[Help] Painted Into a Corner (Chaos DoT | Essence Drain + Contagion)

Hi all! 👋 I wedged myself into a bit of a pickle, and could use some advice.

Super new to PoE, I last played during Harvest league, came back to the game in the middle of the league, about a week ago. I wanted to play a build by someone that presumably knew what they were talking about, but I didn't want to play anything too meta so that my gear wouldn't be a major PitA to get.

I settled on this Chaos DoT Occultist, from PoE Vault, and things have been going fine, but it's really starting to flounder in around Tier 12+ maps. I did a Tier 14 map the other day, and it took me 36 minutes just to do the boss fight because the damage on my Essence Drain was so low.

Hopping into the PoB for the PoE Vault build, the total DPS peaks at around 470k, but I'll see people discussing in global about how disappointed they are in their builds that only do 1.4 million DPS. I'm not interested in being a meta slave, but 470k for ideal gear seems a little low.

Now I'm far from ideal gear. Here is the PoB for my current skill tree and items, and it's plain to see how terrible it is. I have all of 50 Chaos to my name, but that can still buy me enough to re-do my entire skill tree, if it really comes to that.

Of course, I came across Subtractem's Bane Occultist League Starter, which seems similar to the kind of build I'm going for, but with 2.4 million DPS, significantly better than what I'm currently working with.

But personally, there's a dopamine rush that I get from watching my Essence Drain spread throughout a pack, and having two buttons annihilate a pack that spans across three screens. I'm fine ditching ED + Contagion if there's no other option, but I'd really prefer not to.

With all of that information in mind, I finally get to the crux of the matter, which is: I need your help. I know the build is terrible, and I'd like to rework it to start working towards 2 mil+ DPS and better survivability, but I can't wrap my head around exactly how. I look at the two pre-made build guides, and I can't see why they're so drastically different.

Could you offer any advice on how I could rework this build, both in terms of re-structuring the skill tree, as well as identifying key modifiers on gear that I could try to get immediately, as well as gear to work towards in the near future?

I know it would be additionally time consuming, but it would be great if you could include explanations as to your reasoning behind your feedback. I'd like to learn enough so that I could ideally begin to make my own builds, or at least distinguish a good build from a bad one before I sink 20 hours into it.

Thanks for reading, and for your time.

I'm going to post the comments and advice that I've received elsewhere on this topic to this forum post as well, in case someone else comes across it in their search and finds it helpful. Some of the problems that people have pointed out are:

1. Source

While PoE Vault describes this build as being updated for 3.18, the showcase video describes a Trickster build, not an Occultist build, and states that it's for 3.16.

Additionally, some of the items (particularly the flasks) in the build guide bear modifiers that were removed in 3.15.

It seems that while PoE Vault's site makes it much easier to navigate and browse builds based on certain tags, rather than having to guess at keywords, its builds aren't the most up-to-date.

2. Contagion

Contagion was nerfed significantly in 3.8, and slightly less significantly in 3.13, to the point where it no longer really excels at what it did previously. Until it recovers from these over-nerfs, I'll have to give up my 3-pack Contagion dopamine rush 😩.

3. Defenses

The build seems to rely mostly on Petrified Blood's damage reduction in combination with recoup to tank hits (large and small), with the regeneration from Essence Drain making up for the lost health, but that's kind of shaky ground to begin with.

The idea is really cool, but falls apart in practice, compared to Subtractem's build which layers Evasion and Armour from Molten Shell, Grace, and other sources. The PB/Recoup method has some interesting avenues, but you've got to make up for that with more conventional defenses in addition.

In conclusion:

* The original build is relying on out-dated information; Contagion has been nerfed many times, and some of the items don't even exist anymore.
* It's just too squishy; you need some more armour and evasion to get this to a workable place.

ED is just a dead horse. Stop kicking it

A good chaos dot is probably something like CA or something like that. And chaos dot is ruled by Occultist by a huge margin; trickster just cant compare.

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dejuvenate wrote:

ED is just a dead horse. Stop kicking it

A good chaos dot is probably something like CA or something like that. And chaos dot is ruled by Occultist by a huge margin; trickster just cant compare.

Toxic Rain is great for Chaos DOT.

Run it on a Champion. Tanky, deadly.

But we are off topic...

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brunowa wrote:

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dejuvenate wrote:

ED is just a dead horse. Stop kicking it

A good chaos dot is probably something like CA or something like that. And chaos dot is ruled by Occultist by a huge margin; trickster just cant compare.

Toxic Rain is great for Chaos DOT.

Run it on a Champion. Tanky, deadly.

But we are off topic...

Ironically, the best chaos dot build out there is probably Spider or poison spark. Both are poison.

Palsteron made a poison spark dealing something like 20m poison dps on Sirus
I am playing Arakaali's Spiders, and with shotgun effects, deal 38m Sirus poison DPS.

Ever since they introduce 'faster ailments', generic DOT would be overtaken with enough investment.

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dejuvenate wrote:

ED is just a dead horse. Stop kicking it

😩 That makes me very sad. Fingers crossed they bring its DPS back up to make it viable again.

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Spooky_Noodle wrote:

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dejuvenate wrote:

ED is just a dead horse. Stop kicking it

😩 That makes me very sad. Fingers crossed they bring its DPS back up to make it viable again.

One can only hope 3.19 brings back past metas or truly unviable skills to comparable states.


melee has been dead since they overkilled the mobs damage and butchered impale etc. Here's to having good diversity finally.