Drain essence or drain Life?

[xiulo88]

Hi, I was courious when do you use drain essence and when do you use drain life. I usually use drain essence because I think it has to be better to maintein the soul barrier. But I really havent done any test.

[Boesch]

Drain Life 100% of the time for me

[-Tutu-]

I usually use drain essence on bosses that hit often for low amounts and drain life for bosses hitting hard but not often. Also drain essence might be usefull for dealing with lots of trash.

[Korando-AoC]

Drain Essence is quite useful in Coppice of the Earth (boss drains mana), but in almost every other situation Drain Life is the right choice imo.

Soul Barrier can be instantly turned on/off.
Also you can feat Ether Reap for mana refill; use 2 or 3 ranks of Mistical Bane in your rotation.
1 point in Crystallized Ether is also good for some refill when you cast Seal of Chaos, and Ether Leech too.

To use Drain Essence to keep mana up for Soul Barrier is really not a wise choice (unless boss has specific high mana drain ability, like in Coppice), because you loose a lot of health tap.
It's a bad trade of survivability.