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The Penance Brand of Dissipation is super powerful to bring into a boss fight in Path of Exile 3.23. Typically, Penance Brand explodes after reaching 20 energy after being activated 20 times on a single enemy. This one deals less damage but expires only after its duration ends. Additionally, it deals with much more damage per energy on an enemy.
To make the best use of this alteration, extend the Brand duration and increase its activation rate, which can be done by simply increasing your own cast speed. It can quickly reach the cap of 20 energy after a mere 5 seconds. You can build around this skill any way you like, but we’ve settled on an Inquisitor with its inevitable judgment and kept Critical Strike Chance. It’s a hit-based build capable of instantly killing the toughest bosses in the game with its mixed Elemental damage.
Pious Path will help you sustain Righteous Fire, which grants more spell damage. We’ve also made it a lowlife build to benefit from Pain Attunement for even more damage. It’s important to convert the remaining 50% of your Brand's physical damage to Elemental, preferably lightning. We encourage allocating the Hierophant Sign of Purpose via a pair of forbidden jewels, as it doubles the Brand damage. As it’s close to expiring, it even continues dealing damage after the character’s death, which combined with the Brand’s attaching nature, guarantees to kill any boss with no effort.
Penance Brand of Dissipation is a skill specifically made for killing bosses, so that’s what we’ve specialized in. It’s not a very tanky build, but there are still clever ways to improve its durability, Petrified Blood, and a lot of Life Recoup with Life Leech and passive Life Regeneration. Clear speed is nice after you allocate the Brand Mastery to make them select a new target every 0.3 seconds. Single target damage is outstanding, absolutely phenomenal.
The build is on a medium budget, but the version we showcased is moderately expensive. You don’t need any unique POE Items, and to be honest, the rare ones are the best in every gear slot. Given your budget is high, we still recommend wearing 1 or 2 Call of the Brotherhood rings to chill and freeze. The type of damage is not important.
As an Inquisitor, you don’t need any penetration or exposure. Enemies' resistances are always 0%. If you’re using 2 Call of the Brotherhood rings, you can consider the Heatshiver helmet for a major damage boost. Considering its impact on the overall DPS, it's surprisingly affordable. To boost your freeze further, allocate the Critical Mastery for increased effect of non-damaging ailments from critical strikes. Impulse is the body armor you can use to improve your clear speed. By eliminating shocked enemies, it triggers an explosion and provides shock resistance.
With Petrified Blood, you will take a lot of hit damage over 4 seconds as DOT, so if you struggle with survivability, stasis prison seems like one of the strongest options. It will recoup all that damage you’ve taken recently. It’s even stronger with progenesis, more recoup, and Ashes of the Stars for extra quality.
For Petrified Blood, Ashes of the Stars improves your damage slightly, and the extra quality contributes to that as well. As of POE 3.23, it’s very cheap. Replica Dragonfang's Flight is possibly the best choice due to the extra 3 levels to the Penance Brand skill, additional reservation, and reduced attribute requirements. We recommend using at least 1 Call of the Brotherhood ring to cause freeze and chill. It lets you make use of some of the best notables on Large Cluster Jewels, upgrade the damage from Hatred aura, and the ailment itself has a big upgrade in terms of safety.
Forbidden Flame and Flesh Sign of Purpose is the best option. Their peak performance doubles the damage to your Brand. If you haven’t converted your physical damage, get Wrath’s physical to lightning conversion on a Watcher’s Eye. The zealotry buffs provide excellent cast speed and Critical Strike mods. Your other auras are Hatred and Vitality.
Precision to achieve 100% Critical Strike Chance, which can be done by accumulating strength and intelligence. After that’s done, focus on critical multiplier and try to obtain physical damage is extra Elemental damage wherever it’s possible. Your base damage is physical, 50% of which is already converted to lightning, and the remaining 50% should be too. It can be done with 1 pair of rare gloves while Watcher’s Eye or a physical to lightning support gem.
To sustain RF damage, you need a bit of extra maximum Fire Resistance, Ruby Flask, and Life Regeneration modifiers on your rare belt or body armor. In case you would like to be more strong, look for modifiers that would diminish your physical damage taken, a source of continuance charges, or move a parcel of approaching physical damage to be taken as Elemental damage. Life Recoup may to offer assistance. Get a Crown of Tempest for including cold harm with no drawback and point for essential defensive stats.
For more damage, seek specific modifiers listed here as optional. You can also find a helmet with built-in support gems that you would want to use in your main Penance Brand setup, such as Hypothermia and Concentrated Effect. If that’s the case, the body armor will host your aura setup.
We recommend dual wielding a pair of wands or maces with modifiers to spell damage, crit chance, and level of your physical lightning Brand skill. Try to get a +2 wand scepter with such stats. Spirit Shield may be similar in terms of damage to a weapon with modifiers like increased spell damage, crit chance for spell, an extra gem level for physical or lightning spells, and that’s on top of a maximum life prefix, which can be crafted.
The best overall option for body armor is a rare one, which you can upgrade with Eldritch mods for more maximum resistances, crit multiplier, or increased effect of auras. Look for maximum life, life regeneration, and resistances. The prefix that shifts physical damage to fire and lightning can be crafted if you’ve decided to wear a rare amulet. It better be a good one, as the Uniques are also extremely powerful.
You ought to have an special necklace with +2 or +3 levels to your Brand skill with maximum life and damage-oriented modifiers. The finest rings need to be crafted to pick up the extra 10% of physical damage as additional fire damage. There are moreover very many great Crusader mods worth trying to find. Other than that, look for the foremost essential qualities and resistances, particularly ability. Get a combine of normal boots and update them with Eldritch mods for greatest Fire Resistance to support RF and additional physical damage as a few other sort of Elemental damage, ideally lightning.
You can use your POE Currency to purchase for 2 or even 3 Large Cluster Jewels. They’re very potent in this build. Use cold or lightning jewels and prioritize notables and at least 1 Stormrider and Doryani's Lesson. Medium Cluster Jewels are also very fitting. Get the Brand clusters with remarkable in Grand Design. Remarkable increases cast speed, and with 3, you’re guaranteed to spawn 2 Brands instead of one. Damage and attachment range massively enhance your clear speed.
The maximum physical hit you can take is extremely low. It’s good with Life Regeneration and Life Recoup. Bottled Faith increases Critical Strike Chance and improves your DPS as long as you and your target are affected by its consecrated ground. Remember to use a silver flask for Onslaught, which translates to cast speed, and a diamond flask for increased crit chance.
Their suffixes shall also increase your cast speed and crit chance. If you don’t want to rely on Enduring Cry for life regeneration, use life flask with bleed-immunity. If you have trouble sustaining Righteous Fire, use a ruby flask. It’s even better if you have mods for physical damage to be taken as fire.
Penance Brand of Dissipation deals half-converted damage with hits each time it activates. The rate can be increased with cast speed. The damage and AOE grow after each hit and reach their max maximum after 20 activations. Link it with added fire damage, preferably awakened one swift Brand, increased critical damage, inspiration, and Empower. You can swap SwiftBrand for Hypothermia if you want more damage per Brand, not per second.
You should also use physical to lightning instead of added fire damage if you haven’t converted the damage yet. Zealotry grants more spell damage and increased critical strike chance. Wrath is used for more spell lightning damage, which is the element you’ve converted to from physical. Petrified Blood affects the bottom half of your life pool by shifting a big portion of incoming hit damage to be taken as damage over time instead, which is good, as your life pool is not high. Link these 3 with enlightened support to reserve less Mana.
Vitality regenerates your life over time to sustain RF. Herald of Purity is implemented for more physical damage. It affects your Brand even after the damage gets converted. Link both to Arrogance support to be on low life and benefit from Pain Attunement. You can unlink Vitality from this setup if your Mana reservation efficiency is high.
Buy a Dark Marionette that gets resummoned as a spectre after it dies all by itself. It will come back quickly after it dies, only to host your aura again. Link it to Guardians' Blessing and hatred. It adds 25% of physical damage as extra cold damage and makes you deal with more cold damage. It’s one of the best auras for such a build. If you don’t want to use the Dark Marionette setup, simply go for Divine Blessing support and allocate an Eldritch Battery.
Flame Dash is used to move quickly and dodge attacks. Enduring cry rapidly regenerates life and grants some endurance charges for physical damage reduction. Arcane Surge buff increases cast speed and Mana regeneration rate. To gain it, link these spells to a low-level Arcane Surge support. Faster casting will be a nice addition to this setup. RF grants you more spell damage as it’s active. Set up Steelskin as your movement key. It’s a guard spell that absorbs some incoming hit damage. Haste is to be used during boss fights for a major boost to your cast and movement.
Kill all the bandits. It’s the best deal. Helping Alira may sound enticing, but the 2 points are still much better in a developed build. It’s a build mainly for bossing, and so we recommend Soul of Solaris for better durability during boss fights. Any other major God is also good, especially Arakaali. It will help you sustain damage over time. For a minor God, we would pick something to mitigate physical damage taken. Soul of Gruthkul may be good if you’re up against an opponent that won’t kill you in one hit. If not, go for Abbath.
This version of a skill tree is an advanced version for a fully developed high-level character, as it accommodates 3 Large Cluster Jewels and 6 medium ones. They’re just that good. If you prefer a more reasonable 2 large cluster version, pick up passives like Nimbleness, Melding, Cruel Preparation, Divine Wrath, and small jewel sockets, other than that, go for maximum life, Critical Strike nodes, cast speed, Elemental damage, some Brand damage, and reservation passives.
The keystones you should allocate are Pain Attunement, Runebinder, and maybe the Eldritch Battery, depending on your temporary Hatred or setup. Get the Life Mastery for an extra 50 life, Critical Mastery for an extra multiplier against bosses, increased effect of auras as Reservation Mastery, and Brand to attach to a new enemy every 0.3 seconds. There’s also an Elemental Mastery of a 5% chance to deal 300% of physical damage as extra random Elemental damage. It’s very good here. It will apply major Elemental ailments.
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Path of Exile 2 has been the center of discussion among loyal players of the action role-playing game since its early access release last year. Although the developers have added many new game elements to this sequel that were not in the original game, the player community and players on many social platforms have been negative about it.
Even after POE 2 released its first major update and the first league Dawn of the Hunt some time ago, players’ complaints about the low drop rate and drastic nerfs of in-game loot have not changed at all. According to some relevant information leaks, the developers are taking some actions, such as releasing some hot fixes and additional changes in patch 0.2.0.
But in order to ensure that POE 2 can be in the best state before the official version is released and can provide players with a best exploration experience, it may also need to add an important feature - death review. At this stage, players are very demanding for this feature, so this guide organizes players’ views on it so that developers can create corresponding strategies according to players’ requirements more quickly.
In the production process of POE 2, developers have always wanted players to explore the huge game world in a slow-paced gameplay, and make the best build that suits them best according to the different exploration contents, until they reach the end of all battles.
However, in this game with slow and methodical gameplay, once the player dies in it, the cost invested before drawing, such as currency, gear, and one-way available Waystones will disappear, which is a very sad thing for all players, especially in the extremely challenging endgame stage.
Most importantly, players must learn from the corresponding experience from the failure just now, and then buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade their own builds accordingly, such as enhancing the overall defense ability or elemental resistance of the build to obtain better survivability. Or re-roll the affixes of the potions that can restore health or mana that they carry to obtain higher combat durability.
The developers thought this style might resonate with players, but in fact they didn’t buy it. Because the one-way available Waystones used in POE 2, on the one hand, the cost of drawing in the more difficult maps will also increase. On the other hand, if there is no death review screen in the game, it is difficult for players to find the real reason for death from the failure just now, which will make players more frustrated.
Because in most cases, the death of players in battle is not only caused by the ineffectiveness of the build they used, but also by mistakes in skill rotation or network jams, or even because of the excessive visual effects presented by the game, which makes players use wrong operations.
After these deaths caused by non-game mistakes, players may not need to make large-scale adjustments to their builds, and they want to clearly understand where they made mistakes and modify them in time, but unfortunately there is no such educational function in POE 2.
Although Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt has made some adjustments to reduce the degree of punishment for players’ death in the endgame, such as being able to create a new instance map after death and use Waystones with the same modifiers to enter it for a new round of exploration. But this cannot solve the genuine dilemma of players.
In fact, there are already many calls for the death review function in the popular action role-playing games in the current game world. Even Diablo 4, a powerful rival of POE 2, has been called by players to add this function, but they are indifferent.
So after Last Epoch, a common rival of POE 2 and D4, released Season 2 Tombs of the Erased, some disappointed players began to enter this more interesting game, because there are many features that players dream of, such as death review.
Even some players who have tried these two games called for POE 2 to learn from these features in Last Epoch in the next version to make themselves more competitive. Although the developers have not explicitly stated that they will consider adding this feature, players are still looking forward to it, because its popularity has become a trend just like couch co-op.
In general, because the difficulty of building and endgame in Path of Exile 2 is very high compared to similar games, the learning difficulty of players will also become higher. Therefore, if a death review screen is added, it may make it easier for them to learn from the experience of this battle and complete subsequent challenges faster.
Because the addition of this feature will improve the accessibility of the entire game, it is very useful for both novice exiles and high-level exiles. This will also indirectly lead to more new players pouring into POE 2, thereby expanding their influence. Like the players, I will also wait and see whether the developers can implement this new feature that can greatly improve the player's experience in the official version.
Path of Exile 2 was well received after its early access release in December last year, because it added a lot of new game content and mechanics compared to the original game. This positive momentum continued until early April this year, when the first major patch 0.2.0, and a new league Dawn of the Hunt were released.
Although the developers also spent a lot of time in this major update to bring players a variety of new content, such as new classes, new enemies and new maps, players did not buy it. Even though the developers subsequently launched nearly 5 patches to make up for the losses of players, players still complained about it.
Since Path of Exile 2 is still in the early access stage, there is still a lot of room for developers to modify. In view of this, this guide will summarize some of the key changes that POE 2 needs to make in the next update that are currently discussed the most in the player community and social platforms, and they may all make the player’s gaming experience better.
Although the quality and drop rate of Path of Exile 2 loot have been greatly improved compared to the original game, only a small number of gear and currency have enjoyed this preferential treatment, while the drop rate of other POE 2 Regal Orbs, Orb of Annulment, and Chaos Orbs that can greatly improve production efficiency is still very low in the game.
This makes it a very long and tedious process for players to make a high-rarity and high-quality affixed gear in the game. More importantly, in order to obtain those rarer Uniques directly through the campaign, players need to complete the running tasks of those more challenging maps.
In this case, the shortage of currency and the lack of gear effectiveness will make this challenge full of great risks. Therefore, players are very much hoping that the drop rate of these key items will become a little higher, making some high-tier maps more profitable, so that the entire game can be more explorable.
The gem cutting system in POE 2 is recognized by players as a great addition to this sequel, because it allows players to customize their skills according to the needs of the current exploration. And when you enter a higher-level explorable area, you will get more Uncut Gems, which means you can use them to upgrade your current skills or unlock new skills.
But when you over-upgrade a skill and change an exploration style, you will find that your build urgently needs to be modified in terms of skills. But when you remove this skill gem, you need to use a lower-level Uncut Gem to fill this gap.
In order to obtain this Uncut Gem, you need to return to the low-level map to do boring farming again, and expect these randomly dropped items to be picked up by you as soon as possible, which will consume a lot of time and energy.
Most importantly, you also need to buy POE 2 Currency to make corresponding modifications to your already nearly perfect and powerful build, which is a completely avoidable consumption.
So if developers add a gem vendor to the game, whether it’s skill gems, support gems, or spirit gems, it will greatly save players the cost of searching for the gems they want, thereby greatly improving the quality of life of players.
Path of Exile 2 has several very large maps, and many players have complained about having to circle the map many times to find the corresponding exit. And because of the unique map refresh mechanism in the sequel, the location of the exit will change when you enter the map at different times.
In addition, there are very few checkpoints on each map, which makes it impossible for players to respawn nearby and challenge an enemy or boss again after failing. All these factors make it difficult for players to quickly draw maps and get more loot from them.
The improvement that developers can make is to set more checkpoints and reduce the scope of each map so that players can better backtrack and farm effectively.
Not only that, many players who want to complete all campaigns quickly suggest that the exit of each map should be permanently marked. However, from the perspective of some players who want to explore in detail, this may have some negative effects, because after completing the main battles and quests, they will be very eager to leave the map instead of looking for some optional quests or bosses.
Of course, in addition to the changes in the game mechanism, players also hope that developers can optimize the performance of the game. Because in many actual explorations, the player’s configuration is far beyond the recommended configuration, but the game’s frame rate is still not stable, so developers may need to put this type of optimization on the agenda.
The above are some suggestions from many players on the recent major update of POE 2 and what they want to see in the next update. Although there is no guarantee that POE 2 will return to its peak state after revising these problems, it is worth affirming that will undoubtedly be a relief to those exiles who criticized patch 0.2.0 and are loyal to the original. I wish you a happy game!
Since the early access release of Path of Exile 2, players have been very surprised by the performance of Mercenary class. This character, which seems to be out of tune with the game style, has become the first choice for many players who love strategic battles with its super damage output and super practicality.
In the latest Dawn of the Hunt league, the developer added a new Ascendancy class called Tactician, which is a class with vigorous support, survivability and damage capabilities. And some of the passive skills and effect gains it provides have significantly improved the practicality of Mercenary.
For Tactician, you can make it a purely auxiliary support class, or you can make it a part-time auxiliary class. If you have just unlocked this Ascendancy class, but don’t know how to use it correctly, this guide will provide you with the most commonly used and most powerful build tips for Tactician.
It should be noted that the builds provided here are all available for single-player exploration, which will focus more on self-leveling, and we will continue to pay attention to those builds that can benefit your allies in cooperation.
Before using Tactician, a class with multiple builds, you need to select Mercenary as your standard class before the exploration begins, and be familiar with some subsequent commonly used active skills, such as Fragmentation Rounds, High Velocity Rounds, Explosive Grenade and Gas Grenade.
Because being familiar with the rotation between these skills will make your early game and the campaign process in Cruel Mode very smooth. When you reach the endgame, you can modify your build according to your needs, because at this time you already have a lot of Uncut Spirit Gems to unlock some new spells, thereby enhancing the damageability of the entire build.
But it is worth mentioning that although the damage ability of Mercenary (or Tactician) is strong, its survivability is also very weak. In a boss encounter, the most powerful build of this character will be in serious danger of death after three consecutive attacks from the enemy.
Therefore, many players who use Tactician build often stun the enemy in combat, which will open up a window for them to deal super high damage and successfully complete all challenges. So here are some strategies and tips for using Tactician build during your exploration, including the leveling stage and the endgame stage.
Since the skills you have in Act 1 are only some basic skills that can help you get through the early game, such as Fragmentation Rounds, which can effectively defend you from monsters. When you unlock Tier 2 and above Uncut Skills Gems, you can cut them into Velocity Rounds and Flash Grenade, two very effective damage skill gems, to have higher clearing and combat capabilities.
Although you don’t have a lot of support gems in Act 1, you still need to place Scattershot and Double Barrel in the support slot of High Velocity Rounds, and Overpower and Second Wind behind Flash Grenade.
In addition, your defensive gear is also very important in the early stages of the game, so you need to try to find some armor or helmets with high dodge ratings and elemental resistance, and then buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade their rarity or re-roll their affixes.
When you level up a little, you can unlock Galvanic Shards and add Lightning Infusion and Martial Tempo to it to expand the effectiveness of this powerful elemental damage skill. Finally, after you successfully defeat King of the Mists boss, you can cut the first Uncut Spirit Gem you get into Herald of Thunder to increase the lightning damage you can apply.
In Act 2, you will need to upgrade your existing skills as much as possible and unlock some new skills. The first new skill you need to unlock is Gas Grenade, and place Scattershot and Magnified Effect support gems on it.
In the case of a group of enemies attacking you, you can use Explosive Grenade and equip it with Second Wind and Inspiration support gems. The other most needed new skill in this act is Explosive Shot, because it will work perfectly with Explosive Grenade skill, further increasing the explosion damage you inflict on the enemy, especially if you choose Martial Tempo as its support gem.
At this time, the support gem of Galvanic Shards should be changed from Martial Tempo to Conduction. With this powerful build, the exploration process of this act will be very smooth until you enter Trial of Sekhemas, which can provide you with a tough challenge with a strong Tactician Ascendancy class.
In this more difficult challenge, focus on upgrading your skills as much as possible and unlock Oil Grenade and Ripwire Ballista, both of which make some high-health enemies more vulnerable to high projectile damage and provide you with some defensive capabilities.
For the support gems of these two skill gems, Encumbrance increases the enemy movement speed caused by Oil Grenade by 15%, while Lockdown and Persistence make the damage inflicted by Ripwire Ballista stronger and more persistent.
If you miss the opportunity to gain Tactician Ascendancy in Trial of Sekhemas, you can also unlock it by completing Trial of Chaos in this act. However, if you have already unlocked Ascendancy class, you can also gain more Ascendancy points by completing this trial.
Finally, once you defeat Ignagduk, Bog Witch, you can use Uncut Spirit Gem it rewards you with unlocking Ghost Dance, which can be used with the support gem Clarity, which increases mana regeneration in this build by 30%.
In Cruel Mode, your overall build doesn’t actually need to be changed much, because most of the skill damage capabilities have been maximized. You can unlock Wind Dancer to enhance your defense capabilities according to your play style.
In addition, at this stage, the support gem slots of Gas Grenades and Galvanic Shards are no longer enough. You need to use two POE 2 Lesser Jeweler’s Orbs to increase this slot and place Primal Armament and Pierce in it.
When you complete all the main campaigns provided by POE 2, you enter the more challenging endgame content. Although your overall build is complete at this stage, you still need to modify it for subsequent game content.
For some key passive skills and active skill gems, you don’t need to modify them because their maximum effectiveness has been demonstrated. But the weapons and gear you use may need a major change.
In the early game exploration, your farming effectiveness and clearing ability may not be so important, so most of them are weapons that can inflict a lot of physical damage. In the endgame, you not only need to pay attention to the physical damage you cast, but also need to add some lightning damage to make you more profitable in some group enemy encounters.
Although your defensive gear such as armor and helmets are of a higher level before, and can allow you to complete some exploration tasks safely, the challenges of the enemies and monsters you face in the endgame are more difficult, so you also need amulets that can increase your maximum health and mana to escort you.
In fact, the operation and gameplay of Tactician build are very simple. You only need to use the correct skill rotation (from Oil Grenade to Explosive Shot to Gas Grenades) to have super high damage output. But it has to be admitted that the cooldown time of these skills is very long. After you use a set of rotations, all skills may enter the cooldown time.
But this does not mean that you can only dodge to ensure your safety during this time. You can also throw Explosive Grenades at the enemy to cause more explosive damage until all skills are restored. Or, during the skill rotation, throw Ripwire Ballista at the enemy, which will stop the enemy from moving forward under the damage of the powerful crossbow, so that it can withstand more damage.
Exiles, the arrival of Dawn Of The Hunt League has brought us some new classes and Ascendancies, which also gives us more options for endgame builds. And here, an excellent league starter build we want to recommend is the new Lich Ascendancy based on Witch class, which is Essence Drain Contagion Lich.
Lich is a very interesting Ascendancy class. It not only brings a new gameplay, but also is extremely powerful, causing a lot of damage in both the early and late game.
And Lich has perfect synergy with Essence Drain, because it has powerful defense nodes like Soulless Form and Eternal Life. And Lich class is also one of the few Ascendancy skills that Essence Drain will have a strong damage multiplier when using Eldritch Empowerment.
Essence Drain deals damage on top of regular hits, as well as secondary damage over time debuff that lasts for a set amount of time. When combined with Contagion skill, the damage over time spreads between groups of monsters, turning our primary damage into a large-scale clearing skill, and you can see groups of monsters on the screen exploding in an instant!
So, as the name suggests, this build revolves around two core mechanics, Essence Drain and Contagion. Now, let’s break down its mechanics.
As we said before, the core damage skills of this build are Essence Drain and Contagion, a combination that has actually been widely used since the early days of Path of Exile 1.
First, let’s understand the mechanics of Contagion, which is to apply a debuff to a single enemy and deal chaos damage over time. When an enemy affected by Contagion dies, it spreads all debuffs, including Contagion, to nearby enemies, and increases damage by +100% per jump, stacking up to 300%. This is really crazy!
For Essence Drain, after you fire a projectile, it can apply a powerful Chaos Damage over Time debuff to enemies. Currently, in POE 2, Essence Drain is the only skill besides Contagion that can apply a high Chaos Damage over Time debuff. So when an enemy affected by Contagion is killed by Essence Drain, its powerful Chaos Damage over Time will also spread to nearby enemies along with Contagion debuff.
In Path of Exile 2, this playstyle was initially adopted by a few Acolyte of Chayula Ascendancy players, making this class, which was not doing well in the early Early Access period, competitive.
However, after the release of Dawn Of The Hunt, Eternal Life mechanic of Lich class clearly proved that it was a better choice for this playstyle. Eternal Life Ascendancy node of Lich stipulates that life cannot be modified while having Energy Shield. At first glance, this seems to have two benefits, one is that as long as you have Energy Shield, you can prevent being killed instantly, and the other is that you are immune to chaos damage when Energy Shield is activated.
But the key is that when used in conjunction with Soulless Form passive skill, 10% of the damage will penetrate the energy shield. And after having Eternal Life, these penetration damage cannot modify life, which actually means that the penetration rate is converted into damage reduction.
The core equipment of this build includes Atziri’s Disdain Gold Circlet, which makes 10% of the damage penetrate energy shield, and it also increases energy shield based on maximum life. In addition to this, you can also get Heavy Buffer, which increases maximum energy shield by 40% and makes 5% of the damage penetrate energy shield.
The combination of Soulless Form, Atziri’s Disdain and Heavy Buffer can get a total of 25% of the damage bypassing energy shield, which is equivalent to 25% flat damage reduction, which is extremely powerful.
Considering that the key equipment of this build is Atziri’s Disdain, we adjust its modifier priority to: Chaos Skill Gem Level > Chaos Damage > Spell Damage.
Currently, the price of Atziri’s Disdain on the market is very affordable, usually 1 Exalted Orb can be obtained, but the price of wands that provide chaos damage is relatively high, so if you want to get a continuous chaos damage debuff, then you may have to buy POE 2 Currency to get them.
In addition, thanks to the unique mechanism of Lich’s Eternal Life, defensive equipment can use life and energy shield at the same time, avoiding dependence on a single attribute, which greatly reduces the difficulty of obtaining defensive equipment. Therefore, except for expensive weapons, other equipment is still affordable.
In the character panel statistics, we can see that the damage per second (DPS) of Essence Drain Contagion Lich is 52,000, and the effective health value is 28,000 under normal circumstances.
As a Contagion Lich build with Eternal Life, you can apply various curse debuffs, chaos resistance, or take advantage of low life bonuses to get additional damage bonuses. Therefore, you can use it to clear all non-chaos immune content.
For the advantages of this build, we will consider that Contagion’s spread mechanism makes it extremely fast to clear the field, and the continuous damage gameplay allows you to clear all enemies in just a few seconds!
Of course, the disadvantages are also obvious. First, Essence Drain and Contagion are both single-target skills, so you can only trigger the spread effect when attacking the same enemy, and missing this combo will make you vulnerable. Secondly, running this build requires at least 2 active skills, which greatly increases the complexity of the buttons.
According to the current statistics for the new league, Lich has a usage rate of 13% in the ladder class, ranking second. Atziri’s Disdain maintains a usage rate of about 6% in the entire ladder ranking, making it the seventh most used unique item. The combination of Essence Drain and Contagion currently has a usage rate of about 7%, ranking 15th among all active skills.
There is no doubt that the build is relatively popular, probably because Lich is currently too powerful, but you have to consider that if Lich is nerfed, the effectiveness of this build may be severely affected.
