Herald of Agony

I concur with most of the feedback other users have posted here. Overall it's a good gem and it's been working well for me. I love that the minion seems indestructible. Very nice to not have to worry about resummoning in boss fights.

Some minion speed each level would be nice also a small moment of no decay like Cemmo suggests on the previous page to be able to maintain stacks easier is much needed (most needed in boss fights where targets are few)

It would seem like the crawler deals chaos damage in some form as i can see the purple hitmarks indicating chaos damage. Edit: Nevermind this is probably because i use spirit offering. Completely forgot

Can we know the type of damage the minion deals? It's been over 2 months now (as of this post)
Atleast we have path of building to figure out which support gems to use but we shouldn't have to rely on that.

I give this gem a 4/5 rating. Would be cool with a unique item that adds another agony crawler or enchantment.

Lvl 88 in delve league. My gear:



Edit: In path of building the crawler does indeed have that 40% phys to chaos conversion people are talking about in this thread.

The Agony Crawler minion definitely deals chaos damage somehow as I just tested it - which I find disappointing as the skill gem reads as though it is 100% physical damage.

Just 1 more hidden headache added to PoE to punish players who take these things at face value unfortunately!

I would appreciate some clarity on this too as I'm loving using Herald of Agony. I guess until then I'll work under the assumption that ZiggyD and Path of Building are accurate with their 60 phys/40 chaos damage split.

I wish I'd noticed this sooner before investing a bunch of time and currency :(

For some reason I can't generate any virulence stacks when fighting Kaon, Daresso and Malachai (when there's no adds) during acts.
Normally I can easily keep the crawler up by shooting on a single target, I'm using Toxic Rain with Mirage Archer and Poison support (for a total of 80% poison chance)
Am I doing something wrong? I never used poison before but iirc monsters immunities to ailments were removed long ago.

Herald of Agony is a great idea for a skill.
But the AI of the Agony Crawler is absolutely the worst AI I have seen since possibly Daikatana.

One time the Crawler stays and shoots off-screen target without following the player who summoned him, next second he walks leg-to-leg with the player and REFUSES to attack boss monster. This is retarded.

Judging by the very sparse feedback,compared to other herald skills,i can safely say that not many players use it and that's saying something. It requires many support gems linked to it so as to be usefull and that increases mana reserved too much. Personally i only use it for the 20% extra poison chance and because i have a Circle of Nostalgia equipped. I would suggest that Virulence affect the player as well other than the crawler. For example increase movement speed or damage or apply a debuff on enemies.

So, I really like Herald of Agony, but I have a problem with this skill.

In summary, it feels like this skill got left behind in the constant improvement that other skills and mechanics got (i.e. feels too vanilla and one dimensional).

The result is a skills that has a very expensive (which is good) but low dps ceiling (thats the problematic part) and a mediocre clear-speed (that would be ok if the dps ceiling was much higher).

The problematic is that it cannot compete with pretty much any other proper build on any battleground (cost, dps, clear-speed, etc...).

I suggest adding more way to scale the agony crawler (rather than just minion levels), for example some interaction with poisons, would be a start. Right now the most effective way to scale is through hatred, which is kinda weird for a poison skill.

New mechanics like the crawler always attacking the enemy with the highest stack of poisons would be great and would help when using skill that do not directly target an enemy (e.g. storm brand).

Maybe a unique jewel, or some other unique adding a new mechanic or unique skill tied to the crawler would be great (something that could increase its effectiveness at the cost of having a more active play-style than just needing to apply poison stacks).

I just throwing things on the top of my head, the dev team will probably do a much better job than me. But the skill is such in a vanilla state that pretty much anything would be welcome :)

With the changes to mana multipliers on support gems in 3.15, you will have to invest heavily in reduced reservation just to make a 6L Herald of Agony castable. 35% reduced reservation to get down to 100% mana reserved on a 6L, 50% reduced reservation to get down to 100% on a 7L in lioneye's vision. Seems like Hoag is collateral damage in this patch.

Level 88 Juggernaut, using cyclone + cast when channeling to poison enemies. Not being able to run Determination because of Lone Messenger jewel caps me around 16-20k armor. Even with Granite + Basalt flask it is not much better. Having 6 endurance charges doesn't do much against big physical hits. Can't use Fortify Mastery to gain fortification on mele hit (I guess it is because I deal low damage - as I should because of The Golden Rule jewel to only inflict small poison on myself). Only other option is block, but I am tight on skill points already.

Big physical hits often hit me for +3k dmg / 4k life.