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

I've tried this build on SC but tended more to the HC version and it is great.
You are incredibly tanky (have 7,8k hp on 93 lvl). I'm not using the calamity, but just and ordinary (6L) HP delve chest that supports cyclone with faster attacks, life gain on hit, poison, fortify and blind (or blood magic and whitering touch instead fo the last two gems). It doesn't feel like withering touch is doing big difference if any. (with the wither i have to run Blood magic)
With Advancing Fortress you need to have a jewel for mana gained on hit but you gain a lot block so you are capped just with an corrupted anvil. (No need for red nightmare)
I use Abyssal cry with increase are of effect to help clear packs in one shot (especially good in delves) and endouring cry mostly on bosses for endorance charges and hp regen.
Also on bosses or some maps i use Animate guardian linked with minion hp and ele resist. It gives us(me and my craweler) 15% and 18% damage and vulnerability on hit from gloves. The only problem is that you can babysit him a little, but it provides nice damage boost. (especially the curse(using windscream so it want cancle my enfeeble)) After he dies on corrupted piety in malformation you will learn that for some bosses it's better to keep him in your shield.
With cyclone on 6l. i Have only 5l for crawler in my elder helmet with +2 level of minion gems and minions damage support gem. The damage is sufficent for everything including guardians (haven't tested shaper yet)
There are some problems like maps with 65% avoidance for poison. There it takes much more time to take down a boss, but you have your hp and regen. You have time.
With crawler on 5l i can run another aura and that's aspect of the spider. Great for the hinder slow it provides, works great even in boses and it adds some damage.

I've hit 93 on HC with this build,crafted this beast and i slowly going deeper in delve. Guardiams arent a problem but when i craft chimera with more life and avoid poison it took me ages to get her down. Still testing weapons and herald of purity, imo its kinda useless but hopefully someone can prove me wrong.

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Malorie wrote:

Trying this build on HC right now,kinda fun so far. I dont use calamity i think with skin of the loyal you can pump your dps a bit more than with calamity.
84lvl so far,gonna hit around 90 and try uber elder and some deep delving.
Thanks for build mate

I'm glad that you like the build :)

There's no way to be completely sure until we get some updated minion figures, but unless you're using a lvl 4 empower you should get more damage from the Calamity as it gives +2 levels to HoAg. Yet if you have good colours on your Skin of the Loyal then that'll do for most if not all content, the skill by itself is that strong.

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ADM0N wrote:

Ive been playing a version of this and have been having a blast. There are a few questions/thoughts I have as I develop my version more.

Spoiler

Herald of Purity - How quickly does the withering touch stack up on bosses with the herald minions compared to just cyclone? Also would blind be a better support than minion damage? You aren't giving them much flat damage to scale, so it seems like they are just there to debuff the enemy and absorb a few hits. Blind seems like it would be trading their meager dps for more survival. It seems like you could also switch this out for aspect of the spider, but that would be incredibly hard/borderline impossible to fit into the build.

Weapon - It seems like an elder base would be a better fit. You lose faster attacks for the herald of purity, but you can get an additional chance to blind on hit, life gained per hit if they are blinded, or additional chance to poison. It seems like the elder base is much more defensive oriented.

Also I tested out despair on hit with a foil, and while the additional range from the foil felt amazing the despair on hit only translates to a 6% more chaos damage for bosses. It doesnt make sense to give up a weapon suffix for it since you can get that corruption on gloves (along with temp chains or enfeeble). The 3 extra range from the foil helped me dodge things while still stacking poison, but it wasnt worth giving up withered touch.

Shield - I know you wanted the additional 1% max chance to block and its easiest to get those on uniques, but I feel like a good rare shield will give a better defensive capability during mapping than an additional 1% chance to block. You dont get as much flat life, but you recover life on block, gain charges on block, and dont have to deal with a 5% movement speed penalty. Rare shields are worse when theres just 1 mob around, but they recover your life extremely fast when you're in a group of mobs.

Belt - Since the agony crawler (and purity minions) attack, the intimidation from belt of the deceiver is another 10% increased damage taken modifier. The reduced damage from crits helps prevent 1 shots also, though it doesnt have nearly as much life/resists that a good vise would provide.


Finally one thing to note for the leveling tree - Lioneye's Vision makes for a great 5 link until you have the Coming Calamity ready. You can buy the 5 link prophecy, use vorici to recolor it in ~80 chromes. The extra life and armo is extremely helpful while setting up the rest of the gear. You have to choose between the essence worm or herald of purity with it though, since either one of them will put you up to 90% mana reserved.

Thanks for all the feedback and great that you've been enjoying the build!

HoP is probably not providing more than 3-4 stacks of Wither, but then again you won't be able to apply many more yourself with the cyclone (due to the 25% chance to apply). In the end I estimate that you in combination with the HoP will put 8-12 stacks of wither on the enemy, depending on your own and the HoP's attack speed.

Blind wouldn't be of much use together with HoP. From Blood in the Eyes you should quite easily be able to apply blind to all tougher targets.

I once disabled my HoAg when killing Dominus in a t14 map to see how much damage the HoP is doing. While it was no where close to what the HoAg is putting out, it did work fairly well. So HoP is mainly there for utility and for some extra damage, and it's not anything that the build is reliant on. That said you can possibly try to 6L the Lioneye's Vision and go for a 7L setup for similar or slightly higher damage.

weapon
Getting an elder weapon with LgoH against blinded enemies would be great. I bought my current weapon in order to buff HoP as much as I could, but as it doesn't do that much dmg even on my 5L (6L with Melee Splash) you could freely replace the affixes for other stuff. Any socketed gems are supported by XXX is a good choice. If I would have a elder base and I want to keep the HoP then I'd take what I can get from the weapon and then link HoP with FA + WT. Combine that with a possible LgoH and you'd have an awesome weapon.

Chance to poison is also great if you haven't managed to get the extra 20% some where else, so you can skip lesser poison. I use my jewel sockets in order to get my chance to 100%. Then you shouldn't notice 65% poison avoidance maps too much either.

I agree with what you're saying with the despair foil. While it is a nice bonus it probably won't be anything that I personally would go for, as I prefer a Temp Chains curse.

Shield
I never felt that there was any issue to keep life at 100% while mapping. Currently I have 100+ LgoH and 6-7 APS. Combine that with small pack of 5 mobs and it'd be 3000-3500 Life per second, and packs are usually larger than 5. The Additional life recovery on block you can get from rare shields are not needed, yet it can be a nice bonus. Comparing a 82% Block vs a 83% Block and that's a 5.5% difference in damage taken, which in combination of the armour + Life on the Lioneye's is pretty great. However, if you have 2 weapons you can use you can always weapon swap to get that extra map speed.

Belt
Great suggestion with the belt of the deceiver. I'll make sure to include it as a good option when I update the great section.

Body armour
I'll add Lioneye's as an option in the gear section as it'd make for a cheap 6L, even if you lose the +2 to HoAg. For HC and SSF players it won't hurt to have some good options to choose between.
aura and that's aspect of the spider. Great for the hinder slow it provides, works great even in boses and it adds some damage.

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Malorie wrote:

I've hit 93 on HC with this build,crafted this beast

and i slowly going deeper in delve. Guardiams arent a problem but when i craft chimera with more life and avoid poison it took me ages to get her down. Still testing weapons and herald of purity, imo its kinda useless but hopefully someone can prove me wrong.

That's a great weapon. In your case I'd skip HoP and instead maybe go for either Abyssal Cry (in combination with the instant cast nodes) or possibly a 3l or 4L Summon Holy Relic.

Updated the guide with a new section, 4.1.3. Gear & Options. Here you'll find alternatives to the uniques I use as well as lists of desirable affixes for the rare items.

If I missed to add something please let me know and I'll try to add it to the next update.

So far the Crawler seems very nice to play with even to do maps. But im thinking about change Whintering Thouch to Blind in Cyclone setup OR to get a minion abyss jewel with "Minions have #% chance to blind on hit with attacks" to get another layer of defense.

Btw, I was just spamming some chaos in this glove and this happened... not the best but ok lul

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Ldantasgois wrote:

So far the Crawler seems very nice to play with even to do maps. But im thinking about change Whintering Thouch to Blind in Cyclone setup OR to get a minion abyss jewel with "Minions have #% chance to blind on hit with attacks" to get another layer of defense.

Btw, I was just spamming some chaos in this glove and this happened... not the best but ok lul

Not bad with the gloves. You can probably use them and get the %block chance I have on mine from tree + jewels instead.

You already get 10% chance to blind against bleeding enemies from the ascendancy, which in my experience have been enough. If you feel that you need a higher blind chance then you do have the option to replace WT with blind as you say, just make sure that you do hit the 100% chance to poison before that.

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Tahreyn wrote:

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Malorie wrote:

I've hit 93 on HC with this build,crafted this beast

and i slowly going deeper in delve. Guardiams arent a problem but when i craft chimera with more life and avoid poison it took me ages to get her down. Still testing weapons and herald of purity, imo its kinda useless but hopefully someone can prove me wrong.

That's a great weapon. In your case I'd skip HoP and instead maybe go for either Abyssal Cry (in combination with the instant cast nodes) or possibly a 3l or 4L Summon Holy Relic.

Ye i use abyssal cry with instant nodes,makes it was faster for packs.

A question tho,if i run map/delve with chain does it work with HoA? Can projectiles chain from him to me or he is untargetable?

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Malorie wrote:

Spoiler

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Tahreyn wrote:

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Malorie wrote:

I've hit 93 on HC with this build,crafted this beast

and i slowly going deeper in delve. Guardiams arent a problem but when i craft chimera with more life and avoid poison it took me ages to get her down. Still testing weapons and herald of purity, imo its kinda useless but hopefully someone can prove me wrong.

That's a great weapon. In your case I'd skip HoP and instead maybe go for either Abyssal Cry (in combination with the instant cast nodes) or possibly a 3l or 4L Summon Holy Relic.

Ye i use abyssal cry with instant nodes,makes it was faster for packs.

A question tho,if i run map/delve with chain does it work with HoA? Can projectiles chain from him to me or he is untargetable?

The Agony Crawler should be untargetable as far as I am aware, thus projectile shouldn't chain from him to you.

Hey friend, how are you doing?

This build looks rad, I'm running it @delve on low budget. It is working wonders, im glad to play a Gladiator, was really looking forward to it.

Btw, I dropped a Snakebite gloves, can I use it in this build? What would be the optimal setup for it? Cyclone with blood magic and what are the other gem options? I'm looking for a double claw, probably going to buy one (cause mana issues you know).

I also dropped HoP in order to play smoothly, a lot of mana was reserved so I wasn't really enjoying spinning around and running low on mana. It didn't make any difference at all since all my damage comes from the agony crawler.


Cheers mate, keep up with the good work!