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

I already travel on the far outside to the north west in the passive tree, so I figured I could grab the "Spiritual Aid" node. This was both to compensate for the lower rolls on spell and chaos damage we have now with the new and very powerful Chaos DoT multi, and to potentially make the cost of jewels lower as well as opening up for other interesting gear choices.

Since pretty much nobody plays high end ED these days, I was able to grab some pretty GG jewels quite cheaply anyway, so I didn't even remember to add the stat for my search while buying jewels. It did end up affecting my pathing in the tree slightly though, and all in all, I was quite happy with the choice to go with minion damage. LL ED does have a more flexible passive tree than the life/mana version in my opinion, so past level 80-85 you can pretty much pick and choose whatever approach you feel like.

I do regret selling my gear before I saved it in a forum post. The character was the most powerful ED character I have even played. The problem for me currently is that Storm Brand and CoC exists, so I will continue focusing my efforts on non ED chars.

Oh, I see: "Increases and Reductions to minion Damage also affect you". I didn't notice that; makes a lot more sense now. I thought I was crazy thinking that minion damage affected ED somehow (not knowing about that node).

Thanks for the reply :)

Damn the new chaos spell announcements got me hyped as hell. After two leagues i'm actually looking forward to using this as a starter again. So many new toys to play with!

On one hand blight now applies wither so we can probably dump wither totem, in fact this change alone makes me not want to replace blight with soulrend since dropping totems is such a chore.

On the other hand rend has such a nice range and probably is safer for uber bosses since you don't have much time to stand there and stack blight into their face. Maybe even allelopathy for blight mapping and another gloves with soulrend link fitted for single target damage for bossing.

Bane looks gimmicky as hell though, i'm generally using curses for defense, and manually applying them for some extra aoe damage at the risk of having some monster avoid it and get to you seems fishy. ED aoe damage is great as is, compromising defensive curse link for some extra doesn't seem worth it. Although maybe replace obsolete wither totem link with it.

Also ED now aoe on impact for all those times when you contag a pack, shoot ed at at and some side monster without contag decides to be a hero and body blocks it lol.


Although a lot will probably change due to "complete spell rebalance" but at least i expect leveling with soulrend to be much smoother than with blight/ed.

I was extremely disappointed by the new chaos spells announcements, to be honest.

Bane and Soulrend don't add anything - in terms of pure gameplay - to the already existing Contagion and ED.

It was a lot better to focus on buffing the two "old" chaos spells than adding new ones with similar gameplay...

I am not entirely convinced what I am going to do yet. At the moment, a Soulrend/ED build looks really nice, but Withering Presence from Occultist vs. the speed of a Trickster got me wondering what I want to do. It would be nice if Soulrend stacked so that cast speed is more relevant to the build when excluding Blight.

On an unrelated note, i wonder how new "borderline broken" handcasting support gems will affect us since apart from wither we aren't using totems, mines, traps or whatever.

hello nedieth, are u return to rework builds on patch 3.6 when ED/ blight have a buff ?

I love Essence Drain and this has always been my favorite build guide. Please update it for 3.6!

+1 for the update !
We BEG you.

Nedieth, pls update !