Blight

I felt obligated to comment in this thread as I chose to level a 2nd character with the intentions of using a low life/pain attunement build utilizing chaos damage because I managed to get a Shav's while playing on my first character. I also had an Apep's rage in my inventory so it all just made too much sense.

I chose Trickster ascendancy because of:
1. DoT nodes
2. ES nodes
3. Cast speed nodes
4. Close proximity to chaos damage nodes in tree

Leveling with blight was somewhat painful as it relates to clear speed, *but* relatively safe. I tried all of em: wither, blight, contagion and essence drain. I hadn't used any of these before so I figured I'd experiment. While leveling I usually dropped contagion down and used blight or wither (I kinda went back and forth with these 2- unsure of which I'd choose.) ED for single target.

I knew this would be smoother once I was able to use Cast While Channeling, but I wanted to level with these skills to get a good feel for them regardless of how long it took.

The 80% reduced movement speed with blight gets overlooked imo. It tipped the scales for me. I read this whole thread and it's all dps numbers, double-dipping, end-game viability. Fair enough...I'll address all these in a minute. Monsters in PoE largely just charge you. Unless it's a unique- ALL monsters- normal, magic and rare- hit an absolute brick wall when they run into blight. They are usually burned down by the time they reach me.

These channeled skills were released with "Cast While Channeling Support" for a reason. It's effective. I have CWC linked to shock nova and storm call- thereby supplementing my chaos damage with lightning skills and I gotta say so far it is glorious. Blight stops everything just in the range of shock nova, and I can aim storm call for the mobs in the rear. If I need to get closer I just lightning warp to close the gap. If I wasn't lazy I'd post a build thread because so far this character is just mauling breaches. I have shield block built in to take advantage of high proc rate of CwS (as stun is based on life pool)--which is just an insane proc rate considering it's linked to fully-leveled gems.

The point of all this is Blight has been a part of one of the more successful builds I've ever made. I had my doubts early but with enough investment in DoT & spell/chaos damage (and gear) it's been more than viable. The 80% hinder turned out to be unreal in breaches. I can spin in a circle and keep most everything at bay while regenerating and leeching ES (ghost reaver). I haven't even fully invested into the chaos damage nodes yet as I tried to max out ES/defense first.

I suppose one could 5 or 6-link Blight to nothing but support gems and go balls to the wall with it. You'd need Zealot's Oath and high regen to do this I'd think. It'd be worth experimenting. Personally, I wanted to leech life for added sustainability so I worked in some ele damage. I did try CWC contagion and ED but found aiming ED was difficult because the little chaos orb got lost in the blight AoE in its initial release. It made it difficult to aim it for monsters at distance.

I'm lvl 81 at the moment and I'll report back after I get closer to 90 and doing higher tier maps. I know I'm going to need my chaos to pick up the damage slack soon. I can already feel the lightning damage without crit multi or ele investment falling off just a hair in tier 10 maps. That's as high as I've ventured.

Change secondary duration (stack duration) to like 4s and it might be a good skill.
With current stack duration those 20 stacks is only a dream.

It's like if Blade Vortex had blade duration of 0.8s, who would play with it?

The skill work great with some investment.

The most important item is a +1 level staff or body armour (crank or skin of the loyal). I went skin of the loyal. Gem should be blight, empower, control dest, void, rapid decay and faster casting. 5-6000 damage per stack is achivable. For more damage you can switch faster casting to conc effect for boss.

For your defense, you cannot leech so you should aim for high start of recharge energy shield. This can be achive with block and the staff or jewels if you are using the skin of the loyal. For the skin, you can also use grace. My char have 11k evasion.

For offense, abyssal cry is a most. This help a lot with clear speed. Mine is linked to void, inc aoe and poison.

Overall, im farming gardien and breach lord with blight and i never had so much fun. First level 94 ever.

Im making a lot of currency with this char and i have been able to buy some really end gear for it (+2 level skin,lvl4 empower). Im current sitting a 7.9k per stack,12.5k es, 11k evasion and 104% faster start of recharge. Please note that I was able to do end game content with 10kes, 9k evasion, 60% recharge and 5.5k per stack.

the flaws i see in this skill comparing to others, keep in mind that removing/fixing either of those flaws might already make up for the other flaws

- lack of aoe

- stacks have seperate durations hence you wont ever get to 20 stacks without massive investment/permanently standing still
--- blight debuff already lasts only half as long as essence drain aswell...

- hindering debuff also runs out if you dont restart your casts

- too high cast time for its per stack damage


if the debuff stacks duration would remain and refresh after moving/recasting, blight would already be way different.

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omirandette wrote:

The skill work great with some investment.

The most important item is a +1 level staff or body armour (crank or skin of the loyal). I went skin of the loyal. Gem should be blight, empower, control dest, void, rapid decay and faster casting. 5-6000 damage per stack is achivable. For more damage you can switch faster casting to conc effect for boss.

For your defense, you cannot leech so you should aim for high start of recharge energy shield. This can be achive with block and the staff or jewels if you are using the skin of the loyal. For the skin, you can also use grace. My char have 11k evasion.

For offense, abyssal cry is a most. This help a lot with clear speed. Mine is linked to void, inc aoe and poison.

Overall, im farming gardien and breach lord with blight and i never had so much fun. First level 94 ever.

Im making a lot of currency with this char and i have been able to buy some really end gear for it (+2 level skin,lvl4 empower). Im current sitting a 7.9k per stack,12.5k es, 11k evasion and 104% faster start of recharge. Please note that I was able to do end game content with 10kes, 9k evasion, 60% recharge and 5.5k per stack.

The problem is essence drain can blow those numbers out the water with decay and poison with not even close to the ramp up time. I just don't see where blight fits in the game currently.

"

Gravethought wrote:

The problem is essence drain can blow those numbers out the water with decay and poison with not even close to the ramp up time. I just don't see where blight fits in the game currently.

exactly my thoughts

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omirandette wrote:

The skill work great with some investment.

The most important item is a +1 level staff or body armour (crank or skin of the loyal). I went skin of the loyal. Gem should be blight, empower, control dest, void, rapid decay and faster casting. 5-6000 damage per stack is achivable. For more damage you can switch faster casting to conc effect for boss.

For your defense, you cannot leech so you should aim for high start of recharge energy shield. This can be achive with block and the staff or jewels if you are using the skin of the loyal. For the skin, you can also use grace. My char have 11k evasion.

For offense, abyssal cry is a most. This help a lot with clear speed. Mine is linked to void, inc aoe and poison.

Overall, im farming gardien and breach lord with blight and i never had so much fun. First level 94 ever.

Im making a lot of currency with this char and i have been able to buy some really end gear for it (+2 level skin,lvl4 empower). Im current sitting a 7.9k per stack,12.5k es, 11k evasion and 104% faster start of recharge. Please note that I was able to do end game content with 10kes, 9k evasion, 60% recharge and 5.5k per stack.

What is your secondary duration on Blight and how many casts per second you have?
You know, with 10 casts per second, but with 1s stack duration you have like 50k-55k at best with 5k dps per stack. That's nothing for such heavy insvestments.

"

logosys wrote:

What is your secondary duration on Blight and how many casts per second you have?
You know, with 10 casts per second, but with 1s stack duration you have like 50k-55k at best with 5k dps per stack. That's nothing for such heavy insvestments.

secondary duration is the movement debuff

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Giniyo wrote:

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logosys wrote:

What is your secondary duration on Blight and how many casts per second you have?
You know, with 10 casts per second, but with 1s stack duration you have like 50k-55k at best with 5k dps per stack. That's nothing for such heavy insvestments.

secondary duration is the movement debuff

Lol, you're right. I've got those durations mixed up.
But it feels like they are hindered for ages. It's way longer than just slightly over 1s stated in tooltip on my gem. That's why I inherently thought that longer duration is for hinder.

Anyway, It wouldn't hurt to make those 2.5 like 4s. Still you'd have to invest into cast speed and/or skill effect duration to get full 20 stacks running.

I don't understand why the hinder has such a short duration and only works where the blight isn't already on the target. It means you get less than a second of slowing; what's the gain from that?


It's not that it's bad or anything, I'm just not sure I get the point.