[3.1] You can't run from Heaven. -Non-crit Herald Bomber- [Elementalist]
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Hi all, it's been a while since I've written one of these so bear with me. This was my starter build in War for the Atlas/Abyss League and it was a lot of fun - so here's the guide.
Introduction: The Basics
The idea behind every "Herald bomber" is to make your Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder trigger each other, which, assuming your two Heralds deal enough damage, basically lets you run through maps without really worrying about monsters, which explode around you. This means that, as a non-crit Herald bomber, this build needs to get enough Chance to Freeze for Herald of Thunder to consistently freeze enemies in one or two hits, along with Chance to Shock for Herald of Ice to shock enemies and re-trigger Herald of Thunder. Once these two Heralds are consistently triggering each other, all we need to do is get enough damage for them to outright kill most monsters. With the right items and enough levels, the build becomes a clearspeed machine.
Pros and Cons: Why should you play this build?
I built this character to be an effective currency farmer as a starting build in Abyss, and a fairly defensive character despite the low defensive investment on the passive skill tree. Our high chance to freeze and proliferation from the Elementalist Ascendancy help us deal with swarming monsters, and with enough damage, the clearspeed we can achieve is quite high.
Pros " Cons "
Passive Tree: The Heart
The passive tree involves picking up these core stats:
Life Elemental Damage (Cold damage works here almost as well) Chance to Freeze Increased Area of Effect You can check out my character's tree via Path of Building's Import build functionality. In the Import/Export Build tab, click Import from Pastebin... and copy-paste this link: https://pastebin.com/MeTM91L9 Alternatively, if you don't have Path of Building, here's a link to the passive tree on the PoE website: passive tree link Reasoning The Witch start is self-explanatory: you escape the start going through AoE nodes; these make your Herald of Ice larger and stronger, and also increase the range of Herald of Thunder. They also help Lightning Tendrils feel better earlier in the leveling process. The Templar area is full of elemental damage, along with some AoE and Chance to Freeze, which are crucial to the build. Heart of Ice and Breath of Rime at the top of the skill tree are our main source of damage and freeze chance, with the rest of it coming from Fingers of Frost near Ghost Reaver. Finally, we pick up as much life as possible around the top side of the skill tree without being inefficient. The only Keystone we are picking up is Elemental Overload (we are non-crit) to boost the damage of our Heralds by a substantial amount. It can be triggered with either Lightning Tendrils or your single-target Cremation. Bandit Choice As for bandits, there's really only one clear option: 2 passive points from Eramir (Kill all Bandits). None of the bandits help our Heralds do a significant amount more damage, and our passive tree is relatively starved for points in the first place.
Ascendancy Tree: What brings the build together
So for our Ascendancy obviously we need to go Elementalist. You'll note that I haven't picked up much chance to shock, and that's because we don't NEED to shock all the time, just once every so often to re-trigger Herald of Thunder. We'll get this from the rotating Shaper of Desolation buff, which is consistent and free, since we need to path through it to get to Beacon of Ruin. Beacon of Ruin is what really makes this build tick, as it proliferates freeze from one mob to the next. If Herald of Thunder kills the mob AND freezes it, the proliferation ensures that Herald of Ice can chain off the first kill, spawning more Herald of Ice explosions and quickly killing dense packs.
For our second fork of the Ascendancy tree we are going for Pendulum of Destruction, which occasionally gives us a large buff to AoE and Elemental Damage. This is a fairly simple choice. The last two points from Uber lab will be allocated into Liege of the Primordial. The two golems we run are Flame Golem and Lightning Golem, which both boost our Herald's damage by quite a bit thanks to Liege of the Primordial, along with the buffs that the golems give inherently.
Items: Your choices and mine
Items in this build are unfortunately quite rigid, because of how tightly-knit everything is. However, you can make some decisions based on your budget, such as your weapon and jewels. Here's a quick rundown of a couple of Uniques that help the build.
Mandatory Uniques
The Coming Calamity: This unique chest piece is clearly mandatory for the build, so that your two Herald skills have fixed reservation. This means that no matter the mana multipliers of the support gems you link to your Herald skills and/or any mana reservation nodes you take, each Herald will always reserve 45% of your mana pool. This is why mana reservation nodes are not taken on the passive tree. It also adds levels to the Herald that you socket into it, which greatly increases the Herald's damage.
Call of the Brotherhood: This unique ring is what allows Herald of Thunder to freeze. You should use this ring as long as you have the money for it, as it makes freezing and shocking in conjunction extremely consistent. I run two of them in my build, as I have cold damage on my passive tree. The lack of elemental damage on the passive tree means that using these rings is very highly recommended, so that your skill points are more efficient. Three Dragons: This hat falls under the "Mandatory Uniques" section ONLY IF you can't get your hands on Call of the Brotherhood. It's a significantly cheaper option that allows the build to function and has decent resistances, but you need to use it in conjunction with Cold to Fire for your Herald of Ice to shock consistently.
Recommended Uniques
Taryn's Shiver: I use this staff because it was cheap and provides +2 to cold gems, along with the unique mod "Enemies frozen by you take 20% increased Damage. This mod is essentially a 20% more damage multiplier, since I assume the mobs I hit are always frozen. I socket Herald of Ice in the staff for additional levels, and many of the mods on the staff are very beneficial to our build.
Southbound: These unique gloves are a great addition to the build, as long as your Chance to Freeze is high enough. They add a significant amount of damage to Herald of Ice and have good life and high cold resistance, which make them a great glove all-round. To kill bosses and potentially rares you can't freeze, you can ignite them via any fire damage or hope that you get the Burning Conflux buff from Shaper of Desolation. I use Cremation as my single-target skill of choice, so I have no problems killing bosses even with Southbounds equipped. Doryani's Catalyst: This unique scepter is pretty much a no-brainer. It provides an incredibly high amount of Elemental Damage, which buffs the damage of both of your Heralds. The leech it gives is nice for sustaining throughout a map, but don't expect it to help a lot when you really need your life back.
Potential Alternatives
Rashkaldor's Patience: This is a nice budget option for an amulet because it gives us more Chance to Freeze and some passable life. However, your amulet slot will be sorely needed to fill out other resists if you run two Call of the Brotherhoods, so it's more of a starting option to get the build going. I highly recommend a rare amulet with Life, Resistances, and potentially Spell Damage over this amulet.
Tasalio's Sign: This ring can be hard to get, but if you have the budget for it and you want to smooth out your leveling experience, this adds a TON of flat cold damage to both your heralds as long as enemies are chilled, which is now easier to achieve than ever since the Chill mechanics change. Before you get high levels on your Heralds, this ring adds more damage than Call of the Brotherhood. Once you've made your unique choices, fill out the rest of your items with Rares with as much Life as possible, making sure to cap Resistances as well. Good Shaped and/or Elder items with the appropriate support gems for Heralds and your main spells can be good choices, though +levels to your Heralds can outweigh one level 16-18 support gem.
Skills: shooty shooty bang bang
As you might expect, your two main skills are Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder. I also run Lightning Tendrils and Cremation to supplement my damage, especially against Abysses and bosses.
**colours below purely based on gem colour** 4-link: Herald of Ice - Innervate - Added Lightning Damage - Added Cold Damage Herald of Thunder - Ice Bite - Added Lightning Damage - Hypothermia Once you get access to 5-links, your first 5-linked Herald will be Herald of Thunder as it's more crucial to have it one-shot monsters - this makes the build feel a lot smoother. 5-link: Herald of Ice - Innervate - Added Lightning Damage - Added Cold Damage - Hypothermia Herald of Thunder - Ice Bite - Added Lightning Damage - Hypothermia - Added Cold Damage If you 6-link your The Coming Calamity you can set up your Heralds like this: Herald of Ice - Herald of Thunder - Ice Bite - Innervate - Added Lightning Damage - Hypothermia Auxiliary Skills: Lightning Tendrils - Cold Penetration - Controlled Destruction/Increased Critical Strikes - Hypothermia Cremation - Hypothermia/Life Leech - Controlled Destruction - Greater Multiple Projectiles **make sure to run Desecrate as well
Playstyle: WTF does this look like?
Once you get the guts of the build fleshed out and items in place, you will blow through most low-mid maps without even stopping to cast Lightning Tendrils. With two Call of the Brotherhood rings, Lightning Tendrils does enough damage to freeze rares as well, which greatly increases survivability. If you find yourself having trouble proccing Elemental Overload consistently, you can run Increased Critical Strikes in your Lightning Tendrils link. I use Cremation as a source of leech against bosses and Abysses.
There is a video guide on this build, including a quick map run and some other tips about the build up! It's in the media section. If you wanna get some more specific tips and help with your character or just to come hang out with me and watch me play my other builds, here's a link to my Twitch channel where I'll be streaming regularly: twitch link If I'm not playing this build and you want me to show what it looks like, let me know in chat ;)
Media
Video guide is up! Here it is: YouTube link
Update History: you don't actually care about this
December 18,2017 - Build guide created
December 22,2017 - Added non-PoB link December 23,2017 - Added bandit choice + short reasoning December 25, 2017 - Added video guide! December 26, 2017 - Fixed broken passive tree link noot Last edited by AznR4ge#2575 on Dec 26, 2017, 3:03:41 AM Last bumped on Mar 19, 2018, 11:45:45 AM
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Levelling this build now with a few variations in the formula (shaper crafted dagger + shield for example). It's going really good. I'm smart enough to make modifications to a build but not smart enough to make one 100% my own so been waiting for someone to figure out bomber. Probably gonna do a few youtube videos showing map runs. Will post here for you if you want? Will credit you in the description of course :)
Last edited by horribad54#2441 on Dec 20, 2017, 9:42:00 AM
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Nice guide and build. Looking forward to updates.
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" Hey man, thanks for the kind words. I'd be glad to see your videos and hopefully others will find them useful too, so go for it! noot
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So like I mentioned here's a video of a yellow map clear with boss and my take on this build using the same tree but slightly different gear. https://youtu.be/9odR8NM2Dk8
My current gear:
Spoiler
Decided to use dagger + shield because I wanted to shield charge. Got a decent dagger with added fire and inc crit so I thought "why not use lightning tendies CwC bladefall?" I figured the aoe coverage would be better also with added fire and inc crit im usually igniting stuff incase of no freeze for southbound and keeping up ele overload. the dagger is basically a 5l which is a nice boost for something that i was initially just gonna keep as a 3l. I was initially gonna use lightpoacher because... well, lightpoacher... but decided to use a 6l helm with innervate and inc aoe for herald of ice since lightpoacher wouldnt leave me enough room for the cremation set up which i agree you need - not to mention the fact that the damage is absurd and getting more absurd as i level. Lvl 75 at the moment clearing yellow maps pretty much no problem with 3.5k hp lol. I don't expect to be able to scale this build into red maps, just as you said but it's pretty fun and seems to be generating a decent income as of now - which is what i wanted from a build until i can farm for a boss killer. Will expect the damage to get way better as I level, of course - not quite at the automation stage yet. Thanks for the build, dawg. |
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" Looking great man - glad to see others take my build and build on it more as I'm putting this build on the backburner for a bit while I level my Crit Ngamahu's character. keep up the good work :) noot
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Too noob to do it on my own but could you suggest an abberath's hooves variant?
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thank you for a very happy and beautiful build..i have watched the build using HOT since 2.5 but its really hard to kill the boss on high maps ...
If you have time you can try building that I think you will also like. This build also uses HOT but converts it into fire ... currently with tabula, i have 17k fire dmg and 30k dmg burning. The advantage of this building is that it has a large life, and can use two curses with an enchanted hat "30% reduced herald of thunder mana reservation" Here is the link: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1944192 Hope to see you use in the coming time .. I really like build just run and run: D thank you!! |
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Nice build :)
What did you do with the bandits? |
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" I just took 2 skill points from Eramir, as none of the other bandit choices really helps us. We're starved on passives to get so much freeze chance and also life anyways, so it's really a no-brainer. I'll add it to the guide! noot
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