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

You probably forgot to include Blight. I have a full link in my gloves, so when you add blight + hindered in PoB (and times the blight DPS by 20 which should be realistic during beams/balltosses/melee, you should be around 700k for my character at least. Probably 800+ with stuff like cherrubim's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O4I8llbsyw

Video of guardians and Shaper if you want to see how I choose to incorporate Blight in the playstyle (timestamps in the description).

Hey guys, I was hoping I could get a bit of help (similar to some of the current discussion). Here's my character ("Xyrmed" is the ED trickster):

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Xyrm/characters

Things I know I'm missing: an ED helm (how big of a difference does this make?). I see some people are using allelopathy gloves... should I switch and get more resists elsewhere? I could swap out my atziri's and my current belt for the belt/boots on my cycloner for the time being.

Following the guide, I'm starting to get to the point where bosses die super slow. I'm completely willing to accept I'm doing something wrong, but I've experimented with multiple weapons, multiple chests, in various combinations, without any really big changes. Currently in my hideout I'm capped around 47k or so ED damage per sec. I've tried Divinarius, Breath of the Council, the rare dagger I have equipped, along with multiple chests including 6L Cherrubim's, Cloak of Defiance, and the skin of the loyal I have on.

Per the guide, all the points I have left to invest have to do with max mana. I feel like it might be better to skip some of them (since I already have more than 30% of my life in unreserved mana) and go "northwest" in the skill tree towards the Corruption wheel for more chaos/DOT damage.

I am LOVING this playstyle, but with how long bosses are taking on rare t12/13 maps, I feel like guardians would take forever, let alone shaper. I expect it to be slower, but it's not even 2-3x slower than my ngamahu's cycloner, its easily an order of magnitude (10x+) worse.

@Zyrm

ED + Contagion builds are made for fast packs and map clears for farm, not really for progress. With this build you can afford to equip some magic find items for more currency drop / hour. Almost all bosses in the game are chaos resistant.

I understand it won't kill shaper in 4 seconds, but I've seen people clear bosses much faster. Look at the video linked a little by Nedieth at the top of this page, and he does guardians/shaper with no issues. It seems like the main thing I'm missing here is allelopathy gloves and using blight?

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flemieux wrote:

Just wanted to tell you guys how big of an ugrade +3 chaos gems staff is to this build. My ED damage over time rose from around ~53k to 83k and that's without frenzy charges. with them it's over 100k chaos dot. I must say I recommend buying one if u can afford it. With the right colours and 6-linked it's around 10 exalted right now. Shaper farming soon. :)

Hey,

Aye, for boss farming a staff is tons better. The build is designed for map clearing in mind, though it still works for boss farms :)
I'm considering to make the build a 2 section guide where 1 is for map clearing and the other for bosses. We'll see...

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darkOinferno wrote:

Thanks for the reply ! Another question , what would the gem setup be for the allelopathy gloves ?

I would use the Contagion setup in it which is described in the guide! :)

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Xyrm wrote:

I understand it won't kill shaper in 4 seconds, but I've seen people clear bosses much faster. Look at the video linked a little by Nedieth at the top of this page, and he does guardians/shaper with no issues. It seems like the main thing I'm missing here is allelopathy gloves and using blight?

Allelopathy & Blight does TONS. Though do keep in mind that this build is specifically designed for map clearing, by simply switching to a 2H Staff +2 or +3 to chaos gem lvls you'll be able to farm bosses super easy. Though the build in it's original state can handle it as well.

Ghazzy, if you do a boss killing guide, that would be incredible. That's my next step. The post at the top of the page shows just how easily bosses can be farmed, even with a life build.

I don't mind sacrificing some damage to be able to comfortably farm the guardians and shaper!

I hope you'll make a boss guide for this build eventually man. Thanks again

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Nedieth wrote:

You probably forgot to include Blight. I have a full link in my gloves, so when you add blight + hindered in PoB (and times the blight DPS by 20 which should be realistic during beams/balltosses/melee, you should be around 700k for my character at least. Probably 800+ with stuff like cherrubim's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O4I8llbsyw

Video of guardians and Shaper if you want to see how I choose to incorporate Blight in the playstyle (timestamps in the description).

This is really impressive. I get zapped when I do boss runs, trying to figure out what to change.

Is a +3 chaos gem staff better than a +1 body with lvl 3+ empower?

I would've thought the body+empower combo would be even more damage as it boosts all gems .. whereas a +3 chaos staff only boosts the chaos gems?

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Surfinn wrote:

Ghazzy, if you do a boss killing guide, that would be incredible. That's my next step. The post at the top of the page shows just how easily bosses can be farmed, even with a life build.

I don't mind sacrificing some damage to be able to comfortably farm the guardians and shaper!

I hope you'll make a boss guide for this build eventually man. Thanks again

"

Nedieth wrote:

You probably forgot to include Blight. I have a full link in my gloves, so when you add blight + hindered in PoB (and times the blight DPS by 20 which should be realistic during beams/balltosses/melee, you should be around 700k for my character at least. Probably 800+ with stuff like cherrubim's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O4I8llbsyw

Video of guardians and Shaper if you want to see how I choose to incorporate Blight in the playstyle (timestamps in the description).

This is really impressive. I get zapped when I do boss runs, trying to figure out what to change.

Well, the only direct change is to use a proper chest & use the +3 staff with spell dmg instead which will skyrocket damage. Differences are pretty much nonexistant outside of that unless you wanna go lowlife, in which case I recommend Occultist :)

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Ghostextechnica wrote:

Is a +3 chaos gem staff better than a +1 body with lvl 3+ empower?

I would've thought the body+empower combo would be even more damage as it boosts all gems .. whereas a +3 chaos staff only boosts the chaos gems?

For pure damage, yes.
Clear speed, no.

+3 is an abbreviation of +2 (specific gem kind, in this case chaos gems) together with the Paraon roll which gives +1 lvl of all gems (similar to the +1 corrupted tabula). So it gives +2 chaos which affects most gems either way as well as +1 to all gems which includes Empower :)

"

Nedieth wrote:

You probably forgot to include Blight. I have a full link in my gloves, so when you add blight + hindered in PoB (and times the blight DPS by 20 which should be realistic during beams/balltosses/melee, you should be around 700k for my character at least.

First of all thanks, also for the YT Link. I'm working on getting there as well ;)

So, how to include Blight in the calc? Do you mean adding up the ED + Blight DoT DPS? I was referring to the ED DoT DPS only. I did check the "hindered" checkbox, which applies the buff from 2x Spreading Rot Jewels.

20 Blight stacks add another 460k DoT DPS, but only as long as you maintain the 20 stacks (approx 23k per stack).

I also just realized that I had set Wither to 1 stack only, not the max of 20, which increases the ED DoT DPS from 170k to 320k, i.e. a VERY significant increase.

That adds up to 780k, of course under ideal conditions (20 stacks each).

Ok, so that's probably where the misunderstanding on my side came from.

EDIT: in my case, with a non-damage-optimized Allelopathy setup (standard Contagion setup in gloves), my Blight only contributes approx. 160k add. DPS at 20 stacks. My ED also is somewhat weaker at 270k (being lower level, having somewhat worse gear).

With Witchfire, I get up to 310k for ED and 200k for Blight, respectively, but of course Witchfire won't be up the whole duration of a boss fight.

EDIT 2: The biggest issue I have with the build is ... the constant, annoying sound of Shield Charge ;) J/K, the build is great, loving it. My first "real" char, came back to PoE shortly prior to 3.0 Release after having a brief look at the game at the time it was released. I have to admit that I never really got into it back then, but I really love it now.

Tried to optimize my char a little bit and did some theorycrafting in PoB. Doing this, I realized I made some mistakes in the above calculations.

1) I forgot to select that the target is Shaper / Guardian. Obviously, this brings down the DPS quite a bit (25% Chaos Resistance, 80% less effect of Curses)
2) I apparently still had Wither set to 1 stack when looking up the Blight DPS. Correcting for this is a huge buff to the Blight DPS.

So, correcting for both mistakes, the Shaper DoT DPS at 20 Wither stacks then is:
Blight: 32k x 20 stacks = 640k (!!!)
ED: 240k
Total: 880k

Again, this is under optimal conditions (20 stacks Blight and Wither each). This is probably unrealistic for the whole duration of the fight, hence I redid the calc with an average of 10 stacks each:
Blight: 240k
ED: 180k
Total: 420k

Quite a difference. But I guess the difficult thing is to maintain 20 Blight stacks, 20 Wither stacks seem feasible with good Wither totem placement. This (10 Blight stacks, 20 Wither stacks) then results in:
Blight: 320k
ED: 240k
Total: 560k

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In my case, things are worse, since Curse from WB also get's hit quite hard. Again for 20 Wither, 10 Blight:
Blight: 130k
ED: 210k
Total: 340k

In summary: for bosses, it really makes sense to have a dedicated max-damage Blight gem setup in the Allelopathy gloves.

I guess I will experiment with this and drop my CoDT setup (the char is quite tanky anways).