Contagion

damage output seems lackluster at best

This is the build I used to test the skill

Here is the equipment I used:

This is the link set up I had with Contagion: void manipulation, rapid decay, controlled destruction, concentrated effect, empower(giving +2 skill lvls to contagion). These were all linked with contagion in the pledge hands staff.

My character is level 86. I tested it against level 63 monsters. It was taking me about 2 minutes to kill a regular white level 63 monster and I had to keep kiting it while constantly casting contagion on it.

With other older (and so far, more useful) skills, I can map tier 5 no problems whatsoever with the gear I have - even with lower levels of those gems/skills; and most of those other skills I can one shot packs of lvl 70 white mobs at lower levels of the gems...

Couple this with the fact that there is really no way to regain ES with the any of the new chaos spells currently.. the life regen effect from essence drain does not affect es in any way and linking life leech support gem with contagion does absolutely nothing. Also, linking life leech support gem with essence drain doesn't affect the bulk of the damage it does so you end up only getting like +50 es back each time you cast it. When you're losing 700-900 es per hit taken, this amount of es gain is less than trivial.

If you intentionally designed these skills so as not to be viable with any CI build, please let me know.

I think it's pretty clear they expect contagion to be used to spread essence drain. Unfortunately that makes for a really clunky play style. Basically need to cast essence drain on mob (which is a pain since it's a slow to cast, single target, slow moving projectile) then you need to quickly cast contagion before the mob dies and that will spread essence drain to other nearby mobs.

In some ways it's similar to a throw trap and curse play style but there are problems in this case. It's possible for essence drain to kill weak mob before contagion hits meaning it's basically wasted and won't spread. Since contagion only spreads essence drain on mob death if you're fighting beefy mobs then you don't spread and thus don't do aoe dmg. Every pack kill is delayed by needing to kill the first mob to even really start doing damage.

Together they can do good aoe dmg from what I've seen it's just very very clunky and slow.

"

Yazilliclick wrote:

I think it's pretty clear they expect contagion to be used to spread essence drain. Unfortunately that makes for a really clunky play style. Basically need to cast essence drain on mob (which is a pain since it's a slow to cast, single target, slow moving projectile) then you need to quickly cast contagion before the mob dies and that will spread essence drain to other nearby mobs.

In some ways it's similar to a throw trap and curse play style but there are problems in this case. It's possible for essence drain to kill weak mob before contagion hits meaning it's basically wasted and won't spread. Since contagion only spreads essence drain on mob death if you're fighting beefy mobs then you don't spread and thus don't do aoe dmg. Every pack kill is delayed by needing to kill the first mob to even really start doing damage.

Together they can do good aoe dmg from what I've seen it's just very very clunky and slow.

Ok. But if it is straight-up not as good as other aoe builds/skills, then what's the point of having this new skill? Other aoe skills you can just cast one thing over and over and kill huge groups of mob's 10x faster and more safely than trying to do this clunky combo stuff...

There are basically 2 things holding these skills back: too difficult to get reliable survivability out of using them, and low damage output compared to almost all other aoe skills.

A good example is actually what I have socketed in that staff right now. After the failed contagion build, I respec'd to phys + spell dmg and switched to blade fall which is the same level right now as contagion was when I tested it, and now I one-shot packs of white lvl 70 mobs in the harvest. I even used several of the same support gems for both. Also, I'm using the exact same gear with blade fall as with contagion.

You know what is funny that I just realized. I am actually doing 5-10x more chaos damage per second with blade fall as I was with the chaos spells, with the same gear, at the same level of gem, with the same number of links/supports. AND blade fall actually has less +chaos damage from it's supports than I had with contagion (no void manipulation or rapid decay)! AND I am able to recover life 5-10x faster because I can link life leech with it!

What's the point? I ask you

For some reason this skill does not seem to benefit from the Iron Will support gem. I this intended?

Well for starters, Pledge of Hands is kinda odd. Contagion doesn't benefit from Spell Echo at all.

Second, the combo is the other way around. Contagion on the enemies, then Essence Drain to pop one and spread the damage to everyone else. Wither channel on bosses if need be. You want:
+Skill Duration
+Gem Levels
Spell Damage
Chaos Damage
AoE Radius
Damage over Time

The items you linked only has Spell Damage. It's not surprising that it's underwhelming.

"

SuperTaster wrote:

Well for starters, Pledge of Hands is kinda odd. Contagion doesn't benefit from Spell Echo at all.

Second, the combo is the other way around. Contagion on the enemies, then Essence Drain to pop one and spread the damage to everyone else. Wither channel on bosses if need be. You want:
+Skill Duration
+Gem Levels
Spell Damage
Chaos Damage
AoE Radius
Damage over Time

The items you linked only has Spell Damage. It's not surprising that it's underwhelming.

Yeah i agree. Contagion on its own is crap, because the degen cannot be stacked. You need to combine contagion and essence drain and use wither to chanel for bigger mobs.
This makes the gameplay a bit more complex, but you can deal quit the damage.

i was thinking of using essence drain via spell totem with the two totem keystone. Question - since contagion is a chaos degen, does it avoid the keystone qualifier that you cannot do direct skill/spell damage?

I suggest removing contagion as an active skill gem, and putting in a "contagious" support gem that offers the spreading effect of debuffs.