[3.21] Vatinas' Spiders + HoP Guardian - CI, 70K armour, 1400 ES on block, millions of DPS

A couple of items got nerfed this patch so less mana and energy shield than last season.

Also you get 10% of your reserved mana as energy shield because of Radiant Faith. When you are six linked you'll reserve more mana which will bring your shield up.

A couple of things you could look at:
1. Reroll the implict on your neck, missing out on 7 stats
2. Reroll or replace the neck, missing out on 14 stats
3. Could find a better version of that helm mana and shield gains there
4. Sharpen that weapon :P
5. Gloves could be a little better. (but that would be a last fix on the list)
6. Not having Dream fragment ring is loosing you a lot of mana and cold resist which you have to then make up on your belt loosing you more energy shield (looking at your profile)
7. Not having Righteous Decree is loosing you a bit of mana


All of these stat or mana gains your missing out on is loosing you energy shield as well.

"

snoeey wrote:

A couple of items got nerfed this patch so less mana and energy shield than last season.

Also you get 10% of your reserved mana as energy shield because of Radiant Faith. When you are six linked you'll reserve more mana which will bring your shield up.

A couple of things you could look at:
1. Reroll the implict on your neck, missing out on 7 stats
2. Reroll or replace the neck, missing out on 14 stats
3. Could find a better version of that helm mana and shield gains there
4. Sharpen that weapon :P
5. Gloves could be a little better. (but that would be a last fix on the list)
6. Not having Dream fragment ring is loosing you a lot of mana and cold resist which you have to then make up on your belt loosing you more energy shield (looking at your profile)
7. Not having Righteous Decree is loosing you a bit of mana


All of these stat or mana gains your missing out on is loosing you energy shield as well.

Thanks, but HoP better then HoA?

I did hoa last season. HoP feels like a bit more dmg, bosses seem easier.
A little bit more tankier, as there are sentials to soak up some hits.
I haven't done the maths on it so I can't tell you for sure, but so far im liking it more.

So just as a small experiment, I unallocated Spiritual Command and Ravenous Horde and a few other small passives, and am experimenting with running

1x Large jewel with Rotten Claws (20% impale chance) and Raze and Pillage (20% ignite chance, 20% damage against ignited enemies, 6% phys as extra fire) which link into 2x Pure Agony & Disciples jewels which is a total of 130% increased minion damage from small and notables.

I don't know if it's really a huge improvement, I have no real way of testing it or calculating it, but I wanted to try it out.

I'm also running Cult-Leader/Pure Agony leading into a Will Shaper with a bunch of attributes on it, which means a total of +3 Sentinels of Purity all told.

I had to drop some ES, down from about 7.1k to 6.8k but this build is tanky enough that it's not a huge issue. Also with Fertile Catalysts on my Circle of Guilt, I managed to squeeze in a Dread Banner which means +20% chance to impale for minions.

I'm hoping to snag a good deal on an Aegis Aurora with +4 or 5% Spell Block corrupt, but haven't found one with 20% quality on it yet. The biggest upgrade would be a +30 ES on Hit Watcher's Eye, but that's out of my price range right now.

So far, the build has crunched everything for the most part, but Spiders and Sentinels are relatively slow to kill which makes Blighted Maps kind of difficult. This build won't demolish Delirium fog in the way super DPS builds will, and it won't blast bosses very quickly, but it will do them reliably.

https://imgur.com/huahzAy

Managed to get a nice double corruption, what minor god do you recommend instead of shakari since his poison immunity is useless now?

How would Bloodlust support be on the spiders? (socketed in dagger that is)

Update on my progress with this build:

Did Sirus 2 times easily, killed Uber Atziri, farmed some Simulacrums and some t18 full Delirium maps

Reached lv 95 organically with ease, prolly could go to 96 or maybe even 97, but I think I'l stop here and make a new character, try something else!

This build is one of the tankiest out there, I'd say the only tankier Templar after the Harbinger nerf is prolly a CI Mana Guardian variant, similar to this build but with much more ES

Additionally, clear speed is good, the spiders are a joy to watch, all that without that much investment, a Heraldry build with worse defense (but much better boss dps) would cost triple the currency, same for a CI Mana Guardian

I'm contemplating if it's worth it to get a BiS Watcher's Eye (something like flat Armour and % ES) to take my defense to the next level, reaching 8k ES and just keep farming stuff, or just make a new char and spend the orbs there.

Thanks again to the original creator, you made a hell of a build!

Update on an experiment I did

I've been tinkering with a Voices jewel for the
whole day now and I am really liking what it adds to the build

It it kind of expensive but takes the defense to the next level, plus adds more damage

I cut all the minion damage, attack speed and movement speed nodes from the tree to add a Voices cluster, along with 3x Pure Agony/Cult-Leader Medium Clusters that also were connected to Will Shaper Small Clusters

At first I was afraid (I was petrified :P) that the loss of attack speed and movement speed would cost the map clear speed but that is not the case.

Without running the numbers on POB, I am seeing tier 16 mobs die faster and bosses melt faster to the Spiders. Plus, Sentinels of Purity are now 7 in the number.

ES went up about 1000, I was at 6600 and now sitting at a comfortable 7600

Armour went down a bit as I cut Combat STamina, but still is pretty high ( 46.7k)


I am using a 5 small passives Voices but a 7 one could also do the trick, and I think it is really worth it

Honestly, I tried playing a different class, tinkered with ideas, read guides but man, Guardian is so far ahead than any other Ascendancy, that it is not easy giving up on an unkillable character that also has good damage

what you think about this cluster jewel? im playing "classic" HOA version :)

would anyone have a pob for a HoP setup with this build?