Greek's Herald of Agony Herald Build Guide (Poe Legacy of Phrecia Event)

Introduction

This is a very comfy and reliable build that has received some buffs since the last Phrecia build. Its my pleasure to write this guide for you. Currently I have only made a guide for this build in a written format found here on the site. Luckily this guide will cover everything from Leveling through the acts to an end-game all rounder build.

If you have any questions about the build you can always join the PoE Vault discord to get help by @Greek or getting help from others in the community.

Build Overview

In this section, I will outline the pros, cons, and the general play style. This will allow you to determine if the this build is a fit for you.

Pros

➕ League Starter – We can play the build as soon as our 2nd lab, and can use very cheap gear to cruise through maps and 2 stones and push it all the way to lat game juicing.

➕ All Around Build – This build can both clear maps and kill bosses. Block Cap allows for a very safe experience and the on-hit mods we utilize make most map mods easy for use to clear for the risk mods in the 3.27 Phrecia Event.

➕ Ranged – Early on we use a bow and storm rain to stack our Virulence stacks, letting use stay a safe distance away from enemies, allowing time to react to boss abilities.

Cons

➖ Ramp Time – The Build has a bit of a ramp time where you have to stack up Poison and Virulence. This can make the start of our ramp feel weak. The later versions of the build also utilize poison damage which also requires some time to full ramp.

➖ Mediocre Max Hits – This build can feel tanky until it is not. The block keeps us safe most of the time, along side a huge amount of life and mana on hit keeping us topped off but large hits that go through our block can kill us still. This version of the build is not suggested for HC players.

➖ Reliant on Flask for Movement – The early part of this build are reliant on flask to move quickly around the map. This can be a downside for people who are use to using skills to quickly move around the map. This can be fixed with a weapon swap but that can feel clunky to many players.

Playstyle

Herald of Agony is a minion that is summoned by acquiring Virulence stacks through using attacks or spells to apply poison to enemies. The more poison and faster you apply it ramps the damage of our Herald of Agony. The play style requires you to constantly be attacking. If you are use to more permanent minions, this build will be very different as this build play more as an attack build would.

The start of our build utilizes Storm Rain to throw down tons of conduits that constantly shoot beams between them. These beam apply poison each time they hit, this quickly maxes out our Virulence and empowers our Herald of Agony into a quick and hard hitting minion who shoots out a volley from his location. We use automation and convocation to constantly reposition our Herald on top of us. Later on we use Lancing Steel of Spraying to replace Storm Rain but the build functions in a very similar way.

This build can have a bit of clunkiness versus proximity shields and temporal bubbles, as it requires us to move to the mob and summon our herald inside the bubble to affect the mobs. This can be frustrating until we get more tanky.

PoB, Passive Tree, and Gems Links

This can be found in the link below but be sure to use the Loadouts: drop down in the top right to change the different part of the build all-together so that you don’t get confused with mismatched stages of the builds conflicting with each other.

PoB, Passive Tree, and Gem Links

Gear

Much of the end-game gear can be self crafted but Keepers League and Phrecia will print many high-quality rare pieces of gear. So I suggest looking at both options of crafting and purchasing pieces of gear to figure out which ever one is cheaper.

You can read more details about gearing recommendations on the dedicated page below.

Gear, Jewels, and Flask Page

Some uniques items to look out for are the following:

• Quill Rain
• Thief's Torment
• Widowhail
• Rearguard
• Rainbowstride
• Lioneye's Vision
• The Brass Dome
• The Golden Rule
• Amanamu's Gaze
• Calamitous Visions
• Replica Dragonfang's Flight – Herald of Agony Version
• Ashes of the Stars
• Darkness Enthroned
• The Surrender
• Svallin, Girded Tower Shield

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon

You can read all about these on the dedicated page found below:

Ascendacy, Bandit, & Pantheon Page

Leveling

This build unfortunately doesn’t get to start out using it’s main ability. I have provided a personal favorite minion leveling path to get you to the point of the skill swap. The PoB covers all the gems and links need to smoothly level through the Acts. Below you will find a summary of some suggestion and regex you can use while leveling.

Mulling Support Gems

What is a mule? A mule is a character that is used to move early skill and support gems at the start of the campaign by killing Hillock and stashing the items and gems they received from the beach.

These gems can’t be acquired on a Witch early. So we make 2 characters that kill Hillock and stash there items for our Witch. The first mule we use is a Marauder for Ruthless Support and our second is a Shadow for Chance to Poison Support. We are doing this to get our zombies a strong 3-link from the start. This also gives us some extra potions and more chances to find the 3-link we need from vendors before we event start leveling!

Regex

What is a regex? A regular expression, commonly known as regex or regexp, is a specialized sequence of characters that defines a search pattern for text processing. Or in PoE terms it will highlight items in Vendors when searching for certain items!

https://poe.re/ is a useful sight to make your own vendor regex! I have made a few to help you in the campaign

Act I-III: This will highlight 3-link options we can use as well as movement speed boots and +1 level to fire and physical Skills. Just copy and paste the line below into the vendor search bar.

ts:.+(\S*b){4}|b-b-b|:.*(?=\S*r)(?=\S*g)(?=\S*b)|b-b-[rg]|b-[rg]-b|[rg]-b-b|Runn|rint|Lord|Litho

Act IV-VI: This will highlight 4-links we are looking for as well as movement speed boots and +1 Chaos and Physical Skills. Just copy and paste the line below into the vendor search bar.

ts:.+(?=(\S*r){1})(?=(\S*g){1})(\S*b){2}(\S*b){4}|Runn|rint|Lord|Litho

Act VII-Act X: This will highlight 4-Link we are looking for the bow swap! Just copy and paste the line below into the vendor search bar.

ts:.+(?=(\S*r){1})(?=(\S*g){3})|Runn|rint|Lord|Litho

Gambling for Items

Act III Easy 4-Links

The introduction of gambling for items has given us easy access to 4-Links. Once you have hit 26 in Act III, I would suggest gambling Energy Shield or Evasion and Energy Shield bases with Maramoa in Sarn Encampment. These have a high chance to be 4-linked and can help you power up if the vendor doesn’t have your links.

Act VI and VII Gambling

Once we hit Act VI and VII we can gamble with Faustus in Lioneye’s Watch. We want to gamble for Evasion Bases and Bows to fish for 4-links for our Herald of Agony Swap in VII. If you run out of gold before having all your links you can continue leveling with the original minion setup until you get the links you need.

Heist

Act VI Heisting

Once you find your first rogue markers from heist stashes in Act VI I highly suggest you run a few Demolition, Perception or Lockingpicking contracts. These can be found from heist lockers in the Acts or you can purchase them for Orb of Chance from Whakano the Barber in the Rogue’s Harbor. This is a great way to get early chaos to purchase a few starter uniques.

Here is a regex for contracts from Whakano:
Lockpi|Percep|Demo

Here are the uniques I would consider buying for leveling in order of importance

1. Quill Rain
2. Thief's Torment
3. Goldrim

Act X Pre-Kitava Heisting

Act X heisting is a favorite strategy of mine. Heist contract from Whakano reset every time you level. This allow you to go back to the rogue harbor periodically when leveling in the acts and spend any Orb of Chance on Demolition contracts that he has available. This will give you a healthy amount of contract to sustain with once hitting Act X and before you kill Kitava (can do this post Kitava also). Running these contracts can net you a ton of early chaos to grab our key uniques as soon as they are available on the market. You can also use the chaos to buy heist blueprints for a chance at getting at Divine Orb before event entering maps.

Here are the unique I would consider purchasing from Act X heist farming

1. Widowhail – Ideally > 231%
2. Rearguard – Try for as close to 24% & 15% Chance to Block Attack and Spell Damage respectively
3. Rainbowstride – Ideally > 19% Chance to Block Spell Damage
4. Lioneye's Vision – 5 – Link

Questions?

To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, you may have questions. Please join the PoE Vault discord and they will attend to them as soon as possible.

Final Note

As much as I love making build guides, I’m very new to writing written guides for the public. I’ve recently joined PoE Vault and it’s also my first time using the backend of this site! So, if you see any mistakes or have any suggestions feel free to reach out to me through Discord!

No guide is absolute. If something doesn’t suit you, change it to fit your needs. There are many ways to play Herald of Agony this is just my personal preference!