[3.7] SC/HC - ED/Blight Trickster - Up to 10k eHP, Layered Defense, 3m DPS

No, not since 3.0. It does technically work, but only for the initial hit, which we don't care about.

Updated the guide with an explanation of how I gear up each league as well as a summary for Incursion and potential ways to implement Vaal Blight into the build.

TL;DR: Vaal Blight is cool, but Arc traps is OP.

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Nedieth wrote:

The only problem with all this is that Arc traps has a similar feel, playstyle and gearing process while still clearing maps and bosses much more effectively.

sorry for OT, but could you direct me to a good guide for such Arc trapper please?

Managed to snipe a Headhunter from a tier 3 sacrifice altar. Have kind of geared around it using similar gear to nedieth. Finding all content upto tier 15 maps super clean and easy so far. Yet to try gaurdians and shaper. Managed to get the corrupted impresence for an exalt which helped gearing considerably.

@ostergreen, for my build, I just dropped by Dalykas' profile by chance, as I played a build of his last league that I was very happy with. I saw he did a non shimmeron trapper, which was my plan as well, so I basically (almost) copied his tree and started zappin' stuff. If just checking out a character is enough for you, you can check my profile and the character NediMetaBoi. I am extremely happy with the build, and after I got phase acro and positive chaos resistance it feel amazing for all content this league, including t16 incursions, 83 temples and Uber Elder farming.

@Petemate, grats on the HH. I personally don't like playing with it, so how do you feel it lines up with the build? It used to be quite silly to use a HH for this kind of build, but as my build at the very least has shifted more towards Blight than ED, it might be a strong option. Also, going Impresence was a good call this league!

Completed the conclusions part for 3.3 with a video and my gear choices etc. If anything is still unclear about how to manage the build this league, just ask and I will see if I can add it to the guide.

Thank you Nedieth for your time & effort on this build. At 92 & really enjoying it this league :)

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Nedieth wrote:

We are already starved on sockets in our build, and this setup just shoehorns the Vaal Blight unlinked into the build. I used my Vaal Blight outside of my Wither Totem link, replacing one of the supports. Wither totem is less relevant for mapping now that we have Vaal Blight available. This setup still uses Allelopathy, so make sure that you use the Blight setup from the gloves, and not the unlinked one from the Vaal Blight gem.

First and foremost thank you SO much for the updated build, you may remember me bothering you from past leagues, but I always come back to ED and follow your fantastic advice/guides :)!

With regards to the updated portion for Incursion, I'm just a little confused on the 'Mapper' (budget) advice - it may be me being stupid though haha.

Are you saying we run Vaal Blight unsupported, and then for the 'real' Blight we use the Allelopathy gloves and get rid of the Wither Totem setup completly? So effectively the links would/could be:

1. Essence Drain > Efficacy > Controlled Destruction > Void Manipuation > Swift Affliction > Empower
2. Contagion > Increased Area of Effect > Arcane Surge > Faster Casting
3. Allelopathy Gloves ['real' Blight]: Efficacy > Controlled Destruction > Void Manipulation > Swift Affliction
4. Shield Charge > Fortify > Faster Attacks
5. Blaspemy > Temporal Chains (or Enfeeble)
6. Cast When Damage Taken level 1 > Immortal Call level 1 > Increased Duration > Stone Golem
6. Then fit in; Flame Dash, Stone Golem and Vaal Blight

Basically your suggesting we dump our 3/4L Wither Totem setup (Wither > Spell Totem > Faster Casting > Increased Duration) in place of Allelopathy Gloves with Blight?

Hopefully that makes sense - thank you so much as usual!

The way I read your reply, I think you are mostly correct. We simply want too many things in our build, so we have to sacrifice something for every single item or gem we want to add.

I am not sure yet how to write the guide on this part, as the "mapping" setup will most likely be the suggested baseline of the build. The guide is intended to help people playing ED as a league started to take the build to the end game, so the faster and more economical approach feels more natural.

For this setup, we have two links that are non negotiable:

Gloves (Allelopathy): Void Manipulation, Swift Affliction, Controlled Destruction, Efficacy.
Body armour: ED + same as above + Empower/Pierce

This leaves us with two 3-links and two 4-links. The Shield Charge setup takes a full 3-link, so that's one of those gone. To make the build comfortable to play, I would never let go of Increased Area of Effect in my Contagion link, so along with Arcane Surge, that takes at very least a 3-link. This leaves one slot potentially open for faster casting for quality of life or one of our "we want this, but dont know how to fit it" skills:

Contagion, Arcane Surge, Area of Effect.
Blasphemy, CURSE 1, POTENTIAL CURSE 2.
Spell Totem, Wither.

These three links are the minimum of what we need to fit in our last three links, one of which is just a 3-link. If you use The Perfect Form, you need to be able to fit Arctic Armour in addition to this. This is another example of how the build gets harder and harder to put together the higher budget you are operating with. Without Impresence and The Perfect Form, you save two gem sockets for Despair and Arctic Armour, enabling you to use Faster Casting in your Contagion setup as well as a full set of supports on you Wither totem (Inc. Dur. and Faster Casting).

If you follow my advice, you will most likely require Arctic Armour quite early. This should be easy to fit into your Perfect Form in the lonely socket, and is one of the reasons why I tend to stress that there is no need to push for a 6-link straight away. Now we also want Vaal Blight and preferably Flame Dash in this mess, so it will be up to each individual where to place them.

Do you want to prioritize Contagion cast speed or Wither totem effectiveness the most? Your call. I am still unsure of what to recommend in the gem setup part of the guide, and any kind of feedback from you guys would be greatly appreciated. For me, it feels best to sacrifice parts of the supports for the Wither totem, but I would be very happy to hear what you guys feel.

Hi there! Thank you very much for your guide. I've had a wonderful experience as a ED trickster here. Got it to lvl95 and I guess its time to face the uber elder.

Got a big question: How to set up gems for uber elder? In you 3.2 video you've said that ED carried you. But the first post recommends 6L blight for bosses. So what goes to 6L for the UElder? My 6L is a corrupted Skin of the Loyal that puts either blight or ED to lvl28.

Also got a few thoughts about ED/Blight chars. The big one is why don't we use high block as a defense layer?
Using damage over time denies us so many extra damage sources on gear and tree that are available to other builds. We dont crit, we dont hit, we dont do any phys/ele that we could convert or gain as extra on a stat stick. We don't even naturally scale with fast cast. But at the same time that frees us a lot of affix slots that we can use for defense. So we can raise a high block and it'd cost us much less dps than any other caster would have to pay. Rare shields can easily provide 25-30% and they can come with % of block applied to spells and %life recovered on block. Another no-brainer cheap source is the 6% sai implicit. There are also 4-5% corruptions on shields and ammys and 8% from a watcher's eye with determination. I personaly use five Reckless Defense jewels that give more block and also apply it to spells. All this stuff comblied provides me with 75%/75% attack/spell block, which is huge defense boost. Allows me to use Skin of the Loyal for damage and stay alive. Works wonders vs guardians and red elder, dunno about the uber one. Determination aura on a trickster is not as stupid as it sounds imo, because it also allows using the Coward's Chains belt and getting that 30% more bosskilling multiplier with Pain Attunement. Determination with Skin of the Loyal scale that +3000 armor flask to about 15k armor. High block also allows us to use Reckoning -> Curse on hit or Tempest Shield -> Curse on Hit to apply curses.


Another thought: I'd suggest considering vaal grace if you go spell dodge. Vaal grace works for about 10 seconds and adds 34% attack and spell dodge. That'd cap spell dodge with perfect form and dodge boots and eat a lot of attack hits. I'd use vaal grace even on my dodgeless char)