Essence Drain Contagion Hierophant Templar Build Guide - Path of Exile 3.24

1. Build introduction
2. Build Mechanics
3. Ascendancy, Pantheon and Bandits
4. Gems
5. Leveling + Passive Skill tree
6. Items
7. FAQ

Build introduction

Essence Drain (ED) and Contagion provides a solid character capable of good solid speed alongside the ability to defeat all bosses in the game, including Sirus, Shaper, and Uber Elder.

Strengths

• All content viable
• Easy leveling
• Instant Legion clears
• End-game scaling through gearing viable through ~2-5ex increments
• Reasonably tanky
• Can manually dodge whilst still doing damage
• No flask piano'ing

Weaknesses

• No regen maps
  • Doable, but we usually rely a lot on mana regeneration; need to take out Arcane Cloak for these maps
• -max res maps
  • Again, doable - but we don't have any sources of +max. res., so these can be rippier at higher map tiers

End-Game Stats.

• ~9300 eHP (effective HP via Life/Mana through MoM mechanic)
• ~2500 Arcane Cloak damage reduction from hits
• 2.6k Energy Shield
• 34% Block Chance
• 20% Spell Block Change
• 50% Movement Speed (before flasks)
• 1.1million DoT (before flasks)

The clear speed is accomplished through it's large Area of Effect combined with Contagion's ability to spread your Essence Drain damage across packs, reaching monsters up to two screens away.The boss DPS, whilst sitting at only 1 million damage per second, is very powerful due to it's extended up-time as our Essence Drain skill ticks for ~5 seconds - meaning we're still dealing DoT whilst we're not actively casting and are kiting.

In terms of defenses, we opt for a layered approach by stacking Life and Mana (as we are a MoM build, thus our mana pool acts as an extension to our lifepool at a certain percentage), but also pick up some additional Energy Shield, as well as Block and Dodge chance.

Through this, our MoM ED/Contagion build represents not only a solid league starter, but also something that can be carried to end-game with the right gearing; meaning you'll spend more time mapping and making currency, and less time leveling and gearing a second character.

This build has some relatively complicated mechanics to new starters, but is otherwise very easy to actually play - only requiring the player to:

• Cast Contagion
• Cast Essence Drain
• Use a movement skill (ideally Flame Dash)
• (Optionally) - Use a damage support (Blight) for difficult bosses

And not requiring the player to:

• Maintain flask up-time
• Run a separate a bossing skill and clearing skill
• 'Hot-swap' gems for bossing

A player can reasonably expect to clear early red maps with a 5L and less than 5ex investment, where-as a further 10ex investment can carry a player easily through end-game content.

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Build Mechanics

Depending on your projectile speed, it may prove better to cast Essence Drain, then cast Contagion to 'infect' the mobs whilst the ED bolt is still travelling, or the reverse if your ED will likely hit before you get your Contagion off (requiring you to recast ED to get the Contagion 'spread'). Use Blight and Vaal Blight totems for stronger bosses.

Ascendancy, Pantheon and Bandits

This build requires Ascending to a Hierophant to be able to pick up Divine Guidance, allowing us to hit a 50% effective MoM setup. We then aim to pick up Sanctuary of Thought and Illuminated Devotion for more AoE.

For your final ascendancy points, you can pick up Arcane Blessing to make you immune to Elemental Ailments, i.e. chill, ignite, etc., which is a large quality of life bonus. Alternatively, you may pick up Conviction of Power, which gives us reduced Elemental Damage taken when fighting bosses, as we'll be casting many spell totems at once for our Blight skill.

The 2 passive points for not siding with any bandit is usually the better option, as we can pick up a lot of quality of life on the tree, but you can go with another bandit if you feel you need the resistance, dodge, or movement speed more.

Gems

Leveling + Passive Skill tree

You can level with this build with ease, without the need to respec.

Pick up damage or defensive options depending on what you need more of at the time.

To save points, prioritise the notables (e.g. get Arcane Guarding through Shield Spell Damage, Block Recovery, and Energy Shieldrather than throughShield Spell Damage and Spell Block;Growth and DecaythroughLife Regeneration instead of Damage Over Time, etc.). You can get these nodes instead later, as you level closer to 100.

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Items

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FAQ