[3.1] Max Block Essence Drainer (lvl 28 ED) - With Normal and MF setup
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Hellooo Exiles!
This is the third guide I ever did (after Blade Vortex Obliteration and Abyssal Volatile Poet). It's something I always wanted to try, but never had the right insiration to develop properly. As always, english is not my native language, so I already apologise for possible errors and/or unclarity. Table of Contents: - Why would you play this build? - Pros & Cons - Mechanics Breakdown - Detailed chapter - Bandits - Ascendency & Pantheon - Passive tree progression (MF & Normal Setup) - Gear (MF & Normal Setup) - Gems & Links (MF & Normal Setup) - Screenshots - Videos - FAQs (WiP)
Why would you play this build?
Do you enjoy Essence Drain and Contagion? Do you enjoy watching those amazing chain reactions, seeing monsters die as you run through them? But you want to try something different, not the usual Trickster or Occultist? This might be the build for you. It offers a fast playstyle, similar or even better clear speed than the Trickster option, while achieving good damage (not as crazy as the Occultist, since you do not have the -15% chaos resistance aura). It's an active playstyle too, perfect for players who want to take a break from the usual 1-button builds. The build has been developed to achieve high amount of IIQ (Increased Item Quantity) and some IIR (Increased Item Rarity), without sacrificing too much damage or survivability, to farm mid/high tier maps. It also focuses on block, achieving max block and spell block. You can personalize it though, to focus more on pure survivability and/or damage, to fight the endgame bosses. It's still an Essence Drain build, so you can clear everything.
Pros & Cons
Pros: - Good clear (in high density maps it gets crazy) - Good single target (not as good as the common LL Occultist builds) - Scale very well with investment - High amount of build paths and cutomization - Can clear every content in the game - Max block and spell block (with life/mana recover mechanics) - High amount of IIQ without sacrificing too much - Can start with very budget options - Can run pretty much all map mods (I would avoid just "no regen" maps) Cons: - Can get very expensive to min/max - MF (Magic Find) gear is expensive, even more in this league - In low density maps it can get annoying - Need a guardian specific unique (Scourge claw) to be effective, it is cheap though - Be careful of degen effects on you, since you cannot block them Pro or Con: - Active Playstyle, not a usual "right click only" build
Mechanics Breakdown - Detailed Chapter
I do not want to spend too many words on Essence Drain itself and how it works, because there are many good guides out there, but just to summarize the main interactions for newer players. You cast Contagion on a group of monsters, then you hit one of those with Essence Drain, which applies a DoT (Damage over Time) debuff on the monster itself; when it dies, if it was afflicted by contagion in the first place, both the effects spread to nearby enemies. This chain reaction can spread pretty far in high density istances, depending on the duration of the two debuffs (the duration does NOT get refreshed when it they spread). Difference between MF and Normal setup: The main differences between the two setups are gettin described here, keep in mind that either option you choose you still have all the Pros & Cons and the features described later. - The MF option obviously focuses more on IIQ and some IIR, "sacrificing" many item slots for this purpose. The main factor is that you only have "2 defensive pools": life and mana. With this setup i reach something like 6k effective HP. - The Normal option has more damage and it's more tanky than the previous version, since you can use real items in those slots. The increased damage is achieved by using Allelopathy gloves in combination with two Spreding Rot jewels. The defensive aspect is improved even more using "3 defensive pools": life, mana and energy shield. The idea is to use all the three recover mechanics togheter, to sustain all 3 pools when you block (with 75/75 block chance is pretty often), with some regen to make it smoother. Keep in mind that as long as you have ES, the MoM effect doesn't work (except for chaos damage, which bypass ES); this means that you have an ES pool to absorb small/medium hits, and when you actually get hit by big hits the damage is first absorbed by the ES and then split between life and mana. If you have ever played (or seen) an Aegis Aurora build, the concept is not much different. With this setup I reach something like 9k effective HP. Damage: We use Essence Drain as our primary source of damage, spreading it with Contagion; it applies a really strong Chaos based DoT, lasting for few seconds. Keep in mind that, even though it is tagget as a projectile spell, it does NOT get scaled by projectile damage. We need to discuss here one of the reasons we pick Necromancer, which otherwise might seems strange. All the passive nodes in the Necromancer Ascendency sub-tree give some sort of minion damage, which usually is totally useless for any spell based character. We use a unique claw, The Scourge, to exploit all these nodes to buff our damage. The claw offers a lot of damage, it has a pretty high attack speed (good for whirling blades or shield charge) and, even though is a guardian-only item, is usually very chep few days into the league. This means we can also use a Bone Helmet to increase our damage even further, without needing any helm enchant for our build (Essence Drain enchants are usually very expensive). We benefit greatly from Despair Curse, and Wither (usually in a spell totem setup). I personally do not use Wither, since it is only needed for big bosses and currently I use this character just to farm maps. Necromancer offers us also a good amount fo attack and cast speed for free, some chaos and elemental resistances. Defense: We combine many layers of defences to achieve a good survivability even in a full IIQ setup. We are a life based character, we also take Mind over Matter to achieve a higher effective life pool thanks to our mana. We easily achieve max block and spell block (which is 75%, just to clarify for newer players). We get to this goal mostly thanks to Bone Offering (since we are a necromancer and offerings apply to ourselves too), Tempest Shield (which also offers some utility, discussed in the next paragraph). With just these two buffs we are not capped yet, we need either a Rumi's Concoction and a shield with spell block applied to spells, or some Reckless Defence. You can also combine those things, depending on your needs. I personally do not want to rely on a flask to be block capped, so I've decided to use the jewels. Having a lot of block chance is good, but with the addition of Shaped items we gained some additional awesome bonuses. Sustain is a big deal for most builds and when you are using a MoM build, you want to sustain both your life and your mana; we have some life/mana regen and the life recovery from Essence drain itself, but it's not crazy and we need something better. Shaped shields (which can be dropped in maps influenced by the Shaper) have the chance to roll many strong mods for our build, the two suffixes that you want are "Recover #% of your Maximum Life when you Block" and "Recover #% of your Maximum Mana when you Block". The life one is not mandatory, since we already recover a lot of life on block with Bone offering, but the mana one is game changing. As we discussed above, those shield can also roll "#% of Block Chance applied to Spells" which allows you to not invest into the unique jewels. We also have Fortify linked with out mobility skill (Shield Charge or Whirling Blades), which is a good damage reduction. If you remember, we are using a Scourge, which summons Wolves when you kill stuff. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you ever played a summoner you should know how good is having some minions if front of you that take aggro and distract enemies; well, you can have up to 20 of them, pretty good additional defensive bonus. In the end we also have flasks, which offers lots of nice defensive bonuses, and the chance to blind enemies (50% chance to avoid attacks, multiplicative with evasion). Utility & stuff: We already discussed pretty much everything. I just want to rememeber you that we can exploit Tempest shield to trigger additional stuff. We can link to it a Curse on Hit setup (so we can curse with Despair for free) and Blind. Our ascendency also affect our minions (Wolves), allowing them to actually hurt enemies; moreover, when they die, they leave on the ground a chaos damage degen, which is a nice bonus. We also use a Desecrate to generate corpses, allowing us to consume them with Bone offering. I personally use Desecrate in a CWDT setup, since I do not want to selfcast it. You also a bunch of skill effect duration, which means that every effect/skill you use last very long. To give you a rough idea, my Tempest shield last 21.5s without the Increased Duration gem, while a good Bone offering lasts about 15s. If you decide to use vaal skill or other stuff (Vaal Haste, Vaal Grace, Immortal call, etc) they are going to last very long too.
Bandits
Kill all, we want those 2 passive points.
Ascendency & Pantheon
Ascendency: As our Ascendency class we chose the Necromancer. Normal lab you take Mistress of Sacrifice to start using offerings. Cruel lab you take Spirit Eater to gain few additional bonuses while consuming corpses. Merciless lab you take Commander of Darkness mostly to gain some resistances and damage. Uber lab you take Beacon of Corruption for some chaos resistance and damage. Pantheon: As a major god I would take "Soul of the Brine King" to help against stuns and freeze (with the additional bonuses that you can complete). Minor gods are not really that important, you should whatever feels better for you; good options are "Soul of Garukhan" or "Soul of Gruthkul".
Passive tree progression & PoB
You do not have to follow this tree precisely, feel free to adjust it to you needs. You can level with Essence drain and Contagion as soon as you get them, linking them to the support gems you get rewarded while levelling. For levelling you can use standard stuff like Goldrim, Wanderlust, Tabula rasa, Lifesprig and so on, if you have to chance to get them. There are many good guides and videos on how to level any character out there, I invite you to check them out if you are new. Take jewel slots when you have good jewels to use, otherwise delay them until higher levels.
MF Setup
19 points, you start taking some generic life and damage in the Witch's area 39 points, keep taking life and damage, moving into Shadow's area 60 points, keep taking life and damage while moving towards Scion's and Templar's area, you also take some increased effect duration 80 points, same as before, but at this points you should be getting close to the end of the levelling process 95 points, by this point you should be mapping and you should have some good jewels to use 114 oints, you fill out the last few points you need I just want to highlight few things: - You do NOT have to invest those 5 points, near Acrobatics, to take the piercing nodes, but I really like having tha ability to pierce few monsters with Essence drain. If you use this character to map a lot, that's a good QoL improvement, if you focus more on bossing and endgame stuff, maybe you can drop them - The jewel socket near the Shadow's Frenzy charge is used to place Inspired Learning, it's a big boost in clearspeed, even though you have to pick few inefficient nodes to make it work - The jewel socket between Witch and Shadow is used to place Intuitive Leap, this way I can allocate few points without being connected to the tree If you do not have these two unique jewels, or you don't want to use them, feel free to adjust the tree a bit and use other rare jewels. Here I leave the PoB link: https://pastebin.com/9mTgn8LU
Normal Setup
The "normal setup" can gain a lot more survivability and damage than the MF setup, but the passive trees are pretty similar. The main difference is in the endgame tree: 114 points as you can see we do not need anymore the pierce nodes, few points are different here and there, but the core of the build is the same. Here I leave the PoB link: https://pastebin.com/FRYwaw0d
Gear
This is a general idea about what you should look for:
Piece by Piece description
Weapon
The Scourge, that's the reason this builds works. While levelling you can use whatever you want, a dagger or a wand giving you as much spell damage as possible.
Shield
I show you here some options, since I was testing different stuff. Ideally it should have as suffixes: "Recover #% of your Maximum Energy Shield when you Block", "Recover #% of your Maximum Mana when you Block" (there's alsoa life one, but it's a luxury since we already have bone offering) and "#% of Block Chance applied to Spells". As prefixes you should look for high life roll and spell damage. There are good chances you won't find such a shield, or at least not one costing less than many exalts, so you need to find the best option for your budget.
Body Armour
A Skin of the Loyal is perfect for this build, since it gives you a lot of damage, but you need to find one with the right colours (1 red, 2 green, 3 blu). If you manage to get one with the implicit corruption that adds +1 to level of gems you are done, I just recently managed to corrupt one. Similar to the Skin of the Loyal, there's also the new Dialla's Malefaction; if you want to use it, you need 2 red sockets (Essence Drain and Empower) and 4 green ones; it gives you potentially a bit more damage, but it's also more expensive. Another good option is Cloak of Defiance if you want to invest more into the MoM aspect of the build. You can also use a Tabula rasa or whatever rare armour you find with good life and resistances and you may need. Another option worth mentioning is Lioneye's Vision, which gives you a free Pierce gem, allowing you to drop those 5 points we talked earlier in the passive tree. There are many other good unique and rare chest piece, another one I find really interesting is the Perfect Form, which gives a free Arctic Armour and Phase Acrobatics. It's probably one of the best defensive options you can get.
Helmet
We already discussed that Bone Helmets are awesome for this build, this way you do not need an expensive helm enchant. Anyway you need life and probably resistances. If you can grab one with "+# to Level of Socketed Minion Gems" (which can go as high as +3 now) you are going to have a crazy Bone offering. Worth mentioning that there's the Elder combined mod that gives "Socketed Gems are supported by Level # Minion Damage / Minions deal #% increased Damage" which is very strong, since the increased minion damage part of the mod increases our damage too; they are very rare and expensive if you combine this mod with the above stuff.
Gloves
For MF you want a pair of Sadima's Touch. Otherwise you can use rare ones with life and resistances. If you want to achieve the highest damage, for bossing, you can use Allelopathy Gloves and use two Spreading Rot jewels. The enchant on your gloves is not really important.
Boots
For MF you want a pair of Goldwyrm. Otherwise just get rare ones with life, resistances and movement speed (at least +30%, or the new mod +35%). A really good option for clearing, if you don't case about MF, is using Voidwalker boots, allowing you to forget forever about piercing problems. They are a Shaper-only drop, but usually very cheap. The enchant on the boots is pretty important, since allows you to be pretty much stun immune while clearing.
Amulet
for MF you want a Bisco's Collar, which is vey expensive though. Otherwise you can use a rare one with life and resistances, a Impresence (chaos versione) or a Presence of Chayula.
Rings
For MF you want two Ventor's Gamble rings, focusing first on the IIQ roll. Try to get goos resistances and life too, otherwise you might have problems. Otherwise go for 2 rares rings with life and resistances.
Belt
For MF you want a Bisco's Leash, which also gives Rampage (super cool for clearing). Otherwise you can use a rare one with life and resistances, or a HeadHunter if you own it. You can also kill a few monsters with the Bisco's equipped to get the Rampage bonus going, then take that out and use whatever other belt you want; as long as you keep killing stuff, the rampage will keep counting.
MF Setup
I want to showcase my gear, which is pretty good but not perfect; it should give you a good idea about what you should aim for. As I said previously, my goal with this build was to run a IIQ setup, that's why more than half of my items are focused around MF. You do not have to follow this choice obviously, feel free to adjust it. I also suggest you to always use sites like poe.affix, or similar ones, to check all the possible mods, tiers and so on. Gear: Jewels: Here you can see I'm using an Inspired Learning to gain a pseudo-headhunter effect and a Intuitive Leap to reach few unconnected nodes (in particular Overcharged, which generates charges while clearing). The 2 Reckless Defence are used to cap spell block without relying on a Rumi's flask. For rare jewels you want: - Increased maximum life - Increased minion damage - Increased chaos damage - Increased damage - Increased damage over time - Increased spell damage - Increased spell damage while holding a shield - Attributes and/or resistances if you need them Flasks: You have the freedom to choose whatever flasks you prefer, try to have all the immunities you need (mostly bleeding, freeze and curses); focus on using defensive flask, since there's not many offensive ones you can use. A good unique option is the Witchfire Brew.
Normal Setup
I want to showcase my gear, which is pretty good but not perfect; it should give you a good idea about what you should aim for. You do not have to follow this choice obviously, feel free to adjust it. I also suggest you to always use sites like poe.affix, or similar ones, to check all the possible mods, tiers and so on. Gear: If you can cap your resistances without a ring, you can also use an Essence Worm and place Discipline into it to have more free mana; you can also drop clarity and add a Clear Mind jewel. Jewels: Here you can see I'm using an Inspired Learning to gain a pseudo-headhunter effect. The 3 Reckless Defence are used to cap block and spell block without relying on a Rumi's flask. The 2 Spreading Rot are used in conjunction with the gloves, to achieve high damage against bosses. As said above, if you decide to reserve no mana, you can use a Clear Mind jewel which gives a good amount of damage. If you take more jewel slots, for rare jewels you want: - Increased maximum life - Increased maximum energy shield - Increased minion damage - Increased chaos damage - Increased damage - Increased damage over time - Increased spell damage - Increased spell damage while holding a shield - Attributes and/or resistances if you need them Flasks: You have the freedom to choose whatever flasks you prefer, try to have all the immunities you need (mostly bleeding, freeze and curses); focus on using defensive flask, since there's not many offensive ones you can use. I like to use a Sorrow of the Divine to increase my damage when needed, but mostly to regen energy shield instead of life on demand(Zealot's Oath). Another good unique option is the Witchfire Brew.
Gems & Links
You can already see the gems I'm using in the Gear section, anyway here's a list of what you should look for (order of importance). The two setups are pretty much identical, except for few gems.
MF Setup
- Body armour (6 links): Essence Drain, Controlled Destruction, Efficacy, Void Manipulation, Swift Affliction, Empower (at least level 2) - Helmet (4 links): Bone Offering, Lightning Golem, Faster Casting, Increased Duration - Boots/Gloves (4 links): Faster Casting, Contagion, Increased AOE, Arcane Surge (appropriate level) - Boots/Gloves (4 links): Tempest Shield,Curse on Hit,Despair, Blind - Weapon (3 links): Faster Attacks, Fortify, Shield Charge/Whirling Blades - Shield (3 links): CWDT (level 1), Desecrate (level 7), Clarity (level you prefer, not affected by CWDT)
Normal Setup
- Body armour (6 links): Essence Drain, Controlled Destruction, Efficacy, Void Manipulation, Swift Affliction, Empower (at least level 2) - Helmet (4 links): Bone Offering, Lightning Golem, Clarity (level you prefer), Increased Duration - Boots/Gloves (4 links): Faster Casting, Contagion, Increased AOE, Arcane Surge (appropriate level) - Boots/Gloves (4 links): Tempest Shield,Curse on Hit,Despair, Blind - Weapon (3 links): Faster Attacks, Fortify, Shield Charge/Whirling Blades - Shield (3 links): CWDT (level 1), Desecrate (level 7), Discipline (not affected by CWDT) You do not need to follow this link precisely, most of the stuff I use are utility based, so there are lots of possible choices. If you want to do endgame bosses and very high tier contents you might want to consider including a Wither Totem setup to help your single target damage; in the same istances you might find helpful using also a Vaal Lightning Trap to shock those targets.
Screenshots
MF Setup
Essence Drain tooltip damage in h/o (no buffs)  Defences in h/o without flasks  Defences in h/o with flasks 
Normal Setup
Essence Drain tooltip damage in h/o (no buffs and without the +1 SotL)  Defences in h/o without flasks  Defences in h/o with flasks 
Videos
Shaped Toxic Sewer (T10) run Shaped Toxic Sewer with double beyond and breach (first run) Toxic Sewer with double beyond and breach (second run) Gonna upload some more gameplay actions or specific video request in the future.
FAQs - Work in Progress
To be updated. I hope you may give a chance to this build, trying it out yourself and enjoy it as much as I did. I will try to answer any question, so feel free to ask and make objections. I also wanna thanks all the players that will give their feedback and answers to this thread, helping myself and others to enjoy this build. If you wanna check the character, it's called SkellyNaeH (at first this was a skeleton summoner). Have a nice day and stay safe, Exiles. Abyssal Volatile Poet: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2057243 MagicBlaster Deadeye: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2115343 Fortifier Aurabot: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2084465 Last edited by lallalaus on Jan 13, 2018, 7:23:45 PM Last bumped on Feb 22, 2018, 8:29:37 PM
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Update.
I've split the whole guide into two different setups: the "Magic Find" and the "Normal" one, including the trees, gems and gear. I've also recently updated the Screenshots section and added a short video to show how the build perform (the playstyle is similar to any other ED build). I've also just managed to get a +1 Skin of the Loyal after many fails, achieving a lvl 28 Essence Drain. Abyssal Volatile Poet: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2057243 MagicBlaster Deadeye: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2115343 Fortifier Aurabot: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2084465 Last edited by lallalaus on Jan 13, 2018, 8:05:51 AM
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Hello! I've been researching Essence Drain builds and wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this guide. It's detailed and well-written and one I'll refer to for the new league to help get me started on my first Essence Drain character.
"Learn well the lessons that Wraeclast will teach you, Witch. It is your only hope of finding your way home."
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i got into 3.1 late, and played two essence drain characters so far.
the first was MoM based, and i really enjoyed it. the second was energy shield based, and felt good at first, but tapered out as i started mapping (very disappointed in that feels).... so i'm excited to also try another essence drain character, but from a fresh approach!! Here's to hoping essence drain isn't overshadowed by other classes getting more buffs, because i was already league starting 3.2 with the ever popular poet's volatile dead build..... :( |
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