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

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fubgun wrote:

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djnat wrote:

Guide updated as requested with the new Pantheon section!

Enjoy. :)

Did you add the boss timers as well or is that still being worked on?

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WaveofShadow wrote:

Back again with more extremely noobish questions! (Hope yall don't mind)
Sitting at around lvl 70 now having just completed Merc lab. All is mostly well and good, I'm sitting at just under 19k tooltip with Surge active and damage is ridiculous.

Problem is, I am the squishiest squish that ever squished. I'm at 1.5k life and 4k ES but if anything ever looks at me the wrong way, I keel over. I haven't really begun to collect enough Chaos to put together the really important gear for the build, but should I REALLY be this much of a glass cannon?

Problems I have identified (but I don't know if they are the root cause):

1) I don't have Temporal Chains active yet - reason for this being 2x curses is the furthest point away in the passive tree right now. I'm working towards it but since dying as frequently as I do affects clear speed (lol) should I be removing some points from damage elsewhere in the tree (since it seems I have tons to spare) to get there first and fill in the damage after? (Probably also know the answer to this already, but is Hex Master ever worth it to increase the radius at which stuff is weaker to me?)

2) Aforementioned 'good gear' issues. My resistances are decent enough as far as I can tell but aside from trying to procure BiS stuff, what should I be looking for? (And how to go about getting there?)

3) Haven't been using Shield Charge (as my best weapon is a wand right now). Is having this a movement skill with Fortify really a boost to survivability? Should I also be trying to fix my play pattern, pick up a scepter and work on that?

Couple sub-questions.

I find despite having almost 4k ES it gets eaten through instantly and having more life that I could HP flask through helps keep alive better (or at least did when my HP was a little higher). Are the points in the skill tree that offer quicker START to ES worth it (ie Essence Surge)? Because otherwise no matter how fast my ES recharges I feel like it doesn't START recharging fast enough.

How the hell do you afford anything good in this game? Trying to sell anything on PoE.trade is pure hell and takes forever, and I never find anything worth more than a couple chaos anyway.

Sorry about that bombardment, hopefully you knowledgeable people can help me out a little? My build should be opn to view (I think) so anything at all would be helpful.
Thanks a ton guys!

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fubgun wrote:

Did you add the boss timers as well or is that still being worked on?

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xerofite wrote:

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WaveofShadow wrote:

Blah blah blah a bunch of stuff

1. Temporal chains does help a lot when managing mobs. It also affects the duration of your Essence Drain/Contagion making it so you have more time to do other things (like dodge). Hex Master is a pretty good node, but there isn't really a whole need for it to increase the radius of your curses. The whole reason it'd be decent is for the curse effectiveness, since on bosses your curses get a big hit in effectiveness against them. A second curse is amazing for this build, in a lot of ways, I prefer Temporal chains over Enfeeble because not only does it slow their movement it slows their attacks causing you to react easier when in danger. Enfeeble is still really nice to have since it does reduce damage, crit damage, and accuracy. I ran Temporal chains before I had 2 curses. I did make a post a couple pages back where it outlined what your tree might look like during your leveling process. Maybe take a look and see where you might be to help improve your experience.

2. As for gear, what you really need are mid to high tier Energy shield pieces. It can be a pain to try and craft these pieces on your own, your best bet would be to look on poe trade for ES pieces that have atleast 120+ ES on everything + resists. Boots should always have movement speed. Your helmet, should have 200+ ES + resists. Rings should have resists + ES. Your ammy, should have % inc ES + resists. Here's an example from my character running this build:

Spoiler

My ring I sacrificed some ES for the chaos resistance. I bought most of this stuff for about 4-5c each. My gloves being the exception would cost me 15c, but you can get a pretty comparable pair for probably 7ish chaos. I also strongly recommend a Lori's Lantern.

If you aren't low life yet, hold off on it. This ring is absolutely amazing. This ring makes mobs roll twice when hitting you and it takes the lowest damaging hit from those rolls. This + enfeeble makes you a lot tankier from my experience. Not to mention it has chaos resistance + move speed + ele resistances. It's pretty cheap and If I recall you can get a max roll one for probably 5c or less.

3. Fortify is pretty amazing because it gives 20% reduced damage taken from hits. Anything that hits you does 20% reduced damage! Fortify definitely helps for survivability reasons. You can probably find a dagger with decent attack speed + spell damage and run it with a shield and use shield charge(shield charge goes faster the higher your attack speed + movement speed is and daggers have high base atk speeds). A shield + a wand wont allow for it. If you run temporal chains, you can easily shield charge in and out of mobs without too much risk of taking a lot of damage so you can apply the fortify buff.

I would say the core playstyle of this build is that you should never be stationary. You need to really move around a lot while throwing out contagion + essence drain. You shouldnt be getting hit that often, and if you are then you should consider getting some flasks that help mitigate hits (like a jade/granite/quarts/basalt flask). This is not a facetank build, you should try to avoid any direct hit as much as possible.

I took a look at your character and off glance, there are a few things I've noticed. Your helmet has pretty low ES and no resistances at all. A lot of your gear is lacking in resistances + good ES. Your gloves aren't bad, but you need to upgrade your shield + your helmet. If you got a shield with at least 200 ES and a helmet with at least 200 ES that will definitely be a start. as for your wand, you should swap it out with

This item gives you a lot more bang for your buck and its only 1c right now on poetrade + it allows you to use shield charge for fortify. Ideally, you'd want to get a breath of the council and not worry about your weapon at all, but I can see that you're probably under a tight budget.

Poetrade can be fickle, cant really help you there. Just takes a know how to really understand what would sell and what wouldnt. Trial and error! Understanding the current meta right now helps a ton. Selling stuff with High life rolls + high resistances will most likely always sell for something. If you find a wand with + flat lightning to attacks to it those sell for at least 10c depending on if the lightning roll is around 100 or so.

I'd like to note that this build relies heavily on going low life, if you can get your other pieces of gear in line with your es, you could try getting a solaris lorica until you can afford a shavs, they are usually pretty cheap. No doubt, if you arent low life yet, things will be rough.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ hope I helped!

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Good guide! If I wanted to swap to a CI build for the Occultist set up, do I just drop Pain Attunement for CI?

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WaveofShadow wrote:

(Also another question---should I not be leveling arcane surge? I think I read that somewhere in the guide but can't remember where, and now I realize that while leveling raises the amount of bonus I get, it's certainly harder to activate at levels like 17. Should I be keeping it at 11-12?)

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djnat wrote:

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Good guide! If I wanted to swap to a CI build for the Occultist set up, do I just drop Pain Attunement for CI?

Yes, you can remove Pain Attunement and arcane Vision and take CI.

You will also replace Presence of Chayula with the classic Eye of Chayula and Shavronne's Wrappings with a well-rolled Vaal Regalia.

If you go CI you lose Clarity and Haste auras, together with 30% DPS. It's a huge loss, don't expect to have the same performances of the lowlife setup. :)