Making the most out of Jewels and Uniques for Lich!
Hello!
tl;dr
What are the best modifiers for my Phylactery Jewel?
Are Atziri's Disdain, Shavronne's Satchel, and even Melting Maelstrom worth looking into?
What "big" defensive nodes will be best to synergize with Lich's defenses? Chaos Inoculation? Mind Over Matter?
I think I'm going to be going for Phylactery and Eternal Life. I've heard that Atziri's Disdain is a good pick for my helmet.
My biggest thought, however, is that I know in the "real" endgame of PoE 1, Uniques ended up being lesser options compared to really good rares with lots of resistance, damage, etc. Maybe two Uniques is already two too many? and I'm already using Shavronne's Belt so I can use Flask to recoup my Energy Shield as well, but I'm not sure if that's going to be the best way to quickly heal my Energy Shield or if a regular Rare Belt would be better.
And to keep with the theme of being a curse-slinging chaos-monger, I was curious about Melting Maelstrom, the Unique Flask. It looks pretty interesting, but I'm not sure how I'd fit it into a build. With Chaos Inoculation (Or Eternal Life?) could I potentially just have another source of Chaos damage ticking away without the Flask's downside messing with me?
I have plenty of other questions such as about my links and gems, but I can tinker with those until I see what works. I've been doing the Lesser Jeweler's > Vaal strategy to get a couple 5-links on my ED/Contagion in the short term, and it's been fun.
Comments
You'll have to take my Atziris Disdain out of my cold dead... head.
atziris disdain is so strong. a part of energy shield's strength is just that you have a huge pool. you don't really have any armor to reduce any physical hits, no evasion or block to mitigate some hits either. so getting ANY reduction is big. using atziris with eternal life just makes you 10% tankier which is huge.
Most energy shield builds right now are using the new spirit gem convalescence in their weapon swap 2 set. It recharges your energy shield without interruption for the next 3ish seconds. In addition, putting it on weapon swap 2 means you don't really need to worry about the spirit cost getting in the way of your regular stuff.
other than the spirit gem, there really isn't enough damage on the tree for chaos lich. You can pick up all the chaos nodes and have nothing left to grab for damage so you have enough points to pick up all the energy shield recharge nodes. Getting a ton of faster recharge means you only have to dip out of fights for ~1s before the energy shield recharges up
Have you seen CaptainLance’s approach? He’s making daily update videos and snapshots of this build.
1.
Energy shield so you avoid the downside, then chaos/spell damage. Unless you have an awesome jewell that does both of those, pathing towards eternal life first will make you very tanky with just magic ES gear that has life + resistance. I’m in t10 maps with just Soulless Form, and opted for Rupture the Soul instead of Eternal Life for pack clear (blasphemy set up, 7m+ curse radius for chaos explosion). It does use 1 extra portal as “defence” on occasion.
2.
Atziris Disdain for sure, they’re somewhat common and I got mine for 5ex around t8. I do recommend getting it as soon as you can afford it, but a good rare ES helmet will last you a while. Belt is a nice cheap pick up if you can solve resistance with other gear. Otherwise Convalescence for 30 spirit is a good panic button to recover ES. This also lets you use Doedre’s gloves for 100% spell damage, and a rare belt to help with resistance (both uniques would be nice but its a lot of suffix pressure now). Cheap as well, don’t splurge on the gloves it will be temporary (I think).
ES notables still give ridiculous scaling with some double dips here and there. For example it can solve stun threshold at the same time later on. Latest announcement also mentioned scaling ailment threshold with ES as well on tree. MoM is recommended mid/late campaign until you get decent ES gear to spec out of it for simply more ES nodes. CI although cool, doesn’t look viable since we need an HP pool to scale mana regen with the Soulless Form ascendency node (it will be needed at high gem skill levels).
Extra
- not knowledgeable enough about Maelstrom but consider it way down the line in endgame
- 5 link ED is priority but don’t sweat it too much. Chain, swift affliction, + more damage stuff on ED
- Unleash, arcane tempo, and magnified effect on Contagion for the best spread.