Sorcière - [3.27] Herald of Decay Autobomber - A Farewell to Flesh League Starter - Forum

Introduction
This is my take on a fast autobomber with explosions! The build revolves around automatically inflicting Decay on enemies. With Herald of Thunder we can efficiently scale Decay's damage using the Lone Messenger keystone and the A Farewell to Flesh bloodline notable as well as the Lasting Impression cluster jewel notable!

League Start POB: Will update after patch notes
Delirious Forge of the Phoenix League Start: Will update after patch notes

Endgame POB: https://pobb.in/Eykku_uVKZV_
Endgame wisped 10-mod t17: https://youtu.be/uzrp_iah_VA
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Pros & Cons

+ Very fast mapper
+ Autobomber with explosions!
+ League starter
+ No temporary league power is used in any of the showcases (see tab for league specific suggestions)

- Not SSF viable
- Not HC viable
- Poor single target early
- Complex to put together
- Have to level as something else (guide included)

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Keeper of Flames Specific

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For grafts I recommend going Heart of Flame and then Tender Heart or Ennervating Grasp.

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Build Mechanics

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Decay Scaling

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Decay is considered damage from the skill it supports. For example, Decay often supports Storm Burst because it scales off the line, "Exploding Orbs deal 75% of Skill Damage for each 0.4 seconds of remaining Duration", which lets Decay scale damage with Storm Burst duration. Here, Herald of Thunder is supported by Decay, which lets Decay use herald specific damage scaling!

A Farewell to Flesh

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The Lycia bloodline notable A Farewell to Flesh grants 1% more herald damage per 1% life the herald reserves. This means every 1% of life Herald of Thunder reserves grants us 1% more Decay damage (see Decay Scaling)! There are a few ways to make Herald of Thunder reserve life, but most require sacrificing support gems or item slots. However, Blood Magic lets Herald of Thunder reserve life, albeit at the cost of not having any mana.

Lone Messenger

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We can get 50% more damage over time from the Lone Messenger cluster jewel keystone (see Decay Scaling), at the cost of not having any other auras or heralds. However, not having any other auras or heralds isn't really downside since we already have no mana and reserve all our life with Herald of Thunder (see A Farewell to Flesh)!

Lasting Impression

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The medium cluster jewel notable Lasting Impression grants 30% increased damage over time and 50% increased damage over time with heralds. Both of these apply to Decay supporting Herald of Thunder (see Decay Scaling), resulting in each notable providing 80% increased damage! Since Lasting Impression is a medium cluster jewel notable, we can stack a large number of these to get lots of increased damage. We can also roll these medium clusters with Dark Messenger, which helps increase Herald of Thunder’s relatively low base area of effect.

Maintaining of Thunder

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Herald of Thunder automatically hits enemies if you have killed a shocked enemy in the last few seconds, letting us automatically inflict Decay! Unfortunately, killing shocked enemies is quite difficult in some scenarios (e.g. boss fights). Even writhing worms die on hit, making it difficult to shock them. So we equip a Storm Secret, which means we just need to shock enemies instead of killing shocked enemies! Automatically shocking enemies is still quite difficult though, especially since we don't scale lightning damage or ailment effect. However, Storm's Gift counts enemies we kill as shocked! This means as long as we kill an enemy every few seconds, we can maintain Herald of Thunder! By equipping Squirming Terror, which constantly spawns writhing worms, we can even maintain Herald of Thunder during boss fights!

Coruscating Elixir

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Since we are on low life (see A Farewell to Flesh), we need a way to prevent chaos damage from bypassing our energy shield. Shavronne's Wrappings works early, but means we can't equip a rare body armour with lots of energy shield. Instead, once we can afford Brutal Restraint, we use Coruscating Elixir, which means we need to sustain a large number of flask charges. To sustain that many flask charges, we need to allocate The Traitor timeless keystone and have an empty flask slot. We also roll our body armour to have the eldritch implicit that grants 1 flask charge every three seconds and allocate the Essence Extraction wheel. Since we're permanently sustaining our flasks we can also use a magic Sapphire and Topaz flask to increase our resistances/maximum resistances along with a quicksilver flask for movement speed.

Sustaining Squirming Terror

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Squirming Terror causes us to lose life whenever we kill an enemy. This is a problem, because we have very low amounts of life. However, we can offset the life loss on kill with life gain on kill from Brush with Death. Unfortunately, life loss on kill occurs before life gain on kill. Mostly this isn't an issue, since with a low rolled Squirming Terror we have enough life for the life loss to not be an issue. However, Coruscating Elixir removes all but one life on use. Even with recovery from Eternal Youth, this is a problem if we kill an enemy immediately after Coruscating Elixir gets used. Fortunately, we can take the flask mastery for life gain on flask use and synchronize all our flasks to have the same duration as Coruscating Elixir to make sure we always have enough life to sustain Squirming Terror.

The Adorned

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The Adorned increases the effect of corrupted magic jewels in the passive tree. Since there are relatively few jewel modifiers we care about and we have a large number of jewel sockets (see Lasting Impression), we can stack a large number of magic jewels with chaos damage over time multiplier and increased energy shield to scale both damage and defenses! We can also get them with the reduced effect of curses on you corruption implicit for added defenses!

Forbidden Shako

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Since Decay is a support gem that scales heavily off gem level, Forbidden Shako provides an excellent source of damage scaling. Getting any Forbidden Shako with level 30+ Decay is very strong, but ideally we want one with a second support that can support Herald of Thunder (doesn't matter if it scales Decay damage), so it reserves more life (see A Farewell to Flesh).

Spectre and Animate Guardian

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Since our damage setup is in our helmet, we have lots of free sockets. This lets use a six link for Animate Guardian and Raise Spectre. We can support them with Minion Life, Elemental Army, Meat Shield and Empower along with Convocation linked to Automation to ensure they stay alive. We can use an Animate Guardian with Kingmaker and Crown of the Tyrant for buffs/debuffs when it is nearby and Doppelgänger's Guise and rare boots/gloves to help keep it alive. For spectres we use Perfect Guardian Turtle, which grants 5% physical damage reduction along with Determination when it is nearby and Wild Bristle Matron for the action speed debuff. While they will occasionally die in extremely juiced t17s, Animate Guardian and Raise Spectre are both very easy to/automatically revive!

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Starter Gear

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Mandatory Items:
Storm Secret
Storm's Gift
Squirming Terror
Medium cluster jewel with Vile Reinvigoration

Recommended Items:
Shavronne's Wrappings (don't take Blood Magic or A Farewell to Flesh if you don't have this or Coruscating Elixir)

General Rares: Make sure you are resistance capped. Then look for energy shield, strength, dexterity and chaos resistance in that order.

Flasks: No required flasks, recommend Quicksilver Flask and Witchfire Brew

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League Start Skills

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Herald of Decay
Swift Affliction - Void Manipulation - Decay - Efficacy - Herald of Thunder - Less Duration (optional)

Automation
Automation - Withering Step - Phase Run - More Duration

Squirming Terror
Despair

Curse
Despair - Arcanist Brand

Auras (only if you don't have A Farewell to Flesh)
Malevolence, Summon Skitterbots

Initial Shock/Cull
Overcharge - Storm Brand - Culling Strike

Guard Skill
Automation - Steelskin

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League Start, Leveling and Transition

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Leveling as chaos DOT, which is always excellent on league start. We use Soulrend and Bane. Don't forget to buy the gems from the Skills section from Lily in act 5 and level them in your off hand.

Leveling POB: https://pobb.in/SEPA9dxxwDaL

Chaos DOT Leveling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2h93Gp31SA

Transition when you have enough currency to afford the mandatory items (shouldn't be more than ~30c day 1) and have hit at least level 75. Don't worry about swapping immediately on reaching maps, chaos DOT is a strong build through yellow maps with minimal investment. I swapped in late white maps and it felt smooth before and after. Recommended items should generally be your first upgrades.

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Upgrades

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Upgrades
1. Upgrade to a level 21 Decay
2. Roll flasks with good modifiers (increased movement speed on quicksilver) and use when flask charges reach full
3. Socket a Calamitous Visions small cluster jewel and allocate Lone Messenger
4. Socket two medium clusters with Dark Messenger and Lasting Impression
5. Get three large 8 passive cluster jewel with Unholy Grace, Unwaveringly Evil and Wicked Pall and drop the Hasty Demise, Asylum, Harsh Lessons and Charisma clusters (Heart of Darkness too if you need the points)
6. Socket two medium cluster jewels with Vile Reinvigoration and Brush with Death (slowly drop the right side of the passive tree as you need points)
7. Use remaining sockets on the large cluster jewels for medium clusters with Dark Messenger and Lasting Impression
8. Upgrade to an amulet with damage over time multiplier and other good modifiers
9. Swap to exiting witch start left and socket a Brutal Restraint in the name of Balbala near Mind over Matter and allocate The Traitor
10. Allocate the Essence Extraction cluster and the life gain when flask is used mastery
11. Equip Coruscating Elixir and well rolled Sapphire, Topaz and Quicksilver flasks (resistance/shock avoid and 25% increased duration, see Sustaining Squirming Terror)
12. Upgrade to a high energy shield body armour(with gain a flask charge each second eldritch implicit)
13. Corrupt Storm's Gift to inflict Despair on hit
14. Swap to a well rolled micro-distillery belt
15. Graft and allocate Runegraft of Gemcraft
16. Upgrade amulet to have increased energy shield, increased damage over time multiplier and other good modifiers
17. Anoint Whispers of Doom and swap Storm's Gift inflict Temporal Chains or Enfeeble on hit
18. Get a Forbidden Shako with a high level Decay support and move Herald of Thunder and support gems into it (do this earlier if it's affordable)
19. Upgrade boots (with shock avoid eldritch implicit)
20. Socket Stormshroud and make sure shock avoid chance is capped (flasks + boot implicit)
21. Swap staff to a Cane of Kulemak with increased chaos damage and chaos damage over time multiplier (preferably chaos explosions as well)
22. Socket Animate Guardian - Raise Spectre - Minion Life - Elemental Army - Meat Shield - Empower (optional)
23. Equip Animate Guardian with Kingmaker, Döppleganger's Guise and Crown of the Tyrant, using boots and gloves to cap resistances
24. Get a Perfect Guardian Turtle corpse and raise it as a spectre along with a Wild Bristle Matron
25. Get a Forbidden Shako with a level 35 Decay support and another valid support for Herald of Thunder (see A Farewell to Flesh)
26. Upgrade rare boots and body armour for more energy shield and well rolled eldritch implicits
27. Upgrade Amulet to have high tier reflected modifiers
28. Tattoo small intelligence jewels with increased chaos damage
29. Upgrade relevant gems without awakened variants to 21/20
30. Upgrade to high level/quality Awakened Swift Affliction and Awakened Void Manipulation
33. Get useful corruption implicits on max rolled magic jewels
33. Get good modifiers from Brutal Restraint on Essence Extraction and Arcane Dominion (flask charges, onslaught, etc.)
31. Upgrade large cluster jewels to have Unspeakable Gifts
32. Get a good fourth modifier on Cane of Kulemak
33. Get a useful second support on Forbidden Shako
34. Upgrade to Awakened Empower and level 21 Raise Spectre for another spectre
35. Upgrade rares
36. Upgrade The Adorned (88% or 100%)
37. Double corruption hunt

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Other Autobomber Guides

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