GhazzyTV - Essence Drain & Contagion (or Bane/Soulrend) Trickster [SC/HC/Uber Elder/Shaper]

OK so I'm trying out the +3 chaos gem staff setup and am liking it a lot so far. Yes, I lose blight, but I was dying a lot and could NOT figure out why. I chose to sacrifice damage on boss fights but I'm zooming through maps way faster than before and gained a TON of survivability (changed my flasks around to give me lots more leeway). Phase run actually increases my survivability a LOT because it allows you to pass through enemies, which I had no idea until I started using it. Coupled with a speed flask, I've got absolutely no issues getting around. I use it as my main utility/defensive skill and it's worked well with keeping me away from deadly stuff (knock on wood).



Yeah, I lose neck spell damage but to me it's well worth the trade off of having an incredible amount of mana regen and 24% extra mana + 100 flat as well. I found a nice rolled Atziri's Foilble with +1 curse, so I'm able to achieve a LOT more dps with Witchfire.

Doing higher tier maps (11-14), I've only died twice (which is a HUGE improvement from before) in the last few days (switched to temporal chains because of this, fast attacking Shipyard and dual vault bosses RIP'd me fast) and have been having a much easier and safer (MORE FUN) time with trying to progress toward the next level, all while increasing my DPS significantly (boss fights take a little longer but it doesn't feel slow).

I was at 17k ED DPS (very top of ED info) and now am sitting at 26K unbuffed (84K unbuffed chaos damage per second)

Life: 6.3k
Mana: 2.5k unreserved (temporal chains/clarity reserved), 371 regen per second
3k armor, almost 3k evasion, unbuffed

Next goal is to get a helm with 40% ED damage.

Just wanted to share. Hopefully this helps someone.

Thanks very much! I ended up getting a Skin of the Loyal for 1ex. I couldnt resist that +1 and that oddly cheap price, so now my ED is sitting at +4 and 60k (my first time using Empower).

Can anyone suggest any item upgrades for me? I have roughly 7ex to spend. My resists are pretty wonky atm, my lightning is at 90% with my current gear.



Thanks again!

1st, really thorough guide, good job on it!


Some questions on the life build:

1) Method to the Madness is not worth going for in this build? (seems like a lot of damage to not get?)

2) I don't seem to have any problems with mana (not even running clarity) ... why is that, when it seems a lot of nodes are later taken (+ ascendancy) to sustain mana?
I use whirling blades to get around and nonstop doing it, i spam my contagion + ED, just those 2 on a pack and move on.... am I doing something wrong or lacking to do something which would eat much more of my mana?

3) I started this build by another guide from nowleech, but he seems very inactive so now I'm trying to figure to switch to your build (Life/MOM) --- but this is my first league and first ED character, sooooo just a bit unsure how to best do this :) --- I really like whirling blades, but I see also the benefit of shield charge --- would you say its required?

4) Is witchfire brew a must-have for the build to work at high tier maps/bosses?


5) Lastly, do you know of any HC viable CI version of this build you could suggest me to check out?



My profile is public, so feel free to advice if you want... thanks :)

@oestergreen:

the additional mana modes are taken to achieve higher eHP via MoM. It's not about mana sustain for spells.

Shield Charge is not required, Whirling Blade works as well. Matter of preference I would say. WB of course only works with certain weapons (i.e. dagger), so no BotC.

Witchfire Brew is not required, but a nice addition. On the other hand, you need to invest quite some passives to achieve it (or have an item which grants +1 curses).

Method to Madness: yes, significant dps increase, but you also have to skill a few +DEX and +STR nodes to get there (if you follow the standard tree suggestion in this thread), so per point invested, it's comparable or even worse compared to other damage clusters.

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Garyas เขียน:

@oestergreen:

the additional mana modes are taken to achieve higher eHP via MoM. It's not about mana sustain for spells.

Shield Charge is not required, Whirling Blade works as well. Matter of preference I would say. WB of course only works with certain weapons (i.e. dagger), so no BotC.

Witchfire Brew is not required, but a nice addition. On the other hand, you need to invest quite some passives to achieve it (or have an item which grants +1 curses).

Method to Madness: yes, significant dps increase, but you also have to skill a few +DEX and +STR nodes to get there (if you follow the standard tree suggestion in this thread), so per point invested, it's comparable or even worse compared to other damage clusters.

Thanks a lot for the response, very insightful =)

@surfinn:

strange, normally I would have expected it the other way around. +3 staff setup = more damage (especially on bosses), but less overall clearspeed for mapping and less survivability. Clearspeed decrease due to losing the good movement skills (SC or WB), survivability decrease due to missing shield with block, slots for +life and +resists.

Regarding passing through mobs: you can also achieve this with Shield Charge or Whirling Blades.

Relevant damage stat is damage over time. The top number for ED is the initial hit of the bolt - rather unimportant.

Life and mana numbers seem fine, you shouldn't have any survivability issues in maps at all.

Don't know if I would go for 2 CWDT setups - seems overkill. Esp. when you can swap in IC in the first setup and use Flame Golem as self cast. Also, I would not level CWDT to 20, since it then only triggers at high damage numbers (3200+ damage). Rather use a lower level of CWDT (e.g. 8, some people even use lvl 1) and have more frequent triggering. Of course supported spells then also need to be lower, but as you don't use them to deal damage (at least not the primary function), that doesn't matter so much.

I'd rather add a movement / teleportation skill to get out of nasty situations quickly.

Just my 2c.

EDIT : got it, lower boss dps due to dropping blight.

@epicmeatwad:

dunno, with those 2 mf rings, you of course sacrifice quite a few stat slots. Esp. since both rings are not ideal (reduced quant).

If you are doing fine, then by all means, go for it. I never tried a mf equip myself, don't know at which levels of increased quant / rarity it becomes really noticeable / profitable.

Otherwise, swap out those for a pair of rings with life / mana / resists.

Gear looks pretty solid overall. You probably know that the increased elemental damage on your belt doesn't do anything for you.

And another post :)

Regarding Aylardex again. Just checked in PoB and noticed that it only adds a very small amount of extra damage and even reduces my survivability (eHP) a bit, since I don't have enough mana to support the additional 5% MoM effect.

So, I might as well stay with my Atziri's Foible and try and see if I can corrupt that one for +1 curses.

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Garyas เขียน:

@surfinn:

strange, normally I would have expected it the other way around. +3 staff setup = more damage (especially on bosses), but less overall clearspeed for mapping and less survivability. Clearspeed decrease due to losing the good movement skills (SC or WB), survivability decrease due to missing shield with block, slots for +life and +resists.

Regarding passing through mobs: you can also achieve this with Shield Charge or Whirling Blades.

Relevant damage stat is damage over time. The top number for ED is the initial hit of the bolt - rather unimportant.

Life and mana numbers seem fine, you shouldn't have any survivability issues in maps at all.

Don't know if I would go for 2 CWDT setups - seems overkill. Esp. when you can swap in IC in the first setup and use Flame Golem as self cast. Also, I would not level CWDT to 20, since it then only triggers at high damage numbers (3200+ damage). Rather use a lower level of CWDT (e.g. 8, some people even use lvl 1) and have more frequent triggering. Of course supported spells then also need to be lower, but as you don't use them to deal damage (at least not the primary function), that doesn't matter so much.

I'd rather add a movement / teleportation skill to get out of nasty situations quickly.

Just my 2c.

EDIT : got it, lower boss dps due to dropping blight.

First off, thanks a lot for this post. It helped me a lot.

I think I'm actually gunna go back to the original setup and drop the +3 staff. It seems like the mobility of shield charge is just too good to be beat. Plus, I'm assuming that the 59% block applied to spells is a significant form of damage mitigation, right?

Man, but I'm still dying. I don't freaking get it. So frustrating losing the 10% exp. I leveled no problem and wasn't dying much at all, then something changed and I feel incredibly squishy now.

Can somebody help me out? I feel like I cannot even do some boss fights without temporal chains because (even with full resists and over 6k life/2.7k mana) I just get almost instantly killed, like 2 or 3 hits and I'm dead due to some crazy attack combined with insane attack speed that just melts me. Sigh. Died twice to some adds in the Necropolis boss fight (I believe) using enfeeble.

Also, I'm trying to achieve the passives in Nedieth's version below:

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Nedieth เขียน:

You probably forgot to include Blight. I have a full link in my gloves, so when you add blight + hindered in PoB (and times the blight DPS by 20 which should be realistic during beams/balltosses/melee, you should be around 700k for my character at least. Probably 800+ with stuff like cherrubim's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O4I8llbsyw

Video of guardians and Shaper if you want to see how I choose to incorporate Blight in the playstyle (timestamps in the description).

..and for the life of me I cannot figure out how he was able to get the spell damage nodes, curse and chaos nodes at the top of the passive tree, and also the chaos nodes toward the bottom. I feel like I'm crazy and missing a LOT of passive points, even though we are only like 5 passives off (level 92 compared to 97). I tried to check it the best I could and it seems like there aren't too many extra passives I have that he didn't pick up.

Thanks for all the help.

Long story short: How the hell is one able to kill Malachai with this build? I mean I'm lvl 41 atm following the quide and the passive tree. ATM I'm attempting to kill Mala but...damn... all that Chaos resist makes me look like a tiny fly biting an elephant... Granted I'm open to the possibility that I'm just that bad @ this game, or any arpg in general...a few more tries and if he doesn't go down I go down :-(