PROVE ME WRONG: Psn Necro is Best Herald Hunter for Sunder Charms

I’ve been testing a bunch of different builds in full game clears to figure out which character is actually the best for hunting Heralds and getting Sunder Charms online (so p1).

The main things I’m looking at are:

- Speed of clear
- Speed of

Herald kill
- Bonus utility, mainly the Barbarian’s

Find Item

After testing, I narrowed it down to a short list:

Nova Sorceress

Poison Nova Necro

Strafe Amazon

War Cry Barb

Whirlwind Barb

Double Throw Barb

Most other builds felt noticeably slower than these. The only reason Barb builds stayed in the conversation is because of

Find Item, which is obviously a huge advantage. The problem is that Barb feels significantly slower at racking up

Herald kills. It's full clear ability is slow as eff and he's not as strong at killing Heralds compared to the top options. So even with

Find Item I'd say he is not as efficient at farming Sunder Charms.

Nova Sorc is very strong and teleports fast, but in full games it often takes multiple Novas to kill certain monsters, and it's

Nova radius is noticeably smaller than

Poison Nova. That slowed the build down more than I expected.

That brought me to

Strafe Amazon vs.

Poison Nova Necro.

Strafe Amazon is excellent because it can clear monsters off-screen and you don't need to aim at all (even the

Nova needs to "aim" the

Teleport). Which is a big advantage. But the downside is that the

Teleport speed is slower, and the

Strafe animation itself also feels slow. Since

Teleport is basically mandatory for efficient

Herald hunting, that matters a lot.

Which brings me to

Poison Nova Necro.

In my opinion,

Poison Nova Necro is the best full-clear

Herald hunter because an endgame

Poison Nova build basically one-shots all monsters in full games. You can

Teleport around, cast once, and everything melts. The

Poison Nova radius is larger than Sorc

Nova, he has decent

Teleport speed, and it kills Heralds extremely fast. Plus if you put a few points into the skeles, the danger of dying is practically zero.

So right now, my take is:

Poison Necro is the best overall

Herald Hunter in the game.

The Barb has

Find Item, the Sorc has faster

Teleport, and the Zon has off-screen clear — but Poison Necro feels like the best combination of speed, coverage, and

Herald-killing power.

Prove me wrong. What build do you think beats it, and why?

If you're assuming p1 you might be right. I would also consider passive builds like dual Dream paladin though.

The best sundar charm hunter is 3x

Tainted

Blood Boil warlock target farming andy p7. You can pile up magic find and andy dies very quickly. You don't need CTA or much of anything. You'll get sunder charms faster from andy kills this way than killing heralds. I don't have hard data to back this up, but it has been my experience.

I don't know how well this translates to an online p1 andy farm world with no map Memory.

departure wrote: 22 hours ago

If you're assuming p1 you might be right. I would also consider passive builds like dual Dream paladin though.

The best sundar charm hunter is 3x

Tainted

Blood Boil warlock target farming andy p7. You can pile up magic find and andy dies very quickly. You don't need CTA or much of anything. You'll get sunder charms faster from andy kills this way than killing heralds. I don't have hard data to back this up, but it has been my experience.

I don't know how well this translates to an online p1 andy farm world with no map Memory.

Yeah I'm only talking about online farming. So P1. I tried Dream and Dragon Paladins but they're just not as fast.

You ask for "proof" and I would like to offer the following thoughts:

The baseline is P1 - though you

Confuse at least me a couple of time, toggling between full player games and P1?

The questions would be:

What does it take to make heralds spawn? (besides the 2% flat chance of triggering them)

Well, first of all, we would have to zoom in on killing the only monsters that can do this.

That means running or teleporting around the area - a lot?

I think we can agree that running is not viable. At least I hope so.

We want to find and kill as many champions, uniques, super uniques and act bosses as we can - to even trigger the heralds.

How do we meassure this?

Well, even though there is a random part in the equation - my experience with hunting heralds tells me, that for each area there are almost always 1

Herald that spawns.

If we make that the baseline - killing 1

Herald per area - no more, no less - then we can apply this to a test.

Create a TZ96 game - start the stop watch - do the same "routine" with the builds you want to test.

Adjust a bit afterwards - but the

Teleport speed alone, will make the

Nova Sorc the winner by a huge margin.

I would also rather choose my

Hydra /

Fireball sorc before choosing a poison necro.

What are your thoghts on this?

Abyss Warlock for me clearing really fast with P3 online with lots of MF 400. Same with

Demon Machine bowlock 230MF. I like my Poison necro too but just wait until a T5

Herald kills your Insight golem and you have to chug pots for awhile that gets old fast.

I would always farm heralds in P1 anyways. Sunder chance doesn't change.

departure wrote: 22 hours ago

If you're assuming p1 you might be right. I would also consider passive builds like dual Dream paladin though.

The best sundar charm hunter is 3x

Tainted

Blood Boil warlock target farming andy p7. You can pile up magic find and andy dies very quickly. You don't need CTA or much of anything. You'll get sunder charms faster from andy kills this way than killing heralds. I don't have hard data to back this up, but it has been my experience.

I don't know how well this translates to an online p1 andy farm world with no map Memory.

I've tried hunting Andy for sunders, but not much luck. Maybe just the RNG.

Also, I can only take boss running for so long, where 95% of my time is spent teleporting and exiting and creating games.

I prefer

Herald hunting, although I don't love the algo that makes it so they appear more frequently the more monsters are cleared. Makes me feel like I have to hunt down every last couple monsters in a zone versus just doing a 90% clear.

KillingestGOLDENAK47 wrote: 21 hours ago

Abyss Warlock for me clearing really fast with P3 online with lots of MF 400. Same with

Demon Machine bowlock 230MF. I like my Poison necro too but just wait until a T5

Herald kills your Insight golem and you have to chug pots for awhile that gets old fast.

Abyss Warlock is not on the list to pick from

Besides that, a really good point about the

Iron Golem

GtotheP wrote: 22 hours ago

I’ve been testing a bunch of different builds in full game clears to figure out which character is actually the best for hunting Heralds and getting Sunder Charms online (so p1).

The main things I’m looking at are:

Speed of clear
Speed of

Herald kill
Bonus utility, mainly the Barbarian’s

Find Item

After testing, I narrowed it down to a short list:

Nova Sorceress

Poison Nova Necro

Strafe Amazon

War Cry Barb

Whirlwind Barb

Double Throw Barb

Most other builds felt noticeably slower than these. The only reason Barb builds stayed in the conversation is because of

Find Item, which is obviously a huge advantage. The problem is that Barb feels significantly slower at racking up

Herald kills. It's full clear ability is slow as eff and he's not as strong at killing Heralds compared to the top options. So even with

Find Item I'd say he is not as efficient at farming Sunder Charms.

Nova Sorc is very strong and teleports fast, but in full games it often takes multiple Novas to kill certain monsters, and it's

Nova radius is noticeably smaller than

Poison Nova. That slowed the build down more than I expected.

That brought me to

Strafe Amazon vs.

Poison Nova Necro.

Strafe Amazon is excellent because it can clear monsters off-screen and you don't need to aim at all (even the

Nova needs to "aim" the

Teleport). Which is a big advantage. But the downside is that the

Teleport speed is slower, and the

Strafe animation itself also feels slow. Since

Teleport is basically mandatory for efficient

Herald hunting, that matters a lot.

Which brings me to

Poison Nova Necro.

In my opinion,

Poison Nova Necro is the best full-clear

Herald hunter because an endgame

Poison Nova build basically one-shots all monsters in full games. You can

Teleport around, cast once, and everything melts. The

Poison Nova radius is larger than Sorc

Nova, he has decent

Teleport speed, and it kills Heralds extremely fast. Plus if you put a few points into the skeles, the danger of dying is practically zero.

So right now, my take is:

Poison Necro is the best overall

Herald Hunter in the game.

The Barb has

Find Item, the Sorc has faster

Teleport, and the Zon has off-screen clear — but Poison Necro feels like the best combination of speed, coverage, and

Herald-killing power.

Prove me wrong. What build do you think beats it, and why?

I've never played a poison necro, but I've been meaning to try it. If one hit truly takes out all the monsters, what you are saying may be true IF you don't care about picking up items and

Gold that drops (I believe

Poison Nova takes 2 seconds to do its full damage). If you are waiting the up to 2 seconds for Death to see what drops, then my guess is not fastest. And let's be honest, we are all diablo slot machine junkies and have to see what drops.

I would try

Ring of Fire/apoc WL if I were you, I think it plays better than

Nova sorc. Faster at killing, and only 1 tp frame slower at tp.

1 apoc for sure kills all monsters in its zone, but you have the 1.8second casting delay. RoF kills most monsters in 1-2 blasts, that's what I mainly use. You can launch 6 RoF at 125fcr in the same time as it takes

Poison Nova to do its full damage.

I can take down most T-5 heralds in 4-10 seconds I'd say. Lay down a

Sigil Lethargy, time it so they get hit with Apoc and

Flame Wave as soon as they drop, then alternate between spamming

Ring of Fire and Apocolypse /

Flame Wave. This is all without Infinity /

Conviction ever since the patch, since I don't like chugging potions.

retepnap wrote: 21 hours ago

KillingestGOLDENAK47 wrote: 21 hours ago

Abyss Warlock for me clearing really fast with P3 online with lots of MF 400. Same with

Demon Machine bowlock 230MF. I like my Poison necro too but just wait until a T5

Herald kills your Insight golem and you have to chug pots for awhile that gets old fast.

Abyss Warlock is not on the list to pick from

Besides that, a really good point about the

Iron Golem

Where does it say I had to pick from list

varangium wrote: 20 hours ago

I believe

Poison Nova takes 2 seconds to do its full damage

Eh, you just need one drop and then it's

Corpse Explosion. All necros are ultimately

Corpse Explosion necros. Poison is probably one of the least CE, because it can take out a lot really quickly even without it.

It's fast, it clears a huge radius, and then CE clears an even huger radius. It's very good for P1 content, but sucks at bosses. I imagine even a T5

Herald at P1 gets rolled by CE from the minions though.

I haven't played poison necro in a while.

Back in the day, poison necro used to be one of the very few characters that could really do P8 cows, and the big trick was

Corpse Explosion.

I'll just list my experiences of the last weeks.

My most successful solo /P1 hunters:

-Javazon
-Any Sorc build (with

Hydra/

Meteor/FB being my fav)
-

Poison Nova/

Bone Prison/

Blood Golem Nec with 1 pt CE
-

Freezing Arrow/

Strafe hybrid Zon
-

Fissure Druid
-Summoner/

Shock Wave Druid
-

Wake of Fire Trapsin
-Any Lock build

Fishymancer is strong and no doubt can handle most Heralds safely. But I don't like him in solo play, I have lost 1x Pride and 1x Insight Iron Golems to crazy rolled T5 Heralds and since there's no one I can hide my minions behind (lol, never thought I would say that), I prefer playing him in parties as support character.

My Top 3 solo /P8 hunters:

-Javazon (Incredible damage, can fight ranged Heralds (

Slow Missiles!!!), good mobility, high safety due to Vally,

Decoy, merc, defense skills)
-Blizzard/FO Sorc (High safety, can fight around corners, reliable damage, high mobility)
-Any Lock build (op as fuck)
-I don't play Mosaicsin, but I guess she belongs here, too.

Other builds that suck solo but shine in party hunting (if you have friends):

-WW/Horker Barb (Add Sorc and have fun!)
-Fanazealot (Add Java and have fun!)
-Fishymancer (add anything and have fun!)
-Dragondin/Tesladin (add any caster and have fun!)
-Singer Barb (add anything that can deal damage and have fun)
-

Double Throw Barb (add anything that can tank and...)

retepnap wrote: 21 hours ago

<snip>
We want to find and kill as many champions, uniques, super uniques and act bosses as we can - to even trigger the heralds.
<snip>

That used to be the case. With patch 3.2, the zone completion percentage is what influences the chance of spawning heralds with each kill. See Pavke on reddit. Builds with massive AoE now have an advantage.

Engelhard wrote: 15 hours ago

retepnap wrote: 21 hours ago

<snip>
We want to find and kill as many champions, uniques, super uniques and act bosses as we can - to even trigger the heralds.
<snip>

That used to be the case. With patch 3.2, the zone completion percentage is what influences the chance of spawning heralds with each kill. See Pavke on reddit. Builds with massive AoE now have an advantage.

Thank you for that update!

- This is exactly what I have been "experiencing" for over a week with intensive TZ96 P8 games - now it makes more sense.

Looking back, this is (unintentionally, since I was not aware) why I suggested that we should do 1

Herald per area.

Have you / or others posted this vital information no this site?

GtotheP wrote: 21 hours ago

So P1. I tried Dream and Dragon Paladins but they're just not as fast.

Dragon I get because you basically have to give up on engima. But Dream also? Even with a lightning sunder and... I dunno... Crescent Moon Runeword with merc Infinity? I'm a little surprised at that result.

departure wrote: 15 hours ago

GtotheP wrote: 21 hours ago

So P1. I tried Dream and Dragon Paladins but they're just not as fast.

Dragon I get because you basically have to give up on engima. But Dream also? Even with a lightning sunder and... I dunno... Crescent Moon Runeword with merc Infinity? I'm a little surprised at that result.

I refuse to play any build without an Insight because I hate chugging pots lol. So no the Dream pally didn't have a merc with an Infinity. The merc had an Insight. And actually Dragon was faster than Dream surprisingly, even though he can't

Teleport. His

Charge skill gets him around fast enough and his aura kill speed is 2x that of the Dream pally.

GtotheP wrote: 11 hours ago

I refuse to play any build without an Insight because I hate chugging pots lol. So no the Dream pally didn't have a merc with an Infinity. The merc had an Insight.

Why does your Dream paladin need a merc with Insight? What skill are you using that requires so much mana? A single mana leech ring is enough to compensate for

Zeal.

retepnap wrote: 15 hours ago

Have you / or others posted this vital information no this site?

We did twice.
It was discussed in the thread that Shadowheart has linked above and Pavke's reddit post was also linked in the database entry of

Herald.

mikelessar wrote: 1 hour ago

retepnap wrote: 15 hours ago

Have you / or others posted this vital information no this site?

We did twice.
It was discussed in the thread that Shadowheart has linked above and Pavke's reddit post was also linked in the database entry of

Herald.

Yes, thank you for the 3rd notification

I was aware of all the content - I just missed the part about how the spawning changed.