Summary

This guide outlines a two-phase league start strategy for the upcoming event. The plan is to begin with a Herald of Agony build that comes online quickly, clears content efficiently, and generates currency to fund a powerful Minion Pact Shaman reroll. This approach leverages the new ascendancy system where players can take ascendancy notables from other classes onto their own ascendancy tree on Path of Exile.

Phase 1: The Herald of Agony Starter

Why Herald of Agony?

The Herald of Agony build is chosen because it requires minimal investment to reach high damage output. It offers good defenses and becomes operational quickly, making it ideal for day one of a league .

Core Mechanics

The build revolves around the Herald of Agony skill, which summons an Agony Crawler minion when you poison enemies. Each poison you inflict generates a Virulence stack, which buffs the Crawler's damage . The challenge is sustaining high Virulence stacks, especially against single targets.

Key Uniques

Vaalborn Vis Mortis: This body armour grants minions Unholy Might, converting their physical damage to chaos and applying Wither on hit.

Severed in Sleep: This unique provides +5% base critical strike chance to minions. While it lacks minion gem levels, the critical strike chance allows the Agony Crawler to scale damage to insane levels when combined with power charges and critical strike multiplier scaling.

Golden Rule: This jewel reflects poisons you inflict back onto yourself. Since the build uses Chaos Inoculation (CI), the reflected poison deals no damage but effectively doubles the Virulence stack generation . The reflected poison counts for Virulence generation in addition to the original poison .

Bone Melon Amulet: A common drop from the Dread boss, this amulet provides significant damage through +2 minion gem levels and is essentially free.

Scaling Damage

Damage is scaled through three primary vectors:

Minion Gem Levels: Obtained on helmet, amulet (chaos skill gems), and shield.

Wither Debuffs: Both the Crawler and the player (via Lancing Steel of Spraying with Returning Projectiles) apply Wither up to 15 stacks, increasing chaos damage taken.

Virulence Stacks: Maximum Virulence is increased through the ascendancy notable, further multiplying damage.

Crafting Key Uniques with the Genesis Tree

The Genesis tree offers a deterministic way to target farm required uniques.

For Severed in Sleep:

Block intelligence, increase strength and dexterity (the weapon requires strength/dex).

Take 1000% increased chance to drop a one-handed weapon.

Stack foul-born and breach-specific unique chance nodes.

Take 30% chance for ancient combatants to drop an additional item.

For Vis Mortis:

Block dexterity and strength, increase intelligence (intelligence base).

Target body armour nodes instead of weapon nodes.

Keep foul-born chance nodes active.

Defenses

Chaos Inoculation (CI): Makes you immune to chaos damage, which includes the reflected poisons from Golden Rule.

High Block Chance: Achieved through the Red Nightmare jewel and block passives.

Recovery: Energy shield leech from passives and life leech on gloves.

Phase 2: The Minion Pact Shaman Reroll

Why Reroll?

The Herald of Agony build serves as the currency generator. Once the required items are acquired, you reroll into Minion Pact Shaman (Bog Witch) for a hit-based Blade Vortex (BV) minion pact build that deals massive damage.

Core Mechanics

Minion Pact Support: Sacrifices a minion to grant a massive damage multiplier to the supported skill. The build sacrifices a minion once at the start of a map, then weapon swaps back. The damage snapshot persists as long as Blade Vortex stacks are maintained.

Unholy Might from Overwhelming Malice: The Shaman ascendancy grants Unholy Might on critical strike, converting 100% of physical damage to chaos and providing wither on hit. This solves conversion requirements .

Explosions: Early game, Obliteration wand provides 20% chance for enemies to explode on death. This can be supplemented with cluster jewels. Later, the Hinekora's Death Fury ascendancy notable (Chiefain explode) provides an additional explosion chance, scaled through Cinderswallow Urn for chaos conversion.

Key Equipment

Weapon Swap: A weapon with +1 level of socketed gems, +1 intelligence skill gems, and +2 support gems crafted. Minion life is crafted via veiled mod.

Cinderswallow Urn: Provides Malediction (enemies take 10% increased damage, deal 10% less damage) and conversion to chaos.

Timeless Jewel (Caspiro): Used with Supreme Ostentation to ignore attribute requirements. The jewel can also grant significant minion life and damage per notable .

Defenses

Block Cap: 75-78% attack and spell block through passives, Red Nightmare jewel, and Reckless Defense jewels.

Enduring Composure: Generates endurance charges for Immortal Call to provide burst damage reduction.

Hybrid Life/Energy Shield: Early league, hybrid is easier to build than CI.

AoE Scaling

The build reaches approximately 3.7 meter radius on Blade Vortex, clearing entire screens. AoE is scaled through the skill tree, Unnatural Instinct jewel, and Foul-Bound by the Meek jewel, which amplifies notable passives in radius .

Final Thoughts

This two-phase strategy ensures a strong league start with Herald of Agony, followed by a powerful transition to Minion Pact Shaman. The Herald of Agony build requires minimal cheap POE currency to function and generates enough wealth to fund the reroll. With proper crafting on the Genesis tree and an understanding of the core mechanics, both builds are accessible and capable of handling endgame content. For players who want to accelerate their progress without the grind, MMOEXP offers a trusted source for acquiring POE currency to fuel your crafting and gearing needs.