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

Alright, thanks for the thorough answer.

Just curious now if I'm still on the right track for how the build should be performing (can't really find a VOD to compare to).

I'm LL with 6k ES, 42kish ED DoT on tooltip.

I find I still get one-shot by certain things, and I still feel pretty damn squishy. Boss DPS seems OK but is nothing special, and I find kiting while trying to dodge AoE and fire off a missile often simply gets me killed if I misstep even a little.

Is this how the build is supposed to be performing at my gear level? Obviously the next big upgrade is Chayulas but that's gonna be a while, and it certainly won't bring me over 9 or 10k.

Djnat are ES levels like yours only possible with the standard legacy gear you're running? Is there something else I'm overlooking?

Thanks

Standard ES levels are impossible to replicate in the new league, but keep in mind that, as to your current character:

- You are still level 87, and my Standard Character is higher (and has zero mirrorworthy items btw)
- You are missing 6L
- You are missing Presence of Chayula
- You are missing all the jewel sockets, since you have no Energy from Within and no good jewels for this build
- You are missing quality and levels from most gems
- You are missing real ES gear, especially your shield is very bad, the only items you are wearing that can considered semi-good (apart from uniques, of course) are your right ring and the Hubris Circlet
- Lori's Lantern is a good starter ring, but it's far from being an endgame solution because it has zero ES and recharge on it


My girlfriend is playing this build in Harbinger League and she has 8750 ES at the moment (she has Presence of Chayula of course), still with some improvements to do in her gear. She has done all corrupted guardian maps to unlock them in the Atlas deathless, so her ES level can be considered quite "comfortable" to face the endgame content of PoE. I am not surprised that you feel squishy with 6000 ES, since it is a pretty low value which does not fully protect you from high damage spikes which sometimes happen in red maps. 9000+ is definitely obtainable in this league, 10k+ can be really expensive but still doable if you play a lot.

As to the damage matter, 42k is nice for a 5L with your current gem levels. Every additional level you gain on ED is an upgrade of about 11% DPS, so considering that in the endgame you'll aim at a level 24 ED (21 from the corrupted gem, +3 from lvl 4 empower), you'll have a 55% upgrade. And this does not count the levels and quality you are missing from ED's support gems and the damage you can gain from good jewels and passives from the tree. My standard ED is near to 120k dot damage with flasks and surge up, so you can have an idea of the build's scaling in the endgame. :)

Equipping a character for the endgame is an intense process, but it has a nice ramp up which I've always found pretty satisfying.

"

djnat wrote:

@ _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.

Thanks for advice. Thanks for build. After spending a couple of hours in the "Path of Building" yesterday I have decided to stay at HL for a while. Swapping an amulet to the Eye of Chayula and a belt to the Breath (also change 2 passives for the Pain Attunement nodes) gives me same ES amount (6393 exactly) with 71 unreserved Life. With my current belt and amulet a HL pool is 8200 total. My main goal now is leveling without catching one-shots and etc.
And finally I bought the Empower 3. So I have enough DPS to do that:

Here is my first ever Chayula kill, I did it with this build: click

The lack of guides on the internet about the encounter is mostly the cause of so many deaths in the video. On most videos I see on youtube people get in and kill him in like 2 secs with BF or some other bullshit spec while ED requires some proper kiting.

Now that I know how the fight works I did few more runs today and didn't die once. I'll probably do more runs later today or tomorrow so I can upload a deathless kill. I'll do Shaper too if someone is interested.

On a side note, I finally convinced myself to try the Voidwalkers boots and damn I love them! The clear speed for maps is AWESOME!

At this point, after having experienced all endgame content I can say this is a very satisfying build, yes it doesn't trivialize bosses like many other builds do nowadays but that's a plus for me, I like to play the game this way. Thanks Djnat for sharing this awesome build, hope you guys are having as much fun as me playing it!

What is the source of recharging ES when hit? Just dodge attacks and wait for recharging? I have 8.3K ES and can clear T15 map without dying. But sometimes unique bosses with more damage or vulnerability are very lethal to me.
Counting on Zealot's Oath in the sorrow of the divine may be unstable in some times.

Also I get annoyed when I meet rare monsters having 'Allies cannot die', surrounded by trash monsters. Without phasing in Voidwalker, sweeping them is so frustrating. Is there any tips?

U da bes

Thanks for your post this is exactly what I needed to hear because I just feel like I've hit a bit of a wall. I can clear T12 decently well but I often die if a rogue exile sneezes at me or something.

I really didn't realize my rares were that bad, I guess it's just a grind now until I can buy what I need to really up the ES and gem quality etc.

Also wow I missed energy from within in the guide. What an awesome gem for this build. I assume it double dips on the health/ES nodes?

Hi!

First time ive tried Essence Drain and youre guide called to me! Just finished the levelling grind through the acts and managed to skint myself with the gear i have, what would you recommend i upgrade on my gear first? As i know its far from perfect.

@ Erith25: congrats on your first Chayula kill!

Chayula fight is not easy the first time you do it. Some deaths are expected especially if you don't know his combat mechanics, but once you get used to em, it's not too hard. It's a lot of fun, that's for sure.

Did you take ZO from the passive tree spending some extra points? In the video I see you are not using the SotD flask.

And yes, Voidwalker are the best boots for us by a LARGE degree. For both offensive and defensive reasons.



@ duocapo: with this character you can recover ES in three ways:

1. ES regeneration. 1% is coming from the Occultist sub-ascendancy, 0.5% of your ED dot component is coming from the SotD flask.

2. ES recharge. After you stop taking damage for a while, your ES starts recovering authomatically until it's full or you take damage again.

3. Vaal Discipline. It's a sort of panic button which starts your ES recharge immediately and makes it unstoppable, even if you take damage, for the duration of the buff.



@ WaveOfShadow: Energy from Within converts all the life nodes in radius into ES nodes. So if you place it near to the melding cluster you gain 6% ES from the jewel itself (if perfect-rolled) and additional 15% ES from the life converted. A total of 21% ES from a single jewel is pure gold.


@ Celestriel: 6L on the Shav seems the "obviously" best upgrade you can get for your gear. Apart from that, the ES value on your Hubris and Gloves isn't optimal, and you should search for something better in the future.

As to your rings, their ES is already very good, and instead of the life craft from Elreon, I'd go for the faster start of ES recharge by Leo.

Last "marginal" upgrades can be getting a spell damage roll on the spirit shield and the ED enchantment on the helmet.

Happy farming!

Long time no chat Dj :). Just a quicky as I know you're the ED guru - with SSF in mind (Empower Lvl 2 still after failed dream vaal), for the 6th Link I've seen multiple suggestions (from within this thread and others) in the way of; Decay, Poison (single target), Pierce (QoL) and Decreased Duration.

Verdict in 3.0 while saving or leveling the Empower 3/4?