Essence Drain and Crit?

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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

Essence Drain can't be supported by trap.

Possibly the optimal DPS-based 6L for Essence Drain?

Essence Drain...........................(B)
Void Manipulation.................(G)
Rapid Decay................................(G)
Controlled Destruction......(B)
Faster Projectiles...................(G)
Empower.....................................(R)

In a 4L with the top 4 skills:

All chaos dmg nodes in the tree except the Method to the Madness wheel below Shadow
All of the Spell damage nodes in Templar Witch areas
Most of the Spell damage notables in Templar Witch Shadow areas
ALL of the damage over time nodes
Middlish (74%) spell damage wand with crafted DOT
Decent spell damage shield (50%)
Nothing yet at all on amulet

--Essence drain is currently at L18 13405 chaos damage per second. Dry Lake Voll drops in 3 casts.

Much happier with this build at L77. 3300life, 3700ES (still TONS of room to improve on this too). Currently working on defensives as there isn't really any damage options in the near vicinity. Will consider unspeccing in mid 80's if I can go CI, and use the left overs to dip into the ranger projectile area(s).

If you can get up close and have good mobility slower projectiles instead of faster for an extra 'more' modifier.

I'm building a bit defensively (playing on HC), planning on building on block and running two defensive auras (grace and discipline) + tempest shield if possible so picked aura reservation nodes, and also using hybrid life/es, so I don't have all the spell damage nodes (but have the chaos wheel near ranger), but at lvl 60 and with crappy gear the DoT is 4k (in a 4L), I expect the dmg to be good enough.

Probably end-game weapon of choice would be Bino's to abuse poison stacking (excellent for bosses/unique monsters and tough rares). With a wither totem up damage should be crazy high while keeping excellent mobility during long fights. Even dropping empower for poison may prove worth it (and I hate empower grindfest).

All in all should be a solid build, the good thing is that it leaves you with plenty of nodes to pick up defence and it plays like curser/totem build so is very save (can focus on monsters and don't have to stay statically). Need more dmg? Just put up your wither totem and let him build up 19 stacks and see the boss life go down.

Will see how this plays in higher maps but should be fine except the odd chaos resistant mobs.

bro ..put poison support gem on Essence drain ..trust me its sick :) Contagion doesnt spread the poison but its mostly for single target*and its kinda stacks i think ..ive seen mobs life go down faster when i cast Essense drain more than twice) ..you can aslo try out abyssal cry+poison support gem ..that also works ..you use abyssal kill 1 enemy and it works just like Contagion in a way.Just my 2 cents :D

Nevermind. -edit