3.0 LL 26/20 Essence Drain Decay Bow build. Everything farmer.

Well forget everything I said about this build getting nerfed. I'm going to be going over this build during the league and updating as needed.

WHAT IT MEANS

MASSIVE BUFF

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Essence Drain deals 43% more damage at gem level 20, scaling upwards at higher levels.

BUFFS

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The Trickster's Patient Reaper skill now grants 70% increased Recovery Rate of Life, Mana and Energy Shield if you've Killed an Enemy affected by your Damage Over Time Recently (up from 60%).
The Trickster's Swift Killer skill now also grants +1 to Maximum Power Charges, and 5% increased Damage over Time per Frenzy and Power charge.

NERFS

"

Decay from Essence of Delirium now deals 500 damage per second, down from 750, and its duration has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10.

Don't forget about the ES nerfs, it'll be lower es overall but we'll see how it actually turns out.

It's breach league and you know what that means! Playing something that's great until it gets nerfed into the ground! I'll be updating this guide as I find things that are different from the original time of writing.

For people who are beginning to level this just follow the skill tree and move towards the mana regen in the bottom right first then the damage nodes on the top right, then to the flask wheel, then to dual curse nodes. Skip the jewel slots while leveling unless a great jewel happens to fall into your lap. Also if you're wearing an eye of chayula don't bother getting the stun nodes unless you need the +20 to Strength and Dex.


One thing to note is that your gear doesn't really matter all that much if you're using Aurumvorax. I made it through normal and cruel using just that and a tabula I picked up in cruel lake. Once I hit merc act two I started specing into the scion life rectangle (It's not a wheel if it's not round GGG) and actually caring about getting life on gear. This is going to be the somewhat rough stage of leveling since this gear is all going to be temporary.

Once I hit merc lake I dropped the Aurum and picked up a normal dagger to ditch the rarity penalty. Farm up chaos recipe as you level up and start buying gear. You can level to 76 without a big xp penalty so use that time leveling in lake to build currency and gear. If you're lucky you'll get an ex drop or some decent uniques to flip. Make sure you're res cap'd before you move into mapping.

Try not to dump too much currency into it, just enough to get by. Once you've gotten into maps as life based just be careful and start saving up for a shavs, once you've got one start trying to 6 link it. Once you've got the 6-linked shavs start focusing on getting the rest of your ES gear before you switch over to LL. You should have somewhere ~7-8k ES ideally.

Don't worry though because once you manage to create the bow you can sell the 6-linked shavs and buy a cheaper 6 socket one and use the rest of that small pile of exalts to tune your gear further.
The skilltree progression
You should be leveling as dagger/sword/shield with a tabula rasa the second you can get your hands on one.

This will help you cover your res as you progress towards maps, No need to upgrade gear every hour or so just take the loss of rares and uniques to power through to merc dried lake.

My plan for gearing is as follows:

1. Get consuming dark/shield.

2. Get a Shav's and start trying to 6 link it.

3. Once I get the 6 linked shavs start trying to 6 link the reflex bow.

4. Slam the crap out of the bow till I get decay and +1.

5. Sell the 6 linked shavs and buy a 6 socket one.

6. As I get more currency keep trying to 6 link the second shaves and keep repeating the cycle every 200 or so fusings.

T-15 Core sorry for the quality. https://youtu.be/dcAlm2lhIYM

T-15 Twinned Overgrown Ruin https://youtu.be/i3dF3xFVuAk

A really sloppy Shaper run. Learn the mechanics and you'll go deathless. (There are much better players than me.) https://youtu.be/8xAe1ia-_nU

Trivializes all content without cheesing it. (Looking @ you BV Pathfinder)

All trash and by that I mean all trash even T-16 trash is consistently off screened if packs are close enough.

It will clear at least as fast as BV pathfinder if not faster depending on the mob density. I say this because with BV you need to be close to mobs to kill them. ED doesn't have that constriction and will off screen constantly if the mobs are close enough.

Not Pathfinder BV. Outdated reference

Porcupines are a pain as per usual, run cwdt till you are mapping @ T-13+ and just be careful running the invasion mod.

Shaper's slam will still 1 shot you, not an issue once you learn the mechanics.

Can't do Hall of Grandmasters.

You can be stunned because we sacrifice eye of chayula for more dps. If you know how to position yourself and react to stun threats it's no problem.

This build can and will become expensive as you push it further, but the only thing it has to slow down for are essence mobs and bosses.

We're focusing on Shaper farming with this build and he's since two of the guardians are poison immune we need to find an alternative. That alternative is decay. I talked to ProjectPT on stream apparently Shaper is not poison immune. He did say however that it does increase clear speed dramatically for everything else.

I jumped into this blind but thanks to some ig testing by castashadow we know that decay scales with DOT and chaos dmg. He gave me his first impression switching over to the build and said that even losing a sizable amount of spell dmg from consuming/shield didn't adversely effect dps and felt stronger. I'll add more when he gives me some more feedback.


The only downside is that you can't stack it the way you can stack poison.

Without Frenzy Charges

With 4 Frenzy Charges and 68% Witchfire effect.

Once you find a pack Contagion, hit dying sun, essence drain then either move through the pack onto the next one or back off if there's a stun threat ie lighting or ice falling from the sky.

I sacrificed the skill effect duration node in order to get another jewel socket because if something doesn't die in the 3.4 seconds of ED's duration it's a boss or an essence mob and you'll be reuping the essence drain anyway.

For bosses it's the standard ED playstyle. Tag with ED > Get the wither totem down > slam the witchfire brew > avoid mechanics > repeat until you get loot.

I'm not going to copy paste from other people who already have great guides so here you go.
Start life based using one of these great resources. Then go CI as you prep to go LL unless you manage a shav's earlier than that and feel pretty good about you're ability to stay alive.

Project PT's options guide https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1716534

Nedieth's Build guide https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1717015

What you're looking for is a +1 bow that's been essence crafted with the decay mod. Apparently from what I've seen on r/poe It scales with DOT and chaos dmg. I'm not 100% but with how everything melts it just might. Find a 6 link bow and slam Deliriums on it till you get the +1 gems.


Unless I'm mistaken this is the best unique quiver to use. 3.0 the new version has less ES



This is an expensive option that really lets the build scale dps. On the plus side you don't need a 6 link just a six socket. Just get 2x3 links out of it and fit what you can in it.


You'll want a crystal belt with the highest es roll you can get with some resists.



High es gloves are great. Balance your res between your gear. If you can craft a decent pair of fingerless gloves even better! More dps to scale (Just don't enchant them since it'll override the spell dmg.)


Shaper boots are a great quality of life if you can get the resistances elsewhere. To be honest you can use good res/es boots for the shaper fight.

As far as jewelry you need to get the added chaos damage from envy on all 3 slots. These are all crap at the moment. I'm gonna be replacing them but Shaper is possible with this kind of gear. Just remember that each piece of jewelry you can get %increased chaos dmg is the equivalent of a free jewel socket.

Don't feel obligated to go straight for these if you're having issues with total es pool. Just transition to them as you acquire them.



I got really lucky rolling this helm. If you're considering heretics veil and the +1 curse amulet in order to run vulnerability just remember that the flat 40% increased essence drain is better than the 33% you'd get from vuln and frees up the amulet slot from the +1 curse requirement.

Heretics veil with the added ED dmg is an option if you've got tons of exalts sitting around.

Additional options

A good sulphur flask will save your life, just roll the mods you need.

Dying Sun is a very expensive but perfect flask for the build. Off screening is a huge thing that we need to capitalize on, best defense is a good offence. Buy the cheapest one and divine it for reduced charges. However Dying sun is more QOL and quicker clear speed since you won't have to spend as much time recasting ED and Contagion.

Mana flask for lowered mana regen maps.

Witchfire Brew is insane, just buy a cheap one and divine it until you get close to 70% dot.

I stack movement speed so the increased movement speed and duration on the quicksilver is a huge plus.

Main skill is Essence Drain> lvl4 Empower > Controlled Destruction > Void Manipulation > Rapid Decay > Slower Proj if you can fit the Shaper boots.

Spell totem, inc duration, wither

Contagion, inc AOE, faster casting (best to fit flame dash in here as well)

Blood magic, clarity, discipline

Blink arrow is great for a second mobility skill, fit it in where you can. Why blink arrow?


Temp chains, enfeeble, blasphemy

I should add that running arctic armor is worth running in order to slow down the adds during portal phases on shaper.

What you're looking for are these stats.

%Increased DMG

%Increased DOT

%Increased Chaos DMG

%Increased Spell DMG

Try to get 3 on each jewel. You can also just grab 2 of these as magics and regal with fingers crossed.

2.5-2.6https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYCAAMeBx4NfA5IDlwPqxEvEVARlha_GFYYahmKGmwajxslHNwfGB9BH8ci9CSLJogo-isKLYs1uTlSPLY9X0V-SRNJUUmxS65Mg0yzUftSU1KvV8lYB1xAXGtcil3yYlpn_Gh0aoxq-mwLbRlw1HSBdZ52gnvXf8aAs4LHhEiExYfLieCPGo9Gj_qRR5MfkyeVLpcGl5WX9Juhm7WdrqEvotmnCKcrp5uw2LQMtNG1SLcwuJO7Tb6KwzrDbcSiyAzIFMrTzRbPFdAf18_ZW9o72mLdX9-K35jmWOha6QLquutj6-7viO_r8NX1b_ba98H31_k3-aT56PsJ?accountName=DerWeiss&characterName=CloppingforChrist

Planned 3.0 lvl 100 treehttps://poeplanner.com/AAgAAQ0ACCYAAIOw2KLZyBT1b2qMFr-00cgMdoK1SOtjES8rCl3yDki3MOhaJogRlgcelS7w1UlRj_pcQIfLp5t1ns8Vf8aTJ1yK74j5N9fPSbG-isrTtAzqug18V8ko-oLH-ehodNpie9e4kxzc6-6nCI9Gm6EYajlSWAf314RIXGvDbVKvu03dX2f8bAsi9G0ZEVCnK5f0UlM9X5eVTLNFfg5cavrQH-_rjxqhL1H7zRYfGC2LH8cYVg-rJIvDOong5liTH0kTm7WExRmK-wn22hqPlwbEot-YYlpb9Hmhi5m5b9lbNbkbJUuuHU80CjdmLKbpAh0U-tL3wSBuUDCRR4CzPLbaO_mkcNRMg3SBAAAAAAA=

I'm going to test out conduit and the cluster behind it to get additional charge generation and the free endurance charges, a little bit more defenses never hurt anyone.

If it winds up being crap I'll take those 4 points and put it into additional es nodes for an additional 24% ES, that being said it's already got 239% increased ES already.

Alternatively those point could go towards a few other useful clusters:

Mind barrier cluster for some spell block.

Faith and steel for some armor and ele res.

Potency of will for some skill duration though we really don't need more duration.

Void defenses might be a good use of those points as well to get some stacked defenses.

Nimbleness for the cast speed and chance to avoid interrupts.

If you're going to be doing this build kill them all for the extra points. We're focusing on end game Shaper and other bosses where frenzy charges mean nothing.

Very large drop in DPS and health pool even after I went CI Ultimately it's not worth it.

Shav's is great and even though the Cospri's seemed promising by allowing us to have both poison and decay It's ultimately less dps and less survivability.