GhazzyTV - Essence Drain & Contagion (or Bane/Soulrend) Trickster [SC/HC/Uber Elder/Shaper]

1 I must say I like the build, good work! I went with a different shield though and def not biscos belt. The other changes I made were instead of the frenetic and frenzy charge duration, and reduced mana and skills and dynamo i went up and got more dps from chaos dmg nodes and corruption.

I have gotten to the guardians and I have found I can do them except fro pheonix and chimera. pheonix keeps one shooting me (might have been bad mods) and I don't have enough chaos res for chim.

Anyways thought I'd add my 2 cents if people were interested on how this build works 3.0.

Also wanted to point out vaal lightning trap does not work with cast when damage taken support, unless you know a trick around this?

The vaal trap was suppose to be self cast. However after reading the shock changes i'm questioning if it's even useful? Can we even do 1% of a bosses HP with it? Even then a 1% increase in damage does not feel like its worth it?

Another wall of text... xD

"

paranoiah wrote:

Hey,
what a nice build, i am still having a blast. initially, i just wanted to play a starter build but im now lvl 90 and cant stop :) thanks again for the guide.

now a question about gearing with a little background first:

i had 2 5link cherrubs, one to wear and one to try and 6-link. I put in like 400c worth of fusings and thats when i forced myself to stop... luckily if found a few sellable rares and i was able to buy a 6link cherrub by trading all those plus my other currency into chaos.

now im sitting here with 9 chaos orbs and little other currency and thats why i wanted to ask where you would invest into next. i know that my rares (still like my shield though) are really low, but im at max res, 5460 life, 900 es, 2169 mana (unreserved 2059).

plus 2x spreading rot

i was thinking about saving for a good helmet with 40% ED or blight damage next, while on the way getting the remaining 20/20 gems. do you have any suggestions?

also, i am currently using witchfire brew without the 2nd curse effect. is it worth it to lose a lot of stats on ring/amulet just for the extra dmg of the brew? as an alternative, i could redo my tree, but i really dont know which nodes i could take out.

thank you for the time you put into answering in your thread and for your videos and the guide!

cheers, para

Hey,

Cheers bro!

Well, outside the numeric values of your gear I can't really suggest you to upgrade anything specific. It does feel like your mana is a bit low but then again it's currently fine for your life pool.

Regarding the Curse you have 2 options.
1) Get Whispers of Doom on the skilltree for 2 curses so you can run Enfeeble & Vulnerability via Witchfire. You reach this by removing some mana nodes from your tree.

2) Get an item that grants an additional curse such as a corrupted amulet, Doedre's Damning, Windscream Boots. Or if youre in softcore and doesn't feel like Enfeeble is needed, simply skip using that and have the mana as eHP instead of reserving it and use Vulnerability via Witchfire.

I'm glad you appreciate the time I put in to this, sadly I'm not a fulltime streamer (yet) but I do what I can with the time I have :)

"

ScrumpyS wrote:

Ghazzy! Love the build, played ED in the past but only as CI.. Loving MoM though.

Was wondering thoughts on current build using Decay dagger vs a 95% BotC i have.. I have the allopathy gloves but need to optimize resists before dropping gloves.

I personally enjoy the atk speed on gloves and the dagger for shield charging. Having issues with bosses at the moment but i know i need to get 20/20 gems at least in my 5l and then get a 6l (can't afford a 2nd CoD to 6l just yet as they are 150c on HC).

Another question I thought of using 2 Intuitive leap gems as i had them drop; 1 to pick up the Dreamer and Melding Nodes (i'm going to drop overcharged) and the 2nd to pickup infused, mana drinker and frenetic.. Overall these nodes are great for dmg and defense but then i'm also able to travel to pick up the chaos dmg nodes at the top (corruption wheel).

I know you're a busy guy but would love your feedback and thoughts.

Cheers!

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/ScrumpyS
Char name - PrestoDraino

Hey,

Cheers! :)
I personally prefer BoTC as it grants you generally higher clear speed. Unless of course the Decay dagger also grants lie 80%+ spell dmg!

I think intuitive leap idea is solid, not sure if I would prefer it but it should work well tbh.

Regarding the chest piece, the guide is displaying 3 different chests I personally prefer a Tabula corrupted with +1 which would obviously lower my defensive stats but increase my offence quiet a bit. CoD is the general suggestion for hardcore and Cherrubim for softcore if you don't like Tabula :) (I usually play hardcore most of the time, sadly not this league though due to my schedule.. :/ )

You can reach "Whispers of Doom" at the top of witch starter area and use the Witchfire Brew to further scale your effective DMG output. Other than that I think your character looks solid.

"

BigDaddy0415 wrote:

What would be better? Blight with 2 Spreading Rot Jewels or Wither?

You should use both, Wither scales the DMG of Contagion, ED & Blight.
So Spell Totem Wither & Selfcast ED + Blight.

"

Mattmain76 wrote:

Does elemental damage increase chaos damage? I've read it does not.

Elemental does not.
Spell Damage does thanks to Essence Drain having a modifier saying that spell damage affects the DoT damage.

"

Paranoiac wrote:

Current gear, i'm testing this gem setup for now, and i like it. There are just a couple problems i'm having with it. 1. i need to find room for fortify, i was thinking maybe dropping clarity and moving around gems could do this. 2. I need vaal lightning trap, ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶g̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶i̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶f̶e̶a̶s̶i̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶c̶r̶a̶f̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶o̶c̶k̶e̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶o̶s̶ ̶d̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶u̶t̶ ̶v̶a̶a̶l̶ ̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶. (Is vaal lightning trap even good for non elemental builds?) I like the self cast blight,
i̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶g̶e̶m̶ ̶s̶e̶t̶u̶p̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶i̶'̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶P̶o̶B̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶.̶ (It seems like it is). Other than that, i'm just looking for a better amulet, 4 strength and shuffle my resists so i can wear my BoTC without my belt, and gg jewels/gear.

~5.4k life
~2k unreserved
capped resist
11k ed tooltip

for my skill tree i'll be droping the aoe nodes for jewels when i get some nice jewels.

Any suggestions?

Solid plan imo.
Though, Vaal Lightning Trap is only used in the build to help with boss fights, with Blight we are already casting a lot of different spells on the boss and doesn't grant that much DMG due to the nerfs so I could recommend switching that out over Clarity first at least.

"

Dhula wrote:

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Ghazzy wrote:

I am the best of the best of the best

Hi, started on HC league sense i have nothing to do on SC. I understand this build is "old", but in 3.0 we have some rly hard changes. My question is about Vaal Trap. We supose to get shock. But shock got changed, and sense we dont have much lightning damage, our shock will give a rly small amount of boost. May be worth using something else ? Some other set up ?

Haha, when did I write that?! O,O
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vaal_Lightning_Trap it provides shocked ground that increases damage taken by 15% that's why it is being used for boss fights due to the 3.0 boss HP buff. However, it used to be 50% till they nerfed it. It is still very useful but if you find yourself in a tight spot regarding sockets I would recommend switching this out first.

"

naranyra2 wrote:

So why not Greater Multiple Projectiles Support with essence drain? Seems to do way way more damage in comparison to contagion.

This is a common missconception of how ED/Contagion actually works.

ED no longer scales from projectiles and using any projectile modifying support gem pre 3.0 as well as post 3.0 was only used to provide QoL feeling to handle Vaal Totems or Rares with the same mod (Nearby Allies can not die) to make sure to hit such a target.

Contagion is an AoE debuff that makes it so that if any target affected by Contagion dies and have ED debuff it will spread the ED to enemies within the same AoE range with the dead target as the center of that radius.
This means that once the first target dies, everything will get ED and die. GMP would force you to cast ED several times to make sure all targets are hit with it and even then it would still lose DMG due to not having proper support gems scaling the damage.

"

Askani127 wrote:

Just a quick question. Should I use the Withchfire brew potion before or after i put my dots on? I was doing it before but maybe if I do it after I'd get more effect from it. Not sure if it works that way tho.

This is a very good question, I have been unable to confirm how it works, it "should" be fine to activate it after, but for the sake of safety, use it before!

"

enigma322 wrote:

What masters should I put in my hideout?

As the build doesn't rely on specific master crafting it doesn't matter which masters you wish to lvl.
The general recommendation for most builds however would be these:
Elreon (Ring/Amulet Crafting)
Haku (Gear resistance Crafting)
Zana (Map Device % LvLing)

Then w/e you prefer!

"

11ninjas wrote:

1 I must say I like the build, good work! I went with a different shield though and def not biscos belt. The other changes I made were instead of the frenetic and frenzy charge duration, and reduced mana and skills and dynamo i went up and got more dps from chaos dmg nodes and corruption.

I have gotten to the guardians and I have found I can do them except fro pheonix and chimera. pheonix keeps one shooting me (might have been bad mods) and I don't have enough chaos res for chim.

Anyways thought I'd add my 2 cents if people were interested on how this build works 3.0.

Also wanted to point out vaal lightning trap does not work with cast when damage taken support, unless you know a trick around this?

Glad you like it bro :)
The build should be able to handle those bosses as well though.


As @Paranoiac is saying, the VLT is intentionally put together with the CWDT as we want to manually cast it.

Sadly it was nerfed from being a 50% dmg increase down to 15%... so if you find yourself socket starved, switch VLT first!

Hello guys, any suggest to improve? :)

"

ceeren22 wrote:

Hello guys, any suggest to improve? :)

well first dont run empower if is not lvl3+, pierce/poison its best in that case by far.

imo you are running a lot of auras in your mana, you are not running enfeeble, you are losing the second effect of artic armor, the ED&Contagion builds are fast builds with shield charge do you not want to stay in the same place, Fortify and Enfeeble its the best defenses that you can get, and clarity.

You cant reserve a lot of your mana pool, i mean with MoM you want to have a combination of mana pool and mana regen that can sustain the hits you gonna take, blasphemy with two auras what its..70% reserverd mana pool? you need to have a insane regen mana and i doubt that with that gear you have that regen what its more you dont run clarity and that hurts your regen a lot too.

What can i upgrade?

Just wondering how to compare ED damage from the tooltip with more traditional damage builds. I ask because I'm wondering what number I should be aiming for on the tooltip for different encounters.

Currently, I'm breezing through maps up to tier 11-12 (bosses tend to be a bit slower than clear, but still are pretty reasonable).

"

Vergenter wrote:

What can i upgrade?

well the unset ring that you have i think its not worth running with clarity, i mean, the major benefit from that unique is that give you the possibility of run high reservetion auras without reducing your mana pool, with this builds and MoM you have a lot of Mana, and the percentage that clarity reserve its hardly apreciable, if you gonna run that ring, change that aura.

Have a question about contagions role in this whole set up.

Does essence drain add on, or replace the contagion mechanic?


The reason i ask is that i feel like the QOL gems in contagion yield little quality. Would making contagion more powerful add on to the effect of essence drain (does it add to contagion or replace it and use contagion only to spread?)

Im just wondering if putting more dps support gems onto contagion will multiply the damage effect of essence drain when its paired or will essence drain run off its own mechanics once applied to a mob with contagion.

I'm looking into doing this build next, but I have a couple of questions. For the chest do I go for Cherrubim's or Cloak of Defiance? And which gem setups to use for Allelopathy? I've seen different setups for the build scrolling through and I'm a little confused which one to go for.