Essence Drain Contagion
0.2 DOTH – Day 11 – April 14, 2025
POE2 0.2 Dawn Of The Hunt League Start! I’m so excited to try Smith of Kitava but Act 1 Warrior levelling was HAAARDDD!!! Yes, GGG overcooked the monsters a bit, but let’s face it! it’s a skill issue… I’m just not good enough to play melee.
So I gave up on day 1 after 20+ deaths in Act 1 not even killing the Count. I rerolled Witch and smashed the Act 1 on day 1 in 2 hours with no deaths. It was a pretty straight forward levelling with Essence Drain and Contagion.
I ascended as a Lich and completed the campaign in 17 hours with a total of 15 deaths.
I followed CaptainLance9 videos on Youtube and his Maxroll planner. The only thing I added is Unearth as a defensive tool. I’m not good enough to run the map like he does darting around doing ED and Contagion while avoiding everything. I need to play more slowly so I kill packs in front of me with ED + Contagion, then I Unearth to get a bunch of minions to act as a meat shield and body blocking monsters and their ranged attacks. On bosses, I also added the Dark Effigy totem for a little bit extra DPS.
More details below with POB, gems swap, pros and cons, DPS, etc.
TLDR: it’s a great started build, cheap, good at everything, but great a nothing and a bit annoying after a while. So it’s time to reroll!
| Bossing | ★★★ |
| Defence | ★★★ |
| Mapping | ★★ |
| Budget | ★★★★★ |
| Overall score | 13 |
I debated not including these stars as I only played until level 76 so this is highly biased.
Impossible to be fair but I'm trying my best. I'm trying to get all characters to lvl 90, 4 ascendancies, 5L, gem level 19 and under 10 div.
What I liked
- Levelling and map progression – Felt straightforward and easy, not overpower but adequate
- Cheap – Most expensive item was like 35 ex. Adding everything together was about 4 div.
- Balanced character – Ok bosser, Ok mapper, Ok defensive stats, again, not OP but just a great league starter.
- Visual clarity
What I disliked
- Aiming– ED is annoying to aim properlty when you constantly side-step
- 2-button playstile while mapping – It gets pretty tiring after a while.
- Delay – not that bad but when doing challenging hard maps and the mobs are not dying fast because your DOT is not good enough, you have to avoid/tank the mobs.
- Slow – Not a fast character and the map clear is pretty slow.
Would I play it again?
Yes as a league starter only though.
Path Of Building and stats
POB is setup for bossing, but 90% of the time, I would have slightly different support for mapping:
– Chain instead of Chaos Mastery on Essence Drain
– Envenom instead of Withering Touch on Dark Effigy
– I would then add Chaos Mastery to Withering Presence
| POB | In Game | |
| DPS (Guardian / Pinnacle) | 73,329 | 65,000 |
| Hard Core? | Maybe |
| Solo Self Found? | YES |
| League starter? | YES |
| Levelling skill | Same |
| Budget | 4 div as per 0.2 DOTH – Day 11 – April 14, 2025 |
| Death count | 27 |
| Level | 90 |
| Played | 45 hours |
Please visit this Google Sheet to see the main information and POB data I kept track of. You can more easily compare with other builds.
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