[2.5] - Occ, LL, Essence Drain // Any Feedback?

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GoDLikUS wrote:

Any tips for someone who decided to start a new league with this build?

Your damage mainly comes from your gems.. So try to get a 5l/6l (Tabula) as early as possible.
Next step (if your arent going to play highly life based untill endgame) would be a eye of chayula for anti stun ( stuns usually become a problem for me starting act2 merciless).
This can be expensive early in the league doe.
Also (once the quality gems are a bit cheaper) you want to buy 6x Essence drain with at least +15 quality and lvl them in your secondary weapons.
lvl20->21 Essence drain is a HUGE damage boost.

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FrenzyVictim wrote:

Do you know what double dipping means?
Small example... all i have in my tree is 100% inc. Chaos damage.
I have a Essence drain linked with Poison. nothing else
Now the 100% inc. Chaos damage will scale with my ED resulting in a higher Poison damage due to ED having an inc. Base damage.
The same 100% scale with the poison again!.
That beeing said. It does NOT double dip with spell damage!!!!!!

The assumption in bold is completely wrong.

Two spells in PoE (specifically Essence Drain and Vortex) have an unique modifier: Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this skill's Damage Over Time.

This works with ANY damage over time caused by the skill, including poison. So with ED and Vortex (if converted to Chaos), spell damage double dips with the poison damage.

Also with gear and gems posted in OP, and some small modifications to the tree, you can get same or better dos off of ONE stack of poison then from Decay. One stack. Possibly more, I've done some basic calculations earlier, and math doesn't lie.

Also, there's an essence drain cwc scion build on the forums. He gets 3x the damage of decay with one poison stack.
All I'm saying all the time is: with good gear, good gems (20/20, 3-4 empower) you get more dps with poison in a single stack.
And if you do, faster casting wand or spell shield can give you more dps overall while dual wielding then decay wand.

If you dual wield and complain that you can't apply more then one stack because you have to dodge even smallest monster farts, get a 500 ES shield and you suddenly can tank more and apply more stacks without running around like a headless chicken.
Or still run around but skip some ES nodes and get more even damage while keeping your total ES the same.

Decay is seriously overrated once you get gear and gems worth more then 15-20 ex.