Contagion

1. Both essence drain and contagion need massive buff to cast speed.

- Two things that will happen are: ED becomes a viable single target spells due to higher dps, with downsides for mana and frankly other stuff would still out perform it.

- Landing combos of Ed and Contagion becomes easier, but if you go this way you are doing the wombo combo and having faster casts won;t add that much extar damage at all, since the dots do not stack.

- This stuff needs to be casted on the move and faster casting just adds too little benefit just to justify the removal of the clunky play


2. Refresh of DOT as enemies die. Both ED en Contagion refresh their timer as they spread.

- This allows them to do what they need to do and provides a bit more room for the extremely slow casting ED to do work while not hitting that gigantic boss standing in the way.

3. Give contagion also an initial hit. So much is lost by giving contagion no initial hit. This is just one of those things that make people think it was 1 skill to start with and only the spread mechanic got removed elsewhere.

In general for these both spells we can summ it up as:

Small AOE, slow projectile, crap base cast time, okay base duration, but nothing special for DOT spells. No crit, no initial hits. Hard to scale damage, yes hard to scale since specific support gems are mandatory we are stuck with all the other flaws of not piercing, not having an aoe, needing to increase the duration etc. etc.

Overall it is a DOT so you take way more combat risk, with far less options to regen yourself. Maybe if contagion had a hit I could link curses to it or use life on hit.

Excesive low damage and low cast speed. Unplayable for main skill

I got off probation specifically to post feedback.


To preface this, this is the first major patch with new skill gems that actually interested me in a long time. The last time was when Convocation and Bone/Flesh Offering were added.

That said, I jumped into Talisman with the idea of trying a Summoner/Chaos Hybrid. I had enough points to invest into Minion, ES, and Chaos/DoT nodes with the exception of the cluster south of Shadow. I'll keep the feedback towards Contagion only...


First off, the AoE size of Contagion, while respectable, could use a buff. The base AoE is pretty damn small. Mobs need to be standing on top of each other in order for Contagion to spread. With Increased AoE and the AoE nodes around Witch and Templar, it's very noticeably larger, however, it still has problems with mobs that actually move (The mobs that spam whirling blade in A3 are a good example). I've seen lots of instances where a mob with Contagion + ED runs outside of the pack and dies without spreading it to anything else.

Secondly, the cast speed problem. Both Contagion and ED have pretty hefty cast times. For a spell that does negligible damage to even white mobs, it really shouldn't have such high cast times. It's a utility spell that only works with one other spell. Why does it have similar cast speed to the actual meat of the combo? Not only does it slow things down but it also emphasizes a need for cast speed.
Since my build was Summoner/Chaos hybrid, I was pretty strapped for points. For a pure Chaos build, I'm sure it could work but I still feel the cast time could use a bit of a buff.

Thirdly, the mana cost of this skill. I had Contagion linked with Void Manipulation, Controlled Destruction, and Increased AoE. All of this came up to about 50+ mana per cast. For a 4-link, that's not too bad. However, once again, this is a utility skill that doesn't even do a good job of killing white mobs at any stage in the game. Why is the mana cost so high?


Lastly, I'll take a chance to share what I actually like about this skill:
1) It's a great change of pace from most of the spells we currently have. It emphasizes some kind of synergy and doesn't advocate mindless spamming of a single skill.
2) The spreading animation is pretty rad.
3) Finally some Chaos support!



Overall, at least for my attempt at a Summoner/Chaos hybrid, it didn't exactly meet expectations. I debated trying a pure Chaos build but I'm not too excited mainly because of the single target problems (That I'll explain in the ED thread). Definitely needs a few tweaks.

Already posted a quick remark on page 4, but I'll add this more descriptive one.

Currently playing softcore, Searing Totem & ED/Contagion Ranger. Wasn't planning on Searing being the main skill, but ED/Contagion wasn't keeping up with it. Desecrate was also going to be a spell used with trap, but its damage also died quickly. Keystones: Iron Reflexes, Mind over Matter, Elemental Equilibrium (thank you Blade Vortex for making this even easier to apply). I try experimenting with a spell to cast in downtime during the dots, but can't find anything... Really should try wither, but my cast speed is meh. Level 79, while I write this, 3.2k life, 1.2k mana, 9.6k armour.

Searing Totem: Rapid Decay - Increased Burning Damage
Essence Drain: Rapid Decay - Void Manipulation - Controlled Destruction - (still no 5-link)
Contagion: Trap - Increased Area of Effect
Blade Vortex: Curse on hit - Temporal Chains - Added Cold Damage (for Equilib')
Whirling Blades: Faster Attack - Fortify
Clarity, Arctic Armour

Retired using: Spark, Desecrate, attempts to make Blade Vortex do damage.
Should attempt using: Wither, Viper Strike, Enduring Cry

Contagion was what I thought would be a damage skill, especially since it has a lower level requirement than ED, I assumed it could exist on its own. I experiment with Trap to kill the cast time, CoDT since gem level isn't important, but never manual cast. Trap's probably my favorite, and I wish the more damage from the support could be utilized. Increased AoE is pretty much required since there's no reason to try and up its damage.

A typical map goes Searing and Whirling Blades spam, Contagion/ED if big monsters or clumped up, but not often, and usually just Contagion for bosses. I sometimes even remove the skill, since it's such a chore, but it usually comes back due to annoying ranged monsters scattering when I try to drop searing near them. I tried Spark and other spells to fill dead time, but none really worked with the build, so I just stand around now. Probably should go Viper Strike, but my +2 fire gem dagger too beloved to give up.

The biggest thing I want to see from Contagion is damage, extra utility, or just some way to make it viable without ED.

Contagion/ED works great as a secondary skill combo for my bladefall character, I use the combo if there are things like squids and monkeys as it rekts them so fast! Since they move around a lot its hard to always hit them with bladefall so it very much comes in handy.


I also find it comes in use when I run into a phys reflect mob. Just cast C/ED and I'm good. It has respectable damage but as others said its a bit lackluster.

I like the idea of Contagion becoming a Support gem that would spread ailments on enemy death, but I wonder if there are enough skills for it to support. Elemental status effects already have Elemental Proliferation, so Contagion would work with what? Curses are already area of effect, I'm not sure they would be significantly improved by this... We would end with Poison, Bleeding and the chaos damage over time from Caustic Arrow and Essence Drain. I'm not sure that's enough.

Speaking about those, I'm not exactly happy with the implementation of the "chaos damage over time" effects - they feel a bit clunky right now. Instead of having different effects for Caustic Arrow, Contagion, Essence Drain and Poison, I would rather have all of those just applying poison, but with different stacks. So Caustic Arrow would apply, say, 5 stacks of poison in an area, Contagion would apply a single stack but would spread all stacks in an enemy when it dies (thus the skill would work with a lot more abilities than just Essence Drain), and Essence Drain would apply a very large stack, going from 3 to...15? As the skill levels up. Or, all skills could apply a single stack of poison, but with different base damages, so Essence Drain would still do more damage than the others (and Contagion would still spread all kinds of poison, thus having sinergy with a lot of skills).

If none of that happens, it would be nice if Wither and Contagion were reworked, so Contagion slows enemies down (more than Wither does right now, which would help in keeping the enemies grouped), and Wither would instead become an offensive aura, pretty much like a curse supported with Blasphemy. It would be a new skill type, something we know PoE can support (again, that's basically a curse with Blasphemy), and it would make Wither far more useable, since people wouldn't have to cast it together with Contagion and Essence Drain.

I just returned to the game and was surprised to see these new skill gems. I've been using contagion + essence drain, and it's great fun. I like the mini-combo that these 2 gems make.

It even feels a little OP right now, like if I cast them both once, all mobs die. I bet it won't be that easy at high level though.

I havc also begun a Chaos build with ED and Contagion at its core, and so far it works decent,mainly couse the damage nodes i took do their thing (left from the witch area and those on the right in the Shadow area) as do the gems i linked to it(Rapid Decay,Void manipulation.Area of effect)
But even with them the main problem is the base AoE effect couse the damage is fine, even if u don't use ED at the same time it kills most mobs quite fast and i think thats also something many players have issues with.
Couse mobs don't die instantly,sure, they die faster then i thought in the beginning but it still takes time for them to do so, and thats something ppl might not like if u are used to instant clearing groups with bladefall.


my main advice for GGG is that they increase the base AoE radius and put some DoT nodes closer to the witch part of the tree as well as find a way on how to use curses with it, since Vulnablity works wonders together with it only u have no way of applying it to enemies together with it(Blasfamy works only for melee range..) as it stands now.

It would be fun that when a enemies die with contagion, the timer of contagion periodic damage reset on the next targets etc... otherwise its meh.

Well, damn, I just noticed I totally didn't give any feedback here.
I did a pure chaos dot character with contagion and essence drain, and a ranger to boot, in talisman, and while I didn't play it to high levels (because why?) it certainly did better than a lot of things I regularly try out, which is to say it was competitive; A group of monsters could frequently be wiped by a single cast combo of contagion ed curse, apply wither and additional casts as needed.
It also allowed plenty of time for evasion, and if I wasn't running out of buttons I might been able to add totems or some sort of minions.
Sure, it took plenty of clicking, but it was definitely working.