HERALD OF SLAMLIFERATE! (1.3) [V.Cheap] [Life] [Hardcore] [Leveling-Friendly] [Unusual] [Freeze]

Derp, not ready yet.

This cheap but quirky hardcore build involves using both Heralds (Ice and Thunder) as a primary damage source by amping them up with both increased level setups as well as increased elemental damage sources. The build invovles heavily investing into freeze and shock chance, causing our added herald damage (which is present on everything we do) to reliably apply shock and freeze to everything in sight. The Herald buffs then further interact with each other by using the rather cool Three Dragons/Pyre unique item combination.

This build contains two elemental damage types: LIGHTNING + COLD.
Pyre converts our COLD ---> FIRE.
Three dragons makes our LIGHTNING ---> FREEZE, and our FIRE ---> SHOCK.

Due to this combination, the storm bolts For Herald of Lightning now freeze their targets very regularly, which in turn gets proliferated to everything around whichever mob is struck. Because these bolts are so amp'd by level, they do enough damage to kill by themselves which (because the mobs are frozen when they die) causes them to shatter, triggering the herald of ice effect which has a big enough radius to wipe out any mobs around the target, thanks to our large investment into area of effect bonuses. This chain reaction is initiated by leap slamming into a pack (reliably freezing everything due to added herald damage and proliferation on leap slam), and shotgunning a mob that is now both frozen and shocked from the slam with Arctic Breath, killing and shattering it, triggering both the herald storm, and a herald of ice proc.

TL:DR - Jump in with slam to shock and freeze everything with proliferate, kill one mob, start a chain reaction of death.

OK, so now that's out of the way, a quick word about the build's defensive capability: it's difficult to squeeze enough evasion or armor into the build to be effective, and it's pretty much impossible to sneak enough regen in for arctic armour to be effective; however, it's not too out of the way for us to pick up a few endurance charges and increased duration nodes, so we go with a SELF CAST IMMORTAL CALL setup working with 6 charges. The build is LIFE BASED, with a perfectly hardcore acceptable 179% life from the tree.

If you have a 6 slot chest, you can work a curse into the build too for some added defensive benefit. There are lots of good options here (for what it's worth, I personally usually take either ENFEEBLE or WARLORD'S MARK):

Right. Next up, a brief description of the skill choices in the build (find the full links list below):

* LEAP SLAM is used to move around/apply the initial shock and freeze with increased AOE and Proliferate.

* HERALD OF ICE is linked to increased aoe to increase it's potential killing packs, and reduced mana until we get Vaal Pact, at which point we use it with leech health to avoid dying to reflect.

* HERALD OF THUNDER needs to do hella damage and freeze everything, so it's linked to proliferate and empower when possible; reduced mana otherwise.

* ARCTIC BREATH is chosen for it's ability to benefit from conc effect, it's ability to shotgun a single mob with GMP to start the herald combo with a kill, and for the benefit of putting chilled ground underneath anything that somehow escaped being frozen. Proliferate is added to maintain any statuses that might otherwise drop off. This link only fits in the chest slot with this build; If you have a linked sixth slot, you can either increase arctic breath's damage with any number of supports if the slot is linked, or put a curse in it if it is unlinked.

* VAAL SPARK is used to kill bosses/difficult rares, as the build otherwise has to solely rely on Arctic Breath for single target.

* VAAL GLACIAL HAMMER is used in conjunction with Vaal Spark to trap scary mobs in a prison of electric hell.

* IMMORTAL CALL is hardcast in this build, and is obviously linked with increased duration.

* ENDURING CRY is linked with Spell Echo for reliable, quick endurance charges.

The last thing I'd like to make a note of is the build's resource management. The build can be pretty awkward at times when it comes to managing resources, primarily because there isn't much space for taking either mana regen points, nor for increasing our mana pool. It's possible to take eldritch battery, but by doing so you will be losing quite a lot of effective HP, in exchange for a very minor benefit as your regen is still not likely to be high enough that you can ignore your mana - the heralds are going to be reserving most of your mana pool no matter what you do. Even with Eldritch, you're likely only going to be running a very low level of clarity, and you sure as hell arn't going to fit discipline in there. I've toyed with using the reduced mana reserved nodes that this build DOES have easy access to, but even with those, you arn't going to be able to reach infinity mana regen like EB/AA/MOM builds, so it's really not worth the investment.

So those are the ways we DON'T address mana costs; so how the hell DO we work the build? The only way around this awkwardness is to make our spells self-sufficient. The heralds take up most of our mana; there's no way around this. Let it happen. To compensate, we stick MANA LEECH on arctic breath, we make sure we have some PHYSICAL DAMAGE LEECHED AS MANA on our gear so that leap slam becomes more efficient, and we take a HYBRID FLASK in place of what we might usually use for a second "panic flask" spot. You can still use this flask splot as a second panic flask, it just now has the added benefit of solving any mana issues you might run into - problems which we mostly mitigate through leech. See, that wasn't SO bad, was it? And to think, you were going to get all those aura and regen nodes and invest in all that mana regen gear and lose ALL that shield HP, just so your second flask could have slightly more health return and to gain an extra gemslot on Arctic Breath, which already has all the links it really needs anyway! Silly you.

Oh, and Mana Gain on Hit/Mana Gain on Kill makes everything a lot easier, too!

Below is the complete build, at 111 points. You certainly don't need to be 111 points in for the build to work; personally I recommend that you take most of the travel nodes to give the build it's general shape early on, and then attach other things as required as you level depending on what you need at the time. If you feel defensively shaky, put points into life until you feel safe. If you feel like the build synergy isn't coming together yet, invest in more points to shock and freeze (these are what make the build work). If you feel like your immortal call needs to be longer for you to survive, then prioritise the endurance charges and increased duration nodes. Finally, if all of the above are working acceptably well, that's when you should take the time to reach for Vaal Pact, Resolute Technique and the Increased AOE nodes. All-in-all, the build is very flexible when it comes to growth.

Build Link: Click Here!

I'm not going to add a whole section for leveling, but my general advice is to pick up two lifesprigs, use Freezing Pulse, LMP and Mana Leech, and use the heralds. Wait until you have adequate Freeze (priority) and Shock (secondary) chance from the tree before you bother putting on the Three Dragons and Pyre combo - until then the heralds will serve you just fine without making them self-interact. I found this leveling technique to not only fit the build, but actually be pretty quick! I found that I was able to make the transition to the Three Dragons/Pyre combo at around lvl45ish without really running into any survivability problems.

For bandits, I recommend Oak / Kill / Oak.

1) Three Dragons
2) Pyre
3) 15-20% Increased Elemental Damage Implicit Mace with +3 to Cold Gems.
4) 15-20% Increased Elemental Damage Implicit Mace with +3 to Lightning Gems.
5) 5L Chest

All of these things should be available very cheaply. Due to not all of the gems being available to Shadow and the necessity of a 5-Link no matter how shitty, I'm not sure I would describe it as "league start friendly", but none of those items should cost you anywhere near exalt level money, so the build is extremely accessible.

If you can afford it, a 5L CARCASS JACK is an absolute godsend and fits perfectly into this build. Your only other major cost would be a LVL2/3 EMPOWER, which you'd usually achieve by just buying a corrupted gem. If you want to scale this build massively and have an irresponsible amount of money, a DORYANI'S CATALYST can replace either of the otherwise recommended maces to extremely good effect: lots of elemental damage, some leech, a free added proliferate saving a gemslot, some helpful attack speed and physical damage for leapslam, and some cast speed to improve your herald storms. Absolutely not required, though.

WEAPON 1: Herald Of Ice - Increased AOE - Reduced Mana/Life Leech

WEAPON 2: Herald Of Thunder - Ele Prolif - Reduced Mana/Empower

HELM (Eva/ES): Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Increased AOE - Ele Prolif

BODY: (Eva/ES): Arctic Breath - GMP - Conc Effect - Ele Prolif - Mana Leech + [Curse]

GLOVES (ES): Vaal Spark - GMP - Spell Echo - Vaal Glacial Hammer

BOOTS (Armour/ES): Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Enduring Cry - Spell Echo

SWAP WEAPON: [Leveling Gems]

You should be getting the bulk of your life and resist rolls from your gloves, boots, amulet, second ring and your belt. Hitting the resistance cap isn't particularly tight in the build despite having to use two low level uniques, because those uniques both happen to have a lot of resists on them. Getting high life rolls on these pieces will be important. Besides that, these are some useful stats you might look for in their respective slots:

WEAPON 1: Lightning Damage, Cold Damage, Attack Speed

WEAPON 2: Lightning Damage, Cold Damage, Attack Speed

HELM: [Unique]

BODY: [Unique]

GLOVES: +2 Vaal Gems, Attack Speed, Mana Leech

BOOTS: Movement Speed

AMULET: Dexterity, Mana Leech, Mana On Kill, Cast Speed

RING 1: [Unique]

RING 2: Mana Leech, Attack Speed, 1 Socket, Cast Speed

BELT: Armour, Energy Shield

Besides these mostly slot-specific bonuses, you should also value items that have Mana, Chaos Resist, Rarity, Dexterity and Energy Shield rolls, as these are all helpful to some extent to the build.

SEETHING Divine Flask OF STAUNCHING
BUBBLING Hallowed Hybrid Flask OF GROUNDING
PERPETUAL Granite Flask OF IRON SKIN
PERPETUAL Ruby Flask OF WARDING
[Flask Of Choice]

I didn't actually come up with this build myself, it's better described as an up-to-date, cheap, hardcore variation of Moike's build which can be found here.

Some inspiration was also taken from StrangeCloud's "Shatterbolt" build, found here.

Both builds feature the same Three Dragons + Pyre concept, but differ in the details - I hope you find this guide to be useful in some manner!