For Fun Herald build

I havent played this game is several months but plan to come back to it soon, and even after i took a break from it (i was having a blast on my first ever run using Enki's Arc Witch when it was Synthesis League, bless that guy because that build being as fun as it is is part of what got me hooked on things) due to starting college, but I never even finished the 10 act story. That being said from the moment i figured out the ins and outs of the skill tree i fell absolutely in love because i LOVE variety builds. So yeah even ever since i've used Path of Building just for fun to see what i can come up with. I was wondering if any of the stuff i even made would actually be viable though. The main ones I mean are a Deadeye DOT build, an Evasion Onslaught Raider build, an Elementalist Golem spam build, and a Multi-Herald Elementalist build. Herald one especially cause i just love how herald skills work. I've never posted here before so im really sorry if i basically break every posting etiquette rule with this but I dont really know how to share it beyond just linking a POB code.
I know that it uses fully optimized items and stuff that would probably take 100s of hours to get which is why more than anythign else the stuff i wanna know about the viability of is mana avialable, hp, damage output, and general survivibility. Its purely for fun as I always play with Meta at the back of my mind. The code is the Herald triple build

https://pastebin.com/RADkz174

The golem one is https://pastebin.com/E8vhCC3Q

*crosses fingers this isnt a community that will rake me over the coals for ignoring meta*

Hah what is meta even?
There are some builds that are going to be busted (like Arcanist WoC right now) but to say that you can only play meta builds? Nah man - in fact I think most people don't actually do that since what fun is there in just doing that one super strong build that does nothing but make you yawn. Well okay if you want a lot of currency for a build you actually want to play using a strong build will help you get that currency faster. But still... I guess I just don't believe that it justifies forcing yourself to play something you don't want to. But to each his own - I'm not one to judge anyways.

So what I'm trying to say - do not be afraid to experiment. For instance I didn't know myself if trying to go with as much Freeze chance as possible on my SST would make any sense at all but that's fine so long as you're having fun



Disclaimer - I realize I may sound a bit harsh at times but I would assume that's what you wanted? A critique? Anyways - do not get discouraged, I do not intend to be mean.



The first pastebin is for what build exactly? I see three elemental heralds - not something you usually do since you typically focus on one types of damage (so that penetration of a specific element can help more) so if you want to go full offense on auras you'd use something like Herald of Ash + Anger for example or maybe a defensive aura or maybe even a Curse Aura (Curse linked with Blashpemy)

Wave of Conviction in a spell totem is not a bad idea since it applies exposure but if I'm to use it I'd rather do so in a CWDT (that's Cast When Damage Taken support gem) setup together with a guard skill like Steelskin or Immortal Call.

I don't understand the point of Brands here - if you want to use one you can go with Storm Brand linked with Increased Critical Strikes to proc Elemental Overload tho' I'm not sure it's worth it anymore with the brand changes and all. Going back to Orb of Storms might be the thing to do.

Ball Lightning with Curse on hit and GMP is a pretty vintage idea - it does work tho' and you can use this method of applying a curse if you like it.

And now we arrive at the biggest issue - main attack skills. You don't want to link 2 attack skills together. You are losing out on a link this way. You either need to focus on using a single skill or you can use two different ones for different purposes (like clear and single target) but they will have to be separately linked. Meaning you can go with a 6 linked Vortex in your chest for sinlge target and 4 linked Arc in your gloves for clear. Still - you probably don't want to use both of these skills together as your main damage dealers tho' since they are different elements, for utility it's fine and sometimes you can actually do that if you use scaling that affects both of them - in this case it's Spell and Elemental damage. But Vortex will scale with Cold Multiplier or Area while Arc will not. Arc will scale with Lightning Spell Damage while Vortex will not. Same thing with penetration - unless you are converting most or all of your damage to a single element - it will only work for half of your spells.
You can tell by looking at the DPS that Arc and Vortex combined only do around 60k dps - it is much too little for mapping.

As for items - you use almost all uniques. Don't. Unless you have a specific idea in mind going all unique is typically not the best idea. See - rare items are actually stronger than uniques in general it's just that unique items often have... unique mechanics! Like Lightnign Coil reducing your physical damage taken throught lighnint conversion or Whispering Ice giving you access to a skill you can't access in any other way (Icestorm), or Hrimsorrow - gloves that convert 50% of your physical damage to cold. The items you have chosen don't really have any idea behind them.
You take Fidelitas for increased Herald of Thunder buff effect I'm assuming but it gives you nothing in terms of damage - Heralds aren't even linked to anything other than themselves so they won't be dealing a lot of damage.
That one rare ring tho' - fuck me what is this monstrosity xD But even on this one you have Fire/Cold/Lightning Damge to ATTACKS - it won't work for arc or heralds. You need to have Damage added to SPELLS.

I'm not gonna check all of those items but at a quick glance most of them (if not all) can be bought for around 1c each.
If you are unaware you can trade with other people using sites like poe.trade or by clicking the "TRADE" button on the top of this page.

Quick look at the tree - you only get 78% of life% from your tree - that is not enough. You need to think around 150% instead. It can go lower or higher depending on what other defenses you have (for example my build has 110% right now and I will slowly work my way to around 140 as I level to 90 - but I have a ton of other defenses as well - lots of armor, block and evasion, if all I had was this HP - I'd die A LOT) but don't ever go below 100% unless you are experienced enough that you know you can ignore this advice.

Mind over matter with 3 heralds will criple you - only got 34% unreserved mana, so you will barely ever have mana to cast if something hits you - you can consider taking eldritch battery to alleviate that but it would require a lot of changes to incorporate it.

I was wondering where did all of your skill points go and then I noticed you took all three elemental circles at the top - no. You only ever take one - sometimes literally only half - certainly not all of them, you spread out your damage way too wide.

In order to effectively use Elemental EQuilibrium you need to have an idea in mind - like 100% Cold to Fire conversion Vortex - it will deal Fire Damage with the initial Hit (which will lower cold and lighting resists) and then degen with Cold (which cannot be conversed) - using it just to use it is going to actually lower your damage output.

All in all this build tries to do waaaay too many things at once (you even take Shaman's Dominion for some reason) without focusing on any of them meaning that none of them will actually do any good.

If you want to learn how to build characters my advice would be to take someone elses build and try to change it to suit your needs. These changes don't have to be big - may be subtle at first, then make them bigger and bigger to suit your tastes. It will be way more efficient than trying to create an entire build without understanding all of the mechanics - I still need to read up on the wikipedia on some of them and I've been playing for 5 years.

PS.
I never played a herald bomber so I can't really fix the entire tree for you without doing some research and calcs and I've never played a summoner (or golemmancer) but I do hope some of this was helpful to you.

Critique is exactly what i wanted, and this was extremely helpful, thank you! i figured as someone who doesn't know much about what is viable and what isnt, the best way would be trial by fire. I expected the items section to be fubar so no worries there either. More than anything else the bit about minimum life and such is what i was looking for.

rather than go for point for point over i'll just TLDR and say pretty much everything you said helped immensely. I'm a bit anti meta to a fault after having so many different communities for various games rake me over the coals for NOT using the meta. This can swing the pendulum so far in the opposite direction i do stupid stuff thinking its probably still viable its just not meta. Taking all three elemental skills at the top is a stellar example of this. My OCD also compels me to see how much i can stack stuff or how much ground i an cover with a single build which compounds things. Think i'm gonna go back to the drawing board for all of my builds. again, Massive thanks for this.