scrub ED Contagion build / discussion

Got to level 69 and wanted to check in if anyone else is playing this.

DEMO
https://youtu.be/XHGIJaCi26I

Skills

- Essence Drain (SET 1)
- Swift affliction
- Chaos mastery / Drain Ailments / Minion pact
- Intense agony
- Momentum

- Despair (SET 2)
- Heightened curse
- Decaying hex
- Impending doom
- Inspiration

- Contagion (SET 2)
- Arcane tempo
- Magnified effect
- Unleash

- Dark Effigy
- Withering touch
- Ancestral urgency
- Envenom

- Unearth
- Corpse conservation
- Meatshield

- Bone Cage
- Lockdown
- Spell cascade
- Mobility

- Grim feast

- Withering Presence
- Persistence

- Life remnants
- vitality
- clarity

Tree


Ascendancy


Review
The only essence being drained here is this character's, damage feels like its getting much worse as I go up map tiers with not all that many more ways to improve. Biggest get would be more levels on ED but tree wise there's not all that much more I feel I can do. Defensively this thing is not good, feels like all mobs are a huge threat and even with a shield it doesn't get all that much better. The only way to make it playable is to have a constant life on kill compensating for bloodmage's skill costs, but with ED's damage being really off, it doesn't seem like its going to get any easier.

Weird mechanics
Contagion being single target is incredibly frustrating, even with unleash. The amount of times you contagion a mob and shoot ED just to get it body blocked by a faster mob is ridiculous, playing this build in maps with small corridors causes massive mental damage because of contagions targeting system.
At some point I had a bug where contagion hit a whole pack of 9 or so with a single cast and it felt like I had seen an oasis, this version of contagion is really not it.

Having the impending doom support on a second weapon set makes it so that only when you are on that weapon set do you get the explosions, I don't think this is intended but its one of those things that makes the build feel even worse to play.

Looking at the blood mage ascendancy feels miserable with this build, casting curses without inspiration is stupidly punishing combined with the fact that without supports or getting the curse nodes on the tree they feel awful to use. Apart from the nodes on the right, there's basically no benefit to the build, I thought that the bloodmage would have been a decent defensive template for spell builds but it feels really awful. Not critting means there's no health drops in bosses either, once again making the build feel worse. I get that maybe this is just skill issue in my part or whatever but every decision with this combination feels like a lose lose

Having "extra damage as" not work with the ED DoT makes support gems and notables completely unusable. It feels especially off considering how the ignite and bleed changes in PoE2 went the way of just having you aim for a bigger hit. ED feels like it got left behind, not to mention that there's no recovery on the skill which might be a huge improvement for the consistency of blood mage ED.

It took me way to long to realize hit them with essence drain first and then cast contagion. The game seems to prioritize the minion with ED on them over others. But I agree, ED/Contagion feels way to clunky and just meh. It can do well, but in its current state, it just feels like it needs more tweaks.

I use Pierce on ED and took Psychic Fragmentation (Just north of Lingering Horror) on the passive tree. Now, regardless of which enemy contagion hits or body blocks, I can always get the spread started and clear times increased significantly.

I am only level 42 as of this post but combining that with where I am with your build, I am clearing act 3 like cake right now.

Im only in act 2 currently so it might be too early to tell, but i put Chain support on my ED for clearing, it takes away 50% of the on hit damage, but doesnt effect the damage over time at all, it makes it way easier to spread the ED around and get onto a target with Contagion on it

But it does feel weird having Contagion as a single target.

"

Looking at the blood mage ascendancy feels miserable with this build,

Why would you go blood mage for ed contagion? Didn't you read the ascendancy nodes?