[Talisman] MoM/EB/ZO Bladefall/Firestorm Trapper HC ~WIP~

I will go with the self cast route. I think I'll aim for something like this at 115pt for hc.

I also think MOM/EB/ZO will be the way to go at least until wither gets the flameblast/incinerate treatment regarding spell echo. Self casted Wither will end up eating some 100-150 mana/sec. Achieving that I think will end up taking more points with traditional hybrid and straight up mana regen even with the new +2 mana per character level. The keystone passives for MOM/EB/ZO happen to be conviniently on route. Not to mention one would lose Arctic Armour. If the mana cost of wither scales more drasticly than what one would assume I could see people not leveling it beyond 1.

Defence-wise this particular tree would give a character with ~180% life + 3 jewels, Mind Over Matter, Temp Chain and Enfeeble as auras with +30% curse effect on tree, Arctic armour, endurance charges and over 200 es/mana per sec through ZO. The build also has enough reduced mana reservation to fit in discipline to make it relativly easy to get proper shield for EB/MOM.

I plan to use Essence Drain as the main damage dealer. If the damage numbers on the sneak peek chaos gems have anything to do with the eventually released gems, it seems that ED will be doing around 30-60% more base dot than contagion at lvl 20. As such ED will end up using the potential 5-6l slot. This is nice because it means having Increased AoE gem on contagion for convenient dot coverage wont make much of a dent on the total chaos dot of the build.

The basic skill rotation to me seems to be:
Lob a essence drain projectile to a pack, preferably on a weak monster.
Cast contagion on top of who ever ate the essence drain.
Run to next pack or if there is a rare monster on the pack start stacking wither on it.

Going self cast has the perk of having a way to reliably regen life (in combat) even with Zealots Oath. It remains to be seen if this regen is note worthy. Desecrated/burning ground and chaos degen map mods are pain with only pots to regen.

There is clearly some potential with using essence drain on a trap support, especially with 6l, but I plan to try first with self cast chaos spells. This is mainly because traps I feel are clunky and the life recovery from Essence Drain goes really well with ZO. There are also really good non-trap support gems at least up to 4 link.

If the dot of the Essence Drain wont be effected by slower projectiles support gem then fifth link for it will be pretty awkward. In this case I could respec into traps. I could just shuffle the damage nodes to get Clever Construction. This would be when/if I manage to get 5-6l Carcass Jack.

Preliminary link plan would be something like:
4-5l essence drain + controlled destruction + void manipulation + rapid decay (+ slower projectiles)
4l contagion + increased aoe + controlled destruction + void manipulation
4l wither + spell echo + faster casting + increased duration
3l blasphemy + enfeeble + temporal chains

This would leave me with a 4l and a 3l, maybe slots in jewelry.

What I will need to have: Discipline, Arctic Armour, Enduring Cry, Movement skill

What I might want to have: Chaos Golem, Vaal Discipline, Decoy Totem

The tree has very little increased cast speed so skills like Enduring Cry, Flame Dash and Decoy totem will need to be linked to faster casting for them to be bearable to use between the damage rotations.

As of now im thinking of going with:
4l flame dash + enduring cry + vaal discipline + faster casting
3l discipline, arctic armour, chaos golem

Wither could also have somewhat low maximum stack count so it would do fine in a 3l without increased duration.

The damage support gems woudn't be as crucial on Contagion especially if, as I would assume, it is not enough itself to be used to clear trash endgame. If this is the case one could drop one damage support from Contagion and use a Item Rarity support. This would conveniently give increased rarity for every single monster kill so its basically like having the gem in the main damage skill link with the downside of losing only some 5-15% of the total chaos dot.

This might all have to be done totally differently if the base damage of the chaos gems wont be anywhere close to what the sneak peek gems had or if they scale way disproportionally and differently than the degen skills we already have ingame. We shall see.

Good luck and have fun in talisman league!