[3.3] 0piate's Power Charge Essence Drain

Inya's Epiphany boots, The Aylardex, and Void Battery Prophecy Wand are all built around utilizing the power charges for damage. Everything else is just there to give you as much energy shield as possible. Note the body armor is no longer available in league play due to the changes made with reductions in life and energy shield. So you will only find it in Standard League. The highest energy shield body armor you can find in league play now will be around 650 to 700.

The staff, Cane of Unraveling, did not really fit my build. I found that I could get a lot more damage with the Void Battery wands. I'm thinking that Staff is more appropriate for a Trickster Essence Drain build because it gives you the Power Charge generation that you don't get with him.

Bandits: Alira

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/3.2.4/AAAABAMBAQFvBx4NfA3RDkgOXBEPES8RUBGWFX4WQBa_GkgbJRvIHRQdTyL0JogpTysKLJwspi0fNAo1uTdmN4M7DUSrRX5JUUmxS65Ms1AwUq9VrleUV8lcQFxrXfJfKmNDZlRmnmf8adhq-mwLbRl0VXWedoJ7135ZfqF_xoIQhEiFe4V9h8uLeox2j0aPpo_6kNaSdJMnlSCVLpuhnjyhL6brpyunm6yYtAy00bVItzC3MbtNu_y9gr6Kw23G98gMytPPFc_d0B_VptfP2VvbXt1f34rfsOL344ToWukC6rrrY-w474jv6_DV8Yr0KPfB99f5N_rS

DAMAGE TYPES
Essence Drain is broken into two damage types; Chaos damage per hit effect, and Chaos damage over time. Hover your mouse over the skill, your Chaos damage on hit will be shown at the top as DPS(Damage Per Second). The Chaos damage over time will be shown near the bottom as "Deal **** Chaos Damage Per Second". Add the two together for your total damage. Each one will increase differently with different mods.

The damage we have is 50k + 170k = 220k DPS. It's a very high damage for Essence Drain, most of it comes from the power charges but scaling it correctly helps too. You also apply a very good negative chaos resist debuff from the Wither Totem, giving you a higher effective DPS.

Below is an outline of the good, mediocre, and bad mods so you know what to look for when building your damage.

GOOD
These mods benefit both the on hit effect and damage over time portion, these are the ones you want most.
- Increased Spell Damage
- Increased Chaos Damage
- Increased Damage

If it says 'More' instead of 'Increased' such as the mod found in Pain Attunement, that will also affect both and give you an even better boost.


MEDIOCRE
These mods will only boost one or the other damage types.
- Cast Speed
- Damage Over Time

They are o.k because cast speed will also improve your escape speed for skills like Flame Dash and Lightning Warp. And damage over time will account for about 3/4 of your damage so this mod is still not a bad choice.


BAD
These increase only the on hit effect which is about 1/4 of your Essence Drain damage. They do not scale well so I would recommend staying away from them.
- Projectile Damage
- Critical Strike
- Added Chaos (or any kind of damage with the stat 'Added')

Go for the three mods in the top list as much as you can. Get the two in the middle list whenever they are convenient. And there is no reason to get any of the mods in the bottom list, those will help you very little.

POWER CHARGES
Although I use power charges this is not a crit build. Critical Strike scales very poorly with Essence Drain. However, spell damage increases with power charges will give you a significant damage boost. You want to look for the mods "Increased Spell Damage Per Power Charge". The Alardex Agate Amulate will take away all your crit chance but it's not much of a loss since you are not getting very much damage from crit anyway.

We have the following items and skills with "Increased Spell Damage Per Power Charge":

Void Battery Prophecy Wand 25%
Void Battery Prophecy Wand 25%
Inya's Epiphany Arcanist Slippers 5%
Forbidden Power 5%
Spell Damage Per Power Charge (tree) 4%

25% + 25% + 5% + 5% + 4% = 64%
64% * 10 power charges = 640%
640% - 160% (spell damage penalty from wands) = 480%

You will get a combined 10 power charges with 480% spell damage increase. You will also get 100% increased mana regeneration rate with the Alardex Amulate, which is needed because Essence Drain uses a ton of mana.

Gear shown is basically end game gear. For running maps and leveling, you really don't need the 200+ k damage, it's more important to stay alive. Save the Inya's Epiphany boots and Alardex Amulet for later, those are good for damage but gives you poor defense. Use Sin Trek Stealth Boots, a spirit shield, and any amulet with good energy shield on it for leveling. You need Chaos Inoculation in your tree as well, not Pain Attunement. Same concept, Pain Attunement gives you better offense but less defense.

The clear speed is generally slow because when you fight mobs you need to spend time setting up your utility skills. Then you have to shoot them with an Essence Drain ball, wait for that monster to die. Wait for the Contagion to spread to other monsters, then wait for the damage over time to slowly kill them off. This whole process takes time. However, this combo works good on bosses because the Wither Totem has a stacking effect. If it's just one tanky monster you can build up a lot of Wither stacks. But I wouldn't call the clear speed painfully slow. You can still clear maps in decent time. And once you reach around 100k dps, mobs start dying pretty fast.

For utility skills I like to use:
- Spell Wither Totem.
Spell Totem > Wither > Faster Casting > Increased Duration
I'd call it mandatory for most Chaos damage builds. It takes away chaos resist. Since it's hard to scale Essence Drain any other way, this one of the few things you have going for you damage wise.
- Contagion
Contagion > Arcane Surge > Increased Duration
This is designed to be used with Essence Drain, it enables you to take out mobs. Another option, which I don't think is a good one, is to use a multiple projectiles support and forget about using Contagion. But that would hurt your damage making killing bosses more difficult. I also use this to trigger Arcane Surge.
- Orb of Storms
Orb of Storms > Curse on hit > Enfeeble > Decay
Just a good defensive tool. Get rid of this when you get to Shaper though, curses don't work well on him.

Flasks

For the Shaper fight you want the Inya's Epiphany boots and Alardex Amulet. Refund Chaos Inoculation, get Pain Attunemnet instead and keep a Shavronnes Wrappings handy. When you enter the Shaper's Realm, start with Shavronnes so if you come across any chaos damage you don't get anihilated. Once you've killed all four of the starting mini-bosses and the portal to Shapers Arena opens up, switch over to a higher energy shield body armor. The reason is Shavronne's body armor only has around 335 energy shield. You can get a rare body armor with a lot more. And there is absolutley no chaos damage once you're inside the Shaper's Arena. So the mod "Chaos Damage Does Not Bypass Energy Shield" on Shavronnes becomes completely useless.

Regarding Pain Attunement. For those that don't know the difference between 'More' and 'Increased'. 'More' means that mod is multiplying your entire damage by that amount. 'Increase' means it is only adding that percentage to what you are already getting, so it will be a lot less. To keep it simple, if you had 100,000 damage, Pain Attunement would add another 30,000 damage. Which is a nice enough chunk of damage that could make a difference whether or not you kill Shaper.

So get rid of Chaos Inoculation and switch over to Pain Attunement when you get to the Shaper. The only hassle is now you've got to start switching body armors so chaos damage doesn't kill you in between Shaper fights. Don't forget! Like I did a couple of times and died to some miniscule chaos damage.

Flasks:
Remember, his balls deal cold damage with 25% penetration. A Sapphire flask with a Purity of Ice at level 23 as I have shown in my gear, will yield 87% capped cold resist. Activate the flask when you anticipate his balls coming so you can tank it and keep doing damage to him.


Another thing I like to add, I don't know if it's real important, is to switch over to the Sin Trek boots in between Shaper phases. Keep a Lightning Warp skill chain set up in those boots with Lightning Warp > Less Duration > Faster Casting > Swift Affliction. That way you can Lightning Warp over those mobs and get to the Shaper faster so he has less time to regenerate.