2.2 Eluminator's Essence Drain & Contaigon Trickster with Righteous Fire!

Hey guys!
My name is Eluminator and I will show you my Essence Drain, Contaigon, Righteous Fire, Max Frenzy Charge, Max Dodge Trickster :D

Introduction

I always wanted to do a hipster build that nobody has ever did before. The difference between theory-crafting a hipster build and a good hipster is a huge though. So as soon as I saw Shadow get life regen nodes near his starting area I thought of making a RF Shadow. In early stages I went from Shadow through witch to templar and marauder for the life regen, but traveling from shadow through witch to templar is really bad, if you want as little energy shield as possible and are playing none crit. So I thought of going through the bottom to get the life regen from the duelist as well. I saw that I was near all of the frenzy charges and acrobatics. When I picked them up I realized a hipster build was born!


My Character and Passive Tree

This is a link to my characters. Look for JustifierOfChaos:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Wertlok1111/characters

This is my passive tree:

poeurl.com/B1d

Explanation for leveling with this tree:

I would recommend picking up the entire shadow section to have a headstart into the game. You want to travel past acrobatics and move straight to duelist. Until level 70+ you will probably skip all frenzy charges and jewel nodes, because you need your passive points to have enough life regen to use RF at level 75 or somewhere around there. The duelist projectile nodes are a nice damage boost that helps out big time. Grab the life when you need it. After that travel to the templar AoE nodes while moving alongside the tree, getting those scion rectangle life nodes and the juicy templar life nodes. Once you reached the templar AoE, you are done with traveling and can pickup as much life regen as possible. After switching to RF, you want to pick up all the frenzy charges and then get what ever you like. I myself had never any damage or tankyness problems while leveling (This was the first character and I only duelwielded two 30% spell damage wands until Merciless.)

This is the endgame passive tree I would aim for (level 99):

poeurl.com/B1e


Build video

If you want to see my build in action with most mechanics of the build explained just click this video:

https://youtu.be/UoTFS0K_k-g


Labyrinth video

This is a video of an early labyrinth run I had with this build. It was recorded on the seventh day of this league with my character beeing level 86. Some key nodes: Drop RF for the running part and use it to kill Izaro. Use whirling blades all the way. I hope you enjoy it:

https://youtu.be/OlMje55X28M


Build Concept Explanation

This build uses Essence Drain as the main damage spell for both single target as well as AoE clearing. To get AoE from the single target spell Essence Drain you need to spread the damage with Contaigon. At close range enemies will also take a lot of damage from your Righteous Fire (= RF). RF and 9 frenzy charges more than double your damage so picking both as level 75+ feels great.


Defensive Layers

This build has more than 174% life in the passive tree with 5 jewels also available to be filled with more % maximum life. You can hit more than 6k hp with decent gear.

This build uses 9 Frenzy charges with Darkray Vectors and Daressos Defiance to get to 74% Dodge when you use the quartz flask. You also have 40% spell dodge with the flask up. You will always have 9 frenzy charges so you can rely on that layer of defense.

You will gete more than 5k evasion if you use your stibnite flasks. Together with dodge you barely get hit!

You always have 3 Endurance charges from Daresso's Defiance which add 12% physical mitigation on top of the armour you got from daresso's defiance and other chest pieces (which is halfed because of acrobatics. So 12% flat on top of that is so important.) BTW my cast when damage taken setup helps, because I always have endurance charges.

On top of the Endurance charges you have a basalt flask for additional damage mitigation, if you take physical damage.

The blasphemy enfeeble complements your evasion and dodge and reduces the damage if you get hit eventually by a large margin.

You also get fortify on whirling blades which will be up whenever you use your whirling blades onto an enemy. On boss fights it is really usefull because often times you can dash right though the boss to get the RF damage as well as the fortify buff.

You have 86% fire resistance which clearly helps against fire damage :P

All in all you have fairly good defences and many layers that really work great together. If you can't use RF for any reason (no regeb map), you can use the +1 curse ring to get enfeeble + temporal chains as an blasphemy aura. Did I meantion that you have insane regen if you don't use RF? The labyrinth is really trivial with that amount of regeneration, you get.


Links

The support skills show in the order of descending imporantcy.

Main damage skill: Essence Drain - Void Manipulation - Controlled Destruction - Rapid Decay - Pierce - Empower/Faster Casting

AoE Spread: Contaigon - Increased AoE - Faster Casting - Item Rarity

Damage buff: Righteous Fire - Concentrated Effect - Elemental Focus - (Inc. Burning Damage/Inc. AoE)

Movementskill with defensive utility: Whirling Blades - Fortify - Faster Attacks

Automation against spike damage: CWDT - Immortal Call

Curse Aura: Blasphemy - Enfeeble (Temporal Chains)

Single skills to use:

Labyrinth utility: Flame Dash (usually not in the skill bar)

Frenzy charge generation: Bloodrage

Mana sustain and damage buff: Rallying Cry


Weapon Choice

First of all, you need a dagger, because you need to use whirling blades (not only is whirling blades nice because of fortify but also because of the trickster's "walk the aether").

You can't role spell damage on claws and one handed swords and there are 0 good uniques of that type.

This implies there are only 3 possible daggers you can use:

- a rare dagger with a lot of spell damage: This would probably be the best option to use, but the dagger needs to have pretty good stats and good spell damage daggers are really really hard to find. People don't sell non crit high spell damage daggers with an open prefix. Here is the "best in slot" dagger you can get: An itemlevel 84 "sai" dagger with the tier 1 spell damage and t1 spell damage/mana role. You craft the 30% increased damage over time from leo onto it. As suffixes it has some attack speed and resists or whatever is handy. I play hardcore talisman and if didn't see any good rare spell damage dagger yet. Best dagger I could currently find on poe.trade would be a 70%spell damage dagger with a craftable leo mod. That could probably be better than a consuming dark and I will try it out, when I start playing and can get my hands on one those daggers.

- next is the consuming dark: You only care about 2 things: highest spell damage role and the "chaos damage poisons" enemies. Spell damage is nice obviously and the poison works decently with ED. I don't actually know how much it increases my single target damage, because enemies die to fast (I did up to tier 9 maps and the bosses usually die within 2 seconds if I stand on top of them with rf as well). I need to do some testing with voll, but I assume it increased your single target damage by 50%. I got this dagger because it only cost me 14 chaos and at the time I got it, there were 0 spell damage daggers available.

- 3rd option is divinarius: All stats except the crit chance stats are nice, similar spell damage as the consuming dark but has increased AoE instead of the poison. I might switch to this one, because the increased AoE could be enormous for clearspeed. I don't think I need the single target poison from the consuming dark and rare daggers are super hard to come by. BTW divinarius also has a high attackspeed which is nice for whirling blades.

- not really 4th option, but it is there - bino's kitchen knife: All stats are crap except the 30% increased damage over time. This really sucks when compared with the 60% from the consuming and the 70% from the divinarius. You could use the poison if you use a poison as a support link for ED, but then contaigon wouldn't spread the poison and you loose a link and it would all be weird and messy. It just would be another build. Just don't use the bino's, it really sucks for this build.

TLDR: Either of the first three options is fine: Get consuming for the single target damage. Get divinarius for the AoE clear. Get a rare dagger if you can get a really really good one.


Body Armours

I like to use the Daressos Defiance as it also gives you life and decent base stats. But Hyri's Ire might also be good. A lightning coil is possible option as well, but then you need really good rare equip to be overcaped against elemental weakness.

Personally I like the Daresso's Defiance the most.


Fun Fact

If you use blood dance and keep shapers seed you could potentially reach a whopping 31% life regen ((13.2+4.5+2)*1.6) just because you can. But I recommend using the darkrays for the dodge.


Message to you guys reading this

Thank you for all your interest in my build. If you got any questions, just ask them down below. I will upload a merciless labyrinth run soon ;)

Have fun and stay safe,
Eluminator.

___

Edit 2016.03.16:
Changed gem links and fixed error in the rare dagger section (cast speed can't be on daggers).

Edit: 2016.03.20
Added Merciless Labyrinth Run.

seems cool. how does the izaro fight go? facetank him, spam ED? or tag with ED and kite? how long does it take for him to die?

btw base attack speed on weapons has no influence on wb attack speed, unless it has a +% attack speed modifier on it. divinarius still seems good though.

Can you post tooltip dps stats please? I wonder how my ED build compares to yours. Ive build around same idea of using darkrays to cap dodge, but instead of going to templar i just stayed in shadow-ranger-duelist and picked up almost all damage nodes available there.

why do you get templar aoe nodes? They only increase contagion aoe? or what am I missing?

How do you level this build?

"

alexvsevil wrote:

seems cool. how does the izaro fight go? facetank him, spam ED? or tag with ED and kite? how long does it take for him to die?

btw base attack speed on weapons has no influence on wb attack speed, unless it has a +% attack speed modifier on it. divinarius still seems good though.

I facetank him, to get the extra damage from my RF. I try to dodge every attack, but spam ED otherwise. I think a single stage takes between 10 - 15 seconds depending whether I need to dodge more or less attacks from him (It is important to note that I usually don't have 9 frenzy charges in the fight which is another 1.36 damage multiplier). BTW I will upload a merciless run, which took 8 minutes to my youtube channel soon.

I will send you a message, when the video is uploaded. Normally the only problem I have is, that I kill him to quickly, even without frenzy charges :D

"

Can you post tooltip dps stats please? I wonder how my ED build compares to yours. Ive build around same idea of using darkrays to cap dodge, but instead of going to templar i just stayed in shadow-ranger-duelist and picked up almost all damage nodes available there.

The dps tooltip is 13k damage from Essence drain and 29k damage over time from Essence drain. One projectile is enough to kill every rare I have faced so far with the damage over time from Essence drain. You don't go Righteous Fire right?

"

why do you get templar aoe nodes? They only increase contagion aoe? or what am I missing?

Yes, this is the only reason. Area of Effect is basically clearspeed for this build because the damage over time can chain onto another pack if your AoE is big enough. Sadly I can't get more AoE except a divinarius, because I can't go to witch and scion on the tree and carcass jack has Energy shield which would be really annoying to deal with as a RF character.

"

How do you level this build?

I level it as a Essence drain Contaigon character, because Essence drain is insanly strong at early stages (I don't know which difficulty it was, but I needed three casts of Essence drain to kill the act 3 piety).
At level 1 I use Etherial Knives and Fire Trap to have headstart (You don't need EK, but I use it to kill Hailrake). The "breaking some eggs" quest, gives you Contaigon. From this point you only use Fire Trap and Contaigon to kill mobs. At a certain time only Contaigon 1-shots packs, so you can go really fast. At level 12 you get Essence Drain, which is nice to kill Merveil. In act two you can still use Fire Trap and Contaigon, but sooner or later Fire Trap won't do enough damage, so you switch to Essence Drain and Contaigon.
Regarding the passive tree: You want to pick up all the shadow nodes for the early damage. Then you pass Acrobatics and all the frenzy charges to travel to Duelist. You grab the projectile damage and life at the duelist and travel all the way to templar. You get Acrobatics when you want to and grab life as you need it. You want to have enough life regen at level 70+ to use Righteous wiht Shapers Seed and the RotP. After this you grab all the frenzy charges to scale the damage further. I switch to maps as soon as I had RF and all the frenzy charges up and running. I did to much damage, so clearing those tier 1 maps was to easy and boring... :D

I will hopefully add a leveling section in my guide as well, when I got time for it.

what am I missing here? You would need 15% life regen with just Rotp for RF?

which bandits did you go with?

hey pro
can u answer my question ?
What dps when u use RF with this build ?

"

TheCreatek wrote:

what am I missing here? You would need 15% life regen with just Rotp for RF?

Trickster class allows for a 1.6x regen multiplier if you've done DOT damage recently (all the time on this build).