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

I have painted my Shav's with a one red socket. Iam lazy to do it again for Decay which is blue.
I think, tomorrow I will be able to buy the Empower 3. Now my 5L-set ED with 19/20% gems show me 10688 attak dps and 35K DoT. My level is 91 now (no Pain Attunement, no 3 points to Occultist Dominion, and 4p to Primal Spirit).

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_SP_ wrote:

I have painted my Shav's with a one red socket. Iam lazy to do it again for Decay which is blue.
I think, tomorrow I will be able to buy the Empower 3. Now my 5L-set ED with 19/20% gems show me 10688 attak dps and 35K DoT. My level is 91 now (no Pain Attunement, no 3 points to Occultist Dominion, and 4p to Primal Spirit).

You absolutely need Pain Attunement (and then Arcane Vision), which is the whole point of going low life. The dps increase is huge.

What's ur opinion in terms of +3 staff? Ofc we would lose some ES, but can we say that increase of our damage is worth it?

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Xenhil wrote:

What's ur opinion in terms of +3 staff? Ofc we would lose some ES, but can we say that increase of our damage is worth it?

The damage gain would be great, but the survivability loss would be great too. We are talking about a ~1500 ES loss if going without a good spirit shield.

And we have to take into account the loss of Shield Charge and Breath of the Council too, which forces us to go for a 4L Wither to cap stacks at 20, spending an extra socket for Increased Duration and losing Vaal Lightning Trap (or Vaal Discipline).

Hey, lovely guide, thanks for the hard work :D
I would like your opinion on something though. I am leveling as a full life character, do you think it's worth to go for mind over matter and a few mana nodes? Also thinking about taking the necromancer ascendancy first and respeccing into occultist when I swap to LL(the ES bonus on occultist just seem wasted on my char atm).
Would love your insight on this.

Hello
Cool build and great guide. Have you tried using Allelopathy gloves, if so is it any good?

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djnat wrote:

You absolutely need Pain Attunement (and then Arcane Vision), which is the whole point of going low life. The dps increase is huge.

I'm confused. Is it possible without Chauyla's amulet? I'm playing on Harbinger League. There are no 100500c orbs in a stash like Standart. I have to spend a week or more to do mining about 450c for Chayula if I suddenly do not get lucky with a drop of something valuable to sell.

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fisheyz wrote:

Hey, lovely guide, thanks for the hard work :D
I would like your opinion on something though. I am leveling as a full life character, do you think it's worth to go for mind over matter and a few mana nodes? Also thinking about taking the necromancer ascendancy first and respeccing into occultist when I swap to LL(the ES bonus on occultist just seem wasted on my char atm).
Would love your insight on this.

Mind over matter is pretty strong if you go life based and have a decent unreserved mana pool. If you go MoM, I highly recommend not using any curse on blasphemy or one at maximum, since the life / unreserved mana ratio has to be 7/3 to take full advantage from the MoM mitigation effect. The Trickster sub-ascendancy is very powerful in that case, because the extra regen provided is huge and increases survivability by a lot.

As to the Occultist vs Necromancer sub-ascendancy matter, the Occultist gives an extraordinary damage buff because of the -15% to cursed enemies' chaos resistance. Even if going life based, that is still the best DPS trait you can get. I'd go for Occultist all the time.



@yeknod: I have discussed the Allelopathy matter on Ghazzy's thread some days ago.

I don't like Allelopathy for a number of reasons.

1. They provide bad ES when compared to Sorcerer / Fingerless silk rare gloves
2. They provide no resistances, so they make the resistance requirement of the other rare items of our gear heavier and so they can become really expensive, especially rings
3. They work at full potential only if using 2x Spreading Rot threshold jewels. This lowers our ES even more, because we have to remove two rare jewels (potentially 16% max ES) to fit them in
4. Blight's hinder mechanics are pretty absurd. When you cast Blight on a target, it is hindered for a duration which is NOT refreshed if you continue channelling the skill. The hinder can be reapplied only when the Blight damage debuff expires and you recast a new one. This means that the threshold jewels' effect (25% +25% increased chaos damage taken from targets hindered by Blight) only lasts for a couple of seconds, then it's gone. To summarize, the Allelopathy + dual threshold jewels combo is good only when you need a massive aoe burst of damage (for example, at Shaper's adds), and very bad in fights which last more than 6-7 seconds, i.e. pretty all high tier bosses, guardians, Atziri, council and whatever.
5. The damage of Blight is very good if you self cast it, but this forces into a quasi-melee playstyle which I don't personally like. ED is a ranged spell, and one of its main strengths is the mobility it provides: you can still do damage to monsters / bosses while moving. If you want to channel Blight you lose both the mobile and ranged components which this build is based on. You can use a Blight totem, but you lose Wither then and have to cast it manually, so you can be ranged, but still forced to channel to reach the full damage potential.

From a mathematical point of view I don't even think that Allelopathy are a damage boost on long fights. This, coupled with the playstyle change, discourages me from using those gloves. The ED playstyle already requires to keep an eye on three debuffs (ED, Contagion, Wither) and one buff (Arcane Surge). Throwing Blight into this mix results in a DPS loss in long fights, which are the only challenging thing in this game for a well-geared ED character.


@ _SP_ : you can go lowlife even without presence of Chayula. You can use a regular Eye of Chayula which provides stun immunity, and use the same aura / curse setup described in the build. Presence of Chayula is a fantastic upgrade when you get the currencies to acquire it and incrases the survivability a LOT (+60% chaos res, a lot of more ES when compared to the Eye of Chayula), but as you said, it's very expensive this league. To give you an idea, if I switch amulets on my character, I have 8.5k ES with Eye of Chayula and over 10k with Presence. The upgrade from Presence is so high that it justifies the cost. It's like getting a Kaom's body armour on a life based character, it makes your EHP skyrocket.

What about Voidwalker? I'd really like the pierce and the phasing at times could come really handy but the ES loss is too damn much compared to some decent sorcerer boots.

Voidwalker are BIS for us, no other boots can even come close. It's written in the main post of the guide. :)