Velyna's Herald of Agony Champion Gearing (PoE Settlers of Kalguur)

August 10th, 2024, 23:50

Item Searches

Small Cluster Jewel (uncompromising) – 3 passives on a reservation efficiency base.
Small Cluster Jewel (enduring composure) – 2 Passives, Enduring Composure, and we need Dexterity on cluster jewels somewhere so get it here if possible.
Small Cluster Jewel (feast of flesh) – 2 Passives, Feast of Flesh, and Dexterity if you can afford it (turn on in search filters)
Medium Cluster Jewel – 4 or 5 Passives, Pure Agony, then either Cult Leader or Invigorating Portents.
Large Cluster Jewel (starter) – 8 Passives, Renewal with Call to Slaughter or Raze and Pillage.
Large Cluster Jewel (endgame) – 8 Passives, Renewal, Call to Slaughter. Must have either Rotten Claws or Raze and Pillage as third notable.
Circle of Nostalgia – Good implicits are avoid alments or -3 mana cost, you will need the -3 to hit zero cost on storm rain. This search includes chaos resist roll, turn that off for cheaper results.

Chestpiece Coloring

The easiest, most reliable way to color your chest is with the crafting bench if uncorrupted. If corrupted then using Tainted Chromatic Orb is your best bet. The crafting bench steps go roughly like this:

1. Set the chest to 3 sockets.
2. Craft at least 3 green sockets.
3. Set to 4 sockets.
4. If the 4th socket doesn’t land red, set back to 3.
5. Once the 4th is red, repeat with the 5th.
6. The last socket is expensive so hope it hits blue first try.

Zero Cost Setup

You can use combinations of the following sources to hit zero cost on your storm rain:

Level 1 Storm Rain
Ring/amulet prefix craft for -7 mana cost
-3 mana cost from Circle of Nostalgia implicit
Searing Exarch reduced mana cost helm implicit
Inspiration Support

Armour/Weapons

Bow

Our storm rain doesn’t need to deal damage, it just needs to hit as quickly and consistently as possible. This makes Quill Rain ideal for the job.

Quiver

Maloney's Mechanism will automate whatever abilities you socket in it, I use Mirror Arrow, Ensnaring Arrow and Feeding Frenzy Support

Helm

+2 minion gems is a very powerful mod on an otherwise open item. You’ll also want 14% spell suppress here and some life. The other two suffixes are a great place to pick up some resists.

Start with a fractured 14% suppression helmet and use Bound Fossil to hit +2 minion gems.

If the helmet is uninfluenced, use any tier of Ichor to make Eater dominant. If yours is already influenced with exarch, ensure that the eater implicit is higher tier.

Now you can reroll the two unfractured suffixes using Eldritch Chaos Orb.

Amulet

Replica Dragonfang's Flight is our best option here. The +3 to Herald of Agony makes it easier to hit damage breakpoints since the skill benefits off gem levels. It also gives us some mana reservation, resists and the reduced attribute requirement is a nice bonus for us as well.

Chest

To fully stack Herald of Agony with supports, we need The Coming Calamity. Nothing else will do the job. Late game upgrade to this slot is a +1 gem level corrupt.

Boots

I wore Atziri's Step for a long time, then crafted stun avoidance boots using essences and eldritch currency. Like the helmet, it’s best to start with a 14% suppression fractured base. Expensive, but saves money and hassle in the end.

Gloves

Grip of the Council are cheap and easy, plus available early on. Later on we upgrade them with a Vulnerability on hit corrupt.

Belt

We use Stormshroud to hit full ailment immune, I get the required shock avoidance entirely on belt by rolling with Deafening Essence of Torment and then 45% on a jewel.

Ring 1

Very easy slot, just get as much resist as possible and a decent life roll to start. Make sure to have an open prefix for the -7 craft. You can also use catalysts to hit -8 if struggling to sustain mana.

Ring 2

Agony crawler damage and chaos resist are priority, followed by implicits.

Jewels

Uniques

Fertile Mind: Solves our intelligence needs at the cost of a jewel socket, not a bad trade.
Stormshroud: Provides full ailment immunity for only 100% shock avoidance.
Forbidden Flesh+ Forbidden Flame: The Intimidate from First to Strike, Last to Fall buffs our crawlers damage, and we also get nice defensive tools.

There are two jewel slots that have a lot of flexibility, allowing you to use anything from a basic rare to some very expensive uniques like Sublime Vision or a Watcher's Eye. If you aren’t shock and stun immune yet, I recommend you handle that with abyss jewels in these two slots until you can fix it elsewhere.

Cluster Jewels

Large: 8 Passive with ‘Call to the Slaughter’ and ‘Renewal’, then either ‘Raze and Pillage’ or ‘Rotten Claws’ as the third noteable. Only this exact setup will give us the layout shown in PoB, allowing for optimal pathing.

Medium: 4 or 5 Passive with ‘Pure Agony’ and ‘Cult Leader’, with the priority being ‘Pure Agony’.

Small: Enduring composure gives us reliable endurance charge generation, and we can score some attributes and/or resists here as well.

Small: Fettle is an easy life boost plus is gives us a nice boost to our primary sustain, LGoH.