Essence Drain

Why did ED get changed to not work at all with pierce? I feel like this has to be a bug since ED should either apply its degen to anything it touches along the way OR it should be ground targeted so that if you have innate pierce anywhere in your items/tree you don't render this skill completely useless.

The new changes to Essence Drain where it was given the AoE tag and applies the ED Debuff in an area has me a bit at-odds. If I needed ED to hit an area, Contagion already existed. I cant use AoE mods to increase it's damage. At least the tool-tip damage doesn't change if I link Concentrated Effect to it (bug? intended?). Neither projectile or debuff damages change although it does acquire the blue 'o' in the thumbnail. If this is the case then the new Intensify gem will not work either.

The changes feel more quality of life-y which is good, but I feel gypped as an ED main with these changes and not being able to use the new gem despite the change in tags. I would say 'feel left out' but the AoE tag is there and nothing says it shouldn't get the modifiers. Contagion gets them. So logically, why wouldn't ED now?

ED need a balance, but not in the damage.

"Regenerate 0.5% of Debuff Damage as Life"

This is literally OP since the power creep that allowed players to have ~300k tooltip DPS on ED, and that 300k tooltip DPS is literally a very, very low number nowdays. Non LowLife builds can have 3-6 times bigger tooltip DPS value, LL buils can reach milions. With 2 targets affected by a 300k ED, the life regen from it is as effective as Life Flask. 700k tooltip DPS is a permanent Life Flask vs single enemy. Tanking hundreds of Darkness stacks - not a problem.

Keystone - Zealot's Oath
"Life Regeneration is applied to Energy Shield instead"

Now you're sitting at a massive amount of ES regen, so ES recharge is also useless.


It's literally possible to play a Life build with no Life Flask, just because the ED's regen makes the Life Flask basically useless.


"Regenerate 0.5% of Debuff Damage as Life"
This should be removed from the ED, not reduced to 0.2% or 0.1%, it really should be removed.

Alternate Quality 2 100% increased Damage with Hits

I feel like there's something interesting there that wasnt taken nearly far enough
give it like 500% increased damage with hits and 50% less dot along with some chaos pen and you've got an interesting alt quality, which we dont have nearly enough of

Skill could use a slight QoL buff to projectile speed, as of now it's horrendously slow. To illustrate further, it's a pain to hit faster than average monsters (possessed or hasted) or Rogue Exiles with movement skills.

And no, it's not feasible to support with faster projectile or volley, etc. The skill absolutely needs all 5 damage support gems, unless you are bloated with excellent gear, which is not the average player usual scenario.

Pls buff this skill... Its is much worse compared to alternatives right now. I love the Ed Contagion combination but its no comparisson to other available dot skills with just Profane Bloom. The Contagion spread is not enough reason for the skillgem to be that weak.

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zaubererO wrote:

Pls buff this skill... Its is much worse compared to alternatives right now. I love the Ed Contagion combination but its no comparisson to other available dot skills with just Profane Bloom. The Contagion spread is not enough reason for the skillgem to be that weak.

pretty much. i have same issue with soulrend and posted same thing there. i tried ED and Cont. its really bad like you said.

Hello! 2024 here and this skill is still played only by 0.0% of the playerbase :D
We would REALLY LOVE a buff to this skill... Or a rework, maybe something like the DoT part could be scalable by the hit damage? We'd have to carefuly choose between hit dmg or dot increases.. Who knows. But this skill is soooo off-meta that even a 100% more dmg buff would probably go unnoticed lol

Essence Drain of Desperation
This is just a mockery. The loss of life and ES is monstrously high even if you have little DPS. But of course, this doesn’t matter if you can once again BREAK the entire concept of the skill if you put it in Trap Support. It's the same thing every time. If a skill does not work, or has too unpleasant debuffs, it is simply shoved into the Trap/mine support and it becomes OP. But this is a canser. I want to play selfcast, but I can't play selfcast because the damage scaling is hopelessly outdated. While poison (also chaos dot btw) is collected on immortal builds, because poison allows you to have a cap of dot dps very cheaply, ordinary chaos dot skills are in oblivion. And simply adding damage will not save them. Dot damage, also known as delayed damage, is clearly balanced to be so weak, because with one use of the skill it deals the same amount as an instant skill. And it should be extremely convenient. But we are in 2024, where countless strong enhancements to elemental critical builds and poison builds based on physical spells have appeared. Chaos dot skills only have Increase Damage, Damage Multiplier, and Debuffs. The existing Wither, which allows you to deal twice as much damage, is very helpful in strengthening already strong chaos builds. The usual chaos of Dot is still terrible. Of course, he is able to close T16 maps, but T17, heh. No.

This is incredibly disappointing. You already have a fair implementation applicable to this. In Master of Chaos, lose 10% Life and ES. This is still a penalty, but it can be dealt with without using TRAP SUPPORT. Please.
You can play with Sacrifice Life and ES to get additional damage for the skill. You can add damage or Life to the player for each recently killed enemy with a debuff. You could also add an aura version of the skill, which would work like Death Aura, but would increase depending on those killed recently. There are so many different interesting ideas. But their implementation requires resources, time and interest.
I really miss the old PoE, where you could take absolutely any build, without PoB, without guides, and just play. And at the same time achieve decent results. Of course, I'm glad that metaplayers have T17 and Uber Ubers. But unattainable content does not work as an incentive for development if I know for sure that certain builds are initially unable to develop to that level with absolutely any investment (and of course maintaining a balance of survivability and damage).