[3.10] Herald of Agony Mana Guardian | 2.5 Minute Sirus 8 | Deathless T19 100% Delirium

Pros

1) Moderate upfront cost with a very basic set of unique items, scales extremely well with end game gear if you want to spend more currencies.

2) One of, if not the tankiest builds in the game:

a) 10K energy shield with discipline, 20K armor (40K when we flask), three endurance charges after you get hit, this is without the expensive clarity watcher's eye which takes you to 13K energy shield
b) 4K molten shell / 12K vaal molten shell (8K and 24K when we flask)
c) 500 energy shield regenerated every second, 3000 energy shield regenerated every 5 seconds
d) 48/16% block chance without flasking, 75%/36% block chance when we flask
e) Four tanks with 175,000 health each as your indestructible front line!
f) Immunity to chaos damage, ignite, shock, chill and frozen effects

It is as good of a defensive resume as it gets. Best of all? You use ball lightning so you can cast from full screen range so you don't need to face check things like corpse explosion from a strong box on a map with huge damage mods.

3) Full screen clear with Herald of Agony pierce and you clear really fast for such a defensive build! Herald of Agony is also invulnerable, so you don't ever worry about things like damage reflect or zombie dying in deep delve. Ultra luxury gear with level 31 Herald of Agony can pull of level 8 Sirus in in just over 2.5 minutes, Uber Elder in just over 2 minutes, which is top tier damage.

4) Press and hold ball lightning + molten shield + convocation and face tank to win (I have them as Q, W and E), no clunky mechanisms, no preparation needed.

Cons

1) Somewhere between 1000-1500 delve level, defense no longer matters. Builds like deadeye ice shot perform well with "kill them before they ever touch you" mentality and a much higher skill ceiling in the hands of players who can take out Aul without getting hit a single time.

2) Unblockable attacks, especially heavy ground damage can still kill you.

3）You are playing an old bald man, perhaps this is why guardian has never been super popular compared to cooler classes.

4) This is not a SSF build like Lacerate Gladiator, easily the best budget build in the game, tanks as good or better than us at lower budgets, and you can craft everything. Upfront investment and very specific gear pieces are needed.

Level 68 will get you 6000+ energy shield, 15000 armor, and 900K shaper damage. It is still as strong a level 68 as you can get with cheap gear listed below.

Body Armour - Skin of the Loyal OR Skin of the Lords



"100% increased global defense" basically doubles the armor we get from our helmet which is well over 10K in this build, which translates into bigger molten shell as well. +1 gem level is basically +2 to Herald of Agony skill gem level because we use empower.

You will want at least 2 Green 2 Red for Herald of Agony, Pierce, Empower and Damage On Full Life. The last two skills are variable. While Vicious Projectile and Minion Damage provides the best damage and we will use it as baseline, especially with awakened gems, it is also most expensive both in term of mana reserved and price.

Don't be afraid to pick up a different color combination for cheap while you are starting out, or grab a corrupted +2 level to socketed gems Skin of Loyal if a different color is available. One major shopping tip is to look for Skin of Loyal with one or more white sockets and try to fit it into any of these color schemes. It provides immense flexibility in case you need to reduce mana cost to fit an extra aura, and you can snipe it for way cheaper than the proper color because people are often not searching for white sockets.

Color Combination | Final Two Skills | Mana Reserved| Damage
2R-3G-1B | Vicious Projectile & Minion Damage | 100% | 100%
3R-2G-1B | Maim & Minion Damage 94% | 94%
2R-2G-2B | Deathmark & Minion Damage | 108% | 88% no mark, 111% marked
2R-4G | Vicious Projectile & Hypothermia* | 92% | 92%
3R-3G | Vicious Projectile & Maim | 88% | 89%

*For 2R-4G, use hypothermia if you have skitterbot to apply chilled, otherwise vile poison which will have variable damage depend on 0-10 poison stacks.

Other colors work too, generally speaking, anything with no more than 3 red sockets and no more than 2 blue sockets, work just fine. Even 4 green is usable if you can get one at good price.

The lower mana cost means it is easier for you to activate the next aura at every stage until you have herald of agony, hatred, discipline and skitterbot all activated. And yes this can now be done without a super expensive helmet enchant thanks to cluster jewels. You need to max roll your Circle of Nostalgia to 40% reduced mana reservation and pick up every mana reservation trick in the guide if you are using 2R-3G-1B, and the requirement goes down immensely if you are using other combinations.

Skin of the Lords is a great alternative, specially of you are on a budget. In fact if you can grab one with one of these keystones, it is better than the normal Skin of the Loyal until you can afford a corrupted one with +2 levels to socketed gems! 20/20 corrupted support gems are cheap to get.

Phased Acrobat - 30% spell dodge is insanely strong

Unwavering Stance - Stun immunity, can't use flesh and stone sand stance blind effect or evasion flask

Zealot's Oath / Elemental Equilibrium - Saves one passive point

When you are on a super budget, even keystones useless to our build like Perfect Agony, Avatar of Fire, Conduit (does not work with minions), Crimson Dance, Elemental Overload, Iron Grip etc. are totally fine if you get a cheap Skin of the Lords with good colors.

Helmet - Memory Vault



Fundamental to all mana guardian builds as we reserve huge amount of mana, this allows us to have high physical damage reduction and the huge molten shell / vaal molten shell. A rare with +maximum mana, intelligence, energy shield and resistance is sufficient until you can get this item.

Rare Gloves With Poison or Faster Casting Support



Post nerf, Shaper's Touch is no longer a great option, it will give you maybe 200 more energy shield but you lose out on resistance and one of the support skills.

You will want to get either poison or faster casting, so you can 5 link your ball lightning to make it easier to maintain 60 stacks of virulence in single target situations. Notice it is possible to get faster casting AND blind AND slower projectile if you are lucky!

Look for a pair with high energy shield, mana, intelligence and resistance.

Amulet - Astramentis



Perfect pairing with all attribute based builds. Very hard to beat for the price. Strength and intelligence are great for mana guardian. We also need to meet Herald of Agony's 159 dexterity requirement so that 100+ dexterity allows us to not worry about it.

Weapon - Rare Wand



A minion wand with +1 minion skill gem and triggers socketed gems on skill use. Auto cast curse, desecrate and spirit offering just makes the build so smooth and lazy to play. Mana, resistance, minion damage, minion attack speed mods are icing on the cake. Do not take anything with projectile speed or cold damage!

Shield - Whakatutuki o Matua



Good energy shield. You also get 5% energy shield per second for 4 seconds after you block which is good sustain as well for both you and your minions. +3 minion level allows you to hit level 25 for an extra spectre which is required for onslaught bonus.

Boots - Rainbowstride



Really great boots as 6% chance to block spells is 12% with Lethal Pride, and excellent resistance. Great value for the money.

Rare Rings



You will want rings and belts with high resistance, mana, intelligence, strength and energy shield. Because you don't want life, you can get these for really cheap. This is where you cap your resistance. Remember later on you will upgrade one of the two rings to Circle of Nostalgia, so having extra resistance well above 75 to the point you can hit 75%/75%/75% with only one ring is not a bad idea.

Belt - Cyclopean Coil



Gives good energy shield and immunity to ignite and shock, later on you can get a corrupted one with elemental resistance.

Cluster Jewels

You will need two large cluster jewels with 8 passive skills total, Vengeful Commander and Scintillating Idea as the first and second of your passive skills, as we will not allocate the third skill, four medium cluster jewels with Heraldry, Pure Agony and 4 passive skills total, three small cluster jewels with Will Shaper and 2 passive skills total, and one small cluster jewel with Enduring Composure and 2 passive skills total. Prioritize these jewels as you level over all other upgrades!

Circle of Nostalgia



Allows you to activate a second aura like Discipline, or even a third aura like Skitterbot or Flesh and Stone with more investments in mana reservation reduction. The damage increase is not nearly as important as the mana reservation reduction, so you can start with a budget one without damage increase if needed.

Level 21 Herald of Agony and Level 4 Empower are must have damage upgrades.



The Kiloava variant of Lethal Pride doubles our block chance which makes our sustain and damage reduction much more consistent against all contents. If you are lucky enough to get "10% chance to intimidate on hit" (Thanks Mecielle), you can most likely drop Unwavering Crusade and pick up both Time of Need and Bastion of Hope, as intimidate is the bulk of the benefit for Unwavering Crusade.



A pair of can not be chilled/frozen boots is relatively easy to craft and a huge quality of life improvement and makes contents like Uber Elder trivial. Buy a pair of two-toned boots with max roll implicit 12% to cold/lightning resistance, alteration spam then regal until you get enough resistance, mana, intelligence or strength AND have two empty prefix / one empty suffix, and craft the rest. You can also get just the "can not be frozen mod" and 35% speed or more elemental resistance, as chilled is not nearly as annoying as frozen.

Corrupt one of your jewels with "Corrupted blood can not be inflicted on you", helps a lot with face tanking Sirus and fundamental to almost all builds.

Charisma on your amulet, it allows you to activate Hatred, Discipline and Skitterbot at same time if you use it in addition to four Heraldry's.



You will need a Watcher's Eye with "+16-18% of your maximum mana as extra maximum energy shield when affected by clarity", a fundamental item for all energy shield based builds. Alternatively, a "gain energy shield on hit when affected by discipline" watcher is great for our sustain and does not waste a valuable gem slot like clarity, it is also quite a bit cheaper.



Corrupted Skin of the Loyal with 2 levels of socketed gems instead of 1, it is 25% MORE damage overall, it is that big of an upgrade. But it is hard to find. This is how you get to more than 3 million single target Shaper damage, and 4 million when mapping/delving.

Awakened Vicious Projectiles, Awakened Generosity, and Awakened Minion Damage.

+1 to minion skill AND +1 to spell skill wand, very expensive craft with:

Jagged Fossil
Shuddering Fossil
Corroded Fossil
Metallic Fossil
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElT5k--BR4M

Bottled Faith will give you a much bigger area of effect for consecrated ground healing, and another 10% MORE damage. It is the new head hunter for every build.

+1 to dexterity and/or physical skill gem level amulet will give you another 1-2 crawler level to hit level 31 for a big damage buff.

Helmet Enchant with Herald of Agony, Hatred, or Discipline mana reservation reduction will free up valuable passive points.

+5% energy shield recovered on block shield plus another strong mod like spell block or even physical spell level This is better than Whaka shield but you will need to replace meat shield with empower 4 to maintain four spectres for onslaught.

You will need two large cluster jewels with 8 passive skills total, Vengeful Commander and Scintillating Idea as the first and second of your passive skills, as we will not allocate the third skill, four medium cluster jewels with Heraldry, Pure Agony and 4 passive skills total, three small cluster jewels with Will Shaper and 2 passive skills total, and one small cluster jewel with Enduring Composure and 2 passive skills total. Prioritize these jewels as you level over all other upgrades!

Golden Rule: Must have to double your poison applications. Herald of Agony is all about maintaining your virulence stacks. I use this even during early leveling without CI.

Healthy Mind: Huge mana increase and we found a perfect spot for it, right next to the life nodes around Cruel Preparation.

Lethal Pride: Not supported in Path of Building yet, but the the Kiloava variant will double our block and make our defense much more consistent.

Watcher's Eye: "+16-18% of your maximum mana as extra maximum energy shield when affected by clarity", a fundamental item for all energy shield based builds. Expensive upgrade for late game. Alternatively, a "gain energy shield on hit when affected by discipline" watcher is great for our sustain and it is quite a bit cheaper, and discipline really helps make up for our energy shield loss this league.

Body Armour: Herald of Agony | Minion Damage | Damage on Full Life | Empower | Pierce | Vicious Projectile

Please see the section on Skin of the Loyal on other skill combinations, and impact they have on your damage and mana reservation.

Gloves: Ball Lightning - Poison Support - Spell Echo - Fast Casting - Flame Dash

Herald of Agony itself is 20% poison chance, combined with Poison Support it is already 80% poison chance, with Golden Rule it is enough to keep stacks up. Notice you will need lesser poison support instead of poison support until you can add chaos damage to your spells, Circle of Nostalgia provides this. Please be aware your glove should provide either poison or faster casting for a 5-link. If you find Spell Echo too clunky you can replace it with unleash, blind, culling strike . . . plenty of choices but spell echo has the best chance to give you 60 virulence stacks against single targets.

Helmet: Convocation - Vaal Molten Shell - Increased Duration - Vaal Discipline

You will be able to activate discipline with four heraldry cluster jewels and circle of nostalgia. Vaal Discipline is our healing potion equivalent. In super late game, you can replace increased duration with clarity if you get clarity watcher.

Boots: Hatred - Generosity - Enlighten - Flesh and Stone OR Skitter Bot

You won't be able to activate Skitter Bot until very late game with Charisma and four Heraldry's. You can put precision here to fill up the last bit of mana until then.

Weapon: Poacher's Mark - Desecrate - Spirit Offering

You can use another curse like Projectile Weakness for single target bossing, or a defensive curse like Enfeeble & Temporal Chains. However frenzy charges will add another 25% MORE damage for your crawler so I prefer to use that for almost everything except single target boss fights Sirus, in which case projectile weakness is better.

Offhand - Whakatutuki o Matua: Raise Spectres - Meat Shield
- Feeding Frenzy

What makes this build special, try it and you will never go back to any other flavor of Herald of Agony!

We are much more durable than Necromancers, but our minions are a lot more fragile. So to compensate for this, we will take the most tanky spectres in the game.

The best spectre for our build is Stoneskin Flayer from Delve, you will find them in Primeval Fortress or Primeval Chamber as early as 200 depth. Just desecrate, press A to target corpse and summon. They have 175K health and 75 elemental resistance with this build, and will tank anything for you with fast movement speed. You get free onslaught and feeding frenzy buff for your crawler, and free taunt with meat shield support.

Until you are that far in Delve, some of the choices are:

1) Towering Figment from Grand Arena in Act 4, they don't show up in desecrate for some reason, so you will need to walk around to kill them, target corpse with A and summon. 560% health vs 800% health for Stoneskin Flayers, slower movement and earthquake sound when they walk.

2) Sandworn Slaves from The Vastiri Desert from Act 9, 440% HP, faster movement but also a lot of on-screen animation

3) Kitava's Herald from the Cathedral Rooftop of Act 5, 360% HP, comes with leap slam.

Will update this section once we find more spectres from POB update.

a) Remi's Concoction adds 20% chance to block spell damage with our build, and another 10K armor on top of it. Try to pop this before Vaal Molten Shield during boss fights and you can face tank everything. Shaper slams don't even dent me.

b) Sulphur Flask is like a healing potion for our build as long as we stand still, and I added bleed removal onto it.

c) Jade Flask provides a lot of evasion and I added armor on top of it. You can use something like freeze removal instead or whatever utility you prefer.

d) Remaining flask can be whatever you like, I chose quicksilver for movement speed.

For Oil, Primal Spirit is a good budget choice early. Diamond Skin or Sanctuary if you need extra resistance during transition to Circle of Nostalgia and/or Cyclopean Coil.

Charisma is the best end game choice to activate a third major aura on top of Hatred and Discipline.

Level 68 PUB: https://pastebin.com/QwbmnCVP
Level 68 Tree: http://poeurl.com/cPNE

6000 energy shield, 1.1 million shaper damage while mapping, 900k single taret boss damage, 15000 armor, not bad for a level 68! The Heraldry cluster jewel allows us to fit in hatred with generosity much easier than before.

Level 94 POB: https://pastebin.com/ktjHZ7BE
Level 94 Tree: http://poeurl.com/cPNI

2 million shaper damage at 40 stacks, 5 million shaper damage at 60 stacks which is easily maintained during mapping, and still doable if you are allowed to stand still and cast vs single target bosses, thanks to spell echo. Almost 10000 energy shield without watcher's eye.

Ultra Luxury POB Kyuhlee: https://pastebin.com/vjGrRPJN
Ultra Luxury POB Motmana: https://pastebin.com/LW1WKJLp

Level 31 Herald of Agony, Watcher's Eye, Bottled Faith are standard luxury items. For the second league in a row, Kyuhlee took the build deeper into delve than any one else and this league he is doing it against five herald guardians! Also added Motmana's build from the popular Chinese NGA forum using Heraldry instead of Disciples, which allows you to use one Circle of Nostalgia and makes resistance much easier to cap.

Over 10 million shaper damage and comfortably over 10K energy shield.

Non-Cluster Jewel Trees For Those Playing Standard League:

Level 68 POB: https://pastebin.com/idcdCTcz
Level 68 Talent Tree: http://poeurl.com/cMJ4

Level 94 POB: https://pastebin.com/kgFajX8X
Level 94 Talent Tree http://poeurl.com/cMLy

60 stacks of virulence is just too much damage. Highly recommend cluster jewel version if you are playing league! There is pretty much no point to play the non-cluster jewel version unless you are in standard.

Ascendancy

Take them in this order:

1) Radiant Faith - what makes this build work, gives you massive energy shield from mana reservation, still on of the best ascendancies in the game post 3.10 nerf

2) Radiant Crusade

3) Unwavering Crusade

4) Time of Need OR Bastion of Hope

Stun immunity and 20% spell block vs high (albeit slightly random) recovery. You can't really go wrong with either one.

Pantheon

Major:

Soul of Brine King, protection against stun locks

OR

Soul of Lunaris, protection against chain damage

Minor:

Soul of Tukohama If you enjoy stationary face tanking like I do.

OR

Soul of Garukhan Extra movement speed for mapping.

Bandits: Kill all, we need the two skill points.

Use whatever skill of your choice (mines/brands are always good choices) until level 18, once you have Herald of Agony, leveling becomes trivial. 4 link is a lot of damage already. Consider using a quill rain with rain of arrows linked to lesser poison and poison, coupled with thief's torment you get huge amount of life on hit and should steam roll all early contents. Switch to CI at level 68 once you can equip all of your core equipment for a big power increase.

Generally speaking once you get the level 68 tree you can use hatred with generosity for big damage increase. Once you get Circle of Nostalgia you can add Discipline, Charisma will allow you to take a third aura like Skitterbot.

1）Heraldry from Cluster Jewels
2) Level 3 or 4 enlighten
3) Well-rolled Circle of Nostalgia (at least 40% which is not hard with quality catalysts)
4) Charisma on your amulet

Finally, Helmet enchant is huge. Herald of Agony, Hatred, Discipline and Skitter Bot mana reservation reduction can all save you passive points.

Remember you want to keep your unreserved mana as low as possible to maximize your energy shield and armor, so you will want to play around with mana reservation passive points on talent tree to make sure you don't have too much unreserved.

Notable Boss Fights

You can stand and press/hold ball lightning and molten shield keys against most bosses. On maps with 2 or more damage mods, you will want to flask and vaal molten shell if you are trying to grind to 100, just to be safe.

1) Phoenix/Shaper - Heavy ground damage, need to move your feet.
2) Acid Cavern Morgrants the Deafening - This guy has a storm call/spectral throw combo that does more damage for each minion. He is much more threatening to a Zombie user than us, but still can do massive damage.
3) Uber Elder - Run circle around the map, spam balls of lightning in their general direction.

Sirus

To make the encounter 100% brain dead, you will want to have corrupted blood immunity from jewel, can not be frozen boots, and ideally ignite and shock immunity from Cyclopean Coil. Other than dodging the storm between phases, you want to be in his face as much as possible and spam ball lightning for maximum poison application. Whenever you hear "die" or see a big move coming, pop molten shield. Don't bother dodging anything, focus on damage!

Blight

To reliably run Blighted maps, just get two ring enchants with +25% range to scout tower. Then use triple amber oil to get -60% cost of towers on blighted maps. Spam scout towers all over the map, stand near pump to clean up, and win easily.

Deep Delve

Pop your armor flask first so you get maximum vaal molten shell value, flask management is king. Deeper into delve, ironically you will need more damage than defense. Flesh and Stone is also great as it gives us the RNG defense we need.

1) Why do people allocate Minion Instability/Pain Atonement/Conduit?

This is because POE Ninja and Path of Building currently do not display Timeless Jewels correctly. We are using Lethal Pride on the socket next to it which converts it into Glancing Blows. This is also why you see weird keystones from POE Ninja characters.

2) I can not poison any act bosses with my level 1 poison gems!

Make sure you have at least a few levels of lesser poison support gems, otherwise chaos damage are rounded into zero against act bosses.

3) Why elemental equilibrium?

Ball Lightning will lower the fire and cold resistance of your enemies, this is 20% MORE damage once you turn on hatred with generosity. You should not equip any item that adds cold damage to your spell or attacks, other wise you will increase the cold resistance of your enemies.

4) My POB damage looks really low, what are the correct settings?

a) Herald of Agony main skill is tail spike
b) 40 virulence stack
c) Feeding Frenzy active
d) Nearby allies set to 5
e) Enemy hit by lightning damage if you are using wand, Cold Iron Point doesn't have this
f) 10 poisons on enemy if you use Vile Poisons
g) Enemy is chilled if you use hypothermia and Skitterbot
h) Enemy is death marked if you are using deathmark
i) Shocked only if you use Local Identity to set to 18%
j) Enemy is on consecrated ground if you are using Bottled Faith

5) I just hit level 68 and I have 3000 energy shield, what is going?

Be sure to pick up Radiant Faith ascendancy if you haven't.