Essence Drain

Essence Drain (often referred to as ED) is a spell that fires a chaos projectile that applies a damage over time debuff when it hits the enemy. The spell also regenerates a portion of the debuff damage as life. If target dies while afflicted with both Contagion and Essence Drain, the remaining duration of both degeneration effects will be spread to nearby enemies.

Skill functions and interactions

• Damage over time: Modifiers to spell, projectile, chaos damage, and damage over time affect the damage over time component of this spell. Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this skill's Damage Over Time modifier also affects other damage over time effects created by this skill, such as poison or ignite.
• Traps and Mines: Essence Drain can not be supported by and .
• Debuff Regeneration: The amount of life regenerated from the debuff damage caused by Essence Drain is calculated solely off the final amount of outbound damage dealt by the skill, not the damage inflicted on an enemy. An easy way to calculate the amount of regen provided is to multiply the tooltip amount of debuff damage by 0.5%. This will give you the amount of regen that Essence Drain will grant you per target effected. This means that using methods to increased the enemies received damage from sources such as Vulnerability, Wither, or the Occultist Void Beacon notable does not influence the amount of regen provided by Essence Drain.

Strategy

The damage per cast of this spell is humongous, the damage it does per second is comparable to the damage of most spells and it keeps dealing damage (like with totems). Because this spell normally can hit only one enemy, it's not very useful alone unless the target is a boss or a player. However, it can be supported by or similar projectile support skills to hit more enemies at once and in the case of weaker monsters, Contagion can be used to spread it to the whole pack and kill a lot of monsters just with two casts.

Gem level progression

Level				Mana Cost	Chaos Damage per sec	Chaos Damage	Exp.	Total Exp.
1	12	14	21	8	31.2	9 to 14	0	0
2	15	17	25	9	40.6	12 to 18	15249	15249
3	19	21	30	10	56.4	16 to 24	41517	56766
4	23	24	35	11	76.7	22 to 33	81983	138749
5	27	28	41	12	102.7	30 to 44	147968	286717
6	31	32	46	13	136	39 to 59	250557	537274
7	35	36	51	14	178.4	51 to 77	405086	942360
8	38	38	55	15	217.4	63 to 94	447718	1390078
9	41	41	59	16	264	76 to 114	615318	2005396
10	44	44	63	16	319.4	92 to 138	834639	2840035
11	47	47	67	17	385.3	111 to 166	1570760	4410795
12	50	49	71	18	463.5	133 to 200	1633987	6044782
13	53	52	75	19	556.1	160 to 240	2151030	8195812
14	56	55	79	19	665.7	192 to 288	2812189	11008001
15	59	58	83	20	795.2	229 to 344	5099360	16107361
16	62	60	87	21	948.1	273 to 410	9400731	25508092
17	64	62	90	21	1065	307 to 460	15273366	40781458
18	66	64	92	22	1195.5	344 to 516	26286582	67068040
19	68	66	95	22	1341	386 to 579	62890590	129958630
20	70	68	98	23	1503.2	433 to 649	212046017	342004647
21	72	70	100	24	1683.9	485 to 727	N/A	N/A
22	74	N/A	N/A	24	1885.3	543 to 814	N/A	N/A
23	76	N/A	N/A	25	2109.6	608 to 911	N/A	N/A
24	78	N/A	N/A	25	2359.2	679 to 1019	N/A	N/A
25	80	N/A	N/A	26	2637	759 to 1139	N/A	N/A
26	82	N/A	N/A	26	2946.1	848 to 1273	N/A	N/A
27	84	N/A	N/A	27	3289.8	947 to 1421	N/A	N/A
28	86	N/A	N/A	27	3672	1058 to 1586	N/A	N/A
29	88	N/A	N/A	28	4096.8	1180 to 1770	N/A	N/A
30	90	N/A	N/A	28	4568.8	1316 to 1974	N/A	N/A
31	91	N/A	N/A	28	4824.1	1389 to 2084	N/A	N/A
32	92	N/A	N/A	29	5093.1	1467 to 2200	N/A	N/A
33	93	N/A	N/A	29	5376.6	1548 to 2323	N/A	N/A
34	94	N/A	N/A	29	5675.4	1635 to 2452	N/A	N/A
35	95	N/A	N/A	29	5990.2	1725 to 2588	N/A	N/A
36	96	N/A	N/A	30	6322	1821 to 2731	N/A	N/A
37	97	N/A	N/A	30	6671.5	1921 to 2882	N/A	N/A
38	98	N/A	N/A	30	7039.7	2027 to 3041	N/A	N/A
39	99	N/A	N/A	30	7427.5	2139 to 3209	N/A	N/A
40	100	N/A	N/A	31	7836.1	2257 to 3385	N/A	N/A

Alternate skill effects

Name	Cost	Description
Arcane Essence Drain EffectArcane Essence Drain EffectSkill Gem EffectYour Essence Drain becomes a blue arcane effect.	80	Replaces the standard effect on a Essence Drain skill gem with a blue arcane effect. Preview

Related helmet enchantments

The following helmet enchantments affect Essence Drain.

Name		Stats	Spawn Weighting
Enchantment Essence Drain Damage 1	66	25% increased Essence Drain Damage	helmet 100 default 0
Enchantment Essence Drain Damage 2	75	40% increased Essence Drain Damage	helmet 100 default 0
Enchantment Essence Drain Duration 1	66	20% increased Essence Drain Duration	helmet 100 default 0
Enchantment Essence Drain Duration 2	75	30% increased Essence Drain Duration	helmet 100 default 0

Version history

Version	Changes
2.1.1c	Fixed an instance crash with Essence Drain [...]. Fixed a bug with Essence Drain spreading between enemies.
2.1.1b	Fixed a bug where players could get the Essence Drain life recovery effect stuck on their character until changing instances.
2.1.1	Essence Drain can now be supported by "Cast On" trigger support gems.
2.1.0	Added to the game.