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

Yep, the third curse is mostly just for min/maxing purposes, and you should not worry if you are unable to fit it. We gain 30% more spell damage by going low life by grabbing the "Pain Attunement" keystone instead of spending points on going to the CI keystone. We are also able to fit clarity and one more aura (or dropping some reservation nodes if you want to stick with dual curse on mana).

Passive Tree


Sitting at 38k DoT in ho, 10.7k ES and ele weak. capped res.
Mostly wanting a suggestion on what should I improve next, or change in my passive tree.
Wanna try and tackle Guardians/Chayula and would like to improve my chances.

Kind regards, love the guide.

"

Nedieth wrote:

The level of Contagion is actually irrelevant to the spreading of ED. The build does not start to feel worthwhile before you get to level 38 and link contagion to increased area of effect. Going directly for both witch and templar AoE clusters as well as getting a 20% contagion for another 10% increase area of effect will greatly increase the spread of your essence drains.

Thank you for getting back to me. This is my first character since coming back to the game last week, so it may as well be my first ever in some regards. I'm feeling super noobish, but.. I played really hard this weekend and got to level 71 and completed normal lab.

I'm only now starting to enjoy the build, but that is likely because I was lost and accidentally following two different ED builds. My contagion still doesn't seem to spread too far but it is slowly starting to build. It is kind of amazing how noticeably I could feel the character start changing with every minor upgrade I found.

TLDR version for anyone that may want to see how I'm doing and what I might do better:



Gear:



Flasks:



Other concerns:



Any tips, thoughts or advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

"

frenzul wrote:

"

Nedieth wrote:

The level of Contagion is actually irrelevant to the spreading of ED. The build does not start to feel worthwhile before you get to level 38 and link contagion to increased area of effect. Going directly for both witch and templar AoE clusters as well as getting a 20% contagion for another 10% increase area of effect will greatly increase the spread of your essence drains.

Thank you for getting back to me. This is my first character since coming back to the game last week, so it may as well be my first ever in some regards. I'm feeling super noobish, but.. I played really hard this weekend and got to level 71 and completed normal lab.

I'm only now starting to enjoy the build, but that is likely because I was lost and accidentally following two different ED builds. My contagion still doesn't seem to spread too far but it is slowly starting to build. It is kind of amazing how noticeably I could feel the character start changing with every minor upgrade I found.

TLDR version for anyone that may want to see how I'm doing and what I might do better:

Spoiler

Since I kind of jumped in blind at first, I'm sure my passive tree is an absolute mess. I started the character without a build and just started taking physical and chaos nodes because I liked viper strike. I've had to slowly convert that to where I am now and after getting confused with other ED builds... I probably took some odd routes. I'll take the next day or so at work in my downtime to try to figure out how I can adjust the paths I took to something more reasonable. Until then, I am able to farm some basic currency to do so and am really enjoying myself.

Some top of my head stats:

I'm currently able to crush map tiers 1-4 regardless of mods.
I got my resists maxed (not including chaos).
Hp is lacking.
ES is low.
Armor is ok because I took iron reflexes.

Gear:

Spoiler

My biggest problems so far are with breaches and some bosses. If I get interrupted. I get smashed. If I can get a spell off, they melt.

I know my gear is bad. Please recall that I am new. I'm trying.

Flasks:

Spoiler

The potions honestly seem like they changed my game once I got the unique damage flask. There was a point where I stopped being conservative with them when I figured out they recharged so fast, that my fingers couldn't keep up. It cut the time it takes me to do basic maps in half and my drops seem to be much more memorable because of it.

Other concerns:

Spoiler

That being said, the last thing that bothers me is the loot. Man. I got 40 uniques yesterday and don't know what to do with them. So, I hope I'm not throwing away potential currency that could help me advance. All I do now with items I think are good, is throw them in a premium tab at 1 chaos buyout. I sold a half dozen items or so yesterday, I just hope I didn't sell anything worth something considerable. I did save any uniques that I thought may be good for other characters, if I make them, and have sold a few yellow items as well. All 1 chaos.

I did find this right before logging off last night and it seems far different than any other item I had drop to this day. If it is worth more than 1 chaos, or nothing for that matter, I'd appreciate it before I let it go. It just seems super cool.

Any tips, thoughts or advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

'


Hey Frenzul,

Going to do my best to account for most of your shortfalls.

**Note** Some of these recommendations require currency.

First, your skill tree isn't too far off. I would highly recommend that you drop the iron reflexes portion and everything leading up to it. We don't really need armor with this build. We really are a pretty chicken-shit build, we throw an ED at a boss and run around while it dies. However, with that being said - I can drop Con/ED in the middle of uber atziri trash and tank it all with the ridiculous life regen ED provides. That's where the area of your contagion starts to become effective. Ive never done ED as a life build, always either CI or Low Life (low life is not viable for you right now).


Second, We don't need any physical damage nodes - I would respec out of them entirely.


Third, to get a pretty phat damage increase you have two options or you can even mix them. There is poison which you would get with a 'consuming dark' dagger. It poisons all enemies on hit. Poison damage lasts 2 seconds - so its great for mapping where you wreck everything. Then there is decay, which lasts 10 seconds, so its a little better for bosses and some bosses are poison immune, but nothing is decay immune. As far as I know. To do that, you need to get a weapon that has "750 decay damage". This leads into the part where you're not sure what kind of gear is worth anything. You need to start using poe.trade - its a masterful trading tool. Once you get used to it, everything becomes easier. I dont even look at trade chat anymore, it's cancer.

Anyway, you could get a consuming dark dagger and a delirium weapon (750 decay). If you want to dual wield them< i believe you have to get a mace for your offhand. I use a wand (decay) / shield with high spell damage and ES, but my damage is already really high.



Forth, get rid of grace and the like. Either start running some curses (vulnerability, temp chains, enfeeble etc.). Vulnerability would increase your damage pretty good. I run 2 curses, discipline, arctic armor and clarity. I use low life though, so some of those arent viable for your current build. I would go with discipline and a blasphemy (reserves mana but is always on) curse.

Fifth, On POE.trade try buying a helmet with +40% ED damage. You can get a white one and try to roll it with stats you need. It shouldnt be hard to come up with something to replace your current helmet.

Sixth, pick either life or ES, we dont really want to monkey around with hybrid in this build. I would go ES with CI for starters. This would mean that you need to move over above the templar tree and get Zealot's oath. You could try to finagle around it with your flask, but I wouldnt try that. With that being said, you can spec out of all the life nodes at that point. Click my name and look at my build to see where you should be aiming.

Seventh, I would drop tabula rasa and pick up a 5link armor. They are insanely cheap, I would drop pierce.

Let me know if you have any questions - ED for life!

"

JSquiggle wrote:

"

frenzul wrote:

Any tips, thoughts or advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

'


Hey Frenzul,

Going to do my best to account for most of your shortfalls.

**Note** Some of these recommendations require currency.

Let me know if you have any questions - ED for life!

I can't believe you were able to give me so much information with the mess of a post I made, especially after going back and looking at the OP's passives and seeing how ridiculously far I strayed from it being a noob.

The only reason I'm hybrid defenses is because of the different builds I was looking at all at once and getting confused. I'd like to fix it. I'm insanely squishy if I get hit hard enough to be stunned, I'm dead. I will take the day here at work to try and figure out what I can do to switch over to ES and CI. Having never tried them, CI kind of really scares me.

I do have poe trade, I just can't seem to refine the search enough to find accurate results.

The only question I guess I do have is regarding the helmet with ED damage on it. Would you have a link to one for example? I've got a bank full of those shard, things, that turn your gear from white to rare I wouldn't mind using or something.

Can't tell you how much I appreciate the reply man. I didn't think I was going to get addicted to this game and I was about to delete the character and shut down until the first map I went to when everything lined up and my contagion actually spread like wildfire. Now I'm hooked and can't wait to get back in game.

(Any further tips super welcome - taking in as much as I can while I can't play so that when I do, it's efficient. I just don't want to unwelcomingly flood this guys thread.)

ps: The damage is crazy for how bad my gear is.. iirc its 5k dmg and 15.5k dot.. nowhere near anyone here but the maps I do complete are so easy. The only thing holding me back is survive ability. Everything dies just fine, even bosses.

@GoranH: your tree looks really nice. Your curse radius must me insane! When you start dealing with some tankier bosses, you might start considering dropping the curse radius focus and going down to ranger projectile nodes instead. You will just have slightly lower DPS with your current setup, but the curses must be great. Other than a lvl 4 empower and better rolls on your gear, everything looks solid.

@frenzul: it seems like pretty JSquiggle pretty much nailed it while I was quickly reading your posts. Just keep running maps as fast as you can and upgrade your gear slow and steady. A 5L regalia will do you wonders to start with.

"

Nedieth wrote:

@frenzul: it seems like pretty JSquiggle pretty much nailed it while I was quickly reading your posts. Just keep running maps as fast as you can and upgrade your gear slow and steady. A 5L regalia will do you wonders to start with.

Thanks man, I love the build a lot. It has got me addicted to the game for sure. Um, since you mentioned maps though, I just came across something related that I can't seem to find the answer to and its super nooby I'm sorry.

Can I really just run whatever map I feel like without consequence? I was kinda following what the atlas said until I was out of my league. If I did a map and it said ok, now go try this one, I did. I only ask because I started watching some "shaping the atlas" videos and wow. No idea what these people are talking about.

Hey Nedieth,

I need some help with the build. It's been a faceroll so far, killing all guardians without any issues. The tooltip DPS with 6 frenzies and witchfire is ~50k, yet I failed miserably on my first shaper attempt. Got to the second phase, but my dps is far too low to kill adds, they just overrun zana and I die to purple orbs. Never got to third phase unfortunately.

Gear:



Passives:

I tried swapping pierce to poison, saving WFB charges, and still I see no way to kill them. Do you have some tips for the add phase?

There are a few things that are important while exploring the atlas:

Before you have killed the boss of a map, it can only drop in a map that is connected to it in the atlas. This means that Oasis (t2) cannot drop in Crystal Ore or Jungle Valley before you have found it in Desert, as Desert is directly connected to it. Once Oasis drops, it will still be greyed out in the atlas until you run that map and kill the boss. Once you kill the boss, the map will become fully coloured in the atlas and it can now drop in any of the other tier 1 maps as well (as well as any other map you do).

Then there are the bonus objectives. While hovering your mouse pointer over each map, you can see what the bonus objective of that map is. Once this objective is complete, it will get a ring around it in the atlas. Doing these bonus objectives are important, as it increases the chance of maps dropping as a higher tier map and thus speeding up your progress though the atlas.

You should never worry about what map tier you "should" be doing for your character level. Map tiers are hugely gear and build dependent, and you should always stick to the maps you feel comfortable clearing while farming. Hope this helps, and good luck!

"

maladeth wrote:

Hey Nedieth,

I need some help with the build. It's been a faceroll so far, killing all guardians without any issues. The tooltip DPS with 6 frenzies and witchfire is ~50k, yet I failed miserably on my first shaper attempt. Got to the second phase, but my dps is far too low to kill adds, they just overrun zana and I die to purple orbs. Never got to third phase unfortunately.

Gear:

Spoiler

Passives:

Spoiler

http://poeurl.com/ZxO

I tried swapping pierce to poison, saving WFB charges, and still I see no way to kill them. Do you have some tips for the add phase?

I'd start with a level 4 empower and 40% ED enchant on helm. That will be a pretty large boost for you.

What do your jewels look like? If you can get atleast trio damage jewels, its about 750 dps per jewel, atleast for me.