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

@HeavyBurden. You are currently at the stage where I usually feel that the life based build starts being lackluster. The grind from lvl 19 to 20 gems always feels extremely long, but there are some passives and gems I would swap around to make things smoother.

I would have my Contagion setup as a 4L, and CWDT as a 3L. That way you can fit abyssal cry into the Contagion setup and drop Arctic breath from the CWDT. Abyssal cry really carries the clearspeed when the ED DoT isn't strong enough to effectively spread 2-3 times to kill a full pack.

To further increase the speed you should look aim to pick as many chaos damage nodes as you can rather than damage over time. This is to double dip the damage from your initial ED/abyssal cry hits to poison. The first enemy should always die relatively fast, as it is getting poisoned, while the rest of the pack has to die to the ED/Contagion DoTs exclusively. Abyssal Cry will just wreck the packs and your FPS way more effectively.

Remove Doom Cast cluster and Pierce cluster, go down from Shadow towards ranger for the Method to the Madness cluster. Swap the single point in DoT damage in the Corruption cluster for two points in chaos damage. Remove the extra int point towards CI, take another 5% AoE (if you feel that abyssal cry is working out for you). Then take Charisma cluster if you feel that more mana avalible would be nice, or continue down towards Ranger and Ranger start for more projectile damage nodes.


At your level as hybrid, I would run with this passive tree:


As for your flask setup, I think I would swap out the utility flasks with a Quartz with movement speed, a Jade/Stibnite with increased evasion/curse immunity and a quicksilver with freeze immunity. That's just my personal preference. If you are not too picky on the prefixes, it should be rather easy to get those suffixes at least. The Quartz flask is just godlike if you end up liking the non/50% pierce and Abyssal Cry kind of playstyle.

If this was my build, I would also prioritize getting the Alchemist cluster by Witch, but I can't live without next to 100% flask uptime.

Yeah the Corruption area was just a misclick. I see youve dropped skittering runes altogether, is this not a priority? Would it be better to grab the Intuitive Leap jewel slot to grab Runes and Potency of will?

I have used Intuitive Leap to get those two points and the two 5% AoE nodes at scion earlier. With the nerf to curse effectiveness on bosses, I feel that they arent as good any more. We mainly use curses for defensive purposes, and when I play, I never really feel that enemies are too fast when Temporal Chains is on.

I would take them eventually, but I would prioritize the Scion life nodes and the Alchemist cluster over it. We have a lot of snacks avalible with this pathing, so you really just need to make the call yourself.

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Nedieth wrote:

4 support gems 1 level higher is not 4% more damage, it is 1% x 1% x 1% x 1% more damage. Compound interest! If you are still struggling to find out what's keeping you down, just link your passive tree and gear so I can look at it or compare it to mine.

Thank you! I figured out where the differences between our builds were and ever since I followed your build more strictly, my dps has sky-rocketed.

Currently I am toying with the idea of using a +1 to socketed gems, 6-linked bow and swap out slower projectile for poison support instead. My theory is that the +1 bow would then boost ED by 2 levels (+1 from bow and another +1 from empower, which double dips from the +1 bow), as well as boost other support gems (void manipulation, pierce, controlled destruction) by 1 level. All of these could potentially push the dps even much further than using shavs 6 linked without +1 (because +1 bow is way significantly cheaper than +1 shav).

I would love to hear you thought on this idea.

If you go with the bow idea, the optimal way to do it would be to use high tier essence of woe on a grove/thicket bow until you get a +1 roll with the spell damage. That might prove to be hard though. Bow + Soul Strike should work extremely well, but for hardcore I would be reluctant to drop the ES on my shield. I still use Pierce in my links, so with another +2 gem levels to the ED (and some to supports), it should outperform my setup in terms of raw dps even if you don't get spell damage on the bow.

Is it worthy to respec from pierce and frenzy charge to 'method to madness' to get more chaos damage?

What is better gem setup for BBBGGR, my current is ED > controlled destruction > faster casting > rapid decay > void manipulation > emp lvl2.

Have about 6.5k/14k dot tooltip in town, which is not much.

I have a doubt I can reroll ES/Armor chest to have 3 green sockets :(

The Method to the Madness cluster is very strong both because the increased chaos damage is strong for our build, and because it makes other desired nodes easily available (2p jewel socket and Charisma). Personally I don't see much need for 100% Pierce, but it turns out most people do. You basically need to ask yourself if you need that pierce, or if you can do the same job with a Quartz Flask. I would opt for Method to the Madness every single time.

When it comes to colours, BBBGGR works, but is very sub optimal. The Faster Casting is both nice for your survivability in terms of stutter stepping, but also for poison stacking on single targets. However, when it comes to AoE dps, it does nothing at all. With the 2.4 Vorici change, getting a better setup shouldn't take more than a few tries with Vorici 3G. You can check out the averages with the Vorici Calculator:

https://siveran.github.io/calc.html


It might also be worth noting that I played with Reduced Mana as a sixth link even when I had a level 2 Empower available, just for the comfort of a low mana cost over the 1 gem level from the Empower. If you struggle with mana, this could be considered until you get a level 3 or 4 Empower.

Hi @Nedieth, nice build you got here. Just started to lvl it. Want to go Low Life but don't know how to do with the tree progresion, any tips that could help me? FeelsBadMan

And i've got 2 noob question, why did you took the 0.6 reg life insted of those 2 12% Dmg over time in Growth and Decay and why did you pick Arcane vision?

@Nedieth

Thanks for vorici hint, just leveled him to lvl6 and created GGGBBR with second attempt.

Swapped empower with iron will, same damage while IW only lvl12 and it consumes less mana as well.

Haven't decided yet between Pierce and Slower projectiles gems.

At first respecced passives into sentinel and exceptional performance keystones, but it sucked. So went with method to madness to rise damage like you suggested.

So I've got about 7.5k/20k dot ED with 6.2k HP and 2.5k ES on HC.

@tipicozzy, I value damage over time nodes quite low, as I feel that the build provides enough AoE damage when you have a 6L and go Low Life. The life regen is one point less for the cluster, while it provides additional survivability while farming uber lab. With this setup, I am practically immune to spike traps, even as Low Life. The point that I save, I would use for 10% projectile damage (and eventually the 16% one) at ranger start, so you get more of the damage to double dip to Poison. No math, I just like life regen.

@Jokerilum, nice damage increase. You should start seeing the massive DPS jumps now as you progress towards getting some 21/20 gems and a better empower. Stay safe!