Harbinger's abilities will feel familiar to Harbinger item's users, so basically no one. However, as bad as these items are, the Ascendancy Passives have certain merits. Here's what these cryptic Harbinger Skills do: 

• Greater Harbinger of Time Skill, from The Torrent's Reclamation, grants 10% increased action speed for 8 seconds every 10 seconds.
• Greater Harbinger of Focus Skill, from The Immortal Will, grants immunity to curses, immunity to status ailments, Stun immunity, and 20% damage reduction for 4 seconds every 8 seconds, but only if you're Channelling.
• Greater Harbinger of the Arcane Skill, from The Surging Thoughts, grants Arcane Surge and The Surging Thoughts for 4 seconds every 8 seconds. Arcane Surge grants 10% increased Cast Speed and 30% increased Mana Regeneration Rate, but there are ways to scale up this effect further. The Surging Thoughts grants 15% chance to Shock and 10% Lightning Penetration.

Suggested Builds: The 40% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate is such a big boost to this, usually hard-to-obtain, stat, that'll be quite likely popular in builds whose power stems from reducing Cooldown, such as in CoC, Impending Doom, or Warcry builds. Just keep in mind that the cast/trigger rate is harder to calculate the smaller the number gets. The actual cast/trigger rate will be rounded to match server ticks, which is once every 33 milliseconds.

Possibly a Channelling build will be a better option. With the reduced expiration rate of Buffs on you, you can keep the Greater Harbinger of Focus Skill on you for the full 8 seconds, meaning it'll be always active as long as you're always Channelling. Just don't use Temporal Chains for self-curse as you'll be immune to Curses. A good example of a build that'll benefit from increased Cooldown Recovery Rate as well as Greater Harbinger of Focus are all the flavours of CoC Cyclone builds.

"100% increased Area of Effect of Hex Skills" is very desirable in an Impending Doom build - you need the AoE scaling for overlaps with Vixen's Entrapment. Combine it with a 40% Cooldown Recovery Rate to lower the Cooldown in the same item to trigger Doom Blast right on time.

The Harbinger of the Arcane branch seems weak. Stats like Mana Recovery rate,  ES Recovery Rate, Arcane Surge, or Chance to Shock are usually not something to be worried about or are easily obtainable. Nonetheless, you can benefit from them in an ES-based Lightning Damage Spellcaster. The remaining points may be spent to further specialize in Channelling or Triggering.

The Herald Ascendency, just like the name suggests, is all about the Herald Skills. You are forced to pick the Coming Calamity as your first choice, which disables all Auras, but massively improves your Reservation Efficiency of all Herald Skills. It allows you to effortlessly use 6-link setups for your Heralds without worrying about running out of Mana, and you can still use defensive non-Aura Reservation Skills like Aspect of the Spider or Tempest Shield. 

Suggested Builds: Herald of Agony is probably the best choice for this Ascendency. It is a Summoner style that uses only one, but insanely powerful Minion to do all the work. The Agony Crawler gains a massive amount of Damage and Attack Speed per each stack of Virulence, which this Ascendency raises by 25. You gain Virulence by Poisoning Enemies, which requires you to constantly deal even a small amount of Damage, making it a quite active style. It requires a specific setup, so combining it with other Minions is usually not worth it. 

You can also opt for the Herald of Purity, as with the Scourge you will be able to summon 6 powerful Melee Minions instead of the usual 4. Their AoE coverage is a bit lackluster, so you will probably want to incorporate some other Minions that suit the play style, such as Dominating Blow for ultimate Melee fighting Summoner, or Absolution for more support from a far distance. 

It is also possible to make a working Autobomber Build with the Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice, Those Builds usually struggle with scaling the Damage due to their non-existential base Critical Strike Chance, which the Persecution Notable fixes immediately. Unlike the Surfcaster variant, you will be able to use the Annihilating Light Staff for the Triple Damage modifier, and the Inpulsa's Body Armour won't be required thanks to the massive AoE bonus for the Herald of Ice. However, this version will definitely require a higher budget to achieve satisfying results, so it is not recommended for the start. 

The Bog Shaman introduces some very interesting concepts with Life Cost of Skills used as a way to scale your Damage but is also the go-to Ascendency for most DoT Skills. The Rotten Core Notable seems to be quite awkward to utilise fully to scale Damage, but it can be used for the utility of triggering various CWDT setups or enabling permanent 10% Life Regeneration from the Doppelganger Guise Body Armour. 

Suggested Builds: The Pandemic offers a massive Damage boost for DoT Spells, but the Fell Fen makes Chaos DoTs like Blight of Contagion or Toxic Rain especially powerful. You will need the Chaos Innoculation Keystone to mitigate the downsides in the endgame, but for most Starter Builds having 0 Chaos Resistance is substantially better than negative 60%.  The Toad Pact is also very good, as the Elemental Resistances are much easier to acquire on your gear than additional AoE or Skill Effect Duration. 

With the Sanguine Power and Nightblood, you can achieve insane amounts of maximum Life, and use it together with the Sacrifice Support to add massive amounts of Chaos and Physical Damage to your Spells. However, those types of Builds require expensive Items to truly shine, such as the Rathpith Globe Shield, or generally well-rolled Rare Items. They will be definitely powerful, but we wouldn't recommend anyone to start a fresh league with them. 

The Surfcaster is probably the most interesting Ascendency on the list. It offers a very good mix of Damage, Speed, and conditional Defense in the form of Freeze. The Ghost of the Deep offers massive bonuses during the campaign which can save you a lot of time, but it remains fairly useful even in the late game. The two Fishing Rod Notables offer insane bonuses for Spells and Herald Skills, but getting one can be tricky. The Changing Seasons is also amazing, but it requires a specific Setup to pay off, such as picking up the Lethe Shade Notable to make it last longer or using the Trigger modifier on Weapon to inflict Chill on you consistently. 

Suggested Builds: Basically any Lightning Spell Caster will work with this Ascendency. You can experiment with Spells like Arc, Lightning Conduit, or Crackling Lance to find what gameplay feels the best for you and make it work with this Ascendency. In the end-game, you will have two excellent choices: raise your maximum Resistances and use Nebulis to massively increase your Cold-converted Damage, or use a Fishing Rod for guaranteed Criticals and massive Cast Speed. 

If you manage to obtain the Fishing Rod, you should also consider the Herald of Thunder Autobomber Build. With the guaranteed Critical Strikes and easy access to the proliferation of the Shocks for the Inpulsa's Body Armour, it will definitely be one of the fastest Builds for clearing Maps. 

This Ascendency can also be used for Attack Builds. Thanks to the reversed effect of Chill it can easily match the speed of a usual Deadeye Build, and the possibility to Freeze all Enemies with your Lightning Strike or Lightning Arrow is an unmatched defensive layer for those types of Builds. 

The Broodguard is definitely the most important Notable here and makes this Ascendency very unique, but it doesn't mean you have to play it as a Summoner. Each Spider out of 20 you can summon grants you 2% increased Attack Speed and 15% increased Damage with Poison, or possibly even more as the details of level 20 Skill are still unknown. 

Suggested Builds: That said, the Arachnomancer seems to be the most suitable option. Unlike the usual Arakaali's Fang version, you can't use the Support Gems to make your Spiders stronger. However, the difference between levels 1 and 20 of this Skill should definitely make up for that, and you can use a real Weapon this time. At first, we recommend focusing on Poison Damage as it is easier to scale, but Neurotoxin enables a very powerful way of scaling Crit, which is very unusual for Minions. 

The other option is to use the Fatal Bite Notable and focus on your own Damage. It would work best with Physical Damage, which leads you to Physical Spells like Blade Vortex or Blade Blast. You could also use Blade Trap for more focus on the Attacks instead. Admittedly, this side of the Ascendency is less exciting, and could probably work better on a different Class altogether. 

The Blind Prophet is a very powerful and versatile Ascendency for any Attack-based Builds, but it is also the best pick for anything related to Cast on Critical Setups. The 12% Base Critical Strike Chance from the Sightless is easily one of the strongest Ascendency Notables in the game. The remaining options are also very good - the Nimis is one of the most expensive items in the game, and now you can have half of its effects for completing the Cruel Labirynth. The Lightless is also interesting - with this Notable, you can get a lot of extra maximum Life, which is usually troublesome for Builds on the right side of the Passive Tree. 

Suggested Builds: Any Cast on Critical Build will work very well. You will still need hefty investments into Critical Strike Chance for Spells, but you will effortlessly reach a consistent Trigger Rate with any Attack, which is the most important factor for smooth gameplay. You can opt for classic setups with Cyclone with Cospri's Malice or Mjölner, Voltaxic or Rare Bow with Blast Rain or Rain of Arrows, or more recent Setups with Lancing Steel and a Rare Sword, or even Rare Axe with the Settlers-exclusive Fire Trigger Enchant. The Spell of choice is also very subjective - the Returning Projectiles from the Directionless Notable will make Ice Spear or Creeping Frost very deadly against Bosses, while Restless will make your Clear Speed with Physical Spells like Exsanguinate even better. 

It is also a great choice for the Molten Strike of the Zenith, which is one of the strongest Melee Skills in the game currently. The Returning Projectiles for this Skill are more effective than usual as it causes much better AoE overlap than the initial Hit. This Build is the most popular with a Strength-stacking Weapon as it is simply the most effective way to obtain Damage on an unlimited Budget currently, but it can work with a generic Elemental Weapon just as well, for which Abyss Jewels can come in very handy. 

The Daughter of Oshabi is a good Ascendency, but the other Ranger's options are simply even more amazing. The theme here is somewhat lost - it focuses on many different things, making each of them individually quite weak. With the Roots of the Grove, you can use Elemental Damage to inflict Poison, but you must Hit Enemies 5 times before it's enabled. The Spellslinging is extremely strong Notable for this Archetype, as the modifier here is not a simple Reservation Efficiency - it halves any Reservation on this Skill. That said, it is still weaker than Cast on Crit Setup, although much easier to set up. The Illuminating Wisps is also an insanely strong Node - but for regular Attack Wanders only, as it does not interact with Spell Slinger Skills, yet you will have to spend your precious Points on this Node to unlock the Spellslinging. Lastly, the Forest Tracking and Oath of the Magi can be paired to achieve absurd amounts of Evasion Rating to make your Attacks deal greatly increased Damage. 

Suggested Builds: To make the most out of this Ascendency, we recommend a Poison Spellslinger with Elemental Spell. The Sacred Wips can be quite useful as utility tools - they can inflict Grasping Vines to enable Elemental Poison, as well as Wither to massively increase the Chaos Damage Enemies take. 

The other recommendation is an Attack-based Wander with a Rare Wand with Lightning Damage per Intelligence modifier. That way you can get tons of Evasion Rating scaling from the Shaper's Touch Gloves, which grant you a 2% Evasion Rating per 10 Intelligence. Since you will be stacking as many Attributes as possible anyway, it will grant you tons of additional Damage from the Forest Tracking Notable.

The Whisperer is suitable for a very narrow set of Builds, but in that niche, it is insanely powerful. It heavily focuses on a specific style of scaling Attack Damage, which is stacking lots of Mana and using Indigon Helmet for the massive amount of Spell Damage bonuses, converted into Attack Damage at 150% efficiency. While this setup can work with basically any Attack in the game for any type of Weapon, it naturally works best with Skills that already have built-in Mana scaling to elevate them to the maximum potential. You will also have an almost permanent effect on Berserker Buff, as you will generate tons of Rage.

Suggested Builds: Power Siphon of Archmage gains 24% of your Maximum Mana as Added Lightning Damage and offers very smooth Clear Speed thanks to auto-targeting. It also scales with Spell Damage modifiers on its own, so you can use the have you forgotten? Notable to make your Projectiles Fork, for even better Clear. It can be used manually, or combined with Ballistas, such as showcased in our Build Guide for the Hierophant.

The similar, yet very different option is to use the Kinetic Blast of Clustering. It scales slightly less with Mana, as it offers only 15% of Maximum Mana as Added Damage, but this time it adds Physical Damage. It gives you the opportunity to convert it into a different type, such as Chaos, using a single Notable on the Cluster Jewel and benefiting greatly from the Withering Debuff to further improve your Damage, just like in our Kinetic Blast of Clustering Deadeye Build. The Clear Speed is also great, despite having only one Projectile you can use Spellslinger to create Tornado on every Attack, causing a massive amount of AoE overlaps. 

Wildspeaker is a master of Aspect Skills. The Aspect of the Avian or Crab is not really useful, but the Aspect of the Cat is insanely good for any Flicker Strike Build. The reason for that is the Fearful Symmetry Notable which grants you Frenzy and Power Charges every time you gain Cat's stealth. Thanks to this you can use Flicker Strike with any Weapon, and any Body Armour, which was always the biggest restriction for such Builds. That's not all - the Scourge of the Wilds allows you to get a great amount of Damage by stacking Dexterity Attribute. You can also easily cap your Spell Dodge with the Primal Instinct Notable and Acrobatics Keystone. Lastly, you can use the Greatwolf's Call to get 8% Action Speed from Tailwind Buff, or the Pack Mentality for extra Physical Damage Added to Attacks for each active Wolf. 

Suggested Builds: The obvious choice is the Flicker Strike - with this Ascendency you don't need to worry about the Cooldown and Frenzy Charges at all. At first, you can use a usual Elemental Sword or Claw, but at later stages, we recommend a Rare Weapon with a special modifier that Adds Cold Damage per 10 points of Dexterity, which will also greatly increase your Damage with the Scourge of the Wilds. The Voidforge is also a very good option, as the Pack Mentality can grant you tons of Physical Damage, but it might be very expensive in the first weeks of League. 

The other recommendation is to use Facereaker Gloves with any suitable Skill, such as Smite. Each Spectral Wolf grants you 8 to 16 Physical Damage, and you can have 10 of them active at a given time. With Facebreaker Gloves it means 960 average Physical Damage added to your Attacks, which is simply insane. 

The Gambler offers decent Damage, and very good, although inconsistent, Defense. While being good, it doesn't offer anything particularly interesting or Build-enabling. The chance-based Defenses are not ideal either, and they don't work on the Damage over Time effect at all. The Lucky Critical Strike Chance would be awesome for Cast on Crit Builds, but unfortunately, the starting position on the Passive Tree is highly unfavourable. 

Suggested Builds: The Overly Confident can be active at all times with the Petrified Blood Skill active. It will also prompt you to use Bloodthirst Support, which adds 2% of your maximum Life as Physical Damage for your Attacks. Unlike most other options, it doesn't come with a possible minimum and maximum value, which means the Unlucky Damage roll from the Spectacular Parlay won't be that much of a problem. It would work best with Facebreaker Gloves or Voidforge, although the Wildspeaker is probably a better fit for that. The Gambler, however, seems to be a tankier option, especially thanks to Blocking over 90% of the incoming Attacks or Spells.  

The Paladin is also very good, but also quite bland. It offers a lot of Damage for generic Attack Build. You will increase the Elemental Damage taken by enemies by 25%, summon Relics that grant you powerful Wrath, Anger, and Hatred Auras, and you can Taunt Enemies to make them take even more Damage, which can be easily achieved with a Rare Abyss Jewel that grants you up to 8% Chance to Taunt Enemies on Hit, or an Autoexertion Setup. The fourth Ascendency would be usually the Field Medicine to make your Flask stronger. The extra level 30 Aura is not very useful, as it can't be linked with Enlighten Support to lower the Reservation Costs. It also can be an excellent Support Character, but that is a very niche playstyle. 

Suggested Builds: As mentioned, this Ascendency can fit almost any Attack Build, preferably Melee, but can also fit Ranged Builds that use Point Blank for maximum Damage output due to its close Range requirements on the Light of Divinity. The Anger and Wrath Auras will add tons of Elemental Damage to your Build, so you can use your Mana for defensive Auras like Purity of Elements, Grace, or opt for Speed with Haste. The best Skills would be the Lightning Strike or Molten Strike, but Wild Strike or Frost Blades can also work very well. 

The Bring the Battle also grants you infinite Power for your Warcries, which makes it the best choice for any Slam Skill, as those usually use a lot of Warcries to make your Hits slower, but deadlier. We recommend the Volcanic Fissure of Snaking which we already explored on the Chieftain Ascendency, which can be very easily converted for Duelist here. 

Aristocrat is a very flexible class that can be used basically for anything, but it will be the best choice only for a handful of Attribute-stacking builds. Those are usually expensive and harder to assemble, so we are not sure if it's a recommended choice for a 30-day Event, but surely there will be those that will try to push this playstyle to its limit.  With the extra Passives, Levels, and Quality to your Support and Skill Gems, this may end up being a Top Tier class for Aurabot. The question is if a Support character is what you are looking for during such an exciting Event.

Suggested Builds:  The first thing that comes to mind when looking at all the Massive bonuses to all three Attribute Types, is an Attribute Stacker with Widowhaild and The Poised Prism Quiver for a massive flat added damage. You can utilize it to boost the damage of your regular Bow Attacks or trigger numerous low-level Manaforged Attacks, with greatly increased base damage. However, it's hard to determine if the bonus attribute will compensate for the lack of other bonuses a typical Inquisitor offered with this build, so the potential of this class is questionable. This class will also surely work for Curse or Aura-based Support characters, with easy access to higher-level Empower, Enhance, and Enlighten Support Gems. If you pick the extra Passives and bonuses to all Gems, the effect of all such Gems is further increased, but that's essentially nothing new or interesting.

Antiquarian presents an intriguing theme, with Ascendancy Passives that grant bonuses tied to specific Unique Items. However, it also focuses on Ward, a niche and generally unpopular defensive mechanic, making it uncertain whether this class is worth recommending.

The bonus Strength and potentially greatly increased Duration of all effects could have some unique applications, though none immediately come to mind. Perhaps this class holds a hidden gem waiting to be discovered? That said, it lacks any direct damage modifiers, making it one of the least compelling options at first glance.

Suggested Builds: At this time, we don’t have any concrete build ideas for Antiquarian. While it appears to offer strong defensive potential - possibly even to the point of near-immortality under specific conditions - its lack of damage output makes it difficult to justify playing.

One of the worst classes that you can choose for the Event. The first Ascendency choice forces you to disable all your Spells including Auras, Banners, Curses, and even Berserk - which truthfully, doesn't make any sense. If it doesn't get reworked before the launch on February 20,  you shouldn't even consider playing it. There are several ways one could possibly build a Behemoth character - either focusing on Fortification, Rage, Unarmed combat, or Armour-based defenses - sadly, theory-crafting in this case is a waste of one's time...

Suggested Builds: we can't really suggest playing Behemoth at all in its current state, but you could try using it for the Fortification Stacking setup, which combined with the Celestial Brace Gloves can give you insane Attack Speed and defenses. You can also try a cheaper and weaker variant of a Hateforge build, without having to actually obtain this pair of insanely rare and expensive Gloves, or some Unarmed build with Facebreaker Gloves. However, all this is pointless if you are to sacrifice your Auras and Berserk Spell for the questionable bonuses.

Ancestral Commander is the tankiest Ascendency in Legacy of Phrecia. It will be surely very popular among Hardcore players. The +3 to Maximum Endurance Charges is the most notable Passive on this Tree which will allow you to stack up 16-17 Endurance Charges from all available sources, offering uncomparable defensive potential. On the other hand, you can change those to Brutal Charges for a very high chance to deal Triple Damage and utilize those massive bonuses on pretty much any setup.  It's hard to say how all those Spirits you can get to summon will perform,  but given they will trigger under specified conditions, we don't expect them to be that impactful and preferred over the other more consistent options. 

Suggested Builds: The first build that comes to our mind will be a Starter build based on Explosive Arrow Totems and powerful Ignites viable for both Softcore and Hardcore players. You can't go wrong with that, but given how popular this setup was historically, it may not be the most exciting one for you. We also see potential in Melee builds based on Arn's Anguish and Ralakesh's Impatience Boots - for example, Boneshatter which will Melt all the content with ease, but any other Strike Skill will be very satisfying to play on this class. There is some potential for a Corpse-exploding build that utilizes Call of the Ancestors and Deathrattle Passives but without actual testing, we can't tell if the damage will be good enough.

The Puppeteer Ascendancy revolves around commanding an army of Minions, enhancing Zombies, Animated Weapons, and Curses. Key benefits include corpse-less Zombie summoning, Strength-sharing with Minions, aggressive Minion behavior, Critical Strike scaling for Minions, and doubling *Animate Weapon* effects. Ideal for Necromancer-style play.

Suggested Builds: Since most of the Ascendency nodes are related to specific Skill Gems, naturally you are bound to use those when playing a Puppeteer. The most obvious picks are Baron Zombie Summoner and increased Strength, which will be now directly boosted, and the bonuses to Animated Weapons, which could be quite powerful even before, also look very temptaing. Keep in mind that Rotting Might, Feeding Frenzy, Hexbearer and Enervating Presence is a very powerful combination that will work wonders basically on any Minion build out there.

Polytheis is yet another class that struggles to find its' identity. It has some interesting nodes, but those don't offer any synergy between themselves, making it hard to come up with a solid setup for this class. The Abberath's Fury looks most interesting and is surely something that should be able to carry you to Maps in unusual fashion, but it will definitely stop there. The Minimum charges are nice, so is the node with two extra Projectiles or built-in Astral Projector, but then again, those are not pers that on their own may convince you to select this class. 

Suggested Builds: this is a really tricky one, with no obvious choices. Attack builds where you count as moving will work, possibly like a Cyclone builds with Devout or Ryslatha, Garukhan, Ralakesh, and Solaris would work, but most likely there will be better classes even if you decided to play such a simple, well-known setup. Maybe a Pyroclast Mine build? It could be an interesting option, as it benefits greatly from Devout of Lunaris - the Charges are also nice, but then again, you can easily generate Charges on Miner characters, and it's hard to select 2 other valuable Ascendency nodes, and we are not convinced the Blind and 100% Increased Critical Strike Chance is worth it in the end.

A very powerful Ascendency, but surely an end-game one that will require a lot of investments and specific equipment to perform well. It is heavily oriented on the use of Vaal Gems, increasing their Gem Level, Duration, and Critical Strike Chance.  The second part of the tree revolves around converting Mana, Mana Cost of Skills and Reservation to Life. At first glance, shifting the potential defenses and resource management of your build - but who knows if this will not turn out to be a build-defining aspect of this class at some point. 

Suggested Builds: we believe the best builds for Architect of Chaos will revolve around Vaal Skills with Duration, the ability to Critically Strike, and possibly benefit from the extra Gem Levels. The Spells seem to be the best candidates for the job - with Vaal Spark and Vaal Lighting Trap being solid and verified options - and both those Spells may even work fine during the leveling, but with negligible bonuses from this Ascendency until you get the Vaal version of your Gems. Some interesting setups may revolve around the Vaal Minion Gems, like Vaal Absolution and Vaal Domination, allowing your empowered Minions to fight for much longer, and have greatly increased damage. At the same time, the Minion playstyle may be something more suitable for a build that wants to reserve a big portion of your Life.

Scavenger is the Top Tier class in the Legacy of Phrecia Event. It's surprising how it compares to the Antiquarian, who at first glance was supposed to have a similar theme - and somehow it's the Scavenger who got all the interesting Nodes for himself and in a quantity that opens up countless interesting and powerful combinations. You can play all types of builds based on specific choices. After the first and second Labirynths, you get to select defensive-oriented Passives, like, for example, Shavronne's Wrapping for the low-life setups, or Cloak of Flame for its massive Physical damage mitigation, or Foxshade with insane permanent bonuses for Chaos Inoculation characters. It's not until the 3rd Trial that you have to decide on your play style and the type of build you are going to play. And there are a lot of interesting options for all build archetypes. We predict taking Void Battery for your typical Charge stacker will be the most common option, with either Death Rush, Fury Valve, or Leadership's Price as the last option - based on the final build you are playing, and your personal preferences.

Suggested Builds: if you are not afraid of the possible price of Ralakesh's Impatience Boots, then Scavenger is most likely going to be the best class for any Charge Stacking Build. You can play Hexblast Miner, Power Siphon Miner, Penance Brand of Dissipation, and Arc (or basically self-cast on other Spell you want to play). The Midnight Bargain is also a very potent Node for Minion characters. and surely will make this class fully viable for such a playstyle. 

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