Herald of Agony

Post your feedback for this skill here!

Make sure you concisely state your character build, level, and other complimenting abilities you have when you talk about a skill - The more we know about your character, the better we can understand your feedback.
Please email support@grindinggear.com if you need any assistance!

Last bumped on Sep 12, 2022, 5:26:31 AM
Level 91 caustic arrow pathfinder here, Herald of Agony has been great to fill in when I was struggling with gear. Now that I have gear, it is just too slow in an attack based build to be useful. Would love to see a 2% movement speed per virulence stack so that it can stay near me.
I was trying out HoA on Ranged Totem with Toxic Rain, but enemies hit doesn't summon the Agony Crawler unless you use Toxic Rain directly with your bow. So does it mean that HoA isn't meant to be used on Ranged Totem, or it is a bug?
Shadow Character Build:
Essence Drain + Contagion + Curse Vulnerable on Damage Taken + Decoy Totem
Armor + Energy Shield
Wand + Spirit Shield
same here,still a lvl60 ranger,caustic arrow for main and frenzy-lmp-poison-range totem for support, just started to try using ranged totem with frenzy with poison support and lmp, thinking of perma virulence haha, but not once did the scorpion showed up. so i guess it's not for totems or minions..gonna try HoPurity with poison or with my golem while dual herald with agony, they'll add up the restriction line anytime in the future for us im sure. but i wish it's just a bug. hehehe
Last edited by Seth_Ken on Sep 20, 2018, 1:28:35 AM
"
Jatin_GGG wrote:
Thanks for the report. This is not a bug. The reason for this is because Lesser Poison Support adds flat Chaos Damage to your attacks. In order for your attack to poison an enemy you must deal either Physical or Chaos damage with the attack. Poison Support does not have flat added Chaos Damage and Wild Strike converts 100% of Physical damage to Elemental damage of a random Element.
i just saw this, and made sense. so ill hook up my lesser poison for flat chaos needed. my hope relived for frenzy totem. thanks JatinGGG for this info.
Can we please get some clarification on the agony crawler. I keep seeing referenced in reddit that it's attack has a 60/40 % phys/chaos conversion. But nowhere does it say this. Everybody keeps pointing to a ziggyd video, where it is mentioned 1 time. Sorry, but that is not official enough for me to rely on. It will mean the difference between using brutality or not. Also, can the agony crawler ever take damage? It does have a life bar, but it is hard to tell if it ever takes damage in all the commotion. I understand it won't be targeted, but what if it is standing on an area damage attack? Will it take damage then? Would like to know if I am going to keep using damage on full life. Thanks.
Nice skill, currently playing as a poison/cold pathfinder with this and Herald of Ice, having fun proccing Bladefall on Blade Flurry crits, both skills modified by poison so i get 100% chance on both to poison on hit, and considering how many hits i do with this Cast on Crittical combo i can reach about 40 charges on Herald of Agony.
As far as I know, other heralds don't affect your totems either, so that is fine. The crawler doesn't take damage and Damage on Full Life support works.

I've recently asked this in another thread, but that doesn't seem to be around anymore, so I will also ask for it here, which is for precise information on chaos conversion and base damage (if any is present) as well as base APS for dps calculations. While we're at it, base accuracy would be nice to know. I'm assuming crit is 5% / 130% as usual, but a confirmation would be appreciated.

I'm currently playing an Occultist level 87, specialising in increasing the damage of the crawler. I know it says concisely, but because it's the main focus of my build, only 4 gem sockets aren't directly related:

Spoiler

I have the Herald in a 5-link +2 chaos staff, and I have taken aura nodes to reduce mana reservation and add effect for Hatred, which I'm running with generosity. This also benefits from Elemental Equilibrium.

I currently use Assassin's Mark and Poacher's Mark which I apply on hit with the Ball Lightning, that I use to apply poisons. I'm also using an Ice Golem to further increase the accuracy and crit chance.

I will add Projectile Weakness as Curse on Hit instead of Slower Projectiles once I get a 6-link chest and the third curse from my ascendency.

I will buy that before a 6-link staff, because I need the helmet enchant to reserve the mana from the 6th link.

I'm working under the assumption of inherent 40% phys to chaos conversion.
To increase the chaos damage, I'm using Spirit Offering, Wither CwC with Ball Lightning + Poison (20% chance on tree for 100% poison chance), and Vaal Blight linked to Spell Totem for both versions, currently with only one Spreading Rot, but a second once I can get the resistance on gear.

Before increased damage taken modifiers, my crawler should do 60% physical, ~70% cold and ~70% chaos damage.

I also use Desecrate to spawn corpses for Spirit Offering due to the lack of corpses from shattering / Profane Bloom and Convocation to control the position of the crawler.


The skill works very well, especially in delves, and I rarely see enemies that have been hit, but aren't dead yet (basically only bosses or if the killspeed was faster than my Ball Lightning to add stacks). Problems, that I mitigate, but can't fully solve with Convocation, are anti projectile bubbles and instances where the crawler stops following me to shoot, but instead hits walls or cliffs, especially when it comes to narrow doors and passages.

Maintaining stacks can be difficult against single targets, but I'm considering using Firestorm if Ball Lightning is lacking without Slower Projectiles. My own build might be a little overloaded with synergies for its own good, but I'm sure that a reduced version with better defence would be quite successful. Defence aside, I don't feel much slower clearing than with my Glacial Cascade miner in Abyss.
Lvl 68 Pathfinder so far and still leveling up fast.

Im playing Herald of Agony as my main dps source and I like it so far. It's very similar to my Dancing Duo builds. Gaining up to max Virulence stacks is easy to achieve using Quill rain and Rain of Arrows.

However I did notice that Virulence stacks instantly decay after being applied. So one will almost never maintain 40 stacks of virulence because it instantly decays down.

If stacks would have something like a timer of just 0.3-0.2 seconds before decay that would help builds calculate their dps on max stacks alot easier without giving up the need of reapplying the stacks. Maintaining them would still be work but at least the agony crawler can make use of having the maximum virulence stacks.

Has been my observation so far but I do enjoy the skill.
Last edited by Cemmo on Oct 8, 2018, 8:21:22 AM
I'm enjoying it so far, using it as my main damage source for a build I'm doing but something that has been bothering me is, I don't know the exact conversion, or if there is any conversion at all going on with the Agony Crawler.
In the teaser ZiggyD posted on August 24 regarding the new Herald of Agony and pathfinder rework, it is stated (at 1:28 https://youtu.be/8Ax1_cOgcjM?t=89) that the Agony Crawler deals 60% Physical and 40% Chaos.
Is the Agony Crawler a pure physical minion that converts 40% physical to chaos? Does it convert 40% of ALL damage to chaos? is there any chaos conversion at all going on?
This information would be very important as it would allow me to consider other gems in order to scale the Agony Crawler, thanks.

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info