Essence Drain

Having a lot of fun with this skill right now on a melee-range caster in the Talisman league.

Going Contagion -> Abyssal Cry -> Essence Drain wipes out packs fast. Poison Blade Vortex as a spam skill when I'm not setting up combos & for defense (going to grab a Cybil's Paw). Wither Totem for faster damage against bosses. Since much of the power is coming from combinations of skills rather than just spamming one skill, it's quite effective with no 5/6 links.

I'm not yet lvl 60, on Talisman HC league, but as has been said by others, the projectile speed needs increasing and the cast animation needs decreasing.

It's interesting mechanics because feels really different to most one skill spamfest builds, also enjoy the chaos/dark theme and always wanted to build something like this in PoE, but the execution needs tuning.

I've been playing solo but I don't think this will work well in parties... On the other side this can be good skill to kill bosses quite comfortably (wither totem and excellent mobility while applying DOT, scaling with crit and plenty of dot/chaos/spell dmg).

I'm experimenting yet on how to work with this (didn't theorycraft much, just went with it as shadow), but gonna try w/ Rapid Decay, Void Manipulation and the pierce chance nodes in shadow area + LMP leaving a free socket (in a 5L) for an other extra dmg support (added chaos/posion/projectile speed). I think pierce should make this skill easier to use in case others wanna give it a try.

Too bad though that this is not usable with life leech as I planned to use it with ghost reaver + vaal pact and try to make some use of all those hybrid life/ES ES/evasion nodes around shadow/witch area.

I'm having a reasonable amount of fun with ED. Seeing a screen full of mobs disappear in a purple haze because you clicked twice is satisfying.

But... It can be clunky as hell. If you don't get damage on the right mob(s) while under Contagion's effect, nothing happens and you have to recast one or both again. I'm headed toward the projectile pierce nodes, which I wasn't expecting to do, to help deal with ED not getting through to the right mobs. It's especially awful when there's a totem or rare buried within a pack that won't let his allies die. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it's super annoying when a barrel stops me from killing mobs. :|

Some packs require four actions to get them down safely and in a reasonable timeframe: curse, Contagion, ED, Wither totem. That's a lot to do for each scary pack, and against bosses you may have to do it multiple times. A right-click-only build this is not. I'm still in lower-level maps but I have a feeling ED won't be strong enough damage-wise or in terms of mechanics to take into high-tier maps. The gem at level 18 on a 4-link had a hell of a time dealing with the Quarry boss room, for instance. Chaos resist is prevalent and there's no penetration gem to help.

Maybe ED will surprise me eventually, but right now it seems a bit slow, and unlike Caustic Arrow you don't have that handy +3 to level alongside a boosted Empower to give you easy damage. Perhaps Trap support will solve its issues by putting more damage available on the tree compared to Caustic Arrow getting so much from gear.

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Maybe ED will surprise me eventually, but right now it seems a bit slow, and unlike Caustic Arrow you don't have that handy +3 to level alongside a boosted Empower to give you easy damage. Perhaps Trap support will solve its issues by putting more damage available on the tree compared to Caustic Arrow getting so much from gear.

This is what i'm scared of too.
Seeing how slow some mobs takes to die if i dont add fire trap and firestorm at the same time (both of them not getting boosted by anything else but a bit of spell damage) i'm quite worried that it will be a failed build thanks to the lack of damage.
There is no reason why we have to wait for trap support to work to have this build word as it.

Hell, a fire trap without any damage support does more damage than essence drain already !

currently level 68 with the new chaos skills and it feels OKish... definetly a good pick for league start due to the fact that you basicly dont need any gear but i think im rerolling into a BV build when im around level 80...

I've been trying this skill out on my alt in HC Talisman (currently 49). Probably my new favourite skill so far, even competing with Arctic Breath in how much I like playing it (I'll see if there's good combo for them some time =p). I'm really fond of DoT skills and curses/slows so this is right up my alley. I'm also pleased that it works so well with the poison mechanic.

On the other hand I'm finding Contagion mostly superfluous to simply using ED with GMP and pierce. Only needed to use Contagion at the start when I didn't have those. Now it is mostly unused save against really dense and dangerous packs where I don't want to stand still casting. I've given a suggestion for that over in the Contagion thread.

It is super frustrating to play this combo , the mobs non stop get to me . If i wanted to play melee caster i would go for Incinerate or some shit , at least you can hold 1 freaking key .

You always have to kite backwards , clear speed ? = out the window .

To the guys trying to make this combo work - don't waste your time , let GGG fix it instead .

The scaling of the COMBO is terrible , the damage is too low requires curses and wither and +2 chaos staffs and what not , to not feel like an idiot .

While in the same time i can hop on my "caustic " arrow character and decimate 3 maps in the same time frame .

Oh so you wanna play the projectile version ? Hm let's see , why not just freaking play Tornado Shot and offscreen everything faster .

Either buff the dps of both skills , or the supports . Right now this combo is totall BS and it's annoying to play .

Does it Crit? Does the debuff have a chance to crit each sec/ ? Why is it 5% base crit not 6%?

By far the #1 problem with Essence Drain is survivability due to negligible life leech. An elegant fix is to add "#% of Chaos Damage Over Time Leeched as Life" to passive nodes like "Method to the Madness", "Atrophy", and "Corruption".

Chaos DoT damage should be the best method for leeching life in the game because it fits the theme of draining someone's life and as a reward for having to twiddle your thumbs while you wait for mobs to die.

Most of the popular builds can one-shot everything on the screen. In order to have a niche in this game, Essence Drain should be a build that has low trash clear speeds, but excels at killing bosses (due to low initial DPS with the highest possible sustained DPS) and provides ample life leech. Otherwise, I don't see why anybody would bother with this spell.

As a cool bonus the projectiles from Essence Drain could seek out the target that was closest to your cursor when the spell was cast. With GMP & LMP each projectile would determine its "closest target" based on the the distance of the cursor from the player and the standard spread of the projectiles.

You could also consider adding the spreading effect of Contagion to Essence Drain and removing or reworking Contagion.

The Heralds should work with Degen?