[3.1] ~~~ UNIQUE ONLY ~~~ | LL Chaos Tri-Curse Occultist | CwC Blight/ED + Contagion + Wither

Path of Building Link (Lvl 94): https://pastebin.com/yeF02df1


Build idea:

Hi guys,

there are a lot of Blight/ED/Contagion builds around and this one isn't that special/innovative in general, except for one aspect: it's specifically made for these strange people (like me) who prefer to use only unique items over (much better) rare items.

I think I'm not a very good (because more casual) player and I play mainly for fun but nevertheless the numbers are pretty decent: very well rounded defenses and good enough DPS to kill most (all?) of the content in the game without too much trouble. I'm not having any problems with Tier 14 maps at Lvl 92 atm.

(If someone feels inspired and would like to try this build for guardians and/or shaper I'd appreciate if you let me know how it went!)


Play style:

1. Drop Contagion on monster pack
2. Drop Wither Totem (if necessary and/or not too lazy to press another button ;-)
3. Shield Charge into pack for Fortify and Temporal Chains/Enfeeble
4. Pop Witchfire Brew flask fur Despair curse and Smoke Cloud
5. Finish off rest with random Blight/ED-spinning or specific targeting of the most dangerous enemy

Steps 2-4 are optional and not necessary for trash mobs.

I actually use the keyboard keys for my skills so my "four finger press buttons in a row from right to left" setup is (I'm a leftie):

R: Contagion
E: Wither Totem
W: Shield Charge
Q: Blight/ED
Left Mouse Button: Move only
Right Mouse Button: Witchfire Brew
Middle Mouse Button: Rumi's Concoction

For hard bosses you can stay at a distance and use only Contagion + Wither Totem + ED projectiles.


Offense (fully buffed at Lvl 94):

- Blight: 15,459 DoT DPS
- Essence Drain: 77,242 DoT DPS
- Essence Drain: 18,235 Average Hit
- Contagion: 30,908 DoT DPS


Defense (fully buffed at Lvl 94):

- Evade Chance (Base + Witchfire Brew + Enfeeble): 82/87 % (after taking a savage hit)
- Physical Damage Reduction (Base + Chaos Golem + Basalt Flask + Rumi's Concoction): 44/50 % (if only one nearby enemy)
- Block Chance/Spell Block Chance (Base + Rumi's Concoction): 44/26 %
- Energy Shield: 7398 (Base + Discipline)
- Unreserved Life: 395
- Uncapped Resistances: 88 % Fire / 88 % Cold / 87 % Lightning / 43 % Chaos (78 % with Atziri's Promise)
- Movement Speed Modifier: + 57 %
- Fortify
- Arctic Armour
- Phasing (when ES recharge has started recently (Ascent From Flesh)
- CWDT + Immmortal Call
- Pantheon misc.
- Enemies are unlucky damaging you (Lori's Lantern)
- Enemies are hindered, slowed, blinded and chilled (Blight/Wither + Temporal Chains + Smoke Cloud + Arctic Armour)



Items:


Skills/Gems:


Flasks:


Auras:


Curses:


Jewels:


Levelling:


Ascendancy:


Pantheon:


Pros:


Cons:


Variants:


Future Ideas:

👏👏 VERY IMPRESSIVE 👏👏

"

Ryphe wrote:

👏👏 WOW ! !! 👏👏 VERY IMPRESSIVE 👏👏 OCCULTIST BUILD 👏👏👏

Should this be an attempt in sarcasm you obviously didn't even manage to read the first few lines of my posting before commenting. VERY IMPRESSIVE.

hey dude no really i love your build
tons of detail
quality stuff
<3

"

Ryphe wrote:

hey dude no really i love your build
tons of detail
quality stuff
<3

In that case: thank you very much!
(I might be a little sensitive due to my experience regarding forum manners ...)


I'm going to post my Raider build in the next couple of days if you're really into the "Unique-Only-business" :-)

:)

I have some legitimate concerns for adding this build to the listing.

It is immediately apparent that this build did not level with pure uniques, as many of the ones you have listed have significant level requirements. At level 94, you've only managed to break 7k energy shield, and without flasks up your evasion is 8000 and armour is 187. Your only meaningful defense is the 23% block chance on your prism guardian, and arctic armour. enfeeble/temp chains are to help mitigate that obviously, but by then you've spent two curses and don't have any consideration to leech outside of essence drain's innate 0.5% of Debuff-only damage. your mana regen is also less than your mana cost, which means in any prolonged encounter you will not be able to resolve throughput on that.

You didn't take Malediction, which would have brought your curse limit up to 3. Yet you claim to run withfire brew as a curse damage source. Doesn't work.

You claim to be level 92 in tier 14 maps, yet the build guide is for a level 94 character. You said you could literally run every map mod and only be slowed down by hexproof. I have my pragmatic doubts. These tier 14's might be run white for all we know, there would need to be evidence that it can actually tackle mods.

For all of the effort, the damage is abysmally low. Again, we don't have video evidence to show you clearing maps, and you yourself said clearspeed is mediocre at best. How mediocre are we talking about?

What do players do before level 69, when they can put on the last unique?

Is shield charge damage really the enchant you would prefer?

Eldritch Knowledge is giving your DoT damage an extra 2071, or 6.3% of it's damage. Is that really better than a Jewel/Abyss Jewel?

I assume this build cannot do bosses? Your non-boss damage is +/- 52,726 before wither, with bosses enabled and wither at 15 stacks the maximum is 79,545. I would really like to see an encounter if you can manage to record it.

I wonder how vital making a pure-unique build is from the standpoint of viability. It's interesting, sure, but it certainly isn't cheaper than just getting better rares. It's hard to justify. I bet it's very fun because you made it yourself, and I don't doubt that it can clear trash packs eventually. I just need to know it meets a certain criteria of adequacy in order to feel confident in adding it to the listing. To-do:

leveling section
enchant selection
explain curse limit issues
alternative gearing
satisfy concerns about clearing efficiency
state what content the build cannot clear reasonably (bosses etc.)
accurately list map mods

"

Kwitch wrote:

I have some legitimate concerns for adding this build to the listing.

No problem :-)

"

Kwitch wrote:

It is immediately apparent that this build did not level with pure uniques, as many of the ones you have listed have significant level requirements. At level 94, you've only managed to break 7k energy shield, and without flasks up your evasion is 8000 and armour is 187. Your only meaningful defense is the 23% block chance on your prism guardian, and arctic armour. enfeeble/temp chains are to help mitigate that obviously, but by then you've spent two curses and don't have any consideration to leech outside of essence drain's innate 0.5% of Debuff-only damage. your mana regen is also less than your mana cost, which means in any prolonged encounter you will not be able to resolve throughput on that.

Well, of course I didn't level with Uniques only, I thought that was quite obvious, didn't claim I did.
Actually I think 7000 ES and 78 % Evade Chance isn't that bad without flasks.
Where is my mana regen lesser than my mana cost? I can Blight/ED ad infinitum without loosing any mana. The occasional Contagion/Wither is no problem. In actual play there aren't any mana-issues at all.

"

Kwitch wrote:

You didn't take Malediction, which would have brought your curse limit up to 3. Yet you claim to run withfire brew as a curse damage source. Doesn't work.

It does work as I am using Doedre's Damning + Whispers of Doom.

"

Kwitch wrote:

You claim to be level 92 in tier 14 maps, yet the build guide is for a level 94 character. You said you could literally run every map mod and only be slowed down by hexproof. I have my pragmatic doubts. These tier 14's might be run white for all we know, there would need to be evidence that it can actually tackle mods.

Well, I did get all my rare corrupted bonuses for tier 14/15 maps on my atlas using this build.
And yes, there's two levels missing, I'm just tired of endgame grinding. If you had read my "future ideas" you would have known that I'm still missing two levels with this build, although it is "only" more DPS.

"

Kwitch wrote:

For all of the effort, the damage is abysmally low. Again, we don't have video evidence to show you clearing maps, and you yourself said clearspeed is mediocre at best. How mediocre are we talking about?

Well, Contagion has a skill duration of 16 s, ED of 12 s and Blight of 8 s so you can do damage over quite some time without actually engaging directly. Best way to play is probably a hybrid melee/hit & run style.

"

Kwitch wrote:

What do players do before level 69, when they can put on the last unique?

Do one of the many other Blight/ED/Contagion Occultist builds out there ;-) They are easily transformable into my build regarding items and skill tree.

"

Kwitch wrote:

Is shield charge damage really the enchant you would prefer?

Of course not, again, read my "future ideas".

"

Kwitch wrote:

Eldritch Knowledge is giving your DoT damage an extra 2071, or 6.3% of it's damage. Is that really better than a Jewel/Abyss Jewel?

I was also trying to use Unique jewels as much as possible ...

"

Kwitch wrote:

I assume this build cannot do bosses? Your non-boss damage is +/- 52,726 before wither, with bosses enabled and wither at 15 stacks the maximum is 79,545. I would really like to see an encounter if you can manage to record it.

It can for sure! I did all the Tier 14/15 bosses without too much trouble as I said. Of course this is no facetank build.

"

Kwitch wrote:

I wonder how vital making a pure-unique build is from the standpoint of viability. It's interesting, sure, but it certainly isn't cheaper than just getting better rares. It's hard to justify. I bet it's very fun because you made it yourself, and I don't doubt that it can clear trash packs eventually. I just need to know it meets a certain criteria of adequacy in order to feel confident in adding it to the listing. To-do:

I didn't make this build for endgame viability or optimized damage output. I specifically said it's for people who - for some reason - prefer to use Uniques only.
Nevertheless, it does work quite well in endgame, although it is probably not good enough for guardians/shaper - as I also mentioned.

"

Kwitch wrote:

leveling section
enchant selection
explain curse limit issues
alternative gearing
satisfy concerns about clearing efficiency
state what content the build cannot clear reasonably (bosses etc.)
accurately list map mods

- Yeah, levelling section is missing, until being able to use the Uniques you can just use the best Rares you can find.
- Enchants would preferably be something for Blight/Contagion/ED or for one of the curses. Again, I'm not enjoying running the Lab over and over again just to get the right enchantment. Of course anyone willing to can do as they please :-)
- Curse limit: Whispers of Doom + Doedre's Damning
- Well, alternative gearing is kind of stupid if I actually want to do a UNIQUE ONLY build. Again, in "variants" there are variants using alternative unique gear.
- Right now you just have to take my word for map clearing and boss killing. Please consider that it's only dealing chaos damage so ES on monsters will be ignored. Also Profane Bloom helps A LOT with clear speed!
Again: this build wasn't designed for pure efficiency, but it does perform quite well (even on lvl 92, should get better on lvl 94 ;-)!
If I ever figure out how to record a video I'd be glad to proove that.
- As said, this build did any tier 14/15 maps I could get my hands on; I didn't exclude a single one because of not manageable mods, except for - and as said - Hexproof, which is a little hard.

Maybe I was under the wrong impression that not only High-DPS/absolute-endgame-builds could be added to the list but also kind of "exotic" ones which emphasize uniqueness in some specific way.

PS: I would have appreciated if you had had a more closer look at what I wrote before complaining/criticizing ...

thanks for the build, and thanks fro putting up with all the forum trolls over and over so you could post this!

"

RudeLion wrote:

thanks for the build, and thanks fro putting up with all the forum trolls over and over so you could post this!

I hope you weren't describing my asking him to evolve the guide for newer players as trolling. criticism isn't only negative, and I think he replied to most of my questions really well.

@SoilnRock for clarification, i meant that a build guide that consists of information for players to follow should in fact cover some of the points I brought up. Specifically, leveling section for what gear to wear to get them to the point of the guide. Yes, most of us commenting are experts who innately know how to get to end-game and could make this post, but I'm sure you're well aware that guides get hundreds of thousands of views, with maybe only a few pages of commenters. That means that most people who visit this guide are not actively mentioning that they are or are not able to follow the guide. It's the same critera I ask of everyone who posts a build guide. Making it user friendly, even for less-advanced users. "They can follow another guide" is kind of a cop out, but you're welcome to state that.

You stated that a lot of the concerns I raised were in fact already met by the build or did not apply. So your regen that is just breaking even is dandy in less regen maps? added elemental damage to monsters and monster crit doesn't come close to killing you? With monsters staying alive for longer (12 second duration on some of your DoT's) do they do significant damage during that time? It's possible your temp chains / enfeeble means the answer is no. I'm not challenging you here, or saying the build is bad. Those are just the unspoken questions of the build that a reader will have in mid, that if you explicitly answer will make the guide stronger.

I understand you recorded some of the thoughts I had in the future ideas section, but if I was viewing your guide as a new player and wondered where the enchant information was etc., I wouldn't think to look there.

As an aside, I always look over any resources, PoB links, and consider how the build would function before approving or denying submissions. To assume I didn't would be suggesting that I'm not actually doing the role that I volunteer for, and sounds defensive. As you yourself stated, you may be overly sensitive, and I know from prior critiquing of other player's builds that I can come off condescending. Please understand that is not my intention, I just don't 'cushion' my thoughts that involve actual shortcomings, be they justified or not. I think you will notice I tried to sound optimistic that these concerns would be easily defused with either video or your own consideration.

There are a lot of unique builds that are less optimized or ideal on both this listing and the templar one, and I know from experience that bison also adds them on his listings as well as long as they are reasonable. Going back to the idea that guide listings are for newer players, I omit submissions if they would inherently get players that follow them into trouble and offer no advice on how to fix it. This role comes from a place of sincere appreciation for the efforts of build creators (as one myself) and an interest to provide a service to the community. I appreciate you, and the effort you put forth in this guide. None of what I said was meant to discourage you or your build, or suggest that you lied about what it was capable of. Merely that clarification on some points was needed before being added, and some thoughts I had to help you achieve that.

Cheers