from what i saw, it’s real hard to survive without a lot of ward, is there a way to utilize ward with this build?? or do we have to rely on health leech? (if they let u leech ward with aod… it’d be totally awesome)
It is rather difficult to utilize ward with this build as your self-degen and natural ward degen will make your effective idle ward pool take a huge hit.
From the looks of it, we will have some new regen/DoT tools next patch, so it may become easier to survive with those! I will be testing the new skills immediately on release and will discuss their potential with my next guide update.
EDIT: 0.7.7 is out and I am still testing the effectiveness of the new Drain Life skill. However, AoD seems to be suffering from a very odd bug right now, so further tests are postponed!
What odd bug?
AoD seems to be applying more stacks on enemies than it should be. Dev tested it and it applied 82 stacks on a Wengari Brute in a second.
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Yeah, definitely op atm. My AOD Lich melts enemies so fast I cannot even apply Mark For Death in time. 
Really seems to be doing normal damage for me when I been using it. So I guess it been fixed or it one of the nodes I haven’t got that making it do crazy damage.
So only issue I have with this build is wandering spirits. Every time I use it my character lags, latency does not seem affected. Until I figure out the issue is there another skill you would recommend in its place?
Admittedly Wandering Spirits are a large part of this build’s damage. If you didn’t want to run it, then maybe rip blood with poison chance could help.
Quick question as to why you choose not to run drain life? Is wandering spirits just that much better? So far I’ve had a pretty good time running drain life and helps to keep AoD manageable at early-mid levels because the life drain on drain life is so huge.
Eventually your sustain through leech will be so significant that Drain Life will not have a major impact. It is also important to realize that channeling removes one of the biggest strengths of AoD, which is that you are always on the move.
I think it has something to do with the 8% stacking increase at the start of the skill tree.
I went the other route first and the skill felt sub-par, barely keeping up with Rip Blood. But the moment I took 1 point in that Skill Passive, the damage went through the roof.
AoD is fixed now, so I will begin working on the update!
EDIT: Nevermind. The bug still exists, build update back on hold
EDIT 2: Fixed again, so will look into updating the guide!
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I have a build of my own that uses ward, opting for 4 stacks of armor shred on myself with aura of decay 100% fear chance, and drain life converted into health drain, and damage converted into poison, cast while moving, grasp of damn, and +1 to beam, using exangus, stacking spell damage, as spell damage is applied to drain life at an added 300% effectiveness 
Just tried it after patch, build is dead - stacking is absolutely awful
Seems to be entirely missing the 3x application? As of right now I do more dmg with Wandering Spirits
Update is here. Indeed AoD is in a very rough spot right now, and I think its damage and AoE need to be assessed by the devs. Currently, the skill does not seem to justify the risk it poses to the player, which is quite sad. I still have an attachment to this build and will continue to update it with every patch, but as of right now, it is hard to recommend using it. 
Yeah… build is a wet noodle now, and I can’t even progress another area. Redoing the entire char isn’t fun either, it’s a heavy investment. So basically my first playthrough just got whacked.
if you acquire a plaguebearer’s, you can still do obscene damage with Wandering Spirits and their darts without needing a full respec, as a slight silver lining
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Stealing my weapon of choice.
i’m curious if we could set up AOD with passives+equip+skill tree, so that it does 0 damage to us.
it’s ok if AOD doesn’t do a lot of damage, i just want to use it to add a little bit of damage to my build, so i don’t want AOD damaging me if i don’t switch it off.
is this possible?
i’m surviving on ward btw.
@Bankaikiller does what u do allow AOD to do absolutely no damage to u? i don’t care if it does very little damage, i just don;t want to ever lose ward from using AOD