[3.21] Vatinas' Spiders + HoP Guardian - CI, 70K armour, 1400 ES on block, millions of DPS

Hi Vatinas so glad to see that you are still maintaining the guide. I have a question, what about the 3 sockets on the knife? Is there any alternatives if we are using HOP? Since the spiders are basically free we can go crazy with the gem while disregarding the mana multipliers. I'm using Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Impale on the knife but I have no idea if those are any good over the existing Melee Physical Damage - Death Mark - Withering Touch.

Looking forward to the update!

I think you can make the animated guardian unkillable without investing into minion hp/resist nodes and we dont lose the fortify and culling strike because kingmaker gives us both permanently + to the minions also, but i guess you are right that the spectres are a bad idea, resummoning them all the time would be probably a lot of wasted time. I will experiment a little with the animated guardian and give feedback if you are interested.

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ShinyValkyrie wrote:

Hi Vatinas so glad to see that you are still maintaining the guide. I have a question, what about the 3 sockets on the knife? Is there any alternatives if we are using HOP? Since the spiders are basically free we can go crazy with the gem while disregarding the mana multipliers. I'm using Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Impale on the knife but I have no idea if those are any good over the existing Melee Physical Damage - Death Mark - Withering Touch.

Looking forward to the update!

Hi! :)

Indeed, the sockets in the dagger are completely free, but I think the gems I have might be the best. Withering touch increases the damage by a lot - 97% more damage according to PoB! Deathmark gives 60%, which is also enormous for a support gem, and on top of that allows you to tell your spiders to target one enemy in particular, which is very handy, so I definitely wouldn't swap out that gem either. As for multistrike, it does give a tiny bit more damage than melee physical (48% more damage for melee phys versus 50% more for multistrike), but it does mean your spiders will always attack three times before moving, which is going to slow down your effective clear speed and mean much less damage versus mobile bosses. But feel free to try it if you want :)

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gergmt wrote:

I think you can make the animated guardian unkillable without investing into minion hp/resist nodes and we dont lose the fortify and culling strike because kingmaker gives us both permanently + to the minions also, but i guess you are right that the spectres are a bad idea, resummoning them all the time would be probably a lot of wasted time. I will experiment a little with the animated guardian and give feedback if you are interested.

You're absolutely right, I completely forgot that AG gave Fortify and Culling Strike, my bad ^^' I still doubt it would survive though, but I guess it's worth a try - we do give some armour with our ascendancy, after all. But I'm not rich enough to be able to afford a Kingmaker to try it yet, so I'll have to wait a bit. Though if the AG dies, there is a solution - playing HoP and dropping Chance to Bleed and Bloodlust, freeing another socket for elemental army. Could be a thing. Anyway, if you have the currency to try it, sure, I'd love to hear the results :) One small note, remember to grab a lvl 21 AG, if possible 20% qual, it really makes a huge difference!

I'm loading up your PoB and having a hard time seeing the damage for Herald of Purity. Is there a setting under Configuration I'm missing? I only see the Purity hitting for around 150k each, after turning on everything.

I'm used to seeing numbers over 2 million dps for an average herald of Agony build, which also has better clear.

Any ideas? Thanks!

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Kurnis wrote:

I'm loading up your PoB and having a hard time seeing the damage for Herald of Purity. Is there a setting under Configuration I'm missing? I only see the Purity hitting for around 150k each, after turning on everything.

I'm used to seeing numbers over 2 million dps for an average herald of Agony build, which also has better clear.

Any ideas? Thanks!

With our 6L and fully leveled gems, we have around 325K dps per sentinel according to PoB (without awakened gems and only HoP at lvl 21), which amounts to 1.625M dps for sentinels. While it's true that it's less than a classic HoA build, you have to remember two things:

1) We could theoretically squeeze in more damage into the build, like with Victario's Charity for instance, but we choose not to because I wanted to make a well-balanced build that was able to kill end-game bosses, clear high tier maps, and be able to facetank almost everything.

And 2) The heart of the build is not the herald, it's the spiders, and those have 2.6M Shaper dps, for a total of around 4.2M; on top of that, the spiders are incredibly quick and, with melee splash (whose awakened version is dirt cheap), have a great AoE, and clear perfectly by themselves, which is the first reason that pushed me to try out HoP instead of HoA. But if you want more clear, you can definitely stick to HoA; I just, personally, really don't think it's necessary; I clear T16s, blights, simulacrums, etc., with no issue at all. :)

Feel free to ask if you have any other concerns!

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Vatinas wrote:

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Kurnis wrote:

I'm loading up your PoB and having a hard time seeing the damage for Herald of Purity. Is there a setting under Configuration I'm missing? I only see the Purity hitting for around 150k each, after turning on everything.

I'm used to seeing numbers over 2 million dps for an average herald of Agony build, which also has better clear.

Any ideas? Thanks!

With our 6L and fully leveled gems, we have around 325K dps per sentinel according to PoB (without awakened gems and only HoP at lvl 21), which amounts to 1.625M dps for sentinels. While it's true that it's less than a classic HoA build, you have to remember two things:

1) We could theoretically squeeze in more damage into the build, like with Victario's Charity for instance, but we choose not to because I wanted to make a well-balanced build that was able to kill end-game bosses, clear high tier maps, and be able to facetank almost everything.

And 2) The heart of the build is not the herald, it's the spiders, and those have 2.6M Shaper dps, for a total of around 4.2M; on top of that, the spiders are incredibly quick and, with melee splash (whose awakened version is dirt cheap), have a great AoE, and clear perfectly by themselves, which is the first reason that pushed me to try out HoP instead of HoA. But if you want more clear, you can definitely stick to HoA; I just, personally, really don't think it's necessary; I clear T16s, blights, simulacrums, etc., with no issue at all. :)

Feel free to ask if you have any other concerns!

Thank you so much for your reply! Appreciate the info :)

What do you think of the "renewal" notable? how often are spiders and heralds of purity at full life? Would it ever be worth it?

And what is our main source of regen, now that Spirit offering is sadly destroyed?

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Kurnis wrote:

Thank you so much for your reply! Appreciate the info :)

What do you think of the "renewal" notable? how often are spiders and heralds of purity at full life? Would it ever be worth it?

And what is our main source of regen, now that Spirit offering is sadly destroyed?

The Renewal notable is good in theory, but I ended up not using it. Here's a note about it I wrote in a past message:

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Vatinas wrote:

I also wrote about Renewal, which grants our minions 10% chance to deal double damage while on full life, but now that the jewels are out, I don't think it's a good option, mainly because if you want to get Renewal, you need to get a *large* cluster jewel, and none of the other regular minion nodes are that good for our build, so you would need to invest a lot of skill points to grab renewal and a medium jewel socket behind that. Really not worth it in my opinion.

I've thought a lot about cluster notables, and I honestly think that those I listed in my post at the top of this page (42, I believe) are the best right now, but of course I'm always open to ideas, so feel free to share your thoughts! :)

As for the regen, we never relied on Spirit Offering, since it doesn't affect us (we're not a Necromancer). We have two sustain mechanics: first, the most important one, is the ES refill on block. With 60K armour, which is completely doable, we refill 1200 ES whenever we block, which is 75% of the time, and that makes us virtually unkillable by hits (well, I did die to a slap from a Kosis in a crit, extra fire & cold fully delirious elder guardian T16 map to be honest :p).

The second, which helps us versus damage over time or very large hits, is ES regen thanks to Zealot's Oath; we get quite a lot of regen from our skill tree, including (but not limited to) Righteous Army, Sacrifice, and Combat Stamina, but most importantly we have the wonderful ascendancy Time of Need which regenerates 30% of our ES every 5 seconds, which means that even in fights with almost exclusively damage over time like Uber Elder we're able to stay alive (there are videos in the guide if you want to see it in action).

Cheers! :)

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Vatinas wrote:

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ShinyValkyrie wrote:

Hi Vatinas so glad to see that you are still maintaining the guide. I have a question, what about the 3 sockets on the knife? Is there any alternatives if we are using HOP? Since the spiders are basically free we can go crazy with the gem while disregarding the mana multipliers. I'm using Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Impale on the knife but I have no idea if those are any good over the existing Melee Physical Damage - Death Mark - Withering Touch.

Looking forward to the update!

Hi! :)

Indeed, the sockets in the dagger are completely free, but I think the gems I have might be the best. Withering touch increases the damage by a lot - 97% more damage according to PoB! Deathmark gives 60%, which is also enormous for a support gem, and on top of that allows you to tell your spiders to target one enemy in particular, which is very handy, so I definitely wouldn't swap out that gem either. As for multistrike, it does give a tiny bit more damage than melee physical (48% more damage for melee phys versus 50% more for multistrike), but it does mean your spiders will always attack three times before moving, which is going to slow down your effective clear speed and mean much less damage versus mobile bosses. But feel free to try it if you want :)

Thanks for taking the time to reply! At least now I know why those particular gems are used.

After getting the Lethal Pride I am basically untouchable thanks to the glancing blow. But when I die I die so fast i have no time to react. Often, I die to damaging grounds, like those burning grounds, I died so many times to the Colonnade boss. Is there a solution aside from moving out of the way? Sometimes it happen so fast I die before I can move away.

Lastly, what do you think of using Forbidden Taste as healing flask? Additional 10% dodge and phasing, and instant almost full health recovery.

Ok, PoB is actually showing Energy from Naught giving more ES than Will Shaper.

Can someone confirm, because this makes no sense.

With 4000 mana Will Shaper should give DOUBLE the es that Energy from Naught gives.

However, when I look at the calculation in PoB, it shows Energy from Naught giving 100 to the base ES, but Will Shaper doesn't. Is this a calculation mistake in PoB, or is Will Shaper actually calculated different in POE?


On a second note, why don't we pick up Wicked Ward?

Quick question as I seem to miss something

Where do you find those cluster jewels?! (Will Shaper, Invigorating Portens etc)

I'm looking them up by name and/or abilities and nothing comes up anywhere!

Thanks