⛵☁️[3.25] The Arachnophobia Allstars| Chaos Guardian CI|The dirty Scorpion-tail|Herald of Agony 150M+

Hello! First of all, thanks for this incredible build!
It's my first time trying to build it and I feel a little overwhelmed with so much data.

https://pobb.in/mjzWevTfgouW

For now this is my PoB, I feel that it is almost impossible to kill me even if I have some shortcomings.
But above all my problem comes from damage, I don't know if I have something configured wrong or if I am doing something wrong.
Can someone give me a hand? What is the next step to improve the build?

Thanks a lot!
Last edited by BORJAGON9 on Jan 11, 2024, 3:48:13 PM
Swap damage on full life for empower and get an awakened minion damage, herald of agony scales incredibly well with additional gem levels, especially if you do manage to hit level 31 where the attack speed per virulence increases. Additionally you need to cap your chance to poison in order to maintain high virulence against a single target, I do not think you currently have it capped (25% from herald of agony + 25% on the tree is only 50% chance to poison, running chance to poison support would help significantly but would require swapping gravens for a decent crystal belt and would reduce survivability vs ele damage a bit). Additionally you are running the wrong gloves, 6 link on your virulence stacker is not actually that useful unless you're using it to get chance to poison and run a CwC set up with power charge on crit for gravens. You will deal massively more damage by swapping over to a 4x white socket triad grip to convert all of the agony crawler's damage to chaos. Additionally one of your nostalgias has the wrong mod, you do basically no damage, your chaos damage does not matter, instead get a second res efficiency/crawler damage circle. You should also take the left side of the chaos damage wheel near the top left of the tree and chaos mastery for +1 HoA levels, you are missing an enormous amount of damage from the increased wither effect and + gem level. Furthermore you did not cap your minion poison chance, three ghastly eye jewels totalling at least 40% chance to poison should significantly increase your dps.
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EHP is shown as infinite because the average recovery on block is high enough that it is functionally impossible for a normal monster to kill you, turn off the show recovery on block or whatever its called option in the config portion of PoB to look for ehp improvements, however if you are getting onehit, you don't care about ehp you want more max hit. For this and many other builds ehp is a worthless indicator, what you want is as much max hit and as much recovery as you can possibly get.

Also your single biggest issue is just your generally low ES pool. 4k es will still see you get randomly onehit a lot, you want something like a phys max hit of 20kish to do sim without needing to worry about a onehit. The suppression wheels are only really going to help against some ubers and oftentimes suppress just won't be enough and your only option is to block or dodge. I'd recommend dropping most of the stuff on the right side and grabbing an es wheel + es mastery for a bunch more survivability and armor and es mastery for 10% less phys taken.


Thanks so much for this reply, it really helped me a lot.

I managed to switch around a few pieces to get some ES nodes, without giving up the 100% spell supp (which is also what gies me 100% ailment immunity), so got me about 1000 more ES which feels great + I switched aura implicits on ring to get my phys max up to above 21K.

One question I have is about defensive keystones. Right know I have ghost dance and lethe shade, but I dont know how important they are for my survivability, what is your view there? + is Wicked ward worth adding in (either with the other 2 or instead of one of them)?

Thanks SO much for the help.

If helpful, here is my POB https://pobb.in/kOwg2o1rkPJ7
Ghost dance is mostly just a little bit of a safety net for your build in that it will help keep your es up when you fail to block but don't get oneshot. Lethe shade is huge against degens but in general should not be allocated unless you are doing specific fights with degens as it has little use otherwise and can make any ailment you aren't immune to much worse to deal with. If at all possible I would recommend freeing up 4 points to take the left side of the chaos damage wheel over at witch and chaos mastery +1 chaos gems/lose 10% life on using chaos skill, its basically a free +1 to HoA and increased wither effect is a bonus to a damage multiplier that isn't very loaded. Wicked ward on this build is very nearly useless, recovery on block means that you should be basically always at full es in a dense environment, vaal discipline as the panic button does wicked wards job but vastly more reliably and longer when fighting a single dangerous enemy, its not far out of your way but it doesn't actually help the build that much since you still need to stop taking damage long enough to get the recovery started and then it offers a 4 second grace period in which your es recharge cannot be canceled by damage.

Also why are you running despair on hit gloves and the actual despair curse, from what I remember the despair on hit will functionally always override the cast curse so theres no real benefit to running it. If nothing else maybe swap it out for a golem? Lightning and Chaos are both pretty good options for this build and you wouldn't even need to change around socket colors. Or swap in temporal chains, since you appear to have whispers of doom allocated, temp chains got nerfed a lot in 3.22 but its still 25% more poison damage and a bit of enemies act slower.
Last edited by CarbotZergling123 on Jan 12, 2024, 10:22:29 PM
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Ghost dance is mostly just a little bit of a safety net for your build in that it will help keep your es up when you fail to block but don't get oneshot. Lethe shade is huge against degens but in general should not be allocated unless you are doing specific fights with degens as it has little use otherwise and can make any ailment you aren't immune to much worse to deal with. If at all possible I would recommend freeing up 4 points to take the left side of the chaos damage wheel over at witch and chaos mastery +1 chaos gems/lose 10% life on using chaos skill, its basically a free +1 to HoA and increased wither effect is a bonus to a damage multiplier that isn't very loaded. Wicked ward on this build is very nearly useless, recovery on block means that you should be basically always at full es in a dense environment, vaal discipline as the panic button does wicked wards job but vastly more reliably and longer when fighting a single dangerous enemy, its not far out of your way but it doesn't actually help the build that much since you still need to stop taking damage long enough to get the recovery started and then it offers a 4 second grace period in which your es recharge cannot be canceled by damage.

Also why are you running despair on hit gloves and the actual despair curse, from what I remember the despair on hit will functionally always override the cast curse so theres no real benefit to running it. If nothing else maybe swap it out for a golem? Lightning and Chaos are both pretty good options for this build and you wouldn't even need to change around socket colors. Or swap in temporal chains, since you appear to have whispers of doom allocated, temp chains got nerfed a lot in 3.22 but its still 25% more poison damage and a bit of enemies act slower.


Thank you again for the reply, I appreciate it and its very helpful.

I tried running some juiced maps yesterday without lethe and ghost dance, and like you say I dont really feel any difference.

I can free up the points to go and do the +1 chaos gems, but if I have these 4 points, isnt it more valuable to add another medium cluster with Pure Agony / Cult-leader for the extra virulence/herald damage?

Regarding your question on Despair, I have to manually cast it too because of Balance of Terror (inflict whither + curse immune). For Whispers of Doom, I am running snipers mark which helps a lot with single target in addition to my despair.
I am not actually certain on the exact breakpoints for efficiency on another cult-leader/pure agony cluster vs the wither wheel with +1 chaos mastery but it looks life you've already got +20 virulence from clusters, and the new quality is +5 as well iirc. 65 max virulence is incredibly difficult to sustain against a single target, 70 should be harder still if you even have a viable medium cluster socket for it. The wither wheel is going to be more reliable damage against single targets unless you can reliably sustain the increased virulences, which I am uncertain of, blazing salvo + returning projectiles hits a lot but I ran into issues using storm burst + woke CwC ball lightning w 100% poison chance not being enough to sustain more than 60 virulences reliably against a single target last league. Additionally there is the virulence effect breakpoint to consider, at level 31 the agony crawler attack speed bonus from each virulence increases, hitting that is worth significantly more than 5 more virulence and some increased minion damage. Your herald of agony is currently level (21 (gem) + 2 (lords) + 5 (empower) + 1 (woke minion damage)) 29, the chaos mastery is unfortunately not quite enough on its own to bring you to the increased aa speed breakpoint, have you considered swapping auls to a herald of agony replica dragonfang and anointing champion of the cause? With the res efficiency nerf to dragonfang in 3.23 it may not quite work allow you to stack all the auras aul's does anymore but it is a significant damage increase, you may however need to anoint champion of the cause instead of soul of steel to fit everything.
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I am not actually certain on the exact breakpoints for efficiency on another cult-leader/pure agony cluster vs the wither wheel with +1 chaos mastery but it looks life you've already got +20 virulence from clusters, and the new quality is +5 as well iirc. 65 max virulence is incredibly difficult to sustain against a single target, 70 should be harder still if you even have a viable medium cluster socket for it. The wither wheel is going to be more reliable damage against single targets unless you can reliably sustain the increased virulences, which I am uncertain of, blazing salvo + returning projectiles hits a lot but I ran into issues using storm burst + woke CwC ball lightning w 100% poison chance not being enough to sustain more than 60 virulences reliably against a single target last league. Additionally there is the virulence effect breakpoint to consider, at level 31 the agony crawler attack speed bonus from each virulence increases, hitting that is worth significantly more than 5 more virulence and some increased minion damage. Your herald of agony is currently level (21 (gem) + 2 (lords) + 5 (empower) + 1 (woke minion damage)) 29, the chaos mastery is unfortunately not quite enough on its own to bring you to the increased aa speed breakpoint, have you considered swapping auls to a herald of agony replica dragonfang and anointing champion of the cause? With the res efficiency nerf to dragonfang in 3.23 it may not quite work allow you to stack all the auras aul's does anymore but it is a significant damage increase, you may however need to anoint champion of the cause instead of soul of steel to fit everything.


Makes sense with the sustain of the 70 virulences against singletarget, that would indeed be hard - currently struggle to even stay at 50 singletarget.

My Herald is actually 30 at the moment, not 29 (21 (gem) + 2 (Lords) + 5 (empower) + 1 (awak. minion) + 1 (awak. void manip you missed this one). So I would go to 31 with the added chaos tree point.

Where do you see though that 31 is the breakpoint, if I look on the wiki (https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Herald_of_Agony), it looks like it jumps to 6% at 29 not 31?
Huh, I remember there being discussion in the PF thread for this build of wanting to hit lvl 31 specifically for the attack speed increase, the breakpoints may have changed at some point since that discussion though, I think it was some pretty old posts. If you cannot sustain your maximum virulences against a single target then raising the gem level is worth vastly more than increased max virulences because this build does not struggle in high enemy density environments, its biggest vulnerabilities are when fighting single enemies who hit sufficiently hard that failing to block 2 or 3 hits in a row is basically immediately lethal and going for maximum virulences that you cannot sustain vs a single target just makes fighting map bosses and pinnacles even harder then it already is.
https://pobb.in/dyYYES-O0kyF

Hi, so I have a few empowered gems leveling in my weapon swap which I'm working on to power up my build. Still need to get enlightened

not 100% sure what to do from here - I was going to upgrade the boots to hit 100 % spell suppression but then that stuffs up my resists which are currently capped

I was thinking I can just use charms instead of boots to get 100 % spell suppress (just need another 15%) - my charms are only minion apply poison chance right now

At this stage I can survive most things which are not juiced, still have to run around a fair bit. Not sure what the point was getting determination implicit in the shield instead of a gem - it doesn't' get the mana reservation bonus from the head and I haven't got enough spare mana to run envy yet

I have 10 divines I can use - any idea on what to do next?

Also is there anyway to slow down the virulence stack reduction? Seems like after 1 second it starts dissapearing which means DPS suffers alot if there are things to dodge


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Swap damage on full life for empower and get an awakened minion damage, herald of agony scales incredibly well with additional gem levels, especially if you do manage to hit level 31 where the attack speed per virulence increases. Additionally you need to cap your chance to poison in order to maintain high virulence against a single target, I do not think you currently have it capped (25% from herald of agony + 25% on the tree is only 50% chance to poison, running chance to poison support would help significantly but would require swapping gravens for a decent crystal belt and would reduce survivability vs ele damage a bit). Additionally you are running the wrong gloves, 6 link on your virulence stacker is not actually that useful unless you're using it to get chance to poison and run a CwC set up with power charge on crit for gravens. You will deal massively more damage by swapping over to a 4x white socket triad grip to convert all of the agony crawler's damage to chaos. Additionally one of your nostalgias has the wrong mod, you do basically no damage, your chaos damage does not matter, instead get a second res efficiency/crawler damage circle. You should also take the left side of the chaos damage wheel near the top left of the tree and chaos mastery for +1 HoA levels, you are missing an enormous amount of damage from the increased wither effect and + gem level. Furthermore you did not cap your minion poison chance, three ghastly eye jewels totalling at least 40% chance to poison should significantly increase your dps.


thanks for your advices!

I have moved some things on the tree and changed some other items. Now I have HoA at level 31 although I have lost some things. I'm finding it quite difficult to balance the build so that it does enough damage but at the same time is almost immortal.
Although I notice that I do do a lot more damage, and I know that I still have to overcome the chance of poison with minions.
Mana is also a problem at this point, I would need to get some more reserve efficiency.
And on the other hand, are the gems I have okay? I'm not referring to the HoA but to the rest. I'm confused with all the possibilities of the POB.

https://pobb.in/-3kkBnKRiBB1

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