



**What's New** 3.0



On the upside, we have 10k more armour, 2k MORE energy shield (YEP, we are at 12k ES now), better mobility with quicksilver and shield charge, FORTIFY!, +1 max fire/cold res, and +2 max lightning res! Also, if you really want to quad curse you can drop a ring for doedre's damning, although it will cost you 60 base es from your aura, 600 final ES of your character, and some physical mitigation/regen from dropping clarity aura.



Path of Building Pastebin



What we do instead of getting all our flat mana on the tree is get lots of healthy minds on the tree and get as much flat mana on gear as we can. This can be a bit more expensive as we want t1 mana and t1 int on every rare that's possible. Since we can't afford to go south on the tree for that last aura cluster, we also need to run a



If you don't use PoB you probably should, but you can check out the I unfortunately don't have the time to completely update this guide for 3.0, but I did come up with a way for it to work and work well it does. On the downside, it's a little more expensive as we need a specific lab helm enchant (or rather, one of a group of options), a level 3 enlighten, and the rares are a little tricker to get best in slot. Also we only tri-curse instead of quad, and our mana aura is still only 1300 instead of 1700.On the upside, we have 10k more armour, 2k MORE energy shield (YEP, we are at 12k ES now), better mobility with quicksilver and shield charge, FORTIFY!, +1 max fire/cold res, and +2 max lightning res! Also, if you really want to quad curse you can drop a ring for doedre's damning, although it will cost you 60 base es from your aura, 600 final ES of your character, and some physical mitigation/regen from dropping clarity aura.What we do instead of getting all our flat mana on the tree is get lots of healthy minds on the tree and get as much flat mana on gear as we can. This can be a bit more expensive as we want t1 mana and t1 int on every rare that's possible. Since we can't afford to go south on the tree for that last aura cluster, we also need to run a Conqueror's Efficiency jewel and a lab helm enchant for reduced mana reservation. It can be any of: vitality, discipline, purity of lightning, purity of fire, or purity of ice. Merciless version is actually preferred since it will leave us with more mana reserved than if we went with uber lab version.If you don't use PoB you probably should, but you can check out the Tree and Aura Calc if you'd like, although some things might not make total sense without seeing the items/skill slots. When I get a good block of time I'll re-write the guide (a lot has to change), but for now if you want the full picture you'll need to use PoB. 2.6



Even better, Zealot's Oath is now RIGHT on our path, so we get it for ONE POINT! This means we get permanent ES regen, which is incredibly handy for long boss fights and all sorts of nasty map mods, notably desecrated ground. We ALSO now have an additional flask slot since we don't have to run Sorrow of the Divine, so we can drop in



Lastly, some nice buffs to There were a LOT of little changes that add up to an overall pretty huge buff for this build. The changes to MoM with the mana behind it can be easily taken by repathing slightly, and the end result is 85 additional base mana, 18% additional increased mana, and we trade 40 str for 40 int, which is 8% additional increased ES. All we lose is 16% increased armor, sick trade!Even better, Zealot's Oath is now RIGHT on our path, so we get it for ONE POINT! This means we get permanent ES regen, which is incredibly handy for long boss fights and all sorts of nasty map mods, notably desecrated ground. We ALSO now have an additional flask slot since we don't have to run Sorrow of the Divine, so we can drop in Kiara's Determination for stun immunity and some tasty move/attack speed to keep up with path of clear speed.Lastly, some nice buffs to Bated Breath make it very cheap competition to a good crystal belt, and ridiculous buffs to Atziri's Foible (AND THEN THEY DOUBLED IT) make it arguably best in slot if you don't care about stuns or are handling them some other way (*cough* WTB 3.0 *cough*)

Videos Spoiler Coming Soon!

Party Difference Spoiler

Offense Before I step in range:

After I step in range:

I'm granting over 70% more damage and 25% more cast speed! I'm granting over 70% more damage and 25% more cast speed! Defense Before I step in range:

After I step in range:

I'm granting 8000 energy shield, 8000 evasion, 3000 armor, 8% all max res, and 29% move speed! I'm granting 8000 energy shield, 8000 evasion, 3000 armor, 8% all max res, and 29% move speed! I got some screenshots of my friend's blade vortex character to show the differences my build makes

Introduction Hey guys! I spent a long time optimizing this crazy build so I figured I should finally share back with the community that has given me so much! This build utilizes everything the guardian has to offer to grant massive party defense for everyone, including near invincibility for builds that take full advantage of it. The biggest difference between this build and other guardian aurabots is that this build grants the entire party an ADDITIONAL 1.8k BASE ENERGY SHIELD on top of discipline, and it does this by achieving a 12k+ mana pool. This build is an all around great support build, but truly it is CI/Low-Life's best friend, all while being quite tanky.



The idea of this build was to enable extremely difficult content, so while there are definitely some offensive buffs in here, I have focused on defenses to allow the toughest content in the game to be basically facerolled by your party while still contributing enough clear speed to not slow a party down by you being in it instead of another DPS build. If you want a support build that focuses on achieving the fastest possible clear speed, I highly recommend you check out a necromancer support build.



Pros

Makes CI/LL builds invulnerable

Makes everyone else much tankier to all damage except chaos

Works fairly well on a budget

Has a decent gear cap if you're wealthy

Very tanky and mobile for a guardian support

Stun Immune!

Cons

Requires high level to be effective

Transitioning to final build can be tough without currency

Deal no endgame damage, which some people find boring

Not as much curse effect as pure aurabots, not as much clear speed as necrobots

Your CI/LL friends will hate you if you ever stop playing this build

How I arrived at this build



The I decided to strike out and try a defensive support build in breach league as my friends and I had a few new players playing, and a fairly big overall party size (usually it was just 2-3 of us), making support seem helpful and quite efficient. I set out to the forums, and to my surprise, most builds went blood magic! It made sense when I thought about it, as you don't have to divide your reservation between two pools, but it completely ignored the sick base energy shield you can give from reserving mana as a guardian, which just seems like a huge waste given how insane ES is in the current meta. My friend pointed me to Ruz's Mana Guardian , a build that just massively focused on mana using Healthy Mind jewels, and I was intrigued. The core concepts were sound, but the guide was a bit old, not very detailed, and there were still some efficiencies to be exploited. On top of that, it seemed to sacrifice a good bit for that 10k mana pool: only ran 7 auras, couldn't wear alpha's howl, so it only gave +6 to max res instead of +8, and it was super vulnerable to stun. It relied very strongly on flat mana on every slot it could manage, so it was painful to swap in any uniques to shore up some of these shortcomings. I wondered if it was possible to make a hybrid that still excelled at support but put a little effort into mana to at least utilize that guardian feature.The Grand Spectrum jewel came out after that guide was initially released, and provided an alternate way to get a high base mana pool, and the creator of that guide even made a version based on that (bottom comment of that guide's page). It did indeed provide an even higher mana pool, giving absurd numbers, but it had a lot of drawbacks. With no good sources of %mana, Pledge of Hands kind of had to be run, along with several other annoying uniques, which again sacrificed on the other support aspects. I was beginning to think it wasn't possible, but then my friend cyyyylon joined in and was convinced it was. He made a tree that, after doing the math, made a believer out of me. Yes, you get increasing returns for grand spectrum jewels, but despite that, at a certain point you were so desperate for %mana that it was still better to round out using healthy mind jewels. Thus, this build was born: all aura nodes, 13 jewels, 11 of them grand spectrum, but 2 of them that overlap the scion life wheel as healthy mind jewels. The build isn't starved for flat mana or %mana on gear, so you're free to use things like prism guardian and alpha's, and even chayula for stun immunity. The only downside being the tree doesn't have room for things like curse effect and skill duration, and you can't get the +1 curse, so you need 3 bonus curses from gear.

Summary There are a lot of ways to tweak this build and it is pretty flexible, but I will list what I'm currently finding the most effective setup:



Party Buffs:

1600 base armor, 1800 base ES (before auras!)

10 auras at +64% effect (+8 Max Res from Purities)

2 vaal auras at +64% effect

3 curses at +24% Quality

Open curse slot for party to apply 4th curse

10% physical damage reduction, 2% life regen

+15% attack/cast/movespeed

Party-wide conduit

Permanent Rallying Cry

Just You:

10k energy shield

850 es/s regeneration

83 all res (89 with flasks)

8.5k armor (32k with flasks)

9k evasion (15k with flasks)

Stun immune

Whirling Blades for mobility



My Aura Setup



[spoiler="My Gear [Updated 1/14]"]You by NO means need this level of gear, this is just to provide a quick overview or reference of what I consider a near optimal setup: I could really use a reduced flask charges used mod (some more chaos res and a bit of armor wouldn't hurt), so I'm looking for a belt upgrade, but 50+ int crystal belts don't come cheap, and what I'm looking for is specific enough that it's hard to find =P.[/spoiler]

Defenses[hr][spoiler]

Unbuffed, just standing in hideout:



[hr]

All flasks popped:



[hr]

It's true we have no leech, but 1k es/s regen is nothing to scoff at. Combined with our absolutely insane mitigation to all kinds of damage and the fact we're stun immune with whirling blades so we can relocate instantly...we're pretty frickin' hard to kill.



Breaches can definitely be scary as they sometimes literally cover everything with death so there is no safe positioning (not to mention the lag), but I have found that you take damage slowly enough you almost always have time to get out if it comes to that (I try to avoid that as that can sometimes get your party members killed, but if you die, that's what would happen anyway!). The scariest thing for this build is probably chaos damage as it is hard to squeeze chaos res into your gear (I'm still working on it), but your ES pool is big enough that you will rarely be put in a situation where you don't have time to react.[/spoiler]

Skill Tree[hr][spoiler]The base concept here is to get all the aura nodes, then get as many jewel sockets as we can for Grand Spectrum jewels, with the notable exception of the two scion jewels (below and to the left of scion start) that can overlap the scion life wheel with Healthy Mind jewels (Except the Constitution notable is not within reach, which is why it is omitted). This is because despite the exponential scaling on GS jewels, there is still a point where %mana gives is more total mana, plus it means we aren't desperate for flat mana or %mana on gear to the point where we compromise defenses or supporting ability. See my character Get_Disciplined for an example of the jewel socketing.



Level 86 Tree



Level 98 Tree



This tree gets all the efficient jewel and mana nodes, but there is still some room for flexibility here. There are some really juicy curse nodes as Hex Master and Skittering Runes are only 3 points a piece, and the skill duration nodes Potency of Will and Exceptional Performance are only 3/4 points respectively. On top of that, there are even a few aura effect nodes I had to skip. The main problem I have with giving up some of the %mana nodes for things like curse effect or aura effect is that mana is not just a crazy ES aura for your party, but is also YOUR primary means of defense. We can't fit that much %ES into the build, so we just squeeze as much as we can in on gear and rely on a huge base pool.



In the case of curses, trash isn't always cursed given your parties clear speed, and bosses have huge multiplicative resistances to curses now. For skill duration, I already have 74% duration from just the Increased Duration gem, so another 45% is good, but it would only take our vaal skills from 6.96s to 8.76s. We're getting about 11.5% mana per point after level 90, so 3 points would be 34.5% mana, which translates into nearly 1k final mana, which is 150 base ES, so 450 ES for us, even more for the rest of the party. I solidly choose the ES in that scenario, but the option is definitely open if you want to shoot for higher vaal haste uptime or something like that.



I suggest you get all the aura nodes first as those make the build function. Then acquire a few grand spectrum jewels, then the two healthy mind jewels, then finish off the grand spectrum jewels for those juicy exponential returns. Then start picking up the %mana nodes (note that Dreamer is far better than other %mana nodes, and Battle Rouse is noteworthy for being very handy on no regen maps).



Level 70 Tree (All aura nodes, both healthy minds, 6 grand spectrums)



[spoiler="Ascendancies"]Radiant Faith

Makes the class what it is. Insane base ES and solid armor boost. Absolutely required.

Unwavering Faith

Fantastic physical mitigation that scales well with high armor and evasion, and useful life regen (although many CI and/or vaal pact users will not benefit from the regen).

Prayer of Glory

Using the warcy still requires you to stop for a split second and can interrupt other slow animations if you spam it too quickly, but I put it on a macro and got used to it pretty quickly without too much trouble. This means you can basically make it permanent, and it is essentially a second haste aura that doesn't benefit from aura effect. The only downside is that all warcries taunt, and while you are quite tanky, you will generally make your allies tankier than you, plus they have things like leech for sustainability. When you're pushing clear speed, this is an amazing tool, but if it's really difficult content, consider temporarily not using it.

Harmony of Purpose

The usefulness of this entirely depends on your party, but most of the time it's pretty baller. Warlord's Mark is a really commonly used curse, and this keystone with that curse means everyone in your party has max endurance charges ALL the time, including you! Plus people will randomly give out frenzy and power charges which adds up to really handy clear speed when you get a big group together. If people don't want warlord's but you still want to give out endurance charges, consider using Enduring Cry for your warcy.

Time of Need

The reduced curse effect is pretty handy for things like vulnerability and temp chains maps, but all in all curses don't affect us that much, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. The life regen is solid, but I don't find I die very often to slow sustained damage, it's usually sudden spikes, in which case the odds of this being up when we need it are low. That said, if you really want to focus on defenses or are playing hardcore, this can definitely come in handy for sustained fights where there is a lot of moderate unavoidable damage.

Bastion of Hope

We don't have any other boosts to block in the build, so the block boost is not very significant damage reduction. The big occasional boost does pretty much cap us, but with no spell block in the build and high evasion, it's still not guaranteed to get a block, which lowers the usefulness of the stun avoidance portion. Of course, you should probably have another form of stun immunity anyway,

so overall I have a hard time seeing this outweigh the other options.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Bandits"]

In normal, the 60 base mana is useful early on before you've finished slotting all your grand spectrum jewels, but by the time you hit level 86 it's only 160 final mana, and in the final level 96 tree it only scales up to around 240 final mana, even less if you skip out on some of the %mana nodes. In contrast, the WORST return we get on a skill point is 10% mana, which represents 290, and that's only at level 97+, before that it's even better. For cruel and merciless, we don't really need damage or charges, so mess dem bandits up![/spoiler][/spoiler]

Gear[hr][spoiler]It's worth noting a few general requirements before we dive into the specifics of each slot. You normally need 169 resistances in your hideout to be overcapped for red map elemental weakness mod, but we have +8 max res, so we need 177. With just rings/shield/purities I have 137/155/155 resistance to fire/cold/light respectively. That means you only need 22 cold res roll on alpha's to cap cold, any lightning roll on shav's will cap lightning, so you just need 40 fire res from your rare pieces of gear (I have level 23 purities, so bump those rolls up a few points until then, and you will need a lightning roll somewhere until you get shav's). The other requirement is dex, which with a perfectly rolled prism guardian sits at 124. You'll need 155 dex to use level 20 grace/haste/vaal haste, so you need 31 dex on your rare pieces if you aren't using Atziri's Foible, which is annoyingly 1 over the highest master craft roll.



TL;DR; You NEED 40 fire res from your rares, and 31 dex if you aren't using Atziri's Foible.



[spoiler="Weapons"] There really is no substitute for these items. Prism Guardian represents 2 free 50% reservation auras with boosted level, since it essentially lets you run 3 auras for the price of one on blood magic. Splurge for a good dex roll if you want an easier dex roll on one of your rares. Yes it is a fair bit of flat ES we lose from not having a good ES shield, but we can spare some of that as it is, especially for a build-enabling unique.



Ephemeral Edge gives us 50% increased ES, which is COMPLETELY INSANE. We struggle to get %ES from the tree because we are so point starved going grand spectrum at all, but we have a massive base ES pool due to radiant faith. Splurge for the perfect 50% roll as it hardly costs much anyway, and those points make a big difference.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Helm"] This allows us to get our purity auras to level 23, which ends up granting an additional +2 to max resistances! On top of that it grants an additional 1-2 auras, and in general makes my whole reservation configuration work, as I am just barely able to fit anger on blood magic with the extra 8% reservation reduction from this helm. On top of that, a nifty cold res roll and immunity to freezing? Yes it hurts again to loose a big chunk of flat ES, but we do have a huge amount from mana, and the evasion isn't too bad.



There aren't many lab enchants that are super strong, since even if we reduce the reservation of one aura, there really aren't any gems I'd want to drop to add another aura. I'd go with curse effectiveness of your preferred curse. Because this build has armor AND evasion, enfeeble is pretty insane, but temporal chains is probably just as good.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Rings"] We can't get an additional curse from the tree, so we need 3 bonus curses from gear. By far the ring slot is the easiest to put that in. Sure we lose a little bit of flat ES, and a good int roll is a nice boost to %ES, but that's less than we sacrifice on other slots, and the little bit of mana/int/res aren't even wasted.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Chest"] This is a decent enough starting point, and is one of the reasons why this build is more budget friendly than other low-life guardian supports. Yes 400 ES from not running shav's is a good chunk to lose, but we're getting over 2k from auras, so we can definitely make do. I ran around mid-tier maps with this for a good while at 6k ES without too much issue.



There are a few other drawbacks however, as you will need a lightning res roll somewhere, and it being pure armor also makes it hard to color. Your curse on hit setup will be almost entirely blue/green sockets, so even if you got one of these 5-linked, you wouldn't be able to use it to curse without a crazy investment of chromatics. This means you will be stuck dual cursing from gloves or boots until you can upgrade to shav's. All is not lost however, because as I'll discuss in the curses section, you can get 3 curse slots and effectively tri-curse even when applying 2 yourself. Or if a party member goes dual curse, you can get all 4 of your curse slots and apply 2 while they apply the other 2 for the full quad.[hr] When you can afford it, a 5-linked shav's is a beautiful upgrade. It will be about 1200 additional final ES, allow your full tri/quad curse, and takes care of that pesky lightning res. The faster ES recharge doesn't hurt.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Amulet"] The flat mana is good while you're building up your grand spectrum jewels, the %mana is always good, and the attribute requirements removes the need for that pesky dex roll on gear. Definitely use this once you transition into the support build from leveling, as it's basically free without a corruption on it. Splurge for perfect %mana, as it barely adds at all and those points make a big difference for a while. Get this corrupted with +1 curse on it when you can afford it to enable your full quad curse.[hr]If you manage to find it and can afford it, a GG amulet corrupted for +1 curse is probably best in slot (ok maybe +1 curse Presence of Chayula would be better, but let's be reasonable here). You can get 22% energy shield, plus up to like 85 int on an amulet, which is another 17% on top of that. Considering the the huge base ES pool we have, that is a LOT of final ES to pass up! Flat mana, flat ES, and chaos res are also useful rolls, but it is hard to find good rares corrupted for +1 curse, so unless you want to drop to tri-curse, expect to stick with a foible realistically[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Boots"] Great starter boots that have so many good things on them! Decent movespeed, decent ES, helpful all res, solid flat mana roll and a bit of spell block to top it off! Only goes for a few chaos just a few days into the league.[hr] My personal choice is a really solid pair of rares because it can get a lot of little things that add up in the end. You can get really good ES (I have a flat mana roll so mine are a tad low, either option is good really), a full 30% movespeed (with whirling blades it's ok to sacrifice some movespeed, I just really like having it in a pinch), a great int roll and 2 very useful resistances. 50 int is 10% ES, which translates to about 280 final ES. We definitely need that 40 fire res somewhere on our gear, and of course not being CI chaos damage stings a bit so it's nice to get some defense.



For lab enchantments, we don't kill or do damage or any of that nonsense, so there's a small pool of useful ones. If you want to Elemental Equilibrium, you probably want the lightning damage enchant (I'll talk about that more later). If you don't want to EE, or you are using a different element, the regen is pretty sick considering it's our primary sustainability.



A note about Skyforth here: even if I was filthy rich I don't think I would use them. The stun immunity is handy, the flat mana is great, and we do get full movespeed. Even the power charge on crit isn't completely useless as with the Harmony of Purpose ascendancy we can give our party members power charges with it now and again. Unfortunately, the reduced mana reservation is hard to use because we're actually quite pressed for gems, so I'm not sure what I'd even give up to use another aura, and it would have to be another damage aura to be useful as I'm running all the other useful auras really. I would then have to rework my reservations, and the other damage aura would have to go on generosity also if I wanted to keep using Elemental Equilibrium, but my setup has generosity also tied to blood magic. It would be a hassle, and worse still, the no life regen actually removes our only active sustainability, and 1k energy shield per second is really strong with our mitigation. That said, there is room for optimization there if you don't mind the drawbacks, so feel free to experiment![/spoiler]

[spoiler="Belt"] Fantastic and cheap league starting belt that is competitive with anything else out there. A fat stack of %ES along with a sprinkle of int (more %ES) and flat ES, and we have no other sources of recharge rate, so that 50% will make a noticeable difference![hr]A dream belt is probably an essence crafted crystal belt (int doesn't spawn on belts normally, so you need an Essence of Spite to do it). A 50 int roll is 10% ES, plus crystal belts have such a good implicit flat ES, and can roll more as a prefix too! Other useful mods would be armor, chaos res, and reduced flask charges used, which when combined with reduced charges used on the flasks themselves, could allow for 3 uses per flask during boss fights! Also if you need your fire res somewhere, this spot can work. You would honestly have to have a lot of those mentioned things to be worth upgrading though, so expect to wait a bit for it.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Gloves"] Not much you can do here aside from rares. This is the only spot you can get dex, which you need unless you're using something like Atziri's Foible. Aside from that, you really just want the highest ES you can get on them, along with a good int roll for that 10% ES and maybe some chaos/fire res. Also worth noting that if you choose to use an Animate Guardian, Haku can master craft "Equipped Animated Guardian drops item on death" as a prefix.



For lab enchants, the only one that I think is relevant at all is Commandment of Spite when Hit, as it leaves chilled ground, which can be quite handy even though the ground lasts 2s and the cooldown for the skill is 5s.[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Flasks"] There's a pretty straightforward set of 4 flasks that I feel are optimal. We have really solid armor scaling, but very little base armor, so a good granite flask of iron skin takes us from 8.5k to 32k armor! Can't beat that kind of physical mitigation in a flask slot. Then I highly suggest running triple ele flasks for maximum damage mitigation. For suffixes on those we need one to be bleed immunity, highly advise one to be shock immunity, and considering we run grace but have poor evasion scaling, %evasion is really nice additional phys mitigation stacking. Curse immunity wouldn't be a bad suffix to have, but again, curses aren't really the end of the world for us, so I prioritized damage mitigation. For the last flask, I highly recommend kiara's as it's the easiest way to handle stuns, allowing us to use a good +1 curse atziri's foible and not have to find a +1 curse chayula. Onslaught is also handy for keeping up with parties, as every bit off attack speed helps when we have so little. If you don't care about stuns or are going to handle them another way, you could go with a quicksilver to keep up, or basalt for even more physical damage reduction, or maybe something interesting like Doedre's Elixir to give your party charges and handle no regen maps better.



For prefixes, I would recommend good charge recovery rolls until you get reduced flask charges used roll on a belt. Because of the increasing returns of that mod, it then becomes super strong to get reduced charges used on your flasks, and can even up all your flasks to be 3 uses before needing charges, which really comes in handy for some boss fights that drag on.[/spoiler][/spoiler] Hey guys! I spent a long time optimizing this crazy build so I figured I should finally share back with the community that has given me so much! This build utilizes everything the guardian has to offer to grant massive party defense for everyone, including near invincibility for builds that take full advantage of it. The biggest difference between this build and other guardian aurabots is that this build grants the entire party an ADDITIONAL 1.8k BASE ENERGY SHIELD on top of discipline, and it does this by achieving a 12k+ mana pool. This build is an all around great support build, but truly it is CI/Low-Life's best friend, all while being quite tanky.The idea of this build was to enable extremely difficult content, so while there are definitely some offensive buffs in here, I have focused on defenses to allow the toughest content in the game to be basically facerolled by your party while still contributing enough clear speed to not slow a party down by you being in it instead of another DPS build. If you want a support build that focuses on achieving the fastest possible clear speed, I highly recommend you check out a necromancer support build.There are a lot of ways to tweak this build and it is pretty flexible, but I will list what I'm currently finding the most effective setup:Party Buffs:Just You: [3.3] FACETANK THE WORLD: Instant Leech Immortal Double Strike: poeurl.com/b0JX

[2.6] THE DISCIPLINER: Insane Defenses Support Mana Guardian: poeurl.com/ZGS Last edited by PsychicMuffin on Aug 12, 2017, 3:00:49 PM Last bumped on Jul 15, 2018, 8:34:54 AM