For the fellow build rats that can stomach a 26min video, I have made a explanation video where I go in-depth into the mechanics. This is not indented to be a build guide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9mhQW7sRRA

*Disclaimers*

Herald of Ash has to be the most buggy, unexplained skill in the game:

- Firstly, the skill states that it only scales with damage over time, but what about the 40% increased Herald of Ash Damage helmet enchant? Does this imply that the description is wrong and that it also scales with herald damage? Perhaps the enchant has been doing nothing this entire time.

- Even path of building has no idea how to calculate HoA's damage. It drastically overstates the damage as it also includes sources of elemental, fire, and genetic damage mods, despite not working with these as per the skill's description. (this is also very apparent in game, I have reported this to the PoB team.)

- The damage is very inconsistent; sometimes things die basically instantly, and sometimes it doesn't deal damage at all, despite having a clear indication of being in the the burning damage AoE. My best estimation is that sometimes the herald of ash explosion damage is not registered at all. I don't know if this is due to worms or the skill being buggy. Perhaps it has something to do with the DoT cap.

- As a result, although it is very easy to scale to DoT cap with this build, the single target damage can be all over the place and often requires very precise placement of worms, along with the luck that the server deceives to register the damage.

- I would not recommend this build as a smooth boss clearer for these reasons unfortunately.

- But the damage is really good when it works, and it's a consistently good mapper for a pretty cheap budget.

- Due to so many avenues to scale damage, we can focus more on solid defense and utility, such as elemental damage taken conversion and 90% max res.

- This is the main reason why I'm using Cheriton but you could play many different classes with this build.

- Gimmick build, play at your own risk

I have made a PoB here: https://pobb.in/sX1lD2ufzLxl

- I have made manual changes to the calculations to exclude sources of generic/elemental/fire damage as I am confident these do not work and that PoB is incorrect.

- I have unticked shock because I'm not 100% sure it's working properly with Berek's respite. I'm mostly not sure if the worms have the 50% shock applied from the on-kill spread before the discharge damage applies to the remaining worms.

- It doesn't matter anyway because we hit the DoT cap extremely easily. But again, like I said, this is only if the stars align, both the worms hit, and the server registers the damage.

Sources of inspiration:

- u/Sjatar: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/15u1gqw/paint_build_chieftain_with_a_red_dream_of_worms/

- u/BumbleBurryPie: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/10uz08l/i_resurrected_the_wormblaster_please_dont_nerf/