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

"

whyarewehere wrote:

"

djnat wrote:

You need an Essence Drain 4L setup while leveling. ED is your clear skill, playing without it is way slower. :)

Blight / Vaal Blight should be used only against tougher rare monsters / bosses / OACD packs.

Welp no wonder, so I kinda need 2 x 4L setup?

Yes.

Keep in mind that in the endgame you will use 4 damage skills:

1. Contagion to debuff an area (4L)
2. Essence Drain to delete that area (5L in the Hungry Loop ring)
3. Blight for tough elites / bosses (6L in the Shavronne's Wrappings)
4. Vaal Blight for extra tough elites / bosses (same as Blight)

Plus, you will have to keep the Wither totem (3L) up to further increase your effective damage done.

I love the "dotting" mechanics, so I find this kind of playstyle extremely satisfying.

What would you recommend for someone who isn't that experienced in poe in general but want to try out essence drain builds?

Trickster, Occu, or Scion?

"

Enyin wrote:

What would you recommend for someone who isn't that experienced in poe in general but want to try out essence drain builds?

Trickster, Occu, or Scion?

Trickster is the best to start, especially for new players in a fresh league, because it's easier to gear and the lifebased playstyle is more "classical" when compared to the ES / lowlife one.

I recommend you to follow Nedieth's guide in the Trickster sub-forum.

Thank you for the reply.
Just started his Build and went through act1 like a breeze.
Even though most stuff dies to Contagion, blowing them up with ED feels very satisfying.

Hello.
Last league i played as ED Trickster, cleared with it everyhthing but Uber Elder (5+ time got him to less than 10% hp and then i just said "fck this game" and gave up), so this league i wanted to play similar playstyle but better bossing, so i decided to give a try to this build.

This was my first time playing ES build (playing since 3.0), and i must say, the beggining of the league was really hard. Up until i got my Shav's mapping was kinda stresfull with many bullshit deaths, so i went for CI until i got my Shav's, and I must say, suprisingly it worked much better than i expected.
Right now i went for Guardian ascedancy for few reason's:
1). You dont have any space for offering skill (lul), since you use 2 Vaal skills (Blight/Discipline), Shield Charge, Blight, Conta, ED, Totem and Move.
2). It's better defensive option, since i died alot during leveling (btw. now i know why i hate Scion, until you get 2nd lab playing is painfull), wanted to just not die.

Right now i am clearing easily red maps, only problematic mod is "No regen", rest seems to be fairly easy. Didn't try any harder bosses yet, want first to get my 6-link setup on Blight/Vaal Blight.

Will update in future with my game content done with it, and can tell you differences between this and Trickster. (For now i can say only that Trickster is easier to setup, cheaper, and much more relaxed).

Here is my current gear, that i am slowly updating (current focus is to get 6link Shav's - Helmet Enchant on Good base (Blight damage most likely on hubris), and then we will see).

Hello guys :)

I"m kinda new to poe, only played two leagues (harbinger and this one). I was wondering if i can do a low life ED with the trickster class. I already leveled up two char and i dont feel like rerolling again =/
I'm in love with ED/Blight. I just dont want to be stuck with a "normal" build life. In the sense that I'm scared to reach the maximum potential with maybe 5 ex. I want a bigger progression with a higher final budget build.
I dont know if you'll understand me :p
The major fact is with the build im following, i dont want to try 6L cherrubim, perfect form or rare chest if im going to play LL and buy shavronne a couple days after.

PS: I followed Nedieth's guide.

Thx for the help :)

"

Zellez wrote:

Hello guys :)

I"m kinda new to poe, only played two leagues (harbinger and this one). I was wondering if i can do a low life ED with the trickster class. I already leveled up two char and i dont feel like rerolling again =/
I'm in love with ED/Blight. I just dont want to be stuck with a "normal" build life. In the sense that I'm scared to reach the maximum potential with maybe 5 ex. I want a bigger progression with a higher final budget build.
I dont know if you'll understand me :p
The major fact is with the build im following, i dont want to try 6L cherrubim, perfect form or rare chest if im going to play LL and buy shavronne a couple days after.

PS: I followed Nedieth's guide.

Thx for the help :)

Even the "normal" trickster version of ED/Blight can be expensive if you are min/maxing. If i remember correctly i spend good over 20ex last league for gearing (maybe more, i dont remember atm).



I tried low life, it is imo not worth it. If you want to go other direction, you should go for Idigon version. There is one guide on this forum, just type "Idigon trickster" and you will find. Imo this is much better for trickster.

As I wrote multiple times in this thread, going lifebased at the start of a new league is a lot simpler from the early gearing point of view. This is why, for a league starter, a lifebased / MoM Trickster is a safer option. I pointed out this aspect in the "class comparison" section of the guide.

Nedieth's guide is excellent for that purpose.


Going more in-depth...

@raflikz: yes, the new Vaal Skill system is pretty good but it generates some "space" problems because we already use multiple skills in our setup. That's why you did the right choice in taking Guardian instead of Necro as your 2nd sub-ascendancy: if you want to use more than one Vaal skill, playing Necromancer is simply impossible. I'll update the guide in the next days with those info.

As to the "better bossing" point of view, the Occultist Witch has better damage when compared to the Ascendant, but the clearspeed is a lot slower because of the Profane Bloom mechanics.

ES builds are in general a bit more difficult to play until you get used to the playstyle.

If you plan to do Uber Elder with this build, I highly recommend you to go pretty heavy with cold resistance on the second ring slot, so you can replace it with Dream Fragments for that specific fight without having resistance issues. Dream Fragments is fantastic for the Uber Elder fight, chill and freeze immunity are invaluable. There is an Uber Elder video about the Witch version of this build, just to have an idea of how it performs at that specific fight. And it was recorded in 3.2, so it didn't use Vaal Blight which can be a fantastic damage boost in key moments of the fight.

For mapping, don't underestimate the Leadership notable. 50% extra radius on blasphemy curses is pretty huge.


@Zellez: yes, you can do lowlife ED with the Trickster class. Just look at the passive tree of the Witch version of my guide and go for something very similar. Go for Patient Reaper and Prolonged Pain as your first ascendancies, then take Ghost dance. The last ascendancy point is really up to you. You can go for Swift Killer of Weave the Arcane, it's based on your personal preference. I don't really know, btw, how it will perform in the endgame, but it shouldn't be that bad.

Hi guys!
I started playing PoE And I really liked your guide.
At the end of the last League I tried the Trickster ED, but since I'm aiming for farm T16, Shaper and the new temple, I decided to play Scion.
Very difficult start of the League, at level 69 I died 257 times! :D
Try to accumulate currency, but not enough survivability even on the T1 maps - i have to farm "the Blood Aqueduct" area and it upsets me.
Take a look at my character - clothes and skill tree, pls advise how to raise survival. At the moment ~ 3400 ES and 1300 life.
Main problem is i don't want to invest all my poor currency to modest rares etc, aiming to buy chest firstly.
25 chaos, saving up for Shavronne's Wrappings, but i'm afraid I won't be buying it soon. :D
I look forward to your advice, I will be very grateful!
P.S. Maybe ZO+CI will help a bit? Haven't tried yet.

As I told before, an ES based character at the league start is more manageable for experienced PoE players than for "new" ones. Since I really like to play lowlife ED, I usually start leagues with different characters (this league I am playing a lifebased blade vortex elementalist), then I go for ED Scion.

Looking at your character, you should aim @ at least 5-5.5k ES to start mapping in the lowest tiers. You can't play lowlife or ES based if you are not hybrid-based with at least 4k life, or if you don't own a Shav (for LL), or if you don't spam Coruscating Elixir. Going lowlife without taking pain attunement (and without a Shav to prevent being wrecked by chaos damage) is an extreme DPS and survivability loss. CI might be better in that case.

Things I can advise you to do:

1. Buy allelopathy gloves, they are cheap and provide a "free" 6L Blight by socketing right support gems into them (controlled destruction / efficacy / void manipulation / swift affliction) until you get a 5L-6L shav and go for Vaal Blight into it

2. Buy a better shield and helmet, ES values on your current ones are terribly low

3. Buy an Eye of Chayula, stun immunity is required to play ES based, without it you will die a lot while mapping

4. When leveling up, prioritize going to Exceptional Performance > Leadership > Whispers of Doom clusters; when you get the last one, you can dual curse and add Temporal Chains which is the strongest curse in the game for mapping as an ED character

5. Setup a wither totem! It's extremely important to play around it at boss fights.


Cheers!