[3.15] Essence Drain 6.6 Mil DoT DPS | Very Beginner Friendly

Love the build so far but I cant run Flesh and stone. Any hint?
Havoc209 is not to be confused with Havoc616.
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Lamals wrote:
I am having a hard time staying alive in red maps. I am currently in the lowlife part of the build. My resistances are capped and chaos resist is close. I am not sure what I am doing wrong? Any tips on staying alive? I feel like I am trying to follow this guide pretty closely. This is my first poe character.


Same boat, except capped chaos, think I'm just going to reroll.
I'm only lvl 28 but I'm so amazed of how much damage this build does
Started mapping and literally everything 1 or 2 shots me. Speed clear is pretty clunky too, i mean if you get the spread right everything desappear but if you miss some mob is pretty annoying.

But the main problem is that the non CI part of the build is EXTREMELY squishy. I just can't do anything even in magic white maps. I dont know if I'm doing something wrong or what
I'm looking at giving this a shot, how is it for bossing, I only see 850k DPS in the PoB which i'm assuming isnt the full story, would love to see some videos of showing boss fights or damage this league and stuff if anyones running this. Have a good 10ex to invest in the build
Australian Summoner-Main
Don't know why I always get suckered into this build but I do it every few leagues and its always had the same problem ever since ED/contagion was introduced to the game. It is awkward as hellllll to use.

Contagion is simple enough to apply but then you need to hit it with ED. A slow moving, slow to cast single bolt attack. Believe me when I say that, now more than ever, its easy to miss. Something gets in the way that doesn't have contagion on it. Or you accidentally hit the elite monster in a pack and the rest of the group beats on you until the elite finally dies and spreads your dot to the rest of them.

In general, the damage does not impress me. Its absolutely fabulous for killing normal monsters, rares and elites die pretty slow. Rares take 1-2 second to go down while elites take 3-5. And remember, the whole point of this build is to delete the screen with cascading high damage contagion chains. Until that chain effect occurs, you're basically hoping that you can survive long enough for it to happen. The defenses on this build are POOR. Even with great gear they are POOR. Its very common, especially in ultimatum encounters, for you to just get swamped before the contagion chain happens. The real killer is casting ED, which forces you to stand still and execute an extremely slow and awkward single cast while mobs with 5 elite auras are ripping your face off.

The only solution is to just get your gear so god tier that you can mega delete anything instantly. Thats fine. A lot of builds work like that. The problem is that this is supposedly a starter friendly build that can work on no budget.

Thats just false. When you finish the story and start doing maps, you slam into a wall, dying a few times per map trying to clear it. Any sort of mechanic goes from challenging to almost certain insta-doom as your 30% evade and 2500 ES just isn't enough to keep you alive.

Its just so awkward. There a builds in this game that run smooth and are highly effective. This is NOT one of them. This one is fiddly and unreliable. You have to think about damage avoidance from almost everything on the screen while also aiming your silly ED just to kill anything. Its double work that is totally unnecessary considering the existence of other builds.

This shouldn't be taken as a criticism of this variant in particular. Im sure the build designed did a great job on this. Its just that the ED/contagion mechanic is bad.
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Kilgu wrote:
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Hooozi wrote:
Hi there!

Is everything in the first post accurate as of this league? Thanks!
We no longer use a bow/quiver as the mods now only apply to bow attacks.
Also Blood Magic is not longer a gem and would probably need to be replaced by Lifetap.
A lot has changed with this league and the guide needs an update.
Hi

Not much has changed other than the Blood Magic changing with Arrogance Support and the quiver damage gone.

I haven't been playing much so that's why I haven't updated anything yet. I just got home last night, so I will be playing again and updating everything very soon.

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Hooozi wrote:
Quick question, do you use Clarity/Malevolence/Flesh & Stone/Zealotry & Discipline as auras? I can only seem to use 4 of them (No Disc/only Vaal Disc) as I am left with not enough mana to cast.
Hi

I do run Discipline, you need to select it in the PoB if it is not enabled.

It looks like since Arrogance has a more health mulitplier, we cannot run Clarity at level 11, if at all anymore. It looks like Clarity level 1 works, however. I don't think I would run Clarity, unless I had the watcher's eye that gives Maximum mana as Maximum energy shield while using Clarity.

I am not sure yet as I have not tested any of this, but I will be updating it very soon.
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Lamals wrote:
I am having a hard time staying alive in red maps. I am currently in the lowlife part of the build. My resistances are capped and chaos resist is close. I am not sure what I am doing wrong? Any tips on staying alive? I feel like I am trying to follow this guide pretty closely. This is my first poe character.
Hi

I am thinking you might be playing this character like a melee character and running into the fray getting hit and attacked by monsters, we are not a tanky melee build, we are a very squishy caster.

I looked at your character, it looks like you are lacking a lot of damage for red maps.

I would work on getting Essence Drain level 21, Empower level 3 at least, a new bow (the expensive one,) annoinment on neck, and just need gear and levels honestly.
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dmoniak wrote:
Love the build so far but I cant run Flesh and stone. Any hint?
Do you have all the reserved mana reservation nodes? I tried pulling your character up but the gear and skills are gone so I can't really help.
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Jundel wrote:
Started mapping and literally everything 1 or 2 shots me. Speed clear is pretty clunky too, i mean if you get the spread right everything desappear but if you miss some mob is pretty annoying.

But the main problem is that the non CI part of the build is EXTREMELY squishy. I just can't do anything even in magic white maps. I dont know if I'm doing something wrong or what
Hi

I can't help you since it looks like you are doing Toxic Rain, however, it sounds like you are not playing the build how it is supposed to be played. It just might not be your playstyle.

I have had no issues and I have ran this build for 8 leagues now
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Cyan101 wrote:
I'm looking at giving this a shot, how is it for bossing, I only see 850k DPS in the PoB which i'm assuming isnt the full story, would love to see some videos of showing boss fights or damage this league and stuff if anyone's running this. Have a good 10ex to invest in the build
So you will have to go to the Configuration and configure a few things, you might be looking at the level PoB?
Essence Drain isn't the best bossing type of build. It is not bad, it just isn't great.
It's a safer boss type of build, but not un-killable.
It's squishy, but it has high health and health regen via Energy Shield and the Essence Drain regeneration.
For bossing, you throw all 3 totems down, and you cast Essence Drain, Contagion for Arcane Surge, and keep throwing totems if they keep dying and so they can stack up wither, and hope the boss targets them, if you just run around not getting hit.
Then you cast Blight for 1 second to get Infused Channeling, .6 seconds once you get 20% quality.
Keep throwing Essence Drain until the boss drains his/her health away.
Once you get the Vaal skills cast them and yeah pretty much that's it.
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Nonsensei436 wrote:
This shouldn't be taken as a criticism of this variant in particular. Im sure the build designed did a great job on this. Its just that the ED/contagion mechanic is bad.
I disagree with you.

It looks like you are still using Mind over Matter with Eldritch Battery.

There are a LOT of different things you should be doing differently if you are actually following this build:

You need to get Energy Shield gear (About ~3000 Energy Shield) and go CI - you should not still be Mind over Matter / Eldritch Battery after the story.
No Quartz Flask is being used
You could get a cheap 6 link, and a cheap Empower 2 and it will give you a huge damage boost.
There's a lot more, that's just a few I noticed.

I'm not sure why you always get suckered into this build if you think so poorly of it
The expensive low-life Pastebin has been updated and will most likely be updated again at some point

https://pastebin.com/SQcCy9LZ

Edit: ^ That pastebin did NOT have Vaal Righteous Fire activated

https://pastebin.com/c7m31mYj

This one ^ is updated with Vaal Righteous fire, but as of 4/30 I do not believe Vaal Righteous fire is the way to go.
Last edited by Havoc209 on Apr 30, 2021, 10:03:37 AM


Having fun with the build thanks

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