Identity
Lich is Witch's curse-and-chaos Ascendancy: it stacks an extra simultaneous curse with infinite duration, layers in real chaos-damage scaling on top of that, and turns Energy Shield into something you actively spend for bigger spell hits rather than just a passive damage buffer. It shares Blood Mage's "Energy Shield as an offensive resource" framing, but gets there through spending ES on casts and stacking curses, rather than through Life-as-a-resource and Flask charges.
Notables
Small passives
- 3% increased maximum Mana
- 3% increased maximum Life
- 20% increased maximum Energy Shield
- 30% increased maximum Energy Shield if you've Consumed a Power Charge Recently
- 15% increased Area of Effect of Curses (this passive, "Curse Area," appears twice on the tree — confirmed via this site's own datamined tree data; there is no separate Curse Duration small passive)
Keystone
Lich has no keystone-tier node of its own. Crystalline Phylactery is a notable.
Practical notes
- Eldritch Empowerment and Soulless Form pull in the same direction: both reward actively spending Energy Shield rather than holding it in reserve.
- Incessant Cacophony's infinite Curse Duration means you generally only need to reapply a curse once per encounter rather than maintaining uptime.
- Curse Area is a repeatable small passive (two separate nodes, both 15% increased Area of Effect of Curses) — taking both stacks the bonus, it's not a single fixed pickup.
