[3.7] Essence Drain/Contagion Trickster (the best one)

Hi mate!

I am finding guardians a little difficult because my dps feels low. Also because i use witchfire potion I can only apply despair for 5sec.

For the hard bosses like Uber elder and guardians, can you offer any specific tips and setups for this?
FYI I’m running a 6l staff with +2 chaos gems and spell damage, cloak of defiance for 40% mom and no eldritch battery but all the auras in your guide so I got 1100 mana unreserved.

Perhaps bane is better to apply and reapply despair for bosses? And also either totems to max ED dps from either stacks since you Don’t get many times to stand still and channel blight!

Great guide! Can you post a PoB Link? Thanks in advance!!!

I like this build and think I'll swap over... I bought up a 6L Maraketh Bow already correctly coloured last night, but ran out of alts hah. Maybe today I'll get the mod, and find some dex to use it too.

For the +2 support gems, I know I can find a service but has anyone tried buying the Catarina Veiled items to unlock? Any idea how many it would take? It'll be at least 2 items due to needing the +1 first but not sure if it usually gives half a bar per unveil etc and they're around 30c a try. I'm not seeing many Juns yet so think it'll be a while before I get to run even my first safehouse, and with my current gear my DPS is too low (85k tooltip) to feel safe in the mastermind fight.

"

Ultimately it's RNG and playtime unfortunately. You can buy veiled items from folks in bulk on trade sites. You can also use sextants that guarantee Jun encounter (I believe yellow or red sextants only). Other than that it's just make sure to do the dailies and map a ton. There's a Jun prophecy too. Plus Aisling in hideouts.

When running Syndicate encounters, emphasize creating as many "trusted" or "rivals" as possible. The more connection arrows there are, the more people will pop out during your encounters, and the more drops you'll generate.

There are folks that run crafting service threads on the forums. It's still gonna require handing stuff to a stranger, but at least it's a somewhat reputable one if they have a lot of reviews. Still no guarantee though, and I've never done that myself.

I ended up just buying a crafted one for 8EX since I was able to resell the wand for 7EX. Also bought a 21/20 ED. Holy shit the dmg...

I bought a lvl 3 enlighten and used 5 points to get 14% mana reduction to be able to use discipline. Then Solstice Vigil dropped and I decided to test that so I specced out of the mana reduction and into dual curse instead. I think I like the dual curse better than 500 extra ES. Im able to 1 ED a whole monolith in T15-16 if im lucky, generals also unlock if they get hit by the one ED. Im thinking skipping Impresence and keeping Solstice for QOL.

So i'm now lvl 93 with this build, which actually clears T16/uber elder way faster than my cyclone slayer (Rip).

Since I didn't take Arcane will (My mana regen is OK, as you said we don't spam skills at all) and have a few extra points, I have a few questions :

- Does ed/contagion count as spell damage ? I was going to check the Light Eater node for Spell damage leeched as Energy Shield. It does add a bit of damage but I don't know if it's effective with leeching.

- Is it worth to go for Arcane Espanse (Needs 6 extra points to go there, but I could grab wicked ward on the way) ? Lots of spell damage there, and again, is ED/Contagion considered a spell skill for the increased area of effect ?

- Is it worth going for the second mod of Malevolence Watcher's eye (Deal damage 15% faster) ?

Atm my survivability is more than enough (Nearly 7k ehp + tons of dodge) so I might drop a few points in life, since i'll get one shot no matter what when THAT ONE legion mob crits on your face anyway.

I don't know if you can check my gear, but right now I don't know what I should improve next (Still need Empower 4 and a Watcher's eye)

Thanks for the build anyway, it's really insane !

Help! What do I put in the 6L chest? I've just multi-crafted my bow:

And here's the rest of my gear:


And the plan was to buy a quiver and switch to the bow. But the thought of doing two three-gem setups in my armor makes me die inside. What would be a six link that's worth it? Going from a 5link to 6link on blight hardly seems worth the effort (20k to 50k dps according to PoB). And a 6link contagion is a waste according to PoB since it doesn't do enough dps to matter.

Also, in general, the plan was to:
1. run two curses (enfeeble and despair) with devouring diadem instead of Flesh and Stone (since I can switch the passives from Arcane Swiftness to Whispers of Doom).
2. add aspect of the spider to the quiver or amulet
3. swap boots for atziri's step once I have the resists covered
4. buy a WE with the malevolence NACDOT multiplier

The only thing I can come up with at the moment is to do the 6link blight in the chest, drop CWDT + Steelskin along with Allelopathy and run rare gloves with Contagion + Increased AoE + Intensify + Arctic Armour. There has to be a better way though. The dps gain from a 6l blight isn't awesome, and losing CWDT + Steelskin hurts.

"

bankai1009 wrote:

Hi mate!

I am finding guardians a little difficult because my dps feels low. Also because i use witchfire potion I can only apply despair for 5sec.

For the hard bosses like Uber elder and guardians, can you offer any specific tips and setups for this?
FYI I’m running a 6l staff with +2 chaos gems and spell damage, cloak of defiance for 40% mom and no eldritch battery but all the auras in your guide so I got 1100 mana unreserved.

Perhaps bane is better to apply and reapply despair for bosses? And also either totems to max ED dps from either stacks since you Don’t get many times to stand still and channel blight!

Your DPS likely is too low to comfortably run end-game. Your gems are only level 19, so you'll get a boost soon. The +2 chaos skills in your staff is nice, but you really need to get some non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier from your weapon. This is the most important stat. At the low-budget end, you can try to get a 5-link Cane of Unravelling staff with 3B-2G sockets for 30-40c. That and your gems hitting level 20 will give you a massive boost.

For longer boss fights, you need another Despair trigger. I wouldn't use Bane unless you have room to put it in a 4-link. Anything less and it's doing zero DPS anyways and you might as well just hand-cast Despair by itself.

"

frostzor27 wrote:

Great guide! Can you post a PoB Link? Thanks in advance!!!

I promise I will in the next day or two. Real life keeps getting in the way, but I haven't forgotten.

"

So i'm now lvl 93 with this build, which actually clears T16/uber elder way faster than my cyclone slayer (Rip).

Since I didn't take Arcane will (My mana regen is OK, as you said we don't spam skills at all) and have a few extra points, I have a few questions :

- Does ed/contagion count as spell damage ? I was going to check the Light Eater node for Spell damage leeched as Energy Shield. It does add a bit of damage but I don't know if it's effective with leeching.

- Is it worth to go for Arcane Espanse (Needs 6 extra points to go there, but I could grab wicked ward on the way) ? Lots of spell damage there, and again, is ED/Contagion considered a spell skill for the increased area of effect ?

- Is it worth going for the second mod of Malevolence Watcher's eye (Deal damage 15% faster) ?

Atm my survivability is more than enough (Nearly 7k ehp + tons of dodge) so I might drop a few points in life, since i'll get one shot no matter what when THAT ONE legion mob crits on your face anyway.

I don't know if you can check my gear, but right now I don't know what I should improve next (Still need Empower 4 and a Watcher's eye)

Thanks for the build anyway, it's really insane !

ED/Contagion does count as spell damage. However, damage over time is incapable of leeching. There is a very tiny "hit" component to ED that you can see if you hover over the tooltip. Only that hit component will generate ES leech with Light Eater. Overall there are better choices, and I'd advise against against spec'ing Light Eater.

Arcane Expanse is a great node, and ED/Contagion works well with this one. However, as you noted, it's a long journey to that node. It's not super popular just because of the distance.

The "damaging ailments deal damage faster while affected by Malevolence" mod on Watcher's Eye does NOT work with ED. "Damaging ailments" in this context is only ignite, bleeding, and poison. It's the game's way of separating ED/Blight/Bane style chaos damage over time from poison, which also does chaos damage over time. That's why the mod "non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier" has such a long name coincidentally. It has to specifically be worded like that in order for it to work with ED but not poison.

With your extra points, the choices I'd consider (not in order, pick whatever you want):
- Go for Whispers of Doom and get another curse. You can link Temp Chains to your CWDT in that case.
- Grab the first two nodes from the other side of the Shadow starting point (14% damage/12 ES and 12% damage/10 ES)
- Grab Precision by Templar area for more cast and movement speed.
- Grab Alchemist. Flask effect is generally really nice all around.
- Grab Arcane Will. More mana QoL and a bit of ES.

"

kevinbrightblade wrote:

And the plan was to buy a quiver and switch to the bow. But the thought of doing two three-gem setups in my armor makes me die inside. What would be a six link that's worth it? Going from a 5link to 6link on blight hardly seems worth the effort (20k to 50k dps according to PoB). And a 6link contagion is a waste according to PoB since it doesn't do enough dps to matter.

The only thing I can come up with at the moment is to do the 6link blight in the chest, drop CWDT + Steelskin along with Allelopathy and run rare gloves with Contagion + Increased AoE + Intensify + Arctic Armour. There has to be a better way though. The dps gain from a 6l blight isn't awesome, and losing CWDT + Steelskin hurts.

You're correct that there isn't a super natural choice for a second 6-link. I specifically don't suggest it because it's a great way to save costs on the build. Given that you already have one though, we can try.

The blight damage gain is significant. I believe PoB shows Blight damage "per stack". Blight is a channel skill that can stack on top of itself up to 20 times. If your tooltip is showing 50k, you can actually do 1 mil damage from Blight if you stand and cast with enough cast speed.

After that though, you're down to only 12 sockets left for your auras, curses, contagion, cwdt, VRF, and movement skills. Things get squeezed.

It's Blight or nothing. I know it feels bad, but I think you just have to use the chest as utility.

Hey guys, I started an ED/Contagion this league and right now I am kind of lost.
I dont really know where to go, there are so many different setups.
I started with Ziz's build (wand+shield) and got kind of stuck because I ended up just farming monoliths in lower tiers like T4 (which was surprisingly rewarding).

Anyways, I feel like my defenses are way better than my offense.
I do like so little damage from T10+ ... is that normal?
I mean, i have crappy gear, but my gems are almost 20/20 at least, you would assume that you could farm into red maps or not?

When I just want to do monolith farming in lets say mid-high tiers, where would you go from here? Is a bow setup really so much better?

If i just want to do some monolith farming, will a carcass jack and bow setup enable me to do that? currently, damage wise, I cant do red maps, its really frustrating.

Thank you all for your help.

dumb question about impresence. it has the despair has 100% reduced mana reservation. despair doesn't have mana reservation or am I totally missing the point of this (I know I am help a blind man see). Is it for blasphemy setups? If so then why do we care since we use bane for despair?

Another question: now that I have the arcane surge on kill mod on bow do I take the skill gem out of contagion? Or leave it so that it procs on first cast of contagion before any kills (to basically have additional arcane surge procs?)
if i do remove replace with what? faster casting?

is anyone else using shield charge? it's so fast and smooth that i'm thinking of swapping out my quicksilver flask. flame dash is a nightmare to use with high cast speed right now, but should be fixed this week.

edit: i'm really gonna miss shield charge when i change to bow/quiver :(