A general guide on chaos spells
|
Still-to-Do-List
This is a work in progress, I constantly add more then planned and now i need to go farm some Nexus. Any input is appreciated. My to do list of things I still want to add:
3.2 Active Gems Cheatsheet and how they compare: THE ULTIMATE OVERVIEW Detailed info on skill tree and ascendancies. Infos about non-weapon gear (weaponchoices are in here and mostly done). Infos about relevant uniques Spell Totem Support as an option for Active Spells is not in here yet. 5.c) link my old glove setup again
Changelog/what's-new-since-the-last-time-you-checked
10.04. Reached length cap for threads and decided to go 2.0. Check out new intro-text. 07.04. Added section 3.2 Can my Skill leech Life/Energy Shield/Mana and how much? 07.04. Proof read the guide, occasionally applied smoother wording+layout and removed redundancies that sneaked in over time. 06.04. Added Bane and Blight, elaborated on Contagion in 3.1. Section almost finished, only Vaal Blight missing. Adding clickbait for section 3.2 06.04. Added an example built (Section 7.) Fixed a lot of typos and minor layout-flaws. 06.04. Reworked Introduction and other minor stuff. 05.04. Added Essence Drain to Section 3. Active Skill Gems. Reworked and added a lot to Contagion and Soulrend, worth a reread (especially the part on Juns "trigger-socketed-spells"). Took longer than expected, thus still no section on Blight here and only the deepdive-section on Bane, not a short one. This really should've been there on release of the guide. Then again adding stuff weeks after release that were necessary on day 1 is probably the most PoE thing I ever did ;) 02.04. Updated Bane-section and added come general curse-information 02.04. Added huge and ingenious part to the Section 6. Wither and Hinder 01.04. [I updated a lot of stuff on April 1st. Since those are true information it was a stupid move. There are no April Fool's in here since I have no detectable sense of humour. If you don't believe me, come back on another day.] Updated what's not in this guide. Created dedicated Wither-Section since that exploded a bit. Added final thoughts and some placeholder-stuff Read comment input and updated list of stuff I still want to add. No april fools stuff (sry, lazy) 30.03. Added Bane-section and worked on section 4 Support Gems, especially how to wither. Attention: I reached cap of letters per threat and watched Chris Wilsons amazing talk on how to keep PoE replayable forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_5S55jUzk (I don't own this video and hope it's upload is legit). In his video he mentioned that constant weekly updates have no impact on player number's. I am transferring this info to my guide and decided to release a big 2.0-update to regain reader-interest :) This threat will not be continued, check out my "An extensive guide on chaos spells (general guide 2.0)" https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2485596/page/1#p21886656 I did my own Bane-Occultist this league, played way too much and tried out quite a lot of stuff. But most importantly I made several mistakes along the way, which you don't need to repeat and I spent a while comparing numbers which you might want to skip, too. So here is my knowledge condensed into this guide. It will be by no means complete, since I don't play many different builts but rather a chosen few for a long time. So I am no total expert but I sank my share of hours into PoE, the Wiki and Path of Building and I'm happy to add any input from the comments to the guide. This guide is beginner-friendly, I explain the main Chaos-Damage-over-time mechanics (Chaos DoTs) before diving deeper. It is also a good point of reference if you reconsider things in your built with all the information in one place (at some future time) rather than spread on various Wikipages and Buildguides and whatnot. I try to keep the tone light and link items for visuals whenever possible. Nevertheless you will occasionally run into a wall of text. Btw I think I really discovered something new and unique in Section 6 on how to apply withered. I really went bonkers there with an in-Depth-analysis. Whenever I do a deepdive on a topic that I investigated / care about personally, I will put it in a spoiler to keep the mainstream-information on top and easily accessible.
Things-that-are-not-in-this-guide
a) This guide focuses on spells and will not inform you about chaos attacks.
b) I won't explain very general game principles (more, less, Affix...) Others published great guides on those. c) ES vs Life vs Hybrid vs CI vs MoM and what about low life. I am a CI-only-boy and atm I simply don't have enough knowledge to write on this. d) Grammar that is free of mistakes as I'm not a native speaker. Brace you'reselfs ;) 1. General important points of the mechanic
Bulletpoints
Forget everything you know about poisons. They are chaos DoTs but they use very different mechanics than chaos DoT spells.
Most chaos spells deal DoT and some deal flat chaos damage in addition. The flat damage will be very low after all modifiers are considered, but useful for leeching and stuff. Because: Chaos DoTs do not hit, so they don't trigger any on hit effects like leech, blind or reflect (unless they also deal flat chaos damage, in which case the flat damage part will hit) How to change chaos damage over time and what won't affect chaos DoT:
Spoiler
Chaos DoTs do profit from increased Damage, increased Chaos Damage, increased (Chaos-)Damage overtime and all that jazz. Non-ailment Chaos Damage overtime Multiplier is especially nice, more on that in section 2.
Chaos DoTs do NOT profit from Area Damage and Projectile Damage, even if the gem has those tags. These will only buff the flat damage which contributes very little to our total damage output. Chaos DoTs do NOT profit from Spell Damage unless the gem explicitely says "modifiers to spell damage apply to this skills damage over time effect". Projectile Speed, additional Projectiles and Area of effect work if the gem has Area / Projectile tags. To give some examples, the following support gems all change Essence Drain but they won't affect Essence Drains Damage over time: I don't get that, please explain some more, this makes no sense.
Spoiler
To make sense of this: Chaos DoT is applying a debuff to a target or a target arae (maybe via a projectile). This is a debuff like "slow the target", "shock" or whatever. You wouldn't expect slow to be buffed by spell damage. Chaos DoTs are only affected, if the affix tells you: I CAN DO THAT SPECIFICALLY (increased damage over time, less chaos damage, ...) or the gem tells you "THIS WORKS"(modifiers to spell damage apply to this skills Damage over time effect).
Purple. Lot's of purple. I like purple. You like purple. This is a chaos-spell-guide. If you don't like purple, you have come to the wrong place. This point is not up for debate.
Don't-Stack-those-DoTs
Chaos DoTs of the same spell do not stack (unless the gem tells you otherwise, as with Blight). This is a difference to poison and means for example that multiple successive hits with Essence Drain don't do much. This also means that running around and thus surviving won't lower your DPS as long as you keep the DoTs up. Finally, cast speed will help you dodging as you will be less stationary but it won't boost your DPS on most Chaos-DoT-Spells.
Running 2 or more different Chaos-DoT-Gems will greatly increase your DPS but also will occupy a lot of gemslots Examples: Chaos-DoTs don't stack (ED) unless stated othwerise (Blight). Poisons are entirely different as stated before. 2. Our best friend: Non-ailment Chaos Damage over time Multiplier (+Weapon Choice)
NaCDoM
Non-ailment chaos damage over time multiplier is a real mouthful of a Prefix. We'll call it NaCDoM from now on. NaCDoM is found on wands and staves, making them the weapon of choice in Chaos-DoT-builds.
NaCDoM is kinda one more-multiplier. Several instances will add up instead of multiply, hence this is one more-multiplier which is inferior to several more-multiplier but still awesome. And we love more-multiplies around here. While this will differ from build to build, in an endgame setup 10% NaCDoM equal roughly 30% spell damage. Emphasis on the roughly though, as this is very gear/skill-dependent, rather check your path of building than trust me on this one. This leads me to...
Weaponchoice
The main options are:
Dual Wield Wands for the double NaCDoM. Be warned that all the passive tree notes for wands and/or dual wielding focus mostly on attacks. If those nodes buff spells, they usually buff cast speed which again isn't great. ImO not an optimal choice, but can work. Don't let me stop you. Wand+Shield for a nice ES boost and some nice Passive Tree nodes. Staff for a second 6L, allowing you to combine 2 Chaos-DoTs for maximum Damage output at the cost of effective healthpool. Higher NaCDoM-values than Wand+Shield. Apparantly, some people play Bows, something I am unfortunately totally clueless about. These don't roll our generic Spell Damage Affixes, but bring something else to the table. Thx to Marlockk for the input. " I am not aware of other efficient weapon setups, since only staves and wands can naturally roll a Tier1 NaCDoM-Prefix. If there is something I don't know, lemme know in the comments. Chaos-DoTs are quite meta in Synthesis and knowing that you need the NaCDoM-Prefix is no rocket science. This makes these things expensive. On a budget, Jun can craft them for you with lower but decent values. The other end of the scale is a synthesized weapon with a high NaCDoM roll and a high NaCDoM implicit. Tier1-NaCDoM+multiple crafted mods is also amazing (and expensive). I might add content on how to craft such stuff later, for now here are two examples: Wand top-end with space for chaos golems, adding a bit of Soulrend-ES-leech without any Passive-Tree-investment, some curse or Storm Brand+Blind. Fun/quality of life-variant enabling TempChains+Hinder+Maim: 3.1 Active Gems sorted by DPS + explaining all their features
Spoiler
While the chaos skills are quite different in how they work and what they bring to the table, they will ALL have the exact same damage modifiers apply to them (see 1.). That means you will not have to swap out a single support gem in your 6L if you swap the active gem. Well except of specific channeling/duration/something-support in there. Pure damage support like Efficacy Support will have the exact same effect on all Chaos DoTs.
This makes the base numbers very useful to compare the skills, because they all will get the same 400% increased, 350% more, 100 % increased damage taken, +x levels shenanigans that the lategame and one to one hundred exalts provide. So here is a list sorted by topend lv20 DPS + significant side effects + indepth details in the spoilers. Soulrend 1994.3 DoT Does Hit. Pierces all targets. Projectile. Homing shots. 4% ES-Leech. Best DoT-DPS at the cost of really (!) short Duration
Details
Each pierced enemy counts as one hit and will proc leech and stuff. Crit will be rolled once for all targets hit by the same projectile.
Mobs can't bodyguard the boss from hits (unlike for example with Essence Drain). Quite nice off-screen range. Homing shots: You don't need to click the enemy, just his direction. Moving enemies rarely escape the projectile. Can shoot around corners (limited use but always makes me smile and reminds me of the movie Wanted with Angelina Jolie). On a side note: All that talk about minmaxing, being efficent and stuff makes me sometimes forget that this is actually a GAME. Stopping for a moment and sniping that pack around a corner might not be super efficient or even necessary, but I guarantee it will make you smile. (To continue the make-you-smile-tought: Try switching PoE from English to your native language from time to time, some translations are accurate but hilarious!) Okay back2topic. Includes 4% ES-leech. For more Details on ES-Leech, check out Section 3.2. The piercing makes this a decent mob clear even if you only invest in single target (decent, excellent will need investment). Possibel solutions: Increased AoE helps a little. Gems, Tree, Gear, Dying Sun Flask for more projectiles. Dying Sun is a very elegant solution but not budget friendly. Dying Sun maintains a high DPS since you won't need to replace %more-gems with Greater Mutliple Projectile support or invest Passive Skill Points. (Note that GMP-Support's %less damage modifier does not apply to the DoT though). The DoT has a very very short base Duration of 0.4s. Also quite a high mana cost added on top of the fact that you need to recast this very regulary. Even given a little skill effect duration and Temporal Chains, you will end up with less than 1s effective duration (+ the time the projectile aoe hitbox needs to leave the target). Ways to work with this: Increasing Duration + Cast speed (Tree, Gear, Gems). Cast while channeling Support. Less Projectile Speed Support works also since the Missile won't leave the Hitboxes for quite a while. But remember that buffs to Projectile Damage do not buff the DoT.
Why-you-should-not-use-Juns-trigger-seocketed-spells-as-damage-source-with-soulrend
Juns craft "Trigger socketed spells when you use a skill" is NOT a viable way to maintain the DoT, since it comes with a 4s cooldown.
Let's engage in a fantasy: We'll assume you have Malevolence and Temporal Chains up. Slapp Increased Duration support on Soulrend (1.5s eff. Duration), add 20% skill effect duration from somewhere (1.6s eff. Duration) and a maxed out Shapermod of 20% increased cooldown recovery speed on your belt. This means even if you use a skill every 3.33s perfectly, which you won't, your DoT will be up approx. 60% of the time. And at this point it is simply more effective to scrap all that investment (1 gemslot not being a %more-multiplier, passive skillpoints, gear-affixes) and go for Essense Drain instead, which deals 25% less Damage per second while active but will have about 50% more uptime (since it will have 100% uptime).
Why-Juns-mastercraft-may-still-be-useful
If I have Juns mastercraft (good to apply 1-2 curses, summon a high level chaos golem and other stuff) with a spare socket, i will sometimes just slap a Soulrend in there. It helps a bit with clearing trash (quality of life), adds a little damage (why not) and provides some ES-leech which is integrated into the skill gem and needs no further investment. During map clearing this will provide you with 10% ES-leech per second. It uses little investment IF you have a Jun-crafted weapon anyways. Note that the leech will be active only 50-70% of the time due to cooldown, depending on how the projectile travels and assuming 5+ enemies are hit.
On a side note: I bricked this beloved wand of mine by accidentally slapping a resonator on it that was meant for the item next to it. Rest in peace Soul Call, my beloved yet very profane wand. RIP 04.04.2019. Feel free to send me all your exalts to recraft this :..( Conclusion: Best DPS and free ES-Leech but the very short Duration requires a workaround. Shooting homing projectiles feels great. Essence Drain 1503.2 DoT Does Hit. Tiny AoE. Projectile. Provides significant life regen. Single target, can be transformed to mob clearer.
Details
Great single target damage and 8s duration on bosses without any investment (given Malevolence and Temporal Chains). Allows smooth cast-once-then-focus-on-dodging-playstyle against bosses.
Can be easily intercepted by mobs or miss a moving target. Can be made into a mob clear skill with contagion (see the Contagion skillgem section at the bottom of this section for more info). If this is viable / clunky / great depends on the content you are running and is the center of many debates. I dislike this version since it requires me to stand still for 2 skills instead of 1 which will eventually result in me being stupid and getting killed. Tarke Cat (experienced player / content creator / nice guy) disagrees and has a nice video on his point of view, feel free to form your own opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3RVohQ4NEM Since he provides great insight here I think I will procrastinate on my Contagion-section...
How-the-life-regen-works
The life regen works in an interesting way, but it is a significant amount nevertheless. I will lazily quote the wiki here: "The amount of life regenerated from the debuff damage caused by Essence Drain is calculated solely off the final amount of outbound damage dealt by the skill, not the damage inflicted on an enemy. An easy way to calculate the amount of regen provided is to multiply the tooltip amount of debuff damage by 0.5%. This will give you the amount of regen that Essence Drain will grant you per target effected. This means that using methods to increase the enemies received damage from sources such as Despair, Wither, or the Occultist Void Beacon notable does not influence the amount of regen provided by Essence Drain." I deactivated some settings in my Path of Buiding like Despair and the 15 withered-stacks (more on those in the next section, they provide up to 90% increased chaos damage taken). That left 100k+ DoT DPS in Endgame (values on your character may differ but 100k is a pretty accurate baseline on a 6L). This means I will get 500 regen per enemy affected by ED. Pretty nice. Don't forget to pick up the Zealoth's Oath Keystone if you are not life based to gain a sweet energy shield regen. Or use The Sorrow of the Divine. (Consecrated Ground provides 6% additional ES-Regen in theory. But especially while using Essence Drain you won't ever stay on that consecrated ground for more than 0.5s). Note that the wiki claims the regen works "per target effected", meaning one essence drain will trigger multiple regens in dense packs. Note also that the wiki is written by users and I have not verified this, but I trust them on this one. Essence Drain has been around a while. Conclusion: Great single target skill. The very juicy duration allows you to spent your time dodging attacks but comes at the cost of 25% less damage compared to soulrend. Bane 1060.6 DoT Does not hit. Will apply linked curses. Linked curses increase Duration significantly and function as %more-DoT multiplier. Kinda has a curse tag.
Details
Linked curses must not exceed curse limit (Bane itself does not count).
Bane has a curse tag which causes interesting interactions, see the spoiler "What-exactly-does-the-curse-tag-on-Bane-mean?" in Section 5 for more info. Since / altough the first linked curse acts as a really potent %more-multiplier and all succeeding ones as lower %more-multiplier (again see Section 5 for more detail), Banes DoT-DPS can be treated just like the other Skills' DoT-DPS. Great way to apply one or multiple Curses. Banes tooltip-duration is very misleading. A linked Temporal Chains and one more curse will result in 15+ seconds duration (10s+ on bosses) which is an eternity. Great AoE, will clear one pack per cast. Better link it to Spell Cascade Support. Then it will kill every trash mob between your target location and you + half a screen behind that + some area behind you and everything in between. In a 4L this will still provide enough damage from leveling until the Elder's Realm. Conclusion: Excellent mob-clear Spell. Great to apply curses. Will take a quite a while to take Bosses down, better add a single target spell on top. Blight 257.4 DoT-DPS can stack 20 times for 5148 DoT-DPS!!! Does not hit. Channeling Spell. Requires being stationary on occasion. Loves Spreading Rot Jewel. Has a Vaal version that i will include in this guide at some future point.
Spoiler
Blight in a 4L-setup and the Spreading Rot Jewel
To make a long story short: IF you can apply 20 stacks, this is Soulrend on steroids. Usually you will apply less than 20 DoT-stacks though. Shortest range of all our chaos-DoT-spells. Duration is once again longer than the tooltip would make you think, given you use Temporal Chains and Malevolence: 6s on Bosses with 2.5s Hinder, 9s and 4s on mobs. Further investment into increased skill effect duration will influence this. Hindering for 80% with the Spreading Rot Jewel is insane and a huge part of why this playstyle is possible at all. Blight is the only chaos DoT that will scale it's damage with cast speed: +50% cast speed equals roughly one more cast per second on a character that previously did not have cast speed mods, resulting in 20% more Blight damage given that you do not reach max. stacks (then it's quality of life for reaching the maximum faster but not actually %more-damage) Blight is hard to apply, since it needs a more stationary and less dodgy playstyle and has limited range. Stacking 20 times on my current character will need 4 seconds of stationary casting. There are four ways to handle this. Some form of d) is usually the way to go, but I suspect all options are viable: a) Scale cast speed b) Somehow become a facetank-built (cut on the cast speed then, you can take your time to apply all your stacks) c) Don't apply the max. DoT and focus more on DoT->Dodge->DoT->Dodge... d) Do a little bit of all those. Also adapt to the situation (e.g. map has -max resistance -> more dodging). Conclusion: Channeling makes this a very unique Chaos-DoT and will need a fitting playstyle. Potential damage output and 80% hinder will make it worth it. Contagion 235.9 DoT Does not hit. Upgrades Essence Drain from single target to mob clear. Loves increased AoE.
Spoiler
Useful only in combination with Essence Drain. Utility, low DMG. This works but you'll need to cast twice as many spells for mob clearing as most builds. Like... 2... If you can live with such complexity and clear-slow in a game like PoE, go for it. I tried it out (as mentioned before, gem swapping in Chaos-DoT builts is quite easy) and determined that I personally can't... For a different opinion, check out Tarke Cat's video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3RVohQ4NEM Honorable Mentions: Death Aura is a Chaos-DoT-Aura allowing you to clear Mobs simply by walking around. Check the Build-Guide section for further info, this has been around some time. Top end DoT is 562.5 but support Gems on this one are... interesting... You'll also need to invest into Area of Effect more than usual. But definetely a cool and unique choice ImO. Desecrate: Utility rather than clear/damage, fits somewhere else rather than here. Summon Chaos Golem: I like him. If you have +lv to chaos gems on your gear, he will reward that with up to 5% physical damage reduction. Got nothing to do with Chaos-DoT though. Herald of Agony: Remember, I told you Poisons are something totally different. We honor the Na in NaCDoM. On a serious note: This thing needs lots of hits to work and we apply some few low-damage hits if we hit at all. In case there is a workaround for that, just rememeber: Na in NaCDoM!!! 3.2 Can my Skill leech Life/Energy Shield/Mana and how much?
Spoiler
The following applies to Life, ES and Mana leech:
Bane, Blight and Contagion do not hit and consequently can not leech. Essence Drain hits a small Area and can leech if you actually have leech. Essence Drain spread by Contagion will not leech (note that ED by itself grants ES-regen, which is nice but something different, see the ED-section for details). Soulrend leeches as much as your character will allow it to, although against single targets it's difficult to apply enough hits to reach cap. Life leech is capped at 20% of your life pool, ES-leech is capped at 10% but more on that soon. Mana leech is capped somewhere, no one cares.
How-much-ES-can-be-leeched
Without any passive skill tree support, you will be able to leech 10% of ES-Pool per second if your leech skill of choice hits 5 targets. Let's just call this skill Soulrend for now. ES leech is capped at 10%. Soulrends damage and ES-leech-% is easily high enough to reach that cap, but it will always need 5 Hits, which is easy vs packs (each target pierced is a seperate hit btw) but will be tough vs bosses.
The notable Ethereal Feast ADDS 3% to that cap. Light Eater provides another 2%. Thus you have 15% ES-leech with 5 Hits. The Ghost Reaver keystone doubles whichever cap you had, resulting in a 20% or 30% ES-leech-Cap (or something in between if you don't have enough skillpoints for Ethereal Feast AND Light Eater). It does this by doubling the number of leech instances available to you, which means you will need 10 hits to reach cap instead of 5. Ghost Reaver comes at the cost of 50% less Energy Shield Recharge rate (recharge heals only half as fast) and does not affect energy shield regeneration.
I-have-x%-leech-will-I-reech-cap?
If you are thinking about a utility skill like an unscaled storm brand + blind: No. Storm Brand + Mana leech support can be great anyways, for Healthpool-Leech you'll want to aim for cap though.
If you have 4% or more leech (hi Soulrend), damage in poe is so bonkers that you will not have any problem reaching cap as long as you get those 5 or 10 Hits. 3% leech would already be close though. If you have something like 0.5% leech from an affix, this usually won't make it to cap. Check your Path of Building if you want to be sure. 3.3 Active Gems Cheatsheet and how they compare: THE ULTIMATE OVERVIEW
Cheatsheet
Sorry, atm clickbait only. I spent an eternity on writing up the stuff on Blight and Bane. But spending 10+ hours on a guide allows you to see the matrix, this next part will be juicy. Now I really need to kick some Elder... This is on top of my to-do-list now though, stay prepared!
4. Support Gems ranked by 20/20 more-value (and other support)
Spoiler
The ones in this color work for all main chaos spells in Section 3. All others have some twist to them.
90% more: Wither. See the 6. Wither and Hinder-Section on why you will want to include this and how on earth this can be 90% more. 55% more: Lv4 Empower (or around 55%more, high variance!)
Spoiler
55% is the value I get on Essence Drain, here are some scenarios were Empower Lv4 is even better: You got your hands on a lv5 Empower you dirty lucker (Incursion Temple double corrupt for double level up, none for sale at the moment of this article). You use Bane. Now you have 2+ Active Skills and those linked Curses love extra levels. You have +lv to socketed (Support/Strength) Gems which skyrockets your Empower (See Bow under weaponchoices). Note that none of this deserves the tag budget-friendly. 48,8% more: Efficacy
Details
20% Quality adds: 10% increased Damage over time
Two more-Multiplier amplifying each other with a bit of skill effect duration sprinkled on top. It doesn't get better than this. Effective more-Multiplier calculation: 1.20*1.24=1.484>1.44 44% more: Controlled Destruction
Details
20% Quality adds: 10% increased Spell Damage
Without doubt a good option. I'll keep this purple until someone convinces me that a crit-based Chaos_DoT-Build is actually viable (See 1.). 44% more: Swift Affliciton
Details
20% Quality adds: 10% increased Damage over time
The first one with a real Drawback so far: 15% reduced duration. Bane or Essence Drain can easily take this(especially if you apply Temporal Chains) and Death Aura does not care at all. Souldrain will suffer a bit and it depends on your setup if you are willing to take that drawback for a juicy 44%more. Level 20 will need 111 Dex which is possible but might put restrictions on some builts. 40% more: Lv3 Empower (or around 40%more, high variance!)
Details
See level 4 Empower for further details. Corrupted Empower Level 3 are kind of affordable. 39% more: Void Manipulation
Details
20% Quality adds: 10% increased Chaos Damage
Pretty straight forward although we start to sacrifice some %more. No Drawback since we deal no Elemental Damage. 70 Dex for level 20 is ok. Often a good budget alternative for Empower. 19% more: Arcane Surge Support (maybe less, maybe 42,8% more, it depends)
Details
20% Quality adds: 10% increased Spell Damage
Section not done yet Honorable mention: Enlighten Support works great on curses because their quality stats are usually better than something like 10% Spell Damage. Most Chaos-DoT builds will run some curses and adding this should be considered. 5. Bane, Curses and Curses as %more-multipliers for Bane
Spoiler
Since Bane was just added in 3.6 and I personally love this skill, let's look at it in greater detail. It has some interesting interactions, since linked curses will be applied, buffed and increase Banes damage and duration. Banes level needs to be at least as high as the linked curses for this to work.
What-exactly-does-the-curse-tag-on-Bane-mean?
This is a question that requires a surprisingly long answer.
Bane will profit from curse cast speed thanks to it's curse tag. Increased curse effect will not affect Banes DoT directly. It's still nice for all your other curses in your built though. Grab it as often as you can. My crazy prerelease dreams did not come true: Both Blasphemy Support as well as Doedre's Skin will simply disable Bane (haven't tested Doedre's skin myself, but I've heard it doesn't work). No second Death Aura through Bane-Blasphemy :( Bane does not count towards the curse limit. E.g. Curse limit = 2, Bane+Despair+TempChains works. Casting Bane counts as casting a curse and this will trigger all curses in Vixen's Entrapment 5.a) Good curses to apply
Spoiler
These are the basic curses you want to apply: Despair, Temporal Chains, Enfeeble. Here is an example of a 6L:
4L is doable but will miss out on Spell Cascade or Enfeeble. You don't need to link all 3 base-curses to bane. Other forms of application are valid (CwDt, Trigger socketed Spells when xy, Vixen's Entrapment,...). And not every built can bump it's curse-limit to 3 or higher. Note that Bane due to it's curse tag will trigger Vixen's Entrapment. Occasionally you want to add Warlord's Mark or Poacher's Mark for charge-generation, also you won't utilise their other effects. 5.b) Banes curses as %more-multiplier
Spoiler
Bane is a slot-efficient way to apply curses through self-casting. These curses also buff Banes damage. I won't consider the curse effect itself here (assuming if you don't link a curse to Bane you will apply it in some other way). For the sake of a bit simplicity I will also ignore Banes 10% increased curse effect. Now let's take a look. 47% more: First linked curse 32% more: Second linked curse?!?!?!
Spoiler
These things add up instead of multiplying seperately, which means we have a more multiplier with diminishing returns. I think that is new to PoE. Run for cover, math incoming:
Base Damage * 1.94 (94% more, 2 curses linked) = Base Damage * 1.47 (1st linked curse) * 1.32 (2nd curse brings this to the table). 24% more: Third linked curse
Spoiler
Base Damage * 2,41 (141% more, 3 curses linked) = Base Damage * 1.94 (1st and 2nd curse) * 1.24 (3rd curse brings this to the table). 19,5% more: Fourth linked curse, you see where this is going... The major point to consider here: Is it worth it to swap a curse out for a higher %more-support-gem? It will cost gemslots for the now unapplied curse + gemslots or something else since you usually need to apply that curse in a different way. Imo this decision is highly built/gear-depended. Also note that Empower will buff Bane and all linked curses, making it a great option if you can afford it currency- and gemslot-wise. 5.c) Good Bane-setups / How good is the Bane-DoT?
Spoiler
This Wand-setup allows for comfortable mapping while I use Essence Drain as 6L single-target. Getting an effective 5L on a wand is nice (3 Sockets, Spell Cascade, 40% more Damage). On a budget you can do Bane + 2 curses + Spell Cascade as a 4L. Juns mastercraft +1lv to socketed AoE-Gems, +AoE is amazing for this setup. If you run budget gear the spell cascade setup will provide quality of life improvement with little to no suffering due to lower dps probably until around t12 maps. 6. Wither and Hinder
Wither
I mentioned a 90% more in Section 4. That is the result of the maximum 15 times 6% increased chaos damage taken through 15 stacks of withered. There is simply no excuse to leave the hideout without some means to apply withered. (Ok, if you want to clear trash mobs without the need for Boss-Kill-Stuff, but you get what I am saying...)
These are your options to apply withered: If you use Blight, than the recent patches made the Spreading Rot Jewel an option. If you scale your Blight Damage anyways than this is the way to go. Note that investing a Jewelsocket is significant though (juicy 6% ES and 4% NaCDoM on other Jewels). Spell Totem + Multiple Totems + Wither (+ Faster Casting) allows you to apply withered pretty rapidly with 3 Totems but uses several gemslots. Only this setup allows you to leave and do other important stuff after applying your DoTs and placing 2 or 3 Totems. Why not use Blight-Totems instead? Blight has too short a range for our fragile totems (unless you actually ARE a totem built) and Blight lacks effective damage-scaling on a 4L-totem. This makes Wither the superior version. The Occultist Ascendancy node Withering Presence applies 1 Wither per second just like that. A nice variant that will spread some withered even during Mobclearing where you usually don't have the time for this (cze Mobs die too fast). Takes 15s to stack 15 Withered though and you need to stay nearby. Additionally you might want different ascendancy nodes more (I do). And then there is the Withering Touch Support, which would need a skill that applies a lot of attack hits (which we don't have). Emphasis on attack and on hits. Plus this does not apply Hinder. Then again... My Meme-Wand in Section 3 is a way to actually use Withering Touch Support and add maim on top. This one I actually cooked up 100% by myself and I am unsure if it is meta-breaking or meme. But it took like 6 hours of calculating and testing and typing this one section, so be nice... You can skip the In-Depth spoiler, the results are also in the seperate Spectral-Spirits-Spoiler.
Indepth-Analysis
Essence of Insanity will grant the Spectral Spirits Suffix to a Weapon. These are basically three permanent Raging Spirits (SRS) which actually attack, allowing the use of stuff like Maim Support or Withering Touch support. If you socket Withering Touch and Faster Attacks in your Insanity-Weapon, each Spectral Spirit will apply about 0.7 Wither per second (Attack rate, 25% chance to wither, i simply guessed the spirits have 75% chance to hit, you might want to help me out on that last one). At this point I almost gave up, because this really does not seem worth all that hassle. Then it hit me: TempChains and 25% increased Duration from anywhere will Buff the Wither-Duration above 6s, so all this might be able to stack 15 withered. Again: I have no clue what the chance to hit for a Spectral / Raging Spirit is and Path of Building won't tell me. If you just want the results, skip to the 4th spoiler, a complete gem-link setup follows in the 5th spoiler.
Let's-roll-the-numbers
3 Spectral Spirits attack one target with their basic 2.5 attacks per second. I'll just assume the spirits have a 75% chance to hit, I actually got no clue on this one. Furthermore I assume we have 50% increased skill effect duration and 45% increased curse effect lying around anyways and we ofc applied Temporal Chains. If you're character has largely different values, bad luck for you, you will have to adapt this math.
Too-much-math
Spirits * Attacks per second * chance to hit * chance to wither = wither stacks applied per second
3*2.5*0.75*0.25= 1,41 wither per second. Wither per second * wither duration = max withered stacks Wither-Duration is 7.51s / 4.88 on boss (reduced curse effect for Temporal Chains) resulting in 10.5 or 6.8 wither stacks applied. Not good enough... Adding 20/20 Faster attacks support: 3*3.8*0.75*0.25=2.13 wither per second -> 16.0 / 10.4 wither stacks Adding 20/20 Increased Duration Support (or a different source of additional 75% increased skill effect duration): 3*2.5*0.75*0.25*11.5 (new Duration) = 16.2 stacks 3*2.5*0.75*0.25*7.4 (new Duration on Bosses) = 10.4 stacks Faster attacks support and Increased Duration Support: 3*3.8*0.75*0.25*7.4 = 15,81 > 15 Wither stacks on Bosses, WE DID IT
The-one-part-where-I-make-assumptions-in-this
As mentioned before, all of this is based on the assumption, that our spirits will have a 75% chance to hit. This is basically my guess and I just hope it this is roughly true. Increasing / decreasing this to-hit chance would be like a more/less-multiplier to our number of withered stacks applied per second. This would change the time we need to reach full withered-stacks. If this time exceeds the withered-duration, all this effort will be in vain as we won't reach the maximum of 15 withered-stacks.
The-result-of-too-much-math
Just using the spirits alone won't stack withered 15 times on bosses.
Adding 20/20 Faster attacks support and adding 20/20 Increased Duration Support delivers on average 15,81 wither-stacks after the spirits went to work for 7.4s. 7.4s is the wither duration we end up with. We will reach the maximum stack before the first stack expires! It will take roughly 7 seconds.
How-to-apply-15-stacks-of-withered-on-bosses-using-spectral-spirits
The spirits will need 7s to apply 15 withered stacks. The huge benefit is that you need to do nothing other then equipping the Insanity-Weapon with the gems (links aren't even necessary). No casting required.
All calcs are base on assuming we have roughly a total of 50% increased curse effect on Temporal chains, 50% increased skill effect duration and those three 20/20 support gems.
Spectral-Spirits-can-apply-15-stacks-of-withered-without-casting-or-ascendancies
The spirits will need 7s to apply 15 withered stacks on a boss. The huge benefit is that you need to do nothing other then equipping the Insanity-Weapon with the gems (links aren't even necessary). No casting required. All calcs are base on assuming we have roughly a total of 50% increased curse effect on Temporal chains, 50% increased skill effect duration and those three 20/20 support gems. Furthermore I estimated that the Spectral Spirits have a 75% chance to hit which I hope is accurate.
Spectral-Spirits-not-superuseful---yet---I'm-working-on-it
I have started testing and the results are not too promising yet. The Spectral Spirits fulfill a very niche role. They might fit into a build guide diving really deep rather than in a general guide. Especially because they need quite some investment to work properly.
Unless the Spectral Spirits also get Multistrike on top of the other stuff, they will apply wither only on bosses reliably and you can't even let the boss off screen since these guys really like to follow you. Betrayal encounters for example have too many mobs distracting them from the juicy targets. Wither-Totems seem just smoother due to their AoE. But I am still testing stuff. Spectral-Spirit shenanigans in combination with Soulrend look promising Applying withered without casting gioves you more time to keep Soulrends 0.4s-DoT up. And sometimes I dream about these Spirits in a 6Link, blinding, maiming and withering. This would maybe allowe you to maim, hinder, chill and tempchain an enemy for the ultimate slow. I will keep you posted.
Hinder
Hinder is a different Debuff that reduces Movement Speed. Only Spells can apply Hinder while only attacks apply Maim. I mention it here because most forms of withered come with some form of hinder and hinder is really helpful to keep you dodging.
Blight + Spreading Rot Jewel will apply a juicy 80% Hinder for a nice Duration with the first hit (consider an Increased Duration Support Gem). Wither-Totem will apply a less juicy 30% Hinder that will last as long as you have at least one Totem firing. Both things are very nice, please don't make me pick a favorite. If you want to add Maim on top, you will need some form of attacks (maybe check out my Spectral-Spirits-Analysis). While the Occultist Ascendancy node Withering Presence states "Nearby Hindered Enemies deal 15% reduced Damage over Time" it is worth mentioning that this method of withering does not auto-include a hinder debuff. 7. Example Set-ups (stuff I played)
Triple-DoT-Occultist
Figured I might add some kind of built. I played around with a lot of stuff. This resulted in a lot of moving parts on my character and at times felt clunky. Then Tarke Cats Contagion-Trickster inspired me and basically I kicked his Contagion for my Bane-pseudo-4L. The result is finally a smooth character, doing what I want him to do (so not Jack of all trades but rather good at what I want him to be good at). A link to Tarke Cat's video can be found under Section 4. Active Skill Gems -> Contagion.
What-I-gained-and-what-I-sacrificed-in-my-setup
I want high single target DPS. As high as possible (Pro No.1). Squeezing 3 Chaos-DoTs in here allowed me to do that. Thus I can do high DPS on bosses, kill Syndicatemembers before they flee and slay Atzoatls architects in time. While my built has a large healthpool (Pro No.2), it is by no means a face-tank-built and including Blight is a bit greedy (Con No.1, not HC viable). I have died several times going for damage instead of just dodging and watching boss-health tick down.
I have also sacrificed a great deal of trash-mob-damage, since I use Bane with 2 Curses and Spell Cascade as clear skill. Great AoE, still kills trash reliable, but lv80+ rare mobs will need a Blight on top (Con No.2). If you look at my wand you'll realise I run Bane as a 3L / pseudo-5L. This freed up desperatly needed gem sockets. I have pumped this built to 12k Energy Shield before and it was nice. Right now, I prefer a defensive Focus-addition and some other utility, which leaves me at 10.8k ES but feels safer anyways. I prefer going for value instead of raw tooltip-number. Having Focus ready every 12 seconds to instant-recover ES and make me Ailment-immune without using flask charges or anything is GREAT (Pro No.3). Especially burning damage as map / memory mod blocks ES-Recharge and my Ruby flask of Dousing often can't handle that alone. I use Flame Dash as gemslot-efficient movement skill and for Arcane Surge. And I hate it (Con No.3). I might swap to a meekly 2-socket Lightning warp. Also I missclicked while fossil crafting and bricked my old favorite wand, which gained me Arcane Surge. Build does currently not: apply blind, have a 4th curse (Poacher's or Warlord's Mark), Endurance Charges, Maim. Build does include: 80% Hinder (Spreading Rot Jewel), Frenzy Charges (Gloves), Watcher's Eye with bleed immunity, CI,... In decaying memory fragments I'll often need one-screen-teleport which flame dash does not provide. One workaround I found: Quick weapon swap -> Lightning Warp gems leveling in second weapon -> Warp -> Weapon swap back. Requires some careful skill-allocation on hotkeys (even for your second weapon slot) and a bit of training but works smoothly now.
Skilltree
Jewels
Some final thoughts: Like I said, I don't claim to be an expert. I just sank quite some time into my builts and I think I learned something along the way that is worth sharing. Also I myself have been learning quite a lot by writing this guide and your input is appreciated (no student without master, no master without student). I am aware that I have some blind spots (zomfg, how can he not know this, EVERYONE knows this!!!). But hey, educate me in the comments, I like learning as much as the next guy. Thanks for reading, stay sane and may your coffee always be delicious, exile.  Let tomorrow be about solutions. Today is about vengeance. - John Oliver Had a Chaos-DoT-Caster-guide for any class, then 2021 patches happened^^ https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2485596 Last edited by Lightelder#6734 on Apr 13, 2019, 4:23:15 AM Last bumped on Apr 13, 2019, 4:23:45 AM
|
|
|
Nice guide, but I think you left out the importance of gem level. This also makes bows a viable weapon choice. With the ability to craft the +1 gem(and +1 support gem) implicit, you can get level 28+ soulrend or essence drain with multi modding. They don't get the staff level of NaCDoT but they can have the 1H version via crafting, and then you can equip a quiver for defense.
|
|
|
Should really include the bane-vixen interaction in your bane writeup.
When casting bane these gloves cast their curses every time in the same location. Letting you run up to 4 additional curses w/o any damage loss or reserving mana. Note that the curses are cast as is in the gloves so can be linked to support gems if you want. Like say enhance and/or empower. |
|
|
Didn't bother writing a guide and nobody reads, quick summary of my try:
Dream weapon is Shaper staff +2 Chaos gem supported by Cast While Channeling (supported by Arcane Surge) % Spell Damage / % Non ailment Chaos multi % Cast speed % Attack speed 20% chance double damage free suffix Channel Blight to cast Soulrend so mana cost is low at 6 link Chaos skills always use support Efficacy-Swift Affliction-Controlled Destruction-Void Manipulation-(+1 lvl)Empower so both skills are supported at the same time Chest Shav LL or 700+ ES CI second 6 link use ED for bossing and Bane for clearing, use an Arcane Surge to further boost main skill Bane has highest damage (T16 "oneshot" pack) when linking 1 curse 4 support, Vixen for other 2 curse if you wish, but I put all of them in Doedre's Scorn and oneshot below T14 with Profane Bloom anyway Windshriek + Star of Wraeclast + Hex Master for insane 160% Bane AoE one key clear screen CwDT Contagion above T14 if not enough And all Chaos spell used |
|
|
noob question :
To make sure, bane gets the more damage bonus even from curses that are not linked to the gem? |
|
" No. |
|
" I totally agree. Problem is, once I start adding one unique I will sink several hours into elaborating on all the uniques that are relevant. It will happen, but it might take a while. *Update* It's in there now (not other uniques though) Similar responce to Arthur606: Great input, thank you, I might get around to adding this info in the future. " I love how you answered this question indepth and in all detail necessary :) Let tomorrow be about solutions. Today is about vengeance. - John Oliver Had a Chaos-DoT-Caster-guide for any class, then 2021 patches happened^^ https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2485596 Last edited by Lightelder#6734 on Apr 3, 2019, 4:54:13 AM
|
|
|
Let's say I want to focus on bane dot and don't use any leech on some other skill, is there really any purpose to have more curses than the pretty much mandatory 3 dank curses namely despair, temp chain and enfeeble? Assuming 6 links, as 2 remaining slots, having efficacy and controlled destruction linked to bane is more efficient damage wise no?
Last edited by rugalb666#0869 on Apr 2, 2019, 2:53:07 AM
|
|
" Let me point a finger at the guide above (maybe my structure needs to be clearer): Bane 47% more: First linked curse 32% more: Second linked curse 24% more: Third linked curse 19,5% more: Fourth linked curse, you see where this is going... On the other hand: 55% more: Lv4 Empower (or around 55%more, high variance! Also buffs the curses) 48,8% more: Efficacy 44% more: Controlled Destruction 44% more: Swift Affliciton 40% more: Lv3 Empower (or around 40%more, high variance! Also buffs the curses) So yes, more curses sacrifices DPS for utility. Which might be okay, since Bane-DPS is awesome, but if you have no seperate single-target this will need considering. But you gave me an idea, ill add good curses for bane right now. Let tomorrow be about solutions. Today is about vengeance. - John Oliver Had a Chaos-DoT-Caster-guide for any class, then 2021 patches happened^^ https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2485596 Last edited by Lightelder#6734 on Apr 2, 2019, 1:16:07 PM
|
|
" I think your guide is clear, thank you for writing it, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head in all the mechanics stuff of POE so I ask question just to be extra sure I understand it right, I am tired of ending league with weak character, I am trying to do this Bane-hammer right lol Last edited by rugalb666#0869 on Apr 3, 2019, 4:00:09 AM
|
|
