[3.18] Wallach's Siege Ballista Hierophant (Enjoy Consistent Character Balance)

So, a couple of noob questions, since I was able to play FP totems to endgame on two occasions and understood the upgrades and major "inflexion points", so to speak, but not so sure here (never played a stat stacker).

All from the perspective of a slower/more casual player, I'll probably get to maps over the weekend at best, not day 1, and then to red maps over days, not hours.

1. Before, I was able to switch to FP almost from the start of maps. How does the HFT + WoC setup pre-transition fare in white maps? Can it do at least *some* up to a point, or is it going to be one of the cases where I'll smash my face into maps hard, take 2 minutes to kill map bosses etc.? I'm looking for just enough to farm up initial currency for my transition to SB in something more interesting than Blood Aqueducts...

2. How does the initial "minimal build" fare? Meaning: basic jamz (Rain, Brawn, Motion), Hyrris chest or just some life/dex crap, the bow (5L), Astramentis, Fractal, Hyrri's Bite, and crap rares in other slots. Can it get to red maps somewhat easily, or is it again a case of hitting a wall at red maps until I farm up more gear?

3. What would you say are the most important mid- to late-game upgrades to take in terms of cost versus gain?

Hello folks,

I just finished updating the thread for preliminary 3.17 changes, mainly to do with the leveling guide suggestions (now leveling with Explosive Arrow ballistae rather than trying to use Holy Flame Totem for the full campaign) as well as updating the PoB as much as I can for act-by-act skill trees to go along with the guide and such.

Please feel free to look through the new leveling section and let me know if you have questions or see any errors / typos anywhere as it is very late at the time I am finish this up.

Awesome, thanks for the new leveling guide. The build got me to 36 challenges quite comfortably in 3.16.

i have kinda stupid question. any1 knows what happens to hyrris demise? what about vendor recept for hyrris bite ?

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anti4z500 wrote:

i have kinda stupid question. any1 knows what happens to hyrris demise?

That and Wildwrap should drop randomly from map bosses same as most of the prophecy items.

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anti4z500 wrote:

i have kinda stupid question. any1 knows what happens to hyrris demise? what about vendor recept for hyrris bite ?

Fated Conflict node on Atlas tree - "Unique Bosses have 80% increased chance to drop a Fated Unique Item"

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rurt wrote:

So, a couple of noob questions, since I was able to play FP totems to endgame on two occasions and understood the upgrades and major "inflexion points", so to speak, but not so sure here (never played a stat stacker).

All from the perspective of a slower/more casual player, I'll probably get to maps over the weekend at best, not day 1, and then to red maps over days, not hours.

1. Before, I was able to switch to FP almost from the start of maps. How does the HFT + WoC setup pre-transition fare in white maps? Can it do at least *some* up to a point, or is it going to be one of the cases where I'll smash my face into maps hard, take 2 minutes to kill map bosses etc.? I'm looking for just enough to farm up initial currency for my transition to SB in something more interesting than Blood Aqueducts...

2. How does the initial "minimal build" fare? Meaning: basic jamz (Rain, Brawn, Motion), Hyrris chest or just some life/dex crap, the bow (5L), Astramentis, Fractal, Hyrri's Bite, and crap rares in other slots. Can it get to red maps somewhat easily, or is it again a case of hitting a wall at red maps until I farm up more gear?

3. What would you say are the most important mid- to late-game upgrades to take in terms of cost versus gain?

I think to question 1, now that I've changed the leveling guide to use EA ballista over HFT, you should be fine to deal with early map progression. A lot of folks will just stay EA ballista for the entire league starter, so there are plenty of resources for seeing how that build shakes out, but it more than equipped to do white and yellow maps before you swap to SB. It just requires you to pay attention to a few key aspects that are mentioned in the guide and the PoB notes section (no added fire damage, no pierce, high APS basically).

To question 2, I think once you get swapped over to SB you will find the progression is actually very smooth. A lot of your early core pieces are not that expensive (outside of the inevitable spike on Rain of Splinters due to the aforementioned EA ballista popularity), and you shouldn't have any real issues hitting a wall during atlas progression due to needing some really expensive single piece of gear to progress. That's one of the things I really liked about learning this build last league was that there feels like a lot of granularity to the gear progression. There's no big ticket item you need to build up to to get over a progression hump like there used to be with FP totems and Atziri's Reflection (before Viridi's was ever in the game).

Maybe some of the other folks who have leveled into this build recently can share their experiences. This isn't a tanky build, but neither is FP totems so I feel like if you've played that into endgame you should have a pretty similar experience here.

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Wallach wrote:

Hello folks,

I just finished updating the thread for preliminary 3.17 changes, mainly to do with the leveling guide suggestions (now leveling with Explosive Arrow ballistae rather than trying to use Holy Flame Totem for the full campaign) as well as updating the PoB as much as I can for act-by-act skill trees to go along with the guide and such.

Please feel free to look through the new leveling section and let me know if you have questions or see any errors / typos anywhere as it is very late at the time I am finish this up.

For leveling, how did you intend to proc EE? Without a Hyrri's Bite available from a vendor recipe, are we just hoping for some sort of cold/lightning to attacks?

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ThePile wrote:

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Wallach wrote:

Hello folks,

I just finished updating the thread for preliminary 3.17 changes, mainly to do with the leveling guide suggestions (now leveling with Explosive Arrow ballistae rather than trying to use Holy Flame Totem for the full campaign) as well as updating the PoB as much as I can for act-by-act skill trees to go along with the guide and such.

Please feel free to look through the new leveling section and let me know if you have questions or see any errors / typos anywhere as it is very late at the time I am finish this up.

For leveling, how did you intend to proc EE? Without a Hyrri's Bite available from a vendor recipe, are we just hoping for some sort of cold/lightning to attacks?

I should probably spell that out, yeah. You can actually still craft Hyrri's Bite from what I understand - it was not one of the items where they removed the base or Fated version - but you would need one source of either cold or lightning damage. Either on the bow, quiver, gloves or a jewelry piece.

Thank you for the update Wallach (and all your previous work of course!) Just a tidbit question here as I've also never done stat stacking. In the POB you have Str & Int equal from the basic gear shown, you would need to get Str on one of your rares or gems to trigger the Fractal Thoughts Dex % bonus correct?


Looking forward to trying out the EA totem leveling style, every time I use HFT in a build I always feel like it starts to tickle things when I hit maps, so hopefully this plays out better :) I only REALLY got to try FP pre-gutting once and it was glorious, so looking forward to giving this a solid attempt!