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

Because i am a bit slow to react to bad situations do you think going for Void Barrier before Atrophy would be better for me?. A bit more tankier type build?

You should of course go for whatever you feel is correct for your play style. For me, the feeling of safety from a larger ES pool starts to get smaller past the 10-12k mark. At this stage you can pretty much take one of whatever in the face and still survive. Past this, I would focus more on damage to kill stuff faster, cast speed/movement speed to be more nimble, or different forms of mitigation to make our layered defense stronger. Rainbow Strides + Rumi's for instance provides a quite nice amount of spell block with a small investment compared to other alternatives.

All in all, I would try to get more evasion/dodge/block/armour rather than just focusing on ES like a mad man if you feel squishy. I usually solve that by using flasks that massively boost evasion or armour in combination with a Basalt flask for flat physical mitigation. By keeping a defense like this up most of the time, you might be able to jump head first into danger and get out on the other side instead of staying at range and "pulling" the danger towards you.

I might not have answered your question very well or directly, but if you feel like you are slow to react, most dangerous stuff in the game can be countered by just keep moving forward (my rip in essence would be fine if i had not been tired and chickened out for instance).

That was a good answer and maybe i am being a bit hasty but at lvl 80 my E.S. with 5 auras/curses is at 7600 and tooltip dps is 9500 so even though i feel my gear is above reasonable my figures seem low?
Check me out and advise where i could improve, i have 16 exalts left but have heaps i can sell if needed.
Thanks again

You might want to pick up a Corrupted Eye of Chayula with +1 curse so you can run all your curses effectively. (you may have already talked about this earlier, just haven't read all 16 pages of posts.)

Updated the guide to reflect changes to the build with 2.5 patch notes, which is nothing. We still prioritize Decay over Consuming Dark, but it is more situational now that decay does 750 DPS. Also added/cleaned up a few sections a little bit.

Hi. I'm thinking of starting the new league with this build, since I've never played ED/Contagion yet. I was wondering if this build is capable of farming Uber Lab comfortably (even on the hard days).

Thanks for the guide!

I usually don't run charge capacitors since they take so much time, but most other mods are just fine. stuff that adds double elemental/damage buffs to izaro are a pain ofc since he starts hitting for 10k+, but it would be hard regardless of build. You don't kill bosses instantly with ED, but after a good 5-10 sec he is dead.

Hi, planning this as a league starter, and agonizing over a couple of choices (was hoping you can help me out).

The obvious is Occultist vs Trickster. My thought is that Occultist would allow +1 curse, saving you a ring spot. As well as the "When regen starts, it can't be broken".

Would you say Trickster is noticably better?

Another question is with regards to Auxium vs Anti-freeze flasks. Have you tried the belt option?

Also wanted to ask - how come you don't go for Hex Master on your passive tree? wouldnt it be amazing for triple blasphemy curse? Or Skittering Runes for that matter.

And last - with the Weave the Arcane buff, would you say it's now worth going for that over Frenzy? Especially for Atziri/Shaper?

Short version on ascendancies: Trickster is clear speed, Occultist is the boss killer.

Since you want the +1 curse, you have to skip Vile Bastion. This gives the Occultist 60% less regen from ED ticks. You might not be able to stay in fire pits in lab/trials or tank Uber Atziri trash as well as a Trickster if you drop this. Other than this, I feel it is quite easy to list the pros/cons of each ascendancy:

Trickster:
- Faster start of ES recharge, and faster recharge once it starts due to synergy between Patient Reaper and Ghost Dance.
- Needs +1 curse Chayula or Doedre's Damning to tri-curse.
- Should be rerolled to CI as soon as you are comfortable doing so.
- Faster clear speed during general mapping due to more cast speed/damage from frenzy charges (which stays up for bosses outside of guardians/atziri/shaper/vinktar.
- Better Layered defense. Higher base ES, some dodge/spell dodge and evasion. These are more interesting now that Rumi's has been butchered again, and we lean more towards dodge and evasion from flasks.

Occultist:
- ES recharge keeps going once it starts.
- +1 curse, the economic option to a +1 curse chayula.
- Easier to play as hybrid due to dual regen. ED/regen for HP and Vile Bastion for ES.
- Higher DPS potential vs bosses, as they often have chaos resist which Occultists lower (Provides more real DPS than frenzy charges).
- No layered defense from Ascendancies.

The ES recharge is mostly irrelevant while clearing trash, where ED regen keeps your ES maxed out almost constantly.

I am not comfortable with Auxium only. Bosses like Core Malachai still chills you like crazy, and Merveil has quite high freeze chance even against life builds. Since I am using freeze immunity on my QS flask, I already have about 20 sec of freeze immunity on demand, which is more than what is needed for most bosses where it is relevant. By using a heavy belt, it is also easier to reach the required 111/114 str needed for our support gems.

I have played with Skittering runes quite a lot. Hex master is also good, but most of the time I don't feel that I have the points to grab both. I mostly use my curses to avoid unfortunate situations while clearing maps, and feel their power is where they need to be for the most part. If the damage increase on monsters in high tier maps makes me feel squishy, I will drop something and grab more curse effect. I will have to see how the new map mods plays out.

If you are considering Weave the Arcane (which is very strong, and better than frenzies if you want to kill bosses), you might just be better off playing Occultist. That would of course depend on what your priorities are while killing bosses, but I feel that uninterruptible ES recharge and -20% chaos res is stronger than the 150 extra ES trickster gives for t16+ bosses. Weave the Arcane does make it easier to stack poison and gives a pretty nifty defensive boost though, so again it depends on how you approach the dilemma.

Hopefully this gives you the answers you were hoping for. I opt for the trickster due to it's flexibility, and I would roll a different build if my sole purpose was to kill Shaper and Uber Atziri in HC leagues.

First of all, great guide. It's very rare that I want to play a build without even having seen the video proof first. My one question as a sc baby is "would you change anything if you weren't playing hc?" Every passive seems to be taken for a reason, is there an ascendancy you think would be much more preferable if you didn't have to focus on survivability over all else?