stat. On your Helmet and Boots, you should also strive for Energy Shield because of The Apostate's unique interaction with Energy Shield on some of your gear pieces. Energy Shield is much more abundant than Maximum Life there, but you can often go for both Maximum Life and Energy Shield. You still need to cap your Resistances and get enough Attributes. For even more Damage look for Critical Strike Multiplier, found mostly on Jewels. With Dissolution of the Flesh, you have to be careful when taking Damage - try to become immune to most DoTs.

Our recommended items will:

1. Cap your resistances 
2. Give you enough DPS/Life to start mapping successfully

(Helmet) Rare Helmet - Look for a Helmet with the highest Energy Shield or Energy Shield combined with Maximum Life. 300 or even close to 500 of combined ES and Life can be gained from this gear piece. For Suffixes get Resistances. For Eldritch mods get increased Vulnerability Curse Effect and reduced Ignite Duration on you, or Physical Damage taken as Elemental.

Min. requirements: 400 of Life or ES in total Resistances Optional affixes: Resistances Attributes

(Weapon) Relic of the Pact - Your main damaging ability is here, you will socket the three Support gems in this weapon. A single cast shall Reserve more than 50% of your Life to trigger the Low-Life bonuses and rearm instantly.

(17-21)% increased Spell Damage Grants Level 1 Blood Sacrament Skill Your Critical Strike Chance is Lucky while on Low Life

(Off-hand) Rathpith Globe - Disproportionally high amounts of Critical Strike Chance and Spell Damage. The life sacrificed won't stop Recharge and does not count as taking damage.

(10-15)% Chance to Block Spell Damage (120-160)% increased Energy Shield 10% increased maximum Life Sacrifice 10% of your Life when you Use or Trigger a Spell Skill 5% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells per 100 Player Maximum Life 5% increased Spell Damage per 100 Player Maximum Life

(Body Armour) The Apostate - Your Helmet, Gloves, Shield, and Boots will grant you Maximum Life instead of Energy Shield, which you can get a lot more this way.

+(30-50) to Strength +(20-30)% to all Elemental Resistances Gain Maximum Life instead of Maximum Energy Shield from Equipped Armour Items

(Boots) Rare Boots - Here get at least 200 Energy Shield. The prefixes for flat ES combined with increased local ES and Movement Speed leave you with no Prefixes for Maximum Life. For Suffixes get Resistances and Attributes. For Eldritch mods go for Resistances and chance to Avoid Bleeding, Poison, or Elemental Ailments. Physical Damage as Extra Damage, preferably Chaos, is another blue Eldritch mod that you can obtain for even more damage.

Min. requirements: 200 Energy Shield 25% increased Movement Speed Optional affixes: Resistances Attributes

(Gloves) Entropic Devastation - These gloves nearly double your damage with the Impales. It requires high Critical Strike Chance to work, but that's not a problem. Vulnerability on Hit or bonus Crit Chance can be found here as a Corrupted Implicit.

Grants Call of Steel (100-150)% increased Evasion and Energy Shield (30-50)% increased Effect of Impales inflicted with Spells Critical Strikes with Spells inflict Impale

(Belt) Rare Belt - A Belt can grant you tons of Maximum Life and increased Maximum Life. For Suffixes get the usual Resistances with Strength for even more Maximum Life. Note it is not an Armour Item but Jewelry so you don't need Energy Shield here.

Min. requirements: +100 to Maximum Life increased Maximum Life (Hunter's) Resistances Optional affixes: Strength

(Amulet) The Untouched Soul - It can get you tons of Maximum Life via empty Red Sockets from the other items. All of your gear pieces are at least partially Intelligence-based so getting these may in fact be extremely difficult. You could Corrupt your Apostate and maybe even Entropic Devastation and color their sockets with Tainted Chromatic Orbs - they ignore the attribute-tied weighting when rolling colors so while it is purely random it is at least not skewed to your disadvantage.

(12-20)% increased Rarity of Items found +40 to maximum Life for each Empty Red Socket on any Equipped Item +225 to Accuracy Rating for each Empty Green Socket on any Equipped Item +40 to maximum Mana for each Empty Blue Socket on any Equipped Item +18% to all Elemental Resistances for each Empty White Socket on any Equipped Item

Recommended Anointments: Purity of Flesh Cruel Preparation Thick Skin

(Ring) Essence Worm - It saves you a socket, makes socketed Reservation Skill cost no Mana, increases the Gem Level of socketed Aura, and Reduces the Reservation Efficiency, which is very important.

Has 1 Socket +2 to Level of Socketed Aura Gems Socketed Gems have no Reservation Your Blessing Skills are Disabled 80% reduced Reservation Efficiency of Skills

(Ring) Rare Ring - As with other items, it's supposed to contain a lot of Maximum Life and Resistances - Amethyst or Vermillion Rings will be great here. Remember to use Fertile Catalysts on all your Jewelry pieces.

Min. requirements: +80 to Maximum Life Resistances Optional affixes: Attributes

(Jewel) Rare Jewels - If you're using The Adorned use only Magic Corrupted Jewels with one Prefix and one Suffix each. The Prefix is always "increased Maximum Life" and the Suffix should increase your Crit Multiplier. Resistances and Attributes better be gained from the gear as this Crit Multiplier is extremely potent. Corrupted Jewels can roll very powerful Implicits. Up to 25% Chance to Avoid Bleed or Poison. Increase it by 100% from The Adorned and you will only need two of these to be Poison or Bleed immune. The most expensive ones will have Synthesised Implicits. We plan to socket up to 10 of these Jewels.

Recommended affixes: increased Maximum Life Critical Strike Multiplier for Spells Attributes and Resistances Corrupted Implicits: Reduced Bleed Duration on you Reduced Poison Duration on you Corrupted Blood cannot be inflicted on you

(Jewel) The Adorned - The build is so reliant on Maximum Life that the whole Skill Tree is built around these passives, which are scattered all across it. It's an opportunity to allocate more Jewel Sockets and put the Magic Corrupted Jewels there, each for even more "increased Maximum Life". If you have good Jewels and Adorned with a high roll you can ommit all the other Unique Jewels except Dissolution of the Flesh. This one is still very impactful.

(50-150)% increased Effect of Jewel Socket Passive Skills containing Corrupted Magic Jewels

(Jewel) Unnatural Instinct - Put it near the Shaper notable. It will overlap with Perandus Pact's unallocated nodes, each granting extra Maximum Life.

Allocated Small Passive Skills in Radius grant nothing Grants all bonuses of Unallocated Small Passive Skills in Radius

(Jewel) The Perandus Pact - Put it near the Sentinel notable. You have a lot of nodes allocated there, but luckily the ones affected by Unnatural Instinct are mostly unallocated.

Passive Skills in Radius also grant <random stat>

(Jewel) Dissolution of the Flesh - It grants you much more Maximum Life. To work around the downside you have to be immune, or at least reduce the duration to a minimum of all DoT effects that can affect you. These are mostly Damaging Ailments, Corrupted Blood, and Ground Effects. Being immune to Desecrated Ground is difficult so just avoid maps with these. Sacrificing Life with Rathpith Globe, Reserving it with Blood Sacrament, and taking Damage over Time from Petrified Blood will not trigger the Reservation effect on this Jewel or put you on the 2-second Cooldown. You will Recharge it back quickly with Eternal Youth. Note that if you take enough damage you won't be able to use Blood Sacrament. In our case, Blood Sacrament Reserves 84% of the Maximum Life per stage, so taking damage equal to 16% or more of this Maximum Life in the span of 2 seconds will disable the build.

Removes all Energy Shield Life that would be lost by taking Damage is instead Reserved until you take no Damage to Life for 2 seconds (20-30)% more Maximum Life

(Flask) Taste of Hate - Used to gain more Damage as Cold Damage and shift a portion of incoming Physical Damage to be taken as Cold.

+40% to Cold Resistance +5% to maximum Cold Resistance (10-15)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Cold Damage during Effect Gain (10-15)% of Physical Damage as Extra Cold Damage during effect 30% chance to Avoid being Chilled during Effect 30% chance to Avoid being Frozen during Effect

(Flask) Replica Witchfire Brew - If you don't want to cast Vulnerability and you don't have the Vulnerability on-hit Golves, use this Flask.

20% more Evasion Rating Creates a Smoke Cloud on Use (-10-10)% increased Charges per use Grants Level 21 Vulnerability Curse Aura during Effect

Other suggested Flasks: Topaz Flask with reduced Effect of Shock on you Granite Flask with increased Armour Ruby Flask with increased Movement Speed, increased Critical Strike Chance or reduced Effect of Curses on you

If you have any other build requests please leave that in the comments below. We are always open to suggestions and constructive feedback.

Pictures used in this article are the intellectual property of Grinding Gear Games.