Seal of Shadows - build concepts

Note that this is NOT A BUILD GUIDE WITH VIDEOS OR ANYTHING. This is a build concept that I was unable to complete/test as I couldn’t get the items I needed for it.

Posting this as I won’t be playing much for a while and was unable to get the Darkblaze amulet. Worked really hard on this build, didn’t optimize affixes fully but do have confirmation that seal of shadows is pretty damn high damage, especially with this setup.

Seal of Shadows: Grants a skill which throws out a projectile which stops and then comes back towards you. This follows you for a bit of time too. It does 70% weapon damage and a combination of around 520 flat pierce + acid, also has a bit of poison damage. Doesn’t sound like much until you realize it hits up to two times. It also seems to scale with cast speed.

The downsides of seal of shadows is it works really badly with walls. If it hits a wall you lose half your damage.

Pierce + Acid don’t have really good ways of scaling both at the same time though imo, and you miss out on a lot of stuff from occultist because of possession + solael’s. But this was solved with Mythical Fang of Ch’thon which has 36-54 pierce to chaos + darkblaze source which converts 100% of acid to chaos with blood of dreeg, enabling a full conversion to chaos. You can also convert majority of damage to vit+chaos (shown a bit at the end) but full chaos conversion should win out imo.

TL;DR: Darkblaze set amulet + Mythical Fang of Ch’thon = full chaos conversion, with utilization of the weapon damage from the absurd amount of flat from occultist + nightblade.


Grim Tools example of build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZydqakV

Couple notes on the build:
My pants are crap, I’m using greens that i have and of all the like 30 kuba pants i have they’re all crap…

Shoulders: Zantarin shoulders aren’t something I have, so no affixes on those listed. Radaggan Shoulders are a good alternative and also have a stun resist mod on them, super solid shoulders, but Lethal Assault gives more flat.

Magestorm of Kings boots are probably not the best boots, but I have them. Probably stonehide of kings, as per usual.

Undying Oath medal would undoubtably be higher damage due to the absurd flat damage it adds for us, but mark of divinity is one of the best HC medals to get.

The best chest would be an MI with Witch Hunter’s prefix adding +2 to solael’s, +3 isn’t needed. Ascended Vestment would give cast speed, bloodsworn vestment adds chaos dmg and has a ton of life, galakros gives stun res, etc.

On the note of devotions, I would like to experiment with Guardian’s Gaze. It can certainly fit in and is honestly really smooth since the eyes don’t get destroyed by walls. Dying god is a no brainer, its a chaos build which has tons of regen.

I picked up a Kymon’s augment on the ring for the damage reduction which Nightblade/Occultist kinda lacks.

Vitality dmg modifier is actually really high, so maxing second rite is actually not bad even though we’re focused on chaos – we also have a couple RR’s for it. I’d like to try out blade spirits too, but defensives and such came first. Ring of Steel is a great skill especially for trash clear since it has a CC, can just 1 point that and use it for a devotion too.

I don’t like taking acid spray for type A RR, grasp of unchained might could do that but not sure. Grabbing 2 points from throne + getting targo’s proc would be awesome, and as i mentioned earlier - guardian’s gaze would be a pretty nice proc to get.

There aren’t much augments on, which is because again, I never made the build, but with the gear listed the resistances are already fantastic and easy to cap out.

I think there’s still room for min-maxing this, but from what I’ve been told this has a lot of potential from people who had similar chaos setups which weren’t optimized fully for the seal.


Other notes:

If you don’t have a Darkblaze amulet, you can work with a chaos/vit variant with Blood orb of Ch’thon and go vitality/chaos. Something like this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EAGv72 – this converts a high amount of the pierce but not all of it. Didn’t get to try this, might be able to soon. Pretty sure the chaos variant should win out. Also, Radaggan shoulders can be changed out for Zantarin.

There are other variants (almost full pierce to acid) but the big thing about seal of shadows is you get a pretty high amount of weapon damage, so not getting to properly utilize the solael’s witchblade and such sucks. Could work though, didn’t look into it much.


Mostly making this to bring attention to seal of shadows, don’t think many people have looked into it as it seems kinda weird but it can work quite well. Hoping some people get to try it a bit, maybe minmax it as well. Looks insanely strong to me though.

You may want to have a look at this topic for some ideas as well.

I don’t think Witch Hunter is the way to go here due to lack of Chaos RR. Pyromancer or Deceiver will likely be better with Mythical Direwolf Crest.

I hadn’t seen that thread at all, interesting. There are ways to make up for the lack of RR (Necrosis being a notable one). And what you lose in RR you make up for in an immense amount of flat damage, since the skill is doing 140% weapon damage provided its not getting stuck in a wall. But it is not the most amount of damage of the skill - it just gives better leech is all, and you honestly probably don’t care about that on trash - and when you do care about it you use the RR.

Pyro definitely is appealing and it’s something that I’ve looked at in the past. Instead of Mark of Divinity you get blast shield, and you get the extra RR. The downside is you lose about 250 DA and some proj/melee avoid, some phys res, an open slot for your relic (eldritch pact is a pretty good proc), a vit res reduction (which is part of why I like the vit/chaos variant) as well as an ele res reduction for that flat cold. The RR definitely beats out the amount of flat you get though you’ll get slightly less leech on trash, and phys res isn’t all that big a lot of the time.

Gonna have to look at pyro again, I don’t think his setup is optimal and as good as blast shield is I’m not a massive fan of it… It’s really good even in HC settings but I’m not a big fan of it without other defensive mechanics to back it up, which I guess is what Ghoul is for + TD for the faster blast shield recharge. I’d probably prefer Targo though since I’m a sucker for armour and it also helps the HP/DA situation a lot.

Actually got a Pyro setup as a result I kinda like, some of the affixes like the chest will need to change though. Turtle is a pretty nice alternative and has tons of DA, and the build now has a massive OA shred from Bloody Pox.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYDJReZ

It’s also worth noting how good oklaine’s is. Energy regen, cast speed!, reduced entrapment duration, etc… TD is also really good though so hard to say, but Oklaine’s self sustains at 7 green too…

Also, edit for slight update: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWQJqeN – helps a ton with the mana regen, don’t think a gollus ring beats a living ring especially with how easy living rings are to farm and how amazing Ancient Grove is for farm right now (if you hate crucible). Need to fix the bleed res though. Things should be easier with green legs prob, and radaggan’s mantle opens up the chest for a lot of diff affixes.