Drain Tank build: Essence drain necro, 200%+ life, 75/75% block, MoM, AA and Lightning coil [2.3]
 Intro: This Guide is about a tanky essence drain character i first made in the Perandus league, then i updated it in 2.3 and thought i would do a basic guide for it, it consists of using contagion essence drain for the main damage and funneling the life regen into energy shield for MoM and mana costs while using the necromancer ascendancy for block and life gain on block, on top of this we get arctic armor, a large amount of life and due to the ES on our shield + bonuses from shield defenses together with the regen from ED we don't need energy shield on our chest pierce and can go with lightning coil (or really anything you want that has sockets) i have 2 versions of the build, the main one (version 1) that i use from perandus and is the one i will go into the most, version 2 is a more offensive version without lightning coil but utilizing dual curse, more below. i can't really talk lengths about the limits of the build, as i never really found them, but if you play according the strengths and weaknesses of the build i can't see much that can kill it. Strengths and weaknesses
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Strengths:
High hp max block both for Spell and Attack block gains up to 600 life everytime you block tempest shield deals a surprising amount of damage with max block a lot of mitigation (MoM, lightning coil and either AA or 2 curses) less casting means bone offering is easier to hold up doesn't rely on one single spell so the play style doesn't get as monogamous Weaknesses: No liferegen for your health means Dots are dangerous doesn't have hundreds of thousands of dps Not good/fun for parties with peolpe that kill things very quickly as you won't get to do much but tank no great movement skills (since we don't get tons of cast or attack speed) unless you can kill them with tempest shield PvP against a CI character is pretty hard. Passive trees and bandits
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Bandits: Normal: life Cruel: skill point merciless: unless you want to cast enduring cry for EC take skill point Final tree:
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https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMDAAMeBAcEswY5Bx4I9A3NDeIOSBEtES8RlhNtFAkVJxZvFr8aOBpsHM4fQSSqJogmlScvKworUCycLR8y0TY9Nuk6WDqtOtg9D0JLRKtFR0WdSI5JUUyzUWBSr1NSVUtVrlXGXEBd8mHiYqxn_GjyakNqjGsXa9tsjG-EdZ52gnyDfLt_xoIQgh6D24Uyh8uMsY-mj_qQVZUglS6a4JuKnaqiAKKjotmnm6yYr2yvp7DYtMW00bUEtUi3MLtNvOq-T8BUwGbB88LsxYrIDMgUzxXTj9Wm2wvdX9-w42rkIutj6-7sg-yK8B_w1fMG9W_3wffX-6r-VP8c
this is more or less the final build, though if you have some good jewels you can try to fit those in, also depending on your gear you might want to get the 30 dex node between witch and shadow as you might need it for. if you are going dual curse i would think you should use an item that gives plus 1 curse, you can get it on the tree but i don't know what to cut for it this tree gives you 199%+ life with rathpith on top that gives 209% life (more on that later) For leveling you can do more or less what you want, as soon as you get through normal lab and get mistress of sacrifice you can get the majority of your defences in your block. if you want to go defensive for leveling go for something like this: or if you want to power level with some more damage go early to the shadows part of the tree with something like the: Gear setup my current setup: (version 1 lightning coil and AA)
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Version 1 rundown:
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Weapon: The Consuming Dark is the strongest option for the extra poison damage without having to use an extra link. but until you get this weapon Cybil's paw is a really good budget replacement for TCD and i would also recommend using cybil's for leveling as soon as you get mistress of sacrifice or if you have another source of poison using cybils as your main weapon. Rathpit is really important for the build as its stats are more or less perfect for the build, the block chance to spells + bone offering plus the 2 from the skill tree gives us 75% spell block (even before we get 75% attack block) mine is not perfectly rolled and if you get a better roll you might be able to skip the 2% spell block from the tree which would be nice. the energy shield on Rathpith is our main fuel for casting spells and MoM, it might seem a bit low, but with 170% bonus defenses from shields it gets us with our intelligence around 900 ES depending on your roll and with my 1300 es i virtually never run out of ES due to Essence drains regen with zealots oath. lastly the % life on rathpith is also a pretty nice substitute for flat life. Lightning Coil offers some great physical damage mitigation which is really welcome as its kinda difficult to get a good amount of armor going without your boots/helm/gloves gets really expensive as we can't prioritize armor on gear above life and ressist and we still need a bit of energy shield on our gear so going full armor might not be the best option, there are other options for chest pieces, the main one is mentioned in version 2 of this build (below) but things like: Belly of the beast. incandescent heart, carcass jack aswell as Geofri's sanctuary (which i will recommend as a very cheap option as soon as you get to level 64 until you get something better) the most surprising item on the list for most people, but there is a really good reason for it (besides the 3% block corruption) our main problem on the build is damage over time effect, and bleeds are the worst part of dots and before i got this it was the only thing i had encountered that imposed a real treat (except for the attacks you can't block like corrupted piety's beam) Blood grip more or less removes this threat for a much better price than the Death's door boots and on top of this it also gives a nice amount of life and the 100% flask life gain also makes sapping flasks pretty sweet. boots/gloves/helm: there are a lot of options for unique items in these spots, but most of them will make you have to give up either some life or resists or both so you will have to weight the negative and maybe take commander of darkness if you are going with alot of uniques that don't have resists, that being said heres a small list of competitors for these spots: Boots: Death's door, rainbow strides (if you for some reason don't like rathpith) Gloves: Winds of change, Southbound, null and void. Helm: Broken Crown, the vertex, Heretec's veil(mainly for version 2 or if you want dual curse) Secondary setup or version 2
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the main change in version 2 is changing out lightning coil for a more offencive option: Cospri's Will, this will give you a great option to poison and will make cursing a much stronger option  with Copris ysing The Consuming Dark is a bit redundant and using Cybils paw should be the best option, with copris you also don't need purity of lightning for Coil so you can go 2 blasphemy curses and Arctic armor, this more offensive version does come at a cost though, you will gain no armor/life/mitigation from your chest piece and i can't guaranty the survivability of this version i would try it out, but i simply do not have to resources for a Corpris on any league Gem links
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chest 6S: Essence drain, controlled destruction, void manipulation, rapid decay, slower projectile, pierce. SP and piece can be interchanged depending on preference. Change one of them for an empower if you are rich 3 link 1: contagion, faster casting, increased area 3 link 2: Desecrate, faster casting, summon golem (i use chaos golem) 4 link 1: BO, tempest shield, faster casting, increased duration 4 link 2 Aura version 1: Purity of lightning, Blasphemy, Arctic armor, Temporal chains/enfeeble/vulnerability 4 link 2 Aura version 1: blasphemy, Arctic armor, 2 curses of your choice 4 link 3: this is more or less a place for you to put what you want, if you want a movement skill or minions or a wither totem or a CWDT setup, i haven't really made my mind up as none of the things are completely necessary yet. Stats:
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Defensive stats:
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 on top of this we of course also have Arctic armor and Mind over matter Offensive stats:
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 Thank you for hopefully reading my build guide, i welcome any questions and suggestions that you may have as well as comment if there's anything i have left out that you would like to know, i haven't made that many guides so there might be some mistakes. Last bumped on Sep 1, 2016, 3:24:07 AM
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Thanks for posting this! I gave it a try on PHC but ripped to a possessed Merc Triskeriaki after some a bit of drinking. I really liked the idea of the build, but struggled a bit with my clear speed and mitigating attacks that made it through the block wall. I'm hoping to give it a go again with some minor tweaks, dropping a few damage/life nodes for jewel sockets and grabbing a bit of AoE and cast/movement speed. Here's the tree I'm thinking of using. With life + 2 damage prop jewels I think it works out to roughly the same stat-wise but has those extra goodies.
Unfortunately, I didn't make it much above 80 and couldn't really gear the build right (had a Consuming Dark, but no Rathpith or LC). A few stray thoughts for next time: 1) Using the Sorrow of the Divine for Zealot's Oath as a mana pot. Sulphur Flasks are great since generic Spell Damage double dips on the DoT and I kept thinking that I'd like to use one regardless. Might not play nice with EB though. 2) I found I needed Vulnerability to burn through magic/rares, but putting it on Blasphemy seemed like a waste. I'm hoping to squeeze a bit more out of Tempest Shield and use it for CoH. Or maybe see if I can get it to shock by adding crit chance and retire my Vaal Lightning Trap (but probably not). 3) On the note of curses, I was hoping to run at least two by using a Doedre's but never got around to it. Unfortunately, blasphemy curses don't trigger the 20 resist all from Commander of Darkness so if you want that in addition you'll need to squeeze in at least a level 1 clarity. 4) I really want to stack more defensive layers for when block fails, but I'm not entirely sure what to do aside from LC. One thought was to use Reckoning with Fortify but accuracy might be a problem. Without curse effectiveness nodes, enfeeble+temp chains isn't particularly great, so maybe running an Animated Guardian with Leer Cast/Dying Breath/Zahndethus' Cassock. Taking the flask nodes + flask duration belt is also an option. Hopefully I get a chance to experiment this time around. Anyhow, thanks again! Looking forward to trying again. Edit: Some more thoughts after leveling again: I think I might have been unfair implying that the build is a bit squishy, since I didn't manage to pickup MoM. That being said, I'm really interested to see how the build works with a Cospri and a bit of curse effectiveness. I've done a number of LC builds and I guess I just don't like the art. Also, if I had read the wiki more closely I would have noticed that fortify doesn't work with trigger gems. If I can make it far enough next time, I guess I'd like to see what can be done with stacking evasion and curses. Last edited by sirmanky on Aug 14, 2016, 3:28:35 AM
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Do you have problems with chaos dmg in this build?
Considering the -11% in resistances Sorry if it's a stupid question, im at work and haven't seen every detail of the build yet. It looks good though, thanks for sharing! | |
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I finally managed to level back up and gear the character - it's going great. At times I feel the damage is lacking, but that was to be expected and pretty much all I have left on the tree are jewel sockets.
As far as taking chaos damage goes, I'm running a Cospri's so I'm close to 0 res, but also it turns out that a Sorrow of the Divine works well enough as a mana pot. That means that you can selectively turn on Zealot's Oath and keep your life regen and the regen from essence drain. I pretty much never notice my health move even as I'm taking hits. Overall, great build! Thanks for sharing. | |
" its not too bad, poison on is is one of the more annoying map mods, but you should be able to get more chaos resist with gear, and even though the chaos damage over time can be a pain, we have a good amount of life plus 100% increased life from flasks (that can be sapping life flasks) so its still a manageable issue atm, though i haven't been against any mops that have burst chaos damage (at least not that i noticed) but i haven't had any issue with it. | |
" sounds nice, gonna have to try to use the flaks when i retry the build in Atlas and see how that works, though i would like to know how much max energy shield you have with your build? | |
" 1291 at level 88, although I have a roll on a jewel that I'd replace given the chance. I use EV/ES gear wherever I can, and with a stibnite of reflexes I can reach around 9k evasion. It's not much, but with that and the block, enfeeble, and a basalt I rarely see my health move. |
