I'm back on my Essence Drain after the buff.

Good day.

Earlier, a week ago, I faced a catastrophic lack of damage on the Essence Drain build. My gear can be considered average, the passive skill tree was almost entirely dedicated to damage, and I used three support stones giving 40, 35 and 35 more damage. I used 70% effect Withering, Despair -35%, and so on.
Level 68 white mobs could die for 10 seconds. Gem level 21. (normal for early game)
I was extremely frustrated by my helplessness (I play on ssf, and can't go buy an amulet for +4 to spell gems), and went to play on a new character waiting for buffs. And it seems I waited? Not quite. When I saw a buff of 33% more damage, I did not believe it. I thought "cool, now white mobs die in 7 seconds."

And I forgot about this news, went on to play on a new character.
The new character is Deadeye, an archer, classic through lightning. Imagine the level of my bewilderment when I reached T5 maps on him, and quite comfortably cleared them and killed bosses despite the +2 levels of monsters (Coruption + Precursor). And I did it with a bow that I crafted in Act 3, at 140 dps. With level 15 gems. No exploits, just Lightning Arrow + Herald of Thunder just do a great job of clearing monsters and, although not fast, confidently defeating bosses. And no, I'm not calling for nerfing archers.
That is, when I find a good bow, I will calmly reach T16. This is how the build should work. Honestly and reliably. I give it an upgrade, it becomes capable of more.

Well, what about Essence Drain? I came back to look at it. I found upgrades (what I found while playing on the second character), reviewed a couple of support gems, and added an extremely strange mechanic that borders on an exploit (I condemn the use of exploits, I am not going to use it). Think about it. For me, for maximum damage, I need to:
1. change weapons
2. wait until skeletons appear
3. use Offering on them, losing 15% of health
4. change weapons
5. run 2 meters
6. use Essence Drain and Contagion
7. use Despair on monsters that should die first
8. place a totem that will stack the wither effect (the aura has time to accumulate only 42%)
and all this must be done within 6 seconds of Offering's action time, which continues to work even if the spikes have disappeared due to a weapons swap.

What is the result of this? Now white mobs of level 63 die not in 8-10 seconds, but in 3-5. Noticeable progress, isn't it? Only this whole combo breaks off on one bunch of monsters if they run away from the main cluster. And you need to repeat this ritual of sacrificing time. I think there is no point in telling how easy other builds cope with similar content. EDC was once the king of clearing, which compensated for low solo target dps. And what is EDC now?

And here's what's in contrast, is how strong Essence Drain is at the stage of 1-3 acts. Especially if this is the second character and you have support gems. And at the early stages, it seems, you can even slightly weaken his strength.

Honestly, I don't know what to do. I was very pleased and interested in going through acts 2 days with this build. I was not embarrassed by long boss fights. I was satisfied that white mobs died at least in a second. But this, this is unplayable. I will find something to play with, this is not a problem. But I really wanted to play this build. It may turn out that some mechanics do not work, and therefore a bow from Act 3 can easily clear T5, but a level 21 ED with several sources of more damage has difficulty clearing T3.

I know that balance is not easy. I do not intend to blame or insult anyone. I just want to know why it is this way and not otherwise. And whether it can be better without maximum investment. The game is still cool, despite the fact that it is not yet fully ready. And I am grateful for the opportunity to play it.

Kind regards.

I think they need to make essence drain actually drain something like it used to, or change the name and remove some of the crippling aspects of this skill that carried over, like its tiny hitbox, agonizingly slow projectile speed, or its complete lack of native piercing or some sort.

I finally swapped to Hexblast and while it's more dangerous, I can just blow up enemies without always needing to bother setting up contagion->Ed->Effigy.