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

There's dozens of us!

https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?item=Geofris-Legacy,The-Coming-Calamity

here's my take on a double-herald build with Geofri's - more currency spent by now, and some levels higher, but also very speedy due to Dancing Duo and very satisfying pops from Infernal Blow. Just killed my first guardians as well (Mino & Chimera) hoping to try more bosses soon.

Have you tried IB on this build? Linked to Lesser Poison IB's explosions can also create virulence stacks, ~30 per pack in my current setup. I have gone to and fro with Cyclone and DB a lot, but in the end i fell for Infernal Blow. Its synergy with Holy Relic's position triggers makes for one swing per pack all the way up to t16, and hopefully beyond in delve due to the % corpse dmg. Corpse removal is also a good safety layer.

Cyclone seemed safer due to room for Life on Hit, but also quite a lot slower clearing, as i often have to stay cycloning around the mobs a bit, similar to in your videos. IB is just pop and move on to the next pack. Still have a Hungry Loop for Cyclone around as well though - its still great for ele reflect maps and some Delve situations where you want more than a quartz flask.
In other Delve situations though, mainly the end battles like the azurite encounters, i felt Ancestral Call was necessary to keep up virulence. Having a large army while being swarmed makes it really hard to pick out a target to keep hitting with cyclone, auto-targeting with AC (or multi) is really good in those situations.
While safer when you're on top of the mobs, you do have to close in more with Cyclone, while ACall allows you to stay in the back a bit when needed. This difference also has you Cyclone ahead of your Relics sometimes, making their nova's miss some of the pack.

DB seemed the best of the bunch for bossing btw, i sometimes go back to it when i've lost rampage on the boss. Pop a few worm flasks and you have an army of summons to make up for the loss of your Duo. Porting to your hideout and going back with 3 worm flasks for insta-rampage also works.
Might make a good weapon-switch setup closer to your build for those situations though. Consistency is definitely a pro you have over my take on Calamity/Geofris.

Overall your attack speed is a lot higher than mine, so you get lots more out of life on hit and your virulence on single-target is a lot higher than me. Maybe with some more investment in damage that turns out the better of the two, but give both IB and Dancing Duo a go and tell me how you feel they compare!

Also very interested on your thoughts on Withering Touch. I can't really test it on Cyclone as Hungry Loop is a bit too hungry on that one, but it's already doing a great job on both Agony and Duo.

@BenjaminBona - there's a few of your notes i'm also playing around with. Got a Poacher ring over the weekend to replace Witchfire Brew as a second curse, and switch charges ascendancy points for the block one. Also aiming for an Auls late league. The Agony fella does damage fine - i've played around with Phantasm on Kill for quite a while before switching in achaos lately, and its killcount was among the best of the different summons i tried it on.

[edit]Oh yes, another notable difference between our builds! I use Empower in Geofri's along with Relic/Purity and Mdmg, for lvl 25 Relics and flat added phy from the Purities. 26 if i get more gold. Seemed a really good choice in my build - did you play with the thought as well?

Nice stuff, I was planning to use that chest to 6l HoP before I ran into issues with the guardian.

This is an interesting take on solving the problems I was having.

Few questions;

Why more links on the HoA Vs the HoP? Particularly because guardian has stronger interaction with them?

When I was messing with the holy relic I noticed it's base damage seemed pretty decent, clearing whites on a 1 link etc. But I heard others claiming it was total meme territory. What's your experience with it on a 4 link?

Why do you run minion life on them?

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Tahreyn wrote:

It's nice to see that quite a few versions of HoAg builds pop up :)

I hadn't thought about using the Holy Relic for my own build, so I'm off to to try it out and see if I can rearrange my gem setup to eventually fit it in. If you and viperesque need some inspiration for your Gladiator setup, feel free to take a look at my build. You'll find the link to it in my signature.

We already are! You posted the uber elder video about a day after we started working on this build, and HoAg + max block was something I was already keen to look at, so naturally it was a topic of conversation! I'm pretty much just trying to combine your build and what's in the OP in some way. Keep the max block but sacrifice a few tank stats for damage, tweak a few other things, the usual. Thank you for the inspiration!

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benjaminbona wrote:

+1

This build looks like it does no dmg but actually pumps

Awesome!

Thanks for taking the time to check out the guide, and thanks in advance for your notes!!

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benjaminbona wrote:

I think you can actually pump out WAYYYYYY more out of this tree/build as well


Heres my notes


1. Gloves can be upgraded to insanity gloves - % more attack speed for an even faster cyclone

2. https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Deafening_Essence_of_Zeal - can be used on a claw to end up with 30% attack speed instead of 18%


3. Amulet can be upgraded to AULS for free hatred

4. Can have a "poachers mark on hit ring" to get extra life/mana on hit
as well as a flat 20 life gained on hit

5. Can go MOM and have a bigger life pool and use the mana on hit to sustain it

6. Have you checked other ascendancy options?
For example scion gets free onslaught and fortify on hit with frenzy charge sustain

1. Yeah, they sure can. We 100% need supported by Poison on gloves though (I assume insanity craft is better than supported by Faster attacks). I imagine these gloves would be the next best upgrade (or insanity AND both supported by), but then we're talking absolute best-in-slot getting towards mirror tier gear for the build (assuming life and resists).

2. Yes, the claw could get more attack speed, but I'm unsure how important that is really. For the claw, you really only need "Life gained for each blinded enemy hit by this weapon" - any attack speed you can get on top of crafted tier is great.

3. Aul's can certainly be a good amulet upgrade. Essence Worm is really nice because of the +2 socketed gems, so you'd have to get a really nice ring to make up for the loss of +2 gems.

4. Poacher's Mark ring is a good option, yeah. I'd really want Fear craft for % minion movement speed as well though.

5. I don't think MoM can be a good option in this build while using Coming Calamity, we just don't invest enough into mana to be guaranteed to Cyclone through the damage.

6. I'm sure there are other ascendancies viable for this build. My immediate thoughts on good options would be: Gladiator (currently working on this), Ascendant, Champion, Trickster, Necromancer, Occultist, Juggernaut. The shell I think is very flexible to change levels of damage/tankiness.

"

benjaminbona wrote:

Side note -

I made a pathfinder to lvl 90+ and had uber ascendancy with a coming calamity and my herald of agony didnt do any dmg...

So im pretty sure 90% of your dmg is from holy relics not the agony.

Therefore the herald of purity should be 6linked and can be implemented in a +1 all with a lvl 4 empower or +2 duration tabula

If possible Id like you to test and show side-by-side comparison without and without herald of agony.

Check out this video shoing Holy Relic's damage. Our other minions add to that for clear. In terms of single target, it's really very hard to figure out what's better at this stage without all the numbers.

I won't be doing much testing at this stage as my main priority is to push the build in its current iteration as far as it can, then consider gear upgrades.

As a general statement regarding your suggestions, they're sound, but this build is framed and designed as a budget and/or league starter which can do most/all content while being pretty tanky. Including items like insanity crafted gloves with one or more "supported by" affixes in the main guide isn't what I'm looking to do at this stage. If I do push the build to the limits, I might include a high budget section.

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viperesque wrote:

"

Tahreyn wrote:

It's nice to see that quite a few versions of HoAg builds pop up :)

I hadn't thought about using the Holy Relic for my own build, so I'm off to to try it out and see if I can rearrange my gem setup to eventually fit it in. If you and viperesque need some inspiration for your Gladiator setup, feel free to take a look at my build. You'll find the link to it in my signature.

We already are! You posted the uber elder video about a day after we started working on this build, and HoAg + max block was something I was already keen to look at, so naturally it was a topic of conversation! I'm pretty much just trying to combine your build and what's in the OP in some way. Keep the max block but sacrifice a few tank stats for damage, tweak a few other things, the usual. Thank you for the inspiration!

Beat me to it! Yeah Tahreyn, your build is sweet and we're keen to see how Holy Relics might fit in. We'll update the initial post with detail once it's all figured out.

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jubsey wrote:

how deep has this build went? in Delves?

Looks good

J

Hey, thanks for checking out the guide!

I'm currently delve level 100~ waiting for the account-bound changes to come into effect. I'll update once that happens and I can push the build to the limits.

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elbramso wrote:

WOW - really cool build!

where does all the damage come from? 4L HoP + 5L HoA?

really impressive!

Hey thanks for checking out the guide!

We have three main damage setups here:
- 5L (6L if you have it) HoAG
- 4L HoP
- 4L Summon Holy Relic

Holy Relics actually do a surprising amount of damage for clearing which is helped by the Agony Crawler and summoned Phantasms linked in the Crawler. Sentinels of Purity and Agony Crawler do the heavy lifting for bosses.

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Toverkol wrote:

[edit]Oh yes, another notable difference between our builds! I use Empower in Geofri's along with Relic/Purity and Mdmg, for lvl 25 Relics and flat added phy from the Purities. 26 if i get more gold. Seemed a really good choice in my build - did you play with the thought as well?

Hey, thanks a lot for checking out the build and taking the time to share your build and thoughts/experiences!

My immediate goal is to push the Cyclone version as far as I can, then I might look into IB or other options. I really like the Life Gain on Hit from the claw and not needing to scale self-damage.

I agree that sometimes you're ahead of your relics, but I haven't found this to be too-big a problem as your Phantasms clean up.


Regarding Empower for Holy Relic, I think it may be better than minion life, but I was working on a budget for this build. For higher budget I'll probably swap it out. For the Cyclone build, you don't need selfish damage, so I probably wouldn't consider Empower on Herald of Purity.

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devilmz wrote:

Nice stuff, I was planning to use that chest to 6l HoP before I ran into issues with the guardian.

This is an interesting take on solving the problems I was having.

Few questions;

Why more links on the HoA Vs the HoP? Particularly because guardian has stronger interaction with them?

When I was messing with the holy relic I noticed it's base damage seemed pretty decent, clearing whites on a 1 link etc. But I heard others claiming it was total meme territory. What's your experience with it on a 4 link?

Why do you run minion life on them?

Here's a video showing just Holy Relic damage in clear. It's used mostly for clear. The damage on 4L is pretty nice, but it's not all of our damage.

I use Minion Life because you don't need more damage and sometimes the Relics can die to large and-game boss AoE damage. It's very possible that Empower is better than Minion Life in that socket with greater investment. Some people think the clear is clunky, but it doesn't feel that way to me at all.

It's really hard for us to make a good decision on Herald of Purity vs Agony for the 5-6 link slot as we simply don't have enough information. Theory is Agony is better as we're investing a lot into getting and maintaining virulence stacks. Additionally, Agony is active during both clear and single target, whereas Purity minions only get summoned against unique monsters and sometimes with incidental poison kills.

"

systemplayerlost wrote:

"

devilmz wrote:

Nice stuff, I was planning to use that chest to 6l HoP before I ran into issues with the guardian.

This is an interesting take on solving the problems I was having.

Few questions;

Why more links on the HoA Vs the HoP? Particularly because guardian has stronger interaction with them?

When I was messing with the holy relic I noticed it's base damage seemed pretty decent, clearing whites on a 1 link etc. But I heard others claiming it was total meme territory. What's your experience with it on a 4 link?

Why do you run minion life on them?

Here's a video showing just Holy Relic damage in clear. It's used mostly for clear. The damage on 4L is pretty nice, but it's not all of our damage.

I use Minion Life because you don't need more damage and sometimes the Relics can die to large and-game boss AoE damage. It's very possible that Empower is better than Minion Life in that socket with greater investment. Some people think the clear is clunky, but it doesn't feel that way to me at all.

It's really hard for us to make a good decision on Herald of Purity vs Agony for the 5-6 link slot as we simply don't have enough information. Theory is Agony is better as we're investing a lot into getting and maintaining virulence stacks. Additionally, Agony is active during both clear and single target, whereas Purity minions only get summoned against unique monsters and sometimes with incidental poison kills.

I see, thanks for clarifying. That was also a concern / annoyance I had with HoP. You gotta get the kill. And I found my melee damage fell off heavily, as I wanted. I wanted a summoner. But that just meant I often was running around with 2-3 hops out because I went for a while without last hitting

I had considered fast attack and culling strike to negate it slightly, but man I wish it wasn't an on kill effect