[3.11] Bashtart's HERALD OF PURITY GUARDIAN: cheap starter & endgame boss farmer with insane dps!
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Is there a consensus for a budget version of this build without spending tons of exalts. I only have about 6 right now. There seems to be a ton of variations in the commments and I am getting confused. Thank you
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" Ookay so we wanna talk about budget huh. I delved into this build for about 3 weeks and got my fill of this league from bare-bones start to killing Sirus and other notable bosses, am ready to share what I learned. First, I'll link the delirium budget version (Kendricklzb, around page 61-65 of this post) and a high-end version (Gnomiro, referenced alot in last ~10 pages of this post) which were a big help for me. Budget: https://pastebin.com/mpUykeDV I would not use +2 unique chest though. High-end: https://pastebin.com/inzt0N0s What we can all agree on is to stack Pure Agony on medium jewels (+1 sentinel) and rotten claws on large jewels (impale dps is huge). Everything else is up to you. The rings will be about 1 ex each, four medium jewels and two large jewels are anywhere from 50 chaos - 1 exalt each, low end means need to allocate more small passives so you'll eventually upgrade those. Good usable chest about 1 ex, and two daggers about 40 chaos, everything else can be upgraded in small steps/cheap. I want to take this time to sum up my experience, and things I learned and tweaks that was part of me playing around. 1) First, defense.
Spoiler
Defense is already good in this build but I kinda went overboard and crafted aspect of the crab on my chest, and went out of the way and got two medium jewels with Disciples (phys damage reduction per sentinel). Why? I felt this league was more dangerous. These two are 48% phys damage reduction alone and I didn't have to get out of my way to get them (pretty expensive the medium jewels tho). In hindsight, a little less on phys dmg reduction and more on chaos resist might have done better for delirium. Vaal molten shell I consider to be our number one safety net.
2) Concering Sirus.
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Gear/resistances I set up so I can easily switch to Sirus fight. This entails switching boots to Kaom's roots (no slow, otherwise good chance you'll die) and switch out blade vortex for ball lightning-greater multiple projectiles-faster casting for easier sentinel summoning without stalling stationary (otherwise you die trying to keep up blade vortex). Make sure one of your jewels has "corrupted blood cannot be afflicted on you", put dash-second wind, and a bunch of quicksilver/life flasks for the fight. All other major bosses I felt I could faceroll with original setup.
3) Specter/golem?
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I deleted the whole summon specter/golem thing. Why? Carrion golem adds very little damage to sentinels, and instead of stone golem life regen, you can get Surging Vitality on small cluster jewels (very good life regen). Specters I didnt want to manage all the time.
4) Other changes for quality of life. Arcane surge:
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Instead of arcane surge on blade vortex I went with faster casting (huge quality of life). Losing ~15% more spell damage on blade vortex from arcane surge does nothing imo. Also, faster casting is huge for cast speed -- can't sit around casting BV with 0.5 second cast time while delirium mobs are out and about.
Culling strike:
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I had culling strike on my gloves (big quality of life for snagging more trash mob kills to upkeep sentinels). In hindsight you can grab faster casting on gloves and put culling strike as skill gem too -- cheaper option.
Other auras:
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Also sneaked in low level clarity cuz if you go nuts on blade vortex and whirling blades you will run out of mana every now and then. Arcane surge mana regen might be good enough for you. But I personally like faster casting + clarity. Even with clarity can't keep casting BV over and over -- need to adjust to playstyle where you upkeep BV periodically and whirling-blade around. Around 25-30 mana regen/sec will enable you to do that comfortably. Also, sand stance for flesh of stone for me personally cuz I hate dying but that's up to you. So my aura is: HoP (0% mana reserved), aspect of ___ (20%), clarity, dread banner (8%), pride (36%), and flesh and stone (18%) -- depending on your rings and enlighten and charisma-annointment you may have to drop one aura for lower budget, but I didn't go out of my way for reduced mana reservation other than charisma-annointment on my amulet. Make sure the circle of guilt ring has around 39% or better reduced mana (can be upgraded using catalyst if you buy uncorrupted). In hindsight instead of aspect of crab, arctic armour or aspect of the spider might have been better.
Curse.
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Also, I dropped +1 curse on the tree but don't be like me and keep one defensive and one offensive curse. For me, I felt offensive curse was not needed for doing end-game content and it's not up 100% cuz I dont have curse on hit (from gloves or from skill support) or blasphemy -- was just using low level cwdt. Relying on cwdt for offensive curse was clunky and using curse on hit with whirling blade was also clunky. So I sac'ed some damage for 4 whopping skill points. I put the surplus points for cluster jewels and for more life on the tree (so that I sit on a nice 7k hp).
For choice of offensive curse, punishment versus vulnerability is totally up to you. I opted for vulnerability cuz its less condition-based than punishment (cursed mobs have to melee hit a sentinel for that sentinel to get buffed). Anyways the lesson here is we got plenty of passives if we cut down on some weak minion nodes, so in hindsight I would have kept the +1 curse from tree if I had a better way of proc'ing it rather than via a low level cwdt. Passive tree/jewels:
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Some minion nodes on tree pale so much in comparison to cluster jewels -- two important ones in my books are: "increases in minion attack speed apply to you" (zoom zoom whirling blade) and "increases in minion damage apply to you". But do cut down other minion nodes you think are unnecessary cuz cluster passives offer so much for this build.
Large jewel = rotten claws and call to slaughter are really good, renewal is bonus. 8 passives best. Medium jewel = pure agony, cult leader, and disciples all good. 4 or 5 passives no difference if jewel has two notables and one small jewel socket. Small jewel = more life, I personally like surging vitality, but options here. Feeding frenzy or minion damage for support gem:
Spoiler
sentinels being aggressive didn't really do much at the end. We will be up and close to mobs with our BV anyways so sentinel's aggro distance didn't really have a big impact. I cut down convocation as well cuz I'm already tanky enough. I could have put vaal haste but I am lazy to press it.
Last but not least. Writhing jar flask.
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I feel it's almost a necessity. So many cases you need it. Initial boss fight when all your sentinels are down, transitioning into Alva mission, etc.
After cutting all that out, I'm clocking at 2.39 million dps/sentinel (~3.2 with blood stance and if I were to use an offensive curse). Not using awakened skill gems so I would call mine medium budget. Anyways, up to you how much you want to sacrifice offense for quality of life/defense at this point. Also, spiking damage to insane levels means +1 or 2 gem level on chest and +1 or 2 from amulet which is out of budget for me. Then multiplicative treatment using increased damage taken on bottled faith, helmets mods, aspect of spider, and etc (also don't forget to squeeze in minion attack speed anywhere you can). Some of these damage increases are a bit condition-based and will not always be upkept. For example, chance to deal double damage inflates dps on paper alot but most of it depends on sentinels being on full life. Also, not to mention ramp-up time initially, especially on bosses. So I would say I'm clocking about 30-50% of dps from a high-end build on average considering all things. Overall, been a pleasant experience, and the fun of this build is choosing which aspect of the build you will strengthen (offense/defense/quality of life). And remember you can cut down quite a bit on offense because even after sacrificing alot of damage like I did, you can burn major bosses in no time. Anyways, here's my PoB also if you wanna see what a lazy/medium-budget/defense-oriented version looks like: https://pastebin.com/P1AVTD7H Small aside, some of the PoB's floating around has mistakenly enabled feeding frenzy buff while not actually using the skill gem (it's a bug). And make sure you are using PoB fork for impale support, cuz it seriously adds like third of paper dps. Last edited by hyukin#4288 on May 19, 2020, 4:22:09 AM
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For budget, i'd generally agree with Hyukin.
You dont NEED 9 sentinels. 7 is fine. 6 is fine. 9 is a luxury - in fact i'd say the entire second cluster jewel setup is a luxury. Curses on HotHT are also a huge luxury and will be a 10ex ish investment easily, each. In terms of absolute must haves for clearing all content: 15c for 2x Cold Iron Points 10c for Gloves w/ Life + Resists 10c for boots w/ Life + Resists + 20% move speed 10-50c for an amulet - ideally with +1 to Str Gems (Physical is a lot more) 30c-50c for a belt w/ Life + Resists 100c for 2x Circle of Guilt w/ Res + Sentinel Damage 1-1.5ex for a 6L w/ Life + resists DONT FORGET TO USE FERTILE CATALYST ON YOUR CIRCLES OF GUILT. It'll bump your Reduced Mana Res for HoP up significantly. Annoints probably add another 100c as you should probably be using Ravenous horde. I believe I was pretty close to 2.5M DPS per Sentinel (1.7 w/ Feeding Frenzy) before swapping over to a more Gnomiro like build. Even with 5 sentinels, this is more than enough DPS to carry you through 95% of content easily, with UElder going down like a sack of bricks and Simulacrum being doable, although with this gear you may catch a death if you get double bossed or just get caught out. If you could get Cannot Be Frozen/Chilled in your setup, you'd be really fine for about all content as that's one place where it's been medium challenging for me. Gem wise, i'm lazy so i never really swap. I used Arcane Surge on Vaal BV, i kept a pocket Writhing Jar for content that might not provide enough uptime. I though spectres and golems were huge for keeping me alive, especially Stone Golem & Stoneskin Flayers. Recently i've found 2x Arena Master + 1x Stoneskin Flayer to be a really nice setup, as the Arena Masters have a movement and Attack Speed buff that constantly goes off every 8 seconds, with about 3.5 seconds uptime. I didn't have much issue with Redeemer Sentries, or even with the Bashtart recommended Heretical Wards since the Prox shield can be quite nice, but they're a little fragile. My last update for Delirium league is done. I finally got an Arcane Surge Circle of Guilt. There is probably a better chest for me out there but I dont really feel like messing with my enchants and whatnot, or trying to craft at all. I probably have 40-50 ex in my character now and there really isnt any content that gives me trouble, other than maybe double beyonded quad sextant delirium T17+. I've got probably 90% simulacrum deathless... sometimes you just get caught. According to PoB right now i'm at 5.1M DPS per sentinel w/ 9 Sentinels. This does not factor in uptime on Arena Master which would put the DPS even higher. I do not have an awakened multistrike gem, which again, would push it even higher (+700K dps). I am not level 100, so i'm missing some health. I dont have perfect small cluster jewels - another Fettle with +16 Max Health + some resist would be enormous defensive boosts. I have a buffed 10K armor which I feel like is plenty, with 5.6K health and 95 unreserved mana - again, plenty for keeping BV up and whirling around to distribute my 3 curses. I've now tried 4 other builds out there - Ball Lightning Sabo, whispering ice scion, detonate dead/spell slinger necro, and TR Trickster. They're all adequate. This build scales tremendously well - with MAJOR power creep with moderate investment. Had i known that Hands of the High Templar were only a 5ex upgrade, I would've done it much sooner. I will have a hard time with a new build next league... this one is just too capable. |
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Is this build league hardcore start viable? :3
Regards Matthew |
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There are probably some moves that you could make to make it HC viable, but it's core defensive mechanisms are vaal molten shell, a boatload of armour, and only a moderate amount of life. Cold Iron Points are pretty critical, but I suppose you could sub in a shield if you really wanted and use shield charge w/ fortify ILO of Whirling Blades. It wouldn't be my choice for HC.
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Since I play standard and don't have proper access to cluster jewels yet, I've been concentrating on making defense stronger on the build lately. With five sentinels and ~3 mil dps (with max buffs) on each of them there's plenty of dps already. Golems, spectres and blade vortex on top of that. At lvl 97 I have 7,4k life + 700 ES and ~1600 regen. Armor is at 6,8k without any buffs or flasks and at 19,7k with flasks and vaal molten shell. Few regen passive nodes still available in passive tree but otherwise it's quite finished and not many useful nodes available without sacrificing other important nodes. You can't facetank sirus death beams but if you don't play very poorly, it's really difficult to die while mapping and doing "regular" bosses, guardians etc.
These gloves are the latest addition with little bit extra life and dps through gem levels: Taking Pride at lvl 30 and Dread Banner lvl 31, small boost to dps. Found them for very decent price considering how well the corrupt implicits work with this build. Last edited by patouskii#3252 on May 23, 2020, 7:39:28 AM
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Any advice on how to improve my equipment? Which upgrades would be the most helpful for about a 20ex budget? Also, is there a good alternative to spectres? I just find it quite tedious of a playstyle when they start dying alot around t15-16 maps. I'm using triple undying evangelists btw, they feel the most survivable of all the spectres I've tried. Thanks! |
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" If you want spectres to not die, use stoneskin flayers. I've used them for ~two months now and they have died zero time. Done several Sirus aw8, uber elder, delve (450 depth now) and other difficult stuff in the game and they just don't die. About your build, try to find +1 active skill gems chest and/or +1 physical/strength skill gems amulet. This will probably improve your dps most and wont even take your whole budget. Also annoint your amulet with ravenous horde for dps or if you need more life and regen, Golem's Blood is good choice. Last edited by patouskii#3252 on May 29, 2020, 9:42:30 AM
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I'm fitting some cluster jewels to my build, they are quite readily available on standard already.
One question about the Fearsome Force node on passive tree. How does minion AoE effect HoP sentinels? Do they attack in larger area or do their hits have somehow larger AoE? Last edited by patouskii#3252 on May 30, 2020, 3:55:37 AM
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With the help of Gnomiro's build I modified my build with cluster jewels and other changes. Currently at 7 max sentinels with 4,93 mil dps with all buffs. Level 98 with 7,6k life and 600 ES. The build feels quite tanky now and melts bosses in no time. Mapping could be speedier but is quite ok.
I wanted to keep Stone Golem in the build for life regen but I removed Carrion Golem and replaced it with Feeding Frenzy. Feeding Frenzy gives over 600k more dps per sentinel so it's a nice buff to have. Obviously Meat Shield and Feeding Frenzy cancels some of each other's function but I feel no difference during gameplay and the ms, attack speed and damage buff from Feeding Frenzy is the most important thing here. PoB: https://pastebin.com/GY2vziws |
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