[2.6/3.0 BETA] eMbbu's detailed Essence drain guide for shaper & t16 boss farmer

This is my current occultist in legacy hc with pretty mediocre gear,
but im still pulling over 18k energy shield! (life is technically better)
and easily able to farm shaper + guardians. (770 chest 510 shield, current gear is much better and so is es 22.3k)
18k energy shield paired with
5.8k es recharge that isnt stopped if energy shield recharge started recently is INSANE

(if ur stocked on exalts u can use energy from within in melding for 21% es) Sitting at 21 368 es as now

Here is my current dps on the legacy hardcore character.
Anything above 22 or so k with decay is enough to start farming shaper carefully.



I use my mobility skill (shield charge) paired with faster attacks and fortify in my weapon for easier gear. Its SUPER important to get a weapon with "your hits will inflict decay, dealing 750 chaos damage per second for 10 seconds" (created by essence of delirium) Since it will get scaled by your support gems on essence drain. After decay priortise attack speed and spell damage/and or leo lvl 3's damage over time craft.

If you are crafting your own weapon use a sai base since crit implicit is completely wasted on ed and sai grants you a 6% additional block


On Helmet I link my auras blasphemy temporal chains & discipline & vaal discipline. On helmet i prioritize just es/resistance/int and I usually go for a temporal chains/enfeeble curse effect enchant over essence drain damage (these usually go for 200c+ in hc leagues and i just dont feel like its worth the investment)



On shield i currently have the abyssal cry/contagion setup, switching abyssal cry for shaper farming (very useful for cheesing addphase that can otherwise be the hardest part of run) or faster casting for mapping. Prioritise high es/int/resistances and if your rich enough an open suffix for leo lvl 3's "reduced damage taken from damage over time"



Eye of chayula is the only 100% required unique for this build granting you stun immunity that is vital to have on a chaos innoculation build specially versus high lvl content. I went for a foiled one for the extra strenght/dex/int that i need to use my gems/gear


Both of my current rings are pretty garbage, if you compare them to the rings i show on the gg gear. Prioritize resist/int/chaos dmg (essence of envy) and an open prefix for %es or leo lvl 3's faster start of es recharge.
(Here is a quick guide how to craft the rings shown in gg gear, but they are not cheap! Use envy essences on a ring untill you get one with 1)Chaos dmg(obviously) and 2) high intelligence WITH an open prefix and an open suffix. This can be really painful to get. After that you need to craft "suffixes cannot be changed" and scour the item, followed by multimod and crafting %es, flat es and %faster start of es recharge)



"But why arent you using empower? WAAA ITS MORE DMG?" - Decay, thats it. The decay from essence of delirium is SO strong and it gets scaled by the support gems LINKED to the skill that applies the decay, so we use essence drain to apply decay and ALL 5 of our supports scale both the decay and ed's dmg. Empower does NOT scale decay at all. On a 5l drop slower projectiles or pierce, really presonal preference. I prefer to have the 50% pierce over 10% more dmg for that small qol. Chroming a regalia for 4g2b can be a real bitch. If you are crafting your own regalia roll it with -32% reduced attribute requirments to help chroming it. Afaik vorici 3g (120chrom per try) is the best way to chrom for 4g2b. I usually end up using 1k+ chroms to get 4g2b



Gloves, just high es/res/int/attributes (or insanity gloves for faster mapping but that requires messing around with your gemlinks) Here we have our Curse on hit setup that we drop on bosses. Enfeeble is basicly broken for defence and vulnerability is a good 3rd damage curse that scales the dmg of both ed and decay.


For belt slot i use a crystal belt (need resistances) but ascend from flesh and bated breath are both amazing budget options if your resistances allow it.


What can I say? These boots got insane buffs on legacy league start so they are now insane for essence drain. 200es, 40% proj dmg (scales both ed&decay), 25%ms and a solid lightning resistance roll. I link my wither totem setup in here since the boots have fairly low attribute requirments.
Wither totem is an INSANE single target dmg boost, always drop it on bosses and try to have permanent uptime vs guardians & shaper. Try to get 2% regen enchant from uberlab, its roughly 1/15 chance


For my flasks i use for shaper farming, and i swap witchfire brew for dying sun when im mapping

"But why aquamarine flask? I've never even heard of this flask what shit guide is this?" - Shaper adds. Again the HARDEST part about shaper is dealing efficiently with addphase. Chilled ground on the adds is insanely effective in keeping them from reaching zana.

Sulphur flask is great for pure dmg and some extra regen

Mana flask to sustain ED, yes, this is one of those builds that use mana flask and there really isnt any way around it without sacrificing a lot in tree or gear. Roll bleed removal here since its better to have immunities for shock/curse/freeze on flasks that dont end on reaching full mana

Witchfire for some extra damage vs shaper's adds really the only reason why i use it.

Quicksilver for moving fast, roll adrenaline here if you cant afford a dying sun and just use a silver flask of grounding instead for mapping.

Im ranking the guardians for this build from easiest to hardest
1)Chimera, pretty much a joke fight for ed, adds are the only dangerous part here.

2)Phoenix, a pretty simple fight aswell. Dont stand in big boom boom and dont roll ele weakness unless ur massively overcapped (Phoenix's big BOOMBOOM attack doesnt actually do that much dmg, but it gives you a -50% resistance debuff (just like ele weak)

3)Hydra, Pretty annoying fight,the frostbolts in the arena kill your wither totems really fast so max dmg uptime is fairly low. Stand on melee range on him and dance around when he does his attacks, his attacks all have a pretty long windup so they are fairly easy to dodge if you are paying attention. If you lose your focus you can die VERY fast

(heres a video of me dying to hydra in hc legacy while not paying attention (WITH 0 DMG MODS) So after he disappears Pay attention to where he leaves and when you see a white line (it might be a bug?) Shield charge fast to where he reappeared.

4)I rank minotaur the hardest just because of the slow from shocking beams that cannot be dispelled afaik and his deadly attack burrow where he digs underground and reappears on you. This can easily hit you multiple times for 15k+ dmg on a single burrow so be extremely careful


For shaper you want to have preferably a 6l chest &22k+ tooltip with decay and close to 18k energy shield, and 1 ring with %faster start of es recharge.

All minibosses are fairly easy as long as you know the mechanics.

For shaper himself you want to ALWAYS stand as close as possible on melee range so he does not use his ball attack. (this and bullet hell is the only way you can die on "1 hit" (3 balls is enough to kill 20k es specially on crit and if 1 crits they all crit) These balls have 25% cold penetration so they do mad dmg.

When the stage starts place your orb of storms on him and your wither totem somewhere near the side. When the fight starts instantly proc your fortify with shield charge and try to keep it up always. You basicly cannot die to a slam and beam takes quite a while to kill you (very easy to move away from)

Try to pop vortexes on the edges of the arena. If you are in bullet hell phase and a vortex spawns and starts moving towards you LOG OUT. Yes, you can get fucked by rng really hard here.
Here's a video of what happened to me on day 5 (was tired & greedy to do my 2nd shaper kill of the league while i was massively ahead on t16/shaper progression) while i tried to juggle the vortex inside the bubble

On 3rd stage Just play carefully, its the only "hard" part of shaper run. Clone spawning and balling you while shaper itself is balling you can be super deadly.

On addphase you want to place your curse on hit, stand between portal and zana, pop your flasks for chilled ground+dmg, drop down a wither totem and spam your abyssal cry & hope that occultist's prophane bloom procs :D


For uber atziri switch out abyssal cry for vaal lightning trap (for atziri split phase) Play super fucking careful since almost everything here kills you really fast. Dont use curse on hit on atziri herself, and logout when you see empowered stormcalls coming for you (afaik her stormcalls are still bugged with blasphemy temporal chains, so it might be worth considering baslphemy enfeeble instead)

Heres how fast i died with 20.4k es, max effect topaz flask and atziri enfeebled (with 30% enfeeble effect helm) last league, so be careful

Click

For ascendancy points (also shown in linked tree) I first pick Wicked ward for insane defences, followed by void beacon. I hold on merciless lab untill i can complete uber labyrinth aswell, because of how bad prophane bloom is for mapping. For merciless&uber points i take prophane bloom and malediction for the extra curse.

Normal: I usually end up helpin kraityn for the 10% all resistance and ending up respeccing out of it when my gear allows it

Cruel: If you plan to farm bosses just kill all bandits and take the passive point. For mapping help kraityn for that extra attack speed (specially with insanity gloves)

Merciless: Kill all, no way to sustain any charges on bosses

Lul ur an occultist with mad es&regen just proc wicked ward es recharge and run trough traps and laugh at life builds

I leveled with firestorm grabbing the witch spelldamage start and nearby life nodes. Invest into "the gull" if you can, it will make your life super easy at lvl 38 &
after completing normal labyrinth. You can switch to ED when you have 5l & lvl 17-18 gem in merc lake (lvl 70ish) Also grab the templar and witch aoe nodes for easier leveling, respec out of them when you feel like you need more es and u are doing high endgame content

Invest into twink leveling gear, lvling with so few dmg nodes can be pretty painful with bad gear. Use arctic armor + blasphemy temporal chains while leveling, switch to discipline when u have roughly 1.5k es or so

Rough lvling tree for firestorm into ed

Shaper 3rd stage (lhc)

3.0 BETA SHAPER + GEAR + TREE

3.0 BETA UBER ATZIRI