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

The optimal way would be getting a +1 Aylardex and use the Witchfire flask. Manual cursing adds another action to an already long list of priorities (keeping wither totem alive + keeping arcane surge up via contagion + keeping essence drain dot up + spamming blight while avoiding bosses' skills + keeping the trickster attack / cast speed buff up using a movement skill every now and then). Plus, getting a +1 Aylardex saves 4-5 passive points, which is a pretty big gain.

Despair would reduce chaos resistance by 6% and increase damage over time taken by endgame bosses by 7%, because at guardians / Shaper (and possibly Elder) curse effectiveness is 20% of its normal value. Not a big deal when facing the endgame content, but the new curse should be really nice for regular mapping.

This is going to be my league starter for sure. I tried it out during the Turmoil event up to about 40, just for a chance to win things and the guaranteed chest, and I'm excited to start playing it at max level and in end game.

However, this would be my first time playing ED+Contagion in any real sense, so I have a couple questions that I either missed in the guide or they weren't there.

1) The LL version is obviously going to be expensive / time consuming to set up in the first place (though vastly superior), but how do you maintain <35% life to gain the buffs? I see that you swap away from MoM and favor ES, and you suggest adding more curses, but I would definitely like to see this expanded upon, as it looks super cool. You mentioned changing a few links, but what exactly do you mean?

2) I see you already said you're working on adding Despair to the MoM build, but like djnat said, adding in a manual curse in addition to floating everything else seems rather intense. After the transition to LL build, would a Despair aura be more viable? Really eager to see how this all comes together after all the hiccups of the league have been ironed out.

I gave LL setup a go yesterday to see if I would make it work. I posted it a page or so back, but can repost the setup I ended up with:


Low Life is forced through Blood Magic > Discipline.

With this setup I was able to reach max stack of both Wither and Blight, and for 3.1 you could swap out Enfeeble with Despair. Note that most of this stuff is legacy gear. Even though it is not tripple t1 prefixes across the board, it is still rather good. Realistically, you will not get much more ES than we have EHP with the MoM build with current ES gear, and due to the high requirement in prefixes for ES, my damage was nearly the same (no spell damage on shield for instance). I should rewrite the LL part of the guide to emphasize that it really is for those with infinite currency, as even last league when I was sitting at over 100 ex, I did not want to reroll LL.

Ah, okay, that makes much more sense. Thanks for clearing that up!

Did they change Allelopathy's rarity? Not seeing any for sale on both leagues is worrying. They did the same with The Baron last league...

I already got mine, so not paying much attention to the market any more. I didn't get the impression they were any rarer.

Hi

I really like your guide and I am following it through the League. I always wanted to play ED and never did.

Im wondering why nobody is using the heartbreaker or am I wrong.

I realy like it and the culling strike is nice to have while leveling.

What do you think about the Voidwalker murder boots. I played around with them and even if the dont bring life to your stats the phasing and pierce realy make mapping more comfortable.

Greetz and have fun with the league

Heartbreaker is just fine for the build. Before I use BotC, I pref a weapon with attack speed. If I were to use a unique, I would most likely use Divinarius or Heartbreaker. The culling strike for spells is not that good for us, since we don't really hit enemies much. It is only the initial hit of ED that is counted as a hit of all our spells. Still, the rest of the stats on the dagger are good enough for it to be used as a budget option.

Personally I have never felt the need to use pierce, especially now that we have Blight. If you feel like Pierce is something you want in the build, Voidwalker is probably the best and most efficient source of getting it.

Is there a reason for leveling up the Spell Totem gem? As far as i've seen, leveling it up increases the damage of linked skills, but Wither does no damage.

I am pretty sure it gains health as it levels as well.