RM-focused Hierophant build

Hierophant is... interesting to say the least. It's another minion class, yet contrary to most other minion classes in other ARPGs, it is probably the most involved build in the game when it comes to actually playing it. There are a lot of timers to keep track of, minions to keep alive and buttons to press. I guess what i'm trying to say is, if you're looking to kick back and relax with a can of beer and a do-nothing build after a hard day of work, this probably isn't the build for you.

And to the rest of you piano build enjoyers, welcome, and let's see how far we can push these minions

This build also requires no seasonal items, so all you non-seasonal players can breathe a sigh of relief

DISCLAIMER: I've only had about a week to come up with this build. There are a ton of weapons I tested only sparsely, and even more that I haven't touched at all. So if you find a combination of weapons and retinue members that I overlooked, do let me know in the Martyr discord server

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVIG7gQ3fig&ab_channel=BodhiSattva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuDvpIFZ6tk&ab_channel=BodhiSattva

V2: Changed berserk token generation method as the previous one did not work without either being in season 5 or having a Harbinger of Judgement. Added a section for an alternative, heat version of the build. Now making use of Bulwark of Order, changed most of the non-relic enchantments to account for this

For those of you that are not interested in the details of how it all comes together: here's all the screenshots of the gear I am using, my passives allocation and perks. Retinue member gear will only be on there once as all the enchants should be the same on every member

In this section, we will take a look at the selection of gear, perks and passives for the Heirophant himself. I will explain all the choices made for individual pieces of gear as well as overall approach to gearing

The main idea of the build is to let the retinue members(henceforth referred to as RMs) do all the damage. And so, our build will revolve mainly around boosting their damage while making us as tanky as possible as we will need to be able to take a lot of punishment to safely revive RMs when they inevitably go down. Gear pieces will be listed in order from most to least important



This is a crucial, almost mandatory piece of gear for the build - an inoculator with 3 yellow and 1 red component. This is vital to the build, as with 3 neurophines and a blood balm slotted into it and other enchants on different pieces of gear boosting the duration and cooldown of the inoculator, we can achieve a 27% cooldown recovery speed and 6% health regen for our RMs, seeing as one of the passive nodes on one of the new trees applies our inoculator to RMs at 30% efficiency



This armor, along with a myriad of sources of cooldown reduction and -% devotion cost enchants allows us to generate berserk tokens for our RMs quite quickly, resulting in a big increase in damage. Fire aura is essential because it allows us to stay alive while picking up our RMs


With me being determined to keep this build non-season friendly, we have to rely on 2 of these relic enchantments - one here on the belt and the other on the inoculator - to generate berserk tokens. We don't use them for damage, but rather to take advantage of enchants such as "X HP gained on hit per berserk token" and "X HP regeneration per berserk token". Swap the curio for Defiance if you're running a physical build




All three of these items serve to make us even tankier, allowing us to(more or less) safely revive our RMs



This combination allows us to stack general vulnerability, increasing our RMs' damage. It is better to stack them with our character rather than with RMs as RMs don't have a lot of sources of vulnerability effectiveness



Guaranteed crits are necessary to stack out vulnerabilites. We use a Dialogus Staff as it has a nice boost to RM HP. Heirophant has access to Psyker's force swords, therefore we use an Aether Blade to get around maps quickly


I genuienly do not know what to roll here. None of the relic enchants on neural implants are useful to us. If anyone has any ideas, hit me up



As most of the skills we'll be using have long cooldowns, this is helpful in helping spam them


This is where we get our physical vulnerability from. Blessing of Holy Fire is a heat skill and all of our RMs' weapons are physical, so the downside doesn't affect us


We do not use the Psyker RM simply to benefit from this perk. Psyker doesn't do much damage and the buffs he provides are negligable compared to this perk



This is our bread and butter skill. It applies vulnerability, stacks berserk tokens, heals us as well as RMs that stand in it


Cast at the start of the mission and periodically throughout to generate devotion. Damage is reduced by RMs' DR and resistances, so it barely tickles them


This is what we use to easily cap out resistances and damage reduction, freeing up enchatment slots for other things It also draws a bit of aggro away from our RMs, allowing them to live a bit longer



The most important passive tree. It's what allows us to apply our inoculator to RMs, sustains said inoculator, buffs our RMs in general and draws aggro from them


Seeing as we'll be using our spells quite frequently, our RMs will be applying burns all the time which will help with generating enrage tokens for them through enrage on burn main implants


Miscellaneous spell buffs here, no single improtant nodes here but good to have all of them


This is mostly there because i can't be bothered to respec it when switching from physical build to heat build


More CDR as well as Cerebral Feedback to enable the spamming of Blessing of Holy Fire


More AOE as well as more reduced cooldown for Blessing of Holy Fire


Reanimator Glands help revive RMs in tough spots


Leftover points. Up to you where you put them, this is my preference


My attribute allocation. Since we won't be doing damage ourselves, base damage doesn't matter as much. As long you get the 20 point bonus, you're good to put your points anywhere else

For this build we will only be making use of Crusader, Assassin and Battle Sister. As I have found out, psyker's damage leaves a lot to be desired and the buffs he provides are negligable compared to the buff we can get from Party Efficiency. That being said, you should still be using all the RMs while leveling, as they only gain XP if you actually take them with you

All the enchants on all of RMs' gear pieces of the same slot should be the same, so I will only be showing them once and clarify the few times you should change something for a different RM


Roll the fabricatus scatter field chance on all armors except for Assassin's as it cannot roll that enchant


Melee is by far the best choice of weapons for RMs, as it gives them decent survivability and great damage. Use Death Cult Blades and Power Halberd for Assassin and Battle Sister respectively


By far the least useful slot for RMs. This is the best I could come up with, open for suggestions on what else could be rolled on here


This along with burn for RMs on spell use passive node allows us to stack enrage tokens on our RMs. Use damage per enrage on whoever you put Inspiration perk on


As I have found out, it really does not matter which particular RM gets what perk. As long as you're using these 3, you're good


Mostly survivability here. Periodic taunt helps but isn't necessary


Some good damage here, though -0.2s cooldown is the real MVP


Single target saint form can take out half of an elite's HP in one hit when fully buffed, always go for it

After some testing, I found a viable set of heat weapons to use on RMs and adjusted the build accordingly. This variant may suit people who prefer to run lower difficulties and don't want to worry about RMs as much. Here are the weapons and the changes made:



Flamers are a far cry from melee in terms of damage, but as I have found out, the RMs' AI seems to be quite good with them, mostly staying out of trouble and spraying on the damage.


We replace Diversive Tactics with Blessing of Saint Victorius as we can stack heat vulnerabilities with the heat tree.


The changed RM skill trees

As I have stated before, this build is quite involved as far as the gameplay loop is concerned. Make sure to always put patches of Blessing of Holy Fire where your RMs are so they don't die, periodically press your armor skill to refresh berserk tokens on RMs and Flagellation to trigger Fabricatus Scatter Fields, use your curio on tough enemies, don't forget about Bulwar of the Order to draw aggro and not die and always, always have your inoculator up. As for orders, simply use the charge when you want them to target a boss and defend when you know you're about to walk into a big fight

Prepare for your RMs to die. A lot. You will have to revive them a lot as they are quite squishy on higher difficulties

That being said, we only had about a week to test the Hierophant, and that is not nearly enough time to discover everything about the class. Now we must rely upon you, the community, to figure out the rest. If you have any suggestion on how I could improve this build, do let me know in the comments or on the official Inquisitor: Martyr discord server.

Hope this guide was useful to you, bye!