Essence Drain
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I think that a buff to cast speed, projectile speed, area of effect of contagion, and the life regen from ED is in order. It does good enough damage as it is, but it's a slow and clunky combo to use. The life regen from ED is also negligible unless you are using consuming dark/Bino's (10,000 life regen is nice :D).
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Level 88 with 5L, level 19 ED. I love the concept as I am a fan of DoT mages in general. The problem I see in an ARPG is that having to cast 2 spells on a pack of white mobs is horrible. Especially with ED being a long cast. Two quick casting spells would alleviate some pain. I may try and buff my cast speed as much as possible, but I will lose quite a bit of damage or survival.
I see that maybe if I 5L on contagion(currently 4L) that might drop the pack sooner, but then you have to try and time your ED hit. To me as other people have had the same idea, I would see contagion as a support and not a separate skill to link with ED. If I went from 5L to 6L and contagion was the 6 I would be much happier with the other issues of ED such as projectile speed and cast speed. |
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This skill combines really well with contagion (duh) and abyssal cry, as long as you are using a consuming dark. The problem is that you have to cast contagion, dive into the mob with whirling blades, cast abyssal cry, and then use essence drain on one of the mobs. The entire pack explodes in a delightful purple color, AND the poison effect is spread by the abyssal cry explosions (which is fantastic with a bino's). The setup for this combo is very tedious, though.
Basically, faster cast speed and faster projectile speed for essence drain and faster cast speed for contagion would be great. Also- the new MTXs for ED and contagion look GREAT. Can't wait to try them out :D |
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I wonder if a CWDT contagion would do this less painful. Haven't test it yet, it's just a thought.
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It works quite well with Contagion, but it has a slow base cast speed as well as slow projectile speed wich forced me to use it with both a Lesser multi projectile and Spell echo gem since its otherwise hard to hit your targets before contagion kills them.
Even if used separate both skills do good damage but its a shame ED does't also restore ES couse then it would also be great for CI builds, the life it restores also could use a small boost on later lvls since its very low then. So to sum it up: Needs increased cast speed. Should work with ES. Inproved life drain on higher lvls. Oh! and maybe make the projectile explode like Fireball would help spreading its drain faster then it is now. |
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I am using
With Spell Totem and Rain of Splinters for what is essentially a 10L. ED; Spell Totem; Poison; Slower Projectiles; Controlled Destruction; and either Void Manipulation for damage or IIR when MFing. And then I get LMP; Fork; Chain and Iron Will from my gear. It turns the game into a bullet hell for the enemies. Self cast Wither doubles the damage, and quadruples the Poison damage (double dipping is retarded). Tooltip DPS using IIR is 2k at level 70, degen is 3k. So that's 2k per totem, 4k between the two of them. The Poison does as much damage as the hits. So that's another 4k. And the degen does 3k. Without Wither it's not super stellar, just around 11k/so total. Enemies do take extra hit damage and Poison from Chain, but that's hard to account for. With 2 seconds of Wither built up that's 8k from the hits, 16k from poison and 6 from the degen. So 30k total. Bump everything accordingly for Void Manipulation (don't forget To double dip the Poison). No need for Contagion with this setup. Just drop the totems and wither the nearest enemies. Edit: Apparently Wither is brokenot right now and does not increase the damage of Chaos hits and only increase damage over time. The fact that my build actually works with this broken version of Wither is a good indicator. They fix that bug and it will be potentially real good. Posted some videos of my build to reddit: It's worth noting that +2 maps are a dangerous thing. They can cause players to get out of their depth - playing maps that are too hard for the items they currently have. Herp Derp. Last edited by RickyDMMontoya#7961 on Feb 11, 2016, 10:26:18 PM
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shadow lvl 81. have a 6L staff with +1 chaos gems and a 5L chest piece.
posted my build guide here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1510170/page/5#p12755581 it is a pretty decent solo-play gem. the mechanic with contagion is fun and the buffs/enemy slows via wither, abyssal cry, vulnerability and temp chains are great. also, ED is a great single target skill for Caustic Arrow characters. problem 1: the leech of ED is negligible. only when you hit a large mob with contagion the leech is noticable, but those are NOT the moments leech is useful. because when you have time to cast your skill combo on a large mob, you don't take damage and are on full health anyway. when fighting bosses however, no big mobs are around and you don't get the much needed life leech problem 2: bad for MF characters as I never know which skill kills the enemy. ED or Contagion? would have to link Item rarity to both skills. problem 3: very underwhelming party play. yes, damage is done, but it "feels" underwhelming and obviously DoT does not get kills in party play. limiting the options for getting charges, etc. some unrelated suggestions suggestion 1: "cherubim's maleficience" unique chest has increased chaos and damage life leech. that leech should be made to work with the ED leech mechanic. suggestion 2: getting the contagion gem before the essence drain gem is absolutely useless, so essence drain and contagion should be made available together. suggestion 3: cast speed is very important to all the slow mechanics into action, so increasing cast speed would be nice - OR adding a unique that give increased cast speed for socketed slow-gems. Last edited by PopeJo#5880 on Feb 12, 2016, 3:18:41 AM
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" Essence Drain does not offer Leech, it grants Life Regeneration. That's why the description explicitly mentions the word Regeneration, and never uses the term Leech. Leech only works with flat Damage, not with Damage over Time. |
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" Really nice. Always cool to see different approaches. IGN: Scordalia_
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Level 53 Shadow
Talisman League. ED- LMP, Pierce, Void Manipulation (Controlled Destruction, Increased Rarity) Contagion- Concentrated Effect, Controlled Destruction Viper Strike- Void Manipulation, Added Chaos Damage Wither I personally have been having a great time with ED/Contagion. The damage output is fine for me, even before I lucked into a Tabula and was able to boost it. I'm running my Shadow as a heavy Magic Find, and granted it isn't into mapping yet, but it seems to be scaling and building well. I haven't had the same problems others seem to be having with cast speed, maybe they bumped it up a bit, or it could be because as soon as I see baddies at the edge of my screen I just launch a volley or two of chaos spreaders through and by the time I get there most everything is dead already. Honestly Pierce solves a lot of the problems people have been discussing, and while it does take a way from it a bit, it does not completely replace contagion, the two still complement very well. I agree that the regeneration effect is non-existent. If you're doing enough damage I feel like the monsters are dead before you have time to benefit from it at all. Right now my tool-tip says mine's handing out 1800 dps on the debuff, which is a grand sum of 9 life per second I should be gaining, and they're usually dead without having the chance to apply multiple damage rounds. Something should be done to make the life gained more significant (increase the percentage, make it a larger up front gain, make it persist after enemy's death, something) 1) to make the skill more appealing to the sort of build that it really should appeal to (the fact that it can regenerate ES through Zealots Oath would allow a more substantial regeneration to work fine with CI), and 2) so it works better with the style of play that goes along with a heavy DoT build. And that brings me to the final point, I think we should all do a common sense check here. ED and Contagion are not going to have lightning fast burst damage clearing speeds. They shouldn't, it's called damage OVER time for a reason. It's not supposed to be fast, it's supposed to be consistent, and safe. Your job with a DoT is to work through a hairy approach, land the DoT, and then sit back and let them die. If the drain function of ED was improved, you could more effectively embrace this style of play. And I grant to some people that may sound boring, but that's why they make blade fall. Different strokes and all that. Last edited by BChebyshev#5551 on Feb 18, 2016, 11:31:00 PM
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