[3.9] Herald of Agony Juggernaut - Beginner friendly and detailed guide to unconventional marauders

Pit of the chimera - Dual Cold Iron Point variant

You should probably read this section last. I placed it here just to make it more visible. Come back to it when you feel like it.

You can run The golden rule for easy Virulance up-keep.

How it works: Self poison also counts towards virulance.

Be warned tho, it does a quite a bit of damage. Do not attempt it without good chaos resistance. I'd say at least 50% chaos resistance is required. Remember that Golden Rule also gives 1% chaos resistance per 1 poison.
"+1% to Chaos Resistance per Poison on you"

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You can run Flesh and Stone, Anger and Hearld of Agony(4 link helm) for extra damage if you have a "+5% reduced mana reserved" helm(easy to find on pathofexile.com/trade and fairly cheap) and a helm enchant with reduced mana reservation for herald of agony.
Flesh and Stone can be run either defensively or offensively. Whichever you feel is needed.

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A Sulphur Flask creates consecrate ground on use. "Consecrated ground is a beneficial ground effect that provides additional life regeneration." Very useful for stationary fights such as bosses. Highly recommend it.

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ShinyValkyrie wrote:

Thanks for a great guide, I was following this post for my latest character and I've been having a great time with it so far!

Just a question may I know whats the best way to sustain mana for this build?

While leveling in acts a mana flask will do just fine.

At higher levels you actually have several options.

1. You can run Blood Magic along side Cyclone, but I don't like it that much, that gem slot is better spent on Withering Touch or if you feel you can't keep up virulance go for Lesser Poison(that would put you at a 100% chance to poison, 120% actually if we're counting the herald buff but 100% is the limit ofc). If you do go for Lesser Poison along with Cyclone get it up to level 6 at least. Some mobs have Chaos resistance and lesser poison may not work at all.

2. A Viridian Jewel with "of Absorption"(+1(2) Mana gained for each enemy hit by your attacks) works nicely too. However with other affixes such as %Life, etc, it can get quite expensive.

3. The simplest I've found was the Eleron mod "-x to Total Mana Cost of Skills". Since Cyclone has a meager 5 mana cost even a rank 1 elron mod is more than enough.

4. The last and the one that I don't particularly like but I admit it's useful is to get a Gemini Claw. I don't like it because I feel you lose waaaay too much damage it the process. Admittedly survivability also gets better because of the extra life gained on hit.
See if you like playing with a claw, I didn't find it to my liking.

Thief's Torment is great until you can get either of these.

Dirt cheap. Can carry you to end game with minimal gear.
- My starter budget was 30 chaos. Of which 12 was Tabula rasa, however it's NOT mandatory.
Very lenient on mistakes.
- Due to the inherent tankiness of Juggernaut this build is very tanky even with minimal investment. That's not to say you should facetank everything.
Scales decently with investment
Can do ANY map mod.
- Some map mods are harder. No regeneration(for example) is quite painful.
Can do Uber lab very easily.
With decent gear chaos damage is not an issue.

Can be a league starter but it gets rolling nicely after level 28(that's when you can use cyclone)
Can get expensive if you try to min/max.
Not as high damage potential as other builds. It's meant to be tanky and lenient.
Not a "gotta go fast" build. It's more in the area of slow and steady. But is that really a con if you're just starting out?
While it can delve quite nicely after a certain depth it's no longer possible to facetank.

> Herald of Agony

We use Herald of Agony to do damage for us. We do not do damage ourselfs. That in turns allows us to invest heavily in survivability. That in turns allows most mistakes to go unnoticed and won't cause you to die.
The clear speed is above average but not fantastic. While other builds clear much much faster than this build will ever be able to, they also lack the survivability this build provides.

Herald of Agony requires Virulance stacks(a total of 40 can be had at any one time), which we generate by poisoning enemies OR ourselfs(yes, that counts too, we'll get into self poison later).
We do this, early game and late game using Cyclone and Lesser poison(early game) and Poison Support

> Life gain on hit

Life gained on hit support does exactly what you'd expect. Every attack that successfully lands on an enemy will grant you X amount of life. Since this build uses Resolute Technique EVERY attack will always land, no matter what, with the drawback that we can never land a critical hit. But who cares about you doing damage when your minion does damage for you.

> Life regeneration

Life regeneration provides another valuable survivability tool in our already extended arsenal of survivability. With good gear expect about 1000 life regenerated per second. With minimal gear expect about 400-500 life regen.

> Good armour

While armour doesn't scale that great in Path of Exile(see below image) it does provide a good layer of defense against small hits and it also scales fantastically with Molten Shell.

About the image: Long story short, armour is good against a lot small hits but very bad against one big hit.

Lets take an example of 10000 armour.

- 10 consecutive hits of 1000 damage each will result in taking 1/2 of the damage, so 500 damage. That's a 50% reduction.
- 1 big hit of 20000 damage will result in a total of 19048 damage taken. A mere 5% damage reduction. Very bad indeed.



> Endurance charges

Endurance charges are the backbone of Juggernauts. They provide a 4% Physical Damage Reduction per Endurance Charge and 4% to all Elemental Resistances per Endurance Charge due to our ascendancy. And we have 7 of them with minimal investment.

That results in a FLAT 28% physical damage reduction no matter what. Not counting the added ascdendency bonus that Juggernauts provide.

With Unrelenting it becomes 5% per endurance charge for a total of 35%.

This section is VERY important if you are a new player. Do not gloss over it and ignore it. I highly recommend you take your time and properly read the information here.

General information: In path of exile knowledge is truly power. If you are a new player and happened to stumble upon this guide by accident or this guide was recommended to you I highly suggest you bookmark The path of exile wikipedia. It provides invaluable information on any aspect of the game. Use it often. Engineering Eternity is your friendly youtuber with a strong orientation towards new players and very detailed guides. I highly recommend him.

> Lootfilters: Lootfilters are a way to reduce the clutter of dropped items from various monsters you'll encounter in your adventures. You'll very soon realize that 99% of the items dropped are not worth even picking up. While this may not seem like much at first, since Acts 1 to 10 are not particularly hard in later stages of the game the ground will simply be cluttered with items. This is where Neversink loot filter steps in. For installation instructions see here.

> Flasks: Path of exile requires you(to some degree) to actively use flasks. Some flasks I, personally, consider to be mandatory.
This has a dedicated section below. Yes, they are that important.

> Trading is an integral part of Path of exile. If you are not playing Solo Self-Found(SSF), which I assume you are not, sooner or later you will have to trade. I won't get into details of trading, you can watch this for more information. The only thing I must stress is DO NOT USE poe.trade. It's outdated. Use the official site https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/. It will make life a lot easier for you.


> Stash tabs. The default space which are provided by stash tabs is honestly pretty limited. While you can play just fine with them it's an exercise in frustration the more you play. More space can be bought via the stash tabs page of the official site. HOWEVER, before you go and buy any make sure you actually like the game. It's not a big investment but, hey, its your money. Make sure you spend them well.
Also it's highly recommended you wait for a stash tab sale.
The "must have" tabs I consider to be the Currency tab and the Map tab and at least 1 premium stash tab. The rest are your own call.

> How to sell items using premium tabs. Do note this isn't me in the video, it's just some random youtuber which I found informative.

Before you read: Everything in this particular section, except 1(one) item can be found by simply playing the game, so don't worry about it too much, you'll find them eventually

I consider MANDATORY only flask 1 and 2. Flask 1 you will find in later acts(9-10), up until then you can use ANY life flask you find. Literally any will do, the more health it heals the better. As for flask 2, you will naturally find it in Act 1 as quest reward for Nesa.


There are 5 total tabs for flask, in which you can place any flask you want. Even the same flask on all 5 tabs if you desire.
The following flasks I prefer to use, these flask will work well for 90% of the players for this build, however feel free to mix and match to your hearts desire.

1. Life flask
Specifically Eternal life flask. Perhaps you're asking yourself "Why not use Divine life flask? That gives more health." Yes, that's correct, it gives MORE health but it gives LESS health over a short period of time. Eternal life flask, the one I suggest you use "Recovers 2080 Life over 4.00 seconds" while Divine life flask "Recovers 2400 Life over 7.00 seconds
". A 3 second difference can be life and death.

For this flask I prefer the suffix of staunching. In short, it will instantly remove ANY Bleed effect on you, that also includes Corrupted blood.
Make no mistake bleeds can kill you faster than you can say "What just killed me?!". This flask will save your life.


2. Quicksilver flask makes you walk faster. That's it. Who doesn't like to walk faster!?

For this flask I prefer the suffix of Heat. Some more experienced players are thinking "But why do Juggernauts even need that? You can't be frozen dumbass." True, Juggernauts cannot be frozen, however they can be chilled and being chilled will slow down your life regeneration, which is really bad.
I also prefer this particular suffix simply because when in panic mode new players tend to spam flasks. This will be pretty close to the life flask and it's an extra "oh shit" button that they may not even realize it's helping. Of course, "of Adrenaline" is also good on this.

3. Granite flask Remember when I said that armour isn't that great, well I stand by that, however since we're using Molten Shell which directly scales with our amour this flask, combined with some skill tree passives provides a MASSIVE boost in survivability if used at the right time.
Case and point.

WITHOUT the granite flask:




WITH the granite flask:



That's a 4000 damage absorb difference. Don't underestimate this flask, it's incredibly good.
Also do note that I'm wearing fairly good gear in these pictures, but the point stands.

For this flask I prefer the suffix of Iron Skin. It provides (60-100)% increased Armour during Flask effect, which is nothing to sneeze at.

4. Basalt flask provides even more physical damage reduction, and since we'll, for the most part, be in melee range expect some heavy hitters to be striking you with physical damage all the time. This flask can further help mitigate the damage. It's also a welcome extra layer of defense added to our already thick layers.

For this flask I prefer any of Grounding or of Dousing. Whichever one you prefer.

5. This is mostly a free slot, however, Forbidden Taste is incredibly good here. I don't recommend getting it right off the bat since it also does "8% of Maximum Life taken as Chaos Damage per second" and that can really hurt you if your chaos resistance is not good.

For example, if you're lacking resistances you can always use a Bismuth Flask

As for the suffix, it's your call, here's a list of all the suffixes: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/List_of_flask_suffix_mods

How do I get any of these flasks?

Odds are you'll naturally stumble upon these flask in your adventures, just keep an eye out for them. The only exception being Forbidden Taste. Which you can search for here

How do I get these suffixes you keep talking about?

You can use a Orb of alternation(which again, you'll find naturally) on a MAGIC flask.

In path of exile all items come in tiers:

WHITE - plain item, nothing special about it. Notice the name of the item is written in white.

BLUE - magic item, has extra properties that show bellow the item itself. Notice the name of the item is written in blue with some extra stuff before the name of the item itself, in this case.


How do I go from white item to magic item?

You can use an Orb of transmutation on a white item.
"An Orb of Transmutation is a currency item that can be used to upgrade a piece of normal equipment to magic."

Simply right click the orb the left click the item.

I noticed that the flask in the image also has "quality: 20%". What is that?

Quality adds some extra duration(in this case) to your flask, which is a welcome addition.

You can use a Glassblower's Bauble on a flask and it will improve the quality.

IMPORTANT: if you use the Glassblower's Bauble on a WHITE item it will gain 5% quality for each use, up to a total of 20%. If you use a Glassblower's Bauble on a MAGIC(blue) item it will gain 1% quality for each use, up to a total of 20%.

So in short, if you want to craft your own flask the logical path is this:

Find the flask
-> If it has the desired suffixes and prefixes congrats, you can stop here, but lets assume it does not.
-> Use a Orb of scouring on it to make it a WHITE item.
-> Use the Glassblower's Bauble on it to give it 5% quality per use, up to a total of 20% quality.
-> Use a orb of transmutation to make it a BLUE magical item.
-> Use an orb of alteration on it until you get the desired prefixes and suffixes. Do note that you can use orb of alteration multiple times.

If we read the wiki it says "An Orb of Alteration is a currency item that can be used to re-roll the random modifiers on a piece of magic equipment."

on a piece of MAGIC(which we've learned means BLUE) equipment.

I won't give a SUPER detailed guide line on how to level simply because I feel each player levels at their own pace and it would be wrong of me to impose strict rules on your leveling experience. This is after all a game and should be played for fun.

I will however explain how to get some currency and some gear, the gems required, what gems are best to level with etc. So lets get to it.

Unfortunately(or fortunately?) this guide requires some trading, not a big amount of it, but a fair bit. Simply because GGG decided to not give Marauders access to certain gens so they must be bought(unless you want to wait until act VI that is, that's when "Lilly Roth in Act 6 sells all unleveled skill gems after completing the Act 6 quest "Fallen from Grace". See here. But I'm going to assume you don't want to wait until act VI.

Here's a complete list of all quest rewards in the game.

For the first 28 levels you're going to use Molten Strike(or any other gem you feel more comfortable with Molten Strike happens to be accsessible and does good damage) acquired from the quest Enemy at the gate. Just socket it into your weapon, that's fine.

Once you finish Breaking some Eggs grab Ancestral Call Support and equip it in your weapon OR any other piece of equipment that has LINKED sockets.

Example of LINKED sockets:
Example of NOT LINKED sockets:
In this particular image all 4 sockets can be linked. I just happened to link 2 and didn't bother linking the rest. It was just for example's sake.

Once you finish The caged brute quest in Act I you'll get access to Life gain on hit support. Save it, you'll need it for later.

Up until level 28 you'll be playing with Molten Strike and Ancestral Call Support. Or honestly any other skill that you feel comfortable with.

Once you've reached level 28 it's time to do some trading or to switch characters a little(if you have another one).

1. If you have another character that you've leveled up with and can buy gems head on over to it and purchase Herald of Agony from Lily Roth.
1a. If you don't have another character that can purchase gems then head on over to some global channel and ask if somebody can purchase it for you. Of course, offer to pay the price.
1b. If that didn't work, then you're off too pathofexile.com/trade and search for it there.

Repeat this process for all the gems listed bellow, note that some gems can be bought by your character. Firstly check with the vendors.
The following gems are optional, not really required, and apply only if you have a 6 link chest available: Minion Damage Support, Maim Support.

That's it as far as items required.

Gem setup:

NOTE: FINAL GEM SETUP HAS IT'S OWN SECTION BELLOW.

1. Cyclone => Lesser poison support => Life gain on hit support => (optionally) Faster attacks support

2. Herald of Agony => Vicious Projectiles(requires level 18) => Damage on full life(requires level 18) => Pierce support => Minion Damage Support(optional, only for 6 links) => Maim Support(optional, only for 6 links)

This is about it as far as required gems go.

You may have also noticed that you don't have enough dexterity to actually wear any of these gems.
Here's where talents come to the rescue


Do note that these are NOT final talents, they're simply a means to allow wearing the gems at the level you're currently at. If you happen to have some gear that gives dexterity then those talents are not needed.

The final talents are shown in the appropriate section.

If you want a little extra quality of life and easier all around game(and have the items to socket them in):

Deathmark
Flame Dash
Molten Shell

Hatred => Generosity Support

Convocation

Spirit Offering => Projectile Weakness => Cast When Damage Taken => Desecrate

For This particular gem setup order is important, CWDT will proc gems clock wise. So make sure you put Desecrate BEFORE Spirit Offering in a clockwise direction or else you'll find out soon that Spirit Offering does absolutely nothing in the right circumstances.

"=>" means LINKED sockets.

This gem setup is what I consider to be a good balance between survivability and damage. Feel free to tweak it to your own needs.
The number between the parentheses represent gem level and quality. Example: Herald of Agony(21/23) means gem level 21 and 23 quality
If you can't get gems with level 21 and 23 quality don't worry about it too much.

Helm(assuming you have a +2(or 3) to level of socketed minion gems:

Herald of Agony(21/23) => Viciosus Projectiles Support(21/23)/Awakened Viscious Projectiles => Pierce Support(21/23) => Damage on full life support(21/23)

Gloves or Boots:

Life gained on hit support(21/23) => Blood magic support(20/20) OR Lesser Poison Support(6/0) OR Withering Touch(20/0) => Fortify Support(21/23) => Cyclone(1/0)

For Life gained on hit support a simple level 20 gem will do just fine.
Also worth mentioning that you can drop Blood magic support for Lesser Poison Support if you can get a # mana gained for each enemmy hit by your attacks or a -2(3) mana cost of skills on some item.
IN FACT I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU USE LESSER POISON OR WITHERING TOUCH

For that extra damage Withering Touch is great.
If you feel you can't keep virulance stacks up use Lesser Poison.

Example gem with mana gained(+2 should be more than enough):

for Cyclone(1/0) the level is not important. Keep it to level 1 always. Also the quality is completely irrelevant.

Spirit Offering(8/20) => Projectile Weakness(6/20) => Cast when damage taken(2/0) => Desecrate(8/20)

Shield or Weapon:

Convocation(level and quality whatever)
Generosity(21/0) => Hatred(21/0)

Deathmark(21/0)
Flame Dash(21/23)
Molten Shell(21/23)

The most important gem to get level 21 on is Herald of Agony. The rest of the gems aren't THAT important, but get level 21 on them if you can.

With the enchant "Herald of Agony has 30% reduced Mana Reservation" on a helm you can also run Flesh and Stone for either extra damage or extra survivability. Depending on which you prefer. To run that you NEED either an amulet with a socket or you can drop Convocation.

When it comes to gear it's all about what you can afford or what you can craft. Some items go better with some other items. An item that you won't look twice at will complement another item so well that it's worth throwing in.

This section is somewhat split into 2 major sections Low budget and Medium budget and High Budget. Medium and high budget feature Kaom's Hear. If you can't afford Kaom's Heart don't worry, you can do fine without it for quite a while. I was well into red maps before I got mine.
Some items are so cheap and good that they're included regardless of the budget.

If you plan on running Lioneye's Vision use a level 4 Empower(it's expensive tho)

The gems are: Hoag => Minion Damage => Damage on Full Life => Vicious Projectiles => Pierce => Empower
If you don't want to run Empower repalce it with Maim
If you're using Flesh and Stone drop Main and use one of these:
- Hypothermia(you're going to be running Hatred either way)
- Faster Attacks

Thief's Torment is another great and cheap item that you can use. In fact I highly recommend it and would advise you to get it as soon as you can afford it.
Feel free to switch it with Circle Of Nostalgia later on.
I've mentioned it here as to not copy + paste it 3 times.



Dirt cheap. Use this as soon as you can.
It's a MASSIVE boost in damage. And I mean massive.



Great all around shield. Provides a ton of EHP(Effective Health Pool) by providing +4 to MAXIMUM all resistances.

Enchants, anointments and catalysts

HELM ENCHANTS(in order of important):

- Agony crawler has 30% reduced mana reservation. With a 5% reduced mana reservation on another item(helm, amulet) it will allows us to run Hatred + HoAg + Blood and Sand.
- Agony crawlers fires # additional projectiles.

BOOTS ENCHANTS:

- Regenerate 2% of Life per second if you were Hit Recently

GLOVES:

- Commandment of Frost


ANOINTMENT(amulet):

Ravenous Horde
(Opalescent Oil + Opalescent Oil + Verdant Oil)

CATALYSTS:

Fertile Catalyst is usually preferred.

Prismatic Catalyst also works for extra resistances.

Complete list of catalysts. Mix and match to your own needs.

Some people enjoy doing maps, some people enjoy currency flipping or item flipping. Each to their own. On this particular build and considering that it's aimed towards new players I highly recommend doing Eternal Labyrinth runs.
Yes, they can be very profitable, although overall fairly boring, I admit. But the grind is the same, weather you run lab or do maps.
If you enjoy running maps, then by all means have at it. I'm simply saying that maps efficiently requires some game knowledge where as lab requires little to no game knowledge except searching on httts://pathofexile.com/trade for the value of the enchant.

I highly recommend Path of Exile: The Labyrinth Guide by Engineering Eternity. It has everything you need to know about the lab.

Assuming you want to give running lab a shot, here are a few simple guide lines that you should follow:

1. You must finish all the prior requirements for The Lord's Labyrinth. They're explained in depth on the wiki page so I won't go through them.
1a. The The Eternal Labyrinth trials are fairly hard to come by naturally, so here's how most people get them:
- open up the chat by pressing enter and type /global 820
- there are a total of 6 ETERNAL trials:
--- Trial of Piercing Truth, showcasing Spike traps
--- Trial of Swirling Fear, showcasing Spinning blades
--- Trial of Crippling Grief, showcasing Sawblades
--- Trial of Burning Rage, showcasing Furnace traps
--- Trial of Lingering Pain, showcasing Blade sentries
--- Trial of Stinging Doubt, showcasing Dart traps
- once in global 820 simply type "Looking for trial of piercing truth" or whatever trial you're looking for.
- you'll get a party invite, in the upper left corner of the screen you'll see the portrait of whoever invited you, right click the portrait and "visit hideout"
- find his maps device and you'll see some portal open, enter one of them, finish the trial
2. Go to https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/ and search for Starkonja's Head. But a few of them, they're usually pretty cheap.
3. Once you reach the end room in the lab enchant the head.
4. If you get a good enchant, gratz, you're rich.
5. Didn't get a good enchant? Rinse and repeat.

Do note that almost all enchants are worth something. Be it 5 chaos or 15 exalts. If you're patient you can sell most.

Each lab run will NEED a offering to the goddess, sooner or later you're gonna run out of them. So why not offer to run people through lab. It's pretty easy, just /join global 820 and offer your services. Something like "Uber lab carry, your offering, my loot (EU)". Where EU is whatever continent you're on.

Each person in a party will make Izaro harder, so careful. Also each person gets access to their own Shrine of Enchantnment so don't worry. You can still enchant stuff.

If you're a new player and are patient you will make currency running lab. That's a guarantee, there's literally now way you can lose money. Period. If you're not dying that is. If you spend a few hours running lab, mark my words, you will be able to afford pretty good gear. Perhaps even fund you next exile.