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

From wiki:
Increasing poison duration with Temporal Chains curse results in a longer-lasting poison that deals damage at the same rate.

I don't understand this. Does it mean that the duration of the poison is only a little longer (same dot) or that it actually does more damage too?


Regardless with a longer duration it would be possible to create more poison stacks aswell. The base duration is rather short. Only 2 seconds.

If i am using this dagger:

The mechanics of poison is still bound by the rules that only the chaos damage from essence drain's hit is in effect? If not does it affect all chaos damage? Does anyone know for sure?

I am lvl 88 and contemplating a passive tree that includes acro/phase acro but i'm not sure about the whole thing yet. Acro/phase acro would go well with grace. I have not used iron reflexes as i don't like that skill much.

What other options are there. The big reason for going down in duelist area is to pick up iron reflexes no?

From the guide:

"

Start with taking "Walk The Aether" and after those 2 points it comes down to a matter of personal taste.
You'll chose from these nodes: "Swift Killer", "Patient Reaper", & "Weave the Arcane".

You can actually pick all those for 8 point so there is no choice. Or was this written before endgame lab was added to the game?

"

kompaniet wrote:

From wiki:
Increasing poison duration with Temporal Chains curse results in a longer-lasting poison that deals damage at the same rate.

I don't understand this. Does it mean that the duration of the poison is only a little longer (same dot) or that it actually does more damage too?

Regardless with a longer duration it would be possible to create more poison stacks aswell. The base duration is rather short. Only 2 seconds.

If i am using this dagger:

The mechanics of poison is still bound by the rules that only the chaos damage from essence drain's hit is in effect? If not does it affect all chaos damage? Does anyone know for sure?

I am lvl 88 and contemplating a passive tree that includes acro/phase acro but i'm not sure about the whole thing yet. Acro/phase acro would go well with grace. I have not used iron reflexes as i don't like that skill much.

What other options are there. The big reason for going down in duelist area is to pick up iron reflexes no?

From the guide:

"

Start with taking "Walk The Aether" and after those 2 points it comes down to a matter of personal taste.
You'll chose from these nodes: "Swift Killer", "Patient Reaper", & "Weave the Arcane".

You can actually pick all those for 8 point so there is no choice. Or was this written before endgame lab was added to the game?

Wait for Ghazzy's answer (this is his thread and I want him to have the final words on your doubts).

BTW I can anticipate some thematics.

1. If you use temporal chains, the poison lasts longer but does the same DPS. The longer duration, btw, means you can apply more stacks, thus resulting in higher DPS when you get the maximum stacks possible (depending on your cast speed).

Skill duration nodes do a similar thing.


2. If you use Consuming Dark, it's like you have a 7 link on ED, with the poison being the 7th. The mechanics are the same: the poison damage is based on ED's initial hit, not on ED's dot component. But the poison is very strong with ED, because it double dips with almost all the damage stats: spell damage, projectile damage, chaos damage. Only "damage over time" on gear or passives does not double dip with the poison output.


3. There are two reasons to go into the duelist area: the first is getting iron reflexes if you are basing your playstyle on it, the second is the insanely good dirty techniques node.


4. With 8 ascendancy points you can take all the useful nodes: Walk the Aether, Patient Reaper, Weave the Arcane and Swift killer. Taking swift killer makes you want to take advantage from frenzy charges, so you want to have the maximum possible number of them (3 baseline, 1 from merc Kraityn, 1 from the ascendancy and potentially up to 3 from the passive tree).

Are you sure about that because it says on wiki: stats modifying spell damage and attack damage do not apply to poison as poison is not a spell or attack

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Poison

I can only note that bosses and tough rares go down faster with consuming dark dagger. I guess that is what matters the most if we decide to use the dagger.

"

kompaniet wrote:

Are you sure about that because it says on wiki: stats modifying spell damage and attack damage do not apply to poison as poison is not a spell or attack

Essence Drain and Vortex (if converted partially or totally to chaos damage via pyre + consuming dark / infernal mantle) are the only exceptions to that rule.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Essence_Drain

In ED's (and Vortex's) description you can read: Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this skill's Damage Over Time.

This means that spell damage modifiers from gear / passives also affect other damage over time effects created by this skill, such as poison or ignite. AKA double dipping.

@kompaniet;

The Ascendancy text was written before uber lab yes, now you can get both :)
The DoT dmg is no longer affecting any poison procs which is why it has dropped in value. Still an optimal single target choice, but for overall mapping I personally preffered other options, however with the value drop due to recent nerfs to it, it might be worth looking at again.

The Temporal Chains is not affecting the actual damage the DoT's are doing, but rather the duration so it does neither increase nor decrease the damage. It only prolongs it's duration which indirectly means that 1 proc of poison does "more" damage cause it lasts longer. But the general idea of it is to slow enemies down and make it easier for us to maintain and keep stacking poison on the enemies.

Regarding going down to the Duelist area;

Iron Reflexes are insanely effecient for you in terms of defensive stats due to the choice of using a Tabula Rasa. Outside the defensive aspect of the routing, Dirty Teq. is the sickest dmg over time cluster on the tree.

"

kompaniet wrote:

Are you sure about that because it says on wiki: stats modifying spell damage and attack damage do not apply to poison as poison is not a spell or attack

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Poison

I can only note that bosses and tough rares go down faster with consuming dark dagger. I guess that is what matters the most if we decide to use the dagger.

The Poison itself is not modified by anything but poison/dmg over time and/or chaos. It is a support gem that inherits the effects of the attack that it procs from. So if you are using a chaos projectile such as Essence Drain, the poison will doubledip the damage gain from projectile dmg, chaos dmg, dmg over time (because dmg over time affects the initial hit as well).

(Exactly how @Djnat is explaining in the comment above)

Someone take a look at my tree? I can't do Ascendencies cus of ISP issues. So i have mana issues. I picked up the mana flows node for the mana fix that trickster gives, then went on to take bravery to replace thick skin for travel efficiency (coming out 4% short in max life increase). I went south through the projectile damage nodes to meet up with golem blood, then pretty much everything else is same. I am now starting on my way north from scion life wheel to Quick recovery and onward to templar nodes just like the recomended path on tree in first page. Any recomendations for a no ascension build while i'm still down here (duelist area) to compensate further?

So what's our single target DPS like? Without poison? Also I been following ProjectPT for a while and his take on a life based contagion tree. Thoughts?

All best. PS. I used to your snapshotting summoner builds, those were some good times ^^

"

Tenembre wrote:

Someone take a look at my tree? I can't do Ascendencies cus of ISP issues. So i have mana issues. I picked up the mana flows node for the mana fix that trickster gives, then went on to take bravery to replace thick skin for travel efficiency (coming out 4% short in max life increase). I went south through the projectile damage nodes to meet up with golem blood, then pretty much everything else is same. I am now starting on my way north from scion life wheel to Quick recovery and onward to templar nodes just like the recomended path on tree in first page. Any recomendations for a no ascension build while i'm still down here (duelist area) to compensate further?

You can't really compensate more than you already have, I would suggest buying a boost for it! :)

"

Alnaimi wrote:

So what's our single target DPS like? Without poison? Also I been following ProjectPT for a while and his take on a life based contagion tree. Thoughts?

All best. PS. I used to your snapshotting summoner builds, those were some good times ^^

His version is utulizing curses and would lose effeciency if you want to use Tabula Rasa, still a solid tree and be something id look to do with a few minor changes (such as life regen replaced for more dmg @ "Growth and Decay" cluster. etc etc.
The reason my tree is going down south is to fully cover defensive stats for the use of Tabula Rasa.

Would also like to add the fact that you certainly don't need increased AoE nodes on the tree if you just get a quality Contagion which is super cheap and/or you can flip your gem at lvl 20 cause the lvl of the gem doesn't matter. (It will of course be linked with Increased AoE support gem as well as described in my guide.)

What would you recommend instead of a Tabula if one can afford more?

And thanks for your reply. I noticed that he had invested more into the curse keystones but that would require a 6L Cospri's Will to be more worth while I would assume.

EDIT: Area damage is also useless isn't it? Meaning that the Increased AoE damage he is getting is rather wasted and it's only real purpose is the + AoE radius?

EDIT2: My take at a tree following your recommendations and assuming a Cospri's Will 5L until currency enough for a 6L. I opted for the close by frenzy charge as I imagine rolling with Swift killer as second ascendancy upgrade. Only issue I see with this is we would be reaching the Contistution life tree later into the game, and may create an issue with survivability?

"

Alnaimi wrote:

What would you recommend instead of a Tabula if one can afford more?

And thanks for your reply. I noticed that he had invested more into the curse keystones but that would require a 6L Cospri's Will to be more worth while I would assume.

EDIT: Area damage is also useless isn't it? Meaning that the Increased AoE damage he is getting is rather wasted and it's only real purpose is the + AoE radius?

EDIT2: My take at a tree following your recommendations and assuming a Cospri's Will 5L until currency enough for a 6L. I opted for the close by frenzy charge as I imagine rolling with Swift killer as second ascendancy upgrade. Only issue I see with this is we would be reaching the Contistution life tree later into the game, and may create an issue with survivability?

In my opinion, if you play life based with that tree, the best options to replace Tabula are Carcass Jack or Cospri.

Area damage only affects the damage of Contagion, which is pretty low and hardly noticeable in higher map tiers. The only purpose of the AoE radius as you said, which also affects curses'radius via Blasphemy.

BTW, radius nodes are still better than +int travel nodes, so in that tree you linked I'd still take them.