1. Cold Iron Point vs Arakaali's Fang.
CIP a pretty viable alternative at some point, being budget and gameplay friendly.
When it is best to use CIP:
Spoiler
Mid-budget.
There is a huge damage breakpoint of Herald of Agony at lvl 31, with CIP it can be achieved for a lot cheaper:
- The skin of the Lords (+2)
- Empower lvl 3 (+4) or Awakened minion damage lvl 3 (+1) + Empower lvl 2 (+3)
- Chaos Mastery on the passive tree (+1)
- HoAg lvl 21 (lvl 20 is doable if u have both Empower lvl 3 and Aw minion damage lvl 3)
- CIP (+3)
At this point, when you can get hoag lvl 31 with CIP and cannot with AF, the damage gap between CIP and Arakaali's Fang is the lowest with just ~10%.
Pros and cons of CIP vs AF:
+ No spiders gameplay (This is insanely big QoL for those who can't get used to spiders summoning).
+ Free flask slot. Many options here.
- Damage is still lower
- Wither + spell totem + multiple totems is a must-have for bosses, but it dies fast.
- Chain (Awakened) or fork (Awakened) support is required instead of the pierce - more mana problems. I elaborate on this below.
- No onslaught.
When it is best to use Arakaali's Fang:
Spoiler
Low budget and High budget.
On a low budget, just 3-link spiders will do more damage than your entire 6-link HoAg (no skin of the lords, no empower, no awakened gems, no chaos mastery, etc). So, it must be a chase item early.
On a high budget, when you can get lvl 31 hoag using AF, it overshadows CIP by a very huge margin (~20%) again.
Pros and cons of AF vs CIP:
+ More damage anyway.
+ Pierce is fine, spiders finish damaged monsters.
+ Reliable Wither (spiders don't die), and apply it all time.
+ Onslaught
- Clunky. I elaborate on how to deal with it below.
- More expensive. 4ex week 1? 1ex week 3? CIP price got down for 10 times already.
Well, the most clunky part of this build. No need to deny it, bc it's obvious. Even I felt really bad with the default self-casting setup at first, so I had to find alternatives last league.
Spoiler
To summon spiders there are 2 conditions required:
1. Corpses nearby.
2. Kill.
You won't summon spiders if you just press flask and kill worms w/o corpses around. You won't summon any spiders if enemies or allies kill worms first.
The normal way to summon spiders is:
I. Desecrate, twice (or in the middle of the dead pack).
II. Kill worms.
But, in normal circumstances this feels clunky af, bc u had to stop ur mapping to summon worms pretty often, right?
Or are you getting pissed by failing to summon for whatever reason? No corpses, no kills, enemies and crawler around hunting YOUR worms, etc.
I know how it feels, bro.
And here are BEST ways to deal with it:
Spoiler
1. Cold Iron Point. No spiders - no problem, right? Most obvious solution. Trading a bit of damage for QoL. It's reasonable, doable, why not.
2. Gravebind. Budget mapping option, very good. Literally, a lifesaver on early mapping.
Why:
Spoiler
With them, HoAg will summon spiders, spiders will summon spiders, your party will summon spiders, etc.
The downside is - bossing damage of HoAg will be low, bc gravebind is bad for virulence uptime.
Well, early spiders will do more damage than HoAg anyway, and with the Gravebind, your spiders' uptime is 100%. If not - press some flask from time to time.
3. Culling strike. This was the best solution prior to 3.16, before gravebind was introduced.
Explanation:
Spoiler
Culling strike helps you to get kills for summoning spiders.
Also, it can be either the cheapest solution with just culling strike support skill gem, or the most expensive one with double influenced gloves, which allows 1 button gameplay:
There was an entire page with the discussion of culling strike/cyclone gloves with some videos of virulence uptime with the different skill gems at the end of the page:
4. Unbound Ailments instead of Minion Damage in Arakaali's Fang. Chromino, please.
How it works:
Spoiler
UA support increases the Poison damage of the spiders, as a result - more enemies die by poison applied by spiders - and it counts as you get the kill in this case, which fulfills the second condition of summoning.
Also, Unbound Ailments is 15% stronger than minion damage support for spiders. In all cases, even if enemies have strong chaos resistance. Again, Chromino, please.
Bonus: Corpsewalker boots.
They automate desecrate (creating corpses out of the air), but in short - not worth it. Boots slot is too precious to waste it on corpsewalkers.
1. Cold Iron Point vs Arakaali's Fang.
CIP a pretty viable alternative at some point, being budget and gameplay friendly.
When it is best to use CIP:
Spoiler
Mid-budget.
There is a huge damage breakpoint of Herald of Agony at lvl 31, with CIP it can be achieved for a lot cheaper:
- The skin of the Lords (+2)
- Empower lvl 3 (+4) or Awakened minion damage lvl 3 (+1) + Empower lvl 2 (+3)
- Chaos Mastery on the passive tree (+1)
- HoAg lvl 21 (lvl 20 is doable if u have both Empower lvl 3 and Aw minion damage lvl 3)
- CIP (+3)
At this point, when you can get hoag lvl 31 with CIP and cannot with AF, the damage gap between CIP and Arakaali's Fang is the lowest with just ~10%.
Pros and cons of CIP vs AF:
+ No spiders gameplay (This is insanely big QoL for those who can't get used to spiders summoning).
+ Free flask slot. Many options here.
- Damage is still lower
- Wither + spell totem + multiple totems is a must-have for bosses, but it dies fast.
- Chain (Awakened) or fork (Awakened) support is required instead of the pierce - more mana problems. I elaborate on this below.
- No onslaught.
When it is best to use Arakaali's Fang:
Spoiler
Low budget and High budget.
On a low budget, just 3-link spiders will do more damage than your entire 6-link HoAg (no skin of the lords, no empower, no awakened gems, no chaos mastery, etc). So, it must be a chase item early.
On a high budget, when you can get lvl 31 hoag using AF, it overshadows CIP by a very huge margin (~20%) again.
Pros and cons of AF vs CIP:
+ More damage anyway.
+ Pierce is fine, spiders finish damaged monsters.
+ Reliable Wither (spiders don't die), and apply it all time.
+ Onslaught
- Clunky. I elaborate on how to deal with it below.
- More expensive. 4ex week 1? 1ex week 3? CIP price got down for 10 times already.
Well, the most clunky part of this build. No need to deny it, bc it's obvious. Even I felt really bad with the default self-casting setup at first, so I had to find alternatives last league.
Spoiler
To summon spiders there are 2 conditions required:
1. Corpses nearby.
2. Kill.
You won't summon spiders if you just press flask and kill worms w/o corpses around. You won't summon any spiders if enemies or allies kill worms first.
The normal way to summon spiders is:
I. Desecrate, twice (or in the middle of the dead pack).
II. Kill worms.
But, in normal circumstances this feels clunky af, bc u had to stop ur mapping to summon worms pretty often, right?
Or are you getting pissed by failing to summon for whatever reason? No corpses, no kills, enemies and crawler around hunting YOUR worms, etc.
I know how it feels, bro.
And here are BEST ways to deal with it:
Spoiler
1. Cold Iron Point. No spiders - no problem, right? Most obvious solution. Trading a bit of damage for QoL. It's reasonable, doable, why not.
2. Gravebind. Budget mapping option, very good. Literally, a lifesaver on early mapping.
Why:
Spoiler
With them, HoAg will summon spiders, spiders will summon spiders, your party will summon spiders, etc.
The downside is - bossing damage of HoAg will be low, bc gravebind is bad for virulence uptime.
Well, early spiders will do more damage than HoAg anyway, and with the Gravebind, your spiders' uptime is 100%. If not - press some flask from time to time.
3. Culling strike. This was the best solution prior to 3.16, before gravebind was introduced.
Explanation:
Spoiler
Culling strike helps you to get kills for summoning spiders.
Also, it can be either the cheapest solution with just culling strike support skill gem, or the most expensive one with double influenced gloves, which allows 1 button gameplay:
There was an entire page with the discussion of culling strike/cyclone gloves with some videos of virulence uptime with the different skill gems at the end of the page:
4. Unbound Ailments instead of Minion Damage in Arakaali's Fang. Chromino, please.
How it works:
Spoiler
UA support increases the Poison damage of the spiders, as a result - more enemies die by poison applied by spiders - and it counts as you get the kill in this case, which fulfills the second condition of summoning.
Also, Unbound Ailments is 15% stronger than minion damage support for spiders. In all cases, even if enemies have strong chaos resistance. Again, Chromino, please.
Bonus: Corpsewalker boots.
They automate desecrate (creating corpses out of the air), but in short - not worth it. Boots slot is too precious to waste it on corpsewalkers.
also got 2r2g2b, currently I use Phantasms, lv21 but dont feel good, they are slow, die by 1hit, I dont think they contribute to total effective dps in any way. Predator is single target, AwChaos damage looks best in slot.
Hmm .. and for bosses you still rely on desecrate i guess.
You can take for automatical corpses instead desecrating the boots corpsewalker.
You get a free skillslot, but loose other stats and need to move to create corpses and then target your worms upon the death mess.
Last edited by Chromino on Nov 10, 2021, 2:50:48 AM
I feel like with better gear (I have lots room to improve) can hit 10k ES.
9 or 10 k es are nice to have, but overall es on block, substain, damagereductions and preparations against debuffs are more worthfull as only high es in defences.
The additional 2 k more es are in a typical poe map or boss meltdown lost in 0.2 seconds.
But high es on block, high avoidances and safety from elemental debuffs, burning ground ir shocks improve your build to an immortal tank.
High es is nice to take one hit more. But very often you will take 5 hits in one second in da: then only other layers of defences protect you. I advice that 7.5 - 8.5 k es are enough, upwards this I advice ordinary to improve other layers of defences.
Last edited by Chromino on Nov 10, 2021, 4:02:35 AM
