[3.8] A CI/LL Tri-Curse Herald of Agony Occultist [Deathless Uber Elder, League Starter]

Leveling :

From level 1 to Act 3 Library :

I have leveled my Occultist from the first levels to the Act 3 Library by using Summon Raging Spirit + Zombies. It was neither good or bad : the DPS on single target (bosses) was rather good with SRS but the clear speed was pretty bad as the Spirits disappear too quickly and the Zombies are slow to react.
The Syndicate Encounters were also quite an issue...

Looking backwards, I would recommend to have an hybrid setup : a fast hitting spell like Freezing Pulse for clear and Summon Raging Spirit for bosses.

By the way, I have leveled using the "pure ES" strategy (not life/ES) and it was really good.


From Act 3 Library to Act 6 Western Forest :

When I finally got access to nearly all gems with Siosa in the Library (remember that I play SSF), I have been able to switch to the Herald of Agony !

The game then became really enjoyable. I crafted a 4L +1 minion helmet with the vendor recipe (Magic (Blue) helmet + Orb of Alteration + Life Flask with the suffix "of Animation") for the Crawler.
My early setup was Herald of Agony - Minion damage - Minion speed (not enough minion nodes in the tree taken so far) - Pierce (no curse on hit)

For poisoning, I went with Ball Lightning - LMP (GMP after Act 4) - Lesser Poison, and it was really good as well. A bit low on bosses, but the Crawler still managed to 4-shot Malachai in the last phase, giving a huge feeling of power !

I still kept the Zombies to provide some meatshields for the Syndicate/Bosses and it was quite alright when I went Summon Zombie - Minion Life - Totem and Minion Elemental Resistances.

Then again, leveling with pure ES was very good and no problem at all to survive.


From Act 6 Western Forest to end of Act 10 :

Upon reaching the Western Forest in Act 6, I farmed the Divination Card "The Incantation" for getting the Whispering Ice staff. It did not take too long to get the 4 required cards (between one and 2 hours). I was over level 50, which is important so that the Whispering Ice staff can go to 6 sockets.

At first, I settled for 4 sockets and the coloring (2 blue 2 green) was already a big challenge. It costed me all my chromatics and even some jewellers to get additionnal chromatics at the vendor. In the end, I succeeded and the poisoning became (Icestorm) - Spell Cascade - Lesser Poison - Curse on hit - Projectile Weakness, while Crawler link became Herald of Agony - Minion damage - Added Fire damage - Physical to Lightning (Elemental Equilibrium was taken in the passive tree).

The rest of the leveling/story process went very very well, the Crawler was obliterating everything. I was able to do the Merciless Lab just before act 10 Kitava and it was very easy.
Kitava himself went down very quickly, just one random death to a ground blast I didn't see.
Just one thing of note : the Sewers in the beginning of Act 8 were quite challenging, as I was not yet CI, and life was very small (1k5 HP). The poison clouds from the zombies were very deadly. But it was the only problematic zone.

For Ascendancies, I took the ES nodes first (Wicked Ward then Vile Bastion) and finally Profane Bloom.



End game

From early maps :

With the help of Hillock in Transportation, I have been able to put 28% quality on the Whispering Ice staff, which allowed me to 6 socket it very easily (less than 50 jewellers).

However, this luck ended here, as I was not able to achieve 3 blue & 3 green sockets in more than 200 chromatics (average of 439 chromatics in Vorici calculator). I had to settle for 2 green, 2 blue & 2 red.

The link in Whispering Ice has then become (Icestorm) - Poison (with the help of an Abyss Jewel with + chaos damage to spells) - Spell Cascade - Curse on hit - Projectile Weakness - Increased Duration - Reduced Mana.
I have now Vorici in Research and I will try to put some white sockets in the staff to ease the coloring.

Defense-wise, I am currently sitting at a bit above 7k ES, which is very fine. DPS-wise, The Herald of Agony is still in my Helmet link (which has +2 minion gems) for now. I will try to first get a good ES chest and then 5L or 6L it. PoB indicates 240k DPS on Shaper @ 40 Virulence, so it is already very good !

I am still in T4/T5 maps (SSF slows obviously the full completion process) but everything goes very smoothly. Especially the Incursion/Delve parts where the Crawler just deletes every monster !
I am also looking to completing my last Trial of Ascendancy to finally get the Malediction node !



Final Words :

Pros :

- This is therefore the best build I have ever played in SSF for now (even though my Glacial Cascade Totem Ascendant last league was already very strong). The DPS is really high for SSF and the defense is excellent with CI and Occultist.

- The Whispering Ice staff held its promises by giving me the easiest 7L of the game. The coloring process is quite hard though. Icestorm with Spell Cascade has amazing reach and area of effect, allowing to reach 40 Virulence stacks on one pack. For bosses, the stack of Icestorms also allows me to reach 30+ Virulence stacks with ease.


Cons :

- Unfortunately, Icestorm with Spell Cascade and Increased duration comes with an additional hefty price : the game crashes a lot, especially when there is a lot of action spawning (Breach, Abyss, and even more the Syndicate Intervention encounters), where it has never crashed on my PC before. I have read countless topics on this, but this is really due to Icestorm and Spell Cascade unfortunately. I will soon change my gaming PC, so maybe for a higher spec one will be able to handle the heavy load that occurs.



Thank you for reading this. If you have additional comments/questions, please do not hesitate !

My SSF Character is public so you can see it, her name is Esmeraldakita (a nice name combining ES + Herald + my pseudo).

Bye for now !