(3.6) Katmos’s bosskiller necromantic agoniser guide (videos attached)

(3.6) Katmos’s bosskiller necromantic agoniser guide (videos attached)

Introduction
Hi, first, thank you for reading this guide. It is the first that I write, and not in my native language, so please be understanding. This is a guide that requires only minimal knowledge about minions, and will explain the build’s choices as they follow. Also, if you like video guides, this one has one attached (see below). This guide will be updated periodically.
Also, I chose to not put too many spoilers,but instead write plain text, because a lot of people use mobile phones to read guides, and those devices may have problems with opening spoilers.
This build was designed in Delve league (patch 3.4). The only difference in 3.6 is the bone hemet implicit mod slight nerf. The build is still very good at pumping over 1 million dps for as little as 2-3 exalted orbs worth of gear.

Video Guide
See video section below.

Build concept
The main damage of this build comes from the Herald’s of Agony’ minion. In order to summon and empower it, we need to poison enemies as quickly as possible. As Ball Lightning was recently buffed (hits 6,66 times/second, and chains to its nearby enemies), we use it when channeling Wither, in order to cast it quickly AND decrease the enemy’s chaos resistance using Volkuur’s guidance gloves (unique zealot gloves that allow our lightning damage to poison enemies).
As it is mainly an anti-boss build, we need to make sure that the boss doesn’t kill us before we kill it. So, we disrupt it with our other various minions to keep it busy while the agony crawler kills it.

Pro’s
- Safe
- Can run all map mods (see below) and all tiers up to T15 for sure. I don't have the agility to run guardians and Elder/Shaper, but the damage and defences are certainly viable (so good, non-lazy players should run these, too) as PoB calculates damage at over 1 million dps.
- Has up to 5 gem slots to customize, 6 if you get a stygian vise belt
- Only 1 mandatory unique item required: Volkuur’s guidance zealot gloves (but it doesn’t cost more than 1 alchemy/chaos orb, so it’s very cheap)
- Overcapped elemental resistances, and more than 20% chaos resistance, all from rare items and jewels
- More than 7000 life (considering that most builds have ~ 5ooo life without expensive items like Belly of the Beast or Kaom’s Heart), and apart from that, with all those meat-shield minions, you are quite tanky.
- Very cheap to start (if you just want to reliably run yellow maps, only 5-links are enough, and the total cost without jewels is ~10 chaos orbs). It is also one of the cheapest builds to safely run red maps, but you’ll need some investment on that, ~ 1-2 exalts.
- Lots of meat-shield minions (10 zombies, 1 chaos golem, 2 spectres, 1 Animated Guardian) to protect you (3 spectres if you use boots with a +1 spectre delve mod on them)
- Decoy totem to distract the boss
- Destroys corpses, so that you don’t have to worry about reanimators
- Non-meta (only 2-3% of players play it), so there is a low chance of it getting nerfed. It cleans maps fast enough, though, because the agony crawler has a split-arrow ranged attack built into it.
- Minions are resistance-capped too
- Safe from porcupine explosions, because your meat-shield minions stand in their way.
- Great physical damage reduction: 10% from zombies, 4% from chaos golem, 15% from basalt flask = a grand total of 29 % physical damage reduction
- Animated guardian has just under 40.000 life, more than 1600 life regen/sec, with only 7-8 chaos orbs worth of gear, and it increases the damage of other minions, and curses enemies with level 10 temporal chains on hit!
- Great league starter!

Con’s
- The agony crawler +Clarity (level 1) reserve 87% of your mana, so you won’t be able to cast any other auras, but generally you should not have problems with it
- Summoners are not for everyone, but it has a lot of direct casting and flask button-pushing to compensate, so you won’t get bored.
- Summoners are generally not for PvP.
- Channeler build, meaning you have to stay in one place to keep buffing the agony crawler, and because of that, bosses that can hit behind your meat-wall are very risky. Most Guardians, the Shaper/Elder, and all Kitava variants are extremely dangerous. All other bosses are very easy to kill.

Path of Building link
https://pastebin.com/C2ykuu1q
Raw data


Videos

Please set your YouTube video quality to at least 720, for some reason, it default starts with only 360.

Map run demonstration
Tier 7 Zana mission (short map run)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvGO6q6Gpg0&feature=youtu.be
Tier 9 long map, includes an Abyss run and a Zana mission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J325zbkx7AE
Apex of Sacrifice run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5UfCDLbrWA&t=110s
Tier 12 map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q3C546oR1w&feature=youtu.be

Delve demonstration
https://youtu.be/bpBwhNmSg5A

Boss demonstration
short T11 bossfight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ2iXtmcXPo&feature=youtu.be
Level 79 (Tier 12) Abyssal Lich fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkA3J_7Dauc&feature=youtu.be
Guardian fight
upcoming

My standard league hideout that I'm very proud of:
https://youtu.be/APTdNsUW6ps

Passive tree
Requires level 85 for just 2 jewel slots (and works perfectly fine), and in order to get 3 more jewel slots you’ll need to be level 91.

Passive tree
https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMDAAQHBLMI9A-rEFERLRUnFm8Wvxo4HNwi6iL0JIskqiUhJbImlScvKPoqmCycMPgyATLRNZI26TkLOlg6xjrYOuFBh0VHRZ1HhUqfTLNNuU3jUEJTNVNSVUtVxlqRYPhh4mHrYoZmVGaeZ3FqQ2qsa9tsC20Zcg96U3yDgpuCx4PbhMWFYIV7ibyMNoyxjxqQM5BVkyeUb5hNmuCbtZ69oOahL6IAplemrKh9qqmqxKyYrv-yGbc-uJO86r6Kv5fAZsM6yT3MvM960B_Tj9P72L3ZXt-K42rpAuvu7Djsg-yK7-vwH_Ie8kX31_no-tL-Cv6B_o8=?accountName=katmos&characterName=Bewitching_Crawlering

What can this build do?
Maps up to tier 15, bosses included, but not guardians or Shaper, because those hit hard behind your meat-shield. PoB calculates fully buffed Agony Crawler damage at 1.135.001 Dps including poison against regular bosses (more than 1 million Dps for under 1 exalted orb!!!). The important part is the safety in disrupting the boss with various minions into not attacking the character, though. You can safely run unidentified rare red maps, but you must play carefully.
In case of elemental reflect, you will have to swap your high level Ball Lightning with a level 1 gem. Also , with a shaper’s ring having a mana gained on hit with spells mod, you can run maps with no mana regeneration.

Gear
Concept:
Only Volkuur’s guidance zealot gloves is mandatory. All the rest is rare gear. Get a 6-link corrupted intelligence based body armor for meat shield minions and a 6-link bow for the agony crawler. Put life and resistances (chaos too) in all rare gear. Your helmet should be a bone helmet, because its base implicit mod is as good as the lab enchantment, plus it applies to ALL your minions.
Recommended but not mandatory uniques are Winterheart amulet so that you won’t be chilled (thus, slowed) by cold damage, or Bloodgrip amulet, if you are a lab farmer or afraid of its bleed-inducing traps. The Skullhead helmet is also great before you get a bone helmet.
Jewels should be crafted with life, resistances (including chaos resistance), minion damage. If you want to go somewhat magic-find, you can get item rarity on the jewels as well.
For flasks, you need a Quicksilver flask for movement speed, a Quartz flask to pass through enemies in the Azurite mine, a Basalt flask to increase physical damage resistance, and the rest of the flasks should be eternal life flasks. Craft them to give you immunity to curses, poison, bleeding, freeze and ignite during flask effect.

My gear


Gem links
In bow (main damage setup): herald of agony, damage on full life (as that minion can’t be targeted by enemies and is always on full life), maim support, vile toxins (enemies are already poisoned by you), vicious projectiles, minion damage.
In body armor (supporting minions setup): raise zombie, raise spectre, summon chaos golem, animate guardian, minion life, minion damage. If you can’t afford a 6 link, get a 5link, and drop minion damage. You’ll ease off 20-30 chaos orbs in build expenses just from this. After all, these minions are used for support, and damage for them is just the cherry on top.
In Volkuur’s guidance zealot gloves: wither (level 1, you don’t have enough unreserved mana for more than level 1), cast while channeling, ball lightning, poison. This way, you get 100% total chance to poison, at an excellent hit rate, so that you’ll get all 40 stacks of virulence in 1-2 seconds.
Various other skills: clarity (level 1, to increase resistances for yourself and your minions using the Commander of darkness Ascendancy skill point), convocation, spirit offering, blink arrow, decoy totem with minion and totem resistances, desecrate.

Spectres
Against bosses you need your spectres to get in the way of the enemy boss and stall it, not to deal damage. So, they have to be tanky and fast. Go to act 9 Oasis area and raise Rhexback Spearmen. Be careful not to get the ranged variant (those are called Rhexback raiders). You want your minions to get into melee range of the boss, to force it to engage them in melee, and not let the boss use its ranged abilities on you as you keep channeling wither. If you think that even they are not tanky enough, use Hairy Bonecrushers from Act 2 Wetlands (or any giant beast of the similar type, they all have immense health – but the Hairy Bonecrushers also use enduring cry to give themselves endurance charges and taunt enemies)
For general mapping and delving you need anti-mob monsters. Get some Flame sentinels from Act 3 Solaris temple, they work very fine throwing exploding fireballs at enemy mobs.

Animated guardian setup
- Leer cast to provide a damage increase aura.
- Asenath’s gentle touch gloves to curse enemies with temporal chains on hit.
- Gruthkull’s pelt to get it a good 5% life regeneration, >200 extra life, cold resistance and increased size to make it look better.
- Dying Breath unique staff to increase the damage of all nearby allies
- Vicatario’s flight boots for movement speed, or boots with life and chaos resistance to make the guardian more tanky.
This way, your animated guardian has capped resistances, near 40.000 life and more than 1600 life regen/second (apart from Gruthkull’s pelt) – it’s very tanky, and capable of protecting you well, gives you increased movement speed, and curses the boss for you.

Ascendancy
Go necromancer, as it allows you to toughen up your meat shield minions a lot. Order of importance:
1. Invoker
2. Commander of darkness
3. Flesh binder
4. Puppet master for mob-killing / Soul weaver if you want the build to be more of a boss-killer

Bandits
Kill all for 2 extra passive skill points.

Pantheon
Major god: soul of Solaris for general boss mapping, soul of Lunaris for delving
Minor god: soul of Tukohama or Ryslatha
Of course, you can always change them in town/hideout to better fit the map you want to run.

Levelling tips
You can use lacerate until you can equip Volkuur’s guidance zealot gloves. Barrage is good too. The Skullhead helmet is very good (until you can find a fine rare bone helmet), because it has life, resistances, and most importantly, minion life regeneration for you meat-shields.
If you don’t have enough dexterity, simply get a Careful planning unique jewel and put it in the socket between the Witch and the Scion starting points.

Playstyle
Channel –cast Wither on the enemy in order to simultaneously:
- get your minions over there to move/attack (minion AI is very dumb in this game, but only for your minions, not for bosses like Izaro or guardians)
- lower the enemy chaos resistance in the area
- auto-cast Ball lightning spells, in order to summon and empower the Agony Crawler
- decrease enemy movement speed.
While in the Azurite mine, opening strongboxes or simply in tight situations, simply use your quartz flask to phase out of the pinch.
From time to time, cast spirit offering to add chaos damage to your minions and increase their resistances.
This build has the general splaystyle of a spectre summoner build, but it's more suited for a full life build, instead of a low life midnight bargain spectre variant.

Buffing the build for rich kids
Get your gems with maximum quality, starting with your minion gems, to increase their life and damage.
You can get some rare boots with a +1 spectre delve mod (+life, resistances and moment speed). Get a good rare stygian vise belt and put an abyss jewel in it, too.
Instead of the Leer Cast, the Animated Guardian can have a Crown of the Tyrant helmet (lightning variant to synergise with your Ball Lightning).
You can also try to get the bow with +1 gem level, but it should also contain increased minion damage, and added dexterity (as you barely have it on the skill tree).
Also, the jewels I equipped had only +30 max life on them and cost ~9 chaos orbs each. However, the life roll can be up to +50, so if you have the currency, buy those instead.
Lastly, if you are truly rich enough, you can craft all your gear with essences of fear to improve minion life/damage. Bound fossils are even better!

Extrabuffing for those that have too much currency
Instead of a bow for crawler setup, use Femurs Of the Saints, as it buffs the Agony crawler a lot. You will have to get skeletons into your setup, so switch the minion damage gem in your body armour with Vaal Summon Skeleton. This way, you can regularly summon ordinary skeletons for usual crawler buffing and Vaal skeletons for a massive damage boost. 6-linking the femurs should be quite expensive, though, and you will have to get life and resistances on your gems. (Path of Building calculates an extra 200 000 damage boost when ignoring skeleton numbers).
You can also use an Aul's Uprising amulet for a free Hatred aura - that will also massively buff your minion (around 200 000 according to Path of Building), and the price of the builds as well (that amulet costs several exalted orbs just by itself, up to several dozens exalted orbs). I, myself, would not even dream of buying something as expensive as that. If you can get it to drop, good for you.

Use of banners

Will update the build as I advance more into the Azurite mine.
Do not message me in-game, use this forum instead. Will respond nearly every day.

Updated the build.
Also added videos for gear, passive tree and my standard hideout.
Map runs take like ~2,5 hours to upload on youtube, but I will upload those as well.
I'm planning to upload a guardian fight - video incoming.

Added My gear section and uploaded a demonstrative T7 Zana mission map run. Remember to set the Youtube video quality to at least 720.

Uploaded a better map run, that includes Abyssal Depths and also a surprise Zana mission!

At last, more than 1000 views! I'm very glad to see that people are interested in this HoA build. I was almost certain that skill would have been abandoned the following patch.

Anyway, one tip: if GGG, for some reason, decides to make the crawler (,,skorpyboi") damageable, and gives a certain amount of life to it, then the support gem Damage on Full life will be useless, and you should switch it with Empower (they have the same color)

Updated Animated Guardian gear.

Uploaded a T12 map run.
A guardian's fight is still in planning - I just have to get the map.

Updated Playstyle and corrected Ball Lightning's hit rate (6,66 instead of 8 hits/second)

this should be HC viable right? just checking