[3.7] Essence Drain/Contagion Trickster (the best one)

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markuskanada написал:

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With your current setup, you should be able to get pretty far. I'd estimate your tooltip in game to be ~100k dot DPS with current gear. You can clear all way up to t15 with that since you're also using Allelopathy gloves. Your ED/Contagion should clear trash mobs, but you just have to be more liberal with Blight usage on bosses/rares. Blight, when channeled, can do more than ED plus it inflicts withered which at max stacks doubles your damage. So ED + Blight channel is almost 4 times as much damage as ED alone.

Eventually you absolutely want the bow. Those two mods you mention are correct, along with non-ailment chaos dot multi and increased cast speed/arcane surge on kill.

Carcass Jack is better for monoliths. Queen of the Forest is probably better for Delve or other enclosed spaces that don't benefit AoE as much. I tailored build to AoE with purpose of mostly open area mapping and Legion content farming, so that's where I took it.

:D Bro, now I really think that I did something wrong. Yesterday, after upgrading some stuff (carcass jack, lvl21 gems and finally empower 3), i reached 30k for the first time. You say I should have 100k? How is that even possible.
I think my current wand is holding me back. Also, i dont use one single jewel that highers my DPS. I think thats the next step today after work.

So yesterday I bought a carcass jack for monolith farming and its cool.
Today I was gonna get the bow and I just realized that I am supposed to use it for my ED 6link (because of the empower stacking). Now i have two 6 links then, but I do not need the 6 link in my carcass, i actually need 2 3links instead of 1 more 6link. But if course I do not break the 6link on carcass, that would be stupid. What should I use my second 6link in the body armor for?
Make Contagion 6 link? Then i have ED and Contagion both as a 6link.
And i use helmet, boots and gloves for my other utility i guess.


Hey, thank you very much for answering!!

Not sure why your ED damage is that low, you are looking at the tooltip damage right? (in game, hover over the skill in your hotbar and the 2nd to last line it has your dps of the skill). Your wand could be a bit better but as OP said that dps number should be in the neighborhood of 90-100K. When I upgraded to the bow it jumped to 197K (had been 109K prior) so a bow will make a big difference once you upgrade.
Do NOT unlink your carcass jack, it can work as 2 separate 3 links, the bow just makes it cheaper to get a new chest since the 6 link is not required. As others in the thread have offered a 6 link contagion or bane in the chest can work but it hurts in utility since we need every available socket.

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jbabel1012 написал:

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markuskanada написал:

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With your current setup, you should be able to get pretty far. I'd estimate your tooltip in game to be ~100k dot DPS with current gear. You can clear all way up to t15 with that since you're also using Allelopathy gloves. Your ED/Contagion should clear trash mobs, but you just have to be more liberal with Blight usage on bosses/rares. Blight, when channeled, can do more than ED plus it inflicts withered which at max stacks doubles your damage. So ED + Blight channel is almost 4 times as much damage as ED alone.

Eventually you absolutely want the bow. Those two mods you mention are correct, along with non-ailment chaos dot multi and increased cast speed/arcane surge on kill.

Carcass Jack is better for monoliths. Queen of the Forest is probably better for Delve or other enclosed spaces that don't benefit AoE as much. I tailored build to AoE with purpose of mostly open area mapping and Legion content farming, so that's where I took it.

:D Bro, now I really think that I did something wrong. Yesterday, after upgrading some stuff (carcass jack, lvl21 gems and finally empower 3), i reached 30k for the first time. You say I should have 100k? How is that even possible.
I think my current wand is holding me back. Also, i dont use one single jewel that highers my DPS. I think thats the next step today after work.

So yesterday I bought a carcass jack for monolith farming and its cool.
Today I was gonna get the bow and I just realized that I am supposed to use it for my ED 6link (because of the empower stacking). Now i have two 6 links then, but I do not need the 6 link in my carcass, i actually need 2 3links instead of 1 more 6link. But if course I do not break the 6link on carcass, that would be stupid. What should I use my second 6link in the body armor for?
Make Contagion 6 link? Then i have ED and Contagion both as a 6link.
And i use helmet, boots and gloves for my other utility i guess.


Hey, thank you very much for answering!!

Not sure why your ED damage is that low, you are looking at the tooltip damage right? (in game, hover over the skill in your hotbar and the 2nd to last line it has your dps of the skill). Your wand could be a bit better but as OP said that dps number should be in the neighborhood of 90-100K. When I upgraded to the bow it jumped to 197K (had been 109K prior) so a bow will make a big difference once you upgrade.
Do NOT unlink your carcass jack, it can work as 2 separate 3 links, the bow just makes it cheaper to get a new chest since the 6 link is not required. As others in the thread have offered a 6 link contagion or bane in the chest can work but it hurts in utility since we need every available socket.

I also have no idea what i did wrong with the DPS :D
Need to check everything step by step again at home.

Ok, so you are saying I should use my body armor for utility, rather than
another 6link. then i leave it as 4link contagion and use the other 2 links for utility, just need to figure out what exactly I use in the 6link , not the different supporting gems are getting messed up with CWDT or increased mana etc. i do not know, what is the smartest option for me. i will see.

and again, thank you. your help is highly appreciated.

I have contagion, bane and blight all 4 linked in helm, boots and gloves respectively. ED in bow and my 6 socket chest has a CWDT-immortal call linked then malevolence, discipline, vaal grace and artic armour (links don't matter), then i have flame dash in an unset ring.
Contagion's main use is spreading your ED, so 6 linking it isn't really that helpful since the additional links don't really help it do what it's designed to do better.
Blight is a pseudo 5 link already if you're using allelopathy gloves and lvl 22 at that so a 6 link isn't going to be much of a boost anyway (if at all).
That makes the chest best used for it's stats and 5 or 6 socketed for utility gems. It saves a bit of currency since you can get the cheapest version of your chest you want and 6 socket it for a couple hundred jewelers (hopefully) or use Jewelers Touch prop to 5 socket for ~20c.
That's how I've done it (you can also click my name--->) and check out my character and tree and all that.
There are a lot of viable ways to build this character, mine is just the one I feel fits my playstyle and goals. Good luck with finding yours.

i did my first 4 way battle and got a karui timeless jewel. kinda useless for this build but i think i can get a nice chunk of life if i socket it above blood drinker. does anyone know how to create a timeless jewel in pob?



and i finally found an empower last night and i had 3 exalts drop over the past 2 of days (up to 6 now). really itching to craft the bow so i can swap out the tabula for qotf. i also found a restless ward and wondering if that would be better. the good thing is i don't have to 6 link them so i can easily swap them out.

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Gorrilas написал:

My next steps are:
1.Trying to 5L my Perfect form, and drop Acro/Phase Acro thats 5 points.
2.Get a Rare Helmet with Essence drain enchant and metacraft with Fossils for 3.-9%chaos resistances
Get a pair of rare gloves with Non-ailment and multimod it.
4. Get a Neck with Chaos dmg/Non-ailment
5.Get a Watchers eye with Malevolence effect on Non-ailment

6.Im thinking since im dropping Acrobatics to keep MoM/Eldritch since i believe it provides a great layer of defence. and i believe Wicked Ward helps there.

7.Also im thinking of dropping Clear Mind jewel since it provides like 10% increased dmg and add flesh and stone/Zealotry/Dread banner, and Keep Malevolence in my essence worm. And since no Acrobatics ES will grow more since no penalty.

8.Also Drop Overcharge with Intuitive Leap gem, since killing Monolith Mobs to free them doesnt generate any Charges, although it does provide some quality of life in the clear mode of maps. Still unsure about that!

9.and something that im confused with, some people 5link Vaal Blight/blight Gem on chest piece, and get spell totems with Wither on a 4link. Does that make sence? My thought was that you either get a 5link self cast blight with Spreading Rot gem on setup, or a 5pseudo with alleopathy again with with spreading rot gem, right? and i guess you still get the 15 stacks of wither with both of these way, you need wither totems and blight selfcast to get the maximum?

Thoughts? :D

1. 5-link may not even be necessary since you have the bow.
2. Yup
3. Good, but expensive
4. Good, but expensive
5. Amazing, but very expensive
6. If you go Perfect Form, definitely
7. Trading a little DPS for massive survivability. I agree and most people would benefit going the defensive route.
8. I like my charges, but yeah they're a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have
9. You are correct. If you use blight with spreading rot, don't use wither at all. PoB doesn't take care of it cleanly though. I have to manually add a wither gem somewhere in my PoB in order to give it the stacks to make the rest of the damage look right. I don't actually have it it my character though.

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frost21 написал:

I started this league following Ziz's ED build, and just cleared up to guardians with minimal investment in my gear so far.

I'm trying to decide on what to upgrade/respec next, since I've had some difficulties surviving against some legion rares and endgame bosses. I noticed Ziz updated his build guide with grabbing acrobatics and using restless ward instead of perfect form now.

What are your thoughts on that for anyone who's seen/tried that type of setup?

I play Softcore, so more damage is always welcomed as long as I still have solid defensives.


I plan to make a ED bow, I just bought a 6l no-implicit bow for 18c, and managed to get the mod with 150 alts/2 annuls only. Used about 360 chromes so far to color it, will buy some more later tomorrow after I get the crafted mods on it likely.

Also I plan to grab atziri boots and set them up when I respec to Ziz's new tree. (Or if any suggest against doing that?)


Just wanted to see how everyone else is running their ED builds for endgame and such.

For ultimate end-game survivability, I think Perfect Form and no Acro on the tree is the best. You can drop Amplify too and just stack more life/ES. Shouldn't be hard to get 8-9k eHP without MoM, along with big evasion, capped spell dodge (PF, atziri, escape artist), blind aura, etc.

I personally don't see the draw of Restless Ward. It's sort of a hybrid, balancing some quality of life with some defense, but not really great at either. It has more ES than Perfect Form, but not after you account for Acro removing 30% of it. The movements speed and charge stuff is nice, but Carcass Jack or QotF are probably better quality of life choices. Then again, he's the pro, and I am not, so I'll do some more reflecting.

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sixer написал:

Hey, thanks for this guide! Interesting variation and nice specifics on Legion!

I'm running a mix of Ziz/Ghazzy guides on Hardcore Legion (ggdowntown). Not having too many issues (damage could be a little better as rares have so much health now - hopefully improves when i 6-link) but haven't hit red maps yet. I'm a bit torn on a couple of thing:

1. I want to ditch Acro nodes for more life on the Templar side similar to Steelmage did in SSFHC but I'm not sure it will be the better defensive option as i lose the big evasion on my chest which works well with my ascendancy. Interested in Perfect form, do you think it would be a good replacement to Hyri?

2. Is Bow + Quiver really that minor of a difference to defence? I think it would be great to boost damage that much.Intended on getting Magna Eclipsis with Cerberus but now i'm second guessing it.

3. Should i ditch spell totem and just channel blight? Concerned i cant place and run if i channel though.

Any other hardcore survivabilty/damage tips?

I'm enjoying mapping but i wouldn't mind pushing bosses. Although if this build isnt quite good for it i might roll another character - any good HC boss killer suggestions if so?

1. If I were playing HC, I'd use Perfect Form. In HC, evasion really sucks. If you had to choose between taking 4k damage guaranteed or 90% chance to take nothing, 10% chance to take 8k, SC and HC will make different decisions. The evasion route is less damage "on average" but basically guarantees you get killed eventually. Acro's ES hit is a big deal. I think Phase Acro, Arctic Armor, the life bonus, and uncapped cold resist evasion boost overcome Hyrri's higher base ES and 10% dodge.

2. It depends on whether you use Acro and on which shield you choose. With Acro, you take a big hit to block as well. Thus, switching to bow/quiver is a smaller downgrade in defense. The shield I have in this guide is Zeel's which is more of an offensive oriented spell shield. Losing that isn't as big of a deal. Magna plus Cerberus is VERY defensive in nature, so you're right that bow/quiver is a big dropoff from that.

3. Self cast is more offensive, totems more defensive. I play SC so I go self-cast. How risky you think you can get is on you :)

For HC, the biggest tip is probably not to cast Contagion/ED back to back. You need to get in the habit of sidestepping in between. Contagion -> stutter step -> ED. So many tunnels/temples/incursions where you pop open a door and a million projectiles fly at you. If you try the full combo, you'll get torn up. Outside of that, I'd go full hybrid without EB and try to get 5.5-6k life with 3k ES. Perfect Form, flesh and stone, atziri boots, vaal grace arctic armor, huge evasion rating and 9k eHP should feel pretty breezy, and you can still use the bow/quiver for top DPS.

Any guide for CI version of this build?

@Rlauren2


I'll probably try the updated Ziz tree with phase acro and such and use restless, hopefully works out. I play on SC so will see how it is

Are 6l Short Bows expensive just because of popularity in these guides? Any 6l bow will do, correct?

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HockeyVG написал:

Are 6l Short Bows expensive just because of popularity in these guides? Any 6l bow will do, correct?

short bows are great for ED builds because of the low dex requirement (26) which makes it easier to color, but any bow will do. the stats and implicit on bows are not important for us. reflex/maraketh bows have inc movement speed implicits but higher dex requirements (124/222).

edit: you can also get a 6L short bow from the porcupine div card. so it's actually really cheap if you farm for the cards.

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qaizr написал:

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HockeyVG написал:

Are 6l Short Bows expensive just because of popularity in these guides? Any 6l bow will do, correct?

short bows are great for ED builds because of the low dex requirement (26) which makes it easier to color, but any bow will do. the stats and implicit on bows are not important for us. reflex/maraketh bows have inc movement speed implicits but higher dex requirements (124/222).

edit: you can also get a 6L short bow from the porcupine div card. so it's actually really cheap if you farm for the cards.

Yea, I didn't know if there was a specific reason. 6l white Short Bows are 70c+ while there are other 6l bows starting at 15c