TbXie's Herald of Agony Juggernaut Build Guide (PoE Settlers of Kalguur 3.25)

July 25th, 2024, 23:59

Introduction & Expectations

I expected this skill to perform a lot better than it is in your guide. Why is this?

Because it is impossible to cater to everyone, I choose to not overcomplicate things. As a rule of thumb, this means you get to be confident you can obtain your two first Voidstones, an otherwise full Atlas completion & have a great mapping experience in T16 maps with moderates amounts of juice.
This implies you will most likely be looking for some help, or further investments to obtain your last two Voidstones. This is due to the fact that fighting these bosses on acceptable amounts of gear requires an enormous amount of game knowledge, fight practice & mechanical skill. Trying to compare your playing experience to those who’ve done nothing but play for years, tends to lead to disappointment.

Therefore, take your time & appreciate the fact that some content can be harder for you, and the characters power levels you’ve managed to acquire, than for others. There’s no shame in this.

Disclaimer

I am currently playing the new Challenge League and a lot of things have been added of which no mention can be found in this guide?

While I would very much like to give you all the ins and outs of the new powercreep in the new Challenge League, it saddens me to let you know that no Early access is given out, and we thus have no more information than anyone else when updating our build guides before the new patches. We try our utmost to make sure everything is as close to perfect as we can, but cannot forecast which special mechanics / interactions might exist in new Leagues. If something of tremendous power is teased or announced beforehand, you can find specific League specific remarks in the section on the GEAR PAGE

What to Expect

🔸 T16 Maps ✔️
🔸 T16 Maps w/ a few Atlas Mechanics or some scarabs ✔️
🔸 Pinnacle bosses when playing well ✔️
🔸 T17 Maps ❗
🔸 Uber Content ❗
🔸 Uber Content when investing well beyond the guide ❗

Herald of Agony

Herald of Agony is an aura-like buff, which in addition spawns a Spideresque monster called the Agony Crawler. While mostly used for its buff effects, this build builds upon the Herald’s Crawler to do all of our damage. The Agony Crawler spawns & gains more damage as you poison enemies. It does so by gaining Virulence per poison you inflict, which is why you try to get as many poison shenanigans going as possible to get as much Virulence as possible. Generally, the build is considered really beefy but lacking in speed environments. For slower players trying to learn, it still is a fan-favorite.

Playstyle

This build plays nothing like a general minion build. You are going to be using Cyclone Cyclone to get through maps. You spinning on monsters is going to count as channeling, in turn spawning a bunch of lightning balls on the floor. Both the Cyclone & Ball Lightning will poison the enemy, for which you will gain Virulence & your Crawler will start doing more and more damage. So in fact, you’re a Whirlwind Melee character that spawns a bunch of Lightning Spells in order to make its Minion to good damage. Sounds interesting, right?

Build Assessment

Pro’s & Con’s

➕ Beefy & Forgiving
➕ Zero to Hero
➕ Uses well perceived Cyclone-playstyle

➖ Extremely specific w/ gear
➖ Never reaches tremendous damage
➖ Minion builds aren’t for anyone

Viability in Numbers

🔸 Ease of Transitioning: ★★☆☆☆
🔸 New Player Friendliness: ★★★☆☆
🔸 Playstyle: ★★★★★
🔸 Ease of Gearing: ☆☆☆☆☆
🔸 Easily Executable: ★★★★★

Map Modifiers to Avoid

While certain combinations of modifiers are generally just bad, such as for example a couple of damage modifiers combined with Critical Strike Multiplier, these are things you are supposed to get a feel for yourself and test out. Just make sure not to combine too many crazy things together. Modifiers the build cannot run are listed here.

❗No Life Regeneration
❗Chance to Avoid Poison

Damage & Defenses

Mechanics

Scaling & Layers

This build layers a bunch of mitigation mechanics to stay in the fray all the time and reduce incoming damage. These layers are combinations of the following attempts to avoid taking relevant hits:

🔸Some Chance to Evade Attacks
🔸Very high Armour
🔸6 Endurance Charges for 24 PDR/EDR
🔸Permanent Phasing
🔸Divine Flesh + 90% Chaos Resistance
🔸+4-5% Maximum Resistances

Build Resources

Path of Building, Passives, Skill Gems & Progression

Path of Building, Progression, Skill Gems & Tree Page

Ascendancy choices, Bandits & Pantheons

Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheons

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Powers Page###

Gearing choices

Gear, Jewels and Flask Page

Gear, Jewels & Flasks Page###

Leveling the Build

Leaguestarter or Transitioning

This build has not been given the Leaguestarter tag. This means we expect you to gather the gear beforehand on another character and then either level a new character to equip the gear after the campaign or transition into it from another build. This however doesn’t necessarily mean this build is unplayable as a starter build, we just either don’t recommend it, or haven’t built it in an optimized way to do so. If you’re looking for another build from this class, which is to be played as a Leaguestarter, you can check our Leaguestarter Page.

Starting out

We used to support Leaguestarts for this build and thus have a bunch of information which no longer has a place in the guide. People still are and always will be leaguestarting this build however, because of its place in the meta, we chose not to recommend it to you. However, should you be adamant enough to push through, here’s a Path of building (https://pobb.in/sanvD92tfoB3) which has all the old leveling notes in its notes section.