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

Despair is a new Intelligence gem that will replace existing copies of Vulnerability. It reduces Chaos Resistance, increases Damage over Time taken, and grants added Chaos Damage to hits against cursed enemies. (This gem isn't counted as one of the ten new ones in 3.1.0).

I think this one is pretty nice for this build so that leaves Temporal chain or enfeeble to pass?

After about three weeks of pausing, I'm back to PoE and ready for the new league!

I'll update the guide before 3.1.0 comes out with the new things that need to be mentioned:

1. Despair curse seems to be good. We have to see the numbers to fully evaluate it, but it will be used in the Occultist version thanks to Witchfire Brew and it can be used in place of Enfeeble in the Ascendant version if damage seems more lackluster than survivability. We still have to consider that in endgame fights (Shaper, Guardians and probably Elder / Guardians) all curses have 80% LESS effectiveness.

2. Wither nerf is pretty heavy. It accounts for abount 20% LESS ED damage, which is terrible. Hopefully the new Shaped / Elder items will compensate for it.

3. A lifebased Shadow Trickster version could be deployed in the future (and added in this thread like the Witch Occultist one). The new 3.1 chaos staff seems very promising for an ED + Contagion + Blight hybrid character, especially when comboed with Mind over Matter and The Aylardex.


Stay tuned!

Build updated for 3.1!

I explained the changes, as usual, in the "build background and evolution over leagues" section.

Passive tree links seem to work for the new league. If you experience some issues for those links or the pastebin ones for PoB, please post in this thread so I can fix them.

Enjoy. :)

Is it viable to use new Spell Cascade support on Contagion instead of improved area of effect?

I was considering going with this build as my 2nd char in abyss after I get some currency, the nerfs vs single target are pretty disappointing.

Another poster just wrote here in the scion section a pretty interesting ED build with the raider sub-ascendancy - going for frenzy charges should help vs single target (plus general speed in mapping) right? Theoretically it could be an additional 16%-20% more multiplier. Not much but at this point I guess every little thing helps…

Do we have the sockets for the OOS setup in a LL build though?
[edit: well it could work well using it as a swap for contagion]
In any case seems more interesting than trickster sub-ascendancy, which really looks sub-par to me.

On a related note, has anyone ‘mathed’ the damage differential between going MoM plus a skin of the loyal/+1 tabula vs going LL (excluding +1 shav’s ridiculousness)? The currency investment is massively different…

"

Trumbettoo wrote:

Is it viable to use new Spell Cascade support on Contagion instead of improved area of effect?

I still have to test this possibility. Probably it's a good solution for the clearspeed.

"

unciuchino wrote:

I was considering going with this build as my 2nd char in abyss after I get some currency, the nerfs vs single target are pretty disappointing.

Another poster just wrote here in the scion section a pretty interesting ED build with the raider sub-ascendancy - going for frenzy charges should help vs single target (plus general speed in mapping) right? Theoretically it could be an additional 16%-20% more multiplier. Not much but at this point I guess every little thing helps…

Do we have the sockets for the OOS setup in a LL build though?
[edit: well it could work well using it as a swap for contagion]
In any case seems more interesting than trickster sub-ascendancy, which really looks sub-par to me.

On a related note, has anyone ‘mathed’ the damage differential between going MoM plus a skin of the loyal/+1 tabula vs going LL (excluding +1 shav’s ridiculousness)? The currency investment is massively different…

The only problem with the raider ascendancy is that generating frenzy charges on bosses is ULTRA SLOW, even if you use Orb of Storms and spam ED bullets on a boss you still have to wait an obscene amount of time to max frenzies.

I agree with you that the single target nerfs are really terrible, probably we will be forced to use the Allelopathy + Blight combo even when going low life. The problem would be in gem slots avalaiblity, since the gloves require a full Blight setup to work properly. Maybe we will have to sacrifice a ring slot to get the new ring which "eats" support gems and so we get a 4-5 link back to fit the contagion setup in.

When going for Blight, Voidwalker's pierce wouldn't be necessary anymore, so we could use some extra ES / resists boots like rare sorcerer ones.

The difference between MoM and Low life at the moment is huge if we talk about pure Essence Drain damage. MoM has an easier time to fit Allelopathy in the setup because it doesn't have to use 3 dedicated sockets to reach the lowlife threshold (Clarity / Discipline / Blood magic). If you compare the possible BiS gear for both iterations of the build, the EHP numbers are better when going low life, and if you can use Blight as low life the damage is still way better than any life based build because the pain attunement multiplier is pretty damn good.

Hi again,

just wanted to say that spell cascade works well (at least for me) when applying contagion as it covers whole screen and a bit more with 2 casts.

Furthermore, on most builds I see that Hex master is not taken. As this build runs 2 curses and you get 15% more damage on cursed enemy, I find it pretty invaluable. Enfeeble and temporal chains are strong defensive curses which significantly increase my survival and having them affect as much enemies as possible…I dont know. For being 3 points you get lots of defense via those curses. Not to mention casters and ranged are usually bit father away.

"

Trumbettoo wrote:

Hi again,

just wanted to say that spell cascade works well (at least for me) when applying contagion as it covers whole screen and a bit more with 2 casts.

Furthermore, on most builds I see that Hex master is not taken. As this build runs 2 curses and you get 15% more damage on cursed enemy, I find it pretty invaluable. Enfeeble and temporal chains are strong defensive curses which significantly increase my survival and having them affect as much enemies as possible…I dont know. For being 3 points you get lots of defense via those curses. Not to mention casters and ranged are usually bit father away.

The problem with hex master is the strong reduction of curse effectiveness at endgame bosses.

Curses have 80% LESS effect at guardians / shaper and 60% LESS effect at Atziri / map bosses.

The spell cascade idea is nice, I'll test it in the weekend! Thanks for reporting. :)

Hi, u seem to be the most dedicated Ed Player.

I wanted to Play Ed this league and wondering wich build to use:
Oculist LL/CI ?
Trickster MoM?
Scrion with Oculist +Raider/Deadeye/Trickster?

I want to be able to kill Bosses and have a decent clearspeed.
Can u add a in-depth section in the Guide for the different class choices?

I´m rly excited toplay ED :D - always wanted to !