[2.6] Essence Drain Progression - Life to CI to LL

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Nedieth wrote:

all your gear looks just fine. My only concern is that your defenses will not be able to keep up for more challenging content like guardians and shaper if you choose to stay life based. The combination of both decay and poison is very nice, but my guess is that you need to invest quite a bit to be able to get through the game.

Back in Perandus, I did a a hybrid character like yours. I was able to clear all the tier 15 content (max back then) with relative ease, but guardians is a whole other ballpark. My recommendation would be to look into the CI option. It would leave you at lower DPS, but at least you would have the EHP pool to be able to screw up slightly on all the guardians and shaper.

If you are OK with dying and getting the rest done on standard, you could just keep your setup as is (with potential upgrades). Once your cospri's is a 6L and you have level 21 ED, you have the tools you need to get through the game if you play it well.

Thanks alot for the all help dude. Unfortunately i ripped like 30min after my post lol. Maybe im gonna try to finish the game in standard as you recommended with some upgrades, though funneling hc curreny into standard seems pretty meh.

Muling currency and maps to open up the atlas in standard is quite tedious indeed. I've done the same to get some practice on guardians and Shaper before I attempted them on HC.

Hello,

Have you tried dropping Profane Bloom and taking another ES point in the Occultist ascendency? I know how stupid this sounds, but I found the interaction between ED and Profane Bloom to be somewhat buggy.

I've done that myself, and while this is a hit to the overall damage, I found that the consistency of spreading ED via Contagion has vastly improved and I'm having much more success with the build now.

Regards.

You can see that in my Occultist trees, this is exactly what I am doing as well. I really dislike Profane Bloom, and prefer to get 8% increased ES over it. If I really want to min/max damage, I get profane bloom for guardian/shaper farm. Other than that I prefer when enemies does not die instantly, so that they have more time to move and spread ED to other packs.

What do you think about ED Scion? The Occultist ascendancy is a must obviously, and as a bonus it bypasses Profane Bloom's annoying explosions which get in the way of Contagion spreading the ED. Than for the second ascendancy it's either Deadeye(more offensive minded) or Trickster(more defensive minded) and being more efficient on the skill tree thanks to having 2 different starting locations(typically the Witch area but if you go Trickster you can go from Scion through Templar into Witch and than use the Shadow area as your secondary instead.

Scion is also a valid option, and in terms of raw potential DPS it is even slightly better than both Occultist and Trickster. The two projectiles are nice, as well as the total 80% pierce chance you get. Even though the Scion is still pretty strong, I would say the three other options provide slightly better overall experiences after the Scion nerf in 2.3 (i think). Back then it was Scion ED all the way.

If you have played ED before and want to try something else, Scion is still good. I just don't want to recommend it to new ED players (which this guide is most likely for).

Hi, I've read your guide with the trickster and now this to ED, I'm a new ED player, can you help me optimize my tree and item? my dps tool tip is at 14k with lvl 20 ED, wanted to push it further. sitting at around 9.8k ES only. I'm using tri curse setup

My jewels in those 3 slots are all % spell damage with shield, increase ES and % increase DOT.
I was thinking of dropping the path to occultist dominion and the path of ES which leads to Path of Savant for some extra points and was wondering if I should put them on Alchemist and the jewel socket beside it. And others to Potency of Will or Skittering Runes for curse effect



https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAAMeBx4NfA5ID6sRLREvEVARlhNtFAkVfhXXFr8YahmKGo8bJRzcHRQdvh9BIvQkiyaIKPorCiycLKYsvzW5N4M9X0J6RKtJE0lRS65SU1KvVa5WY1fJWAdcQFxrXfJiWmf8adhqjGwLbRl1nnaCeC96cHyDfOV88H6hf8aCEILHhEiExYauh8uJ4I8aj0aPpo_6kNaRB5MfkyeVLpcGl5WX9Juhm7WhL6LZpuunCKcrp5uw2LTRtUi3MLiTu027_L6KwzrDbcSiyAzIFM8V2VvdX9-K35jfsOZY6QLrY-vu7Bjw1fVv9tr3wffX-ej60vsJ?accountName=crunchz87&characterName=Burntdry

Assuming you drink as many flasks as I usually do, you will benefit a lot both defensively and offensively by getting the alchemist wheel and the jewel socket there. Another option is to get the projectile damage nodes at the ranger start since you have already taken the points leading up to those. Other than that I cannot see anything major that would increase your damage other than gem levels (and chaos damage on rings, but that gets expensive).

Is the DPS you are looking at the direct hit DPS of your ED or the damage over time DPS listed in the middle of the tooltip? 14k seems a bit low with your current setup.

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Nedieth wrote:

Assuming you drink as many flasks as I usually do, you will benefit a lot both defensively and offensively by getting the alchemist wheel and the jewel socket there. Another option is to get the projectile damage nodes at the ranger start since you have already taken the points leading up to those. Other than that I cannot see anything major that would increase your damage other than gem levels (and chaos damage on rings, but that gets expensive).

Is the DPS you are looking at the direct hit DPS of your ED or the damage over time DPS listed in the middle of the tooltip? 14k seems a bit low with your current setup.

Yes, I usually use flask whenver I release my ED, so maybe I should consider getting the flask there. On the tooltip it says 14k DPS , but the DOT on skill description says 40305 chaos damage per sec, is that high? or just normal?

Does % spell damage, % projectile damage, % increase DOT, % chaos damage all affect ED the same?
ie: 14% spell damage would give same damage as 14% projectile damage or 14% increase DOT?

40k DoT DPS is pretty nice for an ED character. If you really push things you can expect to see 50-55k.

Since you use decay, all forms of increased damage are equal to each other. This is not true any more if you swap to poison. Damage over Time does not double dip to poison, and is inferior to spell, projectile and chaos damage.