TbXie's Herald of Agony Juggernaut Passive Skill Tree & Gem Links (PoE Necropolis)

March 28th, 2024, 20:25

Divine Flesh

The way the build has been constructed focuses on using the Divine Flesh keystone from a Xibaqua Glorious Vanity. It’s imperative to let you know, though, that the build doesn’t fall flat without this mechanic, but this keystone is a big part as to why specific combinations of items are used. Divine Flesh converts 50% of all incoming Elemental Damage to Chaos Damage while granting you an extra 5% Maximum Chaos Resistance. This effectively means you’re dealing with 50% of the incoming Elemental Damage with up to 90% (Depending on Cluster Jewels) Resistance instead of the standard 75% Elemental Resistance. This is a huge difference in terms of mitigation (+/- 40% better).

Good seeds to look out for are 7516, 3338, 7827, 830 and 4868 giving you both Ritual of Flesh (9% increased life and 1% life regen), Ritual of Shadow (28% increased Choas damage and 25% chance to inflict withered for 2 seconds on hit)

To further amplify how that works, we chose to run a Saffell's Frame & Born of Chaos clusters, which gives us even more maximum Chaos Resistance and we obviously try to get our newly capped Chaos Resistance at 90%. If you don’t want to go for this entire Keystone setup, Chaos Resistance becomes a lot less important on gear, as you’ll be getting some naturally through poisoning yourself and through having Endurance Charges from the Juggernaut Ascendancy.

Passive Skill Tree

Since we assume you went through the main page of the guide, you already know what your leveling looks like. Given the nature of the build and how it initially really doesn’t synergize with Marauder/Juggernaut, there will be a small amount of Orb of Regrets necessary to change some things around left and right that were just there to help you with leveling. There’s nothing that can’t be gotten through the respec skill point quests though so don’t worry!

You can find an optimized Path of Building here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s website offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the code from the above link. it is highly recommended you install Path of Building to follow builds most optimally.

Gear Page

Progression Advice

Herald of Agony really scales best with levels & Cluster Jewels overall. Neither of those are really accessible very early on in your journey, so I would aim to get at least most of your damage nodes at around level 80, and just fill out the Life nodes afterwards. Make sure to check the Path of Building for levelling trees.

Transfigured Ball Lightning

With the newly introduced Transfigured Gems, we have received a stationary ball Lightning. This means the ball will stay there and keep hitting the target. Therefore, you can now maintain up to 65 Virulence which again boosts the maximum output of your Crawler and approaches 10 million boss damage again. You should definitely look into this segment of the PoB which grabs more Cluster Jewels to help upping maximum Virulence.

Gem Links

Pre Poison / Faster Attacks Gloves

Your endgame pair of Gloves will provide a 6-Link for your Cyclone Cyclone, but as you start out, you probably won’t have the luxury of obtaining such item(s). Since you still need to get Poisons on enemies fairly fast, our Cyclone needs to be linked to those two supports you’d generally be getting from affixes on Gloves. As this means you’re dropping Withering Touch Support, we suggest you free up a 2-link somewhere for a Wither setup with a Spell Totem.

Likewise as before, if you feel like you have enough Virulence uptime without linking Faster Attacks Support to your Cyclone Cyclone, then by all means go for the extra Defense of Life Gain on Hit Support. Otherwise, stick to Faster Attacks for now.

Post Poison / Faster Attacks Gloves

Once you get a pair of Gloves, even if it is a temporary placeholder, with the right support gems, you can swap to your endgame Cyclone Cyclone setup. There’s a bit of if’s and then’s in this setup. If you have a source of mana cost reduction, which should be your rings, a cluster jewel or a Flask in the late game, you *will not *need a Lifetap Support gem. If you have the Ritual of Shadows notable on your Glorious Vanity, you will not need a Withering Step. Wither is a huge source of damage though, so we advise you to have that. If you have both the mana cost reduction & the Wither source on the jewel though Ritual of Shadows your 4-Link looks as follows :

Cyclone L1
Awakened Cast While Channelling Support
Ball Lightning L1 (Divergent Ball Lightning Level 1 is a HUGE upgrade)
Life Gain on Hit Support

Before you have both the Ring & Jewel upgrades, your cyclone needs either the Lifetap, the WIthering step or both! If you only need one, we recommend you to drop the Life Gain on Hit Support. If you need both still, you can entirely forego the Cast when Channeling Ball Lightning but it is advised you look for either of the two ASAP so you can swap back into the Cast while Channeling Setup.

Herald of Agony 7-Link in Lioneye's Vision

Since we want Pierce on our Agony Crawler to not make it super slow at clearing maps, this Body Armour piece really does a lot for us. Giving up an entire support socket for a Pierce Support costs you so much in terms of damage that this is just so nice! Also, no one has ever gotten upset about having a 7-Link for their main damage skill as far as I know! The Herald of Agony setup we’re using has 2 Support gems that could become Awakened Gems. Minion Damage Support and Vicious Projectiles Support should be upgraded to their Awakened counterpart whenever currency allows it. A level 21/20 Herald of Agony also gives you a lot of damage and is one of the first things you should be on the lookout for!

It’s however incredibly important to keep an eye out for your chance to poison. You’re going to probably want a 21/20 Herald of Agony gem to scale as much as possible.

Before being able to afford an Empower Support level 4, you should replace it with a Predator Support. Predator outperforms Empower at level 3 and all other support gems when a target is Deathmarked. In case you don’t want to use Predator, because it requires you to mark, Void Manipulation Support is another option.

Convocation / Utility

Auras

Before getting a Level 2 enlighten, drop the Defiance Banner.

Curses

Both curses linked to Lifetap to counteract their high mana costs. The Sniper’s Mark is automated. Through speccing Call to Arms & using an Enduring Cry, you will be getting Endurance Charges when you enter the fray. Because you rely on these to cap resistances, its kind of important to use Enduring Cry versus the firsts pack of the map. Outside of the First Pack, this is pretty solid extra “Life potion”. Put it on Left click & thank me later!

Automated Buffs

This setup will take care of keeping your Spirit Offering buff up for the Crawler

Main Page / TL;DR