[3.9] Paragon of Death CI Occultist Death Aura/Blight

https://pastebin.com/yMiFrvkA

A few notes regarding the tree - you can grab Hex Master if you want a little more curse effectiveness/aoe but since I only use a single curse from my flask I didn't think it is absolutely necessary but if you feel like you want to take it - it's not a bad idea.
You can also grab Whispers of Doom in order to use Temporal Chains but that would require dropping Malevolence from our setup - or getting Solstice Vigil which is pretty pricey or putting it in a CWDT setup. We are kind of starved for passives though so again - it's up to you to decide if you want to drop a few energy shield nodes to take it.

Chest
Swift Affliction - Efficacy - Void Manipulation - Less Duration - Arcane Surge - Inc Aoe/Conc Effect

Death's Oath works the same way as Whispering Ice for Icestorm does which means you don't need to link the sockets so getting a 6 socket Death's Opus is what you should do. This is also the biggest problem with the build as the optimal setup requires 5 offcolours which you can do yourself using jewelers on the crafting table or try to get lucky with chroms which is way easier said than done. Buying a chest like that can be rather expensive - around 4-6ex last time I checked and it's probably the biggest con of the build.
Using Arcane Surge adds the "duration" tag to Death Aura allowing it to benefit from Swift Affliction and Less Duration support gems.

Gloves
Vaal Blight - Efficacy - Swift Affliction - Controlled Destruction

As an alternative you can also use Allelopathy gloves which grant you the Blight Skill and then replace Vaal Blight with Void Manipulation but this means we can't use Vaal Blight and this skill is just too awesome to pass up for me but if you feel like you don't want to use it - go with Allelopathy.

Weapon
Shield Charge - Fortify - Faster Attacks

Our movement skill and source of additional physical damage reduction through Fortify

Shield
Stone Golem - Elemental Army - Minion life

You could use the golem in a CWDT setup but that would require either using a lower level or having a higher level of CWDT - I didn't want to do either so I selfcast the golem for additional life (or energy shield in this case) regen.

Helm/Boots
Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 11) - Steelskin (lvl 16) - Increased Duration

You can use whatever you preffer - like Immortal Call or Molten Shell but Steelskin feels best for me.

Helm/Boots
Vaal Discipline, Malevolence, Flame Dash, Portal

Our buffs - flame dash for moving across terrain and portal for... well - you know.
Vaal Discipline is very important - it makes you almost immortal save for oneshots for its duration.

Body Armour

No choice here - this build works around Death's Oath so we need to use it.
Getting 5 offcolours is not going to be easy tho' you can start with a 4-socketed one and work your way up.


Gloves

As mentioned earlier you can get Allelopathy but I didn't want to lose Vaal Blight so I went with rare gloves - focus on Energy Shield and Resists.

Boots

Rare with as much Energy Shield, Resists and movespeed. Mine lack the movespeed unfortunately and this is probably the next item that I will change.

Helmet

Rare with Energy Shield, Resists - same as boots minus the speed.

Weapon


A couple choices - you can go with a Breath of the Council to start off and then transition into a rare One Handed weapon with Increased Chaos damage, Chaos Over Time Multiplier and/or Dmage Over Time.
Since we do lack ES compared to most CI builds as Death's Oath is an armor chest I decided to go with Ephemeral Edge - it adds a bunch of Energy Shield making us way tankier. If you feel like you need more damage and your survivability is fine, then stick to a rare damage weapon.

Shield

Rare with as much Energy Shield as you can grab - also resists.

Belt


You can start with Bated Breath - very cheap and gives decent ES. Has 0 resists though so you need to cover them elsewhere. Later on switching to a well rolled Crystal Belt will give even more ES with the possibility of having some ressists too.

Rings

Dream Fragments gives us a lot of Cold Resist and Immunity to Chill and Freeze which makes it a lot safer when opening storage boxes for example - not a mandatory unique tho' since you can simply have a flask with freeze immunity but I treat it as a quality of life item - I don't have to remember to actually use the damn flask.
Other than that - Energy Shield again, some resists and Strength. Death's Oath require a whopping 180 strength which is gonna be a high ammount for a Witch so you need to get that strength from somewhere.

Amulet


Flat ES + %ES + Strength - the main source of our strength. Of course if you can get the strength somewhere else you don't have to get is here but it's easiest to grab it on jewelry.
As for annointments - early on you can annoint Beef for +30 STR if you can't meet Death's Oath's requirements. Later on I recommend Sanctity - it gives 20% armor, 10% maximum ES 1% life regen and 10 to STR and INT - every stat is good for us.

Jewels
1x Spreading rot - Boosts our Blight
1x Energy From Within - Place it in the jewel socket on the left of the "Melding" Passive
2x Rare with
- Damage over time
- %ES
- Chaos Damage ovr time multiplier
- Chaos Damage

Flasks


Rumi's and Basalt for Physical Damage Reduction - you don't have to use Rumi and you can get a regular Granite Flask instead.
Sulphur for additional Damage
Quicksilver for movespeed
Witchfire brew is very important - it not only gives additional damage over time but it also gives us a free level 21 Despair Aura which is our only source of this aura.
Make sure to have Immunity to Bleed and Ignite on your flasks - those two ailments will prevent your Energy Shield from Recharging unless you use Vaal Discipline.

Kill All - we are starved for Skill Points as it is - grab those additional two.

Ascendancy order - Profane Bloom -> Vile Bastion -> Void Beacon -> Withering Pressence

Profane Bloom will help with clear early on, Vile Bastion will make our Energy Shield a really potent defense granting a ton of Regeneration and Immunity to Stun.
Void Beacon and Withering Pressence grant more damage.

One thing of note is that before going Chaos Inoculation make sure you have Wicked Ward and Zealoth's Oath

Soul of Solaris/Lunaris
Pick whichever you preffer

Soul of Tukohama
Additional Physical Damage Reduction and Life Regen while stationary - which is what you are going to be while channeling Blight - makes you even more tanky.

Since you can't equip Death's Oath until level 62 you have to level with a different skill - you can use any Chaos skill you want. I recommend starting with Blight, then Essence Drain/Contagion and finally Bane - if you have a Tabula or other 6-linked chest link Bane with - Despair - Swift Affliction - Efficacy - Controlled Destruction - Void Manipulation
At level 62 you can switch to using Death Aura and Blight as your source of damage.

Just a random Tier 8 map to show the playstyle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB6GZYLSIKg