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

All right, thanks for the tips - I made the switch!

Updated character and tree are here and here.

At the moment, my stats are about the same (7k EHP, overcapped resistances, ~25k DoT dps with charges up), but on a 5L instead of 6L, so that's nice. The extra auras don't feel that exciting yet, since they're just getting me back to the same EHP, and my defenses are actually lower now since my evasion bottomed out and I no longer have Fortify.

Next I have to switch out my flasks, and next level I'm taking the witch starting node. After that, I think all I have left is fiddling with the passive tree to see what I like best, and gear upgrades.

Does %life regen on the tree make that much difference, given the ED regen? I think it should be fine to drop most of it, since I'll have ED regen in fights and normal ES recharge out of fights, right?

Also, isn't Uber lab going to be awful as a pure CI character? (no flasks to top off mid-trap)

Can somone please check Notheere out and tell me if i am doing anything stupid as i am prone to do.
Build is nice but a bit squishy atm, will get better with more leveling i presume.
Thanks.

@harmonictempest: I keep the life regen when I play on hc. It is really nice when I farm Uber Lab and screw things up. Energy shield only takes 60% damage from traps in lab, so with our regen from ED, passive tree and trickster, you are extremely tanky in lab. When I am on standard, I run Trial of Burning Rage without ever caring about the fire pits being active at all, as I easily out regen the damage by killing the skellies.

@EDMOSES: You have elemental damage nodes at the start of the tree, run a shav's and Low Life gear and a passive tree set up for life.

Get rid of Maligaro's and Nomic's Storm asap, use Reduced Mana as a sixth link in Shav's, drop all life nodes from the tree and swap them for ES nodes, drop all 3 health flasks and get utility flasks instead, get Arcane Vision and Pain Attunement, swap the first fire nodes from elemental damage to chaos/phys damage. Use blasphemy with your curses, you currently selfcast 3 curses. Swap your gem links in the dagger for Blood Magic > Clarity > Discipline to force Low Life.

First of all i have to thank you Nedieth for your time and effort in helping me.
Got this account along with a lot of ex's from my son and have got some really good gear but i am older and not real savvy to tell the truth, this game's tree is confusing to say the least for me.
When you say "use shav's" i assume you mean shav's ring?
That would mean dropping Deodre's Damning cause the other ring is just too good with resistances, is that ok?
I also have Skyforth's boots if they are any good for this build otherwise i will just go get some suitable ES/Life boots to suit, what do you think?
Thanks again for the help and please bear with me if i ask stupid questions.
Your HC build interests me greatly cause too many button pushes gets me frustrated and then i die if you can understand that so a tank build is what i need.

Just 1 other query is swapping a lvl4 empower for reduced mana a good trade? that empower gives me a heap more dps but admittedly the gems aren't maxed as yet.

Aha! I will change the way I explain things then.

I can see that you swapped around on a lot of things, and everything looks much better now. When I first checked out your character, you did not have a sixth gem, so I assumed you didn't have a level 4 empower. The empower is the way to go. Shav's generally refers to Shavronne's Wrappings, the body armour that we use. This armour lets us reserve all our life for auras. With this body armour, there are no damage types that can penetrate our shield.

You want to swap your curse links from your gloves to your head. The reason why we use this headpiece, is to exploit the reduced mana reserved it gives for our blasphemy curses. After you swap, you should be able to comfortably run all 3 curses at the same time, as well as you can drop the blasphemy support from the link (if you do not have a level 20 one with 20% quality) and support the curses with enlighten for instance.

You should also just use some rare (yellow) boots with high movement speed, energy shield and some resists if needed. Skyforth is terrible for us, as crit is not very useful and all our survivability comes from regen, which they do not allow.

When you swap around your gems in head and gloves, you could consider unlinking your gloves. by making your gloves a 3+1 link, you can have spell totem, wither and faster casting in one part, and a flame dash in the other. having a movement skill greatly increases survivability and flexibility.

Since we have next to no life available, even the one life flask is redundant. I would suggest getting a quicksilver flask instead. movement speed = staying alive.

For further progress in the tree, you just have to consider yourself what you want. you can go towards the templar area for a larger contagion by taking the Amplify cluster. This helps general clear speed. Other options are focusing more on energy shield to get as tanky as possible or getting more projectile and chaos damage to increase general dps and boss killing potential.

I hope this clears up some things for you.

Hey nedieth. Can you look at my character : Richsoft and tell me what I need to improve or replace? My Ed tool tip dps is still low.

Your ED is just level 16. The base damage will be almost double when it gets to level 21.

Expert thoughts on using "Brittle Barrier" cobalt jewel?
Build is coming along nicely now, thanks for the very good advice and help.

it can be quite good if you play occultist ascendancy (witch), but not so much for trickster. 10% increased damage taken does increase the chances of a one-shot, especially on content like guardians and uber atziri, where we take hits in the 10k range. trickster already has quite fast start of ES recharge, and due to ED mechanics + trickster leech, we do not really need faster start of the recharge outside of boss killing situations. for witch however, getting ES recharge going asap is really strong due to their ascendancy points, making this jewel more interesting even though it has a major drawback.

in conclusion, if you want faster start of ES recharge, you should get rare jewels with %ES, % faster start of recharge and some damage/faster casting.