[3.4] The Mistress of Agony - Lowlife BlightDrain Ascendant / Occultist - ALL content viable!

I found your build(s) at the end of Beyond league and wanted to try them out in the Legacy league (SSF). I'm rather... noobish... in some aspects of play, but still understand the general aspects of how things should work. I wanted to play your low life build from the start. Lightning Tendrils was very nice to me leveling/starting off, but I'm now at the end of A4 Normal (Level 43 atm) and while my gear/gems might be lacking a little, I feel it's a little too cat & mouse for my liking, especially on bosses. (Cast ED (no channel gem) run and wither when I can, recast ED, etc...)

So, while I've basically filled out the south path and followed the east/north path from Scion I'm at a barrier of not enough Dex to level gems, Str would be nice for some Armor/ES gear, and all-around just "squishy". Since there was only a Life-based leveling path in the guide (and sorry, didn't read all 16 pages) should this be expected? 945 Life/381 ES 75/43/75/8 Resistances (F/C/L/Ch). Am I really waiting until later on when I have my 6L and 4L's complete to be clearing comfortably?

In the life build version why do you recommend going for the Ranger start area from uber lab rather than Witch? You only save 5 points but spend a lot more traveling all the way through the Templar area for rather unimpressive gains. There are much better nodes either around the Witch or Ranger areas that would serve you much better than those Templar nodes with all the traveling nodes in between Imho.

Currently lvl 85 in LSC. Leveled as life based with Bladefall totems, first time I have tried that.

I transitioned to CI and ED at the same time (late 70s, maybe 80). I felt it wasn't working really great until I got the hang of the build. Pretty nice clear and boss damage. Working my way to Shavs for lowlife atm.

Hi there

tried your build, at the moment i'm running your low-life tree with some life nodes.

I'm planning to switch CI, before being able to afford a shav for lowlife build.

My biggest concern is with CWC setup, I'm not really liking it compared to standard ED, I just got my first 5l, tested both setups and manually casted ED seems to be way smoother and performing better dps-wise

Would your build be suitable to be run without CWC in its lowlife itineration ? just manual ED

From my experience CWC version is better for bosses/rares. Although, I haven't played an endgame ED before since the last time I played was HC (RIP).


I'm currently up to T9s comfortably with CI and CWC setup.

I'll answer all questions tomorrow when I get some time. Stay tuned!

"

Silgnon wrote:

I found your build(s) at the end of Beyond league and wanted to try them out in the Legacy league (SSF). I'm rather... noobish... in some aspects of play, but still understand the general aspects of how things should work. I wanted to play your low life build from the start. Lightning Tendrils was very nice to me leveling/starting off, but I'm now at the end of A4 Normal (Level 43 atm) and while my gear/gems might be lacking a little, I feel it's a little too cat & mouse for my liking, especially on bosses. (Cast ED (no channel gem) run and wither when I can, recast ED, etc...)

So, while I've basically filled out the south path and followed the east/north path from Scion I'm at a barrier of not enough Dex to level gems, Str would be nice for some Armor/ES gear, and all-around just "squishy". Since there was only a Life-based leveling path in the guide (and sorry, didn't read all 16 pages) should this be expected? 945 Life/381 ES 75/43/75/8 Resistances (F/C/L/Ch). Am I really waiting until later on when I have my 6L and 4L's complete to be clearing comfortably?

It's very difficult to setup a lowlife character in a SSF scenario. You will require Shavronne's wrappings, which is quite rare, and that is a roadblock which makes the build impossible to optimize.

While leveling, since all the passives are not in place, you'll need some items with +stats to wear all gear pieces / keep gems at max levels.

945 life is pretty bad at level 43. Considering that you can go up to 6k at lvl 90 with the right gear, 945 at 43 seems a bit low, 1300+ should be your goal. Resistances are good btw.

As to damage, keep in mind that Essence Drain scales a lot with the gem level, so you will see your DPS grow up significantly as you level up. This is why having a lvl 21/20 Essence Drain gem is really advised if you want to tackle the endgame; its dps gain is pretty noticeable when compared to a 20/20 one.

For bosses, consider a fact: Essence Drain's single target is pretty lackluster without poison or decay (that is why I use both in my lowlife setup). It really shines when you get a Consuming dark / a Cospri's will or you use a poison support gem in the meanwhile, because of double dipping mechanics.

"

OwlRaider wrote:

In the life build version why do you recommend going for the Ranger start area from uber lab rather than Witch? You only save 5 points but spend a lot more traveling all the way through the Templar area for rather unimpressive gains. There are much better nodes either around the Witch or Ranger areas that would serve you much better than those Templar nodes with all the traveling nodes in between Imho.

The corruption and whispers of doom clusters are pretty required for an ED build. So I tried to go for all the possible alternate starts to see which one gave me the most benefits, and I found the ranger one the best, because starting from the witch one didn't save much traveling to get to Whispers of Doom and Corruption. The templar zone nodes are pretty good; you get some area of effect and a lot of life (30 flat + 20% from D&T zone, 14% from quick recovery cluster) while also getting life / mana regen (which is very required in a classic ED setup) and some cast speed plus AoE efficacy / QoL stats (bonus armour, strength and attack speed). On the other hand, the witch area offers some more spell damage but to reach both whispers of doom and the shadow area you'll require even more traveling. The solutions are very close in effectiveness btw, if you prefer one over another it shouldn't be that much of a difference.

"

Lÿn wrote:

My biggest concern is with CWC setup, I'm not really liking it compared to standard ED, I just got my first 5l, tested both setups and manually casted ED seems to be way smoother and performing better dps-wise

Would your build be suitable to be run without CWC in its lowlife itineration ? just manual ED

"

EmptyPalms wrote:

From my experience CWC version is better for bosses/rares. Although, I haven't played an endgame ED before since the last time I played was HC (RIP).


I'm currently up to T9s comfortably with CI and CWC setup.

Exactly. Endgame fights like Uber Atziri / Trio / Shaper are what makes the CWC iteration fantastic. Usually the classic ED version requires Abyssal cry to have an easier time, for example, in the Shaper's add phase (mana is a REAL pain in the ass right there). The CWC version does it by simply spamming wither on them and aiming ED in a correct way, with absolutely no mana issues.

And the CWC version, like I wrote in the guide, was specifically designed for low life; we sacrifice TWO support gems from the classic ED setup, so we lose Empower plus Rapid Decay, which is about 32% MORE damage plus 40% MORE damage over time (at the cost of some skill duration). We compensate the loss of Empower with Pain Attunement (which is 30% MORE spell damage, which double dips with ED's poison), we get 9-10% MORE damage from the CWC support, and we replace Pierce (since we don't need the Pierce feature anymore when using the Shaper boots) for Slower Projectiles, gaining another 10% MORE multiplier. We sacrifice Rapid Decay because we don't want Wither to have reduced duration; we want it to have the potential to reach max stacks in optimal combat situations.

Also we don't really look at the tooltip, because in the current state of PoE it means absolutely nothing. There are ED builds which reach 90k ED tooltip and are immensely slower in the majority of boss fights when compared to this one because they cannot compete with the Wither mechanics coupled with double dipping. The clearspeed difference isn't noticeable in 99% of cases because when you are able to single-bullet oneshot packs with ONE cast, it doesn't matter if the tooltip is 100k or 35k. In that scenario, which is super frequent when your gear gets nearer and nearer to perfection, what makes the difference is movement speed / attack speed from whirling blades, and we have plenty of MS from boots / belt craft / tree / haste aura (boosted by a crazy ton of aura efficiency nodes we take in this build) / quicksilver flask (boosted from the Alchemist cluster) and some nice extra AS from tree and because we don't use a shield, but go dual wielding while still mantaining 21% chance to block.

BTW, I arranged a passive tree for the ones who want to play a NON-CWC iteration of ED, i.e. with the classic manual ED casting, but this one is for low life, and not life based anymore.

Classic lowlife ED Scion passive tree (updated for 2.6)

Enjoy :)

Yesterday specced to low life. All my currency for shavs :( So other equipment is kind of shit. I have a bit under 7 k es and about 400 life when haste on. So a lil bit squishy still but able to run T9 maps. Im so impressed about boss killing with CWC setup compared to classic ED/Contagtion which I played with life version. Never played low life before so whats good stack of life to have?

What should I focus next? Why did u pick up so many aura buff nodes from tree? There is only haste aura we use. Is it better to pick up example curse effect nodes? Like those next to CI node?

Also how important is those duration nodes under Scion starting area?

My items atm:

"

Yesterday specced to low life. All my currency for shavs :( So other equipment is kind of shit. I have a bit under 7 k es and about 400 life when haste on. So a lil bit squishy still but able to run T9 maps. Im so impressed about boss killing with CWC setup compared to classic ED/Contagtion which I played with life version. Never played low life before so whats good stack of life to have?

What should I focus next? Why did u pick up so many aura buff nodes from tree? There is only haste aura we use. Is it better to pick up example curse effect nodes? Like those next to CI node?

Also how important is those duration nodes under Scion starting area?

My items atm:

I took the aura nodes because they are simply a lot of quality of life:

- More mana regen with Clarity
- More ES with Discipline
- More movement speed / cast speed / attack speed with Haste
- More area of effect of aura skills (this includes Blasphemy curse auras)
- Less life / mana to reserve so we can keep Clarity level high while still having a comfortable mana pool to spam Wither

The duration nodes are super important and required to cap Wither stacks in optimal conditions, and for general mapping purposes. We are aiming at a 0-17-0.18 cast time with Wither in endgame gear, and having more duration impacts the clearspeed (and boss killing) because we can kill almost any mob pack of the game with a single ED bullet after contagioning the area, and because we can have more poison plus wither stacks on a boss.

For lowlife, the first upgrades you should focus on are Voidwalker and Presence of Chayula. The first gives free pierce and fantastic extra defenses, the second gives a ton of ES and 60% chaos resistance, i.e. a lot of extra survivability.

After that, aim at gear similar to mine. Jewelry with ES + Life + resists, 400+ ES hubris with the Essence Drain damage enchantment, a good Crystal belt. Don't forget to craft / buy a decay Sai when you feel you need some more single target damage / clearspeed.