[3.6] Tahreyn's 83/83 Block Herald of Agony Gladiator - Über Elder Viable

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pathofexile3 wrote:

I'm generally a pretty skeptical person so will reserve my opinion once 3.5 comes out to test. It won't take long to quickly jump onto Standard to do an Uber Elder run. The time to kill will either be practically the same or nearly double, depending on the outcome of the change.

On another note, I am very interested in the Dread Banner skill. Some things we need to know about Dread Banner to make full use of it - how much % chance to Impale does it give? how much is the aura reservation? how much of the phys damage is stored per Impale? If all of this aligns, we could be looking at some pretty decent extra damage :)

Also, with the new Champion Master of Metal node we can get 4 - 8 flat added phys damage per Impale on the enemy. This is pretty damn significant as a level 20 Herald of Agony only has 45 to 84 flat phys damage and WILL scale all our elemental/chaos damage as well (since we know flat added damage occurs before damage conversion). With 5 stacks on the enemy we're looking at nearly 40% more damage and that's not even counting the stored physical damage on the enemy! However, I'm not sure if all this extra damage is worth losing max block and spell block.

We'll just have to wait and see then ;) I'll probably be pushing maps early with some friends so I won't be able to try it myself, so if you do try it out please let us know how it goes.

I thought some about the banners yesterday, and a bit more today when they relased the gem infos. Impale looks like an awesome mechanic for phys based builds, giving them a huge buff in damage. For the crawler I am not as convinced. The banner gives you and your allies 20% chance to impale, or 30% when you place it with max stacks. If the crawler didn't have its phys to chaos conversion I would argue for that it would be good to run a banner, but as it is now I would only go for it if I had the gem socket and mana to spare. Lets run some numbers. The 20% chance is good to use, because on average will the crawler impale the enemy once every 5 attacks, and since the impale lasts for 5 attacks it'll on average always be 1 stack of impale on the target. Impale causes 10% of the physical damage, pre mitigation, to be reflected onto the target. If our crawler deals 60% of base damage as phys, 40% as chaos, and 36% added as cold from hatred, that's 44.1% of the total damage as phys. Impale increases this by just over 10% (as it ignores armour and other phys dmg mitigation), resulting in a total damage increase of about 4.4%. Not much, but if you have sockets and mana for it then it's free damage ;)

You're mistaken about the crawlers flat phys damage. It gains 45-84 flat phys damage per virulence stack, resulting in 1800-3360 flat physical damage with 40 stacks. In addition to this there is some amount of base damage that is not shown on the skill gem, thus the added damage from Master of Metal will be close to nothing. So while I do think impale is an extremly strong mechanic, and I'm looking into running an impale champion as my 2nd or 1st character, it's not looking good for a Herald of Agony build.

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Black_Star_Line wrote:

Hi Tahreyn, just wanted to leave a quick note thanking you for this build guide. This was my main last season and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Strong build, smooth play style, perfect for Delve. Thank you, and good luck in the coming league!

Hey! You're most welcome. I'm thrilled that you enjoyed the build. What are your plans for the upcoming league?

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Despiteful wrote:

Hey :) really great build, i probably gonna start with it.

Have you tried using this as an early league ulab farmer? Perma fortify should be quite good.

Thanks! It should make a strong starter :)

You will have no issues with running über lab with it, it'll be safe even early on. Although I wouldn't consider the build of being a true lab runner as, at least for my taste, it would be a bit slow on the running parts.

do you think this build is suited to push for 100? Or is it just way too slow and AI of the thingy makes it bad at clearng?

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Zgurf wrote:

do you think this build is suited to push for 100? Or is it just way too slow and AI of the thingy makes it bad at clearng?

I can imagine worse builds to push 100 with. Just play maps that work well for you, go with cyclone, and then you can watch TV while holding down rmb 🙂 it will never be a contender to a fast lvl 100, but you'll pretty much always be safe.

I looked into Master of Metal for Herald of Agony. I particularly found it interesting because the passive states 4-8 dmg to you and allies for each impale. The idea being we swap our virulence stacking attack such as cyclone or molten strike for something like lancing steel which can still maintain high virulence but also mass impale packs.

I made an assumption of we can keep 100 impales up consistently. this would be a 400 to 800 flat dmg increase to the crawler.

Running
phys on full life
pierce
minion damage
vicious projectiles
maim

The added flat from a 100 impales seemed to only come out to a 40k dps increase.

this doesn't include the dps of crawler impaling. Also this was with no passive tree just pure gem calculation.

The first problem is I think maintaining 100 impales is a bit optimistic. I asked myself at what point of dps increase does it become worth dropping max block/spell block for more damage. Master of Metal would need to be a broken amount of scaling to be worth loosing glad's tankyness.

also running lancing steel would require dropping a claw. So there is alot of downsides of trying to scale impales with Agony.

People will run it and it will work though so :D

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KingGorlak wrote:

I looked into Master of Metal for Herald of Agony. I particularly found it interesting because the passive states 4-8 dmg to you and allies for each impale. The idea being we swap our virulence stacking attack such as cyclone or molten strike for something like lancing steel which can still maintain high virulence but also mass impale packs.

I made an assumption of we can keep 100 impales up consistently. this would be a 400 to 800 flat dmg increase to the crawler.

Running
phys on full life
pierce
minion damage
vicious projectiles
maim

The added flat from a 100 impales seemed to only come out to a 40k dps increase.

this doesn't include the dps of crawler impaling. Also this was with no passive tree just pure gem calculation.

The first problem is I think maintaining 100 impales is a bit optimistic. I asked myself at what point of dps increase does it become worth dropping max block/spell block for more damage. Master of Metal would need to be a broken amount of scaling to be worth loosing glad's tankyness.

also running lancing steel would require dropping a claw. So there is alot of downsides of trying to scale impales with Agony.

People will run it and it will work though so :D

I'm afraid you have an incorrect assumption there.

From the patch notes:

• Added a new Debuff - Impale: When a hit applies Impale, a portion of that Hit's Physical Damage is recorded before sources of damage mitigation are applied. The next 5 hits against that target apply that recorded damage as Reflected Physical Damage. You can have multiple Impales on a target.

This means that the impale debuff will only last for 5 hits, or 7 if you go Champion. Hence as long as you're only able to apply 1 stack of impalement per hit you'll be able to have maximum of 5 or 7 stacks on the target, so the added phys damage for the crawler would be neglectable.

Running Lancing Steel with GMP could however be an excellent option to run the build as a "range" character.

I agree with you. 100 impales is super generous. In reality our crawler 1 taps most packs anyway. Thus, it will be extremely hard to maintain a good number of impale stacks.

even in extreme circumstances where one could push 100 stacks I still think the damage is negligible compared to what is lost in defenses.


What would be your gem set up for lancing steal? I like the idea but it will need gmp + pierce or pierce at a minimum to feel as good as molten strike or cyclone for stacking.

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KingGorlak wrote:

I agree with you. 100 impales is super generous. In reality our crawler 1 taps most packs anyway. Thus, it will be extremely hard to maintain a good number of impale stacks.

even in extreme circumstances where one could push 100 stacks I still think the damage is negligible compared to what is lost in defenses.


What would be your gem set up for lancing steal? I like the idea but it will need gmp + pierce or pierce at a minimum to feel as good as molten strike or cyclone for stacking.

100 impales is not only generous, but impossible, as 7 would be the maximum achievable number ;)

Lancing Steel - LGoH - GMP - Poison - Faster Attacks - Pierce/VP
where Poison + FA would be provided by the gloves.

For a regular 4L I'd go with:
Lancing Steel - LGoH - GMP - Poison

You'll have around 4 APS without much investment and have 9 projectiles with GMP. As long as it isn't a small target you should be able to hit with most, if not all projectiles. That would provide you with up to:

1584 hp/s - lvl 20 LGoH
1944 hp/s - 20/20 LGoH
2664 hp/s - 20/20 LGoH + 1 elder ring
3384 hp/s - 20/20 LGoH + 2 elder ring

Because the gem doesn't have the "Melee" tag you won't be able to use multistrike and get up to Molten Strikes levels, yet it is still a decent amount. As you won't be standing in the middle of packs you'll take a lot less damage as well, thus should be a good option for those who prefer that play style.

I thought it counted as 7 impales per mob. If you hit 5 mobs with 1 lancing steel hit and all impales procced you would be up to 5 impales.

if the max you can get up to is 7 stacks total its pretty lack luster all around

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KingGorlak wrote:

I thought it counted as 7 impales per mob. If you hit 5 mobs with 1 lancing steel hit and all impales procced you would be up to 5 impales.

if the max you can get up to is 7 stacks total its pretty lack luster all around

• New Notable - Master of Metal: 20% chance to Impale Enemies on Hit with Attacks. Impales you inflict last 2 additional Hits. If you've Impaled an Enemy Recently, you and nearby Allies have +1000 to Armour. You and nearby Allies deal 4 to 8 added Physical Damage per Impale on the Enemy.

The damage you get is dependent on the number of impales on the specific target you hit, not the total amount of impales on all targets.

It's still really nice for most physical attack builds though. With 7 stacks it's the equivalent of 2x Steel rings with T1 flat added phys on them.

I've been experimenting with a champ version of this build, using dread banner for extra defense and going whispers of doom for an additional curse. Using poachers mark for frenzy generation and temp chains. The question then is what to use in the off hand. Should be like a mix between this version and an occultist MS version i played in delve. This one should be even more fun!