[3.9] Cyclone Summoner - Heralds of Agony and Purity, Summon Holy Relic - League starter

First, pretty nice build !

I'm still not hitting a wall, but I start to struggle for few maps (especially blighted) and I got 7 ex, but not really sure how I should invest them. I get few "random" one shot but I feel like I'm missing some damages on red maps, but maybe it's because I still didn't find the last lab trial (god that's painfull!). I'm looking to upgrade in quality all my gems + corrupt aswell and go for a 6L Herald of Agony, but already wasted around 1k fusing :(

There is my PoB if someone wanna have a look into it : https://pastebin.com/K5sVYt2R

Thanks for the great guide and for anyone who would look into my PoB !

https://pastebin.com/hV7fwU1y

could anyone tell me why i dont see the dps under "calc" for "Physical"? You guys have here most of you damage but for me its 0.

https://imgur.com/5LNbe1R

After playing this build in Betrayal and optimizing it to the extreme (Delve 1000+ etc.) I decided to play it again this league. The primary reason being the (to me new) Cold Iron Point dagger (CIP).

I have seen an interesting build guide for a Necro HoAg cyclone summoner. It uses two CIPs (2x +3), The Coming Calamity (+2), a Necro ascendancy (+2) and a lvl 21 HoAg gem to reach lvl 31 without using empower. This allows to still keep a true 6L with 5 ~50% more support gems. Lvl 31 is an important breakpoint because the crawlers atkspeed per virulence increases. In terms of DPS, lvl 30 to 31 is more significant than lvl 31 to 36. However, I didn't like the dependence on mortal other minions and the defense package of that build in general. Notably, it can reach 5M DPS without an enormous investment.

So I took systemplayerlosts build as a starting point again and modified it to fit my gem level obsession. As I poster earlier, 2 CIPs and a Thief's Torment were a great fit for early mapping. Now I can present my close to final setup:

PoB: https://pastebin.com/jfr0rL55



Jewels are either life, minion atkspeed, life regen while moving or res, life, poison chance/mana gain on hit.

Second weapon set:

I have 9k hp, 100 lgoh with daggers, and insane 11M Shaper DPS under ideal conditions (During focus and with frenzy charges on crawler, full shotgunning, full virulence, 10 wither stacks) Even without focus and weapon swap shenanigans, I have roughly 6M Shaper DPS while continuously attacking. I also assigned high priority to passive life regeneration (slightly above 1k/s) and cyclone attack radius. These aspects are crucial for the Sirius fight for example. Life regen so you don't have to dodge too much and more reach to be able to attack while avoiding the bullshit melee hate. I even consider using increased AOE support for cyclone. The only item that isn't close to optimal is of course the helmet. A good one could turn HoP from mostly a supporter for HoAg doing only 500k DPS itself into a serious 1.5M DPS addition. I couldn't find an ideal base with the enchantment so far though.

I have only beaten 0 watchstone Baby Sirius, but I think he is very much doable on higher levels with my version of the build. Uber Elder is not a problem, although he is definitely beefier now.

"

KäptnSharky wrote:

After playing this build in Betrayal and optimizing it to the extreme (Delve 100+ etc.) I decided to play it again this league. The primary reason being the (to me new) Cold Iron Point dagger (CIP).

I have seen an interesting build guide for a Necro HoAg cyclone summoner. It uses two CIPs (2x +3), The Coming Calamity (+2), a Necro ascendancy (+2) and a lvl 21 HoAg gem to reach lvl 31 without using empower. This allows to still keep a true 6L with 5 ~50% more support gems. Lvl 31 is an important breakpoint because the crawlers atkspeed per virulence increases. In terms of DPS, lvl 30 to 31 is more significant than lvl 31 to 36. However, I didn't like the dependence on mortal other minions and the defense package of that build in general. Notably, it can reach 5M DPS without an enormous investment.

So I took systemplayerlosts build as a starting point again and modified it to fit my gem level obsession. As I poster earlier, 2 CIPs and a Thief's Torment were a great fit for early mapping. Now I can present my close to final setup:

Jewels are either life, minion atkspeed, life regen while moving or res, life, poison chance/mana gain on hit.

Second weapon set:

I have 9k hp, 100 lgoh with daggers, and insane 11M Shaper DPS under ideal conditions (During focus and with frenzy charges on crawler, full shotgunning, full virulence, 10 wither stacks) Even without focus and weapon swap shenanigans, I have roughly 6M Shaper DPS while continuously attacking. I also assigned high priority to passive life regeneration (slightly above 1k/s) and cyclone attack radius. These aspects are crucial for the Sirius fight for example. Life regen so you don't have to dodge too much and more reach to be able to attack while avoiding the bullshit melee hate. I even consider using increased AOE support for cyclone. The only item that isn't close to optimal is of course the helmet. A good one could turn HoP from mostly a supporter for HoAg doing only 500k DPS itself into a serious 1.5M DPS addition. I couldn't find an ideal base with the enchantment so far though.

I have only beaten 0 watchstone Baby Sirius, but I think he is very much doable on higher levels with my version of the build. Uber Elder is not a problem, although he is definitely beefier now.

Got a PoB?

You can take the PoB from poe.ninja for now:

https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/K%C3%A4ptnSharky/Avanion?i=20&search=class%3DGuardian%26skill%3DHerald-of-Agony

PoB unfortunately can't deal with the +1 to dex gems from the necklace. For DPS calculation: increase from shock is too high, should be 20%. +2 proj. enchant is ignored. Withered stacks are 10 if both you and HoP guys are constantly attacking.
Also, I use lvl 21 Vile Toxins instead of Pierce for bosses

"

KäptnSharky wrote:

You can take the PoB from poe.ninja for now:

https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/K%C3%A4ptnSharky/Avanion?i=20&search=class%3DGuardian%26skill%3DHerald-of-Agony

PoB unfortunately can't deal with the +1 to dex gems from the necklace. For DPS calculation: increase from shock is too high, should be 20%. +2 proj. enchant is ignored. Withered stacks are 10 if both you and HoP guys are constantly attacking.
Also, I use lvl 21 Vile Toxins instead of Pierce for bosses

How is it handling Legion/Blight? I haven't used HOAG for either and I question the AI/Clear for those league mechanics?

You might not believe it, but at this level of crawler atkspeed and sheer DPS my clear is actually great. I did of course have problems with legion and blight earlier in the league, but by now T16 cassia is no problem at all. For legion encounters, I usually manage to get everything relevant by occasionally using deathmark. It's not as smooth as e.g. ED contagion, but it works surprisingly well by now. Blighted maps: I haven't done a high tier one recently, and I think handling many directions at once would still be quite hard. I will test it at some point.

Hey Kaptn, thanks for the detailed comments. I'm missing one thing though, on your final setup you have two rings which are not the Thief's Torment. How do you get a sustainable mana on hit then?

My cyclone only costs 4 (-3 craft on ring) And I have two jewels with +2 mana gain on hit each. And I even have manaleech on amulet, which is quite nice for no regen maps but not important. Not relying purely on mana gain on hit and thus being able to cyclone despite not hitting something immediately can be quite convenient.

Kaptn! Thanks for sharing your almost min max build :)

Can I ask you a question?

I see you have poachers mark on lvl 20 CWDT for frenzy charge generation?

Considering frenzy charges are very powerful on this build, don't you consider this an unreliable way to generate them?

Any ideas on how would to fix that problem?