[3.13] [SSF] Essence Drain Beastmode || Ultimate Guide to Solo Self Found

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Contagion damage doesn't matter, ED damage matters. Enemies affected by Contagion spread the ED debuff to nearby enemies. The clear is significant and you can see it in the videos I provide at the end of the guide. Easiest outer jewel socket to access for the character is the one next to Whispers of Doom of course, but I'd rather go for the one next to Essence Surge

I don't think the new jewels are at all necessary for the character to succeed. If you have a couple really good ones it might be worth speccing out of some nodes and get them, but there's nothing build defining for chaos dot's like there is for Heralds or other archetypes

Sorry, I misspoke. I meant Area of Effect, not damage with my question. What I was trying to ask is if you thought the 30% less area of effect on Contagion due to different pathing hurt its spread any. I think the answer is no because the radius difference is like 33 to 31, but since you know the build well it's easier to ask what you have seen in play.

After thinking about it more I realized a mistake with the Whispers location. For some reason I had thought it was giving us 12% increased damage which was better than the 8% mana from the Essence Surge socket in my mind. After looking again I realized it had elemental damage (not spell damage), so it actually won't help our essence drain right? If so, then clearly your thought on Essence Surge is the way to go.

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ZeroCloud wrote:

Sorry, I misspoke. I meant Area of Effect, not damage with my question. What I was trying to ask is if you thought the 30% less area of effect on Contagion due to different pathing hurt its spread any. I think the answer is no because the radius difference is like 33 to 31, but since you know the build well it's easier to ask what you have seen in play.

After thinking about it more I realized a mistake with the Whispers location. For some reason I had thought it was giving us 12% increased damage which was better than the 8% mana from the Essence Surge socket in my mind. After looking again I realized it had elemental damage (not spell damage), so it actually won't help our essence drain right? If so, then clearly your thought on Essence Surge is the way to go.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense! The 2 units of AoE missing don't make much of a difference. ED/C clears really really well, so you don't have to worry about that. If you want to experience some meme AoE.. get a Carcass Jack. It's legit! I like having more life, but it sure works

The Elemental Damage will indeed not help ED damage. ED scales with generic spell damage or chaos damage

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ZeroCloud wrote:

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Heya! I updated the Path of Building link and fit it to level 90 so it's easier to make adjustments for the new cluster jewels. I also made some changes to the general gem setup, so take a look. :)

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Heya! I updated the Path of Building link and fit it to level 90 so it's easier to make adjustments for the new cluster jewels. I also made some changes to the general gem setup, so take a look. :)

Gem/Skill section is much cleaner and easier to follow for sure.
Also, I instantly noticed a huge increase in the DoT DPS between your 2 PoB links, then I realized it was because you simply put 15 wither stacks in the configuration to calculate.

This made me want to figure out what is realistic in terms of stacks achieved, so I have been doing a lot of searching. From what I can tell, it looks like we will only be able to get 7 stacks of wither. With 1 spreading rot we only apply wither for 2 seconds, and with a cast rate of 0.28 for wither that works out to 7 stacks. Am I missing something?

In terms of movement skill have you had the chance to think about the patch notes and flame dash or frostblink? With the slight nerf to flame dash, I am wondering if it is still the better one.

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ZeroCloud wrote:

Gem/Skill section is much cleaner and easier to follow for sure.
Also, I instantly noticed a huge increase in the DoT DPS between your 2 PoB links, then I realized it was because you simply put 15 wither stacks in the configuration to calculate.

This made me want to figure out what is realistic in terms of stacks achieved, so I have been doing a lot of searching. From what I can tell, it looks like we will only be able to get 7 stacks of wither. With 1 spreading rot we only apply wither for 2 seconds, and with a cast rate of 0.28 for wither that works out to 7 stacks. Am I missing something?

In terms of movement skill have you had the chance to think about the patch notes and flame dash or frostblink? With the slight nerf to flame dash, I am wondering if it is still the better one.

Blight has a cast rate of 6.73, meaning we apply 6-7 Wither stacks per second of channeling. The Wither stacks from Withering Step last 3 seconds. Both of these effects are enhanced by skill effect duration. For Withering steps we have a 1.45 duration mod (= 4.35 seconds), for Blight it's 2.9 seconds. That's more than enough to keep the stacks at the maximum, especially since that doesn't factor in Temporal Chains which makes the debuffs last another 40% longer.

I prefer Flame Dash in this instance, because Withering Step shares a cooldown with other "blink" skills, meaning you wouldn't be able to use Frostblink before the cooldown on Withering Step expires. Personally, FD felt better to me

Hey, thanks for the build! Considering it as a league starter, are there any reasonably easy ways to up the single target dps a bit? Don't mind going low life but would rather not be super squish.

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aastr wrote:

Hey, thanks for the build! Considering it as a league starter, are there any reasonably easy ways to up the single target dps a bit? Don't mind going low life but would rather not be super squish.

Yeah, there are some easy (but not so cheap) options:

-9% Chaos Resistance on helmet boosts DPS on Essence Drain from 820k to 910k
Alternatively, you could use Crown of the Inward Eye, which'd boost the DoT by 8%
Belt can roll with Delve mod for 30% increased Chaos damage (+4.5%), same with the rings
Gloves can get chaos damage over time multiplier through Hunter influence

I advise against LL for ED. It's possible, but generally not worth it imo

Not gonna lie, all of this is starting to be pretty outdated. I really liked the integration of glorious vanity, as it's a different approach from the usual Mom+EB combo to hybrid tricksters.

I'm not sure why you were recomending solstice vigil in the first place, but with the massive nerf it's getting (25% more buff duration, down from 50% more), it sure isn't worth it anymore. Especially when you can get things like:


It would be cool to have a mention for the new Transcendent Mind cobalt jewel. It's really strong damage wise.

Also, your crafting cestion for ED bows is outdated. You can (should) now get 75% damage multi as well as +1 gems, and the +2 supports crafted mod. You can even get some onslaught on kill on your bow now.

Maybe you should add a few notes for the -9 chaos hunter mod on helmets, it's a ~11% damage boost when despair is us and a ~16% damage boost when it's down. I really wouldn't sleep on this, especially since ED really feels weak singletarget wise since the boss health buffs.

Anyways. I can't really recommend this thread for those who are playing ssf, it's starting to be a bit too outdated. It's nice to see an endgame ED version with no uniques and well suited for endgame SSF.
Will you refresh it a bit for 3.10? You've visibly spent a lot of time polishing it, could be good to make it suited for the niche of players looking for SSF advices again! ^^

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Darkxellmc wrote:

Spoiler

I'm not sure why you were recomending solstice vigil in the first place, but with the massive nerf it's getting (25% more buff duration, down from 50% more), it sure isn't worth it anymore. Especially when you can get things like:

It would be cool to have a mention for the new Transcendent Mind cobalt jewel. It's really strong damage wise.

Also, your crafting cestion for ED bows is outdated. You can (should) now get 75% damage multi as well as +1 gems, and the +2 supports crafted mod. You can even get some onslaught on kill on your bow now.

Maybe you should add a few notes for the -9 chaos hunter mod on helmets, it's a ~11% damage boost when despair is us and a ~16% damage boost when it's down. I really wouldn't sleep on this, especially since ED really feels weak singletarget wise since the boss health buffs.

Anyways. I can't really recommend this thread for those who are playing ssf, it's starting to be a bit too outdated. It's nice to see an endgame ED version with no uniques and well suited for endgame SSF.
Will you refresh it a bit for 3.10? You've visibly spent a lot of time polishing it, could be good to make it suited for the niche of players looking for SSF advices again! ^^

I like discussions that help me learn more, so keep it coming!

Don't understand why you say Solstice was nerfed. Patch notes say "Solstice Vigil: Now has 30-40% increased Damage (from 20 to 25%)".
Clearly your example amulet is the more glass cannon approach for damage, but I thought one of the key reasons he choose Solstice was for the free Temp Chains which allowed him to add Flesh and Stone for the defensive benefits.

I missed the DoT multiplier change on Transcendent Mind in the patch notes, great find. What socket are you thinking on this?

You mentioned despair with the helmet comment. I didn't think he used it on his build and I didn't see it on an item. Did I miss it?

You talk about gear and uniques a bit. Personally I was looking at this for trade league. So did you have good examples of significantly better gear choices?

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Darkxellmc wrote:

Not gonna lie, all of this is starting to be pretty outdated. I really liked the integration of glorious vanity, as it's a different approach from the usual Mom+EB combo to hybrid tricksters.

Well, the original guide was written in Legion league. Naturally, some texts may seem outdated and I'm always happy to receive feedback on specific parts, because with a big long guide like this one, things are bound to slip through when revising. I've put in time to give it some polish for 3.10, but obviously I can't show items I haven't crafted yet.

I tried EB/MoM before and didn't like it much. Glorious Vanity lets me use more auras and still have a big eHP pool, so it's a perfect fit. :)

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Darkxellmc wrote:

I'm not sure why you were recomending solstice vigil in the first place, but with the massive nerf it's getting (25% more buff duration, down from 50% more), it sure isn't worth it anymore. Especially when you can get things like:

That's a nice ammy! I was going for a more defensive playstyle, though. Solstice Vigil lets me use Flesh & Stone for the sand stance effect (blind + less damage) and TC in general has many positive effects on the build (debuff duration, huge slowdown with hinder). Additionally, it'll still be great despite the nerf.

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Darkxellmc wrote:

It would be cool to have a mention for the new Transcendent Mind cobalt jewel. It's really strong damage wise.

Yeah, that's a really nice jewel now. Gonna mention it, so thanks for the suggestion!

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Darkxellmc wrote:

Also, your crafting cestion for ED bows is outdated. You can (should) now get 75% damage multi as well as +1 gems, and the +2 supports crafted mod. You can even get some onslaught on kill on your bow now.

My guide is geared towards SSF players who'll want to farm Porcupine cards. The divination card gives us an ilvl 50 bow, so we'd only be able to roll up to 21% chaos multi on it. Of course, that's still great. Just not all that likely to roll. E.g. compared to Dexterity as a suffix, it's 3x less likely to appear. If you are trying to min-max in trade league there's even better options of course thanks to Awakener Orbs etc. - I just don't think it really fits here. With 3 prefixes (+1 gems, +2 supports, 40% chaos multi) you already have a really really strong bow

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Darkxellmc wrote:

Maybe you should add a few notes for the -9 chaos hunter mod on helmets, it's a ~11% damage boost when despair is us and a ~16% damage boost when it's down. I really wouldn't sleep on this, especially since ED really feels weak singletarget wise since the boss health buffs.

Yeah, that's a really good mod to have on helmets. I mentioned it to someone on this page actually who asked if there's ways to increase the damage further. Not that easy to get a good one, though. You want T1 life, the chaos suffix and also high energy shield to benefit the most from Escape Artist.

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Darkxellmc wrote:

Anyways. I can't really recommend this thread for those who are playing ssf, it's starting to be a bit too outdated. It's nice to see an endgame ED version with no uniques and well suited for endgame SSF.
Will you refresh it a bit for 3.10? You've visibly spent a lot of time polishing it, could be good to make it suited for the niche of players looking for SSF advices again! ^^

Well, thanks for the feedback and the critique. :)