The Scion build is optimal for damage, and it's currently going low life in its main iteration. Its lifebased version, btw, isn't used anymore, but it will be remembered for its past BotW glory. :)
The Trickster build was optimal for survivability, and was a CI build (Chaos Inoculation). I won't update that version anymore, because I think it's pretty dead in the current state of the game.
NEW: Witch variant added! Look at the passive tree sub-section of the guide for more details!
Hello!
First build post here, so feel free to post criticism / suggestions / whatever you want to improve it.
I know there are a lot of Essence Drain builds of all kinds. I just wanted to post mine, since I have received some in-game requests for it after posting some hints in the Witch sub-forum.
This build has its best iteration by going low life. You can start as life based and then switch to CI (and eventually low life) when all your ES items are in place, respeccing some key nodes. I highly recommend going LL in the end, to tackle all the content of the game. I've
successfully killed Uber Atziri / Shaper / Guardians multiple times with my build.
The old life based poison version was featured in GGG's Build of The Week in Season 6, Episode 3 (29/9/2016).
The low life one came out after some experiments I made during Breach League. Since this new support gem was introduced in 2.5, I wanted to try it and gain all possible advantages from it... so this new iteration of the Mistress of Agony was born and I think it was
probably the best way to play an Essence Drain based character in Path of Exile pre-Fall of Oriath.
I want to point out a thing: this is NOT the best clearspeed build of the world, but it is incredibly efficient for solo playing, farming, mapping, labyrinth runs while being quite safe to play.
Build background and evolution over leagues
I leveled my Scion up to 95 in Talisman League (2.1), when Essence Drain / Wither / Contagion were added to the game.
I decided to publish the build after Ascendancy came out because the character became even stronger than it was (and this was a common feeling in 2.2).
In 2.3 (Prophecy) we got 2 additional ascendancy points, so we could take advantage from the double starting point to save some precious passives which could be invested in a more efficient way.
In 2.4 (Essence) this build received some small nerfs, which fortunately didn't impact the playstyle, the clearspeed or the efficiency of the character in a noticeable way. The details:
- Pierce support gem got a 10% damage nerf and a 20% increase in mana multiplier
- Poison damage was lowered by 2%
- Bosses' curse efficiency reduction became a lot stronger
But some good things were added for us: Essence of Delirium (which allows to craft our endgame dagger), fingerless silk gloves base type (16% free spell damage on implicit mod), Shaper boots (free pierce while mapping) and crystal belt basetype (lots of extra ES from the
implicit).
In 2.5 (Breach) the CWC support gem was introduced in PoE. And it came together with some nice new items too, especially Presence of Chayula to play low life while gaining some good survivability tools (extra ES and 60% chaos resistance).
In 2.6 (Legacy) there were no important changes to the ED playstyle. The CWC iteration was still the absolute best, as you can see in this Enfeeble Minotaur kill video.
In 3.0 (Harbinger) there are going to be some changes to the core game mechanics which completely destroy both the CWC and Poison interactions of ED. To summarize:
- Double dipping is gone, so the poison interaction with ED is plain dead
- Energy shield sources in the game are being substantially lowered, so it will be more difficult to achieve consistent ES numbers after Oriath's launch
- Essence Drain damage is being buffed by a significant amount (about 43% at high gem level) to compensate for the fact that it doesn't scale anymore with projectile damage modifiers
- Contagion damage is being buffed by a significant amount (about 25% at high gem level), it is going to have more radius at max level and its cast time is being lowered from 0.85 to 0.6, dramatically increasing the clearspeed of our Ascendant
- Breath of the Council chaos damage bonus is being buffed from 80% max to 100% max
- Vaal Lightning Trap's shock debuff is being nerfed (from 50% increased damage taken to 15%)
- The Scion's Trickster sub-ascendancy is being buffed (50% extra recovery of mana, life and ES after killing a mob is insane while mapping!)
- The Scion's "Path" ascendancy nodes now give 2 extra passive points
- The bandit rewards are going to be adjusted, now we still kill all bandits but we only get 2 passive points instead of 3 total
- Two new interesting support gems we can make use of are being implemented in PoE: Efficacy and Arcane Surge. We will use the first one to replace Slower Projectiles, and the second one as an extra Contagion link to take advantage from the spell damage boost
when it is triggered
- Rapid Decay support is being renamed into Swift Affliction support
- Discipline aura now has 30% extra ES recharge rate built into it to compensate for the ES nerf
- Elreon ES% enchants on rings are gone, now we will look at the 20% faster start of ES recharge enchant by Leo for endgame purposes
This character can start from a really cheap gear and do normal Atziri on a really low budget (items like Solaris Lorica are usually dirt cheap even at leagues' starts), but if you want it to really shine at higher levels and destroy the endgame content you have to invest some
serious currencies. I personally did a lot of farming and trading to get my Ascendant to her current state.
I can assure you this build is really enjoyable, especially at higher levels. Don't expect to be overpowered at lower levels: the Mistress of Agony enters the ownage mode in the 80s, and the even faster ownage mode in the 90s.
Table of Contents
1. Build mechanics and explanations
2. Pros / Cons
3. Passive Tree
4. Ascendancy Points
5. Gem Setup
6. Gear
7. Flasks, Jewels and Enchantments
8. Bandits
9. Pantheon Powers
10. Leveling and Ascension priorities
1. Build mechanics and explanations
First of all, this is an entirely chaos-based character who relies on the spreading of a damage over time single-target skill, Essence Drain. The spreading happens via Contagion, another damage over time skill, but with a good area of effect radius. Mechanics are simple:
you contagion an area, then target the potentially weakest mob in that area and shoot an ED bullet in its direction. When your target dies, the entire Contagion area will be affected by both Contagion and Essence Drain DotS. And the Decay craft on a dagger can push
the single target damage a bit further if you like it (but I do not).
This character makes also use of some utility skills and curses to boost both the damage and the survivability. Wither, when applied to a spell totem, constantly debuffs an area, increasing the chaos damage taken by all the foes inside by a stacking percentage (capped at
140% chaos damage taken, or 20 wither stacks). This has proven to be very useful against high health mobs / bosses, especially if you can pre-cast the totem at no damage cost (think about Atziri's phase changes, for example). This Scion also uses Vaal Lightning Trap, if
needed, to apply shocking ground to an area, again increasing the damage taken by the mobs affected. Her curses help with sustaining the damage, too: Temporal Chains increases the duration of debuffs on targets (contagion, essence drain, wither or decay for example),
allowing for a smoother gameplay, while making enemies' curses on her less effective. Don't go mad if your hideout ED tooltip looks low in terms of damage; it does not take into account the effect of Vaal Lightning Trap, Wither, enemies' chaos resistance reduction (from
the Occultist sub-ascendancy) and combat gains (increased damage after killing a cursed enemy for example). The real DPS you do in optimal conditions, when all of the debuffs are up, is way higher.
The defensive options are great too: the Mistress of Agony has got strong evasion mechanics and a decent block chance, plus the extra mitigations from Fortify (applied in a wise way via Shield Charge if needed). She has two very strong defensive curses in her arsenal:
Enfeeble and Temporal Chains. The synergistic flask setup and the life regen (converted into ES regen via Zealot's Oath from our only unique flask) from gear / passives / Essence Drain help a lot with survivability when mapping, breaching and lab running.
The theory is simple: we aim to have a decent ES pool (over 8k is achievable without tremendous gear costs, over 10k (with a peak of ~11k) with mirrorworthy gear, reserving most of our mana for curses via Blasphemy, and using a mana potion for no regen situations.
The health (converted in ES) regen is quite good because Essence Drain has a regen mechanic included into it (Regenerate 0.5% of Debuff Damage as Life). That 0.5% is added to all the other sources of regen, like the ones we can get from our gear or the passive tree. To
take advantage from this extra regen, in the lowlife version we use The Sorrow of the Divine unique flask, so we gain Zealot's Oath and Consecrated ground (and some extra damage too!),
This is not a leech build, so we have to adjust our gameplay accordingly. Dodging whatever mobs throw at us is important, especially in the highest tier maps and unforgiving fights like Uber Trio, Atziri, Core Malachai, Pale Council, Guardians and Shaper.
In optimal conditions of gearing / character level (90+), we should aim at these values:
- Overcapped elemental resistances to deal with Elemental Weakness maps
- Positive chaos resistance
- 9k+ Energy Shield (in the low life version)
2. Pros / Cons
+ Very funny and active gameplay
+ Very efficient in solo playing
+ Safe playstyle, you are a dotter and not a spammer of a single skill so you have time to dodge whatever mobs throw at you
+ Reflect proof, since chaos damage rocks
+ Can do all map mods! Temporal Chains and No Regen mods are pretty horrible, but definitely doable with some patience and using a mana potion when needed
+ More than decent clear speed if you aren't a fan of backtracking for crap currencies :D
CONS
- In parties this build lacks of burst damage, so it's a lot less efficient
- Hall of the Grandmasters CI champions cannot be killed with pure chaos damage builds like this one
- Temporal Chains / No Regen maps: they are perfectly doable, but I find them incredibly annoying; I don't love to be super slow :)
3. Passive Tree
Level 100 Passive Tree
If you want to check the build endgame setup with mirrorworthy gear and its full gems / passives you can use this pastebin link in Path of Building:
https://pastebin.com/pLXw3vwQ
Please note that the passive tree is optimized for level 100, with 127 talent points spent; those include the extra passives we get from the Scion Ascendancies and from helping Eramir killing all the bandits.
Witch variant
On request, I deployed a Witch Occultist version of my Ascendant. It's more oriented to defense, but the damage is still very high thanks to the Occultist tools (Void Beacon is amazing).
4. Ascendancy Points
As you know, the Ascendant is amazing because of her flexibility of choices.
The Occultist sub-ascendancy is extremely powerful for this build, thanks to the extra ES, free regen and enemy chaos resistance lowering. Then, after the 3.0 buffs, the Trickster sub-ascendancy is the second best, because it provides amazing defensive bonuses and makes
the gameplay even smoother. The last 2 ascendancy points go to Path of the Witch, to take advantage from a second starting point.
5. Gem Setup
Small note: the gems are listed in order of importance.
6L (Body armour, RGGBBB): Essence Drain | Controlled Destruction | Efficacy | Void Manipulation | Swift Affliction | Empower lvl 4 (expensive) or Less Duration (cheap)
4S (Helmet, BBBB): Contagion | Faster Casting | Increased Area of Effect | Arcane Surge
4L (Boots, GBBB): Blasphemy | Temporal Chains | Enfeeble | Discipline
4L (Gloves, RBBB): Wither | Spell Totem | Faster Casting Vaal Lightning Trap
3L (Spirit Shield, RGB): Clarity | Haste | Blood Magic
3L (Scepter, RRG): Shield Charge | Fortify | Faster Attacks
Small note 2: 20 quality is NOT required on the following gems.
- Empower
- Haste
- Clarity
- Discipline
- Vaal Lightning Trap
- Blood Magic
- Less Duration (not only quality is not required here, it's a nerf if you have it)
Small note 3: the most important skill gems to get 20q on as soon as possible are by far Contagion, Essence Drain (obviously!) and all its supports, Wither, Temporal Chains and Enfeeble.
Small note 4: the levels of Clarity and Arcane Surge have to be adjusted depending on your gear / preferences.
6. Gear
As a general rule, you want gear which has:
- ES / Life / Evasion
- Resistances to cap at 75% the elemental ones in merciless (and to ideally overcap for Elemental Weakness maps, i.e. 109% elemental resistances after you defeat Act 10 Kitava) and to have positive chaos one (this is easily achieved if you own a Presence of Chayula).
- Some strength, if you need it to make up with gear requirements (you should aim for 113 str to equip Breath of the Council)
- Mana regeneration
- Life regeneration
- Spell damage / Chaos damage (on shield, for example, or from essence crafts on rings)
- Cast Speed
Cast speed can be useful to boost clear speed, pick it if you find gear with it consider that it usually boosts the value / price of items by a significant margin. Consider it as a "luxury" when you get rich.
At start, your gear will be mostly rare with useful stats. Shavronne's Wrappings is by far your most important piece of gear to obtain, since it unlocks the lowlife option, but you can go with Solaris Lorica if you haven't got enough currencies for a Shav.
6a. Best in slot gear
Weapon 1: Breath of the Council. It has amazing mods for the ED gameplay. It allows us to reach 20 wither stacks without using Increased Duration support in the Wither setup. Best weapon by a large degree.
Shield: a rare Fossilized Spirit Shield. Try to get a spell damage mod on it and high ES / decent resistances.
Body Armour: Shavronne's Wrappings. No chance here, we are low life and this is a core item for the character.
Helmet: a rare Hubris Circlet with lots of ES and some resistances. Intellect / on it is a luxury.
Boots: Voidwalker. These babies are fantastic, they give all we need: free pierce and phasing while mapping, evasion, some ES, 30% movement speed, and an amazing defensive mod, 20% chance to avoid projectiles while phasing. Don't undervalue those boots like a lot
of players do, they are amazing while mapping, especially in the highest tiers.
Gloves: rare Fingerless Silk Gloves with lots of ES and some resistances. Intellect on them is a luxury.
Amulet: Presence of Chayula. This thing is seriously OP for lowlife builds. Get one if you can and you'll easily understand why.
Rings: these are two slots which are easy to obtain if you don't ask for too much. Try to grab rare rings with energy shield plus life and some resistances. The 20% faster start of energy shield recharge mod (by Leo) is the final goal you are going to obtain for endgame
content, and ideally a super expensive ring with the right mods should have the chaos damage essence craft on it. Best bases for rings are Prismatic, Two-Stone or Unset if you are a Vaal Discipline lover and need an extra socket to get it into the mix.
Belt: Bated Breath. Amazing ES, recharge and a bit of damage.
As a side note, this is my current gear in Standard League:
7. Flasks, Jewels and Enchantments
For Flasks, I highly recommend getting:
- 1 The Sorrow of the Divine
- 1 Quicksilver flask of Heat
- 1 Basalt flask of Staunching / Warding
- 1 Jade flask of Reflexes
- 1 Stibnite flask of Staunching / Warding
and a mana flask of your choice (to use in the slot of the Stibnite one) for no regen maps.
The Witch variant of this character uses a Witchfire Brew unique flask, too, instead of a magic Stibnite one. If you go for the Witch variant you should sacrifice the "Reflexes" suffix from the Jade flask to have all the required suffixes in the non-unique flask slots
(Staunching, Dousing, of Heat).
For Jewels, we have a lot of choices.
An unique jewel is recommended for survivability, since it boosts our ES slightly: Energy from Within. It has to be used in the jewel socket under the Melding cluster.
Our Scion scales with all of these damage stats you can find on jewels:
- Spell damage while holding a Shield
- Spell damage
- Chaos Damage
- Damage over time
- Damage
And ideally, you should aim at jewels with maximum energy shield on them. Keep in mind that good jewels with ES and damage stats are really expensive. Jewels are also a good way to fix resistance issues if you are short in some specific element.
For Enchantments, the choices are quite restrictive!
- Helmet: 40% increased Essence Drain damage.
- Boots: Regenerate 2% of Life and Mana per second if you have been hit recently
- Gloves: absolutely NO enchantment! We want to keep the Fingerless Silk Gloves' implicit as it is.
8. Bandits
Kill ALL the bandits! We love Eramir when going low life for the 2 extra passive points.
9. Pantheon Powers
All the Pantheon powers introduced in Fall of Oriath grant defensive bonuses to characters.
Our Ascendant can take decent benefits from some of them.
MAJOR GODS
We are stun immune, so Brine King power does nothing for us.
We have high chaos resistance and an anti bleed flask, so Arakaali power isn't that good.
The choice is between Lunaris and Solaris.
I personally go for Solaris. Single target fights in Oriath are much more dangerous when compared to mapping, and Solaris powers can be life-savers.
MINOR GODS
We are ES based, so Garukhan and Ryslatha powers do nothing for us.
We are reflect immune like all chaos damage based characters, so Yugul's power does nothing for us.
Tukohama's power isn't that good, since we are never going to be stationary.
Ralakesh's power isn't that good, since we have an anti bleed flask and we don't mind being maimed or blinded, because we don't attack at all, we are spellcasters.
The choice is between Gruthkul and Abberath.
I personally go for Abberath. We don't plan facetanking things, so the reduced ignite duration and the immunity to burning ground are huge bonuses for us. They come with a 5% reduced fire damage while moving, which is a good bonus too.
10. Leveling and Ascension priorities
LEVELING GUIDE IS GETTING REWORKED, I'LL UPDATE IT WHEN I CAN
As you know, in the leveling process, you should go for the Labyrinth 4 times to achieve your Ascendant subclass and all the Ascendancy points. This should be the order:
- Normal ascension: take the intelligence node and the passive point in the Witch zone.
- Cruel ascension: take the Occultist sub-spec and the intellect/dex node in the Shadow zone.
- Merciless ascension: take the passive point in the Shadow zone and the Trickster sub-spec.
- Uber Lab ascension: take the extra passive point in the Witch zone and the Path of the Witch sub-spec.
The Trickster build was optimal for survivability, and was a CI build (Chaos Inoculation). I won't update that version anymore, because I think it's pretty dead in the current state of the game.
NEW: Witch variant added! Look at the passive tree sub-section of the guide for more details!
Hello!
First build post here, so feel free to post criticism / suggestions / whatever you want to improve it.
I know there are a lot of Essence Drain builds of all kinds. I just wanted to post mine, since I have received some in-game requests for it after posting some hints in the Witch sub-forum.
This build has its best iteration by going low life. You can start as life based and then switch to CI (and eventually low life) when all your ES items are in place, respeccing some key nodes. I highly recommend going LL in the end, to tackle all the content of the game. I've
successfully killed Uber Atziri / Shaper / Guardians multiple times with my build.
The old life based poison version was featured in GGG's Build of The Week in Season 6, Episode 3 (29/9/2016).
The low life one came out after some experiments I made during Breach League. Since this new support gem was introduced in 2.5, I wanted to try it and gain all possible advantages from it... so this new iteration of the Mistress of Agony was born and I think it was
probably the best way to play an Essence Drain based character in Path of Exile pre-Fall of Oriath.
I want to point out a thing: this is NOT the best clearspeed build of the world, but it is incredibly efficient for solo playing, farming, mapping, labyrinth runs while being quite safe to play.
Build background and evolution over leagues
I leveled my Scion up to 95 in Talisman League (2.1), when Essence Drain / Wither / Contagion were added to the game.
I decided to publish the build after Ascendancy came out because the character became even stronger than it was (and this was a common feeling in 2.2).
In 2.3 (Prophecy) we got 2 additional ascendancy points, so we could take advantage from the double starting point to save some precious passives which could be invested in a more efficient way.
In 2.4 (Essence) this build received some small nerfs, which fortunately didn't impact the playstyle, the clearspeed or the efficiency of the character in a noticeable way. The details:
- Pierce support gem got a 10% damage nerf and a 20% increase in mana multiplier
- Poison damage was lowered by 2%
- Bosses' curse efficiency reduction became a lot stronger
But some good things were added for us: Essence of Delirium (which allows to craft our endgame dagger), fingerless silk gloves base type (16% free spell damage on implicit mod), Shaper boots (free pierce while mapping) and crystal belt basetype (lots of extra ES from the
implicit).
In 2.5 (Breach) the CWC support gem was introduced in PoE. And it came together with some nice new items too, especially Presence of Chayula to play low life while gaining some good survivability tools (extra ES and 60% chaos resistance).
In 2.6 (Legacy) there were no important changes to the ED playstyle. The CWC iteration was still the absolute best, as you can see in this Enfeeble Minotaur kill video.
In 3.0 (Harbinger) there are going to be some changes to the core game mechanics which completely destroy both the CWC and Poison interactions of ED. To summarize:
- Double dipping is gone, so the poison interaction with ED is plain dead
- Energy shield sources in the game are being substantially lowered, so it will be more difficult to achieve consistent ES numbers after Oriath's launch
- Essence Drain damage is being buffed by a significant amount (about 43% at high gem level) to compensate for the fact that it doesn't scale anymore with projectile damage modifiers
- Contagion damage is being buffed by a significant amount (about 25% at high gem level), it is going to have more radius at max level and its cast time is being lowered from 0.85 to 0.6, dramatically increasing the clearspeed of our Ascendant
- Breath of the Council chaos damage bonus is being buffed from 80% max to 100% max
- Vaal Lightning Trap's shock debuff is being nerfed (from 50% increased damage taken to 15%)
- The Scion's Trickster sub-ascendancy is being buffed (50% extra recovery of mana, life and ES after killing a mob is insane while mapping!)
- The Scion's "Path" ascendancy nodes now give 2 extra passive points
- The bandit rewards are going to be adjusted, now we still kill all bandits but we only get 2 passive points instead of 3 total
- Two new interesting support gems we can make use of are being implemented in PoE: Efficacy and Arcane Surge. We will use the first one to replace Slower Projectiles, and the second one as an extra Contagion link to take advantage from the spell damage boost
when it is triggered
- Rapid Decay support is being renamed into Swift Affliction support
- Discipline aura now has 30% extra ES recharge rate built into it to compensate for the ES nerf
- Elreon ES% enchants on rings are gone, now we will look at the 20% faster start of ES recharge enchant by Leo for endgame purposes
This character can start from a really cheap gear and do normal Atziri on a really low budget (items like Solaris Lorica are usually dirt cheap even at leagues' starts), but if you want it to really shine at higher levels and destroy the endgame content you have to invest some
serious currencies. I personally did a lot of farming and trading to get my Ascendant to her current state.
I can assure you this build is really enjoyable, especially at higher levels. Don't expect to be overpowered at lower levels: the Mistress of Agony enters the ownage mode in the 80s, and the even faster ownage mode in the 90s.
Table of Contents
1. Build mechanics and explanations
2. Pros / Cons
3. Passive Tree
4. Ascendancy Points
5. Gem Setup
6. Gear
7. Flasks, Jewels and Enchantments
8. Bandits
9. Pantheon Powers
10. Leveling and Ascension priorities
1. Build mechanics and explanations
First of all, this is an entirely chaos-based character who relies on the spreading of a damage over time single-target skill, Essence Drain. The spreading happens via Contagion, another damage over time skill, but with a good area of effect radius. Mechanics are simple:
you contagion an area, then target the potentially weakest mob in that area and shoot an ED bullet in its direction. When your target dies, the entire Contagion area will be affected by both Contagion and Essence Drain DotS. And the Decay craft on a dagger can push
the single target damage a bit further if you like it (but I do not).
This character makes also use of some utility skills and curses to boost both the damage and the survivability. Wither, when applied to a spell totem, constantly debuffs an area, increasing the chaos damage taken by all the foes inside by a stacking percentage (capped at
140% chaos damage taken, or 20 wither stacks). This has proven to be very useful against high health mobs / bosses, especially if you can pre-cast the totem at no damage cost (think about Atziri's phase changes, for example). This Scion also uses Vaal Lightning Trap, if
needed, to apply shocking ground to an area, again increasing the damage taken by the mobs affected. Her curses help with sustaining the damage, too: Temporal Chains increases the duration of debuffs on targets (contagion, essence drain, wither or decay for example),
allowing for a smoother gameplay, while making enemies' curses on her less effective. Don't go mad if your hideout ED tooltip looks low in terms of damage; it does not take into account the effect of Vaal Lightning Trap, Wither, enemies' chaos resistance reduction (from
the Occultist sub-ascendancy) and combat gains (increased damage after killing a cursed enemy for example). The real DPS you do in optimal conditions, when all of the debuffs are up, is way higher.
The defensive options are great too: the Mistress of Agony has got strong evasion mechanics and a decent block chance, plus the extra mitigations from Fortify (applied in a wise way via Shield Charge if needed). She has two very strong defensive curses in her arsenal:
Enfeeble and Temporal Chains. The synergistic flask setup and the life regen (converted into ES regen via Zealot's Oath from our only unique flask) from gear / passives / Essence Drain help a lot with survivability when mapping, breaching and lab running.
The theory is simple: we aim to have a decent ES pool (over 8k is achievable without tremendous gear costs, over 10k (with a peak of ~11k) with mirrorworthy gear, reserving most of our mana for curses via Blasphemy, and using a mana potion for no regen situations.
The health (converted in ES) regen is quite good because Essence Drain has a regen mechanic included into it (Regenerate 0.5% of Debuff Damage as Life). That 0.5% is added to all the other sources of regen, like the ones we can get from our gear or the passive tree. To
take advantage from this extra regen, in the lowlife version we use The Sorrow of the Divine unique flask, so we gain Zealot's Oath and Consecrated ground (and some extra damage too!),
This is not a leech build, so we have to adjust our gameplay accordingly. Dodging whatever mobs throw at us is important, especially in the highest tier maps and unforgiving fights like Uber Trio, Atziri, Core Malachai, Pale Council, Guardians and Shaper.
In optimal conditions of gearing / character level (90+), we should aim at these values:
- Overcapped elemental resistances to deal with Elemental Weakness maps
- Positive chaos resistance
- 9k+ Energy Shield (in the low life version)
2. Pros / Cons
+ Very funny and active gameplay
+ Very efficient in solo playing
+ Safe playstyle, you are a dotter and not a spammer of a single skill so you have time to dodge whatever mobs throw at you
+ Reflect proof, since chaos damage rocks
+ Can do all map mods! Temporal Chains and No Regen mods are pretty horrible, but definitely doable with some patience and using a mana potion when needed
+ More than decent clear speed if you aren't a fan of backtracking for crap currencies :D
CONS
- In parties this build lacks of burst damage, so it's a lot less efficient
- Hall of the Grandmasters CI champions cannot be killed with pure chaos damage builds like this one
- Temporal Chains / No Regen maps: they are perfectly doable, but I find them incredibly annoying; I don't love to be super slow :)
3. Passive Tree
Level 100 Passive Tree
If you want to check the build endgame setup with mirrorworthy gear and its full gems / passives you can use this pastebin link in Path of Building:
https://pastebin.com/pLXw3vwQ
Please note that the passive tree is optimized for level 100, with 127 talent points spent; those include the extra passives we get from the Scion Ascendancies and from helping Eramir killing all the bandits.
Witch variant
On request, I deployed a Witch Occultist version of my Ascendant. It's more oriented to defense, but the damage is still very high thanks to the Occultist tools (Void Beacon is amazing).
4. Ascendancy Points
As you know, the Ascendant is amazing because of her flexibility of choices.
The Occultist sub-ascendancy is extremely powerful for this build, thanks to the extra ES, free regen and enemy chaos resistance lowering. Then, after the 3.0 buffs, the Trickster sub-ascendancy is the second best, because it provides amazing defensive bonuses and makes
the gameplay even smoother. The last 2 ascendancy points go to Path of the Witch, to take advantage from a second starting point.
5. Gem Setup
Small note: the gems are listed in order of importance.
6L (Body armour, RGGBBB): Essence Drain | Controlled Destruction | Efficacy | Void Manipulation | Swift Affliction | Empower lvl 4 (expensive) or Less Duration (cheap)
4S (Helmet, BBBB): Contagion | Faster Casting | Increased Area of Effect | Arcane Surge
4L (Boots, GBBB): Blasphemy | Temporal Chains | Enfeeble | Discipline
4L (Gloves, RBBB): Wither | Spell Totem | Faster Casting Vaal Lightning Trap
3L (Spirit Shield, RGB): Clarity | Haste | Blood Magic
3L (Scepter, RRG): Shield Charge | Fortify | Faster Attacks
Small note 2: 20 quality is NOT required on the following gems.
- Empower
- Haste
- Clarity
- Discipline
- Vaal Lightning Trap
- Blood Magic
- Less Duration (not only quality is not required here, it's a nerf if you have it)
Small note 3: the most important skill gems to get 20q on as soon as possible are by far Contagion, Essence Drain (obviously!) and all its supports, Wither, Temporal Chains and Enfeeble.
Small note 4: the levels of Clarity and Arcane Surge have to be adjusted depending on your gear / preferences.
6. Gear
As a general rule, you want gear which has:
- ES / Life / Evasion
- Resistances to cap at 75% the elemental ones in merciless (and to ideally overcap for Elemental Weakness maps, i.e. 109% elemental resistances after you defeat Act 10 Kitava) and to have positive chaos one (this is easily achieved if you own a Presence of Chayula).
- Some strength, if you need it to make up with gear requirements (you should aim for 113 str to equip Breath of the Council)
- Mana regeneration
- Life regeneration
- Spell damage / Chaos damage (on shield, for example, or from essence crafts on rings)
- Cast Speed
Cast speed can be useful to boost clear speed, pick it if you find gear with it consider that it usually boosts the value / price of items by a significant margin. Consider it as a "luxury" when you get rich.
At start, your gear will be mostly rare with useful stats. Shavronne's Wrappings is by far your most important piece of gear to obtain, since it unlocks the lowlife option, but you can go with Solaris Lorica if you haven't got enough currencies for a Shav.
6a. Best in slot gear
Weapon 1: Breath of the Council. It has amazing mods for the ED gameplay. It allows us to reach 20 wither stacks without using Increased Duration support in the Wither setup. Best weapon by a large degree.
Shield: a rare Fossilized Spirit Shield. Try to get a spell damage mod on it and high ES / decent resistances.
Body Armour: Shavronne's Wrappings. No chance here, we are low life and this is a core item for the character.
Helmet: a rare Hubris Circlet with lots of ES and some resistances. Intellect / on it is a luxury.
Boots: Voidwalker. These babies are fantastic, they give all we need: free pierce and phasing while mapping, evasion, some ES, 30% movement speed, and an amazing defensive mod, 20% chance to avoid projectiles while phasing. Don't undervalue those boots like a lot
of players do, they are amazing while mapping, especially in the highest tiers.
Gloves: rare Fingerless Silk Gloves with lots of ES and some resistances. Intellect on them is a luxury.
Amulet: Presence of Chayula. This thing is seriously OP for lowlife builds. Get one if you can and you'll easily understand why.
Rings: these are two slots which are easy to obtain if you don't ask for too much. Try to grab rare rings with energy shield plus life and some resistances. The 20% faster start of energy shield recharge mod (by Leo) is the final goal you are going to obtain for endgame
content, and ideally a super expensive ring with the right mods should have the chaos damage essence craft on it. Best bases for rings are Prismatic, Two-Stone or Unset if you are a Vaal Discipline lover and need an extra socket to get it into the mix.
Belt: Bated Breath. Amazing ES, recharge and a bit of damage.
As a side note, this is my current gear in Standard League:
7. Flasks, Jewels and Enchantments
For Flasks, I highly recommend getting:
- 1 The Sorrow of the Divine
- 1 Quicksilver flask of Heat
- 1 Basalt flask of Staunching / Warding
- 1 Jade flask of Reflexes
- 1 Stibnite flask of Staunching / Warding
and a mana flask of your choice (to use in the slot of the Stibnite one) for no regen maps.
The Witch variant of this character uses a Witchfire Brew unique flask, too, instead of a magic Stibnite one. If you go for the Witch variant you should sacrifice the "Reflexes" suffix from the Jade flask to have all the required suffixes in the non-unique flask slots
(Staunching, Dousing, of Heat).
For Jewels, we have a lot of choices.
An unique jewel is recommended for survivability, since it boosts our ES slightly: Energy from Within. It has to be used in the jewel socket under the Melding cluster.
Our Scion scales with all of these damage stats you can find on jewels:
- Spell damage while holding a Shield
- Spell damage
- Chaos Damage
- Damage over time
- Damage
And ideally, you should aim at jewels with maximum energy shield on them. Keep in mind that good jewels with ES and damage stats are really expensive. Jewels are also a good way to fix resistance issues if you are short in some specific element.
For Enchantments, the choices are quite restrictive!
- Helmet: 40% increased Essence Drain damage.
- Boots: Regenerate 2% of Life and Mana per second if you have been hit recently
- Gloves: absolutely NO enchantment! We want to keep the Fingerless Silk Gloves' implicit as it is.
8. Bandits
Kill ALL the bandits! We love Eramir when going low life for the 2 extra passive points.
9. Pantheon Powers
All the Pantheon powers introduced in Fall of Oriath grant defensive bonuses to characters.
Our Ascendant can take decent benefits from some of them.
MAJOR GODS
We are stun immune, so Brine King power does nothing for us.
We have high chaos resistance and an anti bleed flask, so Arakaali power isn't that good.
The choice is between Lunaris and Solaris.
I personally go for Solaris. Single target fights in Oriath are much more dangerous when compared to mapping, and Solaris powers can be life-savers.
MINOR GODS
We are ES based, so Garukhan and Ryslatha powers do nothing for us.
We are reflect immune like all chaos damage based characters, so Yugul's power does nothing for us.
Tukohama's power isn't that good, since we are never going to be stationary.
Ralakesh's power isn't that good, since we have an anti bleed flask and we don't mind being maimed or blinded, because we don't attack at all, we are spellcasters.
The choice is between Gruthkul and Abberath.
I personally go for Abberath. We don't plan facetanking things, so the reduced ignite duration and the immunity to burning ground are huge bonuses for us. They come with a 5% reduced fire damage while moving, which is a good bonus too.
10. Leveling and Ascension priorities
LEVELING GUIDE IS GETTING REWORKED, I'LL UPDATE IT WHEN I CAN
As you know, in the leveling process, you should go for the Labyrinth 4 times to achieve your Ascendant subclass and all the Ascendancy points. This should be the order:
- Normal ascension: take the intelligence node and the passive point in the Witch zone.
- Cruel ascension: take the Occultist sub-spec and the intellect/dex node in the Shadow zone.
- Merciless ascension: take the passive point in the Shadow zone and the Trickster sub-spec.
- Uber Lab ascension: take the extra passive point in the Witch zone and the Path of the Witch sub-spec.
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