Getting Started with Heraldry Guardian under 30ex
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Hi guys, first build guide on the forum, but I wanted to offer a guide aimed towards getting started with Herald Stacking on a budget since there's no way this build isn't getting nerfed next league. The bar to entrance for herald stacking is actually not as high as many believe, and you can get your character rolling for around just under 30 exalts. Yes, you could theoretically get it going on an even tighter budget, but it would not feel very good. The build outlined in this guide is what I believe to be the baseline for a herald stacker to feel good in most content the game has to offer.
Gear and Cost Breakdown
Weapon - Nebulis with good rolls - 2exa The implicits don't really matter here (more of a nice bonus), the most important stats are the actual rolls. Each 1% difference in "X% increased cold/lightning damage per 1% cold/lightning resistance above 75%" is actually a difference of 15% increased lightning/cold damage Shield - Prism Guardian - 5c Body Armour - Shavronne's Wrappings - 2-3exa Helmet - Alpha's Howl - 10c Amulet - Vitality/Mana reservation - 3-4.5exa The easiest way is to get a pre-made Shaper/Redeemer influence amulet with the mods "Grants Level 22 Vitality Skill" (Shaper mod) and "4-5% reduced mana reserved" (Redeemer mod). Use the crafting bench to craft "15-20% increased maximum energy shield", use 20 fertile catalysts to reach 6% reduced mana reserved, and then anoint the "Champion of the Cause" notable with a teal, crimson and golden oil. Alternatively, you can self-craft the amulet using an awakener's orb to combine a shaper and redeemer amulet with the above-mentioned mods. Try to choose a hybrid base that gives you strength, preferably onyx, agate or citrine amulets, in the early levels when equipping gear it's needed. Rings - 2 x Call of the Brotherhood - about 3.8-4 exa in total Since you will be buying the rings corrupted (the uncorrupted ones sell for over 3 exalts each), make sure that the rings you buy are already qualitied up with the elemental damage catalyst to reach 48% lightning to cold damage conversion. If possible, try to get a good roll on intelligence, since the build is rather starved on sources of increased mana and energy shield. Gloves - Maligaro's Virtuosity - 1-1.1 exa Just get a corrupted one here, nothing special to look out for. Belt - Bated Breath - 20-25c (including catalysts) Remember to use Tempering Catalysts on the belt to get more energy shield out of it. Boots - Sin Trek - 3-10c Ultra budget boots, but try to look for good rolls on the energy shield and intelligence. The alternative would be a half decent pair of tailwind boots, but that would cost about 4 exalts minimum. Flasks - about 1.2 exa, solely for cinderswallow Wise Oak can be used in the last flask slot but make sure your uncapped cold resistance is the highest.]
Jewels and Cost Breakdown
Jewels:
3 x 7 passive voices - 3.3-3.6ex, 1.1-1.2ex each 5 x Purposeful Harbinger (PH) / Heraldry medium cluster jewels 4 x PH / Endbringer medium cluster jewels For the medium cluster jewels, purchase 4 or 5 passive "skills grant: 10% increased minion damage while you are affected by a herald" medium cluster jewels for about 100c each to craft on. Spam with alterations and augments until you hit one of the three notables we are using along with a jewel socket, then regal. Craft of Exile puts the average cost of crafting at about 70-80 chaos worth of those currencies, so the total cost of crafting your 9 clusters would be 9ex on average. 1 x Purity Mana reservation small cluster jewel (Pure Guile / Pure Might / Pure Aptitude) The purity whose mana reservation notable you are targeting here is the purity that you will be reserving on a level 21 blood magic. Use a 2 passive base here as we need to save as many passive points as possible. 1 x Strength/Int Split Personality Jewel - 1ex Solves your strength requirements and gives a good amount of Int. Total costs: Weapon - 2ex Shield - 5c Body Armour - 2-3ex Helmet - 10c Amulet - 4ex Rings - 4ex Belt - 25c Boots - 10c Gloves - 1.1ex Flasks - 1.2ex Jewels - 14ex Level 21 blood magic support gem - 80c Total - slightly under 30 ex
Pastebin
Level 90 ultra-budget pastebin:
https://pastebin.com/p9XkZGZp 9 million shaper dps, 5.3k ES
leveling advice
Level as either archmage storm brand or a hollow palm character till about level 80. Yes, you can equip your gear at level 70, but without the required amount of passive points the build will feel much worse than whatever leveling skill you picked. Here is a pretty scuffed passive tree: https://pastebin.com/UVyYMnMH Essentially, fill out heraldry notables, grab as many purposeful harbingers as possible, turn off haste so you don't have to spend 3 passives to allocate the purity reservation notable. The lack of haste will feel bad, but not as bad as using 3 passive points that could have been used to allocate purposeful harbinger notables. Within the next few levels, you can skip allocating the remaining purposeful harbinger notables to opt for getting the purity mana reservation notable on the small cluster, allowing you to reserve haste and activate pain attunement. From then, get the remaining purposeful harbingers and then endbringer notables.
Aura reservation management
Sources of generic "% reduced mana reserved" : Skill tree (with Champion of the Cause anointed) - 38% Rare amulet - 6% Helmet - 8% (Alpha's Howl) or 5% (Rare helm) Conqueror's Efficiency - 2% or 3% (corrupted with mana reservation) Jewels % cluster jewels - 1% for each "1% reduced mana reserved" corrupted implicit Sources of specific "% reduced mana reservation" : Cluster Jewels - Pure Might/Pure Aptitude/Pure Guile, 30% reduced mana reserved for the respective purities Heraldry - 10% reduced mana reserved for all heralds Helm Enchant - 15% reduced mana reserved off a 50% aura, or 20% reduced mana reserved off a 35% aura (the aura you choose for the enchant should be being reserved on life) Things to note: With 1 purity reservation small cluster or the helm reservation enchant, you can reserve 3 50% auras (prism guardian), 1 herald, 1 purity and 1 50% aura with level 21 blood magic on life. This is the base of the build, with all auras and heralds activated. Use as much heraldry clusters as you need to keep your heralds free or nearly free (depending on if you can spare some mana for non-free heralds). If you have generic 60% reduced mana reserved or close to that, you probably dont neeed 50% reduced mana reservation for heralds from 5 heraldry notables, since the maximum you'll need is 100%. That means you can probably swap out 1 heraldry notable for something else like endbringer or replenishing presence, up to your preference. Feel free to message me here or pm me in-game @Yisan_hAraLd if you have any questions about the build. I'm kinda done with the league, so I might not be online in game for you to pm me, sorry. Last edited by notgud#3150 on May 25, 2020, 12:02:58 AM Last bumped on Jun 1, 2020, 7:33:58 AM
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Gem Setup
Body Armour We're using fork support because it boosts our clear to the point of being comfortable, while not imposing a damage penalty as chain support does. Between cold penetration and inspiration, it's up to you. Upgrading to a 21/20 Ethereal Knives provides about 9% more damage for the cost of 1.5ex. One of the most efficient upgrades for the build. Awakened Fork will improve your clear speed by a good amount and is much more affordable than Awakened Chain, and the clear still feels really great on it. This is more of a luxury upgrade as fork support alone has decent clear.
Why EK?
Ethereal Knives, in my opinion, is the best all-rounder in terms of skills used by herald stacker. Compared to divine ire, it has much smoother gameplay and clear, albeit a slightly lower damage. Compared to arc, it is able to make the full use of the damage auras that we are running, i.e. the physical damage gained as extra cold from hatred that is scaled to enormous extents by purposeful harbinger. It's also a simpler spell in that there is no real need to target anything, since your knives fire in all directions.
Shield Three 50% reservation auras in your prism guardian here. Level 21 auras here is a very late-game upgrade, as to make the full use of them you will also need a +2 to aura/aoe gems corruption on your prism guardian. Helmet Socket the best auras for defence/offence here (discipline/precision), as they will benefit from the +2 to socketed aura gems. Heralds don't count as aura gems, and your purities don't benefit from gem levels as you are scaling their effect to insane levels already. Quality on the heralds here is important, as increases to we are converting almost all our lightning damage to cold damage, thus %increased lightning damage is also applied to the cold damage we deal. Boots/Gloves Level your Clarity gem to whatever level where your unreserved mana pool and mana regeneration feel comfortable. Quality on these don't really matter. Take note here that whatever Purity you got a mana reservation notable for on you small cluster jewel, is reserved on life. Level 21 Blood Magic is also a must for the reduced mana multiplier. Quality on the the auras here is irrelevant, except for maybe Herald of Ash. Weapon Not much to explain here. I swap flame dash out for the portal gem whenever I'm done with a map. Last edited by notgud#3150 on May 11, 2020, 6:38:51 AM
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Upgrades
First 30-50ex
EK gem level As a spell build, the damage scales very well off gem levels, so grab a 21/20 EK for a sizeable boost to dps for around 1-2 ex. Aura reservation enchant Get an aura reservation enchantment for one of the auras that you are reserving on life, this will enable you to drop the purity reservation small cluster jewel, freeing up 2 passive points and a jewel socket. This will cost you about 7 exalts or so. Tailwind boots Get a half-decent pair of tailwind boots for about 4-10 exalts, the action speed boost that tailwind provides increases dps and movement speed and it feels great. Try to get a decent amount of energy shield on the boots, as herald stacking characters generally lack base ES and %increased ES. Having a larger ES pool goes a long way to having great survivability and tankiness. Watcher's Eye Grab a watcher's eye with the single mod "X% of physical damage converted to lightning damage while affected by wrath", it allows us to convert almost all our physical damage from EK to lightning and then to cold, allowing the massive % increase to lightning and cold damage from nebulis to apply fully to our EK damage. The cost is currently around 9 exalts or so. Good Cobalt Jewels Getting the "1% reduced mana reserved" corrupt is expensive and is only a small part of the endgame goal of using swapping out heraldry notables for endbringer/replenishing presence notables, so whether you get them depends on your budgets. For more immediate benefits, look for good cobalt jewels (and maybe decent corruptions like cold/ele pen). Jewel mods to look out for: "% increased maximum energy shield" - a must on all your jewels. "+X to intelligence" - any suffix that gives intelligence is nice as intelligence increases maximum mana and provides %max es. "% increased projectile speed" - mostly a quality of life mod for your EK to cover the entire screen and a bit. "% increased cast speed" - the cast speed mod on jewel is the best dps upgrade out of the available mods since we have an insane amount of %increased generic/cold/lightning damage, and since we are not scion we do not get free cast speed "+X% to chaos resistance" - chaos damage is pretty much the only thing that this build doesn't take kindly too, so any source of chaos resistance is great. Flasks There's always these. Bottled faith is a pretty big dps increase even though the price may be a little daunting.
Next 50ex or so
+2 corruptions on gloves/shield: Do note that a +2 to aoe gems corruption will affect your offensive heralds, while a +2 to aura gems will not. To fully take advantage of the +2 corruption on the shield, you will need level 21 auras socketed, as most auras have a 1% increase in their respective buffs from level 24 to level 25. +2 corruption on chestpiece: Do note that Ethereal Knives is not considered an AOE gem, and will not gain levels from a "+2 to socketed AOE gems" corruption. Gem levels on Ethereal Knives scale our damage by an insane amount, this will grant a double-digit percent increase to our damage. Rare helm: Herald Stackers, with so many uniques, lack base ES to scale off. By switching from an Alpha's Howl to a rare hubris circlet with a Haste reservation enchant, you will be able to gain a lot of ES which directly correlates to your survivability and regen. You will either need a redeemer base to roll the "% reduced mana reserved mod", or you can spam Defeaning Essences of Loathing for the guaranteed "5% reduced mana reserved" essence mod. Last edited by notgud#3150 on May 11, 2020, 6:53:55 AM
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Nice guide! Can't wait to try this out.
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Nicely done, do you think its worth it to craft jewels for yourself? Or just buy?
MAN MODE ACTIVATED!!!!!
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" It's definitely cheaper to craft the clusters yourself than to buy them when on a tight budget. The average price for crafting one of the clusters you will be using is about 1ex in terms of chaos (calculated using Craft of Exile), while a PH/Endbringer cluster goes for around at least 1.3ex each, and a PH/Heraldry cluster goes for at least 2ex. In total, you'll be able to save on average 5-6.5ex by self-crafting the medium clusters. |
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Used your guide as a baseline to get a herald build up and running and its working pretty good so far. One thing i'm a bit confused about is that I can't figure out why I have no regen even with Unwavering Faith + Zealot's Oath. Mind taking a look at my character and giving some advice?
edit: LMAO I figured it out. Skyforth's are the culprit lol Great guide for getting a herald character started. Last edited by BanishedKittyy#4786 on May 10, 2020, 1:52:32 PM
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Hey mate, thanks for this guide, been looking to give this a try but it was pretty dauting seeing those 20ex voices. How would you go about the leveling process? are you rushing for the cluster jewels, or what would your priorities be?
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I think its important to specify that this build is mediocre until you hit the base gear and 9 PH. I still see a lot of people asking why their herald build is so weak, so it would be good to clarify that up front. And even when you hit the base gear, its still completely outclassed by plenty of other builds until you start to add better gear (+2 chest/helmet/shield, implicit gloves, tailwind/doryani boots) and add more jewel sockets.
With that in mind, it could be worthwhile including a short levelling section in the guide with suggestions such as hollow palm / storm brand and a recommendation for when to respect/switch to Herald build. You should also specify that the CotB need to be 48% conversion. |
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" 20ex voices? I think those are 5 passive voices you're looking at, not the 7 passive ones that are currently going for about 1.1 exalts and look to be continually dropping in price. 5 passive voices are absolutely not necessary in starting a herald stacking guardian, and you'll find most level 100 herald guardians on poe.ninja still using 7 passive voices. The 20 exalts spent on that extra passive point for use is rarely worth it when you could be making other more efficient upgrades. I'd personally level as a hollow palm character till about level 70+, perhaps even nearing 80. Grind breachstones or get a friend to help you level, because if you swap over to early, it's going to feel real bad. This build only feels good to play once you have allocated almost all your Purposeful Harbinger notables and are reserving all your auras. I'd probably use a tree like the one shown in this pastebin at level 80: https://pastebin.com/UVyYMnMH It looks very messy and it probably is, but heraldry notables are the first thing to look towards as reserving all your heralds for free or nearly free is the cornerstone of this build. Then, look towards allocating your purposeful harbingers and getting the purity mana reservation notable. Endbringer notables are your last priority. Last edited by notgud#3150 on May 11, 2020, 6:06:23 AM
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