[2.4]Pathfinder Essence drain



This is the character (Character name: JackalopeEssence) I decided to go with for the Essence league, IMO pathfinder is the best choice for essence drain during the essence league for a few different reasons, but they can be summed up with higher damage, higher survivability, higher movespeed and higher clearspeed. Pretty good reasons IMO

Argument for Pathfinder

The first reason is the decay effect you can get on weapons, this effect is so strong that you basically must use it on an ED build, if you are not using it then you are being ineffective. This has some interesting side effects, primarily that it limits your access to poison which is another very strong mechanic for Essence Drain. So your options for getting poison is now running 2 daggers 1 with decay and 1 consuming dark, or spending a link loosing 40% more multiplier, or using Cospri's Will or playing as a pathfinder and getting poison when you have a flask active (which is always). Using 2 daggers is not ideal because you miss out on a shield which is extremely strong, spending a link is not ideal because of the massive damage loss, using Cospri's Will either limits you to health/hybrid or CI with no chest.

The second reason is the absurd flasks that exist for ED this league, I am currently using
these flasks, Sorrow of the Divine is an excellent choice for ED as you save a ton of skillpoints from not having to take Zealots Oath, Witchfire Brew is just a massive boost to damage and saves you having to blasphemy 2 curses, Dying Sun gives 45% increased Aoe and 3 additional projectiles which is important for clearspeed as they apply decay) and the rare flasks are self explanatory, couple this with that flasks grant you immunity to all status ailments.

The third reason is that with the flask effect and quicksilver you are moving fast enough to run faster than whirling blading, allowing you to use a wand instead of a dagger, these have higher spell damage and let you frenzy from range to build up frenzy charges on bosses

The forth reason is that you are tankier than the other choices, with the flask effect and flask uptime on basalt you constantly have a 30% physical damage reduction up and natures boon gives 8% reduced elemental damage taken which is equivalent to 2% max res


My Stats

Videos:
Abyss Map
More Coming soon

The Passive tree

bandits
Kill/Kill/Kill (or frenzy charge)

The Gear


Gear choices
Most of the gear is regular ES gear, however there are a few choices that are not completely standard, first off insanity essence on gloves is a massive QoL for essence drain as it drops the cast time of contagion, and makes the entire experience much smoother, the second choice is a wand, this is because I am a pathfinder and I move faster than I whirling blades so the wand allows me to have higher spell damage and use frenzy on bosses for a 12% boost in dps, the third choice is how I have decided to deal with stun, the Leo enchant on helmet+heart of oak notable and having ES adds up to 85% chance to avoid stun (50% from having ES is not additive), this choice is not one for everybody but it is the way I prefer to play it, to be a bit safer you can give up the QoL of the gloves for gloves crafted with essence of scorn to reach the 100% chance to avoid stun which is still stronger than using an eye of chayula, energy from within next to melding, for rare jewels you want energy shield and any of the following: chaos damage, projectile damage, spell damage while holding a shield, damage over time, damage, spell damage

Links
Chest: Essence Drain - Pierce - Void Manipulation - Controlled Destruction - Rapid Decay - Empower/Slower Projectiles

Helmet: Wither - Spell Totem - Faster Casting Clarity (unlinked)

Gloves: Contagion - Faster Casting - Increased Area of Effect - Increased Duration

Boots: Enlighten - Discipline - Blasphemy - Temporal Chains

Weapon: Frenzy - Summon Flame Golem - Vaal Discipline

Shield: Lightning Warp - Less Duration - Faster Casting


Leveling
I personally decided to level using bows because of the wealth of choice in good leveling unqiue bows and I was leveling life based and mostly took projectile damage nodes early. It is really players choice here though, I am not a big fan of ED early on until you get the needed cast speed on contagion to make it smooth and there are really no good early uniques that help boost your damage outside of hidden potential. I started off with a tree roughly like this and used stormcloud into deaths harp into deaths opus to get me to level 70ish where I finally swapped over to ED


So far I have killed shaper and uber atziri and every guardian, Chimera was the hardest as the damage was persistent and much harder to kite/dodge than the other bosses, and I have completed hall of grandmasters with a chin sol puncture trap swap for the CI characters
Last edited by Jackalooop on Nov 1, 2016, 9:42:27 AM
Last bumped on Nov 30, 2016, 3:44:24 PM
I agree with your pathfinder arguement. I went the cospri's will route and being limited to life kinda sucks. I may have to try a pathfinder next league, depending on what happens with all this essence stuff.

Either that or try hybrid.
"Success is not the absence of failure. Success is persistence through failure."
Currently Playing: Contagion/Essence Drain IGN: JddoggAscended

updated with the jewels I use after a few requests, if you find anything unclear feel free to ask

as soon as I find an ignorance I'll post an uber run and I'll get some footage of the guardians and perhaps some shaper
Would using Eye of Chayula and Void Walker be too much for capping resistance?

Take full stun, pierce with Void Walker, and spend 12 points in more ES and dmg (travel to Occultist's Dominion? Grab more jewels? idk)

I guess capping res would be a problem then. What are your thoughts?
void walkers are really really bad for ED, you are using worse boots in order to drop a more multi gem from your link setup

I would rather keep the helmet mod and then use an essence to craft stun immunity on gloves rather than use eye of chayula (you give up 6 stats from amulet for 1 stat on helm 1 stat on gloves, pretty easy math)

my thoughts are that both void walkers and chayula are bad items if you are trying to optimize your setup, chayula has a place when you are starting out and are doing low budget, void walkers are never the right choice
Enjoying this build at the moment at lvl 88 in EHC, crafted some nice Essence gear for it as well which I'm pretty stoked on.



Last edited by dandan88 on Nov 14, 2016, 1:09:52 PM
damn that wand :D

I also crafted most of the gear myself, been really enjoying essence because of the crafting options
Thinking about this for upcoming breach as first toon. Seems like it could be strong enough early on, and would scale considerably. Do you think this to be a good option? And how do you think it'll fare with the chaos damage on weapon nerf? (750 instead of 1000)

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