A Blight/Essence Drain of Desperation Starter for Desperate ED/Contagion addicts.

Disclaimer : this build is by no means the best league-starter available. It's probably C/D-tier at best. It's an attempt at making the ED/Contagion playstyle the least shit possible by leveraging a couple cheap uniques & mechanics. The reasoning to play this build shoudn't be "I'd like to play a strong league starter, let's try this build" but rather "I am a hopeless Contagion spreads addict and will play ED/Blight/Contagion no matter what, let's try making my experience the least painful possible".

Now that we got that out of the way : ED/Contagion might be my fav build of all time. Unfortunately, for quite obvious reasons (it's crap), I haven't played the build in a while, which already made me itchy as league teasers came around. The last straw was then looking at the reveal and realising that this breach revamp basically wanted us to have the best map clear possible. This was too much for me to handle, and it was at this moment I crit failed the constitution roll to resist Dark Urge.

Anyway, here's the PoB : https://pobb.in/kaJJ4C04Tfzh

This is a dual 4L setup, Gems are adults only in the EU, Steelskin & Flasks are disabled. The current skill is set to Contagion to easily see its AoE breakpoints (hence the lonely AoE node in the middle of the tree). Our DPS can be found under "Full DoT DPS". The tree is a bit too high level here (94) but is very flexible, I kind of just clicked all the various options you have to show them, unclick the stuff you like the least at lower levels.

The main """tech""" here is slotting Vaal Blight/EDoD in respectively Vaal Caress & corrupted Deerstalker to get cheap gem levels/pseudo 5Ls. We get basically perma Onslaught from Vaal Caress which should make the build feel decent for mapping. I plan to get a regular Vaal Blight as soon as I am able to get the gloves, and then try to vaal the of Contagion variant myself (1 in 4 chance, it should eventually happen). Or maybe there's a cheap one on trade. Use Efficacy over Swift Affliction with regular Blight for uptime.

+2 Deerstalkers are easily farmable by picking up Deerskin Boots, vaaling them if you get +2 AoE/Duration/Projectile, and using a Tainted Mythic Orb on them. Deerstalker being about a Tier 69 unique & the only Deerskin Boots unique, you have a straight 50% chance to get them.

For levelling, I'm probably first going to go Elementalist in normal lab for the golem node, which is just too good early on. I'm not sure whether I'll level as chaos dot or some generic firestorm campaign build just yet though.

As a side note, I first planned this entire build as an actual Elementalist but the socket pressure from having to slot in 4 golems was in turn too much in my opinion. But it's surely playable. It'll be a bit tankier thanks to Bastion of Elements, the recovery from Stone Golem, and against bosses because you probably take Shaper of Flames and proc it w/ ED.

Defensively, the max hits are oookayyy, but the attack block is lower than what I'd like, and the recovery only hangs by the thread that is Sorrow of the Divine + an Eternal Life Flask. Phys mitigation is fully on Kaom's shoulders, and while I hope they're strong, I might consider Arctic Armour over Tempest Shield if they're not. Infused Channelling on Blight is another desperate defensive option. Also we can't be stunned thanks to Occy.

Endgame gear probably includes essence of hysteria shaper gloves w/ trap support, more gem levels everywhere, probably clusters, and more. I'll do a PoB if I have time kill/if people are interested, otherwise I'll just wing it or maybe transition into Rue's Phys DoT if it Chaos sucks too bad.

If you have any ideas, comments or questions feel free to post them here.

Enjoy, hopefully.