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

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The low budget setup should be doable with around 50c

For the higher budgets you'll find the items in roughly this range.
The Coming Calamity: 1-5ex,
The anvil: 1-2ex,
Victario's Charity: 30c-2ex,
The Red Nightmare: 3-6ex,
Abyssal Jewels: 40c-1ex,
Rings: 100c-2ex
Boots: 50c-5ex
Gloves: 20c-2ex
Helmet: 50c-2ex for enchanted base + 50c-100c for a decent craft.
Weapon: 10c-5ex+ depending on if you can hit your craft.
Belt: 10-50c

So that's roughly 10-20ex for a very good load out. Bear in mind that you'll be able to do shaper & über elder with cheaper items too. The prices I stated here were estimates of what me and couple of friends picked up our final items for in Betrayal.

Thanks for the detailed answer, that really helps me a lot. Unless something else catches my eye think I'll give this one a try next league. I am doing a test with it right now just to see how it feels and so far so good. I have been skipping HoA builds because I tried a bow based one (RoA maybe, forget) and I really didn't like it. Cyclone works for me tho. Thanks again.

Thanks again for this great build and guide!
Some notes and my POB for Betrayal; Uber Elder down
https://pastebin.com/TND99q5A
I really enjoyed going dual claw wield - more damage (up to 80% minion damage + other nice stats on the second claw) and more attack speed
Still able to get to 82-83% block chance with a shaper mod on claw and Rumi's flask
Getting 'tabula' 6-white socket Coming Calamity makes for great quality of life - save up for one

This is a great build if you love crafting (like me):
Claws: Go for straight bound fossils against shaper claws; I recommend one gemini and one imperial
Hat: Pristine + Jagged fossils for lots of life and nearby enemies take increased physical damage
Boots: Once you save up - for a nice pair of rare abyssal socket boots - Hollow + Pristine + Shuddering + Sanctified
Gloves: alt-regal if you are trying for multi mod gloves or Shuddering - Pristine fossils for your socketed gems are supported by faster attacks + poison
Ring: Once you save up - alt/regal/annul until you get an elder ring with Poachers mark on hit as the only mod; multi mod on bench - be sure to get +1 min endurance charges and -8-9 mana cost of skills (ignore the maximum damage roll on my ring, I know it doesn't help the HOA)

My opinion on gem links for Herald of Agony:
Main 4L setup: HOA-Minion Damage-Empower4-Damage on full life
For bosses, 5th-6th links: Vile Toxins-Vicious Projectiles
For maps, 5th-6th links: Pierce-Minion Speed

Flasks:
Swap out the second Blood of the Karui for your standard quicksilver flask of adrenaline

Just wanted to post another thanks for the build now that the league is over. Was the tankiest build I've played and among the top damage as well, blows MS Jugg out of the water for survival and damage. Playing on an outdated gaming laptop, I lived through countless freeze ups by holding cyclone as t15+ syndicate members beat on me and unlagged with them all dead. Never managed to hit a claw with minion damage, life on hit against blinded, and intimidate, but was very happy to hit the below claw and run a belt of the deceiver for the intimidate

I spent the last few weeks trying to min/max the damage and found that unless I'm making a mistake with cyclone, wither provides very little damage, and level 21 maim support is probably better. At 6 attacks per second and a 2 second wither duration, you should only average 3 wither stacks, and that requires 2 seconds to ramp up and drops off fast. Maim provides the same damage with a higher chance to apply it's single stack and lasts for 4 seconds of full effect. So wither can easily simulate out better but in actual conditions it likely doesn't perform as well, and never simulate more than 5 stacks. This may be different with Molten Strike or if you use the Herald of Purity but level 21 maim is not a bad alternative.

Outside of a +1 to gems chest enchant, and optimizing jewels, the only other real upgrade I could find was trying to squeeze a banner in but I couldn't tell which would be better since impale isn't calculated in POB yet. Dread banner is nice for a little boost as well by reducing enemy accuracy.

One other craft that is helpful for this build is a T1/T1 life on hit and life ring, which can be crafted in about 20 attempts using pristine/metalic/corroded on an elder ring. This leaves only 5 possible prefixes, of which we want 2. Then you can craft to remove all suffixes and multi mod with some resists and even the -8 mana to skills.

One last thing I tried just this morning after struggling to stay on shaper but out of his beam was spectral throw(with GMP). I didn't test that long, but it seemed to stack virulence pretty well even on a single target and gave plenty of LoH to face tank the dark forest boss. Plus, the blades spin a bit and return to you so the LoH continues as you move. May be something to consider in fights where ground effects are major risk.

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Malrockk wrote:

I spent the last few weeks trying to min/max the damage and found that unless I'm making a mistake with cyclone, wither provides very little damage, and level 21 maim support is probably better. At 6 attacks per second and a 2 second wither duration, you should only average 3 wither stacks, and that requires 2 seconds to ramp up and drops off fast. Maim provides the same damage with a higher chance to apply it's single stack and lasts for 4 seconds of full effect. So wither can easily simulate out better but in actual conditions it likely doesn't perform as well, and never simulate more than 5 stacks. This may be different with Molten Strike or if you use the Herald of Purity but level 21 maim is not a bad alternative.

Outside of a +1 to gems chest enchant, and optimizing jewels, the only other real upgrade I could find was trying to squeeze a banner in but I couldn't tell which would be better since impale isn't calculated in POB yet. Dread banner is nice for a little boost as well by reducing enemy accuracy.

Cyclone hits twice. So your average number of wither stacks will always be whatever your attack speed is. Also base weapon speed is of some relative importance, both for maximizing wither use and for stacking up max virulence charges single target more quickly, so nice as that weapon may be I would look for something with better base as.

Hi, do u think the build will work on 3.6? thx :D

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sign4l wrote:

Hi, do u think the build will work on 3.6? thx :D

If Agony doesn't get its testicles meat tenderized on a bed of hot coals, then nothing so far mentioned significantly changes the build.

But it's not bad odds that agony is gonna get tuned down a touch - we'll see in a few minutes I suppose.

EDIT: Assuming the damage doesn't get changed/only slight nerf - the convocation buff alone will make the build much better.

I did a variation of this build, but using Arakaalis Fang and The surrender, dual curse anvil and curse on hit reckoning, and aspect of the spider. Withering touch in the dagger for spiders, culling strike on cyclone. I really couldnt be happier, i think it outperforms the claw variants of this build in dps as well as tankiness.

Thank you op for the build, and everyone else for your insights, i had so much fun im doing it again in 3.6

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Thukker wrote:

Cyclone hits twice. So your average number of wither stacks will always be whatever your attack speed is. Also base weapon speed is of some relative importance, both for maximizing wither use and for stacking up max virulence charges single target more quickly, so nice as that weapon may be I would look for something with better base as.

Thanks, knew about the hit 2x but thought PoB took that into account. Even so, with 8 aps, you need to be on a target for more than 3 seconds to average over 5 stacks of wither. So maim is a viable alternative unless you are staying on the target for longer.

And for some reason I didn't read the minion attack speed enchant and figured it was the same as the regular + AS but would help the minion(forgetting on a weapon it becomes local), so I'll go about changing that or try crafting a new claw.

I guess I could try to craft an elder right with +mana on hit so I can switch to the Imperial claw with 1.6 base attack and more life on hit.

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sign4l wrote:

Hi, do u think the build will work on 3.6? thx :D

It looks like it'll l work even better in 3.6. No major changes but they did give us some QoL, like the Convocation buff and decreased mana cost for some of our utility spells.

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Tahreyn wrote:

3.6 Changes
A few QoL improvements was made in the 3.6. Patch. The most noticable will be that Convocation now has a 4 second cooldown (from 8), and besides that there were some reductions of mana costs for the build's support spells. There's also a small damage nerf of about 9% due to changes done to hatred.

And nerf to leech affect Lgoh??