[3.9] Cyclone Summoner - Heralds of Agony and Purity, Summon Holy Relic - League starter

I'm running this in SSF HC Delve at level 83. Without being able to trade, do you guys have any insights into upgrades I should look out for?

Gear:

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oregoncrete wrote:

I'm running this in SSF HC Delve at level 83. Without being able to trade, do you guys have any insights into upgrades I should look out for?

Gear:

Spoiler

Skill gems:
Put your Herald of Purity in a 4L in your helm (it will always reserve 45% thanks to Coming Calamity, so you're not punished by the additional reservation). Drop the Offering setup in your claw and replace with Shield Charge-Faster Attacks-Blood Magic. Put Cast when damage taken-Immortal call-Enfeeble in shield. Drop Convocation and Chaos Golem.

Items:
You really need to get a claw which has mana on hit as an inplicit (eg. Gemini or Twin).. Get one of these and alt roll high attack speed on it. Regal and craft whatever you need. The mana on hit will really help to sustain Cyclone. Then the rest is obvious - keep an eye out for elder gloves and mana on hit claw for the affixes in the guide. If you have some Essences of Fear (preferably screaming or higher) you can try to roll a nice minion movement speed ring or ammy (you can also craft these with bound fossils).

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IchiMorghulis wrote:

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Yah, aul's would make the resists a bit tight.

Yah saw your choice of bloodlust over good old minion damage, guess it does give those guys that extra damage. Are they that good since agony is mainly for the aoe and those guys for single target?

And I see some ppl fossiling/essense claws for 60+ minion damage, how much would the fair against the bleed? (You mentioned you wanted to craft a claw yourself, if it's not essence, just chaos spam until desired ias/lgohwb/blind%?)

For the helm, what base seems the best for crafting? ES or armor?
If defense is less of an issue, would fossiling the -9 chaos resist aoe be good?

Thanks again

Those Purity guys are not very useful while mapping, but against single target, they hit like a truck. They generate their own wither stacks (Withering Touch), you can expect 2 to 4 stacks, these will stack on top of the wither totem's limit of 15. These stacks will also benefit the crawler (6% inc. damage TAKEN per stack), it's like a free 12% to 24% MORE damage for your crawler.

Minion Damage on the claw is great, but to hit this AND get 2 to 3 of the other mods is going to require a huge investment in fossils. You can easily test for how much extra dps it gives you by editing your claw with "Minions deal X% increased damage" in PoB.

Helm base doesn't matter, I bought the cheapest one that have the +2 agony projectiles enchant (It cost me 50c then, I'm sure it's much higher now). The best would be an Elder helm with that enchant so you can roll "Socketed Gems are supported by Minion Damage" ("Socketed Gems ... Conc. Effect" is also good but it only benefits the slams and not the default attack). It should be noted that I'm using this enchant because of the lost of the relics, those relics were awesome for clearing.

I can't help you with the -9% chaos resist. What you can do is to create one in PoB or copy one off trade and plug it into PoB.

The priorities should be lgohwb - blind - ias. Because you can mastercraft AS.

One last thing, if you are planning on delving deep, defense is the ONLY issue.

edit: the wither stacks only affects the chaos portion of the damage dealt.

Did some trading and some crafting and ended with a decent helm.

Threw a bunch of currency at a claw but didn't end up crafting anything noticeable.

After looking around, is the blind gem or blind from claw really that necessary when you can get 6% blind from a random jewel? Not high enough %? maybe stack 2 of them?

"

Skill gems:
Put your Herald of Purity in a 4L in your helm (it will always reserve 45% thanks to Coming Calamity, so you're not punished by the additional reservation). Drop the Offering setup in your claw and replace with Shield Charge-Faster Attacks-Blood Magic. Put Cast when damage taken-Immortal call-Enfeeble in shield. Drop Convocation and Chaos Golem.

Items:
You really need to get a claw which has mana on hit as an inplicit (eg. Gemini or Twin).. Get one of these and alt roll high attack speed on it. Regal and craft whatever you need. The mana on hit will really help to sustain Cyclone. Then the rest is obvious - keep an eye out for elder gloves and mana on hit claw for the affixes in the guide. If you have some Essences of Fear (preferably screaming or higher) you can try to roll a nice minion movement speed ring or ammy (you can also craft these with bound fossils).

Thanks for the insights! As for the skill gems, I've made some of those decisions on purpose for SSFHC.

Convocation helps vs Proximity Shield and keeping minions close to me for defensive purposes. Chaos Golem is for extra phys reduction. In terms of mana, I've got no issues at the moment. I'm not sure if it's because I'm on a 4L cyclone, but I can cyclone for days and not worry. As for Desecrate/Spirit Offering, those seem to provide a solid dps boost for crawler (% phys gained as chaos). Do you think dropping Spirit Offering/Desecrate would be worth the 4L Herald of Purity (I understand mana reservation is the same, they just don't seem to provide much dps)?

As for items, I haven't found a high ilvl Gemini yet. I'm having difficulty progressing up the Atlas without trading, but the new claw is priority atm. Once I get some elder influence I am going to be looking hard for a glove. That's where all my crafting will be heading.

"

Did some trading and some crafting and ended with a decent helm.

Threw a bunch of currency at a claw but didn't end up crafting anything noticeable.

After looking around, is the blind gem or blind from claw really that necessary when you can get 6% blind from a random jewel? Not high enough %? maybe stack 2 of them?

You should leave Blind in with Cyclone. The only roll you need on the claw is lgohwb with an open suffix for AS. This alone is hard enough to hit, much less one that includes T1 AS or Blind. Before you start swapping out Jewels, make sure you have 4 5% poison with % life.

Base on your questions, it seems like you don't have a strong understanding of how OP's build work. OP's build is nearly perfect as is, I played it unchanged to level 94 and could easily go to 100 with it. I only made the changes I did to try to get deep into the mine (goal is 600 to 800).

Chris Wilson had said in the past that this game is about making choices. What are you willing to give up for what you want? The choices I made is base my gears and my goal, your's will probably be different. I will not answer any more questions on this thread as I feel like I'm hijacking OP's thread. If you have anymore questions, you can PM me.

To the OP, I apologize for all these long winded posts, your build is the best that I played in a long while and I'll probably use it as a starter for the next league. I'm currently at delve 350 or so and my defenses are holding up nicely, I haven't encounter Aul yet. I'll let you know if I'm able to meet my goal or end up hitting a brick wall. Thanks again.

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IchiMorghulis wrote:

...OP's build is nearly perfect as is, I played it unchanged to level 94 and could easily go to 100 with it. I only made the changes I did to try to get deep into the mine (goal is 600 to 800).

Chris Wilson had said in the past that this game is about making choices. What are you willing to give up for what you want? The choices I made is base my gears and my goal, your's will probably be different. I will not answer any more questions on this thread as I feel like I'm hijacking OP's thread. If you have anymore questions, you can PM me.

To the OP, I apologize for all these long winded posts, your build is the best that I played in a long while and I'll probably use it as a starter for the next league. I'm currently at delve 350 or so and my defenses are holding up nicely, I haven't encounter Aul yet. I'll let you know if I'm able to meet my goal or end up hitting a brick wall. Thanks again.

It's great to hear you've enjoyed the build so much.

To everyone who would like to contribute your thoughts/ideas/experience: thank you. This is by no means a solved build and all perspectives are welcome.

To everyone asking questions: keep it up! This is a tough game and this build in particular is a bit more intricate with its mechanics than an average build. Keep asking your questions and improving.

To everyone answering questions: thanks for meaning questions don't go unanswered if I'm not around to do so. There have been cases where you've added things I may not have and provided value for the group.

I do think dropping blind as a link in favour of culling strike (ideally 20q) is worth it. Ideally by getting a blind roll on the claw or otherwise on abyss gems.
Getting more uptime on herald of purity for mapping is great, plus the cull without having to switch to another skill or waste a minion link is good for endgame bosses.

Ideally something like this, with t1 minion damage and attack speed, but good luck rolling that!

is this build SSF league viable?

Cheers
J

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jubsey wrote:

is this build SSF league viable?

Cheers
J

You really need the coming calamity, which could be an issue.
You can build something similar running a single herald, or maybe 2 4l heralds (though single HoA probably better) but it wouldn't be exactly the same build.
The helm is optional, though the dual relics do help with clear, and the shield can be replaced with a rare.
I'd say it's an ok choice if you happen to find a couple of the pieces, the rest of the gear requirements are pretty flexible, but I wouldn't do it as a starter build.

At level 93 now, and will probably get at least to 94 which would be my highest ever level. I normally always get bored by about level 90ish. So shows the build is fun, or delve keeps me interested, or both.
Probably main thing is that it is totally safe levelling in the nastiest of t16 maps and running elder and guardians. Not many builds I've played recently have been able to do that (You either level, or do bosses. Not both)

Hit a bit of a gearing wall. Only things I can really get are

- Curse on hit gloves. Been trying, but no joy. Fairly expensive buying/rolling then bricking gloves too!
- Minion speed rings. Been trying to roll, but hard to get a good one.
- +1/+2 chest. Given up - bricked too many now!
- Helm enchant. A few decent ones, but hard to buy on a niche helm and no luck enchanting yet.

The other place to invest, which can get pricey is on jewels. I've already re-jigged to get extra jewel slots at expense of a bit of life (Just under 7.3k now). t1/2 life + t1/2 phys damage to minion jewels are expensive as they are, even more so with other mods. I've got a half decent set, but upgrades are very expensive now for minor gains.

I've basically been surprised how good the build is though. It would probably be 80% as good with a fraction of what I've invested into it. Clearing is good enough for me, it's great for delves and it's a very safe boss killer, and not as slow as you might think.

Going for elemental damage,and EE is probably more damage though. Would be what I'd go for if aiming for uber elder farming.