[3.4] The Mistress of Agony - Lowlife BlightDrain Ascendant / Occultist - ALL content viable!

I leveled my Scion up to 95 in Talisman League (2.1), when Essence Drain / Wither / Contagion were added to the game.

I decided to publish the build after Ascendancy came out because the character became even stronger than it was (and this was a common feeling in 2.2).

In 2.3 (Prophecy) we got 2 additional ascendancy points, so we could take advantage from the double starting point to save some precious passives which could be invested in a more efficient way.

In 2.4 (Essence) this build received some small nerfs, which fortunately didn't impact the playstyle, the clearspeed or the efficiency of the character in a noticeable way. The details:

- Pierce support gem got a 10% damage nerf and a 20% increase in mana multiplier
- Poison damage was lowered by 2%
- Bosses' curse efficiency reduction became a lot stronger

But some good things were added for us: Essence of Delirium (which allows to craft our endgame dagger), fingerless silk gloves base type (16% free spell damage on implicit mod), Shaper boots (free pierce while mapping) and crystal belt basetype (lots of extra ES from the implicit).

In 2.5 (Breach) the CWC support gem was introduced in PoE. And it came together with some nice new items too, especially Presence of Chayula to play low life while gaining some good survivability tools (extra ES and 60% chaos resistance).

In 2.6 (Legacy) there were no important changes to the ED playstyle. The CWC iteration was still the absolute best, as you can see in this Enfeeble Minotaur kill video.

In 3.0 (Harbinger) some significant changes to the core game mechanics completely destroyed both the CWC and Poison interactions of ED. To summarize:

- Double dipping was gone, so the poison interaction with ED died
- Energy shield sources in the game were substantially lowered, so it's be more difficult to achieve consistent ES numbers after Oriath's launch
- Essence Drain damage was buffed by a nice amount (about 43% at high gem level) to compensate for the fact that it doesn't scale with projectile damage modifiers anymore
- Contagion damage was buffed by a decent amount (about 25% at high gem level), its max-level radius was buffed too and its base cast time was lowered from 0.85 to 0.6, dramatically increasing the clearspeed of our Ascendant
- Breath of the Council chaos damage bonus was buffed from 80% max to 100% max
- Vaal Lightning Trap's shock debuff was dramatically nerfed (from 50% increased damage taken to 15%)
- The Scion's Trickster sub-ascendancy was buffed (50% extra recovery of mana, life and ES after killing a mob is insane while mapping!)
- The Scion's "Path" ascendancy nodes was reworked to give 2 extra passive points together with the alternate start
- The bandit rewards were adjusted, now we still kill all bandits but we only get 2 passive points instead of 3 total
- Two new interesting support gems we can make use of were implemented in PoE: Efficacy and Arcane Surge. We use the first one to replace Slower Projectiles, and the second one as an extra Contagion link to take advantage from the spell damage boost when it is triggered
- Rapid Decay support was renamed into Swift Affliction support
- Discipline aura now has 30% extra ES recharge rate built into it to compensate for the ES nerf
- Elreon ES% enchants on rings were removed from the game and they went legacy, now we will look at the 20% faster start of ES recharge enchant by Leo for endgame purposes

In 3.1 (Abyss) the build got a pretty heavy nerf, sadly. Wither was reduced to 6% increased chaos damage taken per stack and the maximum number of stacks is being reduced to 15 (from 20). This accounted to a 20% global damage nerf for our beloved Ascendant and Occultist. We had a partial compensation of the Wither nerf in the new Despair curse, which replaced Vulnerability and is applied via Witchfire Brew or Blasphemy, depending on the build / class.

Fortunately, a couple of new items felt really good with this build. The new jewel from The Elder (Watcher's Eye) and the new unset ring which gives us a free 5-link made a new iteration possible while staying lowlife. We can support the damage from ED (which will always be our map-clearing skill of preference) with Blight on pure single target boss fights. This playstyle allowed to go back to our 850k+ DPS potential on the hardest endgame bosses, like it was in the most glorious iteration of the build (the Wither + CWC + ED one which took advantage from poison's double dipping before Fall of Oriath).

In 3.2 (Bestiary) the Ascendant version got another nerf from the boss damage point of view, while the Witch Occultist version got a buff in almost all her ascendancy points. In detail:

- The Occultist sub-ascendancy of the Scion was nerfed to the ground, making it pretty useless for us in boss fights. The 15% chaos resistance lowering was removed, and the 20% extra ES was removed too. They were replaced by some curse effectiveness and an extra curse, but since curses aren't that good at bosses, this is a global nerf. That's why I decided to specialize the Scion in the clearspeed aspect and decided to take the Necromancer sub-ascendancy to replace the Occultist one.

- The Trickster sub-ascendancy of the Scion was buffed and now it grants a chance of free power and frenzy charge generation on kill. This makes our map clearspeed even better and can slightly boost the boss killing time if the bosses have some adds (think about the Elder's portal phase, for example, or the Chimera guardian fight).

- The Witch Occultist ascendancy was buffed in an amazing way. Our Witch gained a total wrecking of enemies' life regeneration, 10% reduced damage taken from monsters, hexproof bypassing and a bunch of extra curse effectiveness. Plus, she got stun immunity on Vile Bastion, which is amazing to start a fresh character because we have free stun immunity and extra ES / regen until we can afford a Presence of Chayula and switch to Malediction.

TL;DR since 3.2 the Ascendant is a lot better for map clearing speed, the Witch Occultist is still shitty for map clearing speed but she is pretty amazing in boss fights (about 32% MORE damage when compared to the Scion build in pure single target and no-adds fights).


In 3.3 (Incursion) nothing will change for our ascendancies and passive trees, but a new skill is being introduced in the game: Vaal Blight. We will simply replace the regular Blight gem with its new Vaal counterpart into Shavronne's Wrappings. And hypotetically, if we want to, we can use our Vaal aura counterparts too, but it's a gameplay choice. We can use Vaal Discipline / Vaal Haste to get even better safety / clearspeed.

First of all, this is an entirely chaos-based character who relies on the spreading of a damage over time single-target skill, Essence Drain. The spreading happens via Contagion, another damage over time skill, but with a good area of effect radius. Mechanics are simple: you contagion an area, then target the potentially weakest mob in that area and shoot an ED bullet in its direction. When your target dies, the entire Contagion area will be affected by both Contagion and Essence Drain DotS. For pure single target fights, Blight comes into the mix: you can stack it up to 20 times to speed up the boss kills a lot.

This character makes also use of some utility skills and curses to boost both the damage and the survivability. Wither, when applied to a spell totem, constantly debuffs an area, increasing the chaos damage taken by all the foes inside by a stacking percentage (capped at 90% chaos damage taken, or 15 wither stacks). This has proven to be very useful against high health mobs / bosses, especially if you can pre-cast the totem at no damage cost (think about Atziri's phase changes, for example). This Scion's curses help with sustaining the damage, too: Temporal Chains increases the duration of debuffs on targets (Contagion, Essence Drain, Wither, Blight), allowing for a smoother gameplay, while making enemies' curses on her less effective. Don't go mad if your hideout tooltips look low in terms of damage; they do not take into account the effect of Wither, enemies' chaos resistance reduction (from the Despair curse) and combat gains (flasks, for example). The real DPS you do in optimal conditions, when all of the buffs and debuffs are up, is way higher.

The defensive options are great too: the Mistress of Agony has got strong evasion and recovery mechanics, plus the extra mitigations from Fortify (applied in a wise way via Shield Charge if needed). She has two very strong defensive curses in her arsenal: Temporal Chains and, if required, Enfeeble. The synergistic flask setup and the life regen (converted into ES regen via Zealot's Oath) from gear / passives / Essence Drain help a lot with survivability when mapping, breaching and lab running.

The theory is simple: we aim to have a decent ES pool (over 8k is achievable without tremendous gear costs, over 10k (with a peak of ~12k in the Witch Occultist version) with mirrorworthy gear, reserving most of our mana for curses via Blasphemy, and using a mana potion for no regen situations. The health (converted in ES via ZO) regen is quite good because Essence Drain has a regen mechanic included into it (Regenerate 0.5% of Debuff Damage as Life). That 0.5% is added to all the other sources of regen, like the ones we can get from our gear or the passive tree.

This is not a leech build, so we have to adjust our gameplay accordingly. Dodging whatever mobs throw at us is important, especially in the highest tier maps and unforgiving fights like Uber Trio, Atziri, Core Malachai, Pale Council, Guardians, Elder and Shaper.

In optimal conditions of gearing / character level (90+), we should aim at these values:

- Overcapped elemental resistances to deal with Elemental Weakness maps
- Positive chaos resistance
- 9k+ Energy Shield

PROS

+ Very funny and active gameplay
+ Very efficient in solo playing
+ Safe playstyle, you are a dotter and not a spammer of a single skill so you have time to dodge whatever mobs throw at you
+ Reflect proof, since chaos damage rocks
+ Can do all map mods!
+ More than decent clear speed if you aren't a fan of backtracking for crap currencies :D

CONS

- In parties this build lacks of burst damage, so it's a lot less efficient
- Hall of the Grandmasters CI champions cannot be killed with pure chaos damage builds like this one, but if you arrange a Scorching Ray setup in the Shav you can still complete the map to get the bonus objective on the Atlas
- No Regen maps: they are perfectly doable, but I find them incredibly annoying; I don't love to spam a mana flask every 5 seconds

QUICK CLASS COMPARISON



To explain the table, A = excellent, B = good, C = not that good.

Please note that the popular lifebased MoM Trickster is included in the comparison even if it's not covered in my guide, because I have played it multiple times after 3.0 and I know the class gameplay and how it performs in all scenarios.

Level 100 Passive Tree

If you want to check the build endgame setup with mirrorworthy gear and its full gems / passives you can use this pastebin link in Path of Building:

https://pastebin.com/xkvCdTfd

Please note that the passive tree is optimized for level 100, with 128 talent points spent; those include the extra passives we get from the Scion Ascendancies and from helping Eramir killing all the bandits.

As you know, the Ascendant is amazing because of her flexibility of choices.

The Necromancer sub-ascendancy is quite powerful for this build, thanks to the extra skill duration, free cast / attack speed from our auras and the offering halved bonus on us (a lvl 21 Flesh Offering gives us a neat 15% extra attack / cast / movement speed). Then, after the 3.2 buffs, the Trickster sub-ascendancy is the pretty amazing, because it provides free charges generation while mapping, a lot of extra regen when killing monsters, and it makes the gameplay even smoother. The last 2 ascendancy points go to Path of the Witch, to take advantage from a second starting point.

If you want to feel more defensive, or you want to use multiple Vaal skills because of the new Vaal skill system, you can consider the Guardian sub-ascendancy too, replacing the Necromancer one. In that case, you will go for Path of the Shadow instead, slightly adjusting the passive tree (you will get the extra shadow start but not the witch one, so you will save only one "travel" node instead of two and you will be forced to sacrifice the 16% spell damage node at the witch left start).

Necromancer has skill duration and attack / cast speed bonuses, Guardian has extra ES, curse effectiveness, some physical mitigation and the huge ES regen every 5 seconds.

Small note: the gems are listed in order of importance.

6L (Body armour, RGGBBB): Vaal Blight | Controlled Destruction | Efficacy | Void Manipulation | Swift Affliction | Empower lvl 4 (expensive)
4S (Helmet, BBBB): Contagion | Faster Casting | Increased Area of Effect | Arcane Surge
4L (Boots, GBBB): Blasphemy | Temporal Chains | Enfeeble (or Despair*) | Discipline (or Vaal Discipline)
3L + 1S (Gloves, RBBB): Wither | Spell Totem | Faster Casting + Flesh Offering
3L (Spirit Shield, RGB): Clarity | Haste (or Vaal Haste) | Blood Magic
3L (Scepter, RRG): Shield Charge | Fortify | Faster Attacks
5L (Ring, B): Essence Drain | Controlled Destruction | Efficacy | Void Manipulation | Swift Affliction

*In the Ascendant build, you can choose between Enfeeble and Despair. If you feel you lack damage, use Despair. If you feel you lack survivability, use Enfeeble. In the Witch build, Flesh offering is replaced by Vaal Discipline or Vaal Lightning Trap, depending on your needs (VD = "oh shit" button,
VLT = some extra damage in boss fights).

Small note 2: 20 quality is NOT required on the following gems.

- Empower
- Haste
- Clarity
- Discipline
- Shield Charge
- Blood Magic

and obviously, it is not required on all ED supports because The Hungry Loop does not "eat" gems' quality.

Small note 3: the most important skill gems to get 20q on as soon as possible are by far Blight (and all its supports), Contagion, Essence Drain, Wither, Temporal Chains and Despair / Enfeeble.

Small note 4: the levels of Clarity and Arcane Surge have to be adjusted depending on your gear / preferences.

As a general rule, you want gear which has:

- ES / Life
- Resistances to cap at 75% the elemental ones in merciless (and to ideally overcap for Elemental Weakness maps, i.e. 109% elemental resistances after you defeat Act 10 Kitava) and to have positive chaos one (this is easily achieved if you own a Presence of Chayula).
- Some strength and dex, if you need them to make up with gear requirements (you should aim at 113 str to equip Breath of the Council and at 155 dex to use a lvl 20 Haste aura)
- Spell damage / Chaos damage (on shield, for example, or from essence crafts on rings)
- Cast Speed
- Mana / Life regeneration

Cast speed can be useful to boost clear speed, pick it if you find gear with it consider that it usually boosts the value / price of items by a significant margin. Consider it as a "luxury" when you get rich.

At start, your gear will be mostly rare with useful stats. Shavronne's Wrappings is by far your most important piece of gear to obtain, since it unlocks the lowlife option, but you can go with Solaris Lorica if you haven't got enough currencies for a Shav or even with a Skin of the Loyal + 2 Coruscating Elixirs if you are a big fan of easy deaths caused by bad flask management.

Best in slot gear

Weapon 1: Breath of the Council. It has amazing mods for the ED gameplay. It allows us to reach 15 Wither stacks without using Increased Duration support in the Wither setup, and it increases the duration of the Arcane Surge buff linked to Contagion. Best weapon by a large degree.



Shield: a rare Fossilized Spirit Shield. Try to get a spell damage mod on it and high ES / decent resistances.



Body Armour: Shavronne's Wrappings. No chance here, we are low life and this is a core item for the character.



Helmet: a rare Hubris Circlet with lots of ES and some resistances. Intellect on it is a luxury.



Boots: rare Sorcerer Boots with lots of ES, resistances and 30%+ movement speed. Movement speed is the absolute priority because it heavily impacts clear speed.



Gloves: rare Fingerless Silk Gloves with lots of ES and some resistances. Intellect on them is a luxury.



Amulet: Presence of Chayula. This thing is seriously OP for lowlife builds. Get one if you can and you'll easily understand why.



Ring 1: try to grab a rare ring with energy shield plus life and some resistances. The 20% faster start of energy shield recharge mod (by Leo) is the final goal you are going to obtain for endgame content, and ideally a super expensive ring with the right mods should have the chaos damage essence craft on it. Best bases for rings are Prismatic or Two-Stone, or even Unset if you want to add a Vaal Lightning Trap into the mix.



Ring 2: The Hungry Loop. This new ring is AMAZING, because it gives us a free 5-link setup in a ring slot. All we have to do is socketing level 19 (with ZERO quality) gems into it before they level to 20. Then, when they level up, the ring will "eat" them and form your 5L setup of preference. We fit our ED setup into this baby.



Belt: Bated Breath. Amazing ES, recharge and a bit of damage.



As a side note, this is my current gear in Standard League:

For Flasks, I highly recommend getting:

- 1 Sulphur Flask of Heat
- 1 Quicksilver flask of Adrenaline
- 1 Basalt flask of Staunching
- 1 Jade flask of Reflexes
- 1 Stibnite flask of Warding

and an anti-bleed mana flask of your choice (to use in the slot of the Basalt one) for no regen maps.

The Witch variant of this character uses a Witchfire Brew unique flask, too, instead of a magic Stibnite one to apply Despair without reserving more mana, and to have a nice damage over time boost during its effect. If you go for the Witch variant you should sacrifice the "Reflexes" suffix from the Jade flask to have all the required suffixes in the non-unique flask slots (Staunching, Warding, of Heat, of Adrenaline).

Important note: after Fall of Oriath, the Warding suffix of flasks temporarily removes map curses mods. This is amazing, especially in Temp Chains maps which usually hurt our clear speed a lot.

For Jewels, we have a lot of choices.

An unique jewel is recommended for survivability, since it boosts our ES slightly: Energy from Within. It has to be used in the jewel socket under the Melding cluster.

Another unique jewel, introduced in 3.1 (and dropped by The Elder), can be considered an amazing survivability booster: Watcher's Eye. Sadly it can be insanely expensive. The ideal combo to search for is the following one:

(30-40)% faster start of Energy Shield Recharge while affected by Discipline
You gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Kill while affected by Haste

The faster start is the absolute priority. Free onslaught on kill is an amazing clear speed boost, especially in the Scion version of the build.

Other possible good modifiers on Watcher's Eye are the following ones:

Gain (12-18)% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield while affected by Clarity
(5-8)% chance to Block Spells while affected by Discipline
(1.5-2.5)% of Maximum Energy Shield Regenerated per Second while affected by Discipline
(5-8)% chance to Dodge Spells while affected by Haste
You have Phasing while affected by Haste
Unaffected by Temporal Chains while affected by Haste


Our Scion scales with all of these damage stats you can find on jewels:

- Spell damage while holding a Shield
- Spell damage
- Chaos Damage
- Damage over time
- Damage

And ideally, you should aim at jewels with maximum energy shield on them. Keep in mind that good jewels with ES and damage stats are really expensive. Jewels are also a good way to fix resistance issues if you are short in some specific element.

For Enchantments, the choices are quite restrictive!

- Helmet: 40% increased Blight damage (single target) or 40% increased Essence Drain damage (clear speed).
- Boots: Regenerate 2% of Life and Mana per second if you have been hit recently
- Gloves: absolutely NO enchantment! We want to keep the Fingerless Silk Gloves' implicit as it is.

Kill ALL the bandits! We love Eramir for the 2 extra passive points.

All the Pantheon powers introduced in Fall of Oriath grant defensive bonuses to characters.

Our Ascendant can take decent benefits from some of them.

MAJOR GODS

We are stun immune, so Brine King power does nothing for us.
We have high chaos resistance and an anti bleed flask, so Arakaali power isn't that good.
The choice is between Lunaris and Solaris.

I personally go for Solaris. Single target fights in Oriath are much more dangerous when compared to mapping, and Solaris powers can be life-savers.

MINOR GODS

We are ES based, so Garukhan and Ryslatha powers do nothing for us.
We are reflect immune like all chaos damage based characters, so Yugul's power does nothing for us.
Ralakesh's power isn't that good, since we have an anti bleed flask and we don't mind being maimed or blinded, because we don't attack at all, we are spellcasters.
The choice is between Gruthkul, Shakari, Tukohama and Abberath.

I personally go for Abberath. The reduced ignite duration and the immunity to burning ground are huge bonuses for us. They come with a 5% reduced fire damage while moving, which is a good bonus too. Shakari can be used in poison maps if you want. Tukohama is also a possible choice for endgame content, since you are going to use Blight a lot and being stationary becomes a larger portion of the fight.

LEVELING GUIDE IS GETTING REWORKED, I'LL UPDATE IT WHEN I CAN

In the meanwhile, you can follow some really good advice by Jkurs.

As you know, in the leveling process, you should go for the Labyrinth 4 times to achieve your Ascendant subclass and all the Ascendancy points. This should be the order:

- Normal ascension: take the intelligence / dexterity node and the passive point in the Shadow zone.
- Cruel ascension: take the Trickster sub-spec and the intellect node in the Witch zone.
- Merciless ascension: take the passive point in the Witch zone and the Necromancer sub-spec.
- Uber Lab ascension: take the extra passive point in the Witch zone and the Path of the Witch sub-spec.

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMAAQMeBAcEswceCPQOSBEtES8RUBGWE20UCRZvFr8abBzcH0EfxyL0JKomiCaVKworeCycLYsy0TW5Nj026TpYPAU9X0J6RKtFR0WdSVFJsUyzUlNSr1NSVUtVrlXGXEBd8mHiYqxn_GjyadhqQ2qMbAtsjG0ZdZ52gnpwfIN88H6hf8aCEIIeg9uFMofLiEKPGo-mj_qRB5MnlS6XlZf0muCdqp_foS-iAKLZpyunm6yYrUqw2LTRtQS1SLcwu0286r6KwFTAZsHFyAzIFM8V0B_VptfP2wvdX9-w42rkIutj6-7vfO-I7-vwH_DV9W_3wffX-Tc=