Chaos skill and Damage Over Time

Hello everyone,
I’m Ichigo, and I’ve been playing since the 2013 Beta. I created Lahkesis, Queen of Chaos Essence Drain in Path of Exile 1 during the Talisman league and have kept it updated ever since. Many players and streamers have adapted my Essence Drain build and take idea from the build over the years.

When Path of Exile 2 was announced, I planned to make POE 2 Lahkesis, Queen of Chaos Essence Drain ,and this My Showcase for the build
my signature build. Unfortunately, I’m disappointed by how things have turned out.
Several classes and skills can easily one-shot high-tier bosses, while I struggle to deal enough damage against Endgame pinnacle tier 3 and 4 bosses.
and this one-shot build not even think close to 30% of my build idea that you have to do many things to deal a good damage over time
My build focuses on sustained damage over time, but it feels outclassed by one-shot builds.

Even when I try to boost my damage, mana costs become a major problem. For example, casting Despair costs me 1200 mana, even with Inspiration reducing mana costs by 40%, and my total mana pool is only 1700. Without Inspiration, the numbers are impossible to manage.

Here are the issues I’ve noticed:
● Limited skill tree options for chaos skill
● Few support gems for damage-over-time
● Damage Over Time Multiplier does not exist
● High mana costs
● No ascendancy focused on chaos damage

Most of everything is unfair for Chaos and Dot vs other scaling elemental or physical damage and other support gems for this type of damage.

Many players suggest I switch to a one-shot build, but I won’t. I believe Path of Exile 2 should be more than just one-shotting bosses. I want to keep improving my build with each new league and make something memorable. Right now, though, the meta makes that tough. One-shot builds and abuse of game mechanics dominate.


Thank you for your time.

I 100% agree with this. I have been a long time friend of Ichigo and have played this build more than a couple of times... The current state of chaos damage multipliers/amplifiers/buffs, is complete crap compared to ANY other type of damage...

Can we get some focus on the chaos damage too for the people that enjoy playing it? Sure, one-shotting bosses can be super fun, but gets super boring super fast, everyone wants to play meta and inflates the prices of every item that would/could ever improve any of the meta builds... Let's get some love for the chaos people please!

I always liked the Contagion/Essence Drain build also, but its always been underpowered, they overcame this somewhat in PoE1 with the damage over time multiplier and i was also amazed that this is entirely missing from items and the skill tree in PoE2. It can be very powerful for clearing things like Breach encounters but for Bossing its always been poor when compared with most other builds. It also doesnt help in PoE2 that the maps are often quite empty compared to a juiced map in PoE1, so you dont get the satisfaction from clearing entire areas with 2 casts as often. They have also removed the life leech effect from essence drain which was very useful for recovering health after taking a few hits casting, and of course contagion now only affects a single target in PoE2 so you have to make sure you hit the same enemy with essence drain afterwards which is far from easy at times.

I tried combining it with some minions to take advantage of the minions spreading contagion but you are far better off ditching all chaos damage and just using Minions.

Monk's non-Invoker ascendancy, Acolyte of Chayula, is meant to be built around Chaos damage but it is severely undertuned. Both the ascendancy nodes themself and the passive tree near monk doesn't offer many tools. It's made worse by quarterstaffs supplying only two wonky Chaos-tagged skills and minimal support gems.

I have had a similar experience with chaos DoT spells:
Mana costs are far too high for the damage damage output we get.

Having to cast two DoTs, curse and totem also feels very clunky and "PoE 1" compared to other combos available in the game.
Even in the Atlas enemy packs are quite spread out and having to contantly recast the whole setup feels bad.

There are so many cool payoff setups for other archetypes, I hope chaos DoT gets it too.

~

Ichigo, I recommend trying out Chronomancer with chaos DoT.

Having returns from both DoTs and Time Freeze makes investment into skill duration feel very good.
Keeping enemies frozen while their life withers away is super fun.

Slowing enemies and/or recoup fit very good with this playstyle too.

Node arragement on the skill tree support this pretty well.

"

LeFlesh#9979 wrote:

Monk's non-Invoker ascendancy, Acolyte of Chayula, is meant to be built around Chaos damage but it is severely undertuned. Both the ascendancy nodes themself and the passive tree near monk doesn't offer many tools. It's made worse by quarterstaffs supplying only two wonky Chaos-tagged skills and minimal support gems.

I mean. Just because you pick monk doesn't mean you have to use a quarterstaff.

Also I wouldn't consider the following as bad / underpowered:

+140% Life Leech
+164% Mana Leech
+140% EXTRA chaos damage (damage in addition to base hit)
+8% Skill Speed

Mana leech is instant
Mana leech applies to energy shield
Always considered in a breach

---

You can definitely make some wonky build around this and just go left into the energy shield northern area.

Seems like this ascendancy would do OP good.

"

NiceGuy69#1759 wrote:

"

LeFlesh#9979 wrote:

Monk's non-Invoker ascendancy, Acolyte of Chayula, is meant to be built around Chaos damage but it is severely undertuned. Both the ascendancy nodes themself and the passive tree near monk doesn't offer many tools. It's made worse by quarterstaffs supplying only two wonky Chaos-tagged skills and minimal support gems.

I mean. Just because you pick monk doesn't mean you have to use a quarterstaff.

Also I wouldn't consider the following as bad / underpowered:

+140% Life Leech
+164% Mana Leech
+140% EXTRA chaos damage (damage in addition to base hit)
+8% Skill Speed

Mana leech is instant
Mana leech applies to energy shield
Always considered in a breach

---

You can definitely make some wonky build around this and just go left into the energy shield northern area.

Seems like this ascendancy would do OP good.

of course the issue with your theory is... the extra damage as chaos damage only applies to hits, not to damage over time...

"

joheblacke#1057 wrote:

of course the issue with your theory is... the extra damage as chaos damage only applies to hits, not to damage over time...

You're right because he's using essence drain, all other dots in the game scale from the base hit application.

If he wants to scale dots, he should probably not look at essence drain as his main source of damage and as a secondary source of damage.

There's no raw DOT scaling in the game unfortunately, DOT's scale from base hits.

@OP, consider going infernalist witch, get the internal flame perk whatever it is, then the one on the left that allows you to apply ignite and ignite magnitude from any and all hits.

If you go bloodmagic node, you're perma considered in high flame mode, so all your hits always will ignite enemies.

If you want to stick with the chaos theme, get the blackflame ring, it cuts ignite duration in half, but doubles the DPS and turns the ignite damage from fire into chaos.

Your essence drain would proc ignite still this way, but you'd be better off doing higher base damage hits for the ignite considering that's how DOTS scale.

"

destroyerofeternities#0802 wrote:

I have had a similar experience with chaos DoT spells:
Mana costs are far too high for the damage damage output we get.

Having to cast two DoTs, curse and totem also feels very clunky and "PoE 1" compared to other combos available in the game.
Even in the Atlas enemy packs are quite spread out and having to contantly recast the whole setup feels bad.

There are so many cool payoff setups for other archetypes, I hope chaos DoT gets it too.

~

Ichigo, I recommend trying out Chronomancer with chaos DoT.

Having returns from both DoTs and Time Freeze makes investment into skill duration feel very good.
Keeping enemies frozen while their life withers away is super fun.

Slowing enemies and/or recoup fit very good with this playstyle too.

Node arragement on the skill tree support this pretty well.

did u see my showcase im allready chronomancer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KETzT267HXs

"

NiceGuy69#1759 wrote:

"

joheblacke#1057 wrote:

of course the issue with your theory is... the extra damage as chaos damage only applies to hits, not to damage over time...

You're right because he's using essence drain, all other dots in the game scale from the base hit application.

If he wants to scale dots, he should probably not look at essence drain as his main source of damage and as a secondary source of damage.

There's no raw DOT scaling in the game unfortunately, DOT's scale from base hits.

@OP, consider going infernalist witch, get the internal flame perk whatever it is, then the one on the left that allows you to apply ignite and ignite magnitude from any and all hits.

If you go bloodmagic node, you're perma considered in high flame mode, so all your hits always will ignite enemies.

If you want to stick with the chaos theme, get the blackflame ring, it cuts ignite duration in half, but doubles the DPS and turns the ignite damage from fire into chaos.

Your essence drain would proc ignite still this way, but you'd be better off doing higher base damage hits for the ignite considering that's how DOTS scale.

um the thread is about essence drain and damage over time chaos spells, and making them on par with other damage types. You are basically saying "dont use essence drain" as the direct damage part of essence drain is tiny, inflicting an ignite or poison from it does nothing.