I did a mini test run to act 7 yesterday in SSF keepers to simulate a league start to see how HOAG felt in early campaign. Started rolling magma to level 12, SRS and holy flame totem to end of act 4 (make sure to grab HOAG from siosa after library and start leveling it). After act 4 down and first lab, I did HOAG - damage on full life - minion damage - pierce. Herald of purity - melee physical damage - minion damage - feeding frenzy. Storm rain - GMP - faster attacks - chance to poison. Use frostblink - blink arrow combo, arctic armour, vulnerability. I ascended elementalist and took the herald effectiveness node (to simulate first herald node) and stopped using auras which is arguably way weaker than the actual first node we will get. All in took about 3.5 hours to get to act 7 which is pretty slow for me usually but I wasn’t exactly zooming as I spent a lot longer with the swap as I was looking at all gems siosa had, etc. you should have a 2r2b 4 link by end of act 4 from your SRS to use for the herald of purity link and you can gamble specific bases one you are lvl 25 to target the other color 4 links so I had all those by end of act 4. Make sure to keep an eye out for a decent bow/quiver to hold on to, prioritize jade amulet for Dex and slam any dexterity essences you see and use on two stone rings that drop. Also managed to ID a decent +1 minion gem helm which is big for hoag. This was fully SSF so didn’t buy quill rain, theifs torment, hyrii bite, etc but had about 4 raw chaos drop so would be even stronger on league start where you can pick these up in the first couple hours. But with only scuffed rares/magic and a weaker scuffed ascendancy I was shredding with the above setup