- Darkness Skill: They do shadow damage and are not counted as a darkness skill. This is the main issue with them and why they struggle to synergize.
- Reaper’s Pursuit: Darkness skill so they can’t proc it.
- Crippling Darkness: Darkness skill so they can’t proc it.
- Gloom: Used decompose to proc since mages can’t but did not notice any lower or higher damage values. AKA doesn’t seem to buff shadow mages.
- Terror: Applied this with decompose and Bloodless Scream. Damage is applying to shadow skills but not mages. Sadly the lower or higher end of damage numbers never increased.
- Shadowblight: They do proc Shadowblight.
- Bloodless Scream: Minions do not chill or freeze with shadow damage as it requires a darkness skill. This is a big L for us since its a 50%[x] multiplier and would do a lot to make it worth using shadow mages with a shadowblight build.
Overall I think they need to make all shadow damage dealing necromancer skills count as darkness. It feels really bad that the only reason to run them is to increase our procs of shadowblight when we can just take cold mages for the bloodless scream uptime or sacrifice cold mages for a 15%[x] multiplier which is by and far better when you add in the sacrifice bonus aspect and momento mori. I am uncertain why the developers decided to give us a noob trap and a right option for our builds. Doesn’t really make sense to give up a multiplier and damage reduction on any shadow build for shadow mages.
Wanted to add that you could potentially deal more damage with shadow mages by utilizing shadowblight as your main damage source. Considering the fact that it can reach numbers astronomically higher than the top end shadow mages can ever get to, it would be an ok minion build if the stat investment wasn’t so high. Shadowblight gets a 450%[x] multiplier from aspect of decay on a two handed weapon or amulet and 180%[x] damage increase from blighted aspect on a two handed weapon or amulet. Which comes out to around 35,000 damage before critical or vulnerable so about 60,000 before additive bonuses. I would just use BCE, Sever, or Blight, if I was going this route though doesn’t feel worth it to take the worse choice here once again.