So after getting squashed and depressed by a failed Uber Lab run, I waited a few days for prices to come down on Voices and other gear. Ended up buying a few more Purposeful Harbingers, two 7 passive Voices, 1 Purposeful Harbinger/Heraldry and 2 Call of the Brotherhood rings (corrupted). How is this looking so far?
Well, it was very hard to setup because at level 88 (when I started this build), I was missing quite a few points to get all the critical nodes. More importantly, as I suspected in my initial PoB theorycrafting, I would be off by quite a bit of mana/life to make the reservation portion work. What I also underestimated was the need for strength mostly for Vitality. Although I had leveled up another Vitality jewel, I could not make use of it and required a fresh one.
In the end, through a lot of maneuvering, I managed to eek out enough to get the basic build working. Right now, I’m sitting at 7 Purposeful Harbingers with 2 Heraldries and a Pure Guile jammed in there, which is barely enough to get 5 Heralds with basic auras of purities and offensives to handle white-yellow maps.
What has helped massively that I can see now is the Call of the Brotherhood for the lightning -> cold conversion. However, I sacrifices Hatred for Haste because I felt movement was better than damage for now. So damage is pretty subpar but it’s enough to get through a basic map and the boss.
The important part for me has been the ability to absorb damage. The huge winners are the purities since they give roughly 90% to my resistance. On top of that, I run Discipline and Vitality (though of lower level) where I use Zealot’s Oath to convert Vitality’s life regeneration to energy shield regeneration. The combined effect boosts my ES to 5600 and gives me 3k worth of ES regeneration. So far I haven’t been hitting hard enough to get wrecked.
What I’m missing is the Maligaro’s Virtuosity gloves. This item is huge due to the critical strike and critical strike multiplier. Unfortunately, my only options are corrupted ones on my budget unless I can find (or be given) another exalt. I’m aiming for non-corrupted ones simply because I want the coloring to be flexible and those cost roughly 2.1 ex.
If I am able to secure those gloves, the next upgrade will be another Purposeful Harbinger jewel with Heraldry. I believe 3-4 Heraldries are required to make the heralds close to nothing when it comes to mana reservation. So I’m going to try and aim at 3 to start.
But it’s pretty obvious that 9 Purposeful Harbingers are really needed for the big buffs. I’m missing 100% more efficacy on my current buffs (namely Discipline, Haste, Wrath and Zealotry) and it’s pretty noticeable, especially during boss fights. I’m going to wait to get the last 7 passive voices since the market continues to plunge on those.
I think once I can make that last few ex for the main gear, my next upgrade will be a Cinderswallow Urn. At 1 ex, I think this will be a nice upgrade since it provides a good damage boost and qualifies for my Necromancer ascendancy’s “consume a corpse” aspect to improve my AoE.
Once those are in the place, the truly hard grind starts since it’s mostly leveling to get more passives. At some point, I’m going to need to do Uber Lab since 3 missing passives are just too big for a build like this. Those passives might help me acquire another Purity small cluster gem to help reduce more mana cost. The goal here is to get Hatred back into this build somehow.
Currency-wise, this will be very tough as everything passed these items are multiple exalts each. Obviously, Unnatural Instinct will be an excellent upgrade as well as more reduced mana gems. Then there’s items like Tailwind and Elusive boots and a helmet enchant for mana reduction on something like Haste.
And of course, the real top tier stuff will involve getting better armor like the Saqawal’s Nest and a shield with more mana reservation. And for fighting Sirus A8, I would need a gem with corrupted blood immunity.
Thus far, my luck hasn’t been great with drops since the switch over. And the map clearing isn’t much better than it was. But bossing is less sketchy with the high ES regen and other high resistances in place. Of course, I still need Uber Lab which I’m not sure if this build will handle. I figured on outleveling it by a mile then doing what I could to get around traps by re-specing and removing things like Blood Magic.
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