[3.9] Herald of Agony (Melee!) Necro--Get in Monsters' Faces Safely (5M Shaper DPS/8.4kLife+Fortify)

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MisterBones wrote:

Hey there! Loving the guide and build - having just gotten it online tonight, I look forward to seeing how it performs in Blighted maps.

I have a small question regarding sockets: While I have been able to afford a 6L Calamity, I was unable to pick one up with GGGBBR sockets - a hundred chromatic orbs later, G3B3 is the best roll I managed to grab. What blue support gem would you recommend using as a replacement for the DoFL gem?

Thanks in advance!

So, I hope you realize that chromatic orbs are very cheap--a hundred to roll a 6L chest is nothing, generally I go in with at least a thousand, which is under an exalted orb mid-league (though right now, everyone selling at good rates is offline...)

Anyway, geez, that's a tough one. There aren't any good projectile blue gems so it has to be a minion gem.

The two options then are Feeding Frenzy and Summon Phantasm.

Feeding Frenzy, you're getting a guaranteed damage multiplier, and then can also afford to take the support off of your golem and relic (to make them tankier or something instead). It's not going to be very big though, since you already had the feeding frenzy buff itself from other sources. However, making your minion more "aggressive" can be a downside sometimes, since it'll wander farther away from you to attack packs that may be different from the ones you're cycloning into yourself.

Summon Phantasm, I haven't tested at all so I have no idea how good it'd be. However, according to the wiki, the Summon Phantasm Support's minion levels are based on your active skill gem's level. Which means if you have a level 31 herald of agony, the phantasms will scale as if they were also a level 31 minion gem. You won't get bonuses from Chain support or Vicious Projectiles, but you will get the bonuses from Minion Damage, Death Mark, and (for single target) Vile Toxins.

If that sounds interesting to you, by all means, see how strong summon phantasm support is in this setup.

Thanks for the suggestions! Though, after a mere 150 chromatic, Ive actually managed to roll my GGGBBR piece, so they turned out to be less necessary than expected. :)

Cool, cool. If anyone ever does decide to see how well this build works with summon phantasm support, I'm still interested :P (feeding frenzy on the crawler itself is definitely not a good choice over the current setup, but for all I know, maybe high-level phantasms are awesome)

If you use the synthesis unique ring for herald of agony you can get a damage buff for crawler and 100% increased buff effect. That means you only need poison gem to hit 99% chance to poison (not sure if quality makes it higher) and you also dont need poison jewels.

This means you can get more life, resists, or whatever on jewels.

Im currently playing this build on console and having difficulty completing blighted maps, even though i can do high tier maps, and have done uber lab. But ill get there as i level my gems.

That would definitely work for what you're saying but we really don't need more damage. Loss of a ring means loss of tankiness, with our current setup.

Anyway, hope it's fun, at least :) I don't know what the console economy is like but I hope you haven't had trouble getting a total of level 31 herald of agony since that makes the biggest difference.

I added a 3.9 update section since the patch notes are out.

tl;dr the build was nearly untouched. Zombies will die faster but if your crawler kills things fast enough you'll still be fine.

I also added a credits section to the end. The guide has been up for long enough that I didn't feel like the credits to Ekar really belonged at the top anymore.

Quck question, in 3.9 they increased monster armor by something like 3000% in late game, as the actual cyclone damage in this build is extremely low, is there a concern about not being able to apply poison at all? can you apply poison if you do 0 phys damage?

Another quick question, you mention, and it is also confirmed by others that the build is really tanky, but how tanky is it before you get the high dps gear? at 5 million i assume your are wiping out everything before it can hurt you, but the way the build seems setup there does not seem to be any defensive layers, am i missing something?

Thanks!

How tanky is it compared to its Guardian counterpart, is it better for bossing overall ?

Defensively: I can see 8k life, soul of steel, fortify and bone armor.

Obviously the damage is insane in comparison, at the price of shield and block.

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Quck question, in 3.9 they increased monster armor by something like 3000% in late game, as the actual cyclone damage in this build is extremely low, is there a concern about not being able to apply poison at all? can you apply poison if you do 0 phys damage?

I... I don't think you understand how armor or poison works. First off physical damage reduction, including on monsters, can never mitigate more than 90% of your damage. They're not suddenly going to absorb hits entirely. Even the base damage from the daggers, before the "minion damage increases also apply to you" line, will deal at least 5 average physical damage to even a monster with infinity armor.

Second, ever since the double dipping nerf of years ago, physical damage mitigation doesn't even affect poison damage, because ailments all became based on a pre-mitigation value in exchange for also being based on a pre-hit-buff value. This is why fire penetration is no longer useful for ignite builds--the penetration no longer affects the ignite damage. Again, this change was made multiple years ago now.

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Another quick question, you mention, and it is also confirmed by others that the build is really tanky, but how tanky is it before you get the high dps gear? at 5 million i assume your are wiping out everything before it can hurt you, but the way the build seems setup there does not seem to be any defensive layers, am i missing something?

Thanks!

You're missing... 8k life... fortify on hit from cyclone... enfeeble on hit from gloves... soul of steel for extra physical damage reduction and max resistances... and two different necromancer passives, Bone Barrier for Physical Damage Reduction, multiplicative life recovery, and the "bone armor" skill, and Plaguebringer which causes all enemies around you (once desecrate has been cast at least once, or once you've killed any mobs that leave corpses on the battlefield) to deal 10% less damage. Not to mention massive regen from both Stone Golem (which gets boosted thanks to cold iron point) and Holy Relic.

It's very, very tanky.... If that doesn't sound like a lot to you then I have no idea what kind of armadillo-like build you're used to....

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Glyhf wrote:

How tanky is it compared to its Guardian counterpart, is it better for bossing overall ?

Defensively: I can see 8k life, soul of steel, fortify and bone armor.

Obviously the damage is insane in comparison, at the price of shield and block.

This is exactly the tradeoff, yes.

The idea here is the standard PoE idea: kill monsters before they kill you.

As I acknowledged in my "videos" section, I did die to Aul at depth 308 (not anywhere near oneshot, but just failing to dodge a mechanic I wasn't familiar with and subsequently getting 4 or 5-shot), whereas a guardian may have just been able to outright facetank him.

But in general, while just mapping, I only came close to dying when I made very obvious mistakes. For example, dashing directly in the middle of 4 syndicate members in a research lab where the agony crawler has very little maneuverability and many obstructions to its firing--the correct way to do research labs is by cycloning enemies on the periphery rather than charging in. Another example of an obvious mistake is diving into an incredibly dense blight pack and then just standing still--cyclone gives you constant motion and you need to take advantage of that, to avoid being hit by 10 enemies at once. If you cyclone straight through a pack with your flask movement speed buffs up, you should get to the other side before the melee dudes even hit you, even on a Turbo map.

Dying while playing smart was near impossible simply because the crawler kills enemies too quickly.

You don't have to play as smart when you're a guardian, but your speed slows down a lot. We're still way tankier than most "interactive" builds that hit 5 mil dps, but a guardian is built to be a tank.

Edit: I just actually looked at the build you linked, and holy shit he's missing so much dps even compared to what a guardian can achieve. Wow.

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codetaku wrote:

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Quck question, in 3.9 they increased monster armor by something like 3000% in late game, as the actual cyclone damage in this build is extremely low, is there a concern about not being able to apply poison at all? can you apply poison if you do 0 phys damage?

I... I don't think you understand how armor or poison works. First off physical damage reduction, including on monsters, can never mitigate more than 90% of your damage. They're not suddenly going to absorb hits entirely. Even the base damage from the daggers, before the "minion damage increases also apply to you" line, will deal at least 5 average physical damage to even a monster with infinity armor.

Second, ever since the double dipping nerf of years ago, physical damage mitigation doesn't even affect poison damage, because ailments all became based on a pre-mitigation value in exchange for also being based on a pre-hit-buff value. This is why fire penetration is no longer useful for ignite builds--the penetration no longer affects the ignite damage. Again, this change was made multiple years ago now.

"

Another quick question, you mention, and it is also confirmed by others that the build is really tanky, but how tanky is it before you get the high dps gear? at 5 million i assume your are wiping out everything before it can hurt you, but the way the build seems setup there does not seem to be any defensive layers, am i missing something?

Thanks!

You're missing... 8k life... fortify on hit from cyclone... enfeeble on hit from gloves... soul of steel for extra physical damage reduction and max resistances... and two different necromancer passives, Bone Barrier for Physical Damage Reduction, multiplicative life recovery, and the "bone armor" skill, and Plaguebringer which causes all enemies around you (once desecrate has been cast at least once, or once you've killed any mobs that leave corpses on the battlefield) to deal 10% less damage. Not to mention massive regen from both Stone Golem (which gets boosted thanks to cold iron point) and Holy Relic.

It's very, very tanky.... If that doesn't sound like a lot to you then I have no idea what kind of armadillo-like build you're used to....

ah alright, thanks for the info!