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

thanks a lot for build. I think its a very good league starter with only 70c im running throught everything even t16 maps with bisco on.
A tip for fast maping if someone is interested. There is new craft "trigget spell when u use skill" on weapon< so actually u can put shield charge-faster attacks-convocation in weapon and maping becomes super fast with this/ also u dont need any more minion speed things on rings or other pieces

Awesome build. Finally got my Uber lab done today and the build is pumping! But before I got my Uber done by here's a short story: I have been trying to farm my way through the atlas, currently around t9, when a poor soul offers chat his Hydra fragment if someone kills the boss. Me, dying to test this undergeared build out offers to help. He asked if I had killed this before. Yes, plenty of times! Just not yet this season. Well, it took awhile to kill a corrupted unid Hydra with %100 more life, but I got my fragment. Looking forward to testing solo kills with Uber lab done.
Sorry for bad story, it was my exciting moment.

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i have 1 idea to make as much regen as i can : belt with life recovery + vitality+ watchar's jewel with life recovery when vitality on + ( Time of Need node maybe)

Something most people playing this build is probably unaware of is the "of Light" gloves enchant. Upon taking a critical strike, it create consecrated ground, giving you 6% life regen for 5 secs. You can easily get this from farming "Normal" lab. Higher level lab is not needed.

Is there a reason we don't take the righteous army skill node?

20% minion life
20% minion damage
1% life regen
1% minion life regen

That sounds op to me.

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Ringcycle wrote:

Is there a reason we don't take the righteous army skill node?

20% minion life
20% minion damage
1% life regen
1% minion life regen

That sounds op to me.

As a HC player, I take it all the time.

"

Is there a reason we don't take the righteous army skill node?

20% minion life
20% minion damage
1% life regen
1% minion life regen

That sounds op to me.

Every point since 85 I've looked at this node and contemplated it. So about 7 times I've considered taking this node. I'll tell you my reasoning why I haven't taken it...

So first off the better question is, how much are the stats vs. the passives actually worth?

For 2 passive points you get:
30% Minion Damage
20% Minion Accuracy
20% Minion Life
1% Life Regen
1% Minion Life Regen

If it was just 1 pt, it would be okay, but for 2 points, you're essentially giving up 10% life or more realistically, a jewel for these stats, which makes them look... less appealing.

Sure, the life regen is great, but you'll likely get more life regen (and bang for buck) out of 2 life nodes anyway. Even with 5700 life in red maps it's still pretty possible to get space jammed (and in fact I got one-shotted by a boss in a CIty Square map (t4?) TWICE at level 91 recently somehow-- I think a phys or chaos mine or something) since all we're utilizing Coming Calamity we have almost zero defense on our chest, meaning despite all the layers of great defenses, if something gets through it can easily cut deep.

Minion Life and Minion Accuracy are of debatable value. You already get quite a lot of minion accuracy elsewhere on the tree (100% from ascendancy is the big one) and the summon phantasms which make up a large portion of your damage (in some situations) don't benefit from Minion accuracy since they use spells. The minion life and accuracy stats also do NOTHING for your actual character, so in many ways taking it for these two stats is basically giving away a passive point that could be used for more life to give a negligible buff to your minions. The life is wasteful in my view as Holy Relics will still randomly die to high damage situations and they're really the only minion you use that is in any way limited by how much life they have.

So this makes the calculus: Is 2 points for 30% damage to me and my minions worth?

I don't think it is, because jewel slots are INSANELY valuable for this build. Consider the jewel mods: Minion Spell Hinder for the phantasms/relics, minion attack and cast speed (which seems to be power budgeted to be more valuable than inc. minion damage per point of it), resists for our character, attack speed, poison chance (though I'm not going this route), life, and then the various flat phys damages available to minions, not to mention % damage, minion damage, and life. Right now I'm using 5 jewel nodes and a stygian vise and without the jewels my resists would be FUBAR.

Unless you have some kind of crazy crazy claw, increasing your own damage isn't really too meaningful, as your minions and relics do the damage that makes all this work. I also think it's easier to get minion damage via crafting, etc. than it is to get additional jewel slots. Though I've used every point I would have used taking these nodes to take life nodes instead, because at 91 I'm more interested in staying alive till the next level than killing a guardian 3 seconds faster.

Current Gear:


Thoughts on Strengths/Weaknesses of the build so far:

I've killed Chimera and the Mastermind as well as high level Omnitect with this build. No other guardian maps dropped yet. Atziri is a joke with our damage, but her ignites can kill you if you don't bring ignite flask and failboat into one of the 3 or 4 flameblasts that will inevitably go off while she's phase shifting.

Getting frozen or stunned is one of the worst things that can happen to this build, hence the anti-freeze boots. Chilled ground is annoying so 2 birds, das boot.

For a long time I was using Garukhan's Flight just so I could ignore shocked and chilled ground entirely as I didn't have other ways to deal with them and wanted to forget about them in maps. Also for the Dexterity! I feel like build creators never talk about attribute requirements as even at level 91 I struggle to get enough dex to use level 20 Herald of Agony. To solve the dex problem I just threw currency (and a 30 dex passive node) at it (jewels, jewelry with dex). As for shocked ground I just deal with it and try to keep my anti-shock basalt flask up against hard targets.

Generally stun isn't an issue due to Coming Calamity covering most of the small window your ascendancy doesn't protect you from but it's still possible to get stunned, especially if you've been looking at an item in your inventory and charges fall off and then you start combat again, things don't go your way, etc. It's also possible to get petrified by one of the Syndicate members; I know this from experience.

Map mods... No regen is doable but requires a mana flask and is annoying so I usually skip it. Tricurse maps and other garbage like that is easily doable. Most map mods don't even affect our minions, so the worst are the big ele damage mods stacking to create dangerous bosses/syndicate members. General map mobs are mostly a joke at all tiers, red map mobs being more dangerous when they pierce the veil of your block. Regen will cover you in most cases even before you get the life-on-blinding-hit claw, but getting the claw will make you all but impervious to everything but 1-shots. One remaining issue I haven't really solved yet is bosses who put down DOT AOEs or make you dodge things you can't easily tank via regen (Daresso sword clouds and Chimera Balls for instance) can create challenging situations when there's no way to move in to cyclone to get life on hit/trigger greater regen. Still beat Chimera on the first try for Atlas bonus no less, but her balls chunked me for about 3/4s of my 5700 health if I didn't dodge them.

My claw is pretty bad, one of a few I've been trying to craft-- here I don't have multimod so I just stopped at bad regal and crafted attack speed. There's some guy in Betrayal crafted the perfect claw for this build like 1 day into the league, wants 50exa or something for it. Honestly, I want the claw, but you can make your own for about 100 alts + Elder Gemini Claw until you hit the life gained on blind hit and then craft Attack speed on it and the build works fine. Elder Gemini claws aren't too expensive and it's also possible to just buy a claw with the blind/life on hit mod as well, but will be more expensive. (FYI: For 50exa you're better off buying HH than getting a great claw IMO.)

Was lucky on the 6L-- made 2 5Ls and this 6L in like 80 fusings. Just dumb luck. I was easily doing red maps on a 4/5L before I got the 6L.

Gloves I leveled using Flesh and Spirit. And then I went into maps and kept using them. Rampage is just an incredible mod for this build. I still think of these gloves often, but the reality is that now I'm more worried about losing XP dying than I am about raw speed, so I bought the cyclone gloves after all. Basically, I just bought something with the MORE attack speed and poison for the 5L cyclone. I opted for %moreattspeed over the 6L cyclone using life on hit because I wanted to hit faster-- not sure if this was a smart choice or not. I'm also not using poison chance jewels so I only have like 80% chance on hit to poison, but I think I hit 7.5 times per second so scorpion gets going easily. (Side note: it's possible to easily die in very narrow corridors or chokepoints, especially to say, uber-buffed freezing pulse mobs in red maps because your scorpion and/or other minions get all choked up and can't stream in to help you.)

I swapped out Victario's for Whakatutuki o Matua... the reason for this is sometimes giving our minions charges turns certain types of combat/instances into SLIDESHOWS. In Alva's temples specifically I've found I can lag myself out (where the server simulation slows or pauses completely) to the point my client will DC. I tried switching Victario's out and I THINK the lagfests become more infrequent. (Still happens sometimes though.) Damage is probably higher when your minions have charges, but Whakatutuki does give increased aura effect to minions which means Hatred (or Dread/War Banner which I'm currently experimenting with) will mitigate this damage loss somewhat (but alas it doesn't mitigate the movement/cast/attack speed the minions lose out on for sure). Addressing the banners, jury is still out on these; they seem to be comparable to Hatred (which is a luxury part of the build anyway) and the increased fortify effect Dread Banner gives is theoretically AWESOME if it works for the entirety of the banner effect as people say it does), but I often forget to put the banner down or pick it up or whatever I'm supposed to be doing with it so sometimes I'm just getting nothing out of it or my ring slot, which is annoying. The Tar on Block seems like it is amazing, but it's very difficult to tell in practice just how often I'm blocking and procing the effect. Regen is kind of the same, actually-- 5% is significant, but it's hard to tell as I already have so much and the only time 15% regen vs. 20% regen matters is a situation where I'm taking extreme damage anyway and not thinking about if my shield is procing a lot or not. I guess my point here is you can experiment with the shield-- Vic's is kind of optional.

The nice thing about the tar on block, minion spell hinder chance on my jewel, maim on the sentinels, etc. enemies are always facing a lot of debuffs that also make me safer. It may in fact turn out that Dread Banner is higher DPS than Hatred, but Hatred is comparable and safer due to chill/freeze? Someone with better knowledge of this could educate me. There's pretty much no information anywhere about the Banners that I can find and since the build performs well even without them it's difficult to test vs. Hatred.

Also I use Vaal Summon Skeletons as having them along for boss fights can trivialize a lot of the game when you have like 10 phantasms, full stack scorpion, 4 dudebros, and like 38 skeletons and two magic religious artifacts all regening 10% of their health every second while they talk out their problems with the bosses. They can also be used every time the syndicate attacks, for tanky essence mobs, etc. the spell is ALWAYS up, they do crazy damage, and the regen keeps them around to do it. The real issue is you have no room to support them with anything-- you could slot them into the holy relic 4L instead of minion life or in exchange for some damage, but I'm just letting my shield's +3 minion gems + passives do the heavy lifting for these guys.

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Ringcycle wrote:

Is there a reason we don't take the righteous army skill node?

20% minion life
20% minion damage
1% life regen
1% minion life regen

That sounds op to me.

Short answer: Opportunity cost - that's 2 points you can spend taking life or jewel sockets or endurance charges.

FutureBlues' post above goes into good detail on the topic.

Is Attack Speed Enough?

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Uberness wrote:

It sounds viable, also look into abyss jewels with "Recover life while moving" which works well with cyclone.

thx for idea!

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IchiMorghulis wrote:

"

i have 1 idea to make as much regen as i can : belt with life recovery + vitality+ watchar's jewel with life recovery when vitality on + ( Time of Need node maybe)

Something most people playing this build is probably unaware of is the "of Light" gloves enchant. Upon taking a critical strike, it create consecrated ground, giving you 6% life regen for 5 secs. You can easily get this from farming "Normal" lab. Higher level lab is not needed.

ok. i will try your advice
thx