An extensive guide on Chaos-DoT Spells ft. ED, Bane & Co [3.14 rdy]

14.04.21 Patchnotes 3.14 section

12.01. 3.13. Updates are in. Curse section updated. Weapons section expanded, renamed to Gear, has more affix-info and shield-info. Minor improvements.

16.-10.-17.09. Updated all available 3.12 news. Updated many things Bane related due to the unexpted nerf :(

03.09. 3.12 section added (infos still scarce though), updated example trees, added arcanist brand analysis, condensed trap/mine-analysis and general polish/condensing

13.08. Support Gem section condensed while having actually more information.

17.06. Added 3.11 changes. Added Unnerve to stuff that doesn't help us.

17.03. Added 3.10-section, polished Wither and Hinder section

20.01.20 Expanded Wither Section 6 (Withering Step is nice). Deleted Leech-Section (wiki explains it better than I did)

11.12. added 3.9 changes

1. Alternate Gem quality
2. Cluster Jewel section
2. Add Influence-Affix section (maybe a whole new section on highest-end-gear...)
3. Write up more of my chars to example builds

Most information in the guide can be found elsewhere but in a less structured, all-in-one-place-style. These are the topics that afaik have not been covered anywhere else:
A deepdive on pure Blight vs Blight + Cast while Channeling + Soulrend vs Soulrend (Section 3)
An indepth analysis of Bane (Section 3) and Empower (Section 4)
ALL viable options to apply the curses a chaos-caster needs (Section 5)

This is not in the guide:
a) Chaos attacks. I'll focus on spells only.
b) Very basic game principles (more vs increased, resistances, ...)
c) ES vs Life vs Hybrid (CI, MoM, LL, EB, Dodge,...) Too build specific and this is not a build guide.
d) Soulrend-Builds with focus on flat projectile damage. If anything I say in this guide also applies to those builds: It's a coincidence :)
e) Grammar that is free of mistakes as I'm not a native speaker. Brace you'reselfs

Vaal Blight has 7s (from 8s) Soul Gain Prevention. Besides Fireball and Spark it is the only effectively unbuffed Vaal Skill :(

Nothing else happened for us. One could say that is a good thing in this nerf-heavy patch. For example the nerf to Frost Bomb and Wave of Conviction means an easy 10% less damage on most elemental builds. Furthermore 100% Exposure uptime is more difficult with the Trigger-Wand-Cooldown-Increase. So yay, all remains intact.

Trickster finally stopped dodging nerfs. 50% incr. damage on Patient Reaper is gone as well as spell dodge chance on Escape Artist. Other minor changes and a Ghost Dance rework (slight nerf?) also happened. No devastating changes but definetely nerfs.
Update: Ritual is probably the most Trickster-ED-Contagion-friendly content ever released.

Occultist got an immense undercover buff. All the numerical / obvious changes are minor imptovements(e.g. DoT multiplier replaced by more damage). What's insane is that you can now skip Profane Bloom and go directly for Malediction. Exploding some corpses and ignoring hexproof is nice, but now other ascendancy nodes are viable alternatives.
Occultist got slight buffs when MANY Ascendencies got nerfed. This makes 3.13 an even bigger buff if you compare Occultist to overall Ascendancy power.

Hierophant lost 6% increased Damage per Enemy Killed by you or your Totems Recently of Pursuit of Faith. Hiero always was a niche option for a CDoT caster that wanted to include powerful Blight/Soulrend-Totems. There are still MoM-EB-Shenanigans available (EB+Arcane Surge is nice), but overall this will be a suboptimal choice in most cases.

Contagion's radius is reduced from 20 to 17. This means 15% less radius and is a signifikant nerf.
It's cool that Essence Drain remained unchanged. Imo GGG precisely hit ED+Contagion where it was overperforming (area coverage, clearspeed) while leaving ED intact as a main or supplementary single target skill.

Alternate Quality was changed/nerfed on an abundance of gems, especially auras. Efficacy can be used on level 8 already and scales slightly slower per gemlevel but (thank god!) has the same lv20 damage.

No other skills, items or affixes used by us got touched. We unfortunately dodged all skillgem buffs. I would have liked a buff on Bane after it got hit in the crossfire of 3.12's curse rework.

Hexblast got buffs in case you want to take a break from CDoT but stay true to chaos :)

Conclusion: I am 100% biased and I like the Ascendancy changes because in the past Occultist (my personal favourite) often felt inferior to Trickster. Now both are more on par and top tier choices for CDoT Casters. ED+Contagion as one of the best leveling / mapping skills got nerfed and is less powerful than before.

Afaik no new builds popped up combining flat chaos damage with DoTs.

The whole curse rework (hexes, marks, doom) has no effect on overall power levels, just on game mechanics. Curses are either Hexes or Marks (and ofc still Curses). Marks change significantly and will only ever apply to one target. No enemy can have multiple marks ever. Self-casting hexes grants Doom and thus increased curse effect. Self-Casting remains clunky and even self-casting a single curse should still be avoided. Bane is caught in the crossfire of some of the curse changes as it only has a hex tag. Nothing essential is hit but several options are removed (e.g. Vixen's Entrapment).

Spellslinger has 30% Mana Reservation Override at gem level 1, down to 25% at gem level 20 (from 20% at all gem levels) and slight increase in cooldown.

Enfeeble no longer causes cursed enemies to have reduced critical strike chance or critical strike multiplier. This is a huge and rather unexpected nerf.

The passive tree changes are significant and for all the details I recommend checking out the patch notes. It's quite a list. Our overall power level seems unaffected but tree locations changed and skills were added. The north part of the tree (which was sometimes skipped) is now even more expendable since it no longer harbours the +1 curse notable. A lot of notables had Doom-related stuff added.

Since you only need to cast a skill once every few seconds, Chaos-DoT-builts can be honest self-casters and still spend a lot of time dodging enemy attacks.

Most chaos spells deal DoT and some deal flat chaos damage in addition. The flat damage is insignificant DPS-wise for most DoT-builds, but: Chaos DoTs do not hit, so they don't trigger any on hit effects like leech, blind or curse on hit (unless they also deal flat chaos damage, in which case only the flat damage part will hit).

Forget everything you know about poisons. They are chaos DoTs but they use very different mechanics than chaos DoT spells.

Applying the same Chaos-DoT twice does not increase the damage, Chaos-DoTs do not stack. But applying two or more different chaos-DoTs can be a very effective way to scale your damage against bosses.

The exception to the rule is Blight, since the gems description explicitly allows it to stack.
Examples: Chaos-DoTs don't stack (Contagion) unless stated othwerise (Blight). Poisons are entirely different as stated before.

Other points:
a) No chaos-caster ever worries about reflected damage. There is no chaos-reflect in the game. Wohoo!
b) Our damage over time is unaffected by crits (if your chosen spell can crit at all). There is no workaround for that in the game.
c) There will be Purple. Lot's of purple. I like purple. You like purple. This is a chaos-spell-guide. If you don't like purple, you came to the wrong place. This point is not up for debate.

Chaos DoTs do profit from increased Damage, increased Chaos Damage and increased (Chaos-)Damage over time.
All spell gems that deal chaos-DoT actually have the line "modifiers to spell damage apply to this skills damage over time effect"
This line is absolutely crucial because "damage over time" is actually a different damage source than "spell".

So bottom line: Increased (spell-)damage is nice as usual.

Chaos Damage over time multiplier (CDoTM) is a great damage scaler, basically one nice more-ish multiplier. I've elaborated on this in Section 1.3 but the jist of it is:
30 CDoTM + 15 CDoTM + 40 CDoTM on your char = 85% more Damage, nice.
The most common sources of CDoTM are the passive tree, affixes on wands/staves/rune daggers or June crafting it on any weapon.

Withered is a debuff that makes enemies take 6% increased chaos damage and can be stacked up to 15 times. That means 90% increased Damage taken! While you usually will have some additional sources of increased damage taken (Despair curse usually), this is an immense damage buff. All "decreased/increased damage taken" is added up and forms one damage multiplier during damage calculation. It's a very valuable stat.
Because stacking Withered debuffs takes a moment, it's usually only relevant against rare mobs and bosses, the rest dies too fast anyways.
Section 6 deals with Withered in greater detail.
Usual sources are the Occultist ascendency Withering Presence or the skills Wither or Blight (+Spreading Rot jewel), often accompanied by Spell Totem Support. Withering Step can also be used to apply lots of withered fast, but you need to get close.


Our lack of ele/phys damage eliminates many auras/curses, but Despair and Malevolence are auto includes in most builds and Zealotry can be considered (but just for the 15% more spell damage, not because of the crits).

While several ascendancies can be used, Occultist and Trickster are the mainstream ones. For more details on ascendancies check section 9.

Recap: We scale DPS mainly with
a) increased (spell-) damage
b) CDoTM
c) Withered
d) The usual caster stuff (Arcane Surge, Support Gems, sometimes a "Spiritual Aid" notable, ...)

Chaos DoTs do NOT profit from Area Damage and Projectile Damage, even if the gem has those tags. These will only buff the flat damage which contributes very little to our total damage output.

Projectile Speed, additional Projectiles and Area of Effect work if the gem has Area / Projectile tags.

Example: The following support gems all have an effect on Soulrend but they do not affect Soulrends damage over time:


Unnerve (a debuff that makes enemies take 10% increased spell damage) does nothing for us, because we deal damage over time. DoT is not spell damage (although all our gems say "this skills damage over time is affected by spell damage).

"Adds x damage to spells" and critical strikes also do not affect our damage output.

Since 3.6 (with an update in 3.8) we have Chaos Damage over time Multiplier (CDoTM). Since 3.9 weapons can have a general Damage over Time Multiplier on a suffix. DoTM works just like CDoTM.

All applicable damage over time multipliers are added together and form one kinda more-multiplier. This will lead to minor diminishing returns, but CDoTM is absolutely great, grab it if you can!

Let's assume we have 40% CDoTM on our weapon, 20% CDoTM through the Occultist ascendancy Withering Presence and 8% CDoTM on the notable Corruption in the skilltree. This will result in 68% CDoTM and thus in 68% more Damage. Which is great.

As I said, different sources of CDoTM add up instead of multiplying. WOULD they multiply, this example would result in 81% more damage (1.4*1.2*1.08=1.81).

Depending on your tree, gear and ascendancy, your final CDoTM value will vary. But:
---- No chaos-DoT built shall ever leave it's hideout without CDoTM ----

You can get CDoTM from skilltree passives and from weapons. Only Wands, Rune Daggers and Staves can roll a CDoTM Prefix. Jun can craft CDoTM on any weapon at a lower but decent value.
Other sources of CDoTM are some influenced rares (hunter amuletts, shaper gloves, ... you should only consider these for min-maxing) and the occultist ascendancy.

(Good wand with some useless affixes, more examples in the next section)

You have a lot of room for adapting to your personal preferences when it comes to weapon choices in Chaos-DoT builds. This overview is kinda in-depth. Tl,dr: Get a wand, two wands or a staff.


These options can roll a CDoTM-Prefix:

Wands: Spell Damage implicits (or cast speed, which I don't recommend), can roll CDoTM, have all the caster-stuff and even have a slim chance to get you +1lv to all chaos spell skill gems (global, not socketed!). My personal favourite.
Ignore all passive tree wand nodes.

Dual wielding Wands: We get some block chance and are relatively unaffected by the other dual wield bonuses. We get the double increased Spell Damage implicits and twice the wand affixes. Dual wield tree nodes are optional and ok. They often buff cast speed, which is QoL but doesn't scale your damage.
This is a high damage option with some drawbacks in defense.

Wand+Shield grants a significant health pool boost (life or ES), high block chance and some nice passive tree nodes (for shields, not for wands). Great if you like surviving. Sacrifices some DPS but clear speed remains intact. You can use Shield Slam and consequently Fortify Support (must have).
Intelligence shields also can roll spell damage or even +1 to chaos spell gems, but that is not budget friendly alongside a good life roll. If you're life based, look for decent armor or useful implicits. There are some really nice influence mods. Top-end-example with a bad implicit:

Staff for a second 6L, allowing you to combine 2 Chaos-DoTs for maximum Damage output at the cost of survivability. Higher CDoTM-values than Wand+Shield. Can have up to +3lv to all chaos spell skill gems (global!), but that's super rare.
Has access to Fortify since it's a a melee weapon.
Shaper staff can have a "supported by cast while channeling"-prefix, allowing a pseudo-7-link in such a setup (preferably with Blight and Soulrend).
This is an aggressive option. By going staff you are deciding againt high defenses, since your off-hand will be empty (one slot less for expanding health pool and defenses). The block chance from the staff implicit does not compensate for this (although it is nice).


These options get CDoTM only through the crafting bench. But they have other advantages:

Bows have almost no access to spell damage affixes, but can have +1 to all socketed gems (and then you multimod from there -> not a budget option). Bows allow high additional gemlevels on one 6-link skillgem.
Comes with a Quiver for defenses but does not have block chance. If you're life based, consider dodge. Brings a second six-link to the character at the cost of some defenses.

Melee weapons (dual wield or with shield) have access to Fortify Support (20% less damage taken from hits) and to movement skills like Whirling Blades. Melee weapons will need a Jun craft for CDoTM. This is rarely the best option.
Most melee weapon implicits are useless for us, so for bases you'll want to look at:
Sai Dagger for 6% additional block chance or
Tiger Hook for 6% chance to Dodge Attack Hits.
Rune Daggers can have wand affixes, Implicits are crap though (crit chance).
Some melee weapon corruptions are nice (Runedagger/Dagger 50-60% increased Damage over time, stuff with charges), but fishing for a specific corruption is kinda insane.

These are your top priority affixes:
1. CDoTM: Craftable, but T1 or T2 natural rolls are a huge DPS-boosts.
2. +x to chaos spells: Only +1 on wands, not on budget gear but great.
3. Increased spell/chaos damage: Craftable. High values possible :)

Too rare to care (usually):
+1 to spell skill gems: Obviously great but ridiculously rare.
Damage over time Multiplier: The only good damage-suffix, which can give you an easy 10% more effective damage. Realisticly it's never rolled alongside the more important affixes above.

Good wand with maximum CDoTM roll:

Almost mirror-tier harvest wand from 3.11 (Unnerve doesn't do anything):

Shaper wands allow you to fit soo many pseudo-gems in, it's amazing, especially since we are always socket starved.

Wands can roll all these affixes:
Controlled Destruction + 40-60% Spell Damage;
Faster Casting + 10-16% cast speed;
Spell Cascade + 6-15% AoE;
(consider the +2 of socketed support gems craft and lv4 Empower)

Some examples (first one is unrealistically well rolled):

Rares are better.

Breath of the Council is a trap since it's high increased spell damage does not compensate the lack of CDoT and a useful implicit.

Cerberus Limbs with a high armor shield will be cheaper but worse than a good wand with a high ES-Shield, unless you do something crazy with it (see my Hierophant in the build section 7).

Dark Seer is an almost decent defensive option.

Cane of Unravelling is good on a budget but should be replaced at some time. The +2lv is nice, CDoTM is good and increased Damage is lacking. The Power Charge stuff doesn't do much for chaos casters.

The details are in the following section, here is a quick overview of lv20 gems.
3.7: Bane Damage should be 895.6.

While the chaos skills are quite different in how they work and what they bring to the table, they will ALL share a lot of mechanics. This makes the base numbers very useful to compare the skills, because all skills will get the same 400% increased, 350% more, 100% CDoTM, 100 % increased damage taken, +x levels shenanigans that the lategame and one to one hundred exalts provide.

So here is a list sorted by lv20 DPS + significant side effects + indepth details in the spoilers.

1994.3 DoT Soulrend Does Hit. Pierces all targets. Projectile. Homing shots. 4% ES-Leech. Best DoT-DPS at the cost of really (!) short Duration

1503.2 DoT Essence Drain Does Hit. Tiny AoE. Projectile. Provides significant life regen. Single target, can be transformed to mob clearer.


1100.8 DoT at least: Blight + Cast while Channeling + Soulrend, up to 3546.1 DoT
Channeling Spell. Requires being stationary on occasion. Loves Spreading Rot Jewel. ES-Leech. It's complicated.

895.6 DoT Bane Does not hit. Will apply linked curses. Linked curses increase Duration significantly and function as %more-DoT multiplier. Kinda has a curse tag.


257.4 DoT-DPS Blight, can stack 20 times for 5148 DoT-DPS!!! Does not hit. Channeling Spell. Requires being stationary on occasion. Loves Spreading Rot Jewel. Has a Vaal version.


235.9 DoT Contagion Does not hit. Upgrades Essence Drain from single target to mob clear. Loves increased AoE.


Honorable Mentions:

Death Aura is a Chaos-DoT-Aura granted from the Death Oath body armor.It allows you to clear mobs simply by walking around. DoT is 562.5, but support gems and damage scaling is interesting because the DoT does not scale with spell damage but does scale with aura effect. Definetely a cool and unique choice imo. For more info I'd recommend checking a build guide (this skill has been covered extensively by others, thus I'll skip it here). I found this guide by GhazzyTV to be very comprehensive and the intro is really entertaining :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPW4RjkNAHE

Withering Step is not a damage spell but will be covered in my Withered spoiler (section 6).

Desecrate: Utility rather than clear/damage, fits somewhere else rather than here.

Summon Chaos Golem: I like him. Will grant up to 5% physical damage reduction. Basically no damage output without investing into a Summoner Build.

Herald of Agony: Remember, I told you Poisons are something totally different.
On a serious note: This thing needs lots of hits to work and we apply some few low-damage hits if we hit at all.

Bane or ED+Contagion.

These are our top 5 support gems for damage in any 6link (with two gems excluded for now) with the strongest on the left and the weakest on the right:

Efficacy provides a whopping 48,4% more damage (the two more-multipliers give compound interest) and skill effect duration, making it our best choice.
Swift Affliction is the only gem here with drawbacks: The reduced duration can hurt and the dexterity requirement is high-ish. Consequently you might prefer Void Manipultion in your 4link despite it missing 5% more damage.
The "drawbacks" on all gems except Swift Affliction are 100% irrelevant on chaos casters.
Energy Leech is significantly weaker than the others. Avoid whenever possible. Now to our two not-yet-mentioned gems:



This covers all you need for your 4link or 6link damage-wise. Now let's get to the bad ones, the pitfalls and the utility gems.

Tier 3: Bad, don't use!

10% more: Arcane Surge Support (could give up to 42,8% more, but it won't)
Not even 25% more: Decay Support
0% more: Concentrated Effect Support (do not take!)
0% more: Slower Projectiles Support (do not take!)


Tier U: Utility, not damage related but sometimes useful

Occasionally you just want a bigger area of effect on Bane or Contagion. Intensify has no effect on our damage over time! ED doesn't need AoE, Blight is usually single target anyways and Soulrend prefers addtional projectiles support.
Spell Cascade is great on Bane for mapping. It cuts our damage almost in half if we replace a damage support with it. Usually still worth it for extreme area coverage (offscreening!).
Uselesss on Blight, Essence Drain and Soulrend. Don't link Spell Cascade to Contagion, it will Cascade only the initial cast but still reduce the AoE for spreading.

See next post.

Awakaned Gems are on level 1 are strictly more powerful than their normal versions on level 20, only Swift Affliction has a small drawback. Fully leveled they are similar to the normal support gem on lv25, but some come with an additional big perc.
Awakened gems usually cost 1ex+ (or 10ex+ for the more desired ones). They also take an eternity to level up. Only available if you spend a lot of time on PoE :/

These gems receive upgrades which I consider ridiculously powerful:

Awakened Curse on Hit:
effectively +1 curse limit.


These are improvements to our damage support:

Awakaned Swift Affliction:
+5% more damage, 10% CDoTM (instead of 0), 25% reduced skill effect duration (instead of 15%), which is a serious trade off.

Awakaned Void Manipulation:
+5% more damage, +10% increased chaos damage

Awakened Controlled Destruction:
+5% more damage, +10% increased cast speed.


These are QoL improvements to gems used in some builds:

Awakened Spell Cascade:
adds additional areas left and right from casting point (Bane will LOVE this). Usually one of the top 5 most expensive awakened gems :/

Awakened Increased Area of Effect:
+5% increased AoE, 14% more Area Damage (from 0% but we don't benefit from this stat), superminor improvement

For more detailed descriptions, check the first tier list.
??% Empower
52.9% Infused Channeling (only on Blight selfcast)
49% Awakened Controlled Destruction
49% Awakened Swift Affliciton (comes with +10CDoTm and 25% reduced skill effect duration)
48.8% Efficacy
44% Awakened Void Manipulation
44% Controlled Destruction
39% Void Manipulation

This is a rather traditional Tree for a life-ES-hybrid Occultist from 3.11 Harvest.
My main skill is Bane with ED and Blight for bosses.
Possible adaptations:
a) Vary the timeless jewel or replace the timeless jewel for a very large ring Threat of Hope.
b) Remove one or two cluster-jewel-cluster for useful other notables.
c) Grab MoM and go life+mana+ES or add EB for life+ES (again cutting the Timeless Jewel).

This is a somewhat exotic tree from 3.9. It's a Hierophant using Bane, ED and Blight-Totems plus MoM+EB (ES protects mana and part of life damage is taken from mana thus es). Nowadays I wouldn't include the bottom right chaos cluster anymore but get the full scion life wheel or cut some stuff to add a cluster jewel.

The top 3 curses usually are: Despair, Temporal Chains, Enfeeble. If you can apply 3+ curses, make sure to apply all of these. I don't recommend Punishment for the Debilitate debuff, but if you find yourself able to apply 4 curses, maybe consider it. Note that all bosses have less curse effect mods on them.These are usually used only for charge generation. Stat requirements increase significantly per level, but you rarely need gemlevel 20. Don't increase your dex/str just to add a higher gem level for your mark.

Specific builds might utilize other curses, these 5 fit for most chaos-DoT-caster.

So how do we curse properly? There are a couple of options. They each have pros and cons. With one exception: You never want to self-cast defensive/utility curses. And you almost never want to selfcast offensive curses, but maybe it's sometimes ok for despair if everything else fails.
Curse-on-hit-rings are the mainstream choice. Some options work like auras, which implies limited range.

I mentioned a 90% increased damage taken in Section 4. That is the result of the maximum 15 times 6% increased chaos damage taken through 15 stacks of withered.
As long as you care about single target damage at all, you'll ave to include some means to apply withered.

These are your options:
Blight + Spreading Rot Jewel, Wither-Totem, Withering Step, Selfcasting Withered (only Totem builds).

If you use Blight anyways you'll want a Spreading Rot Jewel. Note that investing a jewel socket is significant though (juicy 6% ES/life and 4% NaCDoT on other jewels). Do not use two Spreading Rot Jewels, this only buffs the hinder duration further and is not worth it.


Wither + Spell Totem + Multiple Totems (+ Faster Casting) allows you to apply withered pretty rapidly with 2 or 3 totems but uses several gemslots. Only this setup allows you to leave and do other important stuff after applying your DoTs and placing totems. Some of the endgame bosses will kill these totems very regulary, so you'll need to replace them a lot.
Why not use Blight-Totems instead? Blight has too short a range for our fragile totems (unless you actually ARE a totem built) and Blight lacks effective damage-scaling on a 4L-totem. Can be done, but needs more support than just the gemslots (unlike Wither-Totems). See Section 9 for further info. Here is an example of how to squeeze in a 5L-Blight-Totem for a nice damage boost (maybe get a +1 totem shield on top):


Withering Step can apply up to 7 withered stacks instantly at lv21, which is nice. This can actually be used to constantly and without any casting time apply 14 stacks of withered.
Strategy: Link an Increased Duration Support and make sure that the enemy is cursed with Temporal Chains (debuffs expire slower). This will grant you a skill effect duration of over 6s (even against Shaper and other bosses with 66% less curse effect). With a cooldown of 3s on Withering Step you can now apply 14 stacks of withered permanently.
Casting every 3s takes some getting used to (but you do not need to be precise against anything without 66% less curse effect, because the withered duration is much longer on those enemies). And you need to be close to the enemy most of the time, which is difficult for some builds. If you want to go totally overboard, get a helmet enchant for +3 withered stacks. Withering Step shares a cooldown with blink skills, so (flame) dash interferes a bit.
Be aware that both the withered-application as well as the elusive buff end as soon as you use another skill. Furthermore the cooldown only starts after the skill has ended, so in order to apply withered twice in 6s, you'll need to cast withering step followed by another skill. Casting it while channeling something works really smoothly.


The Occultist Ascendancy node Withering Presence applies 1 Wither per second just like that. A nice variant that will spread some withered even during mobclearing where you usually don't have the time for this (cze Mobs die too fast). Takes 15s to stack 15 Withered though and you need to stay nearby. Additionally you might want different ascendancy nodes more (I do).

This is one only makes sense if you are a chaos-DOT totem built and have taken the Ancestral Bond Keystone (+1 totem, you can't deal damage yourself), but then it's nice. Since you can't deal damage anyway, you might wanna spent your free time self-casting Wither, which has the chaos gem tag, giving you Chaos-Infusion. And while totems can not gain Infusion they "obviously" still get the 10% more chaos damage buff if your character gains Infusion.

And then there is the Withering Touch Support, which would need a skill that applies a lot of attack hits (which we don't have). Emphasis on attack and on hits. Plus this does not apply Hinder.
If you are interested, I have dedicated a section to an idea I actually cooked up 100% by myself: Spectral Spirits (effectively three permanent SRS Raging Spirits). It is totally hipster (NO ONE plays it yet). It's also not good, but maybe one day someone will find a way to make it work. For more details, check Section 8. The basic idea looks like this:

Hinder is a different debuff that reduces Movement Speed. Only Spells can apply Hinder while only attacks apply Maim. I mention it here because most forms of withered come with some form of hinder. Hinder is really helpful to keep you dodging.

Reduced movement speed will not slow attack/cast animations on enemies. That would be reduced action speed (Temporal Chains, Chill).


Blight will apply a juicy 80% hinder for a nice Duration with the first stack. (This will only happen if the target has no Blight debuff on it already!) Vaal Blight applies 80% hinder for a longer duration (3-4 times that long) and does not care about previous Blight stacks. The Spreading Rot Jewel increases the Blight hinder duration and even the Vaal Blight hinder duration (tested!).

Wither-Totems will apply a less juicy 36% Hinder that will last as long as you have at least one totem firing plus some seconds.

Aspect of the Spider hinders nearby enemies for 30% movement speed and increases damage taken on enemies. Aspects aren't auras, so this is unaffected by increased aura effect.

There are some other ways to apply hinder (cluster and abyss jewels can provide hinder on hit chance), but these are the most common ones.

From the Wiki: "If a creature is hindered by multiple sources only the strongest Hinder takes effect." So for example Aspect of the Spider won't override Blights hinder but also won't add to it.

If you want to add Maim on top, you will need some form of attacks (maybe check out my Spectral-Spirits-Analysis in Section 8).

The Occultist Ascendancy node Withering Presence states "Nearby Hindered Enemies deal 15% reduced Damage over Time" but it has no build-in hindering.

I'll first explain a straight forward version of the build, then show alternatives which scale mana and which I consider more powerful.

It's a life-ES-hybrid with Mind over Matter + Eldritch Battery (ES protects our mana). Bane is for clear, pseudo-5link-totems are great against Bosses. While Banes DPS-numbers do not impress at all, they still make for a good mapper with insane AoE thanks to Spell Cascade.
I ended up with a 50% Mind over Matter and a comfortable 10k effective life.
Known Deficencies: Watcher's Eye with "% of mana added as Energy Shield while you have Clarity" was beyond affordable for me this league. Atm the build lacks Arcane Surge, which is a disgrace and should be changed by anybody adopting this (ideally crafted on the wand).

Flasks can be varied, Ascendancies could maybe be varied if one goes for a +1 totem shield.
For more boss killing potential I'd recommend squeezing Bane into a wand with pseudo-links and 6linking an Essense Drain in the chest.
Originally I planned to scale Mana. The version above is more straight forward, but after trying stuff out I'd say this is more powerful: Memory Vault + Cerberus Limb + high armor shield grants the quite unique combination of high ES and armor. Insane effective life pool at the cost of a little DPS. Cerberus Limb with a cast speed corruption would be optimal. Vaal Molten Shell was great for surviving almost everything (absorbing 13k damage). I recommend crafting "immune to ailments while focused" on your boots and adding "increased armor during flask effect" on your utility flasks for even insaner Vaal Molten Shells.

Earlier then 3.10:

The basic idea evolves around any Insanity-Weapon with Withering Touch Support.
TlDr: If you look for something effective, look somewhere else, this is a work in progress ;) Essence of Insanity will grant the summon Spectral Spirits suffix to a Weapon. These are basically three immortal, permanent Raging Spirits (SRS) which actually attack. Thus they give us access to Withering Touch support and Maim Support. Since Chaos-DoTs builds rarely hit and rarely attack, this is an immense oppurtunity.

Applying the withered debuff this way can:
a) supplement Blight
b) speed up the Withering Presence Occultist ascendency node (ough, 15 seconds, not for me!)
c) replace Wither-totems
without any casting, giving us more time to dodge.

Furthermore the Spectral Spirits will catch some enemy projectiles flying around and could be used to apply blind or even curse on hit.

Before you read on: I think that there is a way for this concept to make it into an efficient build. But I have not found one yet. If you care only about top notch builds, this section most likely is not for you. I refuse to let my memes be dreams and will continue looking, but atm this is not more (and not less) than an idea for experimantation and theorycrafting.
Also note that this section is still in it's 3.6-state since I don't think anybody reads it. 3.8 might provide interesting new options.

I've ranked all the ascendancies into tiers depending on how fitting they are for chaos-caster. If the pictures are too small, feel free to zoom in.

Tier 1: Natural fits with lots of power for our playstyle fitting for all chaos DoT spells.

Tier 2: Usuable for specific builds

Pathfinder provides a significant AoE+Damage boost (Nature's Reprisal) with a lot of flask synergy. While overall the defenses and offenses are lackluster, it can enable certain playstyles that make up for it.
In section 7 I've linked to a Vaal-Blight-Magic-Find-Pathfinder.
If you are up for the hassle of permanent flask upkeep, you could go ES-low-life with Coruscating Elixir. Allows for lot's of Auras and 30% more spell damage with Pain Attunement.
The Ascendancy node Master Toxicist does not help us. Since the 3.8 patch notes CDoTM also affects poison. I sometimes toy around with the idea of a Soulrend-Poison-Pathfinder or Assassin, but it just does not compete with dedicated poison builds.

Hierophant's +1 totem can be an option to go for a Blight-Totem build without sacrificing all that damage for Multiple Totem Support. You can even go full out totem with Blight and Soulrend Totems, an Ancestral Bond Keystone and a selfcast Wither+Infused Channeling for 10% more damage on top.
It also provides an immense health pool if you go Mind over Matter + Eldritch Battery or just Mind over Matter without reserving all your mana. Mana scaling can also be abused for a lot of things. I have some example setups in my build section.
Last but not least Pursuit of Faith provides 6% increased damage per enemy killed by you or your totems which can easily give you 100-200% incr. damage in dense areas, creating a smooth mapping and delving experience.

Scion can be an aurabot with lot's of auras/curses and some chaos spell. Not recommended for single play as it can't compete with Trickster/Occultist in that regard.

Juggernaut is maybe rather tier 3, but if you really hate dieing and are willing to spend a lot of passive points on pathing, you can do it. I once played a Jugg-Totem build and while the damage was mediocre, the tankiness was there.

Tier 3: Inferior to other ascendancies or only for super niche builds.

All other ascendancies.
Inquisitor, Berserker, Chieftain and Raider have attacks or elemental written all over everything.
Duelist's ascendancies might have some utility but lack synergy and have the worst passive tree position to reach CDoTM-clusters.
Deadeye, Saboteur (see my Traps and Mines section), Necromancer and Elementalist just don't fit us.
Assassin wouldn't be the worst but Trickster is strictly better (unless someone cooks up an Assassin-Soulrend-Poison build).

There are no "natural" Chaos-DoTs on Totem skills. There are no damage conversions for damage over time (since DoTs do not hit). This leaves Spell Totem Support as the only option, if we decide to play a chaos DoT totem. Damage over time that is applied by a Totem will profit from increased Totem Damage.

Spell Totem Support occupies a support gem slot that would otherwise provide you with roughly 40% more damage. The damage of your DoT-debuff will consequently be much lower than self-casting:
75% Damage at 70% cast speed (Totem) vs 140% damage at 100% cast speed (Self-cast)

So why even bother? Well, Blight and Soulrend have high mana cost and require a lot of casting time to keep the DoTs rolling. Consequently you have less time to cast other skills or to dodge attacks. Or maybe dodging stops you from keeping the DoTs up, resulting in damage lost. So just let a Totem do the casting for you :)

Cast while Channeling can not support Totems, so Blight+CwC+Soulrend-Totems are not an option. Essence Drain, Bane and Contagion have a long uptime and a low casting time, so they do not really profit from Spell Totem Support.

The only sensible option is Arcanist Brand and Soulrend, since all the other Chaos-DoTs are better off being self-cast (and Blight doesn't work wirth Arcanist Brand). Exmaple Gemlink:
This is bad because nothing on the tree is useful for Soulbrands (see what I did there?). More brand activation frequency, brand crits or additional brands don't change our DPS, so there's basically no tree-support for this setup. Some enemies take 5% increased damage per brand on them exists on the tree/cluster jewels but it's not much and not worth this effort.

Essence Drain (a compareable skill due to similar uptime and mana cost) will deal 75% more damage than Soulbrand. The math is in the next spoiler. I think this illustrates why it sucks for bossing. For mapping the DPS might still be ok enough, but Arcanist Brand is so clunky that it's inferior to ED+Contagion (or anything else we can do).

Soulbrand gives some ES-leech but I don't think this ever compensates the poor damage and clunkiness.

Chaos DoTs don't stack and 1 Trap/Mine will consequently do the damage of 10 Traps/Mines. Throwing multiple traps/mines instead of casting one spell is the whole selling point of traps and mines. You might squeeze out some minor advantages but none of it will be worth sacrificing a whole support gem slot. Not worth the hassle, but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong :)

Arcanist Brand was added and might be utilised by CDoT-Casters.
OP Vaal Molten Shell was nerfed, heavily affecting armour-based CDoT Casters (if those existed).
Crit multi is nerfed across the board, which nerfes all crit builds, which is most people except CDoT casters :)

That would be a very uneventful patch for Chaos Casters, but GGG made significant changes to all CDoTM-clusters for casters!

Corruption will give you 20% increased effect of withered. That's a new mechanic found nowhere else. At max withered stacks, this means 18% increased damage taken (or 15% if the server is rounding off in between)
The cluster also gained withered expires 20% slower. Nice, wither-duration could be problematic.
Corruption now grants 0% CDoTM (from 10% CDoTM) and the whole cluster grants 57% increased damage (from 72%).
The overall DPS-result seems to be the same, but the involved mechanics are pretty unique.


Method of Madness now grants +1 max chaos res. This is 100% useless unless you have the very niche timeless keystone Divine Flesh.
The whole cluster now gives 12% CDoTM (from 14%) and 30% increased Chaos Damage (from 46%).
Method of Madness is nerfed and will often be skipped to save skill points.
Anointing Method of Madness is no longer viable, as any CDoTM is located in the small passives.

A lot of cluster jewel notables were nerfed, including chaos and dot ones. They seem still viable but tuned down. I won't list all changes here (there's a lot). One theme is skill effect duration being tuned down all over the place.


Keystones The Agnostic and Eternal Youth were added near the Scion life nodes. Interesting options for life-based chars.
Supreme Ego was also added. It's imo too far away for CDoT-Casters (even with a hole MoM + Essence Worm package). It does not pay off on Malevolence, which is our strongest offensive aura.

Spell Totem Support received a 50% increase in maximum totem life. More survivability for Wither and Blight Totems, nice.

Cluster Jewels added, which we like just as much as the next guy.

Soulrend has a base duration of 0.6 (from 0.4). That means 50% more duration, an immense buff.

Caustic Arrow got +3 radius and 15% more dot. This buff is huge and makes it a Soulrend-level-DPS but with sweet 2s base duration.

Additional Curse can no longer be crafted on body armours.

A general increase in enemies resistances makes reducing resistances more important for everyone.

Several gear affixes (that we don't use) were nerfed :)

Non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier (CDoTM) has been changed to Chaos Damage over time multiplier (CDoM). This is
a) easier to read and
b) CDoT-caster+Poison build possible?
The addition of stuff like Fire Damage over time multiplier should result in a more streamlined game mechanic overall, making stuff easier to understand.

Contagion has no more radius bonus on higher levels, which is sad.

Trickster Ghost Dance has roughly 30% less effect overall now.

Occultist had 40 ES regen added to Vile Bastion.

Minor passive tree changes but bottom line: Everything as usual here. For Details check Section 1.3.

Skills:
Bane deals roughly 15% less damage but was overperforming anyways. Bane is still good.

Soulrend's AoE was reduced (13->10), which is a significant nerf but does not kill the skill.

League:
ED+Contagion is damn OP for the Monolith.

Tree:
Occultists defensive options got nerfed (Vile Bastion). Wicked Ward was exported to the general skill tree.

Trickster got nerfs but remains damn strong.

ES was nerfed overall.

Others:
Wand+Shield can now use Shield Slam and consequently Fortify Support. This is an insane buff for any Wand+Shield-build, since this setup could not get Fortify previously (Dread Banner doesn't count).

Bottom line:
Justified nerfs. All chaos-DoT skills remain viable. Wand+Shield got buffed.

This is speculative and much is yet unknown.

Most builds are busy attacking/casting their main skill. Chaos caster apply a debuff and then have spare time. The amount of active skills they squeeze into their sockets actually multiplies their damage against tougher enemies, because they have the time to cast them all. E.g. if my Bane Occultist adds a 6L-Essence Drain, that will double the damage vs Bosses.

PoE2's new gem system (up to 9 6links) boosts chaos caster much more than it does other chars, substantially increasing our boss killing potential.

"

Sezth wrote:

Hi

iam trying to make an Cyclone cwc soulrend and was trying with Shire of shards staff

overall it feels quite nice clearspeed but kinda lack of single target dps. I wonder ifanyone else have tried this approce or should i just scrap this idea

I tried Cyclone CoC Soulrend the first half of the league (not with Sire of Shards though). Here is my result:


Spamming Soulrend with CoC Cyclone does little in itself since the DoT does not stack and the hit damage is bad (I think, I never really used Soulrend for the hit damage). So we need an additional ingenious idea:
My logical consequence was going poison and double abusing chaos damage over time multiplier and use support gems that work on poison and on soulrend (stuff like swift affliction and void manipulation). So I went Assassin for crit and poison utility plus great survivability of Mist Walker. Going CoC on some non-crit ascendancy like Occultist or Trickster is not viable imo.

1 month later I finally retired the concept, because try as you might, your damage will always be lower than a pur cyclone coc bladefall poison setup, partly because pure ailment support gems (deadly ailments, Vile Toxins) each provide 5-15% more damage than our cdot-supports, making us miss out on lots of damage.
Only upsides of Soulrend were the integrated ES leech (I played a Glorious Vanity ES/Life Hybrid) and the range, but the reduction in damage wasn't worth it imo. On top of that we need additional projectiles to have any area coverage with soulrend while bladefall has amazing aoe automatically build in.

You can look at my char TheChaosDoT and just mentally make my sixlink from
Cyclone, CoC, Bladefall, Awakened Added Chaos Damage, Deadly Ailments, Vile Toxins into
Cyclone, CoC, Soulrend, Swift Affliction, Void Manipulation, Added Chaos / Efficacy / Energy Leech / some other 6th gem
and varify yourself that the damage just doesn't keep up.



Nice concept, I might try again in some leagues, but atm not as good as pure poison. Haven't done a cast while channeling cyclone soulrend yet (pathfinder? or classical occultist/trickster) but I suspect similar problems.
I lost faith in the idea, but hey, maybe you can find something I didn't discover.



On the Sire of Shards: Be aware that your damage will suck. This might be ok if you wanna build a mapper who mainly needs movespeed, area coverage,... but going for a two handed weapon without a single damage stat will hurt. Plus Soulrend in itself (at least the DoT) does not profit from crits which is bad for a crit build. Or maybe you are going for the hit damage, in which case my whole speech was besides the point^^


Lemme hear what you find, I'm intrigued.

"

Not sure if i didnt see it but me and a friend are playing duo chaos builds and we were wondering if blight's stacks and vaal blight's stacks were separate. Any insight?

Not sure how to read your question, I will answer both ways I could understand it. Very niche but very interesting topic, had to think about this quite a bit.

a) Can my friend and I do 40 normal Blight stacks in total?
No. "All damage over time effects [...] usually only the one with the highest damage per second works at any given time (except for poison where all applications stack cumulatively); this is true even in the case of effects applied by different players or sources." (wiki) Blight text overrides the 1-stack-max with a 20-stack max but this is counted per monster not per player. Thus two players can only apply 20 active stacks in total on a mob.

b) Can I have 20 Blight stacks and 3-20 Vaal Blight stacks simultaneously?
No. I am only 99% sure, but this is my reasoning:
The game treats the Blight debuff exactly like the Vaal Blight debuff. Proof: The Spreading Rot Jewel affects both Blight Hinder and Vaal Blight Hinder (can be seen in the tooltip) although Spreading Rot specifically names "Blight" not "Vaal Blight". (Would the game differentiate then this would not be the case)
Let's imagine you somehow applied 15 Blight DOTs and 15 Vaal Blight DoTs. The mobs would only receive the damage from the 20 highest DoTs, most likely 15 Vaal Blights and 5 Blights (all debuffs are on the monster but only the 20 strongest deal damage).

But more importantly:
To synergies instead of interfering with each other I would recommend each skill should only be on one of you two (Blight, Essence Drain+Contagion, Soulrend, Bane). Than you would profit of each others withered, -chaos res to enemies etc. but never override each other DoTs. And if you need help considering which skills to pick then you have come to exactly the right guide :)))

"

Gravedancer wrote:

"

rugalb666 wrote:

noob question :
To make sure, bane gets the more damage bonus even from curses that are not linked to the gem?

No.

"

rugalb666 wrote:

Let's say I want to focus on bane dot and don't use any leech on some other skill, is there really any purpose to have more curses than the pretty much mandatory 3 dank curses namely despair, temp chain and enfeeble? Assuming 6 links, as 2 remaining slots, having efficacy and controlled destruction linked to bane is more efficient damage wise no?

Bane
47% more: First linked curse
32% more: Second linked curse
24% more: Third linked curse
19,5% more: Fourth linked curse, you see where this is going...

On the other hand:
55% more: Lv4 Empower (or around 55%more, high variance! Also buffs the curses)

48,8% more: Efficacy
44% more: Controlled Destruction
44% more: Swift Affliciton
40% more: Lv3 Empower (or around 40%more, high variance! Also buffs the curses)

So yes, more curses sacrifices DPS for utility. Which might be okay, since Bane-DPS is awesome, but if you have no seperate single-target this will need considering.
Also note that quality on Bane will increase the curse effect of linked curses, which is nice.

I once looked into the Decay Support Gem and it blew my mind how utterly bad it is on a caster with good gear. The only sources of Decay are the Decay Support Gem and an Essence of Delirium on a weapon. Decay Support can be used if you are on a tight budget. Let's look at why it's horrible if you have good gear:


First of all: No hit = no Decay. Blight, Bane and Contagion can't hit. A utility skill like Storm Brand could be used to apply Decay (e.g. Storm Brand lv1 + CwDt lv1 + Blind lv20 + Decay Support lv20 or a Delirium-Weapon).
Decay does not stack, do not combine multiple Delirium-weapons and/or Decay Support (for the reasoning behind this, check Section 1.1)

Remember the basic mechanics section? I mentioned that chaos-DoTs are not affected by spell damage unless the gem tells you otherwise. Well...
Decay Support is the only non-ailment chaos damage over time applyable via spells that is NOT affected by spell damage. Every chaos DoT spell says "this skills DoT is affected by spell damage." But this does not cover Decay. Any scaling through spell damage is lost on this one. Confused? Just read this paragraph 3 times (it won't become better...)
Consequence: Decay ignores increased spell damage, Controlled Destruction Support, half of Efficacy Support and so on.

Increased (Chaos-)Damage and increased (Chaos-)Damage over time do buff Decay
(e.g. Void Manipulation Support and literally one half of Efficacy Support). If you want to waste 5-10 minutes of your life, check PoB to see if somehow your character wants Decay Support on Essence Drain or Soulrend.

I had characters for which a level 20 Decay Support will deal roughly the damage of ONE Blight stack being inferior to level 1 Void Manipulation Support.

It does not hurt if your gear somehow says "Inflict Decay on hit". But keep in mind that something like 40% increased Spell Damage would be more useful.

Maybe you are not a caster and consequently do not utilize spell damage anyways? Then Decay might be good for you! I am surprised you read until the end of this article about chaos DoT spells, but hey, I'm sure you have your reasons :)

Body explosions can be leeched from and can be caused by Bane (Occultist Ascendancy profane Bloom, Obliteration Wand). Problem is that body explosions deal secondary damage (not "spell damage"), thus you would need something that leeches from all (chaos-)damage (not just spells/attacks).

Hunter amuletts have a prefix leech life from chaos damage.

Innsbury Edge would leech life from Chaos Damage. Valokos Sign, The Harvest and Thirst for Horrors grant leech from any damage. Of all these Thirst for Horrors is the only one that seems viable for a chaos caster.

Combine this with Ghost Reaver and you have ES leech from Prfoane Bloom explosions.