More Possibilities for Contagion?

So... With some more time for Legacy League and uncertainty about DoT's in 3.0

I decided to make a new DoT build. This time, another ED build, one that uses Contagion too.

With that, one of the biggest things on my mind as I play is "Why does Contagion exist?"

Like, the damage it deals is trash (Base of 189 DPS at level 20 gem) and its entire existence seems to be based off the interaction of spreading Essence Drain.

But like... Why? Wouldn't it have been possible to simply add an on-kill effect to ED itself to make it spread so as to not need to use a second nearly worthless skill in order to make the build work?

I mean, it kind of feels like if you NEEDED the Detonate Mines skill gem in order to make mines deal AoE damage outside of using Piercing projectiles for your mines...

So... I was wondering if Contagion could ever be made you know, not entirely revolving around a specific other skill (Which can actually do just fine without it... Pierce + GMP = Oh look, DoTs applied to everything on screen, off screen and all with just a single skill gem...)?

This could be done in a variety of ways:

- Making Contagion's damage not trash. If it did meaningful damage on its own, without ED then it would have some more worth. It might be necessary to shift some damage from ED over to Contagion to keep the build balanced (Which, would affect non Contagion ED builds. Of which I've used a few. But that's a sacrifice I'd be willing to make in order to get Contagion to not feel so clunky and out of place)

- Allow spreading of other effect(s) in addition to ED. For example, Curses, Poison, Blind etc. The main issue with this is trying to limit how useful it might be for non-DoT builds as an easy cheesy way of getting free prolif for these effects...

- Give Contagion itself additional effects. Such as Chaos Resist debuff or an increased Degen Damage Taken debuff. Maybe something utility orientated like movement speed slow, increased curse effect etc.

Probably some other ways, but I'm too tired to brain right now...

But yeah, all in all, I like the idea of the skill. I love to see those chain reactions with a good damage ED wiping out a ton of dudes. But honestly, outside of Normal where a few supports and passive nodes can make it one shot whites for easy clear... It just feels useless outside of a specific interaction that makes no sense to be an additional gem.

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Tarille a écrit :

- Allow spreading of other effect(s) in addition to ED. For example, Curses, Poison, Blind etc. The main issue with this is trying to limit how useful it might be for non-DoT builds as an easy cheesy way of getting free prolif for these effects...

Threshold Jewels! Maybe with additional downsides. I would imagine "20% chance to spread" somehow

It was added as a 'support skill'. Like 'orb of storms'.

Basicly to have a build that wasn't 'hold down one button'/movment skill.

Ess Drain, with it's slow speed and regen after kill.
Made it a very fun & differnt build, to 'lurk around the back' picking on the litte trash mobs chaining it back into the big scary boss over there.

BUT, it has some major problems.
If the mob expldoes, it dosen't work. So using Occultist was bad because of Profane Bloom braking it.
Group play was a HUGE no-no as anyone shattering or destorying the corpse broke it. Not 'pulling the groups' to do chain kills made it worthless.
And there was no point in 'dots' on anything but boss's. 1 shot or be 1 shot type game. Letting things live for a single attack can be deadly!

Then the AOE nerf, made it a 'very crappy fireball/prolif' with extra clicks and slower clear.

So now it's all about speeding up Ess Drain, to use it to stack posion & kill boss's. With a clunky contagion to prolif to speed up trash a little. (Tho piece and multi-projectiles with say a flask and pathfinder is prob better clear on trash than bothering with Contagion now)

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Bweaty a écrit :

It was added as a 'support skill'. Like 'orb of storms'.

Basicly to have a build that wasn't 'hold down one button'/movment skill.

Though, at least Orb of Storms has something its uniquely good for in its own right. Its ability to use Power Charge on Critical to basically cap out power charges instantly due to the potential for it to roll crits multiple times.

Contagion literally could have been a secondary effect on Essence Drain

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Ess Drain, with it's slow speed and regen after kill.
Made it a very fun & differnt build, to 'lurk around the back' picking on the litte trash mobs chaining it back into the big scary boss over there.

Yeah... The build design is cool. It just always feels lame about how crappy Contagion actually is...

To be honest it's to the point where the ED build I was running Contagion on has actually now just relegated it to a 2L with Increased Area since damage supports are useless because 50% more of 0 is still 0...

I've actually replaced the spot of Contagion with Blight, for some additional single target damage to help nuke down bosses or to get that initial kill for the spread.

"

BUT, it has some major problems.
If the mob expldoes, it dosen't work. So using Occultist was bad because of Profane Bloom braking it.
Group play was a HUGE no-no as anyone shattering or destorying the corpse broke it. Not 'pulling the groups' to do chain kills made it worthless.
And there was no point in 'dots' on anything but boss's. 1 shot or be 1 shot type game. Letting things live for a single attack can be deadly!

Then the AOE nerf, made it a 'very crappy fireball/prolif' with extra clicks and slower clear.

So now it's all about speeding up Ess Drain, to use it to stack posion & kill boss's. With a clunky contagion to prolif to speed up trash a little. (Tho piece and multi-projectiles with say a flask and pathfinder is prob better clear on trash than bothering with Contagion now)

Yeah... Some issues, outside its whole "You need to use an extra button to get this core functionality (Which is so core that its a reason why you can't make ED Traps/Mines) to work. Also unlike Mines, this extra button costs a skill gem or 2. GG"

Mob explosions breaking it also means no Abyssal Cry... Which could be one of the most fun builds if it worked. Contagion > ED > AC and watch everything pop and spread the destruction...

Group play... Meh. I'm SSF so I don't particularly care much about MP side of things (Though, I gather than there are more skills that become "Meh" in group play)

The CSM and AoE nerfs don't help it for sure...

But yeah, ED build really are better off with more projectiles and Pierce to get their spread. That or something else (For example, I have some characters that are CA and stack a ton of Projectile damage alongside Chaos damage so they CA down groups and then ED on single targets)

I just hope that Contagion and ED get a bit of love come 3.0. Since there's such a rework to DoTs coming and there's not been too much mention about what Chaos DoTs are getting (I mean, they mentioned turning the Increased Burning Damage Support into "More Burning Damage" in addition to buffing Emberwake and Poison nodes. But they kind of glossed over ED builds outside pointing out that Projectile damage won't work on ED's DoT...)

And again, the design of the build is so cool. Spreading your DoTs through massive waves of enemies is so cool, really captures that affliction master style RPG character (Also, Perandus Chests are awesome. They keep reviving into a DoT spread!)

Essence Drain has been one of my favorite builds in the game so far, so I figured I would give my 2 cents.

I think Contagion should function like elemental proliferation where the corpses can spread the contagion, not just spreading it once upon death. This would solve the profane bloom problem of not spreading on death in some cases. Also, yeah, please increase the base area of contagion, AoE nodes are not conveniently located for ED builds, and the chain ends if there is even the shortest distance between packs. No fun.

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MrChubms a écrit :

Essence Drain has been one of my favorite builds in the game so far, so I figured I would give my 2 cents.

I think Contagion should function like elemental proliferation where the corpses can spread the contagion, not just spreading it once upon death. This would solve the profane bloom problem of not spreading on death in some cases. Also, yeah, please increase the base area of contagion, AoE nodes are not conveniently located for ED builds, and the chain ends if there is even the shortest distance between packs. No fun.

I've literally never had aoe problems with contagion Ed. What you on about? Too be fair, my last one was before the aoe changes so I could be currently wrong...

But to answer the whole "make it a secondary effect" idea, I think they thought of blight existing before even releasing Ed and contagion, that or the existence of abyssal cry. Either one of those I could imagine a 6 link Ed with contagion built in plus another 6l abyssal or blight would just be the most op chaos build ever. Hell you might be able to swap blight for ac for bosses and cry for general map clearing where one Ed auto spreading with a cry backing it up and then blight stacks on top of Ed on bosses without changing supports and just ruin everything.

You can do that even now but built in contagion would save you another socket item so you ould have 3 4l for with totem, defensive setup and vaal skills all neatly setup. At least keeping contagion out of Ed dials back that freedom a bit.

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PleiadesBlackstar a écrit :

But to answer the whole "make it a secondary effect" idea, I think they thought of blight existing before even releasing Ed and contagion, that or the existence of abyssal cry. Either one of those I could imagine a 6 link Ed with contagion built in plus another 6l abyssal or blight would just be the most op chaos build ever. Hell you might be able to swap blight for ac for bosses and cry for general map clearing where one Ed auto spreading with a cry backing it up and then blight stacks on top of Ed on bosses without changing supports and just ruin everything.

You can do that even now but built in contagion would save you another socket item so you ould have 3 4l for with totem, defensive setup and vaal skills all neatly setup. At least keeping contagion out of Ed dials back that freedom a bit.

You mean, as opposed to the current most OP chaos build ever?

Which would be using a Witch with Profane Bloom, EK with Poison and RoB jewel stacking a bunch of crit and blasting apart mobs and bosses without a concern about anything other than a single 6 link that doesn't even need gem swapping? It can also benefit from Vaal Pact too (While ED builds can't really, since only a minor portion of their damage comes from hits)

It honestly makes no sense. Given the power of other skills with just a 6L. That can also stack Chaos damage via Poison and access Blight/Abyssal 6L if they choose to (But they don't, because it's not worth it since their "Chaos" 6L already obliterates all content. Just like you can do now with just ED on its own when utilizing multiple Projectiles and Pierce, Contagion is unnecessary if you want to get multiple targets affected by ED)

But still, even IF the idea was to make you use extra sockets to put in this ability... Why not make it a worthwhile skill outside literally just spreading ED? Like I mention in the OP, there's a multitude of things they COULD have done with it to make it a decent skill in its own right, in addition to the ED spreading. Which would make it feel less pointless, especially if you go Pierce on ED anyway...

You kind of see the problem with a completely different lense. I find some justification in using sockets to avoid extra utility since I consider a generic Ed contagion build to be a fairly solid build and increasing the flexibility would let it push higher in rank to be more op. Where you seem to see no reason why that should be allowed to be. Personally since you bring up the ek build example, I'd rather see stuff like that nerfed since I view Ed builds to be a good "average" build power and speed. So maybe we aren't going to see eye to eye on the issue on that grounds alone.

Secondly, as already mentioned, Ed and contagion were simply designed to be a build in of itself with neither doing fairly good without the other (I have honestly not seen a popular multi proj Ed build outside of the newer rogue exile) and that ties into my belief that Ed contagion was designed to mainly be a 6l Ed skill with wand/dagger and shield/dual wield and a 4 link contagion since it doesn't benefit from anything else more.

Chaos skills and converasion are supposed to be limited in use in all honesty. I feel like GGG went a little too trigger happy at around the same time people decided to do their damnest to avoid reflect issues ever. So now it feels like we have too many chaos options because we do. If the conversions and such weren't so plentiful, I bet Ed and contagion might have been designed sperately to fill out the chaos skill roster.

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PleiadesBlackstar a écrit :

You kind of see the problem with a completely different lense. I find some justification in using sockets to avoid extra utility since I consider a generic Ed contagion build to be a fairly solid build and increasing the flexibility would let it push higher in rank to be more op. Where you seem to see no reason why that should be allowed to be. Personally since you bring up the ek build example, I'd rather see stuff like that nerfed since I view Ed builds to be a good "average" build power and speed. So maybe we aren't going to see eye to eye on the issue on that grounds alone.

Well, I too would like to see the multi-dipping builds toned way, way, way down. Which is nice since all the Poison builds that don't even invest into Chaos/DoT/Poison nodes will no longer be outperforming dedicated DoT builds if the 3.0 DoT manifestos are to be believed.

However, it still leaves the fact that, Contagion is garbage. It literally is only there to spread ED. You can seriously just 2L it with Inc AoE and be done with it.

Meanwhile, literally every other build only really needs to care about a single 6L. Since at worst they might swap a single gem for AoE/ST (I.e. GMP > Slower Projectiles)

If they wanted to make the build forced into a mediocre gem to take up slots for no reason other than "Well... Don't want you to be as flexible as literally every other build would we!", then why not the same for Mines? Why do they work without slotting in Detonate Mines gem?

As I've said multiple times, I'm not against Contagion being a skill gem on its own. What I am against is it being a really crap skill gem on its own. It having garbage damage and no utility and being there to literally give ED a slight increase in functionality (It works with literally nothing else. So it's not like its a utility skill that can fit into multiple builds, such as Wither which has use on builds with no Chaos damage because its slow)

There really is no difference between having Contagion being a separate skill gem and ED just naturally spreading other than Contagion doing a minor amount of damage and taking up 2-4 gem sockets and a skill slot on your action bar.

That's how limited Contagion is in what it does.

I mean, other multi-skill builds don't have sucky individual skills. For example, Frostbolt has interactions with Ice Nova and Vortex. But, all 3 skills are individually useful and can be used as stand alone skill in a build and can even be used in other builds (For example, Ice Nova fits in well with the Hiltless/Cyclone build and Vortex is great for Trap builds)

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(I have honestly not seen a popular multi proj Ed build outside of the newer rogue exile)

Well, the thing about that, is DoTs aren't meta. So why would a DoT build be popular?

Current meta is about blowing up screens instantly. DoTs are not conducive to that. Even the Poison/Ignite that many popular builds utilize is pretty much just there for bosses.

If the game slows down significantly in 3.0, maybe ED might see more use and so multi-proj ED builds might become popular. But I doubt that 3.0 will slow things down THAT much to make instant damage builds (That for the most part can run with essentially a 5L due to Poison Support not really doing anything while mobbing) less desirable than DoT builds for the majority of speed clearers.

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Tarille a écrit :

"

(I have honestly not seen a popular multi proj Ed build outside of the newer rogue exile)

Well, the thing about that, is DoTs aren't meta. So why would a DoT build be popular?

Current meta is about blowing up screens instantly. DoTs are not conducive to that. Even the Poison/Ignite that many popular builds utilize is pretty much just there for bosses.

If the game slows down significantly in 3.0, maybe ED might see more use and so multi-proj ED builds might become popular. But I doubt that 3.0 will slow things down THAT much to make instant damage builds (That for the most part can run with essentially a 5L due to Poison Support not really doing anything while mobbing) less desirable than DoT builds for the majority of speed clearers.

I more so was referring to lmp/gmp would probably kill dps of ed overall since the base design is simply, contagion and 1 ed blast since the blasts themselves don't stack. That rogue's dps is cranked to hell to do so much damage with a single projectile unless I am missing something.