Herald of Purity Guardian Build Guide (PoE Necropolis 3.24) (2024)

Introduction

The Herald of Purity Guardian build spawned originally from CaptainLance9 which we’ve collaborated with to fine-tune and optimize to the excellent display of power you’ll find in this guide.

Below, you can see the build in action from my YouTube guide. Do note that the video might be outdated in terms of information, you should always look at this guide to make sure you have the updated information.

Build Overview

In this section, I will outline the pros, cons, and general playstyle. This will allow you to determine if this is the right build is for you!

Pros

+ League Starter – The build brings one of the most comfortable league-starter experiences you’ll ever see with high efficiency even without the end-game unique items.

+ Bosser – The damage output this build can achieve even in low budget is very high.

+ Unique Play Style – The way you summon your Sentinel of Purity is via killing-blows or by hitting rare or unique enemies, we achieve this with Ball Lightning combined with Unleash Support to hit enemies a LOT allowing the summoning process of your minions to be consistent.

Cons

– Unique Play Style – Due to the nature of this build’s playstyle, it is a build that not everyone will find enjoyable. I strongly recommend watching the gameplay video before starting this build.

– Utula’s Hunger – During the campaign you’ll want to have life modifiers on all your gear pieces, this entirely changes when you get your hands on the unique body armor Utula's Hunger which will carry all your life. This transition can look a bit daunting at first so make sure you read the guide as it’s very easy if you know what you’re doing!

Playstyle

The playstyle is based creating initial killing blows and/or hitting unique or rare enemies with Ball Lightning to trigger the summoning process of Herald of Purity. This is assisted by the Guardians Sentinel of Radiance ascendancy minion and our utility minions. It’s a very unique play-style bringing tons of damage output and smooth clearing. You can always assist your initial killing blows with the help of a The Writhing Jar flask, though, it should not be needed till the higher budget version.

Damage Scaling And Defensive Layers

Our minions will do all the heavy lifting in terms of damage scaling whilst our defenses are ramped up via the 100% taunting Guardian Sentinel of Radiance ascendancy minion. Outside of this we are looking at a decent life regen combined with capped block chance for both attacks and spells. It is by no means a giga tank build, it does however bring enough defensive scaling to easily manage end-game pinnacle bosses in the low budget version.

PoB And Passive Skill Tree

All my guides use Path of Building. We have a simple guide for you that shows how to import my build into Path of Building, you can find the guide here

Below you’ll find a couple of different PoB links, it is strongly recommended to start with the low budget PoB, it includes leveling sections throughout the acts as well as skill-point progression.

Here’s the low budget Herald of Purity PoB: https://pobb.in/2H_f8kRWaNZy
Here’s the medium budget PoB: https://pobb.in/314jMJhyMUUU

You can find more information on our dedicated page, along with all the recommended gem links.

Gearing

A lot of the endgame gear can easily be crafted. For a general overview of crafting and to learn how to craft specific items, check out my crafting guides here!

You can read more details about our gearing recommendations on the dedicated page. You’ll find a summarized version below.

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Recommendations

You can read about the Ascendancy, Bandit choice, and Pantheon Power recommendations for this build on our dedicated page.

Levelling

Act 1 – 3

A baseline effective way of levelling in the early acts is to utilize Freezing Pulse, Stormblast Mines, Frost Bomb, Frost Blink and Orb of Storms. A useful method of dealing with tougher enemies, such as Brutus, is to include a Holy Flame Totem which not only deals damage but also works as a decoy for the boss(es) to hit rather than yourself.

For levels 1-8, you will use the following gems:

• Freezing Pulse or Rolling Magma for clearing.
• Frost Bomb for clearing when you get it instead of the Freezing Pulse.
• Frostblink
• Holy Flame Totem

Once you reach level 8, you are able to Melee Splash which will allow us to start using minions to level with which would be the following gems that replaces our main source of damage output for both clearing and single-target:

• Summon Raging Spirit
• Minion Damage Support
• Melee Splash Support or Infernal Legion Support

We also add a mobility skill after Brutus:

• Flame Dash or Frostblink

When you reach level 12 and have entered the caverns leading to Merveil you can grab Absolution as your main source of damage with the following links:

1. Absolution
2. Minion Damage Support
3. Added Lightning Damage Support or Added Fire Damage Support

The Absolution will act as our main source of damage and only switch to still deal tons of damage but become what we call a “shock-bot” in Act 2 when we get access to Herald of Purity. The shock set-up looks like this:

• Absolution
• Overcharge Support
• Physical to Lightning Support

This allows us to start using our Herald of Purity as our big damage source supported by the Absolution. The gem set-up would look like this:

• Herald of Purity
• Minion Damage Support
• Melee Splash Support
• Melee Physical Damage Support We add this gem when you get access to a 4-Link and if you happen to end up with a blue color as the 4th socket you can use Minion Speed Support instead.

Act 3-4+

In Act 3 we get access to Convocation and the Elemental Weakness as well as our first ascendancy node which will more or less finalize the leveling set-up you need to clear the campaign smoothly. Act 4 you’ll change the Melee Splash in your Herald of Purity set-up to a Multistrike Support as the Sentinel of Radiance from the ascendancy node will help with the clearing now.

At this point of your progression, you simply just need to follow the endgame tree and gem links to further enhance your character throughout the Acts and into the hardest endgame content.

For more general levelling advice, we recommend the following guides:

• Our step-by-step levelling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the levelling process.
• Our guide to Unique Items for levelling, which helps you gear up your characters for the levelling process.

Questions?

To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, you may have questions. Please join the PoE Vault discord and they will attend to them as soon as possible.

Final Notes

As much as I love making build guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. With that said, if you’ve made any tweaks to the build compared to what I’m showing in this guide I would love it if you share my discord! It’s an effective way to show other approaches and it helps me grow as a build guide creator!

I hope you found the build guide useful and I wish you all many Divine Orb drops!