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Top 3 Currency/Crafting Materials Farming Strategies For The Start Of POE 3.23 SSF

Dec 27, 2023 Author: POECurrency.com

I'm here to share my expertise on 3 lucrative POE Currency and crafting material farming strategies for the start of the Solo Self-Found (SSF) of Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction League.

These strategies are versatile and don't demand any particular prerequisites, making them suitable for any build.

Top 3 Currency/Crafting Materials Farming Strategies For The Start Of POE 3.23 SSF

3. Essence Farming

The very first and most important thing you need to know about Essences is that unlike other league mechanics, Essences do not scale with map tier.

Their rewards will be the same whether killed in a Tier 1 or Tier 16 map. This makes Essences an extremely strong option for league start currency farming.

Corrupting Essences

The next thing you need to be aware of is the mechanic behind corrupting Essences using the Remnant of Corruption.

This special Essence will corrupt other Essences that trap monsters, modifying them unpredictably. It will either randomize the Essences, upgrade them into a higher tier, or do nothing.

It's essential to know on which Essences to use this Remnant of Corruption. There are four in particular that you want to be aware of and corrupt whenever you can because they could potentially yield a very profitable and strong reward. They are as follows:

  • Screaming Essence of Dread may corrupt into an Essence of Delirium.
  • Screaming Essence of Envy may corrupt into an Essence of Horror.
  • Screaming Essence of Misery may corrupt into an Essence of Hysteria.
  • Screaming Essence of Scorn may corrupt into an Essence of Insanity.

Now, I will talk about the actual farming strategies, including how to run Essences in your maps and important Atlas nodes to take if you wish to do this method.

Path of Exile 3.23 Essence Farming

Running Essence Maps

Actually running the maps is very easy and simply consists of using white maps to run through them as fast as possible until you encounter an Essence monster.

Then, check if it needs to be corrupted if it has any of the 4 Essences mentioned previously.

Then, activate the monster, kill it, and collect the Essences. Repeat this until you've cleared out all the Essence monsters in a map, then repeat the whole process in another map. It's that simple.

Essence Atlas Nodes

As for the Atlas nodes, here are important ones that you would want to pick up to maximize the efficiency of this farming strategy:

  • Amplified Energies
  • Crystal Resonance
  • Remnant of Corruption Essence Chance
  • Proliflic Essence
  • Crystal Lattice
  • Imprisoned Monster Additional Essence Chance

If you would like to see where one of these is on the atlas, simply write the name of the node into the search bar in the Atlas itself.

Recommended Maps

Lastly, I'll talk a bit about which maps you want to be running.

Although this is mostly preference, you definitely want to run the right maps to ensure it's as fast and as easy as it can be. Picking an easy map layout could prove to be beneficial, so look out for maps such as:

  • Strand Map
  • Atoll Map
  • Jungle Valley Map

A side note for an Atoll map: The Essences in that map tend to spawn near the center, making them easy to track down. So basically, run the map in a figure 8.

2. Blight Farming

Blight is a bit of a tower defense game and that's why it's great for any build. You're mostly relying on correct tower placements in chokeholds and selecting the correct type of tower for the enemies that you are facing.

Upon completing a Blighted map, you'll have a multitude of chests that spawn from the Tendrils that the enemies were coming from. They have different types of rewards, but there will always be at least one guaranteed Blight chest reward.

Blighted maps do scale with map tiers, and in higher tier maps, you'll have a chance of encountering a Blight boss, which will work the same as other Blight monsters following a set path along a Tendril but will be much tougher to kill and reward you with an extra chest at the end.

Since the chests at the end of a Blight map are random apart from one, the rewards will vary. But at the same time, since there are so many chests when you really get into Blight, you'll have a high chance of receiving something useful to you and your build, whether that's raw currency, gems, POE Items, uniques, oils, Divination Cards, etc.

Path of Exile 3.23 Blight Farming

Blight Multipliers

Another important aspect of Blight is understanding how multipliers work with Blight. They don't work as you may think.

Increased item quantity does not directly increase the loot quantity from Blight chests. Since these are the main source of loot, that means this multiplier isn't a priority whatsoever. However, it does affect generic loot dropping from Blighted Monsters themselves.

Similarly, increased item rarity does not affect Blighted chest rewards, either. It affects Blighted Monsters' loot but not chests. Increased pack size multiplies the number of monsters spawning from each Tendril, affecting loot from Blighted Monsters but not chests.

Blight Scarabs

Scarabs are a great way to guarantee a Blighted map. There are 4 types of Blight-related Scarabs, each with progressively increased profitability and difficulty. Some rarer Scarabs can be challenging to complete.

Blight Atlas Nodes

Regarding the Atlas nodes, here are important ones to maximize the efficiency of this farming strategy.

  • Spores on the Wind
  • Immune Response
  • Mycelial Swarm
  • Epidemiology
  • Fungal Bloom
  • Sturdy Construction
  • Distilled Fungus
  • Blightspawn
  • Cassia's Pride

Blight Towers

Lastly, I'll talk about recommended maps for Blight and my preferred tower choices.

For towers, I usually stick to a few trusted ones that work most of the time. Tower choices depend on the current league, map, build, and monsters' resistances. However, some towers generally work well for many scenarios.

Firstly, we have Chilling Towers III or a Freezebolt Tower. The difference is that the Chilling Tower slows enemies, affects more targets and deals moderate damage whereas the Freezebolt Tower shoots a piercing projectile, which freezes enemies, and deal high damage.

The choice between the two lies on how much resources you currently have to spend and what the map layout is.

Usually, if I can afford it, I would go for the upgraded version - the Freezebolt Tower. But if the map is quite open, affecting more enemies with a Chilling Tower could prove to be more useful.

I like to pair these towers with a Seismic Tower level 3 for maximum crowd control. Seismic Towers deal low damage but always stun enemies. And they repeat multiple times, where at level 3 of the tower, they will slam the ground 7 times in a row, stunning enemies each time. Pairing both of these towers works great for choke points, which is their main objective.

Next up for some damage, I recommend going with the Meteor Tower. It reigns fiery meteors from the sky and is one of the best, if not the number one best damaging tower for monsters. Spreading a few of these around to cover as much area as possible is beneficial.

Also Read: 5 Most Recommended League Starters For POE 3.23 Affliction League

Pair the Scout Tower with the Meteor Tower as it deals high amounts of damage and works as a distraction, holding enemies off for a bit longer. The Scout Tower spawns 10 flying minions that fight the Blighted Monsters heading towards you.

Lastly, a very important tower to place across your run is the Empowering Tower level 3. It improves the effectiveness of other towers nearby, so placing it strategically is crucial. Prioritize improving your crowd control towers first to secure those choke points. Then, if you have enough resources, improve your damage and towers by 100%.

The most important thing to remember, though, is that each one of these towers will be ineffective against Blighted Monsters of the same type. Each Blighted map you run is going to have monsters that are resistant to some of the elements of your towers.

So, you want to make sure you carefully read what monsters are resistant to before starting the map and plan ahead. This way, you don't miserably fail.

If you can see that the monsters are resistant to chill or frost, then do not put down those chilling or freezing towers, as you are simply wasting your time.

Recommended Maps

Now, to quickly finish off this section, I will talk about with what maps I recommend.

I would say to try and go for the maps that have an enclosed layout. Enclosed maps will have more choke points for you to shut down and control compared to open maps. Enclosed maps also mean fewer Tendrils, which means fewer chests but also more chances for Blight chest rewards.

Some maps I recommend are:

  • Core Map
  • Toxic Sewer Map
  • Waste Pool Map

3. Heist Farming

I will be talking about Heist farming, assuming that you already know the basics behind this whole mechanic.

Heist Benefits

First of all, Heist drops an absurd amount of raw currency, which straight off the bat is a big positive on a league start. Not to mention the fact that through Heist, you can get a 5-link very early on and maybe even a 6-link and some other useful equipment, such as talismans or uniques.

Heist can also be comfortably run before even finishing the campaign as a replacement, for example, grinding Blood Aqueducts. If you're looking to get into Heist early on in the league, then you should just focus on leveling up and gearing the Rogues that accompany you in the Contracts and just doing as many Contracts and Blueprints as you can. This way, you are going to be gathering a large amount of raw currency, Divination Cards, and uniques. By the time you're past league start, you'll have a solid foundation for Heist and will be able to run some more advanced methods for some rare and expensive uniques, other items, and raw Divine Orbs.

Path of Exile 3.23 Heist Farming

You need to look at Heist as more of a long-term investment because you really need to level up and gear the Rogues and have a decent understanding of how Heists, Grand Heists, Blueprints, and Contracts work to really maximize your profit throughout. With that being said, though, your efforts will be greatly rewarded.

A lot of people simply don't want to go through all that, and therefore, so-called "Heisters" (people that run Heist a lot) are actually in demand for things that are only available in Heist.

That doesn't mean that Heist is not profitable early on as it definitely is. Even though you don't have a very specific farming method or goal, it's still worth running with the benefits I've just mentioned.

Heist will always be more efficient with a fast movement speed character. So, I even more so recommend Heist if you're running a fast league start build.

Best Heist Contracts

If you want to know which Contracts are the most expensive and what to look out for in particular, then it would be Deception Contracts.

These make it so that once you trigger the final alarm and have to escape, all the doors on the way back will be open for you, so you can just blitz to the exit instead of opening multiple doors and fighting waves of monsters, potentially risking death.

Heist Atlas Nodes

As for Atlas nodes, here are important ones that you would want to pick up to maximize the efficiency of Heist:

  • Secret Stash
  • The Finer Arts
  • No Honour Among Thieves
  • Casing the Joint
  • Friends in High Places
  • Heist Smuggler's Cache Chance

Then, is my list of what I recommend doing as a strategy for league start, and it is personally what I'll be doing regardless of what build I choose. I have run these choices many times before, and let me tell you, they do not disappoint if you put the time. But as always, remember to choose whatever you find the most fun because at the end of the day, what matters most is not efficiency or wealth but simply joy.

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Players Strongly Demand A Death Review Feature In Path Of Exile 2 Dawn Of The Hunt!
Players Strongly Demand A Death Review Feature In Path Of Exile 2 Dawn Of The Hunt!

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.

Developer’s Thoughts

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.

Players’ Thoughts

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.

Players Want These Changes In The Next Update Of Path Of Exile 2! - For Loot, Gems And Maps
Players Want These Changes In The Next Update Of Path Of Exile 2! - For Loot, Gems And Maps

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.

1. Drop Rate Needs To Be Increased

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.

2. Add A Gem Supplier

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.

3. Change The Map Layout

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!

How To Correctly Use The Newly Added Tactician In Path Of Exile 2 Dawn Of The Hunt League? - For Different Stages
How To Correctly Use The Newly Added Tactician In Path Of Exile 2 Dawn Of The Hunt League? - For Different Stages

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.

Tactician Build Overview

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.

Leveling Stage

Act 1

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.

Act 2

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.

Act 3 And Above

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.

Endgame Stage

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.

Overall Tips

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.

How Does Essence Drain Contagion Lich Build Work In POE 2 Dawn Of The Hunt League?
How Does Essence Drain Contagion Lich Build Work In POE 2 Dawn Of The Hunt League?

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.

Essence Drain Contagion Lich Overview

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.

Core Skills

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.

Ascendancy Nodes

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.

Equipment

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.

Pros And Cons

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.

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