[LHC] 2.6 Ramona's CI Essence Drain

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Astrohawke wrote:

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5) Double Dipping
-Double dipping refers to when gaining one source of damage, affects your damage in more than one way.
-With Essence Drain this refers to the initial projectiles damage, and then the resulting chaos damage over time.
-Modifiers to Damage/Spell Damage/Chaos Damage/Projectile Damage scale your initial hit, which scales your DoT damage, while also separately scaling your DoT damage.
-I would suggest viewing my professional drawing to better understand
http://i.imgur.com/4JOkgeU.png
-As you can see these four modifiers are more desirable, Damage over Time modifiers while good, do not double dip.

I want to point out that this does not classify as double dipping. Double dipping occurs when secondary damage is based on the primary damage source (poison is 8% of the initial hit, ignite is 20% of the initial hit). So when primary damage is increased by modifiers, secondary damage is also increased and then increased again by the same modifiers.

In the case of ED, the secondary DoT is not based off the initial hit. It has a set amount of damage per level as the gem level increases and it is only modified once. The "Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this skill's Damage Over Time" just allows spell damage to scale the DoT when spell damage normally can't scale DoTs as in the case of something like fire trap.

ED only double dips when wielding the consuming dark to poison because poison is based off the primary hit and double dips. Decay also does not double dip.

Hi Astrohawke,

You are correct and I'll update my guide.

I apologize for the confusion!

I had confused The Consuming Dark's poison double dipping, with the normal Essence Drain interaction when I wrote this section.

Thank you for clarifying. :)

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Ramona wrote:

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Giammafix wrote:

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Ramona wrote:

-Essence Drain only does chaos damage which means reflect is not an issue.

what about the likely introduction of "chaos reflect" in next patch? :(

Hi Giammafix,

Do you have a source for this information?
This is the first I've heard of it being a possible change.

If it were added to the game through Essence Drain would be fine.
Reason being the initial hit of Essence Drain which is the Chaos damage, is a minuscule portion of the damage.
Almost all of the damage comes from our Damage over Time that the Essence Drain causes.
This like any other Damage over Time (see ignite), is non-reflect damage which means we do not have any issues.
Also take into account that as CI we are immune to chaos damage, which would nullify any chaos damage reflected to us.
Even if it were possible that we could take this damage, a mediocre amount of ES for this build would be 10k (assuming decent Vaal Regalia).
This is a pretty large amount, and after the initial hit we wouldn't be concerned with any additionl reflect damage.
Now if you were Low Life with Shavronne's Wrappings it may be a different story, but this guide is for CI and I wouldn't worry about it.

tl;dr If they added chaos reflect, the initial hit of Essence Drain does not do enough damage to threaten us.

I've read about this in the global 820 chat, maybe I have to presume it's not reliable...I hope they won't introduce the chaos reflect, I'd like to play this build to ignore any kind of reflect (atziri included!)

oh and just another question.
Can this build do the guardians, shaper, uber atziri, breachlords, the pale court, vinktar square, vaal temple?

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Giammafix wrote:

oh and just another question.
Can this build do the guardians, shaper, uber atziri, breachlords, the pale court, vinktar square, vaal temple?

Hi again Giammafix,

I would say yes to all of these.
Shaper is the only one that will be very difficult as our Damage is not instant, you would need to use Abyssal Cry to effectively clear adds.
Some Guardians can be another hard fight but that is mostly for those using the Poison version of Essence Drain.
As my build is not, they are not too bad.
The rest should be fine, obviously for a fight like Uber Atziri you need really good gear and levels.

Hi Ramona,

I played ED throughout most of BHC, couple of questions.
I ended up with a build (level 94) similar to the following: poeurl.com/4nF

I ended up running quite a few more gems than you did (albiet I wasn't playing ssf), but I noticed you didn't take many life regeneration nodes to be used with zealot's oath. I found on doing things like uber/shaper that the 5% life regen +2% from boots = 7% ES regen was huge. Did you experiment with using that at all?

Also, was your choice of jewels (no energy from within), due to playing SSF? I assume you would recommend one if not playing SSF?

Could you explain why you would choose rapid decay to remove over slower projectiles? Slower projectiles has a 29% modifier as compared to a 39% modifier for rapid decay, and I hate the quality of life reduction of such a slow moving projectile, especially against fast moving bosses like chimera.

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eraic wrote:

Hi Ramona,

I played ED throughout most of BHC, couple of questions.
I ended up with a build (level 94) similar to the following: poeurl.com/4nF

I ended up running quite a few more gems than you did (albiet I wasn't playing ssf), but I noticed you didn't take many life regeneration nodes to be used with zealot's oath. I found on doing things like uber/shaper that the 5% life regen +2% from boots = 7% ES regen was huge. Did you experiment with using that at all?

Also, was your choice of jewels (no energy from within), due to playing SSF? I assume you would recommend one if not playing SSF?

Could you explain why you would choose rapid decay to remove over slower projectiles? Slower projectiles has a 29% modifier as compared to a 39% modifier for rapid decay, and I hate the quality of life reduction of such a slow moving projectile, especially against fast moving bosses like chimera.

Hi eraic,

Before I go into too much detail, this build isn't intended for SSF.
SSF was just something I did on the side for fun. :)

The jewels really comes down to having access to jewels good enough to beat nodes.
I didn't personally feel they worth taking at the time for the jewels I had access to.
That said, my last tree for CI does include 5 jewel slots, I believe your current tree has 4.

I did experiment with life regen, unfortunately I did not have a 2% boots enchant though.
Life regen is certainly a useful stat, and would prefer the boots enchant over any others.
Comparing between our trees, I would consider the life regen jewel by Scion to be worth while and I may take that over say like the mana jewel.
(I'll look into it tonight when I'm home)
But I personally do not personally find the Templar side of the tree worth while, which is the last 1% I'm missing when we compare. (My 3.0% to your 4.7%)
*Edit* I should probably mention it would probably come down to if I need the mana from the mana jewel near Hexmaster.
Unfortunately my build does run a pretty low mana pool and it may be more of a situational choice between the two.


Honesty I didn't find my defenses in need of a Energy From Within.
I personally find it to be lackluster in the Melding area early on.
I may find it worth while once I filled more of my jewel slots and have some flexibility.
I know a lot of people enjoy EFW in Melding, but I just didn't find it necessary at the time.

I recently updated some information in my guide, I'll be revisiting the Slow Proj versus Rapid Decay tonight as well.
This section is unfortunately outdated, thank you for reminding me. :)

Hope this helps!

*Second edit* Your life regen jewel suggestion inspired me to further optimize the tree.
Update coming tonight for the final version of my Skill Tree, just in time for GGG to ruin it! :)

Essence drain fuckin blows dude. [Removed by Support]

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Roltar wrote:

Essence drain fuckin blows dude. [Removed by Support]

Thank you Roltar for the valuable feedback!
I will make sure to keep this in mind for my next build guide.
(💮=◡=)

I try RF(Shadow):

Gear:


T15 map (no deaths):

What do you think how will contagion be after the aoe changes? Seems nerfed