[Harvest] PoE 3.11 Shadow Essence Drain Trickster Starter Build (PC,PS4,Xbox,Mobile)

This PoE 3.11 Harvest Shadow Essence Drain Trickster Starter Build focuses on much more defenses than other ED guides you will find out there, while achieving similar to higher damage numbers. While there are many other ED guides out there, the concepts shown here are the ones that prove to work best overall to clear the most game content. Most of them are nothing new, but this guide compiles the best ones to provide a well rounded character.

Quick Jump

Pros & Cons

Skill Tree

Ascendancy: Ghost dance - Escape artist - Patient reaper - Prolonged pain

Pantheon: Soul of Lunaris and Soul of Shakari

Bandit: Kill All (recommended)

Passive Tree & PoB

t16 viable setup: https://pastebin.com/aKAhDsR9

1-3Ex - 6500ehp - 450k ED dps + 650k blight dps

All content setup: https://pastebin.com/7H4ngAyZ

10Ex - 7500ehp - 850k ED dps + 1M blight dps

Endgame setup: https://pastebin.com/UCkwujdD

100Ex - 8600ehp - 2M ED dps + 3.5M blight dps

Gems Setup

Weapon

Essence Drain - Swift Affliction - Void Manipulation- Empower - Controlled Destruction - Efficacy

There is no variation when it comes to essence drain. You should push for a 6l as soon as possible and buy a level 3 empower. If you only have a level 1 or 2 empower but you have a 6l, you should use Decay support instead

Helmet

Vaal Discipline - Malevolence - Enlighten - Flame Dash

You should put your auras in your helmet because vertex gives +1 level of socketed gems. This means you will only need a level 3 enlighten instead of 4. It will also give a slight damage and ES boost by leveling your auras more.

Gloves

Contagion - Increased Area of Effect - Intensify - Faster Casting

If you use an es base gloves, you should put your Contagion setup here for ease of coloring. Intensify and area of effect supports are mandatory to make contagion's aoe massive. Faster casting is a nice quality of life boost.

Boots

Wither - Spell Totem - Multiple Totems - Increased Duration

I recommend placing a 3l wither totem here. Don't use blight totems, it's lower range, worse hinder and takes a jewel slot. It's a noob trap. Wither doubles our damage against anything that stands 2 seconds in the wither circle, it should be used against endgame bosses.

For your 4th socket, if you do not have aspect of the spider on a piece of gear, you should use flesh and stone in sand stance: Flesh and Stone

If you have aspect of the spider, you have a free socket.

You should put a Phase Run inside. In your skills bar, bind phase run to your left click button to trigger it automatically when you start moving.

Body armor

Here you have some choice. For more damage, the best option is blight:

A CwdT setup is also viable with the following gems:

CWDT - Summon Stone Golem - Spirit Offering - Enfeeble - Steelskin

If you do not have aspect of the spider on a piece of gear, you should use flesh and stone in sand stance

Gear Setup

Boots

Price scale: Budget - Expensive

MATATL's boots with up to 6% attack dodge are hard to beat. They always come with 30% movement speed. Try to get life and resistances on top of the dodge/MS mod. A bad pair of boots with just MATATL's prefix and some life will be good enough for uber elder, don't stress it too much.

To try to minmax them, you should try to get t1 life and as much resistances as you can. The two-toned boots shown here are a great example of this.

ENCHANT: Movement speed or Regeneration. I prefer movement speed.

Weapon

Price scale: Budget - Midrange - Expensive

This is the only piece of gear you must invest in for endgame bosses. While the rest of items you wear can be 2 chaos trash, this one is important!

If you are on a budget, get a 4-5 links Cane of unraveling.

You should upgrade to a 6L one to clear red maps and conquerors.

Your endgame weapon should be an ED BOW and soul strike for better energy shield sustain. While you can usually get a 6l cane after a few weeks in a league for ~1ex, the shortbow shown here will be around 5ex to craft, and the maraketh bow around 10ex.

Gloves

Price scale: Budget - Expensive

If you are on a budget, life and resists will do all content. If you have a bit more to spend, elder gloves with chaos multiplier are great.

ENCHANT: Of SPITE. Chills enemies around you when you get hit. awesome. Of LIGHT is also a somewhat decent choice but almost never actually triggers.

Helmet

Price scale: Budget - Midrange - Expensive

Vertex is very cheap and difficult to beat! +1 gems allows us to have an additional level on enlighten as well as slightly boosted auras. It also gives the most ES out of any unique helmets, and also provides a lot of evasion. Best in slot, unless you obtain some truly insane rare hubris circlet. Martyr crown's is a good 1alch unique if you don't have access to vertex for some reason. I killed uber elder with it, it works. Just get high Energy shield to synergise with your ascendancy: Escape artist

Vertex can be beaten with a properly crafted rare. It is difficult to break 300es with more quality of life (750 eva and +1 gems), so Vertex is the go to helm as long as you can't afford a very well crafted rare hubris circlet.

If you have 20+EX to throw at a helmet, check out the crafting section below. A rare crafted helm will be 16% MORE damage overall and slightly more es, but slightly less evasion.

ENCHANT: 40% Essence drain damage.

Expensive, don't bother if you don't have the currency.

Body armor

Price scale: Budget - Midrange

Hyrri's ire is best in slot. It has insane evasion, giving us 500 flat ES from our ascendancy.

The dodge and spell dodge are also really cool, allowing us to reach dodge cap. Perfect form is an other option, but does not offer as many benefits as Hyrri's Ire. I'll go over it in the "popular alternatives" section.

If you are on a budget and cannot afford hyrri's ire, Kintsugi is a very nice chestpiece that only cost a couple chaos. It synergises very well with the dodge/evasion mechanics of this build and will prevents oneshot mechanics, especially on bosses. After playing with both for a while, I can however confirm that Hyrri's ire is still the superior choice when it comes to real endgame.

Rings

Price scale: Budget - Expensive

Life, resists. The usual. Try to get +1 Min endurance charge if possible, it is a massive survivability boost!

The temple mod gives up to 6% increased maximum life on top of the t1 roll. It is a bit more expensive than just flat life but well worth the cost.

3 Minimum endurance charges is our way to generate endurance charges.

Amulet

Price scale: Expensive

Again, aim for life, resists, and an endurance charge. You may also minmax it by having a chaos multiplier elder mod and/or +1 gems level, but that's way more expensive. Just get life and resistances to start.

Once again, I cannot stress how good +1 min endurance is for a single suffix if you are rescapped already.

Belt

Price scale: Budget - Expensive

Stygian vise with an onslaught jewel. On the belt itself, life and reduced flask charges used. This is a good spot to put aspect of the spider.

Tip: If you already have an other source of onslaught (on a bow most likely), you may get 2% dodge instead on the jewel!

Flask

Classic flasks setup. Aquamarine is a 4uses flask with a belt mod, and synergises very well with the build (chills, damage avoidance). It also lasts 6.30 seconds, giving a total uptime of 25 seconds. It is basically always up, even on bosses. I would consider this better than a basalt. Witchfire brew is a must have, insane damage boost.

If you don't like the aquamarine setup, you may use a jade flask for additional evasion, a basalt for additional physical damage mitigation, or a sulfur for more damage.

Jewels

Rare jewel: aim for LIFE at all costs, then any damage source that affects you, like in any other build.

Spreading rot is good to apply wither faster early on. For as long as you use blight on random rares or unique mobs, you should use this. When you feel like you're killing everything that isn't an endgame bosses requiring you to place wither totems, you should stop using this jewel.
A good rare jewel with life and damage will do better against bosses. Once you get enough damage for non bosses, swap it out.

Green nightmare is a good option in the late game, as it gives frenzy charges on kill and a bit of dodge chance to reach cap without flasks. The 3% it gives puts us at 64% flat, which goes up to max only with conditional dodge sources (elusive, flasks, pantheon...).
Don't forget dodge as increasing returns for each point you get, so you really want to reach that magic 75% cap.

Transcendent Mind gives very good damage for all non allocated intelligence in radius. We have 80 non allocated int near the witch start, this is why pathing in this area looks a litter weird. This is at the cost of mana recovery rate, but we use energy shield instead so we are not affected by the downsides of this jewel.

Brutal Restraint of deshret Transforms the keystones in radius to Wind dancer. Wind dancer is absolutely amazing, preventing you from oneshots and being up most of the time because of the high avoidance of this build. It also empowers ghost shrouds by 20%, and makes Lunaris pantheon and Steelskin proc very reliably, not worrying of oneshots before they proc.

Watcher's eye is really expensive, but pretty cool. The mod you are looking for is "damage over time multiplier while affected by malevolence". Due to the price, this should be one of your last upgrades. It boosts your damage by around 7% compared to a normal rare jewel. Due to the price, it should be one of your last upgrades.

10% chance to gain Elusive on Kill
25% increased Elusive Effect

No witnesses is a notable found on small cluster jewels. It grants elusive chance on kill, and is a massive clear speed/defenses boost. It is almost mandatory.

Flow of life and Exposure Therapy are notables found on medium cluster jewels granting chaos damage over time multiplier. These jewels are the best damage possible on a cluster jewel, cost little points and grant some life. They are the best cluster jewels you can get. You want one medium jewel with at least a jewel socket. More information in the cluster jewel section below.

Unique jewels placement

Green nightmare

Brutal restraint of deshret

Cluster jewels

Spreading rot

Reminder that you should only use this early on.

Transcendent mind