Hi everyone,
I need some clarification on how the “Sigil of mortality” node works with “Cursed Limbs”. I thought that it should apply mark for death when you hit the enemy, but it seems to be not true. Does it only work if u cast it manually?
And an overall question about the bone curse. Is it even worth building it into damage? The “illusion of pain” seems intersting, but it only works if u cast it directly and has a cooldown. Appart from that all the damage nodes seem pointless and with added damge effectiveness beeing only 20% hits of the curse itself don’t even reach a 1000 damage on dummy. I thought that the “the damage is trippled” line on the skill implies using it in a melee build, but it just seems to be worthless from the damage point of view. So what is the reason for even having damage nodes on the tree? And why the only node that can make it useful is gated behind the 6 second cooldown and manual casting? Or am I missing something?
Welcome to the LE Community!
I guess the tooltip of Cursed Limbs and/or Sigil Of Mortality needs to be updated.
I assume Mark Of Death is an seperate cast/effect and cursed limbs only applies Bone Curse.
Simialr to Bone Prison for example, which is also not casted by Cursed Limbs.
Absolutely
Bone Curse is a spell, you you need a good amount of base damage to make it useful as a damage tool.
Did you use a caster weapon with adaptive spell dmg, when you tested it’s damage?
The tripled damage, if bone curse is triggered by players damage is to compensate for minions builds, where an army of minions is attacking a target dozens of tiems per second.
So that non-minion builds still can use bone curse effectively.
You still want to have a build that hits as fast and often as possible to make full use of bone curse.
Also to note here, you don’t need to hit with melee for the tripled damage.
Illusion Of Paint does have some really cool synergies and interactions but is certainly not the only viable way to buidl damage for bone curse.
Bone Curse will never be your “main” source of damage, but rather some additional damage on top of other hits, unless you play a very specific build that scales spell damage but does hit with non-spells, which is probably not as strong as other builds.
Thanks for the clarification! I play crit Harvest lich, and i undesrtand that bone curse is best suited for spell damage, but the fact that added damage effectiveness is only 20% makes me think that crits and trple damage with a melee weapon is a good way to scale it for me. As i said the damage in reality is really poor. If it wasn’t for the tripple damage line i wouldn’t even bother, but it is there and it means that there should be a way to scale it playing a melee build. And “Illusion of pain” would be great if not for the manual casting, as u could still apply it on hit even with a cooldown. Would changing the node to only work if u hit it yourself give a chance for melee builds? I don’t think that minion builds ever take “Illusion” now, so it won’t make a difference for them.
Glad to hear you play a Crit Harvest build 
My favorite playstyle in the entire game 
The tripled value again has nothing to do with melee, but with player inflicted hits.
If your base dmg is super low, even tripling the damage does not do much.
There is one way to scale this easily: Use a Scepter or Staff, these weapon types have decent melee damage, while also providing very good amounts of adaptive spell damage.
Harvest’s dmg will be a bit lower, but overall I would say you will deal more damage, depending on the build.
Oh, I probably will spec bone curse into utility then and have some cool explosions going, as I am planning to use Death’s Embrace in near future, so staff is not an option. Need to find a way to get my mana back, though. Do u think using a unique relic-hilt is a good idea or should I just put a prefix on my body armour?
There are ways round the auto crit limitation. If you take Crimson Enlightenment (Bone Curse casts Rip Blood on expiry), Illusion of Pain & Cursed Limbs, plus Rip Blood spec’d with at least 1 of the two blood splatter nodes (ideally both) & some minions to hit the target you get the following:
- Manually cast Bone Curse on a target
- it only has 1 “stack” so as soon as a minion hits it it counts as “falling off” & proc’s a Rip blood via the Crimson Enlightenment node
- Rip Blood hits the target & re-applies Bone Curse (via Cursed Limbs)
- the 1-2 blood splatters then go off both proccing/consuming Bone Curse (auto crit) & re-applying it, plus applying it on everything in blood splatter range, this will also apply Mark for Death via the Sigil of Mortality node, even if you have the Oppressive Gaze node
- the next minion hit consumes the Bone Curse (auto-crit) & starts the cycle off again.
If you want Oppressive Gaze, you’ll need a total of +4 Bone Curse though, which would be difficult to get, though you can get +1 from the Thorn Slinger belt meaning you “only” need a t6 Bone Curse prefix.
It can also be a massive nuke if you take Transplant & all of the additional detonations nodes. Cast Bone Curse then Transplant onto the boss.
Also, the above synergises well with Spirit Plague’s “when hitting” nodes (Plague Burst for spread, Putrid Recovery for ward generation & Laceration for bleed stacks) because the Rip Blood procs count as you hitting the affected mob.
Guess I have another build idea. Thanks! I didn’t really get into Rip Blood much, but it sounds interesting. U mentioned using Oppressive Gaze, I thought it makes the curse limited to one target. So, it’s rather one per cast then?
I am also using bone purely for defense and utility (bone armour and armour shred + mark for death)
Cool to see you are planning to use my Creator Unique, Death’s Embrace!
Depending on the roll on Death Embrace Murama’s Hilt could be insufficient.
You would need some additional sources of mana like Transplant or mana regen, if Death’s Embrace mana roll is really high.
On the Body Armour even T2 can already cover all mana gain.
I would use what ever fits better with what legendaries yo uare able to make.
Murama’s Hilt is great, but also cost you +X to Harvest, which can be used very efficiently.
Titan Heart gives great defense, but also would need some good affixes on it to compete with teh offensive a rare crafted body armour can provide.
I always love to talk about Harvest builds, but I guess thsi is going way beyond your OP.
If you wanna discuss more, feel free to dm me here i nthe forums or in discrod (Heavy#0351) or stop by by one of my twitch steams.
I do paly A LOT of Harvest Lich 
Cursed Limbs appears to override the single target nature of Oppressive Gaze.
Also, @Heavy only plays Harvest.
Thanks, really cool unique btw, I already own two of those (one from the rune and the the other dropped the next day). I planned to farm for the hilt to put + harvest on it, because i think that there are many affixes on the body armour that are much better than mana.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.