Unsure about how to run Dark Pact.
Option one has Baron, Ironwill, selfcasting on packs, using Skeletons on bosses/rough rares only.
Option two would be to go for totems instead of skeletons. Since no skeletons are around, the totems selfcast on their own life (similar to RF), still benefit from the +4 radius and boosting totem life is less gear-dependant. Not sure what amount of totem-health you could get with the rather large totem-HP nerf in 3.0.
lvl 20 spell totem had 5312 in 2.6 so with 45% less life it is now 2921. Now try to figure out how much you can scale that. You will need Soul Mantle for sure. Also spell totems have reduced cast and spell damage modifiers.
probably better to self cast as a Berserker while stacking lots of life. And unlike RF all the life regen you get will give you more survivability while you life leech with the spell (what you cannot do with RF)
Since I am a firm believer of witch being the master 'race' in PoE, zerker isn't an option. Trickster is the only acceptable non-witch ascendancy for me.
Selfcast might work out as an occultist, easy access to warlords mark for sustaining.
Soul mantle would be mandatory for a non-skeleton totembuild and with the huge nerf to totem life this doesn't feel like the right way to go. Another option that sprang into my mind was going to be CWC Wither/Skeletons/Minionlife in a baron, doon cuebiyari as a weapon, 6L Darkpact Totem in a Covenant. Dualtotem via Ancestral Bond should be enough. You should be able to hit 10k Life on Skeletons with some essence crafts, and you don't have to deal with the downside of having to worry about your own life. Can work as either Hierophant (not a witch) or Occultist.
Sounds too complicated. Better to do skele totem and then Wither+cwc+Dark Pact. Skele totem does not reduce skele life while dark pact on totem will have both reduced damage and cast speed.
For skele totem you only need Minion life and maybe faster casting.
EDIT: What I wonder is how do you get to 1000 Str with this build?
You only need around 800 str for Doon to overtake any regular wand when it comes to damage scaling for your spell. With baron you also significantly increase the basehealth of your skeletons. 800str is 500 more basehealth on skellies, about 1.5k more health after modifiers, resulting in ~90 more basedamage on your dark pact. For a single item that is quite a lot, especially since you can fit your CWC/Wither/Skeletons/Minionlife in there perfectly and any additional strength will increase your damage by improving both the skeletons health, aswell as the scaling from Doon. Using Darkpact with Wither/CWC makes you lose two support gems on your Dark Pact and since the spell already has a pretty great base-casttime (0.5s) having it on CWC instead isn't really gonna do much good.
6L would probably be Dark Pact - Spell totem - Faster Casting - Controlled Destruction - Void Manip - Iron Will/Conc Effect. Swapping out any of those supports for CWC/Wither is going to immensely cut into your damage. It might be worth it to pick up Repentence so you don't have to socket Iron Will, though that is going to move the build into territory where you use too many uniques since I was also planning on running the 6L in a Covenant for Bloodmagic and Added Chaos.
As far as getting 800+ strength is concerned, you can easily get 500 strength on the tree itself with two Efficient Training jewels, and you have 2-4 additional jewel sockets you can pick up along the way. Jewels are going to be cheap since you're looking at minion life instead of damage, strength and res, enabling you to wear more useful uniques. Damage nodes aren't that useful when, for example at 1k strength, you get 325% inc damage from Doon and Iron Will already.
Edit: With enough currency investment you could easily make this work while also sustaining RF, so that would be another huge boost to DPS. You're already pathing by most regen nodes, dropping some life (the build I was planning to do has 230% life which is really not necessary when also sitting at 1k+ strength) to get those regen nodes might certainly be worth it.
