[3.6] Speedy Melee Herald of Agony Occultist | ALL MAPS | ALL MODS | SHAPER VIABLE | LEAGUE STARTER

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Herald of agony is very flexible and easy to build, don't be afraid to experiment with variations on it. Use what works for you and gives an enjoyable playstyle. The reason I went melee in delve is static strike allows me to poison while moving. If I were to run HoA again this league though I'd probably go GMP winter orb.

Ah very interesting! Gotta think of some more skills that could work well in it's place.

What build are you going this league? Always curious what people like you (who come up with cool shit) are doing next!

Hi, this is my first time posting and i'm very new to the game. May I ask how one acquired the Herald of Agony by lv 16? From what I see, the earliest you can get it is Act 3 (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Herald_of_Agony). I just got to Act 2 and am level 16 already. Although I haven't really had much of a chance to give the build a shot, it seems to be much weaker than Arc builds. Can anybody give me some helpful insight? It would be much appreciated. Thanks!

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Stuntwei wrote:

Hi, this is my first time posting and i'm very new to the game. May I ask how one acquired the Herald of Agony by lv 16? From what I see, the earliest you can get it is Act 3 (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Herald_of_Agony). I just got to Act 2 and am level 16 already. Although I haven't really had much of a chance to give the build a shot, it seems to be much weaker than Arc builds. Can anybody give me some helpful insight? It would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Either you trade the HoA gem or you have to wait til act 3.
Hopefully you took the Poison gem in act 1, you will need it as well until you can wear a mortem morsu claw.

You only can start to feel the true potential of this build when you have Shield Charge, Mortem Morsu, Static Strike, Molten Strike and at least a HoA in a 4 link. Together with Enfeeble and the life gained on hit from the claw, it feels really fast, hard hitting and pretty safe.

Ive played an arc build 2 leages ago. Yes its great, but frankly i already can see that this one is even better.
Only drawback is that many gems have to be traded or bought later.

CVurrently totally enjoying this build, absolutely league starter friendly, plenty of options to reach endgame, currently 77 and plwing through al content

Just to make sure I'm not missing something.... your
expensive gear drops the 3rd curse since you're not wearing Asenath's any more?

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zz9za wrote:

Just to make sure I'm not missing something.... your
expensive gear drops the 3rd curse since you're not wearing Asenath's any more?

There was a time I had it dropped, then later I re-added it. Do whatever works for the gear you have. The most important part of this guide is that you use static strike for keeping virulence stacks up while you clear and LGoH to stay alive, the rest of the build is extremely flexible so just use what you can.

What should I change in the build to use Winter Orb?

I think its better against the syndicate rippy stuff

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stevzful wrote:

What should I change in the build to use Winter Orb?

I think its better against the syndicate rippy stuff

Winter orb stacks up to a certain amount and then the stacks decay over the total time for that stack amount.

So if you stack it up to 10, you'll lose all 10 stacks in 4 seconds.

The way to fix this is to get increased duration and self curse temporal chains. If you do that, you can get durations in the 20-30 seconds.

This way you only have to spend around 1 second out of every 10 re-upping it.

You can use blade vortex in the gloves to deliver the temp chains on hit curse and keep your things going.

With enough curse effect, duration, and/or cooldown duration, you can put immortal call in a cast on skill use weapon, this will give you near permanent immortal call if you do it right. It should be VERY tanky.

This approach to the build might be a bit starved for resists though because of the heavy requirements of self cursing as an occultist. I'm running an "auto-BV" build atm with this technique and my resists are barely capped.

EDIT:

Here's a rough PoB for it. Might have some stray nodes that don't make sense since I adapted it from my crit BV tree. https://pastebin.com/TaQct8RM

I've been going at this build as my 3rd build of betrayal and it's honestly a lot of fun! Great build!

I was wondering on my end why the focus on claws? If I could get a sword with Poison18, Ancestral call on it and more Attack speed wouldnt it be better than a slower claw(since we're really just looking for attack speed to keep the HoA buff up higher?)

Here's a link to my PoB ; https://pastebin.com/xrEvE1mK

I've replaced Asenath's gentle touch with some Corrupted glove that give Temp chain on hit lvl 12, and added Lightning golem with knockback (which is somewhat useful vs the Syndicate)

Claws are used for LGoH. I don’t see anything particularly wrong with swords but they won’t give as much life back.