Wither

I leveled a Summoner/Chaos hybrid build on Talisman. I didn't start using Wither until close to A1M but I found the idea of it good since taking down Rares was still a bit tedious and clearing Magic packs still took a bit of time.
I planned out my build beforehand to pick up Minion, ES, and Chaos/DoT nodes. My experiences with Wither are...


Firstly, I think it would be great to have some kind of indication of how many stacks are on the mob. I'm not exactly sure how this would work but it would be a welcomed addition nonetheless.

Secondly, the problem of rooting. Wither is pretty useless unless you channel the spell for a while. Even then, the duration is pretty weak and if you're dodging, repositioning, or simply getting out of the way, it's possible that the stacks will fall off before you start recasting.
To solve this, I see a lot of people putting it on a Totem. Actually, I did the same thing. I find it kinda shitty that this skill is unusable if self-cast. I would suggest changing it into a stacking Curse. At least then we'd have the option of paying 35% reservation cost to link it with Blasphemy.


Aside from those two things, I found it to be pretty adequate for what I needed it for - high hp mobs that I needed to get down fast.

I am running a fire/chaos hybrid to get the most from spell damage and DoT nodes. I play solo and Contagion/ED combo has worked well through A2C with some supplement from magma orb and fire dash. Still looking for a fire trap.

I tried playing around with Wither, and it really doesn't seem helpful at the moment. When I get a spell totem, I will try it again and see if it makes any difference. I can see it being beneficial in Boss fights if the spell totem actually targets the Boss.

So, Increased Skill Duration on the passive tree doesn't affect Wither Duration !?
No Potency of Will, or Exceptional Performance !? Is this intended or a bug ? Or it is just not displayed in the tooltip of the skill...
Pretty hard for me to make a difference in the visuals for half a second IF increased.

So, in act 3 merciless and things have been going well. Using Wither-spell totem-faster casting and that seems to speed boss kills up a lot. Would like to replace faster casting with spell echo(read up on SE; probably just as well).

While Wither and Contagion seem pretty decent, I think Essence Drain is going to get nerfed, or at least some of the interaction with its support gems, as it seems really strong.

I recently found Consuming Dark, so all my fire spells are doing chaos damage now also, so seems like I will use Wither a lot more.

I like the idea of a Chaos damage user/debuffer. I can confirm that Wither doesn't work with Curse on Hit, but I think it would be a neat way to go with it. Making it possible to drop curses on target would give Wither more uses in my opinion. As it is, Wither is rather limited in application.

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While Wither and Contagion seem pretty decent, I think Essence Drain is going to get nerfed, or at least some of the interaction with its support gems, as it seems really strong.

Essense Drain without interaction with Contagion (at least) and Wither is total junk.
You either have to use it only for single target (Bosses) and to boost it with "more" damage of supports, and passives OR... I think there is no "OR" in this case... using it with Multiple projectils, Chain etc... is just low damage, slow cast speed etc... it just sucks....Cast Speed of the skill is very slow... projectile itself is VERY slow. If you don't shoot forward to fast upcoming mobs the projectile often misses cause the mobs are just faster than the travel speed of the projectile. Even using it on bosses you still have to go almost close to melee range to hit the boss, so the projectile don't miss it... Even with the Multipliers of damage you either have to put also Increase duration passive And/or invest in increase skill duration... cause the base DOT is for 3.8 seconds (I am not even talking about the initial damage of the hit, cause we all know it doesn't really matter)

Combining it with Wither is a very good thing, Wither is not curse, therefor it might be used for boss fights... But using it yourself is just rediculous... You stay still for 2 seconds (I mean constant stay still, if you dont want to lose the debuff of the stacks). Even for these 2 secs, you should invest in skill duration, cast speed to achieve the maximum effect of the skill, even Increased AOE, if you want to use it for groups, not only bosses... using the skill for groups just "forces" you you to use Contagion Also... which makes it really a challenge... I am trying a build with this stuff right now, and I can tell you that since the beta of the game I have never played a more complicated build (not in terms of strategy, but terms of complexity of using the active skills)

Being at the early 70's I admit that I might need more HOT buttons on the interface of the game with this build.

1.Contagion
2.Essence Drain
3.Wither
4.Vulnerability
5.Movement skill (aka warp, or blades)
6.Golem
7.Enduring cry (Since most of the time you are at almost melee range and you gotta be tougher)
(Which fills the bar, caus eleft mouse button is ALWAYS "WALK")

Also lets not forget that all of this skills require some supports, and .. you know equipment for socketing. I am not even sure how i am gonna incorporate Imortal call with cast when damage taken, since playing HC. and i need this one.

BUT, I must admit using all 3 together is very powerful ! The negative sides are too much investing both in sockets, in passives, like damage, AoE, Cast speed, Skill duration etc. IT also forces you to play melee if you want to be efficient... which requires you to put even more points into survivability nodes. Therefor - IT should be rewarding in terms of damage, considering the complexity of playstyle and tons of investment in passives, supports etc.

I have rapid decay, controlled destruction and void manipulation on my ED. They all give a "more" modifier which scales pretty powerfully. Since spell damage, chaos damage and DoT damage all work with this spell, you can kind of map to the ones that are close without needing to go all over. Increased duration is also pretty useful.

I put Inc. Dur., Inc. AoE on contagion. It can be hard to hit bosses, but if you can get ED to spread fast enough, then directly hitting the boss is not important. I tend to target weaker mobs with ED to get the spread going sooner. Then spam ED with intermittent contagion casts to keep it going.

Having said that, second form Dominus was difficult, since I don't survive well in confined spaces, and the blood rain made it hard to run around.

I'm tired of wasting my time with skills like this...

Wither does not work properly or not at all with direct chaos damage. I do not know if that is intended or not. The wording of the skill description clearly implies that it should work for direct chaos damage.

Some feedback from GGG would be appreciated.

Background: I have tried using Wither totem and empirically found it to be less useful than expected.

So I did some systematic tests. First some informal tests vs some of the undead in act 2 Fellshrine ruins. In Fellshrine I used Rain of Arrows with "Added Chaos Damage".
Then against the lion statues in Merciless "The Grand Arena". In Grand Arena I used Ethereal Knives spell lvl 1 with lvl 19 "Added Chaos Damage" (+controlled destruction and faster projectiles). Close to 100% of the damage is from the chaos damage. I verified that by removing the "Added Chaos Damage".

I tested with Wither totem and without Wither totem. I let a full stack count build up before casting EK of course. My totem produces approximately 20 stacks.
The number of casts required to kill a lion statue:
No Wither: 18, 18, 18, 18, 18
Wither Totem: 17, 17, 15, 17

This is consistent with the informal RoA tests. It clearly shows that Wither does not work as expected for direct chaos damage. Basically it is useless for direct chaos damage.

Side note: Also did some informal tests with poison and Wither works with that. The results were not as good as I expected from my calculations though so I may be looking into that in more detail yet.

Edit: This is probably the wrong place for posting a bug so I made a thread in the bug forum https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1583692 after finding it.