[3.6] Agony Caster | Winter Orb + Herald of Agony Necro | Uber Elder

+ Agony Crawler offers huge DPS (to a semi-5L).
+ It's nice to have Leech recovery for a summoner.
+ Decent life pool with belly, some block chance from bone offering.
+ Budget.

- lack of dex, need find on gear or tree
- move slow if don't have movement speed on boots.
- monsters have x chance to avoid poison cause virulence stacks drop.
- monster's skill chain x times could be dangerous.

Defence

The block chance above is buffed by Bone Offering.
Winter Orb (utility / dps)

Supported by Lesser Poison and Life Leech.

Invoker > Soul Weaver > Mistress of Sacrifice > Commander of Darkness
if you have trouble on resistance, then take Commander of Darkness before 'Mistress of Sacrifice'.

Skill Tree
my current tree lv92

Bandits: kill all.
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Jewels

in order to inflict poison by spell, the spell must do some physical or chaos damage.
A simple way to do this for all the spells we cast is to get adds x physical damage to spells (or chaos damage) on Hypnotic Eye Jewel.


these are for extra poison chance on top of Herald of Agony + Poison / Lesser Poison support.

other jewels are nice if have life / cast speed / minion spell hinder / % minion damage / dex / movement speed ...etc
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Pantheon

Major: Arakaali - increased recovery of life
I don't have 'Blood Rage + Immortal Call' in CWDT set though, this is the major god when I do shaper/elder fight, lots of dot there.
Minor: Ryslatha - life flask charges, more recover on low life.
you can pick whatever you want to suit your character.
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Level up
1 Go straight for Spiritual Aid
level up with Freezing Pulse / Storm Brand or whatever skill you like before you get Winter Orb.

2 more life, minions damage, +1 spectre
Raise Flame Sentinel as spectre for early game.

3 more life, skill effect duration, AOE, life and mana regen

4 more life, jewel socket, Elemental Overload
around level 80 all main point allocated, you can alter whatever you want to suit your character depend on various gear setup.
if you can't get enough dex on gear, take the +30 dex node before you can.
if you need more spell Crit chance to trigger overload more often, or more cast speed / movement speed like I do, there are several node on the east side as well as jewel socket.

Winter Orb

Winter Orb in this build setup has pretty low DPS, it does three jobs.
1 Clear white mobs.
2 Helps in Virulence stacks climbing and sustain by poison enemies. (around 70% chance to inflict poison on hit if supported by lesser poison)
3 Leech recovery.
due to Leech mechanism, instead of doing big damage hits, Winter Orb can reach 'maximum total Recovery per second' in one second by frequently hitting pack of monsters and creating multiple leech instances. And because of the shotgun mechanism (GMP support + aoe overlaps) Winter Orb also does multiple hits even to a single target, this helps a lot in leeching and virulence sustain at end game boss fights. And you don't have to stand still every time to do all of these, even while semi-frozen by elder, the poison and leeching are still on going.
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Herald of Agony


Swap pierce to Vile Toxins for end game boss.
In my case, minion damage support is from Elder base helmet, maybe if I can craft something better for winter orb, then move Herald of Agony to 6L body armour.
or just try to get another helmet with both damage support and + x level for minion skill.
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Spectre on Hungry Loop

using Solar Guard for now.
since 3.6 buffed the chance to summon on hit, phantasms now join the boss fight as long as Solar Guard keep hitting boss.
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Trigger Spells


with poison support + Herald of Agony + poison chance on jewel, it's around 90% chance to poison enemy on hit for these triggered spells. Main source of virulence stacks.
I was aiming 'Bound fossil' craft Elder based dagger to get % minion damage and Poison support on the dagger, but failed couple times, spent all my Bound fossils.
I'd drop the poison support gem and add another spell or curse to trigger if some day I eventually get that luck. that way, I can swap the Lesser Poison support in 6L Winter Orb to some damage boost support.
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Curse and movement skill

Projectile weakness, since Winter Orb, Agony Crawler, Solar Guard and Phantasm all do projectile damage. And it gives the chance to knockback cursed monsters.
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CWDT set

IC + desecrate + bone offering set, since this build has Mistress of Sacrifice, we can take some advantage of offerings to get block chance or damage boost.

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Aura

Clarity work with Commander of Darkness, gives resistance and damage.
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Other skills

Cool down time got buffed 3.6, real QoL improvement, smooth mapping.

My current gears

The shield with +3 maximum cold resistance which I found in azurite mine really helps a lot at shaper/elder fight.

5L on the elder base helmet for the Herald of Agony, there's room for upgrade, but for now that's the best I have.
Need Bound fossils for crafting +1 spectre boots and % minion damage weapon.
If no fractured movement speed boots, then 24% movement speed crafting.

dex and life are valuable mods to this build, lucky to have them on fractured items.
and thanks to RNG for the hungry loop, I was just playing Raise Spectre at the beginning, after I found the loop I started to think if I'd try Agony this time, and here I am. XD
Flask

Ordinary. I think Rumi's Concoction can do better on defence.

(BoE)skill=Raise+Spectre;skill=Herald+of+Agony;skill=Winter+Orb;defense=Life;cheap=true;coc=false;crit=false;hardcore=false;atziri=false(BoE)