POE 2 ✧ Lahkesis Queen of Chaos ✧ "Essence Drain " Guide releas (Showcase video include)

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As for the build, I went Chronomancer as Adavydow did, and I think it is a very good class defensively. I went CI instead of the recoup route, and I feel pretty much immortal. I had budgeted 10 passive points for stun threshold nodes, but interestingly I felt pretty much stun immune after the first 5 points; by my count I have just over 6k stun threshold atm.

How is sustain? That was the main reason why I was worried to go CI for the dot build.

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adavydow#2566 wrote:

How is sustain? That was the main reason why I was worried to go CI for the dot build.

Surprisingly good. I was very worried about having no Wicked Ward and dealing with the new Recharge timing and amount, but I'm really not feeling any issues yet. Granted, I have 38 passive nodes invested in ES-related stats, so its not a small invesment.

I'm at ~6k ES, ~2k recharge/sec, 1.95sec delay. Also running Blasphemy-Enfeeble-TempChains along with the chronomancer slow node and a hinder source, which all add up to a very safe environment.

But the biggest thing is probably Temporal Rift. Since the above defenses provide such a big buffer of safety, completely restoring all of it with one button is incredibly powerful (regardless of the dash back, which is also very good in poe2 context). With Ingeunity socketed it has 4sec CD which matches the number of afterimages you can have, so as long as you don't use it at the wrong time you always have a full-ES state to return to.

I haven't even done the third trial yet, but Time Freeze will of course offer a bunch more safety. It has a long CD so you can't use it as freely as Temporal Rift, but as you can see from my ES stats above it only needs to last 5 sec to completely restore all ES. You can achieve 5.25sec duration with just the chaos/duration cluster near the start, plus the 3 duration nodes near the top.

As for going Hybrid, I honestly don't know enough about how it would work to give an informed opinion.

Edit: This is with decent gear, but no pieces above 15ex, and my gloves, belt and boots are all taken from my MoM character and are quite underwhelming. I'm sure you can comfortably reach 10k ES without insane wealth.

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Also running Blasphemy-Enfeeble-TempChains along with the chronomancer slow node and a hinder source, which all add up to a very safe environment.

Doedre's ring? Or is there any other source of +curse?
Tryed to chance it but with no luck. I have a full collection of this stupid manaflask ring now-( can wear one on each finger.

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adavydow#2566 wrote:

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Also running Blasphemy-Enfeeble-TempChains along with the chronomancer slow node and a hinder source, which all add up to a very safe environment.

Doedre's ring? Or is there any other source of +curse?
Tryed to chance it but with no luck. I have a full collection of this stupid manaflask ring now-( can wear one on each finger.

Yep, Doedre's. I did run for a while without it, though. It works okay with the defensive curses being on an aura, while Despair is being spread by Contagion onto distant enemies. If I had to drop one curse it would be Temp Chains since slows gets downscaled on magic/rare enemies unlike enfeeble.

Is the Viper short really just a clip from Normal campaign after you’ve slapped on 10 ex of items?

I’ve done ED/Contagion on 3 different classes so far. Ascendencies don’t help and neither do most nodes. The skills just don’t have enough support gems/nodes to make the build not feel like total shit after the campaign.

Genuinely curious how it has taken this long to create a build, on one of the many sites, and paste a link to the tree/gems

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Yep, Doedre's. I did run for a while without it, though. It works okay with the defensive curses being on an aura, while Despair is being spread by Contagion onto distant enemies. If I had to drop one curse it would be Temp Chains since slows gets downscaled on magic/rare enemies unlike enfeeble.

Enfeeble downscales too. I think it depends on your tank. I'm not sure I can tank all the slams, so I prefer TC. 10% reduced actions is nice too and it helps a lot while I don't get used to all the boss moves.

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adavydow#2566 wrote:

For now I'm farming around T10-T11, my puny +2 wand, +2 focus with 78% spell damage are enough there.
I don't forsee damage problem on packs, as I hope to get 3 more levels from gems, 2-3 more from gear and will probably go for event horizon.

I thought about offering and culling, but 4 buttons in rotation is near my mental limit -)

That's encouraging to hear, I'll stay optimistic then :D

If you are not already using mouse button 1 you could put cull there. Enemies get highlighted with a blue light when they can be culled, so it is very intuitive and not mentally draining to just go "click" when you see a blue light.

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adavydow#2566 wrote:

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Yep, Doedre's. I did run for a while without it, though. It works okay with the defensive curses being on an aura, while Despair is being spread by Contagion onto distant enemies. If I had to drop one curse it would be Temp Chains since slows gets downscaled on magic/rare enemies unlike enfeeble.

Enfeeble downscales too. I think it depends on your tank. I'm not sure I can tank all the slams, so I prefer TC. 10% reduced actions is nice too and it helps a lot while I didn't get used to all the boss moves.

It downscales, but only on unique enemies. So for mapping it is quite effective. Its directly on the gem tooltip, unlike temp chains where you have to check the slow tooltip.

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If you are not already using mouse button 1 you could put cull there. Enemies get highlighted with a blue light when they can be culled, so it is very intuitive and not mentally draining to just go "click" when you see a blue light.

I switched to WASD. Never thought I would like it, but it was a huge QOL imporvement for me. For some reason I frequently missed with ED and Contagion while mouse-moving. Never happened to me in POE1, it felt like some sort of smart targeting is in place.

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Oaken#2581 wrote:

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adavydow#2566 wrote:

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Also running Blasphemy-Enfeeble-TempChains along with the chronomancer slow node and a hinder source, which all add up to a very safe environment.

Doedre's ring? Or is there any other source of +curse?
Tryed to chance it but with no luck. I have a full collection of this stupid manaflask ring now-( can wear one on each finger.

Yep, Doedre's. I did run for a while without it, though. It works okay with the defensive curses being on an aura, while Despair is being spread by Contagion onto distant enemies. If I had to drop one curse it would be Temp Chains since slows gets downscaled on magic/rare enemies unlike enfeeble.

Drop a link to your build? I have 3 different characters all doing ED/Contagion so I'm interested to see how things play out.

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Oaken#2581 wrote:

Haven't read the whole thread so pardon if I am repeating known info.

I've been trying to make ED/Contagion work since launch. During campaign, there are good and bad parts, pack clear is great, but bosses go very very slow compared to better builds. Unless some new tech comes out to make single target better, I would probably start as something else and switch over in early cruel.

Mate im doing CI ed/contagion chrono right now too but its my 3d character on ED. Could you pls share your build? I really loved ES based builds in POE so im giving a try for it now too.