my writeup on why essencedrain/contagion sucks

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鬼殺し wrote:

The regen is negligible in MOST situations (edited because Demonoz rightfully points out with fracture it can get solid). I'm not sure if that's by design (if it's just a flavour element) or something went wrong. I sort of wish it was leech. That'd make an interesting combination with all those Duelist nodes (in fact, I started a Duelist Essence Drainer with that in mind, but stuck with it since, eh, blood magic is fun too).

Either way, the fact that ED/C/W is a fine combination without the regen leads me to believe getting it 'working' might not be too high a priority. Enemy damage output right now is such that 5+% maximum life regen can be next to pointless, so I doubt the regen on ED, even with Wither, is expected to leave much of a mark.

At any rate, I've loved the Chaos Mage self-cast style from the start. It's the opposite of boring, which is pretty much the first thing I look for in a build. It flies under the meta radar because it doesn't lean on obvious targets like crit (thank God) or CoC/triggering. It works on a budget and it's three skills working tactically, not strategically. That's a good number to juggle in my eyes. Four+ is fiddly; less than three is sort of brain-numbing. Three skills you have to switch between provides a handful of on-the-fly switch-ups.

And since it's not relying on crits, cast speed or AoE, and since so many variables can affect the DoT of ED, there are plenty of nodes for defence to play with.

Yep, Chaos Mage is the tits.

Actually Leech can not work with ED and the duelist nodes since its a spell. That is one drawback to the build is things like leech are completely useless. At the same time because of the way ED works things like corrupting blood simply no longer exist. (Which is one major killer for me on most builds so i love that) Your only hitting things one time and running around and putting out contagions and wither totems so the way i run the build is alot like how people run things like poison arrow only i not just popping an arrow every little bit and thats it im juggling 3-4 other skills as well.

Now another thing i did SOME testing on earlier this league (I would like to do some more on a dedicated build and will at some point because it was very hard to see for sure how crit was fully doing on the degens in progression) is this skill DOES scale VERY well with Crits.. In fact ive found that if you run a Crit variant (RF is simply too point/Str heavy to work this in so i go with str+IW and MORE spell mods for massive scaling) The Degen apparently scales with Crit multi so when you do crit with ED not only is the inital hit much more powerful the degen seems better as well from what ive seen in testing. So going Spell Crit actually is a great way to scale ED damage/degen. Like i said i really need to make another dedicated bild to do more testing with this to be very sure the degen in effected but the inital hit chunks off massive damage with crit.

Now AOE is absolutely NECESSARY to an ED+Contagion build. Now while inc AOE does not do anything for ED itself it does however make Contagion as well as wither MUCH better. In fact Because inc AOE not only makes my Contagion spreads MUCH better this is also how i can achieve such massive regen numbers on fracture. Because the spreads are based off bigger AOEs from contagion. The AIE of Contagion is the same AOE each mob puts off when they die. Since im RF inc AOE was a given but because of its interaction with the other skills i run it really helps me alot. And Wither for the most part is for Boss and heavy melee encounters. It not only amps the Degen from ED but the slowing effect from Wither is VERY nice to insure you can keep things like Colossal Skeletons at a distance safely away from you. If you were to do something like With+Temp Chains you could damn near make a boos come to a stand still.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is Since we have to juggle 3 different skills. (In my case 4 since i also run EC to sustain charges) I like most others run my Wither on a totem. Something interesting about Wither ive found is its alot like RF in the fact theres isnt a whole lot you can support it with. Even IW does nothing for it. So i run it on a 3L on a totem with faster casting and its primarily for boss/tanky/Heavy melee encounters.

As a whole its been one of my favorites so far. I know alot of people would be detracted from the build off gate seeing that you have to juggle 4 different skills at once while mapping but thats the part i think i like the most. The active playstyle of it. While you would think the .5% of degen counting as regen is negligable you do have to keep in mind this is based off the degen so as you scale things like gem lvl as well as the DOT on ED the Regen actually begins to get better and better. even in normal mapping situations. And on a build like RF where i already have tons of regen but its mostly getting ate up by my own fire degen its kinda easier for me to see its full effects and when i get good chains off contagion is when i see this the most. Ofcourse this brings another drawback to the build in the form of boss encounters without adds leaves you to relying on kiteing and proper flask use. But again thats why im enjoying the playstyle.

Edit: I jst woke up and in a hurry for the 10 hour grind Welding all day so excuse any typos/mispellings. Ill clean it up this afternoon if i can remember. \m/

^ED's regenerative function as far as i am aware is neither regen or leech.

Which makes all nodes effecting those base mechanics useless.

If it was, then Zealoths oath and Ghost reaver would actually interact with it.

I don't think the game can make a distinction between leech effects while not including leech relevant
key-stones?

I might be wrong though, haven't made a build focused around it yet cause it's new and hot etc. But i think Mark answered one of my questions around this when it came out, indicating it's not a leech function.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : my intuition is telling me it's a "restore" effects, which potions are classified under. Gracefully excluding it from regen/leech in the engine.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Just to be slightly pedantic, several of the duelist leech modes do help spells that leech because the newish mods of life leech rate and maximum per second aren't limited to attacks. And if you get enough of them, you'll notice a dramatic jump in leech efficacy. I have plans to see just how strong Malificence is now, actually...

But neither here nor there, since ED is deliberately weighted away from on hit power. Which really surprised me at first but once you get your head around it, ED seems almost elegant compared to blunt instruments like crit casting. I'm glad you can make it work but it's really not core imo.

Edit: eh, are you absolutely sure ED's DoT responds to crit? I was under the impression that crit is an on hit function.

I'm happy to be playing my first Duelist caster since mid CB.

Wither on a Totem makes sense but it's just not my style. If I'm to use any Totem with this it'd be decoy to keep the heat off.

Well thats why i said i need to do some more testing yet... i do know for sure Crit DOES effect the initial hit of ED its the degen effect im not so sure of its doing anything for! Things were dieing so fast in progression that it was extremely hard to tell for sure on the degen. That and the inital hit was chunking off so much as well. I also transitioned that build to COC later.. I was lvling with ED+Contagion at that point simply to test it out to see how it scaled and how it felt in progression before i dedicated a build to it. From that inital testing is where i decided i would take it to one of my RF Caster builds. Because it just felt like it would be a good combination and its ended up working out well.

I also wasnt awear the dueist leech nodes effected spells because they are on hit effect nodes but i see what your saying... basically the leech rate modifiers work with spells.. Which is interesting and ive never though of trying that. Ive always done the ol VP thing or put quality on my leech gem and use WM leech and prey thats enough... if i cant go VP which on my RF+IW casters isnt possible.

"

Boem wrote:

^ED's regenerative function as far as i am aware is neither regen or leech.

Actually ED Regeneration effect IS in fact Life regen because thats how i was able to see me hitting 3K+ Life regen on my defenses tab. And it scales with degen as well as how many enemies is being effected with degen. So with that said ZO would in fact interact with the regen effect. Thus why i also made it a point to get a shavs since once i get back to standard im gonna try ED on a low life RF variant.

Thus why contagion spreads is essential to get those kinda regen numbers. You also wont see that kinda regen in normal mapping situations even with massive pack size.. i was only able to see those kinda numbers in Fracture maps with pack size. And since you basically hit once with ED and then contagion spreads it out to the rest leech does nothing.. (However this is Great because Corrupting Blood also does NOTHING) atleast on the version im running. Thats not to say you couldn't make leech work i guess if you run a GMP/LMP version. I run my ED single target all the way to get maximum chaos degen and rely on Contagion to spread it across everything. Hit Hard, Hit Once, Everything Dies.

my instinct is that damage over time cannot crit, and only where the damage over time is dealt as a % of an initial hit that can crit is that going to scale it. ED gives a damage over time number separately right? Its not like firetrap where you are scaling the ignite caused by the traps upfront damage hit critting. This is more like the burning ground caused by firetrap or a caustic arrow cloud thats a fixed damage dot. Poison would scale off a crit ED I think because that is a % of the upfront hit? I may be wrong but thats my presumption.

Binos,rightous fire and tabula resa. Fire ed into mob,cast contagion and run into middle of mob. Mob melts, you regen ridiculous life and anything that gets too close melts in rightous fire. Rinse and repeat. Add in a artic armour and cwdt setup for extra survivability and voila.

Will post my gear when I get home as I'm on phone. Very fun to play but doesn't work so well in party as poison doesn't always apply to get regen. Will post original hide too.

Ty gl hf
Razza

"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FIQh5fY42Y

I found this interesting.

You call this clear speed? I almost fell asleep while he was trying to kill these packs. Even spells that are not fit for a fracture map (because cont+ED is perfect for one) can clear it faster.

Agree with the OP.

"

brutalrazial wrote:

Binos,rightous fire and tabula resa. Fire ed into mob,cast contagion and run into middle of mob. Mob melts, you regen ridiculous life and anything that gets too close melts in rightous fire. Rinse and repeat. Add in a artic armour and cwdt setup for extra survivability and voila.

Will post my gear when I get home as I'm on phone. Very fun to play but doesn't work so well in party as poison doesn't always apply to get regen. Will post original hide too.

Ty gl hf
Razza

I tried a Bino's and while the regen was very nice. (Was able to actually hit that 3K+ Regen in NORMAL mapping situations) The damage i lost from dropping Doon Was simply not worth it. I also tested those new Gloves Repentance and mine were 19% less spell so maybe a 0% pair would be alot better but for what i give up to use them they ended up not being worth it either especially since the ES eat into my Regen of RF. The only other weapon i have yet to test is a Doriani Septer... But so far Doon is the BIS ive found for the build. I also load my Contagion in that 3 link so it gets the IW buff from that weapon. Wither is unaffected.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

my instinct is that damage over time cannot crit, and only where the damage over time is dealt as a % of an initial hit that can crit is that going to scale it. ED gives a damage over time number separately right? Its not like firetrap where you are scaling the ignite caused by the traps upfront damage hit critting. This is more like the burning ground caused by firetrap or a caustic arrow cloud thats a fixed damage dot. Poison would scale off a crit ED I think because that is a % of the upfront hit? I may be wrong but thats my presumption.

Yeah ive noticed i do crit sometimes but not very often on the RF version im running right now and im beinning to noticed no change in the DOT but the initial hit of ED does a chunk of damage and thats where im thinking crit is effecting the skill. But the more im running the build and trying to pay attention to when i do hear the crit sound im not noticing bigger DOTs either. So i think you guys are right the DOT isnt scaling with Crit. So if this is the case the that means theres not a whole lot of reason to even waste the time going crit i dont guess. Unless you are wanting a hard hitting ED thats less focused on the DOT which i wouldnt see a reason for. The DOT is what i rely on for the survival to be so high for me. The with solid defenses.. Well im still at 1 Death so far at lvl 85 almost 86.

hey all sorry for my rather straight to the point post before but i was on my phone and linking gear and stuff is so urghh on a phone.

Im having lots of fun with ed and contagion. Like i said before im using binos at the mo and its proving rather effective. Im getting about 18.5k tooltip dot. To be honost you can pretty much get away without using contagion as poison does the job most of the time. Its rather funny to poison one mob and see how far you can 'chase the poison'. My life is at 4.4 k and im lvl 82. Anway here is my setup at the moment



Ty Gl Hf :)

Razza

There actually is only one reason for binos and I would argue that a normal spell-dagger is better.

Essence Drain is not a poison and the poison stacks you can get are just based on the initial hit (they fixed that after a bug in the first version) and that is rather low. Without utilizing a poisoning abyssal cry the poison stacks are not that great unless you manage to crit. It also forces you to permanently attack with Essence Drain and it isn't all that good in terms of cast speed, exspecially since it isn't something the build otherwise benefits much of.

Of course Binos provides some regeneration the build otherwise lacks but potions are usually enough. To be fair their isn't a really benefitial last support to use, I can recommend faster projectiles since it helps a bit with the issue of not hitting one of the contagion mobs and of course Empower does beat Poison by far.

"

my instinct is that damage over time cannot crit, and only where the damage over time is dealt as a % of an initial hit that can crit is that going to scale it. ED gives a damage over time number separately right? Its not like firetrap where you are scaling the ignite caused by the traps upfront damage hit critting. This is more like the burning ground caused by firetrap or a caustic arrow cloud thats a fixed damage dot. Poison would scale off a crit ED I think because that is a % of the upfront hit? I may be wrong but thats my presumption.

Yeah ED cannot crit, considering the DoT. There is no DoT even if caused by an ability that can crit that is able to crit. And ED does not scale of the initial hit. So Crit is only worth it if you use added chaos and utilize poison, since in that case it does benefit from a crit.

"

Binos,rightous fire and tabula resa. Fire ed into mob,cast contagion and run into middle of mob. Mob melts, you regen ridiculous life and anything that gets too close melts in rightous fire. Rinse and repeat. Add in a artic armour and cwdt setup for extra survivability and voila.

I wouldn't do that with just the poison from ED. Since you only get one regeneration buff even if several enemies die with a poison effect. You get about 3k regeneration which is a lot, but a second is a very long time. If you use a poisoning abyssal cry on top of it you can get far higher numbers (about 40k) which actually makes you unkillable unless you step in a vaal slam or something similar.

The interesting thing about poisoning essence drain is the fact that both slower projectiles and void manipulation affect the initial damage and poison. If Empower lvl4 is avaible (or a +1 tabula) it would actually be benefitial to drop Rapid Decay for Empower and keep poison. The funny thing here is that even though the initial hit is really weak it just shows how incredible OP poison is. Just as a comparison with Firestorm I reach regen stacks of about 6k damage (since I guess concentrated effect affects initial hit and poison as well). And with Fireball I get even higher stacks.

In theory you could just use Freezing Pulse, Pyre and Consuming Dark and would likely be unkillable, since the single hit of Freezing Pulse is so high and creates such ridicolous poison stacks. Also fun you can get 6 digit regen with binos if you abyssal cry a strong rare and poison another enemy with it that dies. The poison stack generated by an exploding rare is so huge but sadly the enemies around it either die from the abyssal cry explosion or are already dead so it happens rarely.

But the thing is... poison on ED is about as good as poison should be in general. But even on a skill that isn't really made for poisoning it is really strong. Still the damage provided from Binos is far lower than from most other items (either a good spell dagger or doon), although I would actually prefer it since it is a dagger over wands or sceptres

"

I also wasnt awear the dueist leech nodes effected spells because they are on hit effect nodes but i see what your saying... basically the leech rate modifiers work with spells.. Which is interesting and ive never though of trying that.

Actually ED does not benefit from it. Like the Binos effect Essence Drain gives you a regeneration while enemies are affected by it. Funny note, during the phase transfer in the Malachai fight if you have ED up on him you somehow keep it for the whole second phase.

"

RestInPieces wrote:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FIQh5fY42Y

I found this interesting.

You call this clear speed? I almost fell asleep while he was trying to kill these packs. Even spells that are not fit for a fracture map (because cont+ED is perfect for one) can clear it faster.

Agree with the OP.

No, I called it 'interesting'. If your definition of 'interesting' is 'high clear speed', that's awesome. It makes me think you're probably trying to compensate for something missing in your life but eh, that's just me assuming people unnecessarily bragging about game power online have other deficiencies. Seems a common enough correlation.

Also, if you're going to quote me, please quote enough of me to realise you're not saying anything new:

"

I can see fairly clearly how the mechanics work and why they'd continue to work into higher end play. I think if you're just after clear speed with minimal skill management, Chaos DoT is probably not the way to go.

Basically, I anticipated your sort of response and you somehow missed that. I've bolded the bit relevant to you.


You will be categorically right in thinking that 'interesting' means 'excellent clear speed' the day GGG declare PoE nothing but a clear speed exercise, no other goals. Not diverse building, not strange usage of items, not a thing. I personally hope no such day ever comes, because I'd like to believe that GGG are catering to a wider audience than V-chugging speed freaks who desperately need to reassess their life priorities.

Now I suggest you go back to having fun with your soon-to-be-nerfed Bladefall. :)