[3.7] SC/HC - ED/Blight Trickster - Up to 10k eHP, Layered Defense, 3m DPS

Well new league looks interesting i think that new Witchfire Brew gona be BiS to boost our dmg, big nerf to wither coz with BotC and inc duration from tree 0% quality wither stack has 5.3 sec duration and cast time of 4.3 per sec (without any boost to cast speed except support gem) so during 5 sec we was able to reach 20 stacks on enemy now we gona be able to reach 15 stacks with 1% lower dmg on each so 5 removed stacks = 35% and 1% less on remaining stacks is 15% that means total we gona lose 50% dmg of wither becouse of that nerf. Just to make it simple current wither give us 140% more dmg from chaos after patch it will be 90% so its realy huge nerf for ED builds. And about MoM there is still no info about numbers of that nerf so i hope it will be still viable choice.

Iean sums the manifesto up quite well for us. Wither is taking a massive hit, going from 140% to 90% increased damage for us. On the bright side, we can just drop the fourth link on the wither totem now, freeing up a much needed gem socket for other things (assuming we still use BotC). The new curse sounds really good, especially considering we had no way to reduce chaos resistance before this. The new curse will most likely not fully compensate for the Wither nerf due to boss curse effectiveness reduction. We would also need to fit two curses again, since there is NO way I am dropping Temporal Chains.

After reading the manifesto, I am very tempted to say that CI is back on the table, and maybe even going hybrid with mainly ES focus and chaos resistance. LL might be back on the menu boys!

Great build and guide, lots of information in the replies to the thread from you and others. So ive been practicing act 10 kitava for abyss league in hc. Killed it a few times now but the deaths ive had was on the add phase, i was killing it at level 65 with 3k health and the mechanics of the fight is simple enough but the add phase just feels extremly sketchy and rippy i know im underlevled and in abyss i probaly wont try to kill it under level 70. Just interested in when you try to go for the kill? do you get merc lab before? any tips for add phase? legit feels like bullethell and flickering dude stuns are extremly obnoxius even with brine king pantheon. (used blight in +1 wand the entirety of the leveling and that alone made the leveling proccess so smooth compared to only going with ED)

Great guide, but i am curious about 1 thing
hows this guild in party ? i usually map with 1-2 friends and im curious how good the guild is into party

@Viip3r, pre 3.1 (wither nerf), I was usually able to kill the heart of kitava before adds spawned at all until the last heart phase, in which the DoTs were enough to kill it by kiting for a few more seconds. I usually farm Oasis until level 70ish or when I feel my HP is high enough to deal with the boss. Getting that extra level on Blight/ED really does help as well. Preposition Wither totem, cast Contagion until HP bar of the heart shows, apply ED, then Blight until you have to move due to adds. GLHF on HC!

@Holg, this build works just fine in a smaller party. You have to play a bit more tactically and apply ED to the target that your team is more likely to kill first to be effective, and you might want to get abyssal cry to assist more. ED is by no means optimal for party play, but you can make it work.

yeah i suspected getting some extra levels / gem levels would go a long way, since i intentionally did it early just to see how the character would kinda work ssf geared / underleveld. I'll try out that more dps strat for the add phase thx alot! :) (dident realize u had to kill the heart thought the health went down by killing adds..xD)

So if ll is back do you anticipate shavrones wrapping probably be very expensive?

Nah, I really doubt that Shav's price will skyrocket due to the new changes. We are just closer to a comfortable LL setup now than we were in 3.0, as well as gaining more from it. For LL to be tankier than MoM, I suspect we will still need a Presence of Chayula, making the LL version extremely pricey in leagues.

We will have to wait and see when patch notes are released, but the information in the manifesto makes it seem more worth it to invest in going LL than it did in 3.0. This means I will most likely update some example LL gear as well for the guide even though I am not sure if I will play it in the upcomming league.

EDIT: I start the league as ED, so I always do Kitava with self found gear. At level 67-68 (usually), I am able to get just above 4k EHP, get a 4L blight, 3L +1 chaos ED and at least 2-3L Wither totem to make Kitava relatively "simple". If I remember, and if I play ED as a league starter in Abyss, I will record my Kitava kill for reference.

I was even thinking to go CI build with this you know with those new shaper/elder items just get around 600 es chest and good rest of stuff that can place us around 8-9k es + MoM. it can give us around 11-12k EHP and thats a lot. Only problem is same as LL build that you need get to ZO becouse you could use goefrey crest but it has realy low ES so i dont think anyone gona use it. LL is also nice becouse it let us use more auras than Life or ES builds but it require that fcking shavs and presence of chayula and on abyss league i think its gona be fcking expensive (no insta leech and ton of nerfs = higher prices) ://

Yeah, I am not really sure what I want to do at this point. We will have to see what the patch notes tell us, then I can respec my Occultist and Tricksters on standard and see how LL/CI might work out there. Unless MoM gets completely gutted (which I doubt), I will still play MoM Trickster as a league starter.