Herald of Thorns – CwDT + Punishment + Shackles (a SC viable alternative to Scold’s or CoC)
 ---- BUILD INTRODUCTION ----
Build Concept
The following are the main design goals I wanted to achieve for this build:
1) Damaging enemies based on the amount of damage received. 2) Somehow dealing damage to yourself to increase effectiveness of #1 3) Viable in late-game maps.
Build Design
"
Damage Scaling
Cast when Damage Taken seems like the most obvious solution here, but we need multiple triggered spells to offset the large % Less Damage modifier.
Low level CwDT gems also means low base spell damage on our triggered spells, so % increases aren’t very beneficial on their own. We need a way to increase the base damage of triggered spells such as: We could also utilize critical hits if possible to further boost the damage. "
Self-Cursing
“Curses in this item are reflected back at you.”
Why is this useful? We rely on damage taken to trigger CwDT. This allows us to cast Punishment on ourselves and constantly be triggering and controlling the damage we take. We reflect x% of the physical damage we deal back on ourselves. Isn’t that annoying? Not if we can sustain it, which I will cover later. The punishment curse itself is easy to apply since you only have to cast it every 9-11 seconds on a single curse-able enemy. This does mean that curse immune maps render it useless, but curse immune enemies aren’t bad at all as long as you have something else around to target.
Reflect Damage Source
Once we cast Punishment on ourselves, we need a way to deal physical damage that can then be reflected and trigger CwDT. We will use Glacial Cascade to do this for a few reasons: • It deals a small amount of physical damage unlike EK which would reflect too much damage. • It scales with spell damage - just like our CwDT spells - to give us another layer of damage. • It needs few support gems to function, and scales well with Apep’s Rage, HoI, and HoT. • It has a 6% base crit chance, which is enough to consider utilizing crit.
Reflect Damage Triggers
This part is a little confusing, and requires a slight understanding of the CwDT trigger gem.
How CwDT Works
• One CwDT gem can be linked to multiple spells, but each spell has its own local 250ms cooldown and damage taken threshold. • Multiples of the same spell gem share the same cooldown and damage taken threshold, meaning CwDT + Spark + Spark does not trigger 2 instances of Spark. The same is true if linking Spark to two separate CwDT gems. • If the spell already has a cooldown (such as Cold Snap or Enduring Cry) then that cooldown applies as well and must be satisfied (or bypassed) before triggering again. • Level 2 CwDT has the highest damage dealt:taken ratio. This means that theoretically you deal the most damage with a level 2 CwDT for the amount of damage you must take, due to the level curve of the gem. • You do not need to be dealt the full damage threshold of CwDT at once to trigger it. It has a counter that resets only after entering a new instance, so taking a bunch of small hits will trigger it eventually. • You can only support CwDT with spells that have the same or lower level requirement as CwDT. For example, a level 2 CwDT would work linked to a level 9 Spark, but not a level 10 Spark. Basically, we want to trigger as many different CwDT spells as we can as frequently as possible. I give my suggestions for spells to link to CwDT in the build guide below, but here are the important factors when selecting a spell for CwDT: • High damage effectiveness – this helps us deal the most base damage when adding Apep’s Rage, HoI, and HoT in the mix. Avoid spells like Ball Lightning. • Inherent multi-targeting – We want to make sure each of our spells connects with as many enemies as possible to avoid needing tons of support gems. Avoid spells like Ice Spear. • No cooldowns – To keep things simple, we want to avoid spells with cooldowns to trigger as many spells as possible, without the need for bypassing cooldowns. Avoid spells like Cold Snap.
Sustaining Reflect Damage
This is perhaps the most difficult part to calculate. We need to make sure that we are able to leech, regen, or somehow sustain the damage we take. Remember, we are reflecting the physical portion of Glacial Cascade back on ourselves, and we want to trigger our CwDT’s with it, but we don’t want to kill ourselves. This is how we do just that:
• Mind over Matter (Cloak of Defiance) + Eldritch Battery: MoM + EB allows us to take some damage on our mana pool. Note that this is still considered taking damage and adds to our damage taken threshold, but it is much easier to regen. • Life Leech + Vaal Pact: The classic way to get around reflect damage. We will need to leech enough to cover the leftover damage that isn’t distributed to our mana pool. It works best with many small hits since none of the leech is wasted. "
How far can the build go?
This is the final question in any build creation process. From here we can begin to discuss the gear, passives, and playstyle needed to progress. Before we continue on to the full build guide, let's take a look at all we have gathered.
Recap of Build So Far: • Uniques: Shackles of the Wretched, Apep’s Rage, Cloak of Defiance • Skills: Glacial Cascade, Punishment, Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder, CwDT (2+) • Passives: Vaal Pact, Eldritch Battery, Spell Damage, Spell Crit Just looking at these key points you can begin to see the build’s skeleton. In the next section I will go over the final build design and I can explain the choices I made and demonstrate its playstyle. ---- FULL BUILD GUIDE (UPDATED FOR 1.3) ----
Reflect Damage and Sustain
In case you didn't read the intro, here's the TL;DR of how the build should work:
• Cast Punishment socketed in Shackles of the Wretched to curse myself. • Cast Glacial Cascade, reflecting the portion of physical damage back onto myself. • Trigger multiple Cast when Damage Taken spells to fire off, targeting the monsters that reflected the damage. Now, the hard part is trying to sustain this damage you deal to yourself. We discussed that both Cloak of Defiance + Eldritch Battery and Life Leech + Vaal Pact are important to spread damage taken between life and mana and leech it back instantly. In order to make sure that works properly I'm going to walk through an example interaction with Glacial Cascade reflect. EXAMPLE: Lvl 17 Glacial Cascade + Lvl 17 Herald of Thunder + Lvl 19 Herald of Ice + Apep’s Rage = 64–98 Physical Damage + 118–178 Cold Damage + (.8 * [9-129 Lightning Damage + 48-64 Cold Damage + 65-105 Chaos Damage]) =~79 Physical Damage + ~193 Cold Damage + ~55 Lightning Damage + ~68 Chaos Damage Now we multiply by: • 28% increased cold damage • 20% increased elemental damage • 12% increased area damage • 92% increased spell damage = ~161 Physical Damage + ~486 Cold Damage + ~139 Lightning Damage + ~139 Chaos Damage = ~925 Total Damage per hit Now if we are using a level 1 Punishment, then we are reflecting 28% of all physical damage. Meaning we take ~45 damage per hit, but 30% of that goes to our mana pool, so we really only take ~31 damage per hit to our life pool. We are also using a level 17 Life Leech linked to Glacial Cascade, so we leech 7.9% of all damage. This comes out to ~73 life leeched – but we are using Vaal Pact, so we only actually get 40% of that, meaning ~30 life leeched per hit. Now although that seems too close for comfort, there are a lot of things that improve my leech that I find too hard to calculate: • Critical hits (50%+ crit chance) • Arctic Armour • Warlord's Mark (5.4% life leech is HUGE) • WM leech from CwDT spells • Most casts of GC hit the same enemy at least twice, which helps build up the CwDT threshold Basically, AA makes it so that non-crit reflect barely damages me, but crit reflect does. But because I am critting, there is a much higher gap between the amount of elemental/chaos damage I’m dealing and the physical damage, so I’m able to leech more than I reflect. Also, Once Warlord’s Mark goes off I leech MUCH more health from mobs afflicted by it. It’s important to level up Punishment if you go this route to about the same level as your AA, as my own little rule of thumb. This way you don’t deal too little or too much damage to yourself. I hope that all makes sense, but if not you can check out the videos I will have added that show in detail the effects of leech versus reflect.
Skills
4L Glacial Cascade (Reflect Source)
• Required 3L: Glacial Cascade + Life Leech + PCoC
• Last Link: + Inc Crit Strikes, Spell Echo, or Conc. Effect Glacial Cascade is used to deal a small amount of physical damage and reflect it back on yourself to trigger your CwDT setups. It also serves as a nice layer of additional damage, leeches life, and grants power charges.
5L & 4L CwDT (Damage Triggers)
• 5L: CwDT (lvl 2) + Freezing Pulse (lvl 9/20%) + Arctic Breath (lvl 2) + GMP + Added Chaos
• 4L: CwDT (lvl 2) + Ice Nova (lvl 9/20%) + Glacial Cascade (lvl 8) + Added Chaos These seem to put out the most damage of all my experimenting. Freezing Pulse and Arctic Breath GMP can both shotgun, making for great up-close damage. Ice Nova hits the largest AoE and Glacial Cascade is just really good for its multiple hits. Added Chaos seemed to fit best on both of these instead of another skill. Quality on Freezing Pulse and Ice Nova is highly recommended. You could try to utilize other skills like Fireball, Arc, Ice Spear, Ethereal Knives, or Frost Wall – but they seemed subpar compared to the above setup. I would avoid pretty much every other spell not listed because they either don’t target reliably (Spark/Shock Nova) or have terrible damage effectiveness (Firestorm/Incinerate), but feel free to experiment!
Utility Gems
• Unlinked: Lightning Warp, Punishment, and Arctic Armour
Lightning Warp for mobility, Punishment in Shackles of the Wretched to self-curse, and AA to reduce some of the physical damage taken. AA may seem counterproductive, but I will explain later. • 3L Auto-curses: CwDT (lvl 1) + Warlord's Mark (lvl 5) + Assassin's Mark (lvl 5) These are really important for survivability. If you have dual curse with Doedre’s Damning or a +1 amulet, Warlord’s Mark + Assassin’s Mark is key. Warlord’s Mark allows you to leech all damage and is required to sustain, but Assassin’s Mark allows you to crit harder and more often which also helps clear speed. • 3L Auras: Herald of Thunder + Herald of Ice + Clarity HoT and HoI buff base spell damage for all of our triggered spells, and Clarity helps sustain our mana pool with MoM and AA. We don’t even need Reduced Mana here because they only take up ~60-65% of our mana pool. • 2L Decoy Totem: CwDT (lvl 1/2) + Decoy Totem (lvl 8/9) Decoy Totem is huge for survivability. We don’t want to use Enduring Cry + Immortal Call here because we would then be immune to our reflect damage while IC is active, meaning less explosions. Decoy Totem fills this role by redirecting agro and is almost permanently active/recast.
Gear
Required Uniques: Mods on Gear (in order of importance): • Wand: Apep’s Rage (required) • Body Armour: Cloak of Defiance (required) • Shield: Spell crit, mana regen, life, energy shield, resistances, and spell damage. • Helmet: Life, energy shield, and resistances. • Boots: Life, movespeed, resistances, and energy shield • Gloves: Shackles of the Wretched (required) • Belt: Life, strength, resistances • Amulet & Rings: Life, resistances, mana regen, dexterity, crit chance/multi, +1 curses (optional) • Flasks: Instant life flasks, Quicksilver flask, Atziri's Promise (optional), remove bleed, remove freeze, etc.
Decent Gear Example
Endgame Gear Example
Coming Soon...
Passives
Bandits: • Normal: Help Oak (+40 Life) • Cruel: Kill All (+1 Passive Point) • Merciless: Help Alira (+1 Maximum Power Charge) From there you can continue to pick up more % mana regen, crit multi, spell damage, or life on the passive tree.
Leveling
I leveled as a Glacial Cascade build. I just used GC + Added Lightning + Added Chaos as soon as I could to ease my way into Merciless. Pretty much as soon as you hit level 62 and can equip Apep's Rage you can switch over to the Shackles + CwDT playstyle. You could just as easily level as Freezing Pulse, Arc, Flameblast, or any other spell. Not much need for respeccing points either.
Videos
I would just like start out saying that I am a very casual player that forgets to use quicksilvers, picks up mostly everything valuable, and takes the time to kill stragglers. Because of this I have pretty slow clearspeed. The build itself doesn't have amazing DPS, but I know it could perform a lot better in the hands of someone else. Maybe sometime I will try to race through a Gorge, since I'm fairly certain I could get a sub 6-minute run. Here's a video showing some gameplay in a white Gorge map, and also a %rare monster + totems Bazaar map: https://youtu.be/EkrgL3_SZ3U Here's a video of me AFK-ing in Merciless Docks to show the CwDT damage: https://youtu.be/jXV0FyR0GWs
Build Variations
• Rime Gaze - This is a great addition and you can use it on your GC setup for an extra link. Unfortunately I could not spare the resists or life or else it would be part of the main build. • Doryani's Invitation (cold) - This belt would help with leech, but we don't really want armour and life is too important on a belt. • Void Battery - This could quite possibly outrank Apep's, but it's much too expensive. • Other Classes - Scion is quite doable with the 1.3 skill tree. You basically trade off ~20% spell damage for the opportunity to grab more % inc. AoE nodes. Not worth it to me, though.
FAQ
Why do you refer to it as an alternative to Scold's or CoC? What makes it similar and what makes it different?
• It's similar to CoC and Scold's in how it looks. You are auto-casting spells on triggering effects. • It is not quite as lag-enducing as either of those. • It is cheap compared to both. • Scold's is a Torment-exclusive unique. • Scold's cannot target enemies with projectiles, where this build can. You are forced to use AoE skills like Molten Shell or Discharge with Scold's. • CoC cannot trigger from spells, where this build can. You have to rely on all your damage from the triggered spells on CoC, leaving your weapon-triggering attack weak. This build uses a spell to trigger other spells, meaning we can scale all damage sources easily. • It will have slower clearspeed than both CoC and Scold's, but it makes up for it in creativity! =)
Doesn't AA feel counterproductive?
Yes and no. Without AA active you will simply take too much damage and you won't be able to sustain it. With AA active you do notice fewer CwDT procs, but every crit on 2+ enemies will guarantee a proc, and anywhere else you just need a couple hits. It feels like a happy medium to me, and you have a little more mitigation against enemy attacks. I don't know the exact math behind the benefit of AA, I just know that it helps. If you do level AA, you will need a higher level Punishment though. I try to keep them both around the same level.
What's sort of budget would I need to make this build?
I think a budget of about 6 exalted would be enough. Your main costs are going to be the Cloak of Defiance 5L and Apep's Rage, both about 2 ex each. After that the remaining gear should be around 1 ex. You can use Doedre's Damning if you can't find a decent +1 curses amulet. You can then spend your remaining 1 ex on a 20% quality gem, either Frost Pulse or Ice Nova. These prices are Standard only, but I imagine prices on a temp league would be quite similar mid-way through.
Why don't you use Elemental Weakness or all the % Elemental Damage passive nodes nearby?
Because I don't deal 100% elemental damage. I try to grab % spell damage instead so that my physical and chaos damage is buffed as well. Elemental Weakness would be a nice third curse, but it falls short to Assassin's Mark in my case, and Warlord's Mark is invaluable for sustain.
What are the biggest dangers of the build? What sort of things do you really need to watch out for?
• Corrupting Blood = carry a remove bleed flask • Elemental Reflect = not a very big issue because we don't deal 100% elemental damage. You will notice your CwDT proccing more often though and if that is a problem then carry a remove curse flask to get rid of Punishment. • Physical Reflect = not usually a problem at all due to the nature of the build. • Curse Immune maps = you won't be able to curse yourself. • Curse Immune enemies = just curse something else nearby first to get Punishment going. • Armoured enemies = makes it difficult to trigger CwDT, but you could turn off AA. • Elemental resistant enemies = you don't quite leech as much life, but its not really an issue. • Blood Magic and Half/No Regen maps = I wouldn't run them. • Certain map bosses/exiles = what build doesn't have a problem with those?
Why do you have 3 curses when you can only apply 2?
It's true, I use Punishment, Warlord's Mark, and Assassin's Mark and I only have a +1 curse amulet, meaning only 2 of these curses apply to enemies. The thing is, I don't care if Punishment stays on the enemy, I only cast it so that it can be reflected on myself. After that is done, I will gladly let Warlord's and Assassin's Mark overwrite it. Think of Punishment as more of a buff then a curse. I don't need to apply it to every pack, I just need to cast it every 9-11 seconds to keep it active.
Is this build HC viable?
Not for me. Don't get me wrong, I don't die often with this build at all, I'm just not a HC player. It seems to me that dealing damage to yourself is not the way to approach HC, and could lead to some sticky situations if you encounter, say, an elemental reflect pack that casts vulnerability on you and also has powerful crits or something. I would love to see someone try it in a HC environment, but that's not gonna be me. Other questions will be added. Thanks for reading! Always looking for constructive criticism! =) Guild: [BLÍSS] Brothers w/o Banners - Rank: Officer Standard IGN: sowen_deashot Standard Shop: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/530290 Herald of Thorns Build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1240012 Last edited by sowen on Apr 8, 2015, 2:17:03 PM
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I would love to see a video of this.
IGN - Blackdepp
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fail.
ign:
Perandus SC: Chthonian_ 87+ flamme totam x2 GIMP_shdw, shadow 90+ clawtank _FIRE_IN_THE_HOLE_, witch 96+ mjollnir | |
" Video will be coming soon. Right now I'm only level 73 with it, but i can clear lvl 70-73 maps pretty easily. Guild: [BLÍSS] Brothers w/o Banners - Rank: Officer
Standard IGN: sowen_deashot Standard Shop: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/530290 Herald of Thorns Build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1240012 | |
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A couple basic videos added. Nothing crazy hard. I am only level 73-74 in the videos so I want to level up a little more before I attempt harder maps.
Guild: [BLÍSS] Brothers w/o Banners - Rank: Officer
Standard IGN: sowen_deashot Standard Shop: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/530290 Herald of Thorns Build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1240012 | |
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Cool build idea making reflect viable.
Not up there survival and damage wise but definitely unique on its own. Archives, https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2206812
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" Thanks! Yea survivability and damage do both take a backseat to creativity in most of my builds =) Guild: [BLÍSS] Brothers w/o Banners - Rank: Officer
Standard IGN: sowen_deashot Standard Shop: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/530290 Herald of Thorns Build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1240012 | |
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Awesome build man, just wanted to ask one thing, have you tried doing a curse on hit set up with herald of thunder? Or was it not as effective?
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" HoT + CoH + Assassin's Mark + Warlord's Mark is another way to go about cursing. The only problem I see is that you are not necessarily cursing every time you need to be. What I mean is, if you can't manage to shock something, nothing will be cursed until you do. For bosses that could prove to be an issue. The single target damage is low, and you will already take 6+ seconds to down some rares, so making it easier to curse them is a good idea. IMO, I curse things easy enough without it. Yea the curses would pack a bigger punch with CoH, but I want to make sure I can curse the rares and bosses. Also, HoT + CoH + Ass Mark + Warl Mark takes up a 4L which I desperately need for all the CwDT stuff. Guild: [BLÍSS] Brothers w/o Banners - Rank: Officer
Standard IGN: sowen_deashot Standard Shop: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/530290 Herald of Thorns Build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1240012 | |
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This sounds awesome and is one of the most unique and creative builds I've ever seen. But there comes a point where using spoilers is detrimental to the readability... imo use less of them. ;)
Current league chars: Bladestorm Champion SSF
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