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

Just to chime in with my own experience, I have found Bane/Soulrend to be much quicker and safer for mapping than ED/Contagion. The exceptions are obviously monoliths and delving, where the pack density is high enough that you can consistently get a really strong chain reaction going. Since I have an Arc witch that is much more nimble than this build, I just use Vaal Arc for monoliths and stick to Bane with my trickster.

I do swap out Soulrend and GMP for ED and Swift Affliction for bosses, since ED has much better single-target damage. Despite what others have said, I find this to be an amazing setup for boss killing. It has let me get my first (2!) deathless Uber Elder kills ever this league, and I've been playing for almost a year.

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grimjack68 wrote:

I've been considering swapping over to ED and Contagion instead and using Ghost Reaver to support ES leech instead of life, mainly just to try it out. If anyone has tried both against guardians and has some experience to share, I'd appreciate it.

Contagion-ED is great for monolith and generally for zoom-zooming. You can clear multiple screens at a time with only 2 casts. However, you dont get despair for free. And oftentimes you end up using 2 casts to clear a small pack whereas 1 bane would've done it. Also, the "allies cant die" mod is a major annoyance, since contagion wont spread the ED to the main mob, and the immortal pack often blocks your ED from reaching the main mob.

About ghost reaver/leech in general, it's generally not very useful since you cant leech from DOT, only from the on hit damage. That said you could also add energy leech support if you want. I generally do before I have a full setup with level 7 empower

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WorderMostFoul wrote:

I do swap out Soulrend and GMP for ED and Swift Affliction for bosses, since ED has much better single-target damage. Despite what others have said, I find this to be an amazing setup for boss killing. It has let me get my first (2!) deathless Uber Elder kills ever this league, and I've been playing for almost a year.

I'm wondering how you calculate ED damage in a way that it comes up higher than soulrend. Since soulrend has higher base damage both on hit and over time. Also, with giving up bane you lose some damage since bane deals damage and contagion pretty much doesnt. And youalso force yourself to need anothwr source of despair, which is crucial to have permanently up against bosses.

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RaislanderUK wrote:

I've reached a bit of a wall with the current build I've modified the original posted here based on other I've found in POE.NINJA, but now I'm kind of lost on where I should upgrade next.

Any ideas? I've got around 6ex to use for possible upgrades. Anything else I could/should change?

Thanks a lot guys!!

You could spend on a similar boot but rare and with alot of resistances (like the ones on either of my legion level 100s). Then it will free up your rings to be able to use Mark of Shaper + Elder resist ring. Youwould want a Mark of the Shaper that is corrupted to have +14-16 all res. I don't think this upgrade is doable at 6 exalt, and your build looks fine as it is. But it's what I would aim to do.




Edit: I just noticed you don't have Empower level 4. Buy that gem to use immediately and level your current empower in your weapon swap. It is a massive upgrade and not something you should wait on RNG and grinding to do yourself!

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xsnowingx wrote:

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RaislanderUK wrote:

I've reached a bit of a wall with the current build I've modified the original posted here based on other I've found in POE.NINJA, but now I'm kind of lost on where I should upgrade next.

Any ideas? I've got around 6ex to use for possible upgrades. Anything else I could/should change?

Thanks a lot guys!!

You could spend on a similar boot but rare and with alot of evasion (like the ones on either of my legion level 100s). Then it will free up your rings to be able to use Mark of Shaper + Elder resist ring. Youwould want a Mark of the Shaper that is corrupted to have +14-16 all res. I don't think this upgrade is doable at 6 exalt, and your build looks fine as it is. But it's what I would aim to do.

Edit: I just noticed you don't have Empower level 4. Buy that gem to use immediately and level your current empower in your weapon swap. It is a massive upgrade and not something you should wait on RNG and grinding to do yourself!

Thanks! Massive improvement you were totally right! I need now to make some currency to get the rest of the updates....:S

So i am new with ED/Contagnition cause i only switched from coc ice nova when i found an incredible timeless jewel.

Could you please explain to me, how you apply the despair curse, lots of you have in chest ? I think, i dont understand the mechanic.

Do you use Soulrend/Bane for Shaper / Elder or ED/Conta? Whats better?

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Goggo2000 wrote:

Could you please explain to me, how you apply the despair curse, lots of you have in chest ? I think, i dont understand the mechanic.

Do you use Soulrend/Bane for Shaper / Elder or ED/Conta? Whats better?

There are basically 3 ways to apply despair if using the gem itself.

1) Selfcast (this is what most people are doing this league)
2) Link it to bane, then cast bane which applies it.
3) Add it to a CWDT setup.

An additional way is to use witchfire brew.

As for Shaper/Elder, generally soulrend/bane is better since it's higher damage and less casts, however ED can provide nice life regen. As for me, I'm doing something I haven't seen anyone else do, both for bosses and mapping, which is to go ED/cont+bane. But the absolute highest damage would be soulrend+bane+selfcast blight, and I'm considering trying that out.

I believe the Soulrend DOT lasts 0.4 seconds vs around 5 seconds for ED, so in order to boss with Soulrend you have to literally not move and facetank while casting. I have not tried it yet because of this assumption.

ED you can cast once every 5 seconds in a boss fight and that frees you up to dodge mechanics or cast blight/bane

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xsnowingx wrote:

I believe the Soulrend DOT lasts 0.4 seconds vs around 5 seconds for ED, so in order to boss with Soulrend you have to literally not move and facetank while casting. I have not tried it yet because of this assumption.

ED you can cast once every 5 seconds in a boss fight and that frees you up to dodge mechanics or cas blight/bane

Oh, I didn't know that, great point

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Adenathschant wrote:

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WorderMostFoul wrote:

I do swap out Soulrend and GMP for ED and Swift Affliction for bosses, since ED has much better single-target damage. Despite what others have said, I find this to be an amazing setup for boss killing. It has let me get my first (2!) deathless Uber Elder kills ever this league, and I've been playing for almost a year.

I'm wondering how you calculate ED damage in a way that it comes up higher than soulrend. Since soulrend has higher base damage both on hit and over time. Also, with giving up bane you lose some damage since bane deals damage and contagion pretty much doesnt. And youalso force yourself to need anothwr source of despair, which is crucial to have permanently up against bosses.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I always use Bane over Contagion unless I'm delving or farming Glacier. It just feels a lot less clunky overall.

Regarding the Soulrend vs ED damage, yes, the flat numbers on the gems support what you're saying; however, as the post above points out, Soulrend has an extremely short duration, so you would need to stand in one place the whole time to get the same DOT as ED, which isn't practical. Also, if you use GMP with Soulrend, it cuts down the damage significantly. The ED setup has Swift Affliction instead of GMP, which results in a lot more DPS overall.