Level 100 CI Herald of Agony Ascendant^3.25

Notes

Thank you so much Luetjeminze!!

I never experienced such a skilled poe-pob-er!
So much fun to celebrate with you this game and hack!
We path it nice again soon!

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The notes here are not always updated, please check and use the buildguide in the forum: 
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3562552
https://pobb.in/qJRPwzj2

This build shows the paths and developments of easy scaleable gear-set-ups. 
Please scroll through the passive trees for the different keystones on Skin of the Lords and further up for all levelling passive trees.
Please scroll through the item-tabs for progressing gear from levelling to endgame.

COMBINATE EVERYTIME THE TREES WITH THE SAME PAIRING ITEMS-SETS AND SKILL-TAB:


1)  "Levelling Trees" with item tab "Levelling Items" and skill tab "Levelling skills"
2)  "Final Trees" with the item tab "Final items" and the skill-tab "Final gems"
3) "Tanky" tree with the pairing "Tanky" item-tab (graven's secret belt, united in dreams weapon)
4) "HoA Lvl 34 / Damage / The Ubers"-tree with item tab ""HoA Lvl 34 / Damage / The Ubers" and skill-tab ""HoA Lvl 34 / Damage / The Ubers" (chaos golem of the maelstrom and feeding frenzy, no convocation, enlighten instead grace, etc.)
5) "Mageblood"-tree with the pairing "Mageblood" items-tab
6) "Iron reflexes"-tree with the pairing "Iron Reflexes" items-tab


All editions are similar based on the same fundament: They vary mainly in: 

- the belt, weapon, gloves
- the used/ unused aura tempestshield
- clusters


POB

--- pob is sometimes not calculating unreserved mana correct - pob's manamanagement is tested and work ----

Configurations PoB:

Configure HoA the tail-attack (in the leftside columne), 40-112 virulences, 15 withers, and 10-45 poison stacks on enemies (for calculating vile toxins) to get the correct dps.
Add / enable: minions are on full life, determination, grace, discipline enabled
If used count in: with the jewel rational doctrine: enemy is on "profane ground", phantasms 11x, physical projectiles.
Disable envy of the united in dreams-sword, it always activates after item-swaps.
When the tree shows high overcapped spellblock, please disable the skill tempest shield manually.
For valuable comparing shaper-damage it is recommended to change pierce in the HoA-support to damage on full life-Support, or vile toxins, or marked predator, and when used on dagger arakaalis fang melee-splash to multistrike.

Further:

PoB sometimes disables 20 spiders after gearswaps, then activate/ check them again / count them 20x
If used, add ignited (raze and pillage), bleeding (vulnerability), moving (knockback), 15% more damage (average effect punishment).


TL;DR - The shortest edition

Get the key-gear:

2 Circles of Ambition or Nostalgia
Small clusters uncompromising - sublime form - self control
4-6 Medium Clusters Pure agony
Skillgem Tornado of elemental turbulences
3-6 abyss jewels minion chance to poison on hit
Darkness Enthroned or Graven's Secret belt
Aegis Aurora shield
Rumi's Concoction flask
Sin's Rebirth-flask/ other source of full 15 withers
Watcher's eye with es on hit
80% / 90% manamultiplier helmet
Amulet anoint
Skin of the Lords /Loyals
Empower and Awakened HoA-supports
Ashes of the Stars

In endgame max 80% poisonchance and castspeed and your generated HoAg virulences to 60-80 with medium cluster "pure agony" and your HoAg-lvl to 31 with empower and awakened gems. Get chances to wither on a jewel balance of terror / glorious vanity or as pathfinder in the ascendancy.
For defences get 3.5k es, spellblock and use 3-4 big defensive auras for infinitive ehp.

Ordinary you need only in the forum-guide:

1. "Tipps for beginning and levelling"
2. "Path of building"
3. "Build up defences and damage"
4. "The composition of agony"
5. "gear" - section body-armour
6. "skills": HoA-virulences
7. "jewels"
8. "checklist defences/ damage/ faq"
9. far down at the total bottom of the forum-build you find all poe-tradelinks and budget-variations in the last spoiler

Build up and balance your defences and damage

This build shows improving paths of easy scaleable gear-set-ups.
Mana, damage and defences are balanced a bit different with weapon, gloves, amulet, used or unused tempestshield and clusters and you can switch the set-ups easy and fast.

1.) Levelling (until t12 maps)

Get the cheap starters: Rainbow Stride boots, Ghastly Theater shield, Ghastly jewels with minion chance to poison on hit, the first cheap small and medium clusters.
Get needed dex and resis on other gear and for HoA a 5 /6 link Body Armour or Replica Alpha's howl or Crest of desire. 

2.) Starter Set-up - The Mana-Management

Begin relaxed to develop your manamanagement around lvl 50 with the 3 small clusterjewels "uncompromising", "sublime form" and "self-control". Simultan outsource your resistances and attributes from gear onto the clustertransferpoints and onto ghastly jewels.
With 2 circles of nostalgia, all skill-reservation-efficiencies, and on top the 90% (or better 80%) manamultiplier-helmet corruption and the amulet-anoint you manage your mana to activate all big tanky auras to stack all global basic defences and keystones.
When you get a watcher's eye with es on hit and reach on the tree 95-100% spell suppression and have crafted well rolled flasks you are already geared for almost all content.

3.) Boss-Hunter - The Damage

Easy around lvl 90 you optimize your damage with full "pure agony" on all medium clusters.
Harmonically in simultaneity you tripple up your ehp:
Around lvl 90 arriving in the third large cluster to cap 70-75% spellblockings you max your defences and recovery with your belt and keystones and switch in more wanted jewels or small clusters.

4.) 100% Chaos-Conversion

Lift off into full force and bear the Ashes of the Stars amulet.
Outsource all needed attributes, resis, ailment avoidances and spell suppression on clustertransfers, abyss-jewels, implicits and league-mechanics like tattoos to get more free passives and more free capacities for damage, tankyness and qol.


HERALD OF AGONY - THE DAMAGE-SCALING

Let's sting!

Mix the max! This fine composed recipe with the full dozen seasoned components tastefully serve full arachnophilia in passion for destruction.
Shake up and stack up the coctail of damage for shining clean screens with

Virulences

Whenever you poison with storm burst and other skills, you generate agony-virulences and your Herald will hit faster and harder.
Poisonchance and 4-9 medium clusters of "pure agony" are basic components to full up 60-90 virulences. Final place in the cherry jewel the golden rule.

I.) Skill up minimum 80% chance to poison:

20% HoAg-buff
25% 2 passives serpentine spellslinger
25% 2 passives fatal toxins
20% curse mastery (whispers of doom: use 2 curses despair and temporal chains or sniper's mark)
40% 8 tattoos of the tawhoa shaman

While levelling:
40% chance to poison supportgem/ or integrated in rare gloves

II.)  We choose the most fast hitting spells with lowest mana-costs in whole poe - like tornados of elemental turbulences, ball lightnings or storm bursts - to generate full virulences.
Simultan they scale up our fast es on hit-recovery and witherings.

Until 100 virulences:
cyclone (lvl 2) - (awakened) cast while channeling (lvl 5) - tornado of turbulence - ball lightning of orbiting


III.) 'Tempestshield', additional 'storm brands', 'void sphere' or other channelled & triggered skills like 'purifying flame', 'firestorm' or 'unearth' stack virulences beside.

IV.) With the jewel "the golden rule" you double with self-poisoning your stacking of virulences.

Full Agony

V.) Insert soon and as early as possible max 6-10x medium clusters "pure agony".
They are our leaders for damage.

VI.) Check the counter in the green HoAg-Aura-Icon for the needed continuous 60-90 virulences-stacks singletarget.
Alternative check in pob the hit rate of poison stacks of your combined fullchannelled skills storm burst and ball-lightning of static without increased poison-durations. Double them manually for the golden rule. Or compare the gained es/ on hit-rating.
Maxed 80 counted virulences quadruple the damage compared to slow 40.


HoAg-supports and gem-levels

VII.) Climb up and crawl to the HoA tipping-gemlevels 23 / 28 / 29 / 34.

The HoA scales heavy with gemlevels, awakened supports and empower.

+21 HoA lvl 21
+3 empower lvl 4
+4 2x +2 skin of the lords
+1 awakened miniondamage
+1 awakened void manipulation

+1 ashes of the stars
+2 the dark seer sceptre

+ awakened vicious projectiles
+ against endgame-bosses vile toxin
/ in other content dungeons: pierce or returning projectiles
/ high budget: awakened fork

Alternative increasements:
+3 Cold Iron Point dagger
+2 triggereapon / wand
+1/ +2 Rare Helmet (vendorcraft)
+1/ +2 rare amulet
+3 Replica Dragonfang amulet
+1 awakened empower lvl
+1 chaos mastery "corruption"

Withers

VIII.) 11-15 wither debuffs almost double the damage:

 withering step (- increased duration) (11 withers)
(+ashes of the stars 15, +enhance 15, increased duration support possible)

Alternatives
jewel balance of terror despair-mod: "inflict withered ..." + selfcast despair (15)
jewel glorious vanity + transformed notable ritual of shadows + stormburst (15)
Sin's rebirth stibnite flask in maps (15)

2-3 Curses

despair + temporal chains are mixed in.

Gear up 

Fuse it all in the armour Skin of the Lords. Wield the "United in dreams"-sword.
If you you are boarding to full damage serve your composition of destruction in the deep love of the dirty scorpion-tail:

IX.) Facetank much to debuff with your void gaze of the helmet Eber's Unification and fire almost nonstop stormburst for full damage.
X.) Triad Grips with 4 white sockets add elegance of millions of damage in the 100% Chaos-Conversion.
XI.) Use more voices-clusters for more medium clusters with "pure agony".

More Poison

XII.) On more stacked ghastly jewels with "15% minion chance to poison on hit" in the tree you scale damage further up.

+ the darkness enthroned belt to double 2 rare yellow ghastly jewels with "15% minion chance to poison on hit"
+ with enough resis/attr in other spots get instead 3 well rolled blue corrupted magic ghastly jewels. Double and more them with the jewel The Adorned. A cheap Adorned rolled 125% is in average early already perfect.
+ HoA-support awakened unbound ailments. Around 100M total damage, with hardcapped poisondot of 35.7M, switch awakened unbound ailment to predator, damage on full life, vile toxins or other supports.
+ with the jewel amanamu's gaze's 30% more dot-damage you reach early the hardcap of the poe-engine for poison-dot
+ 50% dot-multiplier of HoA-crits

Bonus

The +1 chaos mastery "corruption" buffs damage when used. Further large chaosclusters and the jewels amanamu's gaze and rational doctrine add nice damage.

The flasks bottled faith (in combination with Zealot's Oath keystone) or vessel of vinktar scale some extra damage up.

Vaal skeletons or a chaos golem featuring feeding frenzy or the auras malevolence or precision activated instead grace or a third and fourth curse fitted in are buffing the damage too. 


CHECKLIST DEFENCES

1. Check your elemental resistances. They have to be capped and have to be all 75++%.

2. Check your flasks.

- Do you have antibleeding on one flask-suffix?
- anti-ignite and anti-curse before you got removals in the ascendancy and immunities on gear and jewels or with purifying flame?
- Is the quality of all your flasks 20% to +30%? With flasks reduced charges used, charges gained when hit or longer duration?

3. Check your pantheon.

- Do you have in the minor Pantheon and immunity to burning ground?
As CI it's most important to recharge your es. Max the Pantheons with divine vessels in the maps.

4. Check your blockings.

- Do you have max 60-75% spellblock? When not you need blockings on Rumi's concotion?
It's your priority for recovery against the spellhits of the big bosses!
Against final bosses it's best not depending on Rumi's Flask and use a rare granite flasks.
- Do you have 40% attackblock and high 60% evasion of grace? Or without grace 60% attackblock?

5. Other basics & Playstyle

- Do you use and spam Molten Shell and Vaal Discipline? Use them often!
- Use often void sphere and convocation!
- Do you have 4 ascendancies in the labyrinths done?
- Do you have activated all the auras "Determination" for high ar and es on block-recovery and "Grace" and "Discipline"?
- Did you reached 100% spell suppression? Stack "elegant form" (or "untouchable" or "aerialist") on small and unique medium clusters to fix simultan your ailment avoidances until you obtained it on the boots, on the watcher's eye, on tattoos, sol, etc.


6. Do you have obtained all the important jewels in the passive tree?

- Do you have "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" on one implicit on one jewel or 100% uptime flask? A lot bosses can kill you very fast without.
- Use "the golden rule" not before transformed to CI (or before CI not without "maw of the conquest")

7. Check your tanky skills

While your defensive skill gems like determination, molten shell, frost shield, (vaal) discipline, grace, cast when stunned are levelling up, you will get a lot more defense with raising levels of course. When you have too much too weak lvl 1 gems socketed on your gear it is dangerous and you have to level them a bit before returning in high content.

- Try out void sphere for tanky interruptions and much damage-uptime
- Or cast when damage taken lvl1 - frost wall lvl1
- Or curse with enfeeble instead temporal chains
- temporal rift can be one more panicbutton for recovery

- Do you have enough mana, 80-110, so that all tanky skills are triggered?

8. Do you often die of dot/ degen?

Stack more recovery:

Aegis aurora: es on spell block and attackblock, b.i.s. in maps and high density and with iron reflexes on skin of the lords against fast spell-hits of Sirus, Exarch or big physical slams of shaper etc.

> watcher's eye es on hit
> trickster's es-recharge on spell suppression
> frost shield
> trickster's soul drinker and es-leech with cwc ball lightning of static lvl 20
> in maps: vaal discipline es-recharge
> only in maps: soul ripper-flask for spamming vaal discipline
> graven's secret and power charges on crit support
> against the Ubers: lethe shade
> major pantheon of arakaali
> ghost dance
> divine shield on skin of the lords
> es leech flask-suffix, es leech support or ethereal feast with i.e. lvl 20 ball lightning of static
> with 2 passives for Zealot's Oath: bottled faith, enduring cry (- urgent orders), vitality
> Sorrow of the divine
> faster casting flask-suffix and onslaught flask for faster es on hit and es-leech
> wicked ward
> temporal rift as third panic button
> 2% es-reg in es-mastery, 50 es on spell suppression, etc.
> Endurance charges of the ward-flask Elixier of the unbroken circle or on a cluster enduring composure

9. Do you often die of ailments?

Please take a look in the spoiler: "fire and other ailments" to reach 100% ailments-immunities with eldritch-boots.
Visit also "Pantheon". Use fast the shield anti-ailments-mastery.


10. Check your es

You need total minimum around 3500 energyshield + life for all content. Estimated and thumbed. In my experiences. In juiced t16 maps. Try to get more to get more reaction time in damage-peaks!
With 90 % pdr you will never be oneshotted and when there are blockable hits, you will get healed fast and nonstop.

Collecting more damage-avoidances, +max-resis and building up more layers of defences is finally much better!

- When your defences, auras and armour are builded up 5.5 k are enough.
- With crit-reductions of the poison-mastery serpentine spellslinger path for 5 k
- With 100% spell suppression 4.5 k are top tanky
- With 100% flasks-uptime 4 - 4.5k are great
- With 100% ailment-immunities and 70% full spellblock 3.5k - 4k guard you in immortality

Rare gloves (300-600) or the jewel "split personality" with es/ int (200-300) grant needed energy shield before you get it on other slots.
Use beside an elixier of the unbroken circle (+400 es) /iron flask and / or the dark seer +2 shadow sceptre (+700 es).
Get high es-rolls on Eber's and aegis with 28-30 % quality (tainted armourer's scraps, hillock, beastcraft). Stack more es-tattoos. When possible get some added es on cluster-transferpoints. They multiply a lot, 7x, with your SoL and passives.
Path passives in "influence" and increased aura-effects in the tree.

They multiply a lot, 3x, with your SoL and passives.
Or further exchange a large or also a medium cluster into defences with spellblockings, +max resis, ailments-immunities or +es-notables like veteran defender, introspection, energy from naught, savour the moment. Often you find great unique medium megaclusters.

11. Do you have problems with a special boss?

==> Please take a look into "boss-hunting" in "endgame".

12. Know the dangerous map-mods:

"no mana recovery" (reroll or use enduring mana flask)
"less armour and block"

Much too much multiple mods mounted up like:

"reduced effect of auras"
multiple damage / vulnerabilities / reduced maximal resistances - mods

13. Know the dangerous altars:

- only before 90-100% ignite-immunities: searing exarch-altars
- in lower levels: meteorits on flask-usage
- most exarchs' and eater's altar-mods are fast and rippy stacked to many 100's % additional damage. Choose first the chaos-mods as CI, the ailments-mods when you are 100% immune, with optimized absorbation-charges of the graven's secret belt or melding of the flesh the elemental-mods, etc.
- of course choices like -50% resis when you don't have 35% overcapped resis

14. Know the dangerous atlas-passives:

Seance
Wrath of the cosmos

15. Know also the safety-atlas-wheels:

+ max-resis with the delve-note "Packed with Energy"
the tanky shrine-effects in "Supplication" and "Syncretism"
the additional aura of Huck geared in Heist with "The dutiful Soldier"

16. Know the dangerous invitation-mods:

In the mods "temporal chains" and "enemies have #% chance to avoid poison" you loose much damage because of reduced castspeed and less virulences.

17. Visit the spoiler "endgame" ==> "Level 100" to balance some skills into defences like frostwalls, enfeeble, knockbacks, cc's, meatshields and more.

18. When you want to take the total tanky road, you can squeeze in "the melding of the flesh" on top for 82-87% max-resis. Visit in "jewels" the "variations".

19. Remember

You need only 6-15M damage in juiced red maps!
So you can easy balance much capacities of the build into more defences.
Of course ranged, lethal and instant autotriggered damage is almost equal to a tanky deluxe-defensive layer. Stinging your enemies fast down prevents them from dealing additional damage to you.
In reverse without tankyness you will have to need to move and kite more and will have lower damage-uptimes.

In different poe-content it's recommended to balance your tankyness and damage different.

Dps- Checks

- 6M damage are really for sure enough and best for t16-mapping and lvl 100 farming
- 8M are enough to kick Maven
- 10M for juiced red T16 and for Ueber Elder
- 12M for the feared, valdo-maps and simulacrums wave 30
- 15M-30M for t17 and the Ubers