[3.7] Essence Drain/Contagion Trickster (the best one)

I think Steelskin is always better without Armour stacking or charges. IC blocks ~35% of damage, while my level 19 Steelskin blocks 70% with a cap of 1946.

For IC to block more than Steelskin it would mean I would take more than 5560 damage in a very short time, and I'd still lose 3600 HP. While being hit for 5560 while Steelskin is up means I only lose 1668. It gives more time to pop flasks or reposition.

If the damage is coming in super fast then IC doesn't expire, but if it's going that fast (based on low duration without charges) I'm probably dead anyway.

am i the only one not using a bow cause it looks retarded as fuck?

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SuperBurgers wrote:

I think Steelskin is always better without Armour stacking or charges. IC blocks ~35% of damage, while my level 19 Steelskin blocks 70% with a cap of 1946.

For IC to block more than Steelskin it would mean I would take more than 5560 damage in a very short time, and I'd still lose 3600 HP. While being hit for 5560 while Steelskin is up means I only lose 1668. It gives more time to pop flasks or reposition.

If the damage is coming in super fast then IC doesn't expire, but if it's going that fast (based on low duration without charges) I'm probably dead anyway.

It doesn't bother you that you have to take 2621 damage before it activates? That's triple the damage it takes to activate my IC. Shouldn't that count towards the absorbed amount in some way? That's 1800 damage that didn't have any absorbtion on it. Or is the idea that most dangerous hits will be larger ones that would activate either move the same?

Edit: Also unsure what it means that steelskin is damage from 'hits' while IC is elemental/physical damage. Does that mean that IC will affect bleeds (or something like that) while Steelskin won't?

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matt__ wrote:

I'm thinking about going EB/MoM with Devouring Diadem. Arcane Surge is really nice, but it's a 10% damage increase and I wonder if the survivability of a third aura + Feast of Flesh + MoM would be better than the 10% damage.

I'm trying to figure out if its worth to go eldrich battery with MoM tho.

Without Eldrich you would have higher effective life pool.

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matt__ wrote:

It doesn't bother you that you have to take 2621 damage before it activates? That's triple the damage it takes to activate my IC. Shouldn't that count towards the absorbed amount in some way? That's 1800 damage that didn't have any absorbtion on it. Or is the idea that most dangerous hits will be larger ones that would activate either move the same?

Edit: Also unsure what it means that steelskin is damage from 'hits' while IC is elemental/physical damage. Does that mean that IC will affect bleeds (or something like that) while Steelskin won't?

For the trigger, not really, I figure if I notice I get chunked then I'm hitting my life flask, this buys me a second or two to ensure it goes off in time. It's less than half my HP so should be safe. I think IC lets through a bit too much in this sort of case. But, they're still new and I'm not sure there is a consensus yet. If I'm getting one-shot the trigger value won't matter anyway.

For 'hits' this means it won't absorb DOT effects (which you'd usually flask away via immunity) or ground effects. It might mean IC effects bleeds, but usually you'd prefer to remove those anyway.

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matt__ wrote:

I'm thinking about going EB/MoM with Devouring Diadem. Arcane Surge is really nice, but it's a 10% damage increase and I wonder if the survivability of a third aura + Feast of Flesh + MoM would be better than the 10% damage.

In maps I don't think the damage would matter, but I haven't fought Uber Elder yet and I wonder if the lower damage would be a problem.

I also don't have the -9% chaos res helmet, would that really make a big difference? It doesn't seem like that'd be too big of a deal. Would those (arcane surge + chaos res) stack and equal out to losing 20% damage if I used Devouring Diadem?

Edit: Also curious what people who have tried out both Immortal Call and Steelskin think is better. Steelskin has a best case 15% more uptime, but in order to get good levels of damage absorbtion you have to level CWDT so high. I've decided to go with IC for now, but could possibly be swayed to Steelskin.

Your setup will depend on your preferred content and your other gear/tree. A third aura like Discipline will add a lot of eHP, but it's not quite as effective if you're using Acrobatics. The addition of MoM doesn't actually boost your survivability in combination with EB since your ES was protecting your life in either case.

Arcane Surge is awesome, and it is a more multiplier. However, you also get it from your bow in mapping through the cast speed/arcane surge mod. So if you are primarily monolith farming and delving, for instance, having the manual Arcane Surge trigger doesn't matter nearly as much.

The -9% to nearby enemy resistance is also very good. Most trash mobs have 0 chaos resistance, so putting them at -9% is a more multiplier as well. For bosses and maps with chaos resistance mod, it is actually even more effective. Shaper/Elder have 25% chaos resistance, so cutting that to 16 is actually a 84/75 = 12% more multiplier to damage. Despair will alter this to a degree.

It's actually possible to wear Perfect Form, route manually to EB, use Enlighten, not spec Acro, spec MoM, and run Malevolence, Flesh and Stone, and Discipline without Devouring Diadem. This would give you a pretty large eHP and not lose the -9% helmet. You'd still have to lose your manual Arcane Surge trigger though.

With regards to IC vs. Steelskin, again it comes down to gear and tree. A couple very relevant points:

- What is your strength? IC is a percentage-based mitigation while Steelskin is flat damage based. Steelskin scales much better with levels as a result. If your character comes nowhere near the 155 strength required to max these gems, IC will likely be much better. If you do want to get to 155 strength on a build like this, consider the trade-off in terms of what you'd have to lose on your gear to do it.

- Do you run Endurance charges? I recommend Overcharged in this build, so I'm always at 3 charges during maps/delving. This changes the math and works dramatically in IC's favor for dealing with Legion generals or super juiced monster crit mod maps. For bosses like Elder/Shaper though, you can't count on these charges.

As is always the case, PoE is a game of tradeoffs. That there isn't a clear answer to these questions is what makes it tough to write guides, but tremendously fun to tinker and play.

Do you thinking maxing IC/CWDT is most benefial or keeping it at a lower level so it procs more often?

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kevinbrightblade wrote:

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Garash wrote:

Could anyone help out some? I feel like I have rather decent gear (multimodded bow, non-ailment multiplier Malevolence Watcher's eye) and stuff, and still only 450k ish dps in PoB.

https://pastebin.com/ikMk4QVx

Your PoB only shows 1 stack of wither, select that gem setup on the left hand vertical window, then wither, then change the stacks to 10 or 15. Then go to the config tab and change aspect of the spider (top right panel) to have 3 stacks.

That'll show your actual DoT dps, which is 600k and good enough for almost all content.

From there you could do a number of things to pump up your dps. I'd recommend getting a 21/20 ED gem and an Empower lvl 4 as next steps, since that's straight dps gains without sacrificing anything. That puts you just under 700k DoT dps, which is approaching Uber Elder doable.

After seeing this post i looked at my dps in PoB and was surprised to see a lousy 300k DoT DPS although having a similiar build and skill tree to yours. Can someone help me and look if i have missed something? Tried to tinker myself but couldn't find the problem :(

https://pastebin.com/Sg3srvNg

(dont mind AA, just recently dropped it due to mana issues)

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rlauren2 wrote:

- Do you run Endurance charges? I recommend Overcharged in this build, so I'm always at 3 charges during maps/delving. This changes the math and works dramatically in IC's favor for dealing with Legion generals or super juiced monster crit mod maps. For bosses like Elder/Shaper though, you can't count on these charges.

Thanks for the writeup, especially the math on damage. Didn't know how that stuff worked.

I used to run the charges but decided to spec out of them since they don't proc off of popping legion mobs- they'd always be expired by the time the countdown ended. I'd also always have the buffs going away before I made it to the next big group of them, I don't think I cleared fast enough. Maybe I'll try out intuitive leap again and try to work my way from the middle out on the monoliths so I can build it up before I get to the super groups on the edges.

I'm using your build and I'm having a blast with it. :) One question: in the first post you mentioned that Mind over Matter should be ticked, if we are using an Essence Worm ring. Please explain why! Thank you!