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

Scion / Ascendant is more focused about damage and clear speed. If you want to get more survivability, Witch / Occultist is the way to go and I advise you to choose her for hardcore because she has one of the most powerful survivability tools in the whole game: Wicked Ward (especially if coupled with the Leo ring enchants).

As to Shav, you can go for Solaris Lorica if you want a cheap starting alternative but Shav should be the first serious upgrade of the build once you get the currencies for it.

Starting as life based is pretty necessary, then you have to respec the extra life nodes which are needed to level up comfortably with the free respec points and eventually some regrets.

The passive tree should be rearranged a bit if you go Witch Occultist, the gear is the same.

On request, I deployed a Witch Occultist version of my Ascendant. I am going to add the following links to the main post of this guide too. It's more oriented to defense, but the damage is still very high thanks to the Occultist tools (Void Beacon is amazing).

It's probably better for Hardcore bossing purposes, while the Scion excels at mapping. Witch, btw, is a bit more complicated to gear up, because she needs a bit more resists from the gear to get Ele Weakness overcapped. Probably renouncing to the essence chaos damage craft on ring(s) and getting some extra resistances from jewels would be the best option to regain those missing resistances without having to search for mirror-like gear in every slot.

The clearspeed should be faster with the Scion if the problematic interaction between Profane bloom and Contagion persists in Fall of Oriath.


This is the Witch Occultist passive tree:

http://poeurl.com/bpgA

As you can see, it's more defense-oriented, taking Essence Surge which is fantastic when combined with the Wicked Ward ascendancy. And it takes the full Alchemist cluster to take advantage from the fact that we can run three curses (thanks to Malediction), adding Witchfire Brew and Vulnerability to the mix.


This is the Path of Building pastebin link to import the full build.

https://pastebin.com/xX2xGUL7


Enjoy!

And happy Fall of Oriath! :)

Hey Djnat

Loved this build in 2.5, waited until 3.0 to try it again... unfortunately I see the build has changed to low life.

Will you update the guide at all to go back to a life-based build for the scion? I get that having the Shavs is great, but I'm just tired of playing low life.

If you manage to figure something out for a life-based build, can you update? I'd appreciate it, as I definitely want to use your build again! Thanks so much for making all of these!

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Twistntie wrote:

Hey Djnat

Loved this build in 2.5, waited until 3.0 to try it again... unfortunately I see the build has changed to low life.

Will you update the guide at all to go back to a life-based build for the scion? I get that having the Shavs is great, but I'm just tired of playing low life.

If you manage to figure something out for a life-based build, can you update? I'd appreciate it, as I definitely want to use your build again! Thanks so much for making all of these!

Hello Twistntie!

I don't plan to play a lifebased version of ED at the moment. I don't like MoM on non-leeching characters (and ED does not leech), unless you plan to make a clever use of Eldritch Battery too.

Fact is, ED lost a ton of single target potential with the removal of double dipping mechanics and with the change to the projectile damage scaling (ED doesn't scale anymore with it). We have to regain part of that potential from Pain Attunement + Arcane Surge + the ED base damage buff. Going lifebased cuts both the damage (no pain attunement) and the clearspeed (you can't use Haste aura which is AMAZING to clear maps faster). The new 3.0 Contagion is fantastic: the radius is immense when compared to 2.6, and the buff to its cast time makes mapping a lot smoother.

And Efficacy support is really good. It compensates the loss of Slower Projectiles, by adding even more duration to the ED dot without cutting the bullet speed. :)

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I don't plan to play a lifebased version of ED at the moment. I don't like MoM on non-leeching characters (and ED does not leech), unless you plan to make a clever use of Eldritch Battery too.

Fact is, ED lost a ton of single target potential with the removal of double dipping mechanics and with the change to the projectile damage scaling (ED doesn't scale anymore with it). We have to regain part of that potential from Pain Attunement + Arcane Surge + the ED base damage buff. Going lifebased cuts both the damage (no pain attunement) and the clearspeed (you can't use Haste aura which is AMAZING to clear maps faster). The new 3.0 Contagion is fantastic: the radius is immense when compared to 2.6, and the buff to its cast time makes mapping a lot smoother.

And Efficacy support is really good. It compensates the loss of Slower Projectiles, by adding even more duration to the ED dot without cutting the bullet speed. :)

Thanks so much for the useful information. I like the build too much to not play it because it's lowlife, so I'll just suck it up! You're great at this theorycrafting stuff, I'm looking forward to any updates in the main guide. Thanks for the explanation!

I did some testing in a 41% more life Chimera map.

Fight is SUPER EASY when compared to pre-Oriath.

This is my current ED tooltip on my Standard Ascendant (I still have to finish leveling Efficacy, currently lvl 11/20q, and I still have to divine my BotC to 100% chaos dmg).




One interesting thing to note is that Breath of the Council is SUPER BIS for this build, for an additional reason: it increases all the duration effects of chaos spells, INCLUDING the duration of Arcane Surge attached to Contagion. With BotC equipped and all the duration passives in place, Arcane Surge buff lasts 7.6 seconds, thus making easy to have a 100% uptime (Contagion cost is 51 mana, you stop leveling Arcane Surge at level 12 so you refresh its buff every 2 contagion casts).

Please note that my ES is over 10k (I have the Elreon legacy ES% crafts on both rings, but I still have to take 35% increased ES from the tree which is about the same value), and my gear is FAR from a mirror-level one, especially the shield.

When I get more time for testing, I'll update more info.

Enjoy!

I want to test this build on harbinguer league, how about leveling guide? I want to know how to level tree on lower lvls (lvl 30, lvl 50, lvl 70 trees?) and any help for to leveling is nice too ^^.

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danireySvQ91 wrote:

I want to test this build on harbinguer league, how about leveling guide? I want to know how to level tree on lower lvls (lvl 30, lvl 50, lvl 70 trees?) and any help for to leveling is nice too ^^.

I have to arrange a leveling guide for Oriath, since leveling is a lot harder than before now.

I suppose you can level as life based until you reach a comfortable ES pool to switch CI (it's pretty easy to get decent ES low level items now) - then you just continue leveling as CI until you can afford a Shav and can go low life.

I am quite busy with the new league, when I get some time I'll update a leveling guide for this new ED 3.0 build. :)

Please, help me.

How do start sub-tree from Witch domain? I have finished Cruel-lab today and I will want to get Spell Damage nodes (straight to Occultist's Dominion) in passive tree.

https://pastebin.com/v0Errhhe

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_SP_ wrote:

Please, help me.

How do start sub-tree from Witch domain? I have finished Cruel-lab today and I will want to get Spell Damage nodes (straight to Occultist's Dominion) in passive tree.

https://pastebin.com/v0Errhhe

You need at least the merciless lab to get the second start (from witch tree) because it requires 5 ascendancy points spent to get Path of the Witch.