[2.5] Death's Kiss, a Trickster Essence Drain/Contagion full build and leveling guide

No changes, still the same stuff for this build since nothing changed for the passive tree in 2.4 and Trickster is still the same.

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Vulpix0r wrote:

If you are already earning currency and have some to spare, I would strongly recommend getting a Consuming Dark.

TS, can you explain why you advice to use The Consuming Dark? 30% fire to chaos don't work, because we don't use fire. 51% increase spell damage is good, yes, but +1 level fire gem is useless too. 'Your chaos damage poisons enemies' - If I remember correctly, poison add 8% from your base damage like a dot. So you advice to use this unique only for +8% like a second dot?

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kombala wrote:

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Vulpix0r wrote:

If you are already earning currency and have some to spare, I would strongly recommend getting a Consuming Dark.

TS, can you explain why you advice to use The Consuming Dark? 30% fire to chaos don't work, because we don't use fire. 51% increase spell damage is good, yes, but +1 level fire gem is useless too. 'Your chaos damage poisons enemies' - If I remember correctly, poison add 8% from your base damage like a dot. So you advice to use this unique only for +8% like a second dot?

The poison dot scales with itself the dot takes 2sec but if you manage to hit the enemy faster then once every 2sec you will see the dmg of your hits increase very fast.It really really helps to burn down bosses

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kombala wrote:

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Vulpix0r wrote:

If you are already earning currency and have some to spare, I would strongly recommend getting a Consuming Dark.

TS, can you explain why you advice to use The Consuming Dark? 30% fire to chaos don't work, because we don't use fire. 51% increase spell damage is good, yes, but +1 level fire gem is useless too. 'Your chaos damage poisons enemies' - If I remember correctly, poison add 8% from your base damage like a dot. So you advice to use this unique only for +8% like a second dot?

1. Poison damage can stack. So you will have multiple applications of poison on the same target if you spam ED on it.

2. Poison base duration is 2 seconds, but it's modified by skill duration nodes and temporal chains. It's quite easy to have a 3.5-4.0 seconds poison, and since all the useful damage stats (with the only exception of damage over time) of this build double dip with poison, the total damage increase is pretty strong.

3. Both ED and Poison damage over time scale with Vulnerability.

Can confirm. Was on the fence about consuming dark, especially because I don't enjoy low-AS WB, but the poison turned out to be pretty great. I'd say it damn near doubles your single target DPS, which is really important this league what with the more difficult map bosses, essence rares, and new endgame boss options. Its also really cheap, I think I picked mine up for 15c - not that much more expensive than a decent rare wand. Just make sure you aren't relying on your wand to fix your mana/res issues before swapping.

That's not to say it's best in slot - I think an incredibly well rolled rare wand with top tier spell damage/proj speed/cast speed is unbeatable - but good luck getting anything close to that for the price of a consuming dark.

Some comments after building this up in ESC:

* Witchfire Brew is extremely powerful for us; free smoke, 100% increased Eva, 50-70% increased DoT, and most importantly gives us blasphemy+vulnerability in a flask. Using this lets us drop vulnerability for arctic armor or a third curse. Just be aware that witchfire's vulnerability doesn't get the AoE boost that blasphemy would usually give you.

* Arctic Armor/chilled ground is (still) completely broken when combined with temp chains. I don't feel like this should be considered optional - everyone should try to fit this into the build. Dropping a patch of chilled ground on a temp chain'd boss trivializes virtually anything. The phys/fire reduction while still is also huge for us since we are at our most vulnerable during ED's massive cast time. I would even consider dropping vulnerability for it if I had to choose - luckily witchfire brew means we don't have to.

*Cospri's Will is probably best chest in slot if you have a good wand to replace your consuming dark with and the mana reservation nodes to run two curses + arctic armor. Just expensive.

*Getting 100% pierce is probably more important than skittering runes, frenzy charges, and jewels. Grab the piercing shots wheel before you bother with other things.

Seems like there are people still using this guide, thanks for answering the questions for me. I've seen someone use a dagger instead of a shield go benefit from super fast whirling blade.

Nice guide. What ascendency do you reccomend?

One problem this build has in rippy red maps that I think is worth going out of your way to fix is getting permastunned by packs. Especially if you got the bow+drillneck route that's meta right now, you're gunna have a really hard time regardless of how much HP you stack when even white mobs are capable chainstunning you for your entire HP pool. Once you pick up your uber ascendancy's 20% more evasion things get a little more manageable, but it's always going to be a problem.

The best answer (and the only hardcore answer) is to go CI, but a more realistic transition for this build is to head down to Acrobatics. It bloats up your effective HP by a ton and acts as psuedo-stun avoidance. I had to sacrifice my AoE nodes for it, but it was well worth it. Not sure if 20% AoE is worth 4 nodes in the first place.

Anyway, I think I might wind down my play on this character and give into the BV meta. As nice as it is to play something different, at the end of the day the endgame content is really what I want to see out of this league. Logging into last league's BV pathfinder made me realize just how unreasonably hard it outclasses any other build, including ED. GGG y u tempt me so

Hey, I'm enjoying the build so far at level 75 but having a little issue with being stunned, would you say it is worth investing in stun immunity?

Also I have swapped out the consuming dark dagger for a breath of the council, it gives more damage and lets me use leap slam but is there a reason you didn't use it?

Is there a link to the Tricker subclass skills used?

Don't see them in the build.