🌬️⛵☁️[3.25] The dirty Scorpion-tail|Chaos-Necromancy|Herald of Agony CI-Arachnophobia Allstars|600M+

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Solipsistisch wrote:

Thanks for your help, Chromino!

With those suggestion I got it back to feeling smooth again. Got 2 voices one 3p one 5p, respected from the instinct and lethe shade nodes and also the corruption nodes.
Put in 2 more Pure Agony for it and an other magic jewel for the adorned.

Mana feels a bit better now with Arcane Surge, also tried playing with double self-control + arcane surge, that was awesome but went to change it for veteran defender for more tankyness.

T17 Bosses are my bitch now :)

Well done! Looks awesome! Congrats!

With aw vicious projectiles (in place of aw fork) you are now at 54M singletarget damage in infinitive ehp.
With sniper`s mark or punishment it`s 61M (when you focus on dps instead enfeeble or with additional curse on ashes-implicit in "only" :-) lol 11M ehp).

With a jewel +2 max cold-resis you reach more tanky 87% max-resis. Slot it in a rare medium cluster with dex or resis on clustertransfers too, instead the unique veteran defender-cluster.

Rare jewel +2 max coldresis for melding of the flesh, individualize the filters, get it with fire and lightning resis, spellblock, dex for magebane / all attr, manareg, mana efficiencies, es, etc. 1 chaos:

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Settlers/me5ZreBH6



Mana-reg could be improved of course more, but ordinary the build works without also.

Arachnophilia!

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Jasmira wrote:

First time Hoag user question: agony crawler seems to not use the tail spike often. I am only leveling now, to be clear but waiting for the skill is annoying. I try to follow PoB by using Poisonous Concoction, however since it's an attack my hit chance sucks. (no accuracy on the build)
Right now it seems going 6L Storm Brand is easier to level with and I was wondering when Hoag starts to shine.

Thanks for feedback.

PS: I realize virulence stacks make a big difference. However, is tail spike limited by attack speed only or also some kind of cooldown? If it's the latter, it would be annoying. If it's just AS, it should become much more frequent, right?

Yes, the HoA scales best with gemlevels and medium clusters pure agony. The complete scaling is explained step by step in the spoiler "The composition of agony". There are also many alternative ways to buff HoA (withers, curses, bleedings, crits, etc.), but somewhere with 2-5 medium clusters the HoA scales best as guided and than better as most other minion- and poison-skills when you build the set-up correct.

Skills like cwdt lvl 1 - void sphere lvl 1 or tempestshield produces a lot qol and HoA-damage-uptimes.

The HoA-aoe "mortar" is not often used and only in close range.
The "tailspike" is chosen by HoA in 97-99% cases.
Perhaps because of the high HoA-attackspeed mortar seems on first sight more often used.



Yes, for buffing poisonous concoction with accuracy or the aura precision or blindings is great and worth the passives in lower levels.

Would love some advice on next build steps in regards to gear and my tree. All big increases seem like big currency investments now. Happy with build so far, have cleared T16s, exarch and eater so far with only a few deaths. Sometimes will randomly die which might due to my defensive percentages but overall feel pretty beefy so far. Definitely having some trouble managing points in the tree, e.g. not able to drop certain spell block passives to get full clusters at lvl91. Also not sure how my withers are atm. Cheers Chromino for the build!

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Chromino wrote:

Skills like cwdt lvl 1 - void sphere lvl 1 or tempestshield produces a lot qol and HoA-damage-uptimes.

The HoA-aoe "mortar" is not often used and only in close range.
The "tailspike" is chosen by HoA in 97-99% cases.
Perhaps because of the high HoA-attackspeed mortar seems on first sight more often used.

Thanks for the feedback.
One thing the build SEEMS to lack is targeted damage for fast clearing, am I correct? What I mean is, certainly the tail spike damage is enough to OTK must stuff.
But the rather mediocre crawler AI means you have to wait for it (or use convocation all the time) and even then it just randomly targets stuff. Plus, and that's really bothering me, it seems to become very much passive if you do not attack or target something yourself. Would feeding frenzy help with that?

I see a certain "slowness" when it comes to clearing maps later. I have to wait for the crawler and it needs to fire several times since the attack is not 360°. Then I loot and can move on.

My question here is: is fast clearing still possible in some way or can I at least speed up the AI by putting in automated convocation somewhere? I found it helps tremendously to summon the crawler on top of rares/uniques because then it will target them and not some random trash mob.

I see all the cool advantages but for my personal playing experience it would be important to have a reliable map clear.
Maybe all this is auto-solving itself with more virulence but the behavior of crawler will not change.

Thanks for input.

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Jasmira wrote:

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Chromino wrote:

Skills like cwdt lvl 1 - void sphere lvl 1 or tempestshield produces a lot qol and HoA-damage-uptimes.

The HoA-aoe "mortar" is not often used and only in close range.
The "tailspike" is chosen by HoA in 97-99% cases.
Perhaps because of the high HoA-attackspeed mortar seems on first sight more often used.

Thanks for the feedback.
One thing the build SEEMS to lack is targeted damage for fast clearing, am I correct? What I mean is, certainly the tail spike damage is enough to OTK must stuff.
But the rather mediocre crawler AI means you have to wait for it (or use convocation all the time) and even then it just randomly targets stuff. Plus, and that's really bothering me, it seems to become very much passive if you do not attack or target something yourself. Would feeding frenzy help with that?

I see a certain "slowness" when it comes to clearing maps later. I have to wait for the crawler and it needs to fire several times since the attack is not 360°. Then I loot and can move on.

My question here is: is fast clearing still possible in some way or can I at least speed up the AI by putting in automated convocation somewhere? I found it helps tremendously to summon the crawler on top of rares/uniques because then it will target them and not some random trash mob.

I see all the cool advantages but for my personal playing experience it would be important to have a reliable map clear.
Maybe all this is auto-solving itself with more virulence but the behavior of crawler will not change.

Thanks for input.

The minion-ai is documented in "faq" in the spoiler "Is the crawler-ai special?".

Feeding frenzy helps not, but convocation and tempestshield and cwdt / cws skills a lot.

To compare: more aggresssive ai of minions like arakaali`s spiders or srs have a tiny bit better damage uptime, the HoA has 1 full screen more range of damage and do not need to path the distance first and don't rely on only poison with the high hit-damage. Further do not forget clearspeed of chainexplosions by asenath's gloves in maps and you can loot already while the minion is autobombing and the poison-dot alone often kill all remaining mobs.

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Imthetweety wrote:

Would love some advice on next build steps in regards to gear and my tree. All big increases seem like big currency investments now. Happy with build so far, have cleared T16s, exarch and eater so far with only a few deaths. Sometimes will randomly die which might due to my defensive percentages but overall feel pretty beefy so far. Definitely having some trouble managing points in the tree, e.g. not able to drop certain spell block passives to get full clusters at lvl91. Also not sure how my withers are atm. Cheers Chromino for the build!

Thank you Imthetweety! Arachnophilia!

You can already regret 3 passives presage and 1 passive zealot`s oath.
Get the medium-cluster with 4 passives instead 5.
Then get a second small cluster "sublime form" to cap the resis.
Use also 1 passive in the poison mastery against crits and the by crits initialized ailments.
Use pierce instead fork (when you not focus on 100% breach-farming).

Then after you can also regret full 6 passives "sovereignity" for further more medium clusters "pure agony" and more ghastly jewels "minion have chance to poison on hit" (and str/resis beside).
When you reach faster content regret also wicked ward.

A basalt-flask would be worth a try in place of the quartz- or quicksilverflask.

Your biggest upgrades in gear are a skin of the lords, a 80% manamultiplier-helmet and ashes.

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Chromino wrote:

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Imthetweety wrote:

Would love some advice on next build steps in regards to gear and my tree. All big increases seem like big currency investments now. Happy with build so far, have cleared T16s, exarch and eater so far with only a few deaths. Sometimes will randomly die which might due to my defensive percentages but overall feel pretty beefy so far. Definitely having some trouble managing points in the tree, e.g. not able to drop certain spell block passives to get full clusters at lvl91. Also not sure how my withers are atm. Cheers Chromino for the build!

Thank you Imthetweety! Arachnophilia!

You can already regret 3 passives presage and 1 passive zealot`s oath.
Get the medium-cluster with 4 passives instead 5.
Then get a second small cluster "sublime form" to cap the resis.
Use also 1 passive in the poison mastery against crits and the by crits initialized ailments.
Use pierce instead fork (when you not focus on 100% breach-farming).

Then after you can also regret full 6 passives "sovereignity" for further more medium clusters "pure agony" and more ghastly jewels "minion have chance to poison on hit" (and str/resis beside).
When you reach faster content regret also wicked ward.

A basalt-flask would be worth a try in place of the quartz- or quicksilverflask.

Your biggest upgrades in gear are a skin of the lords, a 80% manamultiplier-helmet and ashes.

Thanks for the reply!
Can you have another look at my passive tree now? I crafted a cheap 4 passive medium, took out 3 presage and zealots oath. Picked up extra sublime, poison mastery (got the crit immunity one, was there another one to get?), ghost dance, lethe shade (although dont know if this is good since my ailments are only at like 30-40% atm?) and put points into a megalo. However still had to keep two points in the sovereignty part cause if I took them out I couldnt run all my auras. How do I manage to get these two not needed and then also have room for swapping to ashes? Is it just having to save for a 80% helm or am I missing something? I'm thinking maybe trying to get better res efficiency and maybe some avoid ailment implicits on the two rings could be a good investment, but not sure if that'll be enough to drop the two passives and have room for ashes
Also, how do withers work with this? Am I even currently applying any? haha
Lastly, whats your thoughts on magebane vs divine? I'm leaning towards magebane to help me cap suppression.
Cheers for the help!

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Imthetweety wrote:

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Chromino wrote:

"

Imthetweety wrote:

Would love some advice on next build steps in regards to gear and my tree. All big increases seem like big currency investments now. Happy with build so far, have cleared T16s, exarch and eater so far with only a few deaths. Sometimes will randomly die which might due to my defensive percentages but overall feel pretty beefy so far. Definitely having some trouble managing points in the tree, e.g. not able to drop certain spell block passives to get full clusters at lvl91. Also not sure how my withers are atm. Cheers Chromino for the build!

Thank you Imthetweety! Arachnophilia!

You can already regret 3 passives presage and 1 passive zealot`s oath.
Get the medium-cluster with 4 passives instead 5.
Then get a second small cluster "sublime form" to cap the resis.
Use also 1 passive in the poison mastery against crits and the by crits initialized ailments.
Use pierce instead fork (when you not focus on 100% breach-farming).

Then after you can also regret full 6 passives "sovereignity" for further more medium clusters "pure agony" and more ghastly jewels "minion have chance to poison on hit" (and str/resis beside).
When you reach faster content regret also wicked ward.

A basalt-flask would be worth a try in place of the quartz- or quicksilverflask.

Your biggest upgrades in gear are a skin of the lords, a 80% manamultiplier-helmet and ashes.

Thanks for the reply!
Can you have another look at my passive tree now? I crafted a cheap 4 passive medium, took out 3 presage and zealots oath. Picked up extra sublime, poison mastery (got the crit immunity one, was there another one to get?), ghost dance, lethe shade (although dont know if this is good since my ailments are only at like 30-40% atm?) and put points into a megalo. However still had to keep two points in the sovereignty part cause if I took them out I couldnt run all my auras. How do I manage to get these two not needed and then also have room for swapping to ashes? Is it just having to save for a 80% helm or am I missing something? I'm thinking maybe trying to get better res efficiency and maybe some avoid ailment implicits on the two rings could be a good investment, but not sure if that'll be enough to drop the two passives and have room for ashes
Also, how do withers work with this? Am I even currently applying any? haha
Lastly, whats your thoughts on magebane vs divine? I'm leaning towards magebane to help me cap suppression.
Cheers for the help!

You aren't going to want lethe shade with such low ailment immunity, I would spec out of it. Though like you suggested, 25% ailment immunity on ring is very very good regardless. You will eventually cap your ailment immunity through a combination of rare boots(All the way up to 65%)/ring implicit(25%)/shield mastery(20%)/elegant form(20%).

Your best bet to solve your mana is to indeed get an 80% res helm but in the meantime you can unspec the 4 points leading to the Sovereignty cluster and just put 2 points into the Influence cluster. Also, getting rings with high HoA % Mana res efficiency is very helpful and don't forget to use "Life and Mana modifier" catalysts on them.

You crawler himself has a small amount of uptime of wither from the Unnatural strength ascendancy otherwise yours is coming from your Sin's Rebirth flask. Withering step is usually suggested a good form of getting 12 easy withers once fully juiced. Other good ways would be chaos golem of maelstrom + feeding frenzy. All other forms mentioned in the guide.

Lastly, magebane will be much easier to properly work into the build. Diving shield is only better once you can reliably still hit suppress cap (Supression on watcher's eye(up to 15%), elegant form cluster node(10%), Rare boots(14%), inveterate cluster(39%), spell suppression phasing mastery(8%), and lastly tattoos. If you can cap without magebane at that point then it is a free upgrade to divine shield. Though can be hard to pull off without a good megalo with elegant form or having a mageblood.

I am no Chromino but I hope this helps and feel free to message me ingame if you have anymore @AlphaAgonyTwo.

*edit* One thing that I did is if you are using vixens and not asenaths(Much better for mapping) is since you already have an extra curse, you could drop enfeeble and take the 5 nodes out of whispers of doom. If you need the 20% chance to poison on hit from it, you can easily replace it with a few +5% chance to poison on hit tattoos. Just something I did to free up some skillpoints to fit in maximum number of pure agony medium clusters/megas etc.

Just wanted to share my next iteration. This one feels really strong. I fixed mana now with a magic mana regen ghastly and arcane surge. IMO keeping the mana high enough to consistently cast molten shell and withering step increases my survivability and damage more than any other alternatives. Also makes playing it a lot more fun.
Also adding corpse explosions with asenaths was a good call. With the Despair on Hit implicit I now have some gem slots open, chaosgolem was kinda meh and didnt find any good alternatives for now.

Keep in mind with this setup I mostly run fully juiced 8 Mod T16 and juicy T17.

https://pobb.in/wYTBR2ubItuu

Since dropping Lethe Shade I noticed that degens got a loooooot scarier and I feel like this build lacks severely in regen/recovery when there are no packs of mobs around you. Played around with some es regen but was underwhelmed by it and went for more flat es.

Also still not feeling immortal and playing cocky will result in death. Some combination of map mods just clap me lol


For bossing I would recommend to change to vixens entrapment with curse on hit implicit and change the awakened fork for awakened vicious proj.

Leveling at 88 right now, amazing build, very tanky (although burning really hurts me despite abberath's).

Question though: Vixen gloves are useless to socket with curses because they only trigger them if you actively *CAST* a curse. Right? "Curse on hit", alas, does not count as casting. So you have to free up some gem slot on another equip slot? Ouch. The build is gem slot-starved (very much so), I wonder how to reconfigure to put in a self-cast curse.
Probably gonna exchange it for double curse on hit Asenath.