[3.20]🦂 Velyna's HoAG Storm Rain 🦂 Cheap and Easy Leaguestarter | Hidden and Feared Viable

Herald of Agony has consistently been a cheap and high damage skill that goes largely ignored because of the speed meta, and because it can be a bit clunky to play. This build solves most of the clunkiness by using storm rain as our poison applicator allowing decent clear speed and the ability to facetank when needed.

Pros

• Smooth levelling: We can run Poisonous Concoction from act 1 through to maps, then buy a couple cheap items and swap into full HoAG very quickly at leaguestart.
• Big scaling: HoAG scales damage from Virulence stacks which you gain from applying poisons. Storm Rain has insane hit rate to lock those stacks at maximum no matter how high we raise our cap.
• Safety: Armour, Steelskin, 6k hp, Fortify, ailment immune, CB immune, massive LGoh.

Cons

• Medium Speed: Not going to blow up packs with one click, not going to clear maps in 45 seconds.
• Big Damage is Expensive: For the last million or so potential DPS the cost rises dramatically. Only required for end END content though.

Bosses and Stuff

• 559 Delve Node
• 559 Delve Boss
• Wave 20+ Simulacrum

Easy SC leaguestart.

HC viable for experienced players imo.

Not SSF viable, too many clusters and uniques.

Installer

This version is updated faster and has extra features. The PoB links in the guide all use this and there might be differences from the standard one.

Uninstall PoB before installing this or you might get errors.

- The trees for new characters can be found in the Leaguestart PoB at bottom left. -

---Attack---

---Auras/Defense---

---Movement/Misc---

I ran splitting steel + pierce + onslaught with a 2h weapon at first.

Pick up some GGG and GGR 3Links along the way.

Steelskin can be put on your run button as a free defense layer.

You get Vitality after killing Brutus just make sure not to level it too high and take up all your mana.

Once you hit the end cave swap to poison concoction, keep main hand empty and equip a shield.

Make sure to keep flasks updated and rolled for "% increased amount recovered" because that's a big part of how our leveling skill scales damage.

---Attack---

---Herald---

---Auras/Defense---

---Movement/Misc---

You will get Herald of Agony from vendor after clearing Chamber of Sins.

Clear the Crypt and take Survival Secrets as the quest reward.

Kill all bandits.

---Attack---

---Herald---

---Auras/Defense---

---Movement/Misc---

You will need GGGB and GGGR link setups ASAP.

Take Unstoppable Hero from first lab.

---Attack---

---Herald---

---Auras---

---Movement/Misc---

---CWDT---


CWDT setup is a nice defence layer, I usually put it in an armour base shield for easy coloring.

Second lab take Fortitude.

---Attack---

---Herald---

---Auras---

---Movement/Misc---

---CWDT---


Once you get through the acts make sure to have capped resistances and life on every piece before entering maps.

Second lab take Fortitude.

I took First to Strike next, then swapped to the full Worthy Foe arm after uber lab.

---

Use Leaguestart PoB

This is the gear I ran early maps with using poison concoction, nothing special here this is just to give an idea what kind of gear is required at the very start. Look for high life rolls on high armour or evasion bases.

You will be using this setup for awhile so don't hesitate to invest in it.

Run Precision as well as Vitality until you spec into Worthy Foe after uber lab.


----------------------------Before Maps / T1 Maps--------------------------------

-Match the gem setup in Leaguestart PoB, especially the trigger and curse setups.

-75/75/75 elemental resistance, life on every piece.

-Upgrade life flasks, put on a granite and sulphur with some beneficial mods.

---

Use Midrange PoB

3.19 Note: Helm has changed from Asenaths Chant to a rare helmet with + all minion Gems.

Once you have gathered most of the things shown here it's time to swap into the actual build. You absolutely must have the bow and chest, both 5L. Cluster jewels and the trigger helm/quiver make up a large portion of our dps and are where most of the cost lies outside of linking bow and chest.

This will be a large respec into the new tree so make sure to have around 40 respec points on hand, plus enough chroms/jewels/fuse to get any pieces you switch now linked and colored.

---

Use Endgame PoB

3.19 Note: Helm has changed from Asenaths Chant to a rare helmet with +2 all minion Gems.

Bow: Various corrupts are available including additional arrow and attack speed. If scourge goes core the clear winner is culling strike as shown here.

Chest: +1 to socketed gems corrupt is huge DPS. Very hard to get colors on this however unless you corrupt it yourself. Worth doing because you could also potentially hit life, phys reduction while stationary, max res or reduced crit damage taken.

Quiver: No real upgrades here.

Helm: Few options here for enchant. I like the additional projectiles HoAG, but arctic armour reservation makes fitting all the aura's easier. Phys as chaos spirit offering is a pure damage option as well.

Boots: Suppression, life resists. Make sure to get your enchant and the right exarch/eater implicits.

Gloves: When you get the Vulnerability on hit corrupt, make sure to change annoint to Whispers of Doom.

Belt: As much life as possible, plus resists. Make sure you don't miss the enchant from running Dedication to the Goddess because its massive DPS.

Ring 1: Elder base for the life gain on hit. Resists, life, -mana craft to hit zero mana cost.

Ring 2: You want agony crawler damage and chaos resistance for the main rolls. Implicits are important also. To hit 0 mana cost, you need a -3 mana cost implicit. Before that, ailment avoid is very useful.

Amulet: Ideally you want +1 Dex and +1 Physical with lots of resist.

Quickening Covenant: This will eventually be removed for the Forbidden jewels but its great for a long time if you dont have them yet.

Fertile Mind: This is a fantastic corrupt target, but depending on how meta INT stackers are these can run very expensive. Remember that all these jewels can be hit with a harvest implicit to add value as well.

Forbidden Flesh/Flame: First to Strike, Last to Fall is a fantastic mix of damage and defense, plus the jewels are not usually too expensive.

Large Clusters: For optimal pathing we need certain combinations of notables, either the ones shown above OR:

Renewal + Call to Slaughter + Raze and Pillage
Renewal + Call to Slaughter + Rotten Claws


Medium Clusters: These are where the bulk of our DPS comes from. Storm rain hits so fast we're able to stack virulence cap and reach it without issue raising our DPS through the roof.

Small Clusters: Because we don't hit hard enough to leech we stack life gain on hit instead. Just make sure to run an Enduring Composure and the rest are Feast of Flesh.

• Unstoppable Hero
• Fortitude
• Conqueror
• Worthy Foe

I took First to Strike in third lab and swapped to full Worthy Foe arm after uber lab.

Kill all.

Major: Lunaris

Minor: Shakari