Level 95 CI Blight of Contagion Trickster^3.26

Notes

> CHANGES IN 3.26 <
Chaos skills get a huge damage buff in general, the build was already played last season, but now we get 40%+ more damage


> MERCENARY <
Not that much is known yet about how Mercenaries will actually play out. Some cheap uniques that might be good to put on it:
- Shaper's Seed (life regen)
- Kaom's Binding (effectively gives you physical mitigation)
- Leer Cast (bit of damage)
- Using the aspect of the spider buff unique chest might be interesting with the mercenary that has aspect of the spider

You'll have to experiment what tradeoff between damage and utility is worth it though, and whether the party scaling the Mercenary will give in bossfights(50% more life for bosses) is even worth using at all.

> PLAYSTYLE <
> Clear <
Cast Contagion on the enemies and then cast blight of contagion, it stacks very fast!

> Bossing <
You throw down your Wither Totem (Ideally not where the boss is about to attack) - This will wither the boss making it take more damage
You then cast Bane, this activates your curses and bane will do some damage itself.
Then you channel Blight on the boss, it stacks up very fast, if you're at the point where you have temporal chains in your bane the debuff will last quite a while.
So even if you are running out of mana, 0.5 seconds of Blight should be enough to do max damage for 10 seconds, allowing you to run around and dodge a lot.

> LEVELING <
Start out using a claw or a dagger and use venom gyre, i tried using blight and if you're a new player full clearing it might be okay, but even with actually dodging a lot brutus felt miserable.
Venom gyre lets you be ranged and still do okay damage early and we can swap to Essence drain, blight and contagion at level 12. Make sure you are leveling a blight gem skill though.
Iron rings will help with the damage for your first 12 levels and you can use volley or void manipulation depending if you want to clear more or have more damage.

At level 12 you swap to essence drain, now we cast contagion on a pack of monsters and then essence drain into it, this will spread the debuff and kill the monsters.

For bosses you would use essence drain, wither totem, cast bane with despair when you have it, and then blight for extra damage.


> Getting Blight of Contagion <
We can swap to Blight of Contagion as soon as we get one, this basically replaces your Essence drain and your blight. You can get it already in normal lab by inserting any blue gem (Doesn't specifically need to be contagion)
Once you're able to access the third lab, merc lab, you can sometimes get the option "Turn targeted gem into a transcendant gem" - Blight sadly has two options so this is a coinflip if you get atrophy or contagion.



> WHY NOT OCCULTIST? <
Occultist also looks pretty great for the build, I'm a big fan of trickster, gets lots of energy shield + evasion and makes mapping (which is what the build excells at) feel incredible.
Occultist does get the chaos explosions which are amazing, but we can get them on this build by a) Sacrificing damage and using obliteration. B) Stacking unspeakable gifts on medium clusters.

> Struggling on mana? <
Mana is annoying on the build, early i like having soul siphon, and you do get mana on kill from your first ascendancy with masteries too so that should feel great for killing packs.
Once you get to bosses you'll for a long time (potentially forever) need a mana flask which is a big downside of the build, however you do need to channel very, very little to get max damage, so even having 30-40 mana regen should be enough
It'll end up with needing to get used to it and feel it out, because it can feel like the mana issues are preventing you from dealing more damage, but even 0.5 seconds of channeling should be enough for 10 seconds of full damage.

> Stat issues? <
Getting 30 strength on the tree will be very likely, and if you're going for  an accumulator wand that has such a high int requirement you might need 30 int on the tree as well.
We can also get stats on gear, including jewels (10 strength and int for example)



> CRAFTING GEAR <
> Wand <
For crafting a wand early, using screaming essence of woe on a level 4 driftwood wand can get you surprisingly good wands, level 2 works too but then it can't get dot multiplier.
At level 4 you can get +1 Chaos, the spell damage from the essence, and dot multi, making a really great starter wand


> Energy shield gear <
https://youtu.be/aXVwes0mRLo?t=1743

I linked a video on recombinators, they will be the main way to get really good gear. GGG did announce a nerf which would impact getting 3 perfect prefixes slightly (most make it take a few more attempts) But it will still be a reliable way to get gear.
Using dense fossils on the bases is a surprisingly reliable way to get really good gear as well, but recombinators are very hard to beat.


> COMMON MISTAKES <
Make sure that you cast Contagion before Blight
Remember to use your wither totem and bane, they are a big part of your damage, and chaos dots aren't known for their high damage to begin with.

> Reservation Issues <

There's a lot of options for reservation on this build, annointing sovreignity (3 silver) Using a essence of Loathing on helmet (up to 10% mana reservation) Using Ichor on the helmet (also up to 10% reservation)
Replica Dragonfang as well, but remember if you divine this it will change the ability, so don't divine it hoping to change the stats.
Mana mastery for 12% Reservation
Dropping controlled destruction on blight or dropping intensify or rarity on contagion to fit an enlighten on our auras