[3.0] Life/MoM ED Trickster +500K DPS

As I've seen some interest in a Reddit thread about an ED Trickster build I've theorycrafted, I decided to share it here as well, so hopefully I can get some tips about improving it.

I've made the tree for a level 95 Trickster and some items I've got in Standard, and that's why you'll see some weird items there. To make things easy, you can check the build before reading the rest of the post, this is my Path of Building link:
https://pastebin.com/cPqGZkvS

You can download Path of Building for free (author deserves a lot of credit!) and import that link creating a new build, import/export build button at the upper left side, import from pastebin button at the lower right side.

Alternatively this is the level 95 tree: http://poeurl.com/bnR0

My stats are 547k dps with Essence Drain at full buffs (this is 10 power charges, 5 frenzy charges, Arcane Surge, 20 stacks of Wither and a Flame Golem, as well as The Witchfire flask), almost 5.4k life and 1174 unreserved mana, with a quite nice 350 mana/s regen. With the aid of the unique amulet we can get an extra 10% for Mind over Matter, so you get up to 40% of damage taken from mana before life. You also can add the 8% reduced Damage Taken for 4 seconds after spending 200 mana from the Weave the Arcane ascendancy. That should make this build tanky enough even with just 5.4k life.


Some info about my choices:

With the new rework of Swift Killer ascendancy, you can easily get charges and improve your dps with them, specially with Power Charges. I'm using a 25% Hidden Potential to maximize my damage. This has some pros and cons. You can craft by yourself some of the required items with just alterations, so no need for expensive items crafted with Essence of Envy. The problem of this is that capping resistances is harder. I've chosen Alira as the bandit because of the extra resistances as well as the nice mana regen for our MoM setup.

As power charges improve your damage a lot, 2 Void Battery wands are required. The Aylardex amulet is also BiS because it provides us an extra Power Charge, some life, mana, mana regen and up to 10% extra MoM with 10 power charges.

The Cospri's Will body armour should also be the best in slot because it provides us an extra curse, the ability to curse Hexproof enemies and the extra damage from poison to cursed enemies on hit. This chest has a little problem: It requires a lot of Dexterity, and that's the reason why I'm using a Devoto's Devotion. I also happened to have one Devoto's with Vulnerability curse effect enchant, though a 40% Essence Drain damage enchant should be useful as well. The movement speed and chaos resistance from this helmet is also very helpful. An alternative can be a Starkonja's Head helmet, which also provides us around 50 Dex and has a very decent pool of life. You can also craft an Evasion magic helmet with up to 99 life and 55 Dexterity. Alternatives for the chest might be a Cherrubim's Maleficence or you can simply get more life with a Belly of the Beast. In that case you will have to get a corrupted The Aylardex with +1 curse, or remove one of the curses of your Blasphemy setup. You can get a big improvement in damage if you use a +1 to level of gems chest, like a Skin of the Loyal or a corrupted chest.

Essence Drain gives the most damage when you level up, so a 21/20 ED gem as well as an Empower 4 gem is quite nice. Controlled Destruction, Efficacy, Void Manipulation and Swift Demise looks like are the best damage options. As in any other Essence Drain build, Contagion is required for mapping. I link it to Arcane Surge because it will activate the buff after 3 Contagion casts, what's very common to do while mapping. Wither is also required as in any Damage over time build for boss killing.

If you checked the Path of Building build, you may notice there are some things that can be improved. The jewels in example can be a lot better and provide a big damage boost. You can also add a Vaal Lightning Trap gem to shock bosses. In this setup, with a +1 to gems chest and shocking bosses I get around 700k DPS.

I already did not test this build so I can't tell how good it will perform, though I have to share some cons:
First of all: There are some expensive items there which do not recommend this build as a league starter. With the buff to Power Charges, Void Batteries will get quite expensive (they already are!) early league. You may expect some flippers and guilds to buy them and resell them way more expensive. In the meantime you may be using 2 nice spell wands or 2 Storm Prison wands for the extra power charges. I also recommend chancing every white Prophecy wand base you may find. Another option might be a Decay dagger and high spell damage shield. Some things like the 21/20 ED gem and the Empower 4 gem can also be expensive. You should be leveling 6 Essence Drain gems in your alternate weapon slots, and after that some Empower gems as well.
Second: You are using 2 wands, so the movement skills are very limited. No things like Whirling Blades or Shield charge will make things harder while fighting bosses.



Last thing I want to mention is about generating charges. Though Swift Killer should be enough to generate charges while mapping, to fight bosses there's no easy way to generate them, specially for bosses. In this last case you can not generate Frenzy charges, but you can generate Power charges by equipping a Jaws of Agony shield with a Fire Trap jewel, and throw some traps to generate these charges.



Edit for a quick screenshot from Harbinger league:




This screenshot was made on a level 20/20 Essence Drain gem, as well as a level 2 Empower. So I'm already missing 3 levels. This is my mapping setup with a Blasphemy + Temporal Chains curse, so I'm not using Vulnerability nor Witchfire flask. I'm also doing a little changes from the build, as I'm not using Hidden Potential, but I'm using Inya's Epiphany Arcanist Slippers for quicker full power charges. Another key change is that I'm using a Skin of the Loyal chest, as it was way less expensive than a 6L Cospri's early league. The ideal setup would be to add rings crafted with Essence of Envy and a rare helmet with ED enchant.

I'm also planning to test adding the new Allelopathy gloves with a Blight setup on them for single target (it should stack with Essence Drain), and removing the Blasphemy setup to add a Clear Mind jewel.

So far in league I'm finding I'm tanky enough for mapping at any level, and I'm doing a similar damage as other players while in party. The cons are some bosses, the increase in their life hits hard this skill, but the real problem is the lack of movement skill while using dual wands.

I'll welcome any tips to improve this build!

A little bit of a glass cannon action here.

Surprisingly lot of dmg considering the tree itself does not have that much of a dmg on it. The change to Power Charges is kinda stupid :(

Socket #4 is nice subject for Intuitive Leap to improve the change for charge per kill, some mana and the life/ES split node. Not sure what to drop tho. But maybe couple of points to get for 96-98 :)

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Marxone wrote:

A little bit of a glass cannon action here.

Surprisingly lot of dmg considering the tree itself does not have that much of a dmg on it. The change to Power Charges is kinda stupid :(

Socket #4 is nice subject for Intuitive Leap to improve the change for charge per kill, some mana and the life/ES split node. Not sure what to drop tho. But maybe couple of points to get for 96-98 :)

I never tried MoM, so not sure how glass cannon a 40% MoM build will be. :)
I guess it will compare to a 7k life build.

I guess you can remove Deep Thoughts, Soul Syphon and 3*10% spell damage nodes, but imho a just 12% extra chance to get a charge on kill is not that much for the investment. You'll be killing enough tons of mobs while mapping.

Yep, the power charges are retarded now, more even with Void Battery. That's why I theorycrafted with them.

I am not too familiar with MoM but i think 1000 mana is not enough for a 5k life pool.

Yeah, 1000 mana is not near enough. You want about 43% of your life as mana, so you would need a bit over 2000 mana to make MoM as effective as possible.

"

LightDevil wrote:

I am not too familiar with MoM but i think 1000 mana is not enough for a 5k life pool.

Me neither, but the char will survive a hit of max 1174 mana + 5394 life, that's 6523 life. I don't think a build with 6.5k life is so glass cannon.

But I also don't know how 547k ED dps compare to similar ED builds, so I guess I'll find out when I test it.

"

emperorboonday wrote:

Yeah, 1000 mana is not near enough. You want about 43% of your life as mana, so you would need a bit over 2000 mana to make MoM as effective as possible.

Removing 1 Blasphemy curse gives you 2218 unreserved mana. I guess you can link temp chains to a cwdt setup.

There are some highlights here:


1. There is no need for vuln on blasphemy if you are going to use Witchfire Brew.

2. The 547k DPS is while mapping, with full charges and arcane surge active. On endgame bosses your real damage would be a lot lower (126k on Shaper / guardians, 154k on Uber Atziri / other bosses with arcane surge on) because of their innate curse effectiveness reduction, resistances and poison duration cutting... and because you would have zero charges. Dual Void Battery based builds need a solid way to generate power charges at bosses, or they are pretty screwed.

3. With that gear / passives setup you will never hit 20 wither stacks at bosses (15 max at Shaper, 17 at other boss fights) so the real damage would be even lower than expected.

4. The changes to the charges have been reverted so the output would be lower even on mapping (you will have the 4% more damage for every frenzy charge, but you won't have the 4% more spell damage for every power charge anymore, this is a neat 20% loss in a build with 5 frenzy and 10 power charges).

5. Vulnerability is extremely weak on Essence drain builds when bossing, because its damage modifier is added to the wither one, not multiplied... and because of bosses' curse effectiveness reduction like I said in point 2. Enfeeble is a far superior choice if you want a second curse on Blasphemy.


Cheers!

"

djnat wrote:

There are some highlights here:


1. There is no need for vuln on blasphemy if you are going to use Witchfire Brew.

2. The 547k DPS is while mapping, with full charges and arcane surge active. On endgame bosses your real damage would be a lot lower (126k on Shaper / guardians, 154k on Uber Atziri / other bosses with arcane surge on) because of their innate curse effectiveness reduction, resistances and poison duration cutting... and because you would have zero charges. Dual Void Battery based builds need a solid way to generate power charges at bosses, or they are pretty screwed.

3. With that gear / passives setup you will never hit 20 wither stacks at bosses (15 max at Shaper, 17 at other boss fights) so the real damage would be even lower than expected.

4. The changes to the charges have been reverted so the output would be lower even on mapping (you will have the 4% more damage for every frenzy charge, but you won't have the 4% more spell damage for every power charge anymore, this is a neat 20% loss in a build with 5 frenzy and 10 power charges).

5. Vulnerability is extremely weak on Essence drain builds when bossing, because its damage modifier is added to the wither one, not multiplied... and because of bosses' curse effectiveness reduction like I said in point 2. Enfeeble is a far superior choice if you want a second curse on Blasphemy.


Cheers!

Yes, the new changes to the changes of the charges nerfs this build a little bit, though is already viable.

Regarding to what you say about bosses, you are right. But we've already watched people doing Shaper with way less ED damage. On PoB calculations, removing Frenzy charges and choosing the Shaper as the boss, it deals 336k dps. I do not remove Power Charges from the calculations because as I've stated before, you can generate power charges with the shield Jaws of Agony, before getting into boss room.

BTW those 336k where done without taking into account the last change, but you can expect to do around 300k agains Shaper now. Even if you just stack 10 wither charges, agains Shaper you deal around 240k ED dps. Removing the flask, 230k dps. Removing Vulnerability it deals 220k dps, though I don't think why would you do it as the new Blasphemy aura is really large, and the Witchfire flask won't last forever. IMHO it's already pretty decent for Essence Drain. Anyway we have to wait until the release of patch notes and the subsequent change in PoB for more accurate calculations.

Void Batteries will still be very demanded for Trickster builds.

What do you get from void batterys with the change reversal? Isn't it only 5% increased DoT and 4% increased spellpower per charge? I wouldn't think that this is valuable enough to go for a lot of power charges or am I missing sth?