[3.15] Essence Drain 6.6 Mil DoT DPS | Very Beginner Friendly

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Ludwig_van wrote:

Hello,
I have an essence drain character ( https://pastebin.com/YEMq6NNQ ) which I have had great success with - to a point.
I have what SEEMS to me to be excellent gear, my bow is certainly awesome, and there is nothing OBVIOUS to me that would GREATLY increase my dps, to the neighborhood of several millions more than I already do.
I do about 550,000 chaos dps with ED. Your POB shows you doing over 4 million.
I have messed around with the tree here and there, and can't find out where some of the 3.5 million difference comes from.
1) I am not low life. I know that some damage difference comes therefore from the lack of Pain Attunement. Yet even ticking this off the box changes not so much of the damage.
2) I see a ton of the damage difference is from Auras. I suppose there is no way for me to get these auras without going low-life and using life for reserve eh?
3) Do the awakened gems really make up the remainder of the difference?
4) If I tick off all your low-life-only auras, and the other obvious low-life-only things, you still do over 1 million dps where as I do 550,000
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Would you mind taking a look at my POB and telling me where there is room for improvement (without going low life, or is there no other way?) ? I already absolutely destroy mapping content *except for bosses* which is a large exception. If I can get even half your damage, which would be 5x my current damage, I would feel ready to call this an "all around" character.
https://pastebin.com/YEMq6NNQ
THANK YOU!

Hi
Your DPS is actually about 605K WITH wither totems, you do not have a Despair curse or you do not have a Malevolence aura, which is one reason why your DPS is lacking.

You definitely need better flasks.
Grab a Witchfire Brew and a Quartz, and a Jade Flask, this will help your survivability and damage a TON.
I also do not see Vaal Righteous Fire Anywhere on your build.
After adding the flasks and Vaal Righteous FIre your DPS goes up to 1.2 Mil.
It also looks like your necklace is annointed with corruption.. which is already right on your tree, I would recommend grabbing Tranquility.

I also do not like stacking high Energy Shield with the talent Acrobatics.. as the talent reduces your Energy Shield by 30%.. so I kind of feel like what's the point?

The 3.5 Million damage comes from EVERYTHING on the build stacking.

Awakened gems don't really do too much to be honest, only if you do not know what else to upgrade on the build... just grab the cheapie ones when it comes time.

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ezekiell51 wrote:

Hello,
First, thank you for this guide.
I'm a beginner and with your description, I can farm T16 map and kill Sirus alone (A1.. :) )
Now I have difficulty surviving. I often die and find the character a bit weak in survival.
I no longer know how to optimize it. I think I bought all the suggested equipment and I hardly progress any more.
Do you have any advice to move forward?
Finally, I allowed myself to take the arcane vision talent because I couldn't see anything in the dark areas with the low life build
Last question : how to see the dps? on my page, I only give you 62k dps, 12k-18k poison DPS and 14k - 22k dps poison critical hits.
edit : on the essence drain skill, I can see 756k dps (but it's not 6m :) )
how did you get 6m?

Hello!
So I looked up your character, it looks like you need Flasks. These play a HUGE part.
You are not using a Jade Flask.. and this is VERY HUGE!!
You also are not using a Witchfire Brew (Which is a 1.3 MIL DPS Increase btw!!!) (Very huge as well)

Also, you should not be using Static Electricity, I'm assuming you're only using it for the Corrupted Blood immunity.

Switch your Ascendancy out (Escape Artist and grab Swift Killer instead, make sure you switch the flask out)

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Viktranka wrote:

Lol! Can you maybe quote him next time.. I thought you were criticizing my guide and I started pulling up my pastebins!!

Thank you for the help you are a saint! Lol no big deal I was just like, omg who hates me!

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Reko1 wrote:

Hi, thanks for the build guide. I'm struggling with survival and keep getting one shot by mobs. Any tips for this?

Hi!
Thank you!
If you unprivate your profile, I can look at your character and further help you..
But off the top of my head... let me throw this out there:

I'm assuming you are not using Flesh and Stone.
Use this aura over Zeaoltry if you are having survival issues.

Make SURE you use a Quartz Flask, and a Jade Flask.. these are huge for survival.

Other than that just try not to get hit, everything should die relatively quick.. When I get hit I use Essence Drain and immediately regenerate my health that was lost and I just continuously move along.

I've unhidden the profile. Please do ignore my build tree, I tried to go low life but failed miserably as my mana keeps draining fast and I cant cast spells. Do you think at my current state I could pull of low life or CI? I try to use flesh and stone but I run into life issues and makes survival even lower for me. Also what do you think of my current gear? Any potential upgrades? I appreciate any further help on this. Thank you!

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Reko1 wrote:

I've unhidden the profile. Please do ignore my build tree, I tried to go low life but failed miserably as my mana keeps draining fast and I cant cast spells. Do you think at my current state I could pull of low life or CI? I try to use flesh and stone but I run into life issues and makes survival even lower for me. Also what do you think of my current gear? Any potential upgrades? I appreciate any further help on this. Thank you!

Hi again!
You are correct, your mana is a huge problem right now. You do not have any of the Aura Reduction nodes it looks like!
I also notice you only have 3900 Energy Shield and not fully capped Resistances.

It looks like you do not have ANY of the Labrynth's or Trial's done, which will give you a ton of benefits and is HUGE!
If you don't know what these are, check out this link: Labrynth/Trial Information (click on it)

I would ONLY recommend going low life with your build currently if you can fix your tree and get some more Energy Shield and cap your Resistance. You can also go CI... but I would say yes, you should go low life, just replace some gear and fix your tree up a bit.
Remove Mind over Matter and Eldritch Battery.. Here is the tree I made you. https://pastebin.com/zQR86FHz

You should also not use just Righteous Fire, and use a Vaal Righteous Fire.
Please buy an Essence Drain level 21 Gem.. this will help a TON, they are very cheap.
Also buy an Empower level 3 Gem.. these will give you tons of damage.

If you get your resistances capped and got around ~4500-5000 energy shield, I would say you can go low life comfortably, but until then you should go CI if you cannot cap your chaos resistance..
Actually it looks like if you used Prismatic Catalysts on your Presence of Chayula, your Chaos Resistance will almost be capped.

Make sure you grab the Jade Flask!

As for gear, it looks like you could use maybe some more Energy SHield on your helmet, cap your resistances, and replace your jewels. Spreading Rot is not needed with Wither Totems.
Also make sure to use Prismatic Catalysts on your Jewellery if you are struggling for resistances!

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Havoc209 wrote:

Lol! Can you maybe quote him next time.. I thought you were criticizing my guide and I started pulling up my pastebins!!

I was just saying about the guy directly above from previous post, didn't wanna quote wall of text. Can add to that post it's a reply to him.

Geetings,

I enjoyed leveling with your guide. I tried ED Contagion as my 2nd build this league following a Zizaran build, but got lost in trying to make ED Contagion work too early. But I decided to revisit it after I spotted your guide and just completed Act 5.

Notes on leveling (with recommended twink leveling gear and all socket and link crafts available aside from the 6 link recipe)

-Smooth
-One death to Kitava when I boxed myself into a corner so I couldn't dodge the follow-on effects
-Everything dies!
-Did start noticing the lack of life/defenses when doing Deliriums in Act 5 (i ignored them earlier)

I like the simplicity of frost bolt + onslaught for early leveling. Sure I can do mines and other fanciness but there is something to be said for point and clicking things to death.

However since you are scaling chaos and physical damage early you will notice a lack of oomph from your elemental based spells, but then you can start using Blight in conjunction with Frost Bolt and it works out.

Movement speed is your friend for kiting.

Re-tooling post Kitava

-Found it hard to fix resists while running so many uniques
-Resorted to holding off on using Bated Breath with Malevolence corruption and opted for a rare belt with resists instead
-Take off Goldrim when considering how to fix your resists
-Wands with preferred mods are expensive (like 1 exalt, fortunately I've been collecting them on other characters)
-If you are over level 40 change the maximum level in the searches to your current level (can make a difference for what tiers of explicits are available). I think I finished Ch 5 at lvl 47 because I killed too many things.
-I'd also set the searches to
-Corrupted: No
-Mirrored: No
-Sale Type: Buyout for Fixed Price

And if you want to get more complex with it and be able to craft the items to your liking

Crafted: No

Add Stat Group: Count 1

# Empty Prefix Modifiers
# Empty Suffix Modifiers

Search results as of 5-18-2020

Wands - expensive 1 exalt+ each (minus the 1 AFK listing for like 5c)
Gloves - expensiveish 20c
Boots - 10c
Belt - 10c
Helm - 5c

Changes?

Run Skitterbots (pick up from Yeena in Ch 2 after The Root of the Problem) alongside Clarity for your two auras. My understanding is that it offers more damage than Malevolence in the early game.

I appreciate the leveling section, but I think it could used some tweaking to be "super easy to follow". I tried laying it out in a more visually friendly manner and managed to confuse myself as to what was needed by Act 3 (I made it work since I could use my crafting bench to tweak whatever gear I found). And if I were a completely new player, I'd be lost instantly since it is written with a Tabula Rasa in mind. Will give it some more thought.

If you can't get two or even one Doedre's Damning how would setup Bane? My guess would be Bane + Despair?

Edit 5-18-2020

Found my answer on page 5 of the guide

6L: Bane - Efficacy - Controlled Destruction - Swift Affliction - Void Manipulation - Arcane Surge
3L: Bane - Efficacy - Controlled Destruction
2L: Bane - Efficacy

Thanks!

Hello,

How can I adjust autobomber this build?

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cirerrek wrote:

Hello.
And thank you for your honest opinion!

Yeah that is one problem with making a guide for the leveling process.
It's hard to get anything without throwing a Tabula in there to be honest lol.
Honestly you can use anything, it just needs to be linked together.
I wonder how much it will change when Path Of Exile 2 releases.

I usually only use the Frostbolt up until I get the support gems for Blight, where do you think I should add this, in the Act 1 section to clear it up a bit?

Oh that is interesting!
At the time of making this guide and even checking mid-league, there was a TON of wands that were 1 Chaos minimum.

For the Skitterbots instead of Malevolence, you would only run the Skitterbots until you picked up Malevolence, but that's only about 8 levels. Later on, I only swap out Flesh and Stone for Skitterbots for bosses like Shaper, Elder, or Sirus.

Did you answer your own question or have another question?
I really appreciate your feedback, thank you again for your post! If there is anything you think I can change that would help someone out, please let me know!!

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JaxT3ll3r wrote:

Hello,

How can I adjust autobomber this build?

Hm, you would need to have Essence Drain being casted somehow (Maybe A Socketed Spells Craft) and cast Contagion and have Essence Drain being thrown out while casting Contagion..
I don't know if it would be possible, or even if it would be great if it WAS possible, so I would not recommend doing it as it is making my head spin just think about what I would sacrifice for doing that.

Hey, I've taken into account what you suggested and done most of the things in the build. My survivability has increased a lot and my damage is almost 500k on essence drain, still sometimes get 1 shot but I'm working on increasing my shield from 7k. Right now I'm saving up for a better helemet with -9 chaos resist and a better bow as I don't know how to craft. Thanks a lot for the help!

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Havoc209 wrote:

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cirerrek wrote:

Hello.
And thank you for your honest opinion!

Yeah that is one problem with making a guide for the leveling process.
It's hard to get anything without throwing a Tabula in there to be honest lol.
Honestly you can use anything, it just needs to be linked together.
I wonder how much it will change when Path Of Exile 2 releases.

I usually only use the Frostbolt up until I get the support gems for Blight, where do you think I should add this, in the Act 1 section to clear it up a bit?

Oh that is interesting!
At the time of making this guide and even checking mid-league, there was a TON of wands that were 1 Chaos minimum.

For the Skitterbots instead of Malevolence, you would only run the Skitterbots until you picked up Malevolence, but that's only about 8 levels. Later on, I only swap out Flesh and Stone for Skitterbots for bosses like Shaper, Elder, or Sirus.

Did you answer your own question or have another question?
I really appreciate your feedback, thank you again for your post! If there is anything you think I can change that would help someone out, please let me know!!

Thanks for the reply, Havoc209. I really appreciate it when build originators are active in their forum threads.

I've tried documenting starting a build from start to finish and it is complicated. XD One of the things I'm not sure on is how to import "snap shots" of my character into PoB without overwriting earlier imports.

I would just say that early. I use Frostbolt until you get the support gems for Blight.

For build guides what I've found to be most helpful is snap shots* of your items and I find a visual works best (I still confuse myself with PoB item lists, especially because the sockets can be different than the gems if you aren't really thorough).

That way the readers can get an idea of what you are looking for in items and sockets.

End Act 1 - Items and Gem Links
End Act 2 - Items and Gem Links

Might be a lot of work to make one for the end of every act, but it can certainly help take the anxiety of choice off a new player trying to following the build.

*as in do the thing were you are able to show the item and its gem sockets in the forum.

And I did answer my question.

Thanks a bunch!

Hey just wanted to say thank you very much for the build, i have always loved essence drain ever since i played it in legion, and i thought back then i invested a lot in it and thought it was pretty strong... i never did touch low life because energy shield and stuff did confuse me back then but ever since reading this guide and how you lay out everything so easily accessible to even the links to gear at different stages. im pretty much at 36 challenges too right now (when i can be bothered to do the Do x while x boss encounter ones) which is a first for me ever since starting this game back in abyss league, my main goal with this build after i seemed to have gotten every upgrade you suggested was to get 10mil dps (non boss) which i surpassed a lot easier than i thought i would have and im sure with investing in all 21/23 gems and some corruptions i can easily get 11mil, once again thank u very much for the guide and i'll link my gear here for anyone who is maybe having troubles thinking what to upgrade after they have gotten what you suggested in the guide already.

Edit: decided to slam my rings with crusader exalted orbs and well... i got slightly lucky lets say (added around 460 es)