Toxic Meltdown: An Aura of Decay Lich Guide. [Updates on hold, please read most recent edit/post!]

but u rly skilled 31 points into it right?

Yup! 31 in Acolyte, 84 in Lich for 115 points total, the current max

Hello all!

I’m currently in the process of looking into all the new idol mods and wondering if there’s any way to further augment or edit the build. We STILL do not have many new support skill skill trees for Acolyte, so I’m still hoping we get some health regen related stuff there, as I really do not want to be forced into using Lich.

Anyway, may be a while for a new update as I test everything! I will say that I think the regen version of this build is better this patch because glancing blows eats less of our affixes, and the opportunity to use a catalyst rather than a shield has opened up, which also lets us grab those high boosting DoT nodes that require you use 1h + catalyst.

I can confirm there is a specific affix for increased poison protection while Aura of Decay is active. There are also generic ‘more poison damage’ and ‘less damage over time taken’ affixes.

Combined these allow for more flexibility in the build and freeing up of affixes on equipment to fill out other defences. Further combined with the glancing blow improvements I expect you have much more wiggle room with affixes across the board for this type of build.

This should let you reshuffle points to grab those not using a shield nodes you mentioned much easier if you can replace the lost passives through gear.

I have also stumbled into a new (I assume having not found it previously) unique helmet that provides good ward per second and Int (26/s and 12 in my case). While not better than a normal helmet with T5 added HP/s once you have high regeneration increase it can still contend while gearing which is a nice option to have if it drops.

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0.7.6c update out. Thank you all for your continued support!

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What about Absence of life. I play Hc and I think this node is really good for survive bad situations. I just lose %50 frequency with self %50 frequency its a damage lose but also makes more survivabilty for me.

Well the 50% frequency node is a big loss of damage due to how poison works. Then again, if it’s in HC, then it’s probably best to lower self-damage as much as possible and rely more on wandering spirits for damage. Absence of Life won’t make a huge difference in survivability overall though I think.

I am new to the game and am leveling as this build. I am level 31. I have a bunch of poison res but I am still taking a lot of dmg. Any advice on how to sustain my hp? I havent specced into anything that increases the dmg I take from it.

EDIT: Does leech apply to our poison dmg?

Global leech applies to our poison damage, only global, not spell, not hit, which is why Soul Maw is so crucial to our build. Also, even if you have a lot of poison res, that will not help if you’re not cranking up your base regen! The three most important affixes for this whole build are flat health regen on your chestpiece, gloves, and helmet! Once you get those and start crafting some increased health regen suffixes on other gear, you’ll notice it’s way easier to survive.

Thank for the reply, I got my hp under control now. I have another question though. In your always on AoD set up, why do you take Poisoned Soul over Icarian Poison? It seems like they both increase the frequency of the poison application to enemies by 50%: however, Icarian Poison only increases how frequently you apply it to yourself by 5% as aposed to Poisoned Souls 50%

Poisoned Souls increases the self tick rate by a one time 50%, meaning that it can be managed by increasing your regeneration and protection. Icarian Poison increases your self tick rate by 5% per second, i.e 5% at 1 second, 10% at 2 seconds, 15% at 3 seconds, etc. That WILL eventually kill you if you don’t toggle it. It’s a much more dangerous setup.

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As Dom said above, Icarian is a ramping self poison rate. Every second it will increase the rate you self poison, which means taking it with the permanent upkeep version would eventually kill us.

What about Soul Feast? Is really that bad? Give a bit of surviving and still do damage.

Soul Feast isn’t bad, but it doesn’t synergize that well with this Aura of Decay playstyle, at least in my opinion.

Also, welcome to the forums!

Ty man!

I think you should focus a bit more on the “leveling” zone of the build. AoD is pretty much unusuable just when you unlock it…

I’m planning on reviewing the leveling process of many of my builds after 0.7.7 comes out, so it would probably happen following that patch. I agree that my guide is currently lacking such, and I agree switching to AoD right away is suicide.

So the real problem is that following your guide, you will put AoD asap. It may work, even cause you have to level it to be effective, but feel a lil weird. You need actually a lot of good item to be able to run AoD without spamming pots or toggling it ON/OFF every two sec.

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Do you ever feel like you have some problem with mana? spamming Wandering spirits drains more mana than the regen, actually…

And what do you mean with “flat health regen prefix”? I found none of those, actually…

The flat health regen mod is called “blessed” and can only spawn on gloves, helmets, and chestpieces, so keep an eye out for it. Also, I never really have that many mana issues, honestly. Really AoD is enough damage in most circumstances, so if you’re having mana issues, just try to be a bit more conservative with when you use wandering spirits.

Dropped none till now. Nice.
I think that I have way too low health regen right now. Sitting at 54 and I’m level 60. Pretty sad.