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

@Garyas

Changed my colors on my armor to fit Empower, but I don't know. The build feels much much slower without Pierce. The damage is maybe higher but my clearspeed had been reduced drastically.

Could be linked to the following, something that has been bothering me a lot as well:

As the whole build revolves around the Contagion + ED mechanics (obviously, duh :) ), it is essential to hit a mob which is already affected by Contagion with your ED bolt (or the other way round, hit with ED and then cast Contagion on top). However, when things get hectic, mobs are moving, you might charge in one direction but want to shoot ED in another, it might happen that you actually don't hit with ED (i.e. it passes harmlessly through all mobs) or it hits a mob other than those affected by Contagion.

Then, seemingly, nothing happens (other than maybe one single mob dying and others slowly losing a bit of life due to Contagion). So you have to repeat casting ED.

I've been bothered by this as well, especially against fast moving, small mobs.

I can totally see that Pierce helps with that, as you might still hit another mob which is affected by Contagion and then the whole build mechanics kicks in and nice things happen (i.e. everything dies :) ).

Could be related to this - can't imagine anything else that would make Pierce superior to Empower Lvl 3.

Well, thinking about it: bear in mind that without the +1 from the chest armor, the difference in ED DoT damage is less significant, since the +1 double dips: it adds +1 to ED itself and +1 to Empower, which in turn adds another +1 to ED. And obviously all support gems also benefit from the +1 of the chest armor. So we're talking about 2 lvls difference in ED and 1 lvl difference in 4 support gems vs ~19% "more" damage of Pierce. Could be that without the +1 of the chest, the more damage of Pierce is better than +3 Empower. Didn't check the math yet, might do this later and let you know.

EDIT: Did the math with PoB, based on your char.

With Pierce, I got an effective DoT DPS of 84k.
With Empower, it increased to 107k

Corrupting the chest to +1 gems rises this further to 134k.

So, it seems to be the above mentioned mechanics of hitting targets which are affected by Contagion which you would otherwise have missed.

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Ghazzy wrote:

@Garyas:

Poison > Pierce as well if you can't afford Empower lvl 3+ :)

Yup, I was running Poison before Empower. MegaTen_IV brought up a good point of clearspeed with Pierce though, especially for maps where you don't need the full damage potential anyways. Could be worth testing. Easy to do on a TR due to white sockets and all :)

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Ghazzy wrote:

Thank you btw for helping out with questions in the thread <3

And you are welcome - I love theorycrafting almost (but not quite, entirely unlike - for everyone who gets that reference :) ) as much as playing the game itself. Plus this is something I can do when I can't play the game <cough> work <cough>.

Isn't PoE the abbreviation for Path of Excel anyways? :)

Thank you, exactly my thoughts.

The only thing I gained from empower is +2 lvl to ED and thats's it which translates from 9,5k dps tooltip to 12k in hideout unbuffed. Other gems are not affected which is a shame. Spent also tons of chromes to get the colors since I have a full dex chest. 3 blues and 1 red is a nightmare.

On the other hand, I was leveling with tabula until I 6 linked my Perfect Form and that armor is just amazing, it gives me tons of survival potential.

One thing however came up, why not take the Pierce nod ? It's just 5 points away from our Frenzy charge nod which is a not much of a big deal. With that armor I can sacrifice a dmg over time passive or few hp. Or I might just switch back to 3 blue 3 green and continue as it was.

Last thing which bothers me with this build is that casting ED is slow. It is happening a lot of times that I am facing mobs and after contagion my ED cast is interrupted. It is so annoying that I literally was thinking about to pick the the witch nodes which prevents this with a 25 % success.... Faster casting is really lacking.

Yup, the interupt stuff is also bothering me. I still think it can be mitigated at least by some extent by better positioning - I still have to get the hang of it.

I don't really have survivability issues with TR so far (doing up to T15, beachhead for instance is very smooth and easy). The only thing that bothers me a little (see posts above) is that porcupines now actually pose a threat if massed (after dropping my CWDT setup).

That's why I think that I maybe try the setup of @paranoiah with a "simple" version of Blasphemy + Enfeeble and CWDT + IC both in one 4 link.

Not sure how much I will miss Clarity, though I never have any mana issues, so that should work. Also easy to test, I'll simply run a few maps without Clarity.

@paranoiah: gratz to the Aylardex +1 Curse Amu. Did you craft it yourself or buy? I saw one a few days ago in poe.trade, didn't buy it (was quite expensive obviously, though I do not remember the exact price). Now none is listed :)

Would free up several passive points which I could dump into more damage or maybe the pierce... would try the pierce gem first though. Maybe even run Pierce for regular map clearing and swap out Empower for bosses.

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Garyas wrote:

Yup, the interupt stuff is also bothering me. I still think it can be mitigated at least by some extent by better positioning - I still have to get the hang of it.

I don't really have survivability issues with TR so far (doing up to T15, beachhead for instance is very smooth and easy). The only thing that bothers me a little (see posts above) is that porcupines now actually pose a threat if massed (after dropping my CWDT setup).

That's why I think that I maybe try the setup of @paranoiah with a "simple" version of Blasphemy + Enfeeble and CWDT + IC both in one 4 link.

i was trying several different setups and i found this one working best.. you still get that 1 hit save with CWDT and blasphemy with only 4 sockets.

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Garyas wrote:

@paranoiah: gratz to the Aylardex +1 Curse Amu. Did you craft it yourself or buy? I saw one a few days ago in poe.trade, didn't buy it (was quite expensive obviously, though I do not remember the exact price). Now none is listed :)

Would free up several passive points which I could dump into more damage or maybe the pierce... would try the pierce gem first though. Maybe even run Pierce for regular map clearing and swap out Empower for bosses.

thanks man, yea i traded it after unsuccessfully vaaling 15 Aylardex myself :)
it was almost all the currency i had left at the time, but i feel like it was worth it (around 200c)!

edit: there is one up for 2 ex right now if you are still looking

Yup, that's what I was thinking as well: need to squeeze the CWDT setup and something else into one 4 slot item. Things that I can live without:

Flame Golem:
- only small damage boost, not needed against trash anyways, and against bosses, the damage with a dedicated Blight setup is much much bigger
- distraction as some mobs target the golem, but most of times he lags behind anyways, so that's ok
- against tough mobs, he dies in a few secs anyways

Increased Duration on IC:
- of course longer duration = better, but main purpose is avoiding getting killed by many hits in very rapid succession (i.e. Porcupine death projectiles, volley Vaal Contruct projectiles etc). This should also work without Inc Dur

Clarity:
- tried to run a few maps without Clarity last night, seemed to work just fine, didn't notice any difference

Faster Casting on Contagion:
- of course nicer with, but probably can live without

Will be a major reshuffling of gems and recoloring of sockets, but I think it might be well worth it. Really don't like dropping my CWDT life insurance :)


Aylardex: Hm, don't know if I'm ready to pay 2ex for just one upgrade - I'm at 2ex + 150c right now (plus of course a variety of other currency which I could exchange to c or ex), but still, it's a significant chunk of my overall "wealth"
Plus, I'm currently running an Atziri's foible and would need to get ~30 Dex from other sources to be able to equip some of my gems.
I'm also not sure how mana sustain will be without Clarity (see above) AND without Atziri's. The latter provides quite some mana and sinificant mana reg, while Aylardex increases mana consumption (more damage taken from mana before life, which is good of course).

Could test that of course with a normal Aylardex and if I like it, try to Vaal or buy one...

Tough choices :)

Btw:

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paranoiah wrote:

edit: there is one up for 2 ex right now if you are still looking

already sold apparently

Aylardex again:
bought myself a non-corrupted one to see if I like it. First need to solve the Dex problem though. Easiest fix could be to take a +30 Dex node. Not optimal, but I could live with that until I can squeeze 28 on some piece of equipment.

According to http://poedb.tw/us/mod.php?cn=MapFragment#Amulets, the chance for getting the +1 curse corruption is 0,66% for amulets. Which means that you need to Vaal 105 of them to have a 50% chance of having at least one with the desired corruption. For >90% probability, you need to Vaal approx 350 of them.

Don't know if I want to do that. Let alone have the currency to do it :)

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Garyas wrote:

Increased Duration on IC:
- of course longer duration = better, but main purpose is avoiding getting killed by many hits in very rapid succession (i.e. Porcupine death projectiles, volley Vaal Contruct projectiles etc). This should also work without Inc Dur

yea, base duration is 0,40 seconds. with 20/20 increased duration you would only get around 75% added to this, since we dont have endurance charges. Imo its neglectable and still serves its purpose of tanking one hit.
also, with chain of solaris in your pantheon, chained bullets will be avoided. however, im not sure what counts as such.

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Garyas wrote:

Clarity:
- tried to run a few maps without Clarity last night, seemed to work just fine, didn't notice any difference

i never run out of mana without clarity when using spells. but if you feel like you wanna try it with the same setup, you can always get a ring with a socket, life, mana and needed res to cap those.

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Garyas wrote:

Aylardex again:
bought myself a non-corrupted one to see if I like it. First need to solve the Dex problem though. Easiest fix could be to take a +30 Dex node. Not optimal, but I could live with that until I can squeeze 28 on some piece of equipment.

Regarding the missing dex, i usually look for good rings (30-100c) when reaching endgame that i will keep for a while that add strength, dex and cap my res (plus life and mana in this case of course).


im currently unsure whether to get a 5th jewel slot in passive tree or not.. i started doing beachhead rotations (boring as hell, but 1 rotation ~45 minutes got me from 91 10% to 92 2%) so i will have some open passives in no time :)

I have a question that is breaking my head for a while :

Why you don't recommend "Cherrubim's Maleficence" as the main chest?

This armour gives you up to 80% chaos damage, up to 100 mas life, 1200 armor and 1500 evasion.

With your tabula +1 how % more damage you get? It can't be more than the 80% increase chaos damage from this armour.

Thanks in advance.