[3.4] "The Wicked Warband" | Viper Strike + Both New Heralds = Chaos Melee Summoner

Yes, I did some testing and you're indeed correct. HoA and HoP require entirely different support gems (aside from Withering Touch). Also, as you've described, I've substituted Melee Splash for Melee Physical Damage after realizing the AoE clearing for the build is already done well by Viper Strike and the Agony Crawler.

I'm now testing to see if I can include Temporal Chains in the build. I might re-assign passive points to get to the "Whispers of Doom" notable.

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kaype wrote:

I'm now testing to see if I can include Temporal Chains in the build. I might re-assign passive points to get to the "Whispers of Doom" notable.

Might be easier (and more efficient) to just include a +1 curses unique or corruption.

I don't think that Temp Chains would add all that much, since you are already melee, you might be just fine with just adding maim to the equation

Actually, reassigning points to get to "Whispers of Doom" made little to no impact on the build.

I got rid of the "Sacrifice" notable; I realized minion life and survivability aren't too important because Sentinels and Agony Crawler are constantly refreshed anyway. I also refunded some extra points I had on another socket. Then I re-pathed upwards towards "Whispers of Doom" and assigned points around (heading towards "Avatar of Fire"); this saved a few points too.

Temporal Chains provides a significant boost to poison's DPS (it went from 180k to 260k) because it makes poison last longer. It also helps wither [from Withering Touch, which is, again, applied by minions] last longer, thus increasing consistency with high wither stacks.

I'm sure "Maim" would have the same movement reduction effect as Temporal Chains, but that's more of a utility bonus, at least from my point of view. I wanted to incorporate Temporal Chains for the DPS boost to poison and for extending the duration of wither.

Reached level 75 now and it's going pretty well.

Tooltip on Toxic Rain says 14k/sec and my minions are doing a pretty good job.
Although, a dedicated TR build could easily reach twice that with the same gear.

I got lucky and found a Xoph's heart and financed a couple 6L + other gear with that.



My main problem now is a lack of projectile speed, making toxic rain a little slower than what I'd like.

HoP does a great job in overall mapping and the damage seems pretty good. Ended up taking melee splash after all since my helmet adds conc effect.

The Agony crawler does suffer from not being a Pathfinder though, rarely seeing much action besides boss fights and maps with larger pack sizes.
The Phantasms stick around though for quite a bit after the Crawler ran out of stacks and do a pretty good job of killing things as well.

The goal now is to acquire minion speed rings + Despair on Hit gloves with decent resist. But I fear that'll be about as expensive as my current gear.

Not having Despair on hit or as an aura forced me to get the spell totem, which works fine but costs a lot of mana.

I'll try to push this build to around level 85 and get the uber lab done to have it more or less complete.
Gear-wise I don't see too many upgrades happening right now, unless I get a lucky drop again. A level 4 Empower would also be nice but that would have broken my currency stash tab.

BiS Bow would be a +3 bow with the elder mod/corruption for faster projectiles support.
An then there is this...

I've also tried conc effect for Toxic rain and while is does improve the overall clear speed, I felt a drop in DPS versus single targets, probably due to lack of overlap.

Damage-wise I am pretty happy with the build so far, I have yet to get to the staff cluster for more block though since I had to make a detour for some mana nodes.

Thanks for the build!

Support has been added for Minions in PoB!

I've received a few inquiries about this build heading into 3.5. At the moment, I do not intend to continue developing this build. Instead, I'm working on a physical bow summoner Deadeye. However, I'll certainly be available to answer any questions about "The Wicked Warband" should anyone decide to play it in 3.5.

Thanks, and good luck! :)