Essence Drain
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Unlike most players I love the fact that contagion is needed for essence drain to be seriously strong. It's caustic arrow counterpart is a bit too casual.
I have ONE MAJOR problem! the animation is TOO SLOW! I have sniper, ballistic mastery & 20% proj speed on my wand and targeting evasive/NORMAL walking speed monsters is frustrating unless at point blank range. The DAMAGE is fine! Just give this skill some more projectile speed. Im trying to progress to 75+ maps so I needed a 5TH link. The poor man alternative is obviously slower projectile rather than lvl3/4 empower. The projectile is so slow i can out run it with 25movespeed boots. Please just buff the proj speed. When I use lvl13 faster projectile gem Essence Drain feels really good! but the 26% increased proj damage at this point is not enough. | |
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I got off probation specifically to post this.
I jumped into Talisman with the idea of a Summoner/Chaos Hybrid build. I've tried most other spells in a hybrid build with Summoner and the results range from horrible to purely awesome. That said, I went into this build with an open mind. I had enough points to invest into Minion, ES, and Chaos/DoT nodes and I planned my build beforehand. My results with ED are.... Firstly, the projectile speed. I had massive problems with this starting from A2. The monkeys in A2 run reasonably fast. In fact, they run fast enough to outrun the projectile. I got to T2/T3 mapping with this build and it poses significant problems in any open area. I ran Essence Drain with Void Manipulation, Controlled Destruction, and LMP/Increased Duration. I opted for Wand/Shield instead of a Staff strictly for the bonuses to Spell Damage. 4 links are all I could spare for this spell. Projectile Speed needs a buff on this skill for sure. Secondly, the interaction with Contagion. I've read the first few pages of feedback in this thread and I wholeheartedly agree with others that the Contagion + ED spreading interaction should not reset the duration of Contagion. However, I do feel that it should reset the duration of ED. If Contagion falls off while ED is still running, it shouldn't spread. Although, I do think the duration of ED should be reset when it does spread to another target. This one kinda goes either way but I do think it would be a nice addition. Thirdly, the cast speed. Oh God, the cast speed. From my experience with leveling, you need to think about what you're trying to hit with Essence Drain before you cast it. It's entirely possible that the target will die from ED before you can cast Contagion. As I said earlier, my build is a Summoner/Chaos hybrid so I was already stretched for points. Investing in Cast Speed was not feasible for me. For a pure Chaos build, I'm sure they could, however, that's just making up for lackluster attributes of a spell. With the slow projectile speed combined with high cast time, I found it mandatory to cast Contagion first and just spam ED into the group or slap LMP on it for clearing and take it off for bosses. I feel this could use a slight improvement. Overall, I feel this spell isn't optimal for a hybrid build. Which is alright and understandable. For a pure Chaos build, I'm a bit on the fence. Just from leveling a hybrid, I have no real desire or intention to try a pure Chaos build. That said, I'm curious to see how the damage would be on higher tier map bosses as I was having a hard time taking down Magic/Rare packs with these skills. If you're reading this, I'm probably on another year-long ban.
Thanks GGG. | |
" youre telling me you cant notice that your poison dot is way too big? way more than 10-20% of the initial hit? (or whatever your amount of dot increases are) https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/3xalys/109_gb_patch/cy30i30 Last edited by Giniyo on Dec 20, 2015, 2:26:00 PM
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" There are times when it's more efficient (middle size groups) and times where it isn't (very large and dense groups and single target). The combo is also more efficient solo due to lower health totals whereas the poison scaling is handy for higher health enemies. It depends on what you want out of it. | |
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Make this skill always pierce.
While solo, it is ok and i dont think, pierce would change anything there. It is bad for group play. One of my buddies plays a tornado shot ranger and 1 problem, i encounter very often, while playing with him, is that my skill hits the very 1st mob of the pack. In meantime, he shoots in the pack. The 1st mob dies with my essence drain and contagion on him, spreading it to the front rows. In that time middle of the pack is dead, preventing further spread and making me bad contributor to the overall dmg and clear speed. I have all witch and templar AoE nodes and my contagion is supported by increased AoE. I think, increased base AoE of contagion could be to strong, as a fix. Also i could use pierce and get pierce nodes, to have 100%. But doing so, i would loose to much dmg, making me even worse for group play. | |
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I have a question:
I tried essence drain with item rarity. First question: The item rarity gem counts just as last "hit" ( i mean the last cast with direct dmg) or does it count if the mob is dieing from degen, like poison arrow does?! Second Question: If i spread essence drain with contagion and essence drain is linked with item rarity, does it spread the item rarity to all mobs too? |
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I read 8 pages...
I never see anyone using Spell Echo with this. ED-Echo-GMP not viable? Can we use ED as spam skill, like any other skill? Also, can we use Poison with ED? Is the only way to use ED is with Contagion?? I am thinking of many ways to play DoT build, but lacking Spam Skill DoT. Puncture's Bleed don't stack, which is useless as spam skill. Viper also 'losing it's flavor' with Poison gem. I hope ED can be used as spam skill on its own... | |
" Actualy this is exactly what i am looking to do with a PoH and yes poison works very well with ED Last edited by Melpheos on Dec 21, 2015, 11:59:53 AM
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