Night HoAG

This post is for some theory-crafting about the upcoming gem specific to the Oculist from what we know so far.
Edit 180829: Updated for the 3.4 tree, some the stuff discussed and end game gear.

My though so far:

Oculist with CI
Tree:
poeplanner

Jewels
9 Minion Damage/TBD

Voltaxic Rift**
Ball Lightning > GMP > Poison Support > Curse on hit > Vulnerability > Projectile Weakness

Since Ball Lightning pierces and hits multiple times I think it's best for both stacking poison as well as cursing to multiple targets. Voltaxic's conversion to chaos allows us to posion and have a 6L.

The Coming Calamity
HoAg > Slower proj > Minion Damage > PPAD > Maim Support > 6th*
*Damage on Full Life Support (not sure if this works?)
*Empower
*Minion Speed
*LMP

Calamity for the static mana reserve**

+2 Minion helm w/ slower BL**
Raise Specter > Minion Life > Blood Magic > Fortify

The Apes (Chieftain and Silverback) and from act 6 Riverways can buff with power and frenzy charges. They're melee so need to best keep them alive.

Gloves
Discipline > Blink Arrow > Desecrate > Open Slot (rec. Faster proj)

Boots
CWDT > Inc Duration > Immortal call > Flesh offering

Quiver
TBD

Ring 1 (unset)
Stone Golem

Ring 2
Any/TBD

Neck
Any/TBD

**For endgame
Elder helm with
+3 Minion
20 Minion damage
20 Conc Effect
Add:
HoAg > Slower proj > PPAD > Empower/TBD*
*Damage on Full Life Support (not sure if this works?)
*Empower
*Minion Speed
*LMP

Shavronne
Unearth > GMP > Poison Support > Curse on hit > Vulnerability > Projectile Weakness
Changing to Unearth for poison stacks. This will means you'll need to do a lot more casting.

Soulwrest (new staff)
Raise Specter > Minion Life > Blood Magic > Brutality > Minion Dmg > Minion Speed
Dropping the bow for the new staff. Still need to keep specters alive, so minion life, but want the phantasms to do damage as well .

Why not herald of Purity for the 6th gem in the CC?

i think some of the best supports would be

minion damage
conc effect
damage on full life (if this works)
PPAD
vile toxins

i really don't think gmp would be necessary. with profane bloom you wouldn't need it for clear, and for single target im not sure its the best option. #1 we don't know if its area single target attack gets more projectiles to hit the boss with at all with that attack #2 it gives less damage.

i think it would be best to run a 6L where you are essentially just supporting everything. you can easily run 3 curses, being proj weakness, vulnerability and despair, since the damage is basically all phys/chaos from your minion.

using voltaxic with ball lightning is interesting. i would probably just go with quill rain and barrage or w/e else + poison. with the herald this gives 80% chance to poison, so getting 100% would be quite easy.

rolling with spirit offering would be enormous for this little guy as well. from all his base phys dmg gaining even more chaos dmg would be enormous. vis mortis would be super nice to have as well, if you could potentially do a 6L with the herald without the coming calamity. could be possible i think.

in the video ziggy says he has the herald supported with gmp, minion dmg, faster attacks and vile toxins from the embalmer gloves and yet it only reserves 74% mana.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

Why not herald of Purity for the 6th gem in the CC?

I think it requires you to have the kb, not the minion.
You would need to drop discipline b/c of 90% reserve.
It would be bad on boss/single target fights.

"

Chrom wrote:

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

Why not herald of Purity for the 6th gem in the CC?

I think it requires you to have the kb, not the minion.
You would need to drop discipline b/c of 90% reserve.
It would be bad on boss/single target fights.

"On-kill effects such as this lose some usefulness against tough bosses, so you also have a chance to summon or refresh a Sentinel of Purity whenever you hit a Unique enemy. "

u could also set up some easy cwdt - culling strike - bladevortex - posion/blind/powercharge on crit or something.

"

xMustard wrote:

i think some of the best supports would be

minion damage
conc effect
damage on full life (if this works)
PPAD
vile toxins

i really don't think gmp would be necessary. with profane bloom you wouldn't need it for clear, and for single target im not sure its the best option. #1 we don't know if its area single target attack gets more projectiles to hit the boss with at all with that attack #2 it gives less damage.

i think it would be best to run a 6L where you are essentially just supporting everything. you can easily run 3 curses, being proj weakness, vulnerability and despair, since the damage is basically all phys/chaos from your minion.

using voltaxic with ball lightning is interesting. i would probably just go with quill rain and barrage or w/e else + poison. with the herald this gives 80% chance to poison, so getting 100% would be quite easy.

rolling with spirit offering would be enormous for this little guy as well. from all his base phys dmg gaining even more chaos dmg would be enormous. vis mortis would be super nice to have as well, if you could potentially do a 6L with the herald without the coming calamity. could be possible i think.

in the video ziggy says he has the herald supported with gmp, minion dmg, faster attacks and vile toxins from the embalmer gloves and yet it only reserves 74% mana.

I debated conc, but need more info on the cd of the barrage. Slower Proj would be better the conc though as it would buff both attacks.

I agree on the GMP, ZD's video made this a bit confusing at 1st. He says the one attack works like split arrow which I missed. I only picked up where he said he was using GMP, but you can also count 9 proj being fired.

Split arrow Quill rain would work well too. I just prefer the BL (lvl 1) b/c it lets you be a lot more defensive. BL strikes targets every 150 ms, so you cast it, don't even have to aim, run and the poison keeps on stacking. QR requires a bit more aim and stationary attacking.

The reason I took flesh offering is for the specters.

with quill rain too im curious if the proj speed would work with the minions attack, because it looks like it automatically pierces on its own. unless ziggy had pierce with his setup while recording or something.

there is still so much unknown. what i do think is this won't be the biggest aid for pure poison builds, tho its still clearly the best buff you could get (i imagine the more poison dmg will scale with lvl, and potentially the chance to poison) but the minion is so powerful on its own that i think anybody using this will basically see the effectiveness of purely supporting the minion that most poison builds won't exist.

this herald isn't enough to make poison more viable, but the minion is viable enough to make poison, which lacks in power on its own, more of a support role to just keep this minion up and powerful.

im waiting to see what the new chaos/poison supports are. should be interesting, and knowing GGG, pretty damn OP on first iteration.

Im curious as well if the attack and projectile speed transfer over to the minion if the gems are socketed in it (quill rain). I was thinking about using necromantic aegis with the great old one's ward for an insane damage boost. Then grab united in dream for the minion damage and envy herald. Could be sick. Then maybe go raider or champion and stack attack speed. Just got to find a way to survive lol.

Edit: I also wonder what the base crit chance will be.

Updated for the 3.4 tree, some the stuff discussed and end game gear.

After seeing the gem at lvl 20/20 I think I'm gonna go ahead and make this my starter.

So I didn't make this my 1st build, but i did make and alt and played it; these are my observations:

Ball Lighting is SOOOOO efficient at procing poison. I can maintain 40 stacks of Virulence on a single solo target with it. In fact it's so good that you neither need the poison nodes on the right nor do you "need" LMP. 1 ball is enough to get 40 stacks and LMP only helps to spread curses.

The Crawler is ridiculously OP

Accuracy gem makes a huge difference.

Pierce gem helps for faster clearing if you're not cursing with PW

Oculist is NOT the way to go. This was a rookie mistake, anyone that knows summoners would have caught that you need something to tank/keep the mobs off you (and specters) that something is zombies, so Necro is definitely the way to go on this. You can do zombies it Occy, but it's just a waste IMO.

I'm gonna rebuild next week to Necro and drop all the stuff to the right to see how much better things go.