[3.24]The Arachnophobia Allstars|100% Chaos Guardian CI|The dirty Scorpion-tail|Herald of Agony 50M

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Zerber wrote:

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1) fortify 25% dr against frost shield 20% dr, 60% dr against ranged (combined with bodyguards/ knockback op, much better than fortify), added chill effect of frost shield results in -15 % attackspeed of melee mobs

Frost shield is instantly gone when you do dangerous content, like standing inside a reinforced harbinger pack in a t16 or higher 100% delirium map. It takes literaly under a second to deplete. Its not a reliable source of damage reduction against real endgame threats.

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2) 70000 armour of HoP against 120000 armour HoA (important for big physical hits. Here HoP don't have enough armour for big hits.

Reducing incoming damage by 20% with fortify and than reducing it by armour is better than having more armour and like I said frost shield is instantly gone in content where you actually need such high defenses.

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3) 1400 against 2400 es/ block - HoA recovers faster and in damagepeaks much better

I experimented a lot with armour and roughly 40k armour is enough to get you through anything with ES on block, everything past that doesnt really make a difference you are at full HP from blocking anyway.

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4) pure agony and disciples have both 20% miniondamage: they are equal for spiders and HoA is better scaleable for high damage with pure agony

You can scale HoP way way way easier than herald of agony without sacrificing anything. The end game scaleability of HoP has way higher potential. Extra sentinel helmet, the fact that you can use a +2 duration and +1 gem skin of the loyal and that you can use awakened multistrike gives you way better high end scaleability. Im sitting at almost 12 million single target dps without needing to reduce any defense. Not possible with HoAg.

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5) HoP dies often and must be raised again - HoA raised earlier with ranged attacks, much more area of damage also, but a bit less dps. you have to scale 55-60 virulences, then more damageas HoP.

Their are two boss fights where HoP often dies, purifier and minotaur because of the AoE spam in both fights but both bosses have such low HP anyway that you could easily just kill them with spiders.

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6) HoA has with pierce support and helmet enchant much more dps in mapping, HoP in single target a bit better, but slower: you have to reach melee the target. Here HoA can to change pierce if it is wanted for singletarget, but scaling more virulences are recommended for damage in this build.

Im close to 70k spider dps with melee splash, I just run through maps without stoping once. You dont neeed to melee at all.

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7) HoP is missing phasing, elusive, ev, dodge, soul of solaris, vaal grace, overcapped resistances, movement speed and some more layers of defences and synergies of defences etc. see the spoilers "pro's", the introduction and "index of defences".

You dont need all that because that all does not adress any weakness in the build. Their are more or less 3 things that can kill a mana guardian, super high degen, sirus meteor and super high unblockable damage like corpse exploding strongboxes. None of those extra defenses help against it.

Hi Zerber again,

hehe, for me it is very interesting to take a look on the ups and downs of the different Heralds and minions and builds and I love to vary the builds also and to change sometimes the styles of agony and purity.

So ... wall of text bombing and incoming, hehehe :-)

Sorry, for a lot of stats and skills I have to talk about the numbers. I know both build very good too, and I tried to compare both builds.

For damagereduction I would advice to take a look in the mechanics of the skills on poewiki like: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Fortify for correct calculations of fortify after armour and of course you need in high content more defensive layers or you have to react much, much faster to much more damage taken. For T16 or perhaps T17 fortify is enough, but for T18 or maven you will love the 17 walls of defences of the Agony-Build.

With 4000 es/second damagereduction of frost shield I never had problems, it is optimized and maxed also with blind (50% evasion), dodge and higher other defences up to around practical 7000 es/ second (take a look at the spoiler "21 is only half of the truth" and "Index of defences". Only downside is that it is stationary, but fortify has the problem of need to hit before getting the buff which is problematic also sometimes. In some damagepeaks like t17, t18 full delirium it get to the limit, but it was always enough and offers a lot of times 60% dr, this is 3x as much as dr of fortify and fine as a second guardian skill. The downsides, draining of es one second, is balanced out with dodge, ev, es/ block 800 drained is 1/3 of 2400 of one block es gained), igniteimmunity etc. of this build.

Vatinas great HoP build (one of the best and most tanky I ever played) is very, very tanky too, but is missing also a lot of defences in relations to this build with HoA, you can compare the ehp in pob.

Of course you can scale also the HoA up to 11 mill. s-damage (with pierce changed to singletarget supports like predator or vile toxins take 14 mill. to compare correct) or even 21 mill. with virulences and increased skillgems (take a look at "Index of offensives" and "Make hatred, not grace") or with bis gear, but I think it is at these points about the balancing of defences and damage, dps or tankiness, and your own individual goals and prefered poe-content. HoP has here great possibilities too, but the high scaling virulences of HoA are missing and it offers only auras like hatred and gemlevels like the HoA get very easy too. HoA is 8 mill., 10 mill. with 60 virulences and all defences possible, but you loose on a medium cluster 20% movement speed as quality of life, yes. With the same defences of HoP we can change the grace aura for hatred aura and then take the 14 mill. s-damage ("Make hatred, not grace" is the name of the spoiler) to compare.

But for mapping HoA is faster, sorry, I cannot agree your view. I don't know how much can you raise HoP damage with remaining high defences and not getting too much glascannonstyle? Pierce is around 2x to 4x (or sometimes even more, there are 3 more projectiles and you get 2 more projectiles with helmet enchantment) damage of HoP in maps and it has the spiders and melee splash also of course. (Our crawler has shorter legs as your's sentinels, but do not forget his tail, hehe ;-) )

The weak spots like degens, aoe and not blockable hits are equal and are the same in both builds. Yes, exactly as you write.
But I have to repeat, sorry, you missed the numbers and factors of total damage taken, multiple mapmods, crits, etc. :

The more dodge, vaal grace, pantheon, evasion, phasing, overcapped resistances when you are debuffed and doublecurse (when you choose a defensive second one) of the allstars are not only a bit better than the very, very fine build of Vatinas, to reduce total damage taken: for example you get often multiples damagetypes and sources, degen and hits or aoe at the same time of one boss or one mob and you have to count the total damage taken in these encounters and moments. And here the Agonyca Allstars are shining and charming hot with double and tripple ehp for all damage types.

(I don't want forget two advantages of HoP in ehp and defence here at this comparing the stats:
-the Sentinels can take damage as meat shield and can taunt. But only melee and they die fast in some encounters, maps and bosses and there are some disadvantages in playstyle I wrote before and in the build of the allstars spoiler "HoP". So for example you have also to deal with chained projectiles with HoP and so the advantage is in some other situations very dangerous for yourself.
- you can move while cycloning. But as I said before, for hard bosses the 2 possibilties of HoA hybrid style: melee and ranged raising the Herald, is best to deal with maven, shaper, ueberatziri etc.) and with HoA you can easy switch to cyclone also.

Sirus meteor is better tanked of the allstars, hehe, and the minotaur for a big physical damage hit is a very fine example for differences of effective high 120000 or medium 70000 armour ( https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Armour ... take a look on mitigiated amounts and rules of thumb ): The allstars take with almost double armour minimum 40% less damage than HoP with only one damage map-mod. When the minotaur crits I think about 50% less total physical damage is taken by the allstars because of the mechanics and dimishing returns of armour, and in maps with double or tripple damage modifications these differences in less damage taken will raise higher.

Mmmhhmmm, I cannot find like you an argument for fortify or for the defences of HoP. HoP is very strong in dfeneces, but when I take the ehp numbers of poe for some damage types and because of higher es/ block, dodge, pantheon it has double and in many damagetypes like physical tripple ehp, and that is much.

Some skills in Vatinas build are synergizing not so optimized like in this build. Warcrys, withers, holy relic offers not so much damage like withers, clusters and virulences of this build, too much passives with low results are chosen in the tree when I look critical and careful at the HoP-build. It get problems when molten shell and vaal discipline is down, we start then with dodge of vaal grace and withering step for these cooldwons. But I will not forget: Perhaps singletarget HoP's downsides are not so high when you can cyclone and stay in melee range with HoP. But for a lot of aoe effects and maven this will not be possible.

Hehehe, very interesting to take a look on, to compare and it could be a long, long spoiler for the build and it's variations perhaps too. Thank you for the fine input and thematics!

:-)

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ZebberZ wrote:

Hey grim, I believe I'm the one who sold you the 12% helm. I wanted a mana reservation helm which I was finally able to buy.

So now i can go 2b,2g,2r for max dps during bosses (Predator instead of pierce for bosses) or else vile toxins over predator.

I was able to score a sick triple watchers eye for pretty cheap I feel.


4% increased maximum Energy Shield
4% increased maximum Life
6% increased maximum Mana
+8% chance to Evade Attack Hits while affected by Grace
31% faster start of Energy Shield Recharge while affected by Discipline
Gain 9% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield while affected by Clarity

Hope that faster start is as OP as i believe it will be.

Nice! I definitely remember your name from buying the helmet, thanks again. That was the last bit of gear for me, unless I get super lucky finding a better Megalomaniac... /me goes off to refresh search tabs...

I might go the same route if I decide I'm done leveling... or if I hit 100, which is certainly within reach at this point. I haven't decided if I want to push for 40 challenges this league or not.

I ran with the faster start of ES recharge for a while, eventually dropped it for the extra dodge. What I noticed is, the times where I'm relying on recharge... well, that basically never happens. Block is the big source of healing, and it's instant. I don't take big hits often, and when I do, I nearly always return to full ES instantly. Your mileage may vary, of course, and it's not like it can hurt! :)

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Chromino wrote:

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grimjack68 wrote:

Woot! :)

Now just need a bunch of Divines. 'Cause I'm never lucky with just a couple.

At this point, I think I'm pretty much done for gearing.

Spoiler

That is best geared, yes! Top dressed, high skilled!
Very, very nice!

And going with 55 virulences is great, too!
And you are with lvl 98 in ranking of Agony guardian builds too on poeninja! Big Congrats!

Hope you have a lot of arachnophilia, hehe!

(How would you compare the allstars to other Herald builds? You played some of them in lasts leagues too. Hope the small eightlegged ones charmed and enjoyed!

And did had problems with too many freezes/ chills/stuns? I am not sure if Hibernator on cluster or Soul of the Brine King in Pantheon is important or less important against cold ailments.)

55 virulence is tough to maintain against single target bosses. I may try swapping out GMP for Faster Casting, see if that helps. I don't really need it while mapping, the spiders kill everything there anyway.

I hadn't even noticed I'd made the list on poe.ninja. That's pretty cool. :D

I am a big fan of the large tank type characters, and this is a fantastic example. Outside of the crazy aura/herald stacking builds that GGG (unintentionally, I'm sure) introduced with cluster jewels and instantly tried to nerf into non-existence, this is the toughest tank I've tried. The damage output is a fair bit weaker, however, it's still sufficient. It doesn't matter how long it takes to kill Sirus, for instance, when you can tank every attack he throws at you anyway!

I do still get frozen every now and then. Doesn't seem to matter though, everything the critters throw at me while I'm frozen just heals me anyway. I should probably switch away from Brine King and try that for a while.

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Zerber wrote:

You dont need all that because that all does not adress any weakness in the build. Their are more or less 3 things that can kill a mana guardian, super high degen, sirus meteor and super high unblockable damage like corpse exploding strongboxes. None of those extra defenses help against it.

I just wanted to quickly point out that this build easily tanks corpse strongboxes and Sirus' meteor.

I still have to avoid Shaper's beam and Sirus' chaos storms. Maybe the degen in the new Crimson Township from the boss there, haven't tried deliberately standing in it yet.

PS: Reinforced Harbinger mobs are zero challenge. I can stand in the middle of those and AFK without flasks or vaal skills.

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Chromino wrote:

Some skills in Vatinas build are synergizing not so optimized like in this build. Warcrys, withers, holy relic offers not so much damage like withers, clusters and virulences of this build, too much passives with low results are chosen in the tree when I look critical and careful at the HoP-build.
:-)

Vatinas HoP is kinda entry level of what you can do with HoP or any mana guardian minion build in general. Tbh the strongest version of this play style would be most likley dominating blow anyway but getting those dom blow sentinels up in boss fights is such a pain in the ass that I doubt anyone wants to bother with it (I played dom blow some leagues ago and sirus takes like 10 minutes because you often can only get one sentinel up before he ports away).

I find it strange that you mention Maven because she is in general a super easy fight for any type of mana guardian. She basicaly does no damage to (I assume) any variant of the general concept. I did my first maven with around 7k ES, uncapped spellblock and only 45k armour before flasks, she still couldnt hurt me. You need to be ingite immune of course because she can ignite you.

I found in general the three things that make you unkillable with this type of build (talking again about all variants) is beeing ignite, shock and curse immune. I moved a lot around (and spend a lot of currency) to get a cyclopean coil into my personal version to make that possible. Seriously shock immunity is the difference between getting chunked to half hp out of the blue and basicaly taking no damage at all most of the time.

Edit:
If you want to do something goofy put a headhunter in a build with spiders, you get the buffs because the poison kills count as your kill.

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ZebberZ wrote:

Hey grim, I believe I'm the one who sold you the 12% helm. I wanted a mana reservation helm which I was finally able to buy.

So now i can go 2b,2g,2r for max dps during bosses (Predator instead of pierce for bosses) or else vile toxins over predator.

I was able to score a sick triple watchers eye for pretty cheap I feel.


4% increased maximum Energy Shield
4% increased maximum Life
6% increased maximum Mana
+8% chance to Evade Attack Hits while affected by Grace
31% faster start of Energy Shield Recharge while affected by Discipline
Gain 9% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield while affected by Clarity

Hope that faster start is as OP as i believe it will be.

Yes, the watcher's eye looks fanatistic! I never tried faster rechaarge, would be very interesting and in some situations very, very strong.

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grimjack68 wrote:

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Chromino wrote:

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grimjack68 wrote:

Woot! :)

[/spoiler]

That is best geared, yes! Top dressed, high skilled!
Very, very nice!

And going with 55 virulences is great, too!
And you are with lvl 98 in ranking of Agony guardian builds too on poeninja! Big Congrats!

Hope you have a lot of arachnophilia, hehe!

(How would you compare the allstars to other Herald builds? You played some of them in lasts leagues too. Hope the small eightlegged ones charmed and enjoyed!

And did had problems with too many freezes/ chills/stuns? I am not sure if Hibernator on cluster or Soul of the Brine King in Pantheon is important or less important against cold ailments.)

55 virulence is tough to maintain against single target bosses. I may try swapping out GMP for Faster Casting, see if that helps. I don't really need it while mapping, the spiders kill everything there anyway.

I hadn't even noticed I'd made the list on poe.ninja. That's pretty cool. :D

I am a big fan of the large tank type characters, and this is a fantastic example. Outside of the crazy aura/herald stacking builds that GGG (unintentionally, I'm sure) introduced with cluster jewels and instantly tried to nerf into non-existence, this is the toughest tank I've tried. The damage output is a fair bit weaker, however, it's still sufficient. It doesn't matter how long it takes to kill Sirus, for instance, when you can tank every attack he throws at you anyway!

I do still get frozen every now and then. Doesn't seem to matter though, everything the critters throw at me while I'm frozen just heals me anyway. I should probably switch away from Brine King and try that for a while.

Aaaah, okay, and very interesting!

I think also, it is in the moment perhaps, perhaps, perhaps one of the tankiest or the tankiest build on the whole tree, but there are so many new and strong and tanky builds I don't know near. But the defences and es/ block are top, and lvl 100 not so difficult without dying, but still remaining so much long grind.

Yes, singletarget hard bosses is not best without more virulences, but mapping/ delving/ deliriums etc. are great and one of the best minionbuilds, hehehe. You need a second reserve helmet for the lmp-support, but for singletarget you are best geared allready. ;-)

And I love this longer bossfights as a tank and with the allstars too so much. Ordinary you kill or you are dead in half a second in some arenas with not tank-builds. With this build the energyshield moves really up and down slow and you can react and get not fast killed by shaper or synthesis bosses. And I hate it, when I oneshot the boss and do never see him alive or have the pleasure meeting with him only one blink. I want to enjoy when he fights for his life and struggle against his death, hehe, lol, his darkest arachnophobical fears are my fun in the arena.

Perhaps, when you do concentrate a lot on singletarget with 55 virus, take rare gloves with poison or faster casting support then 60 stacks is no problem. You loose the curse (grrrhrr) and a little bit ar on shaper touch, but you get higher singletarget and some other stats and when you want sniper mark on cws or 3 free passives for more pure agonies or more mana/ ar/ es etc..

Aaah, you took Brine king and not Solaris? For crits & multiple damage mods and aoe solaris is op, but Brine King is in other moments op too, hihi. I have only very short, not harming microstuns and microfreezes without. But the Shaper or Veritania Conqueror can freeze a lot, but I never had problems against them too with enough ailments reductions on belt and tree. But I am not sure also, how often you can be frozen without belt enchant and so on.

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55 virulence is tough to maintain against single target bosses. I may try swapping out GMP for Faster Casting, see if that helps. I don't really need it while mapping, the spiders kill everything there anyway.

Try to use faster casting, works wonders and always able to keep 55 stack fast.

Alternatively i feel slower projectile might also work better to upkeep stacks if the boss doesnt move that much. Personally , i am not a good player, cant really tell where the boss is half the time (or really try to bother to find where the boss is)

I've run a few dozen maps now with Ball Lightning / Poison / Spell Echo / Faster casting, and I can say for sure it keeps up 55 stacks easily on single target. I was surprised it keeps up decent stacks even in mobs, not that it matters there, the key to mobs is keeping up 20 spiders.

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Zerber wrote:

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Chromino wrote:

Some skills in Vatinas build are synergizing not so optimized like in this build. Warcrys, withers, holy relic offers not so much damage like withers, clusters and virulences of this build, too much passives with low results are chosen in the tree when I look critical and careful at the HoP-build.
:-)

Vatinas HoP is kinda entry level of what you can do with HoP or any mana guardian minion build in general. Tbh the strongest version of this play style would be most likley dominating blow anyway but getting those dom blow sentinels up in boss fights is such a pain in the ass that I doubt anyone wants to bother with it (I played dom blow some leagues ago and sirus takes like 10 minutes because you often can only get one sentinel up before he ports away).

I find it strange that you mention Maven because she is in general a super easy fight for any type of mana guardian. She basicaly does no damage to (I assume) any variant of the general concept. I did my first maven with around 7k ES, uncapped spellblock and only 45k armour before flasks, she still couldnt hurt me. You need to be ingite immune of course because she can ignite you.

I found in general the three things that make you unkillable with this type of build (talking again about all variants) is beeing ignite, shock and curse immune. I moved a lot around (and spend a lot of currency) to get a cyclopean coil into my personal version to make that possible. Seriously shock immunity is the difference between getting chunked to half hp out of the blue and basicaly taking no damage at all most of the time.

Edit:
If you want to do something goofy put a headhunter in a build with spiders, you get the buffs because the poison kills count as your kill.

Yes, I think the same. Vatina writes too, that he uses for the build only some medium clusters to keep it easy gearing. But of course he is loosing at this point a lot of damage, Efficency and quality of life for the build HoP.

And I agree total - ailments can kill fast, they are stacking and multiply with mapmods and unique mops skills etc. They are most important for hc or high levels 97-100. For our builds ignite and burning resistances are very important. When you are depending on flasks instead, you need to be really good and fast in reaction and in timing of flask management. And don't forget a lot of debuffs - they multiply the ailments and their damage too. Curses are very, very dangerous too and kill fast ( be careful ofvulnerability cursed with physical degens combined) and we need time of need, hehe. Our relationship with flaskslots is so complicated. Only because of these jealous and stingy worms in their beloved jars...

The cyclope belt is great. Expensive with resistances. You can stack with intelligence wheel in the tree fine too.

But for us Arachnophobiacs it is complicated to use because of attributes and we already are 100% ignite immune easy with pantheon and anointed flesh we need permanent and we have around 80% permament avoidances and resistances to the other dangerous ailments (curses, shocks, freezes) already steady. So I personally prefer the overcapped resistances against map-and mop-debuffs-mods with stygian belt and it's jewel slot for variety of course.

Headhunter is fitting to our build, yes, and when you want to farm currency fast it is op and funny. But you go total lags, hehe. And you have to adapt a bit to the new game- and playstyle.

The dominating blow skill I love much too. And probably I will try in some leagues a build with it. I love the combinations of attacking yourself and minions targeting the mob synchron.

Maven medium and most of the high lvl invitations are very easy, yes, and best fitting to our build. But for some special 10x multiple bosses combinations of her highlvl invitations and for her added arena- aoes you need some movement and cannot facetank all of the unique bosses-abilities simultan at once (for example when you have 3 bosses at once with their degen-beams and aoe). Then ranged raising the HoA has a lot of advantages and is safer as raising HoP with cyclone and approaching the 10 bosses melee like with the HoP-mechanics.