Essence Drain and Crit?

Can someone explain to me the mechanics with spell crit and Essence Drain?

Tool tip DPS goes up with spell crit. The chaos damage per second, does not.

Does spell crit only apply to the initial hit? And then a set amount of chaos per second?

If this is the case, why does the spell have a base 5% crit chance?

The amount of damage that spreads via contagion doesn't seem any different with, and without spell crit... But I would like to hear anyone elses ideas on why this spell is seemingly VERY lack lustre at L72 with every single DoT node in the tree, dot on a high spell dmg wand, almost all of the chaos nodes, almost all of the big spell dmg nodes in the witch and templar trees, and ALL of the spell crit nodes...

I want confirmation too as I plan to scale this with crit, but AFAIK (could be wrong, has been a while, maybe confusing with other game) DoT effects scale with crit, is just split on the ticks (is not evaluated per hit like on attacks or spells?).

In any case the initial spell hit should be affected by spell crit, but I believe the DoT does too, otherwise it sucks.

On your last paragraph... well I'm just about lvl 60 and with crap gear, but white trash dies quite fast (combined with contagion), but to boost damage I guess you are supposed to use Wither (suggestion, use it with increased duration + spell totem) to boost the damage on hard mobs or bosses. What support gems are you using with it?

P.S: For others trying this, IMO is used mostly like a single target skill, which can be sometimes lacklustre due to the cast animations involved and projectile speed (they could improve that), but you can mix it up with LMP and/or pierce (or pierce from skill tree) to make your life easier too.

Ok fail then... good thing I just hadn't specced into crit yet, will have to replan... Looks like we are stuck with lacklustre dmd though.

Then blasphemy + vulnerability will boost dmg a bit at least and usign some skill points into mana reservation reduction.

Its only in a 4L atm. Rapid Decay. Void Manipulation. Added Chaos Dmg.

It was good until Act 4 Merciless. It takes like 1min? Kiting. dodging Voll in dry lake.

I use Wither. And 2 curses on Ball Lightning (vuln + chains).

Well Essence Drain is basically one of the easiest to skills to get multipliers:

Trap, Trap Damage, Slower Projectiles, Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay, Controlled Destruction

Of course you can't put all of them on it. I would avoid using Rapid Decay, since having a good duration means more spreading with one use of essence drain. With Increased Duration you can clear large areas with one cast of essence drain and constant contagion casts.

Also added Chaos Damage is a very suboptimal skill. In theory Essence Drain also has some impact damage that actually hits the target. But unless having quality on Added Chaos it does not affect the DoT.

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knac84 wrote:

Ok fail then... good thing I just hadn't specced into crit yet, will have to replan... Looks like we are stuck with lacklustre dmd though.

Then blasphemy + vulnerability will boost dmg a bit at least and usign some skill points into mana reservation reduction.

You have to spend ALOT of points to get a small radius. Honestly I can only see Blashemy being useful on melee. I had to spec out of witch/templar nodes, plus the curse nodes near CI, plus the aura radius node near Scion, because of damage, and because with like 20 points invested.. it was barely reaching half way across the screen.

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Emphasy wrote:

Well Essence Drain is basically one of the easiest to skills to get multipliers:

Trap, Trap Damage, Slower Projectiles, Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay, Controlled Destruction

Of course you can't put all of them on it. I would avoid using Rapid Decay, since having a good duration means more spreading with one use of essence drain. With Increased Duration you can clear large areas with one cast of essence drain and constant contagion casts.

Also added Chaos Damage is a very suboptimal skill. In theory Essence Drain also has some impact damage that actually hits the target. But unless having quality on Added Chaos it does not affect the DoT.

Thanks, took added chaos out. It wasn't adding to the degen damage.

Also, why Slower Projectiles?

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Also, why Slower Projectiles?

Because Essence Drain is a projectile. Yes it is already a very slow projectile and making it slower isn't the best thing, but if paired with Trap and Trap-Damage it doesn't really matter, since the projectile is created directly at the mob triggering the trap.

The skill doesn't work with traps does it?