TbXie's Essence Drain Contagion Trickster Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Powers (PoE Trial of the Ancestors 3.22)

Ascendancy (Shadow – Trickster)

One Step Ahead

What shall I say. Potentially one of the best ascendancy nodes in the game. Action speed is a really really valuable stat but more so is the free mini temporal chains. Reducing action speed to 92% of their base value is incredibly strong & will make leveling very very smooth.

Escape Artist

This Ascendancy notable basically enables Trickster further. Since it gives you Evasion per Energy Shield on your helmet, it allows you to recover more Energy Shield from Ghost Dance. The fact that it gets you a free 300 Energy Shield from Body Armour also is pretty significant.

Spellbreaker

People will be sleeping on this node. With Soul Thief, you’ll almost always be full ES whilst mapping & since you’re not actively trying to get hit on boss fights, you’re more often than not getting an additional 10% suppression from this node & another source of recovery. 10% Extra Suppressed damage actually means 20% more Spell Mitigation which is absolutely insane. Lastly, the 20% Flat Suppression basically means you’re essentially capped without using any gear.

Bandits

There really only is one option here. You want to kill all for Skill Points. Sure, getting some Resistances and Mana Regeneration from Alira isn’t terrible as a league starter but capping resistances really isn’t an issue on this build! Eramir just offers so much flexibility that it almost always is better than the others!

Pantheons

Major Gods

Soul of Lunaris is probably your best pick. No one has ever said no to some extra Physical Damage Reduction!

Minor Gods

I’m playing upgraded Sould of Yugul on pretty much any build now in combination with a curse flask.

Upgrading your Pantheons

Whilst upgrading your Pantheons never hurts you, it’s not that important for this character. If you have nothing else to do at some point, sure, why not, but it shouldn’t be something you focus on or spend a lot of time on.

Pantheon powers can be upgraded by using Divine Vessel in the Map Device while you are activating the particular Map that contains the boss you need. Once you’ve killed the boss and captured his soul, you can consume the Divine Vessel, which’ll show up filled in the map device, or deliver it to Sin in Oriath for extra dialogue relating to the game’s lore.

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