Essence Drain

How slow is Essence Drain? This slow -



Essence Drain + Slower Projectiles. Character has just 30% movespeed.

No projectile skill can be so easily outrun even with Slower Proj attached to it. :P

Personally, I really like the skill and the combination of Contagion + ED. Once we'll be able to use trap support gem, it'll be great. The chain reaction feels great, and the cast speed isn't that big of a deal for the combo.

One thing that, in my opinion, would promote build variety is making the heal from ED as life leech, so we can go Ghost Reaver. Honestly, I'd say that Ghost Reaver not working was an oversight, if not for the wording of the skill itself.

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Achalus wrote:

Personally, I really like the skill and the combination of Contagion + ED. Once we'll be able to use trap support gem, it'll be great. The chain reaction feels great, and the cast speed isn't that big of a deal for the combo.

One thing that, in my opinion, would promote build variety is making the heal from ED as life leech, so we can go Ghost Reaver. Honestly, I'd say that Ghost Reaver not working was an oversight, if not for the wording of the skill itself.

It works with Zealoth Oath, which matches the wording of the skill description quite accurately: "Regenerate 0.5% of Debuff Damage as Life".

im using the combination of these 2 gears to resolve projectile speed issue and pierce. with 100% pierce i get 100% increased DPS both for initial hit and DOT :D working well so far with 4 frenzy charges i have 12k dot with a lv 16 ED and other gem levels lv 16 below

by the way thats with currently 5l

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The "drain" part of the skill just doesn't feel right with my level 69 character.

I feel that the damage the skill does is fine, and its interaction with Contagion makes it very nice to use against groups of enemies. The spell works well with at least a bit of piercing (I get 40% from the Piercing Shots cluster +15% from a jewel), as it often allows to bypass issues that may arise with wrong creatures taking the hit.

But the drain part is way too low. I cannot see the difference with or without it (I have 40 hp/sec regen) unless it's draining a huge group, and even then I'd probably see much better results with any life leach on a normal skill.
Despite being practical way to avoid wasting potion charges or time while mapping, the drain lacks the ability to have an impact on combat itself.
A way to noticeably improve its drain portion without increasing the damage dealt would be really nice (via quality, maybe?). Also, I think the base value should be checked again. Maybe have an improved drain for rarer monsters? Or maybe a single drain stack that avoids balance issues?
Or you could just skip the drain altogether and rename the skill.


Tl;dr : The skill doesn't feel like it's draining life, because the difference with or without it is too low.

agree with this completely. another problem with this is the fact that if the mob dies quickly buff goes away too.

The lifeleech does not seem to be working for ED.

[edit] probbly mainly because ED doesn't "leech". too bad. loved the design of this chestpiece, now i'm back to finding something else.

I play a Low Life build, got to lv 90 and currently sit around 20k chaos DoT tooltip with lv 19 Essence Drain in a 5L (ED - Void Manipulation - Controlled Destruction - Rapid Decay - Slower Projectile).

I don't love the skill. It feels weak and clunky. The combo (Contagion - ED) has a really low base cast speed, and ED has abysmal projectile speed, especially with Slower Projectile. I try to counter this with a wand with some projectile speed and the passive node in Shadow area.

In group play, I can't even pull the combo most of the time before the pack is dead. Even when I do, it really doesn't do much since the ED DoT doesn't spread until the mob dies, and when that happens, almost every other mobs nearby would die at the same time from other people using their own skills. Basically my Essence Drain doesn't really help. When it matters, just a little bit, is boss fight since they actually have significant hp on them. Even so, with Wither and Vulnerability, and I'm not doing the math here, I'll assume the real DoT to be 35k, which isn't great single target damage at all. There isn't really a way to increase the damage by spamming since the ED hit is negligible. All in all, ED is terrible in groups.

In single play, clear speed is okay I suppose, but the clunkines is still there. The thing is, I only got to okay clear speed, and that's already with Pain Attunement and many % more multiplier gems, with a lot of % inc damage on the tree. 406% inc (Chaos/DoT/Projectile/Spell) total on tree. I don't think the damage is enough to justify the slow combo. I sometimes switch in Poison support gem instead of Slower Projectile, which seems to help kill the first target faster so the spread is sooner, but the DoT that is spread would be lower since the poison isn't spread, not without Bino's.

With all the crazy damage double-dipping Poison builds, Essence Drain feels even worse, even though it seems to be the major contender for Chaos builds when 2.1 was released. Except all the spotlight for Chaos goes to the Poison support gem.

i agree with asperior.

i dont play with low life build, but also around lvl 90 with lvl 20 essence drain 5l with the same support gems.

i only play solo, so i cant tell anything about dmg in groups. but even solo the slow casting speed feels bad. the dmg is too low for a lvl 20 gem with so many more% from support.

i hope the ascendancy patch changes something. maybe the crazy witch prestige class on the pictures you recently showed us brings some chaos and curse love. maybe something like:

if suffering damage from essence drain and contagion, incoming dmg from all ressources is increased by xx%

or: for every second, contagion does damage, incoming chaos damage is increased by xx%

maybe: each curse on an enemy increases your chaos damage angainst it by xx%

after all i like the skill combination. only spamming one skill is boring, but casting contagion for aoe, ultra slow essence drain AND wither spell totem to do dmg is too much effort.