Velyna's Herald of Agony Champion (PoE The Forbidden Sanctum 3.20)

December 30th, 2022, 18:00

Introduction

An absolute beast for endgame bossing, this Herald of Agony build synergizes with Storm Rain to hit high levels of damage and survivability. Storm Rain’s hit rate stacks Virulence with ease and gives massive sustain through Life Gain on Hit, while still allowing mobility. Not the fastest mapper but clears near anything, I have personally completed wave 30 simulacrum with him.

Below is a video guide I made for Youtube. This is a good place to start and goes over gearing as well as Pros/Cons. The PoB’s and guide may be more current so make sure to check!

Overview

Pros

✔️ Insanely Durable – Don’t worry about taking a hit. Fortify, spell suppression, tons of ailment avoid and near-instant life recovery will keep you healthy. Just make sure Storm Rain is hitting things for Life Gain!

✔️ Highly Automated – Nearly everything we use is triggered. Storm Rain, Convocation, and Flame Dash are the only buttons besides flasks.

Cons

❌ Leaguestart Transition – The finished build cannot be played without uniques, so I have provided a PoB to leaguestart as Poisonous Concoction. It farms smoothly and the transition is not hard.

❌ The Agony of Herald – There are a few situations where HoAG can be annoying, it may not always attack what you want it to and can get blocked by terrain. It is ultimately a minion build although it barely feels like one.

How Does it Play?

Just dodge and shoot arrows while things die around you! All you have to do is keep Storm Rain centered on mobs and the build handles the rest. As you hit and stack the Virulence buff, your minion will increase in power until it mows down multiple packs with one AoE.

Damage and Defensive Scaling

The best way to scale damage is by raising your Virulence cap, or increasing the level of the Herald of Agony gem. Medium cluster jewels with Pure Agony each raise the virulence cap by 5. Minion damage and minion attack speed also add damage

Defense layers include Fortify and stun immunity from ascend, insane life gain on hit, spell suppression and elemental ailment avoidance. If you have storm rain fully stacked it is possible to tank some serious damage.

PoB Imports

The current PoB’s for this build are always available in My Discord or on the page linked below:

Pobs and Skills

For help with this build, the best place to ask is my Stream or the PoE Vault Discord.

The Stages

Leaguestart: Used for fresh leagues, or a start with near-zero currency. Its purpose is to get established farming early maps and buying gear for the next stage. In this case, we will be using Poisonous Concoction. Don’t attempt to push into higher content with this version. Make sure to have high level, well crafted life flasks, since this is where most of your damage will come from!

Transition: We are now swapped into the main build, with Herald of Agony socketed in at least a five linked The Coming Calamity and Storm Rain in a five linked Quill Rain. It is important to have at least one large cluster and two mediums, I will explain how to search for them in the gear section. Rounding out the midrange setup, Fertile Mind helps with Intelligence requirements.

Endgame: We have automated some damage with Maloney's Mechanism. Finishing up the unique roster is a Circle of Nostalgia with “Agony crawler deals increased damage” and ideally an “avoid elemental ailments” implicit. We should have two large clusters with proper notables, and 3-4 mediums with Pure Agony and Cult Leader.

Detailed gear info can be found here:

Gear

Ascend, Bandits and Pantheon

A full explanation of bandit, pantheon and ascend choices can be found here:

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon

Leveling

All of my Leaguestart PoBs contain step by step trees as shown below.

How to League Start

Act 1

Level 1-12

Splitting Steel- Chance to Bleed Support- Onslaught Support

Level 12+

Act 2

Take Defiance Banner from quest reward, but don’t use it yet unless your mana allows.

Act 3

Near the end of act 3, the library will allow access to most of the skill gems and we can change a few supports

Act 4-10

At this point the gems will stay mostly the same, just work on getting all the correct groupings set up and a 5link or 6link for your main skill.

For flask charge generation, you can apply Alchemists mark with Mark on Hit support.

Need Help?

I try to give all the information needed to enjoy the build and succeed, but questions do come up. If you need any help with my builds the best place to go is either My Stream or My Discord

You can also check out these handy resources here on the site:

GL out there, Exile!