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
- Rupture the Soul — Cursed enemies killed by you, or by allies in your Presence, have a 33% chance to Explode, dealing a quarter of their maximum Life as Chaos Damage.
- Necromantic Conduit — While you are not on Low Mana, you and allies in your Presence have Unholy Might (+30% chaos damage); you lose 5% of maximum Mana per second while this is active.
- Blackened Heart (requires Necromantic Conduit) — 4% increased Magnitude of Unholy Might buffs you grant, per 100 maximum Mana.
- Incessant Cacophony (requires Rupture the Soul) — Curses you inflict have infinite Duration, and you can apply an additional Curse.
- Price of Power — Spells consume a Power Charge if able, to deal 40% more Damage.
- Eldritch Empowerment — Sacrifice 5% of maximum Energy Shield when you Cast a Spell; Spells for which this sacrifice was fully made deal 30% more Damage; sacrificing Energy Shield doesn't interrupt its Recharge.
- Soulless Form — 10% of damage taken bypasses Energy Shield; you have no inherent Mana Regeneration, but regenerate Mana equal to 6% of maximum Life per second instead.
- Eternal Life (requires Soulless Form) — Your Life cannot change while you have Energy Shield. Life Reservation still works.
- Crystalline Phylactery — You can socket a non-Unique Basic Jewel into the Phylactery; 100% increased effect of bonuses gained from that socketed Jewel; 50% more Mana Cost of Skills if you have no Energy Shield.
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
- Curse Area and Duration — value disputed, not yet resolved. Three sources describe this as a single small passive (15% increased Area of Effect of Curses). One other source instead describes two separate small passives (25% increased Area of Effect of Curses, and separately, 25% increased Curse Duration). Until this is confirmed in-game, don't treat either version as settled — the Ascendancy does grant some combination of extra curse area and duration beyond Incessant Cacophony's infinite-duration effect, but the exact split isn't nailed down yet.
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.
- If you're chasing an exact number for the Curse Area/Duration small passive, verify it in-game rather than trusting any single guide.
