[3.11] Bashtart's HERALD OF PURITY GUARDIAN: cheap starter & endgame boss farmer with insane dps!

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.

Is this build league hardcore start viable? :3
Regards
Matthew

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.

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.

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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3andr3w33 wrote:

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!

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.

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?

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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patouskii wrote:

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

I never really considered using FF on Golems/Spectres but I think thats a great idea once you dont really need the Prox shield spectres. I'll definitely be rolling that into my next build for next league.

This build seems like it will do really well in the upcoming league barring substantive changes to the tree and depending on the availability of cluster jewels. If Purposeful Harbinger ends up getting nerfed, those mediums should come down in cost to continue to make this a really, really strong build. A lot more likely to end up having a 5-7 sentinel build instead of a 9 sentinel build but a 4M+ dps each... i wont really be complaining.

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fong249 wrote:

I never really considered using FF on Golems/Spectres but I think thats a great idea once you dont really need the Prox shield spectres. I'll definitely be rolling that into my next build for next league.

Yeah I only recently noticed that Feeding Frenzy buff is granted to all minions and not only the ones linked to the gem so fitting it to helmet replacing Carrion Golem/Stone Golem gives great results. I've been using Stoneskin Flayers as spectres since they just don't die no matter what.