Tricky without knowing your budget, but areas for upgrades would be:
- Swap the dagger out for a wand with chaos damage/non-ailment chaos DOT multi
- Gloves - e.g. fingerless silk would give you inc spell damage implicit. Could also look at Allelopathy for blight.
- Belt is awful. Shouldn't be too expensive to get a leather belt with some life and couple of decent res rolls.
- You can buy level 21 corrupted essence drain/blight gems for a few chaos each - decent dps upgrade for you.
- You could look to buy a 6L chest (maybe corrupted) to get a 6L ED.
- You don't need 2 mana flasks (or any really).
- Getting an insta bleed flask would be a nice QOL upgrade.
- Get a spreading rot jewel.
- Your rings need replacing - and the craft on the ghoul circle does nothing for you as ED isn't an attack. If nothing else, aim for life and res, then anything else that benefits the build (at the cost of more currency, of course).
- Get some upgrades and do uber lab - it isn't hard with this build as long as you don't rush and take care with traps etc. If you need currency, look at farming low tier maps (e.g. T2 glacier). Anything you can run quickly (couple of minutes per map). You can quickly accumulate currency (and sell things like legion frags if you want even more $).
Thank you for the reply.
It is hard to say what my budget really is, the prices are a lot different on xbox then they are on PC. I just got my third Exalt to drop last night, but the first 2 I used to get my current chest piece.
Also trying to find gear is a bit harder as the search function is not the best.
Yes I have been looking for wands to use (should I dual wield wands or go Wand and shield.
I will look for both the silk gloves and Allelopathy gloves.
Been looking a belts recently will do a better job of looking for one, same goes for the rings.
Is the Perfect form the better chest piece to go to. I see a lot of folks here using it. If I can sell my current chest back and get a 6 link form should I.
I have spreading rot jewel in my tree.
I will look at finding level 21 gems with quality on them (but again the prices on xbox are a bit different then PC)
Flasks I have been lazy about. I will upgrade those soon.
can someone tell me what i should focus on/replace next?
Craft your helmet with aberrant fossils, or aberrant+pristine combo. Don't settle for a roll unless it includes "-9 chaos res to nearby enemies".
Buy a Perfect Form, which is cheap if its not 6 linked. Craft 6 sockets and craft either a 4 link, and then use 4link contagion, or a 5-link if u like to run a 5 link contagion.
Try putting faster casting and efficacy on your totem gloves, because you probably want to hit max wither stacks and I doubt you are getting that right now.
Lots of new folks entering the theead, lots of good questions being asked. Glad to see a lot of people trying out DoT builds - they're fun, right? Just figured I'd take a sec to share some answers I've posted in the past to help answer some frequently asked questions I've seen in the last couple of days.
Disclaimer:
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I use Soulrend/Bane (I've taken down Uber Eler, Shaper a few times, his guardians multiple times, T16 Elder guardians, and plow through T16s/T15s with ease. It's not super great in timeless conflicts, so I usually just sell my emblems). The main difference between me and most here is I use a 6L perfect for for dual-cursing with Bane. the standard setup does not need a 6L chest, and as such offers more flexibility in your gem slots/options.
Why use a bow:
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The main value out of using the bow is the fact that you can get +3 gems. +1 for your main skill, +3 for the supports, and even an +5 with a level 4 empower. With the other mods you can mastercraft on it, there isn't really anything out there that can beat it. It also makes it easier to cheaply gear the rest of your character, as you only need 4L setups for Bane/Contagion, leaving you a bunch of free slots to mess with various offensive/defensive setups.
Crafting a 6L ED +3 bow:
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Note, this is for the alt/regal method. Not a fan of the other method so I wont mention it
Get a white one of those.
EDIT 1: the short bows are the easiest to color, and can be acquired cheaply with
If you want one with movement speed then be prepared to spend a bit more for the base and the coloring as they have a higher dex requirement
1. Transmute it, and then use alts until you hit +1 gems (socketed).
2. Regal
3. Annul off the other affix(es) so that you have a rare bow with +1 gems
If you miss, scour it and repeat steps 1-3. Once you have a rare bow with only the Paragon mod (+1 gems) move on to step 4:
4. Craft "Can have multiple crafted modifiers"
5. Craft "+2 Level of socketed support gems"
6. Craft "Increased Chaos damage"
7. Craft "Increased cast speed"
8. Craft "Non-ailment damage over time multiplier"
9. Craft "% chance to gain Arcane Surge when you kill an enemy"
EDIT 2: some of the crafting options aren't easy to come by, and when you're investing this much into a multimod, you definitely want the highest tier affixes available. I used this guy for everything but the "can have multiple crafted modifiers" mod (I did that myself). He was super professional, probably one of the better crafting services I've used over the years. I'd recommend hitting him up for sure.
It's also worth mentioning you should be prepared to spend a fair amount of currency to do this. The multi mod and +2 support gems is 4ex right there. And the cost of alt-spam/regal/annulment can rise pretty quickly - and this part you'll need to do before a third party crafting service will multimod it for you (at least, this is generally the case.
"Is The Perfect Form that good? How much does it improve your evasion?"
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note, my numbers have improved since I posted this, but the concept is still the same
Whatever your uncapped cold resistance is. For instance, I'm currently at 105% cold res (after -30% the reduction from the chest). That means my evasion rating is increased by 105%. I don't have the best stats at the moment, but while wearing the chest I have 2700ish ES and over 11K evasion. If I remove the chest, I drop to 2K ES and 4K evasion. If I put on Hyrri's Ire (with the max evaszion roll) I'm at almost 12K evasion (300 away), and over 3K ES. Respectable? Sure. But I lose free Phase Acrobatics and I actually do have room in my build for arctic armor + 3 other auras - so for me, it works. It's also worth mentioning going with Hyrri's Ire drops my life from 5K to 4600, which is basically the difference in ES. Also, I have no use for the cold damage/chill stats, so it's not that impressive to me. Now, if I put on Atziri's Splendor (pure evasion) my evasion drops to 9K, but my ES stays at over 3K. The evasion + ES version boosts my ES to 3800, but my evasion drops to 7100. All-in-all, I personally feel that The Perfect Form is BiS, when you consider not only the defenses, but its value. A "free" aura (at the cost of a socket) and a free Keystone passive are kinda tough to beat IMO, especially when the difference in global defense is marginal.
EDIT: My total uncapped cold res is 119%. My bad.
Current gear:
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Obviously there's room for improvement, but this is working fantastically for me.
Current tree for those wondering what an endgame Soulrend/Bane setup might look like:
I'd love to post a PoB link, but I'm playing on Linux. maybe someone else can import the character:
InTheAbsenceOvLight
To get an idea of what the numbers look like. I'm sure they're pretty good. Anyway, just thought I'd reshare some of this - hopefully it will help some folks! Hit me up in game if you have questions too!
As a newbie whos trying to go the soulrend route, thanks for this!
I imported your character and created a POB link:
https://pastebin.com/Rub0FJDJ
Wondered if you cared to explain some of the skill tree differences?
Bane is not smoother, faster, and better in all ways, especially with the current league mechanic. Contagion's ability to proliferate off-screen is much more powerful and smoother once you have enough cast speed.
It is even more potent in delves, where a single ED+Cont cast can be walked from the start to the end of a node.
I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion bane>cont for clearing as a trickster.
