You know what I'm going to miss about these Heralds...

Is finally having a reason to use all these auras I normally would never touch.

Purity of fire/ice/lighting? I've never used them because I never played an aurabot or had one.

Anything I'd want to use haste on probably needed the mana for vaal grace.

While I've used wrath multiple times I've never built with zealotry in mind, let alone running together.

Hell, I didn't even know there was a herald of purity.


But while the number 1 thing is getting to use auras I'd never bother with otherwise...

The second thing is no longer having to constantly worry about a death to sudden spike damage. Don't get me wrong, she definitely can still die, but its no longer one of those open the door and insta death to a large ranged pack like baran's. (I didn't go the supertanky route)

And lastly, it's just really nice to no longer have to depend on cyclone to keep me moving to minimize death to things I can't see or stuttering performance.

I'm definitely not gonna miss the cost of upgrading though - Some of the skill gems alone exceed the total I spend on a league build to hit 36.

Herald of purity is a really useful and common adjunct to pure phys melee builds. I've run it on a zerker with vaal double strike or cyclone/blade flurry and it's pretty awesome. I'll miss it if it gets tampered with.

HoAG has been a long-time damage booster or main damage source for a variety of defensive builds. In fact, HoAg/HoP cyclone summoner has been an archetype since before cyclone became the flagship melee skill, because of its low mana overhead and evasive benefits (moving).

Whenever HoAG sneezes, these older, conservative builds catch their death.

In the past (and presumably going forward) builds like Tahreyn's max block HoAg gladiator and Systemplayerlost's old-skool spinny guardian with 2 heralds needed to be tanky, conservative, and had pretty average performance. They could do a broader range of content by virtue of being in the summoner pool, but didn't abuse stat stacking or necro aegis or any of that. They still do not make use of cluster jewels and seem to do fine.

I would hate to see anything aimed so poorly as to destroy those builds via collateral damage. (I've been playing HoAg/P guardian since Betrayal and he has had less than 1 ex total investment but I'm always pleasantly surprised at how well he handles rippy shit with his ~6k ehp and no block/phys reduction. He has 9 unallocated points and doesn't miss them :P )

The sceptre is probably also going to go bye-bye or become legacy, because it is a positive reinforcer for being more resistant, which goes counter to pretty much everything GGG wants players to have (incremental damage improvements at a steep viability cost).

Delirium is largley boring while broken at the beginning of the league, herald stacking does save the league.

Core: rip delirium
Delirium: agreed

let it be known that even after all this

determination is still trash

"

bobtctsh wrote:

Delirium is largley boring while broken at the beginning of the league, herald stacking does save the league.

I originally planned to finish at 24, but between quarantine and not wanting to sort standard I might actually finish a full 40. My cycloner did all the heavy lifting but the aura stack has been a refreshing (albeit expensive) experience.

"

yamface wrote:

let it be known that even after all this

determination is still trash

Yeah, that aura wasn't even in the running but to be fair it's not like I had significant armor to go with it.