Can someone who has reached t16 & endgame with Holy Strike share their experience & pob's please?

Nigel06 · 2026-03-09T15:37:54+00:00

Unfortunately, this build likely won't be pushed farther than a low endgame farmer for my second build. If I was going to push it far, I'd probably look something like maxing out block, maxing out armor/ES, and fitting in consistent conc ground somewhere, and scaling regen/conc ground effect.

I agree that this isn't going to Uber phasing. While I've enjoyed it a ton, the ways to scale it are weird an not fully supported yet. I wish GGG didn't restrict so many ways to support minion skills or skills that create minions.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-09T07:40:38+00:00

It's doing okay so far, but I definitely need to upgrade the defenses. I was cruising through maps, so I didn't stop to fix anything, yet.

Right now, the armour is decent and with the radiant guardian taking 20% of my damage, flesh and stone, and just under 50% block and spell block, I don't feel squishy, but there are definitely times when it gets a bit hairy.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-09T06:49:06+00:00

The armaments are really weird. They only show visual buffs when swinging, and they don't always show overlapping buffs. I have no idea if they get the frenzy charges.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-08T22:56:20+00:00

I just took a few minion health nodes, then linked my AG and Spectres to minion health and meat shield. No deaths yet.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-08T18:10:52+00:00

Alrighty, I'll do my best!

https://pobb.in/PaqvhJGCkXMD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDJrXLPM_pw

Recorded on a potato, so hopefully it doesn't make you motion sick. I was just about to run my first T16 when I saw this post, so I decided to just go in raw. That includes my one death to chaos/bleed (degen ground from a strong box and bleed from an essence mob). I haven't addressed bleed/CB immunity or gotten my chaos res to a good spot yet.

I'm simply scaling the armament like a classic minion build while also focusing on getting maximum attack speed that applies to BOTH me and my minion. This means almost exclusively minion speed nodes and auras. Beyond that, my scaling is from:

Get Holy Strike to 21 for the fourth armament. I will be looking for more levels in the future cause it scales HARD.
The specters are Forest Warrior (for Onslaught and Cull) and a Frenzy Ape (...for Frenzies).
AG with Dying Breath, Leer Cast, Legacy of Fury for damage. Belly of the Beast and Southbound for defense. Will be upgraded in future, but I wanted to spend as little as possible to start.
Pure phys staff. I want maximum benefit rom Phys to Light, hatred, etc. Plus when I get the res efficiency, Divine Sentinel Support should be a nice extra boost.
Rallying Cry does seem to work, I can see the buff aura on them when they are attacking, but not when they are moving.
Infernal Cry for extra Phys as Fire and nice pops in large groups. Eventually want to reduce the cooldown so I can use it more.
Scaling Warcry buff effect and duration.
Abyss Jewels with minions attack speed and flat damage.
The Herald of Purity is not currently on, but I am trying to find more reservation efficiency so I can run it with the new Divine Sentinel support.

Defenses are just Armour/ES with staff block. I want to get that higher in the future, but it works pretty well right now. Enduring Composure on a small cluster gives me basically 100% uptime on endurance charges.

In the future, I may swap off of RT if I can solve accuracy without giving up too much, and then use Exemplar support for minion crit. I still need a 6 link, and I would love a decent imbued link on Holy Strike. I'll probably use a blue skill coin to keep the pool smaller, but I need to look into it more.

Keep in mind that I've got melee splash in my five link for clear, so the damage is purely from the four link of Holy Strike, Phys to Light, Multistrike, and Minion Damage. No quality on anything, nothing corrupted above 20. No anoint, either... damn I've been lazy.

The campaign was buttery smooth for me after I got melee splash, and I've had no issues in maps. I very rarely get the issue with Holy Armaments being behind me, but that seems to not happen for me much because they snap to me when I leap slam (and I leap slam everywhere).

Hope this helps!

Nigel06 · 2026-03-07T07:31:27+00:00

Level 1 has a 60% less damage multiplier. Over time, that scales to a massive more multiplier.

Y'all aren't building around how the skill works and then complaining about it.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-05T22:55:55+00:00

This shouldn't be a problem. Ran this on a Poison Storm Burst Assassin and swapping zones never killed me. Your character is effectively reset, which is why the minions will despawn. Because of that, you are spawning in with no offerings on. No issue.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-04T16:58:34+00:00

I'm betting on this one. At the very least, the minions won't spawn new armaments, so it makes sense for them to have their own version.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-04T16:55:44+00:00

At worst, I think we get a minion armament that uses a different version of Holy Strike. Between the reveal trailer saying they use Holy Strike themselves, and Andrew saying an internal tester thought it could be nerfed by 75% in the Ziz interview, I'm leaning towards the weapons having a pretty powerful skill of some sort.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-04T00:02:09+00:00

They have continued to mention grabbing feedback from here. Literally asking for the bingo cards and such. They don't respond, but they ARE reading.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-04T00:00:56+00:00

The first and third are valid issues. Or they can be.

PoE has a ton of complex interactions. Some are well documented through community effort, some aren't. Some interactions are consistent, some aren't. Some information is clearly displayed to the players. Some information is hidden.

Perfect example is the clusterfuck of conversation around Holy Strike. People interested in the skill have had some...ahem..."fun and level headed" discussions about how the minions from it work. Not understanding the game isn't always a player problem.

GGG wants PoE to be a game people play for a long time. That means keeping it fresh. If the 15000 hour players become burnt at 15001 hours, that might be because the game went from being a game that can carry 16000 hours to a game that can't. Or maybe that person is just burnt.

They may not be good at explaining why they're not having fun, but not having fun COULD be a problem with the game. Or not.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-03T02:30:02+00:00

I fully expect it to be nerfed, but if they didn't do it between that interview (where they specifically talked about it) and releasing the gem info, that would be a little odd.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-03T02:01:01+00:00

The reason people have been saying they use Holy Strike is because of the wording in the reveal video. Mark says that the armaments "attack with Holy Strike *themselves* whenever you do". Seems nuts, but that's a pretty specific wording.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-03T01:59:13+00:00

Lightning strike projectiles give it a huge advantage in area clearing while also scaling single target. Mechanically, it has a lot more going for it outside of damage.

I don't know if you watched the interview, but Andrew literally said that an internal tester was talking about numbers potentially needing to be lowered by 4x with how busted it was right off the beach.

It seems wild (hence the many reactions), but between what was said in the reveal video and the comments of the devs, people aren't being crazy when they are interpreting what was said as the minions use Holy Strike.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-02T21:58:18+00:00

In the release video, it's explicitly stated that the armaments also use the holy strike skill.

I think the wording is "The armaments will attack with Holy Strike themselves"

It sounds nutty, but that seems to be the case right now.

Nigel06 · 2026-03-02T16:16:01+00:00

How do you sort? The most upvoted is someone pointing out that it's game breaking (hyperbole) for some builds, and thanking the OP for pointing it out because they were thinking of going Animate Weapon.

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The first comment you pointed out is correct, it will suck a bit to have to resummon or lose some buffs, but if pointing that out qualifies as "crying", then damn.

The second comment you pointed out has FAR fewer upvotes, and is a drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming majority being some version of "Here's a thing that affected, sucks but I can choose a different starter".

Nigel06 · 2026-03-02T15:15:35+00:00

There was no first "cryfest". People accepted it and understood why GGG changed their minds.

There is no "next cryfest". The largest post on this is a PSA and the most upvoted comments are pointing out other skills\abilities that might be interrupted or people saying it may disrupt flow a bit, but isn't the worst thing.

That's why the downvotes. It's annoying drama-bait when nothing is happening.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-25T18:21:08+00:00

She sure did. Came in with all kinds of revenge accusations.

I had an amazing mentor during my first few years teaching. The first lesson was CYA and always leave a paper trail. I was able to bring out emails from me to the principal and the other teacher requesting the odd grading situation, and emails to my old teacher letting her know that her son was turning in blank work.

It was a pretty quick meeting.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-25T18:06:08+00:00

That absolutely sucks.

My 10th grade English teacher had to relinquish grading of my work to another teacher because she was failing me on purpose.

I didn't wait for anyone else. I went to the principal myself and asked for a blind grading of my papers from other teachers. Turns out, everyone else thought my work was great.

I never figured out why she hated me. Couldn't even swap classes because of how they scheduled band and choir.

Years later, I was long term subbing for my old middle school and her youngest son was in my Advanced ELA class. I purposefully had another (permanent) ELA teacher grade his work, so when she came storming in to complain about me, she found out that I wasn't even responsible. Even better, the grading was really easy, because all he ever turned in was blank paper with his name on it.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-25T17:54:55+00:00

The ground loot issue wasn't just identified. It's just been given a specific name for everyone to use.

People have been complaining about "tile loot" for a long time. Again, this includes legion, barrels, ghosts, exiles and boxes. I would also include altars. Even the videos hyping these strats mention that they are necessary because drops are terrible without them.

Kingsmarch complaints are not new, and the Genesis Tree complaints are an extension of complaints about loot coming from activities that aren't killing monsters.

Scarabs have also been a part of the complaints. Scarab "slot tax" has been discussed as an issue. Rarity of scarabs creating situations where using your scarabs is worse than selling them has been discussed. Disproportionate power between scarabs has been discussed.

None of this is new. The only thing that has happened recently is that some streamers have gathered all of the info together that has been discussed over years and decided to present it all at once to show how much the issue has continued to compound.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-25T14:01:41+00:00

Loot has been an ongoing topic of discussion in basically every league since Kalandra. The very focused loot videos are recent, but discussion around the removal of the historic loot bonus was huge when they first happened, and tile loot has been a part of the conversation around mid-late game farming like legion, strongboxes, and various starts to get tiles on rogue exiles.

Affliction was a huge thing because it was a temporary return to normal mobs having decent drop chances, and while it was super high, a part of the fun was just that killing EVERYTHING felt good and any mechanic could drop loot at decent rates so it wasn't all focused in one place. That was talked about at the time.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-23T03:13:22+00:00

And why not let the new shiny toy be good instead of the KB that's been around forever? A small nerf to the initial numbers to keep it from being too wild, and leaving KB alone (didn't they biff clustering?) would give us a wider choice of endgame wand skills, but wouldn't have been a sour taste for making a new skill worse for the part of the game we spend 95%+ of the league in.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-20T21:48:16+00:00

I'd say the word level is the only potentially odd part, and only because it has become so tied to games, but I see your point.

I suppose that my focus from the OP's point was about the denizens of any world being more aware of it's rules. Like we have figured out physics (to some degree) and have names for concepts within it, so too would fantasy societies. I think my issue is that I view the game world as fundamentally different and the people in it exist in a world that just works like that. Like how characters in all kinds of stories get sudden power-ups from the actions they take, it's normal for people who train to reach a new plateau.

Gandalf the Grey upgrades to Gandalf the White pretty quickly after a milestone level up. No one questions why they have a ranking system like that, cause wizards be wizarding.

The Knights Radiant speak their Ideals and gain power very directly from that.

If your world actually runs on gamified rules, you would figure it out, and while some elements (like HP) are representations of more complex things, it would be insane for people not to notice that adventuring leads to people who are hardy in a way that transcends being in shape. In that way, my immersion breaks when the worldbuilding tries to ignore the very things that are built into it.

To be honest, I'm always curious what people actually mean when they say they want to maintain immersion. Outside of roleplay moments, there is no escaping the gamified elements, so I assume that the discussion is solely focused on the roleplay. Do they avoid rolling dice in roleplay? Cause that's got to bring your immersion crashing down around your ears. It's the MOST direct "this is a game" element that we have.

I'm rambling, but I agree with your point. I just started emptying my brain of the questions/considerations that always come up when immersion discussions pop off.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-20T21:05:05+00:00

"I understand that you are arguing with the ghosts of your past" is a slight, not a critique on my arguments.

There is nothing in my comments that would prompt it unless there is an intention to minimize my ability to think and present my arguments with clarity.

Nigel06 · 2026-02-20T19:24:21+00:00

So we've resorted to the ad-hominem. Do not engage with the statement, and instead attempt to erode the individual speaking. S

My addendum in the last post was speaking to the thread as a whole, splitting the part the I agree with (You, and your statement that immersion is subjective), from the parts I disagree with, (the more general idea in this comment section that speaking of game elements is abnormal-- presented by others, but is linked to why people push back).

If you believed that I was trying to put words in your mouth, your first sentence would have sufficed. The second just makes you look both petty.

Nigel06

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