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

Occultist Witch has the worst clearing speed because Profane bloom often interrupts the ED spreading via Contagion, thus forcing to recast the Contagion + ED combo to kill the remaining mobs. That's why Occultist got a C in the clearspeed section.

Occultist, on the other hand, offers the best boss gameplay as to damage + survivability combined.

I make an ED character every league, so I guess the answer to your last question is yes. ;)

I'm gonna try the Ascendant build, however I want to try and start with absolutely nothing (Start fresh). Any advice how to finish Act 10 fast and start doing mapping?
Would prefer some item which is easy to get. No unique or hard to get items.
I really hope that a leveling guide for a fresh league character would be in your guide.

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tesun wrote:

I'm gonna try the Ascendant build, however I want to try and start with absolutely nothing (Start fresh). Any advice how to finish Act 10 fast and start doing mapping?
Would prefer some item which is easy to get. No unique or hard to get items.
I really hope that a leveling guide for a fresh league character would be in your guide.

As you can see, if you are trying to make a league starter character who relies on self-found items, the best solution is probably following one of the ED Trickster's guides in the shadow section.

My build (both the Ascendant and Occultist versions) is low-life, so it relies on some items to work properly (especially Shavronne's Wrappings, The Hungry Loop and Presence of Chayula).

If you want to try leveling this build as your first league character with zero resources / currencies, be warned that it may be really difficult to play at higher levels (especially after act 8). Not impossible, but really difficult until you can get the key items.

do you play a LL Blight/ED as your first fresh league character?
or you play other build and then play the LL Blight/ED as your second character on a fresh league?
what build would your first character be for a fresh league? Trickster ED/blight life based build?
FYI, I don't play SSF, only softcore.

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tesun wrote:

do you play a LL Blight/ED as your first fresh league character?
or you play other build and then play the LL Blight/ED as your second character on a fresh league?
what build would your first character be for a fresh league? Trickster ED/blight life based build?
FYI, I don't play SSF, only softcore.

You can technically play most any build from the start (in Softcore) but some will obviously be way better than others.

The absolute "top" will always be Summoner Solar Guard / Totem fire dudes (forget name). With all garbage self found gear it can clear T15's and with some VERY small investments you can do all content.

Solar Guard is up in the Top clear speeds for grinding XP and such. You can basically shield charge everywhere and drag your minions around with you and they'll just auto kill everything. The totem guys aren't as fast but they melt bosses much faster for higher end maps.

AND, with the new summoner unique items (specifically a helm) you can run them pretty early unlike in older patches. Also the new quality of life patch that allows you to summon whatever you want wherever you ware and current zone level makes it so easy!

Hello there, it's my first character. I'm at the act 8 and it's going pretty well so far. But i have a question.

I'm about to take the ballistic mastery and the primal spirit nodes in the talent tree. I just find those not really adapted to the build right ?

Ballistic mastery is totally useless for us right ? does projectile work for ED ?
So does primal spirit justfies so much point "wasted" ?

thank you for the build, i can't wait to reach the end game hehe.

Primal spirit gives a fuckton of mana, regen, strength, intelligence and extra flask charges. A very required node in my playstyle. You'll easily understand why when you get to endgame map tiers and content. Consider that we go low life in the endgame, so we use 5 utility flasks. We also take the whole Alchemist cluster to boost them, so the extra charges are super important to focus on a near to 100% uptime while mapping, especially in maps with reduced charges gained.

Ballistic mastery gives dexterity and projectile speed (it makes easier to aim the ED bullet). The projectile damage only scales the initial ED hit, but not the DoT component. It's still a good talent.

Since we super need the whole Charisma cluster, having both Ballistic Mastery and Primal Spirit costs 4 points.

With those 4 points we get a total of:

30 dexterity
20 intelligence
20 strength
15% increased ED initial hit damage
20% extra projectile speed
23% increased maximum mana
20% increased mana regeneration rate
20% extra flask charges

that's a bunch of stats and utilities for 4 points only. You won't regret getting them!

I was just a bit skeptical because for now i have absolutely no mana problem, espcecially thanks to clarity.

I was also wondering indeed if the ED travel time was concerned or not. A good thing it is, cuz i think it's kinda slow for now.

Thank you for the quick and detailed response. I understand a bit more now. Two more acts to go ! :D

EDIT : I was thinking at first to not put those 4 points there but instead put 3 to access another socket.
The one top after "Nimbless" and before "influence".
So it was +8% mana + whatever the jewel had to offer.

Able to farm Chayula with this build?

I didn't try it with this character in this league, but in the previous one it was really easy. Since we are Presence of Chayula users, with our chaos nodes we can easily reach comfortable chaos resistance values. Monsters are easy with ED + Contagion + Blight, final fight is pretty easy if you know what the boss does.