[3.7] SC/HC - ED/Blight Trickster - Up to 10k eHP, Layered Defense, 3m DPS

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sikker wrote:

I don't understand why all CI/LL ED/C builds that plan on taking 3 curses don't take Skittering Runes. 20% increased curse effect is pretty powerful.
And perhaps even better is Hex Master for 20% (!!!) increased AoE on curses AND +10% curse effect.

I understand these builds are rather point started to begin with, but perhaps someone could explain why these two nodes are never taken?
Thanks :)

In the Low Life tree I use intuitive leap to get the Skittering Runes for that extra curse effect, while still getting some life regen out of it. If you don't plan on rushing uber lab, this life regen is not that relevant, and you can just go straight for them. What I like so much about the pathing I have chosen, is that i have lots of good nodes avalible to me if I choose to mix things up a bit. In the Low Life tree for example, it is just 8 respec points for us to get a total of 25% increased AoE if you value AoE more than ES or chaos/projectile damage.

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Kiri2k wrote:

Btw Nedieth you re the only one i found not going for pierce pts on the tree(and im not agree when you say to cast first ed and then contagion, the mob will die too fast! ), actually i like it because you can save a lot of points, whats your pov about that? I never played ED so i tested your tree CI with trickster in std and seems ok but dunno if with 100% pierce is way better or what

Contagion > ED, yeah. That was a misstype. When you are life based, getting the pierce nodes are pretty easy, but as LL or CI, it becomes a pretty big investment. Pierce is purely quality of life for this build, as there is just one situation where it really does anything. Rares and totems with the "allies cannot die" affix can be very tricky with no pierce. With 50% pierce, it is easier to Flame Dash into the pack, and cast ED at the rare/totem. If you want to see how I deal with this, there are a few of these packs in the videos I linked. Thanks to our curses (and stun immunity as CI/LL), I don't feel that this is an extremely risky playstyle. Pierce just doesnt do anything for the build offensively or defensively, and ends up costing 7-8 points for quality of life.

Pierce would be very good if you opted to use bino's however. Spreading the poison stacks from all the targets hit by ED to a more tanky target in the group could be pretty powerful.

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Ciemjke wrote:

Am I missing something? Do you not Triple Curse Blasphemy when life-based? You get +1 curse from the tree and +1 from Cospri's, but no reduced reservation, it seems like. What gives?

I didnt really write anything for my Cospri's playstyle, as I plan on getting a Shav's for LL rather than investing in a Cospri's again.

With Cospri's I run Temp Chains and Enfeeble on Blasphemy and selfcurse Vulnerability. With ED we have the option to offscreen, or at the very least hit things outside our curses, and by selfcursing Vulnerability, I was able to get the poison applied to bosses I did not want to stay close to. Prime example for this was Vinktar Square, where you have to move around a lot on the final fight. By cursing everything with vulnerability, I was able to more safely kite, activate Cospri's for massive dps, and still get my defensive curses on targets that get close enough to me to be an actual threat.

If more people are interested in my life version of the build, I can add more about it, like the fact that if you want to play hybrid, you should play Occultist.

Do you use unique jewels (like energy from within below the es/life nodes?) or only rare ones? What you prefer on jewels?

Hey, thanks for linking to my build in the main post of this thread! Very appreciated.

Nice to see ED has some very good theorycrafters around, in 2.4 a lot of people will go for ED because GGG nerfed all the super OP meta, lol, and ED is still good, reflect proof and efficient to play.

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Asag wrote:

Do you use unique jewels (like energy from within below the es/life nodes?) or only rare ones? What you prefer on jewels?

As life, you don't need any uniques, but as CI/LL you use Energy from Within under the Melding cluster. You can also use a second Energy from Within at Quick recovery if you want to take that for additional mana and ES regen.

When it comes to jewels, I play hardcore, so I prioritize life/ES the highest. After that you want projectile damage or chaos damage. both proj. and chaos damage double dips to poison, and have pretty high rolls, so those are our best bets. ES is a prefix and projectile damage is a suffix, so it should be really easy to get a few jewels with these two affixes.

Life/ES > Projectile damage = Chaos damage > Damage > spell damage/spell damage with shield.

faster start of ES regen, resists, dexterity, strength and cast speed are all nice as well, and should be used as you see fit.

Personally I solve my strength issue with a heavy belt, but that might change in 2.4 with the new base types. We'll see.

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Nedieth wrote:

I didnt really write anything for my Cospri's playstyle, as I plan on getting a Shav's for LL rather than investing in a Cospri's again.

With Cospri's I run Temp Chains and Enfeeble on Blasphemy and selfcurse Vulnerability. With ED we have the option to offscreen, or at the very least hit things outside our curses, and by selfcursing Vulnerability, I was able to get the poison applied to bosses I did not want to stay close to. Prime example for this was Vinktar Square, where you have to move around a lot on the final fight. By cursing everything with vulnerability, I was able to more safely kite, activate Cospri's for massive dps, and still get my defensive curses on targets that get close enough to me to be an actual threat.

If more people are interested in my life version of the build, I can add more about it, like the fact that if you want to play hybrid, you should play Occultist.

Want to go a little in depth on cospri hybrid version + passive tree ?
Looks like a smooth ED build indeed

Thanks for the guide. I also wanted to say I'm impressed with your level and the level of gear you already acquired on HC Essence *jawdrop*

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Nedieth wrote:

When it comes to jewels, I play hardcore, so I prioritize life/ES the highest. After that you want projectile damage or chaos damage. both proj. and chaos damage double dips to poison, and have pretty high rolls, so those are our best bets. ES is a prefix and projectile damage is a suffix, so it should be really easy to get a few jewels with these two affixes.

Life/ES > Projectile damage = Chaos damage > Damage > spell damage/spell damage with shield.

Spell damage double dips with poison too (and this is true only for Essence Drain and a chaos-converted Vortex).

Hello I am loving this build so far i just have one question: How do you get such high tooltip dps? Mine is only at 3k at level 66 and though i am getting through merciless acts I think I will have trouble with even low tier maps at this dps. I am guessing high level gems and high quality will help but I cant imagine it will increase my dps to such a high ammount you have. Thanks for the help.

Making slow progress with this build.
Still have a few questions though: Like, what is the purpose of abyssal cry? How does it benefit the build?