[3.2] The Fortifier Aurabot - 14 auras, 3 V. Auras, Spider & Fortify // Optional setup w/ 2 Curses

- February 6, 2018: All auras are 21/20 now (except Clarity). Crafted myself a better +1 Victario's. Added a Necromancer version of the build.

- February 28, 2018: Updated the guide for the 3.2 patch.

- April 5, 2018: Added a section for the additional buff (Aspect of the Spider)

- April 9, 2018: Built the character is the current league, updated few stuff here and there, added a "Costs" section

- April 12, 2018: Updated the Screenshots section and updated the Passive Tree Progression

- April 21, 2018: Added a section for "Hybrid Setup (10 Auras & 2 Curses)", added some FAQs, updated PoB links

Auras:

- Level 27 auras: Grace, Determination, Hatred, Anger, Wrath
- Level 24 auras: Discipline, Haste, Vitality
- Level 23 auras: Purity of Fire, Purity of Lightning, Purity of Cold
- Level 21 aura: Purity of elements
- Level 15 aura: Envy (granted by the United in Dream weapon)
- Level "x" aura: Clarity (depending on your precise setup)
- Level 22 V. Auras: Vaal Haste, Vaal Discipline, Vaal Grace
The main setup (level 27 auras) and Envy are also supported by Generosity.

P.S. All auras have 20% quality, we also take every single aura-related passive in the tree (79% Increased Aura Effectivness from tree + 10-15% from Victario's Influence, for a total of 89-94%).
Level 27 auras are socketed into a Victario's Influence to achieve the increased effectivness from Generosity (138-143% Increased Aura Effectivness).

Other buffs:

- Fortify to allies (lasting 35-40s)
- Aspect of the Spider (more expensive setup)
- 3% increased Attack & Cast speed for each aura to allies, which is also scaled by aura effectivness (but rounded down per aura). With my precise setup I grant myself 35% Increased Attack/Cast speed and give my allies 84% Increased Attack/Cast speed.
- 1% Phisycal damage Reduction for each aura to allies, which is also scaled by aura effectivness (but rounded down per aura). With my precise setup I grant myself 7% Phisycal damage Reduction and give my allies 21% Phisycal damage Reduction.
- All allies share charges
- 10% incresed Movement Speed & 33% increased Damage to allies (Animate Guardian)

As I was already anticipating, this is a full support build. You are not going to deal any damage by yorself, you can tank a bit but you should not be in the middle of the fight. Your role is to buff other allies with auras and generic buffs (both offensive and defensive ones).
This is one of the most min/maxed aurabot build out there (if not the best one), but this is also one of the most expensive ones. When you enter a party you are gonna make everyone feel like they just transformed into a super Saiyan; when you leave the party, people are gonna feel empty. The original idea of the build is to create a pure aurabot, having all possible auras (with the most effectivness possible) to handle any possible party composition and necessities
With my setup you can use up to 14 auras, and 3 vaal auras, you grant Fortify to the whole party for about 35-40s everytime you proc it. You can also use Aspect of the Spider to debuff nearby enemies.
There's more to be discussed about in the following sections.

Pros:
- Strong support
- Offensive and defensive buffs
- Underused class (it's nice to use something less common)
- Granting Fortify to the whole party (duration: 35-40s)
- Smooth gameplay
- Ranged allies will love you
- One of the most min/maxed and strong support options

Cons:
- Expensive and specific setup (for best results)
- Need at least 6 ascendency points before actually feeling good (Ascendant's common problem)
- Hardcore viability is limited by your flask management

Pro or Con:
- Full Support playstyle, you are only going to play in parties

Keep in mind, as I already mentioned many times, that you are a Support. You are going to deal no damage whatsoever. Your only job is to buff allies, allow them to deal more damage, move faster and survive easily.
This is specifically an Aurabot, which means that most of your buffs comes from Auras. In my setup I do NOT use any curse and I do not provide any MF/culling ability, since there are specific support setups and builds for those purposes.

Damage:
This section is about the damage you provide to allies, not the damage you are going to deal by yourself (which is none).
I run up to 5 offensive auras, plus and additional vaal aura.
Wrath,Anger and Hatred are located in our body armour, which is a Victario's Influence; these gems only buffs our allies and, if support by a high level Empower and a +1 corruption, can reach level 27. For our allies we also offer Envy, which is granted by the unique sword United in Dream. We also use Haste, but we want the buff for ourselves too, since it increases our mobility. As an offensive vaal aura we are using Vaal Haste.
We are also using an Animate Guardian to provide additional offensive bonuses (I'm gonna talk about it later).
Our Ascendency choice (discussed in the appropriate section) also gives all allies a 3% increased attack/cast speed for each aura we are providing, which is scaled by aura modifiers. This buff, before 3.2, was only available with the pure Necromancer ascendency and was almost the only reason to use that class as a support. Now we have the exact same buff. Gamebreaking.

Defense:
For ourself, we mostly focus on Energy shield, using both Discipline and Vaal Discipline. We also have 84% max Fire and Cold resistance and 85% max Lightning resistance (our allies have 84% max elemental res). We are playing Low Life build and using Blood Magic keystone. This combination allows us to only focus on ES, reserving all our life to activate all the Auras we want to use.
We buff ourself and every ally with Fortify in combination with The Vigil, which last for about 35-40s, depending on the setup you are using.
We use a Shavronne's Revelation ring to regenerate a good amount of energy shield, paired with other sources of life regen (using Zealot's Oath) we can regenerated about 10% of our ES per second. In addition to this, with the new Ascendant-Guardian subclass, every 5 seconds we regenerate 20% of our max ES over 1 second.
We can achieve permanent Stun Immunity, Freeze Immunity, Desecrated Ground/Poison Immunity (while also having high Chaos res) and other immunities by proper flask management.
Our Ascendency also offers some additional damage mitigation to all allies, specifically 1% physical damage reduction for every aura. This node was available only on the pure Guardian ascendenecy before 3.2, but now we can use it too.
We give our allies (but not to ourself) Grace and Determination. We are also using Purity of Elements, in addition to all the specific Purities.

Utility & stuff:
For general utility we offer to our allies some mana regen with Clarity and life regen with Vitality.
One of the most expensive item, but very worth buying if available, is a Watcher's Eye jewel that grants permanent Phasing while affected by Haste; this buff is awesome, since it allows us to run through enemies and always keep the best possible pathing.
Our Guardian subclass also allows all allies to share charges with each other.
While our Necromancer subclass potentially allows our Offering skill to affect ourself (with halved effect); at this moment I haven't found a good way to introduce offerings in my setup, so this buff is wasted. If you find a good way to use them, then it's a pretty strong ability.
We also have the option to use Aspect of the Spider in the Bestiary League, talking more about it in later.
We have every single Aura related passive in the tree, allowing for super strong auras.

Animate Guardian:
We can use an Animate Guardian; there are many good items you can use on it, I'm gonna suggest you the best options in my opinion.
- Weapon: Dying Breath is the most common option, free damage. If you know that you are going to play a lot with allies using Righteous Fire or burning damage in general, you can instead use two Dyadus, for the crazy damage boost.
- Body armour: Ambu's Charge is the most common option, but I also think that the newly added Bloodbond is by far the best choice.
- Helmet: Leer Cast is another common option, free damage.
- Gloves: Southbound is a good option, giving your minion some extra life.
- Boots: Victario's Flight is the choice I prefer, giving some extra movement speed to all allies.

Kill all, we want those 2 passive points.

Ascendency:
So.. This is interesting topic. We are an Ascendant, which may seems strange to many of you.
With 3.2 the choice of sub-classes is pretty much forced: Necromancer and Guardian.
Last two points are not even that important, probably you are just going to take Path of the Witch to save few travel points.



Pantheon:
As major God I strongly suggest Soul of Lunaris and the addional buffs are also very good and worth unlocking, giving us a good amount of general survivability.
As minor God I strongly suggest Soul of Shakari, mostly for the additional buff, which makes us Immunie to Poison.

First of all I want to make clear that if you want to invest into the support playstyle from the get-go you need to level with a party, 'cause you won't be able to do anything by yourself.
The option I prefer is to level as a caster, this way you can farm your way up by yourself.



Here I leave the progression of the skill trees I suggest you to use, as you can see we level up using both our life and our ES pool to increase our survivability. The first few dozens of levels we don't focus too much on auras, since they are not really useful for us at that point, but we try to path near them to have easy access when we actually need them.
When we reach an higher level, we just respec all the not-needed life nodes and grab all the remaining auras and ES nodes.

Passive Tree Progression

For the last few points, take whatever you prefer; more ES nodes, more jewels sockets or other stuff you may need.

Feel free to adjust the tree according to your needs; for example you may need to grab the 30 dex node early, if you do not have enough of that attribute in your gear.
If you know you are gonna play always with the same person or with similar builds, you can spec into Elemental Equilibrium to give them the appropriate "free penetration"; in this case you need to find a source of the elemental damage you want to deal, applying it to your attacks.

PoB link (level 90 character): https://pastebin.com/35CQb7Np

This is a general idea about what you should look for:



I want to showcase my gear, which is pretty good but not perfect, to give you a rough idea of what you should look for; this is the gear I was using last league and is sitting in Standard right now, if you wanna see the current gear you can find at the end of this section.
You do not have to follow this choice obviously, feel free to adjust it.
I also suggest you to always use sites like poe.affix, or similar ones, to check all the possible mods, tiers and so on.

Gear:


Item choices were already discussed in the previous sub-section, your main goal is to get as much ES as possible, try also to get some chaos resistance if you manage to (since it's the only resistance which is not capped by our auras). You do not have to care much about elemental resistances, since we can cap those just with our auras.

Jewels:


We haven't discussed jewels yet, the first 4 are pretty much mandatory (two Energy from Within, The Vigil and Conqueror's Efficiency).
The two Energy from Within should be placed: the first one between Shadow and Witch (hybrid life/ES wheel) and the second one near the Templar's endurance/power charge (three life nodes with aura effectivness).
The other options are more of a personal choice; abyssal jewels with high flat life and ES roll (45+) are crazy for this build and way better then normal jewel with % increase of life and ES. You may also need some DEX over there.
A Watcher's Eye offer many good combination of mods, in particular having the "ES regen with Discipline" mod is really good. Other good options are "Phasing with Haste", "Recovery rate with Discipline", "- Mana Cost of skills with Clarity", "Chill Immunity with Purity of Ice", "Ignite Immunity with Purity of Fire", "Temporal Chains Immunity with Haste" and few others.
If you really want to, you could push your global Increased Aura Effectivness to 97% (up from 94%) using Conqueror's Potency, but I do not really consider it worth the sacrifice of a jewel slot.

Flasks:


The only mandatory flask is the Coruscating Elixir, since it's the only way we have to protect ourself from chaos damage, that otherwise would just bypass our ES and kill us in a blink. You can also use two of those if you wanna be safer (or the party you are playing with is really slow at clearing).
The other flasks should be just generic utility ones, it's mandatory to protect ourself from Bleeding and Curses (mostly Temporal Chains) and anti-Burning is also nice to have.

You can already see the gems I'm using in the Gear section, anyway here's a list of what you should look for. Generally speaking, try to have all auras 21/20, Empower level 4 and Enlighten at least level 2.
Quality on Fortify and Vigilant Strike is very important to increased the buff duration.

- Body armour (6 links only if using Empower): Wrath, Grace, Hatred, Anger, Determination, Empower (lvl 4)
- Helmet (4 links): Purity of Fire, Purity of Lightning, Purity of Ice, Enlighten (lvl 2)
- Boots/Gloves (4 links): Vaal Haste, Vaal Discipline, Vaal Grace, Increased Duration
- Boots/Gloves (4 links): Minion Life, Stone Golem, Animate Guardian, Purity of Elements
- Weapon (3 links): Clarity, Vigilant Strike, Generosity/Fortify
- Shield (3 sockets): Haste, Discipline, Vitality

As you can see, there's not much room to move things around. The only debatable option in my opinion is using Generosity or Fortify in the weapon setup. Fortify allows your buff to last about 40s, while Generosity improves the effect of Clarity and Envy (granted by the United in Dream unique sword). Without the Fortify gem, the buff last about 35s, which is still long enough.
Quality is important on all gems, the only exception is our Stone Golem.

Note1: when you are casting your auras, you should always leave Clarity as the last one. Otherwise you might not be able to activate them all, if you are reserving almost your whole life.

Note2: when you need to summon your Golem and/or the Guardian you need to de-activate at least an aura (or maybe clarity and another random one), use a life flask to recharge the life, cast the Golem/Guardian, use again the life flask and then activate the auras you lost.

This is the build option I prefer and the one I'm currently using, it's more expensive than the original version though.

In the Bestiary league you have the option to Beastcraft some unique mods onto items. There are many cool options, but I believe that the most interesting craft (for this specific build) is the Aspect of the Spider, which is a debuff that applies to all enemies around you like an aura, slowing them by 30% and increasing the damage they take up to 15% (stacking up over 3s). You can craft this new mod on any rare (yellow) piece of gear, as long as it has an open suffix.

Oviously we do not want to sacrifice any of our auras or buff we were already using, so we need to squeeze it into our setup somehow. You have few different ways to do it, but in my opinion the best option is the following:
- Use a level 4 Enlighten in the helm setup (which is supporting the 3 elemental purities)
- Use an Elreon Unset Ring (we need an additional socket somewhere)
- Swap the places of Purity of Elements and Clarity, therefore Clarity goes into the setup which is hosting the Golem/Guardian
- Place Vigilant Strike into the Unset Ring (it was located in the sword previously)
- In the sword now you have to obtain two blue linked sockets (Enlighten, Purity of Elements) and a separated red socket (Generosity). This Enlighten has to be at least level 4 too.

It's pretty important to have Purity of Elements not linked with Generosity, since we need it for ourselves to cap resistances.
This setup is oviously more expensive, mostly 'cause you have to use two level 4 Enlighten (with the normal setup you just needed a level 3 one), but it's also a more min/maxed option and more appreciated by your carries.

The new gems' setup becomes:

- Body armour (6 links only if using Empower): Wrath, Grace, Hatred, Anger, Determination, Empower (lvl 4)
- Helmet (4 links): Purity of Fire, Purity of Lightning, Purity of Ice, Enlighten (lvl 4)
- Boots/Gloves (4 links): Vaal Haste, Vaal Discipline, Vaal Grace, Increased Duration
- Boots/Gloves (4 links): Minion Life, Stone Golem, Animate Guardian, Clarity
- Weapon (2+1 links): Purity of Elements, Enlighten (lvl 4) // Generosity
- Shield (3 sockets): Haste, Discipline, Vitality
- Unset ring (1 socket): Vigilant Strike

Note: Enlighten doesn't affect skills that are not granted by a specific gem, which means that we cannot reduce the reservation cost of Envy with it. This is not correctly handled by PoB (or other "aura-calculator") at this moment, be careful with it.

PoB link with the Aspect of the Spider setup (level 94 character): https://pastebin.com/UDN9ECWC

As I already said few times, this is not a budget-frindly build, the investment is pretty hefty; since I just built again this character in the current league (Bestiary), I decided to add this section in which a give you a rough idea of the costs involved. Take all values with a grain of salt, since they may change depending on the ratios, moment of the league and so no. All prices are valued for an ex-chaos ratio of about 1:90, I'm considering the prices I managed to get, you may be more or less lucky than me.

Gear: total cost about 48ex
Victario's Influence (6link, +1gems): 25ex (was a good deal though, this specific item may have a very different price)
Alpha's Owl (enchant): 5ex
Gloves (+1gems): 20c (was a good deal, let's say 1ex in general)
Steppan Eard (+2vaal gems): 2c (let's say 20c)
Prism Guardian (+1gems): 2ex
Shavronne's Revelation: 2ex
Ring: 10c
Presence of Chayula: 6ex
United in Dream: 6ex
Belt: 1ex

Jewels: total cost about 8ex
Watcher's Eye (3 good mods): 6ex
The vigil: 1alch
Rare Jewels (x3): 1ex total
Conqueror's Efficiency: 1alch
Energy from Within (x2): 70c total

Gems: total cost about 32ex
Enlighten (2xlvl4): 8ex
Empower (lvl4): 3.5ex
Enlighten (lvl3): 20c
Hatred (21/20): 1.5ex
Wrath (21/20): 1.5ex
Anger (21/20): 2ex
Grace (21/20): 1.5ex
Determination (21/20): 2ex
Discipline (21/20): 1.5ex
Vitality (21/20): 1.5ex
Purity of Fire (21/20): 1.5ex
Purity of lighning (21/20): 2ex
Purity of Ice (21/20): 2ex
Purity of Elements (21/20): 1.5ex
Clarity (1/20): 2c
Vaal Grace (20/20): 15c (I bought a lower level gem with 20%)
Vaal Haste (20/20): 15c (I bought a lower level gem with 20%)
Vaal Discipline (20/20): 5c

The total cost is almost 90ex, but I got a really good deal with the Victario's; a more realistic price could be more towards the 100ex mark. To this amount you should also some the cost of a bunch of vaals and minor currency to change colours/sockets/links of the corrupted items (with Vorici lvl8).
I've not included the cost of few random gems which are less important (Increased Duration, Generosity, minion gems, etc) and the few chaos worth of gear of the Animated Guardian.

Note: keep in mind that many items were crafted and some gems were levelled up and vaaled by myself, reducing the actual overall costs. The prices I set above are considering the istance in which you wanna buy all those items.

Recently I've discussed a bit with other players about this topic (auras and curses).
Long story short, curses are strong (mostly defensive curses) and can add an extra layer of defense for the party; they are 100% reliant on your positioning though, so you need to stand really close to the carry and in the middle of the action (while, with a pure aurabot, you can stand more than a screen behind your carry, without any major drawback).
Those were all things I was aware of, but the original idea of the build was to create a pure aurabot, having all possible auras (with the most effectivness possible) to handle any possible party composition and necessities.
On the other side, 95% of the time you are gonna play with a carry (either a KB wander or a TS Windripper) which doesn't really gain much benefit from some of your auras (e.g. Determination, Hatred, Vitality and Clarity); this different setup is therefore focused around providing more meaningful buffs for those istances.

This setup is also way less expensive than the pure-aurabot version, since you don't need a 6-linked Victario's (you actually DO NOT WANT it). The tree is almost the same, except for the fact that now we have to take Whispers of Doom for the additional curse; the rest of the gear is pretty much the same, you just move around the gems to allow everything to fit in the build.
Let's talk about the gems' setup then:

- Body armour (3+3 links): Wrath, Anger, Empower (lvl 4) // Blasphemy, Temporal Chains, Enhance (lvl 4)
- Helmet (4 links): Purity of Fire, Purity of Lightning, Purity of Ice, Enlighten (lvl 4)
- Boots/Gloves (4 links): Vaal Haste, Vaal Discipline, Vaal Grace, Increased Duration
- Boots/Gloves (4 links): Blasphemy, Enfeeble, Purity of Elements, Enlighten (lvl 4)
- Weapon (3 links): Minion Life, Stone Golem, Animate Guardian
- Shield (3 sockets): Haste, Discipline, Grace
- Unset Ring (1 socket): Vigilant Strike

As you can see we link Temporal Chains with Enhance, achieving a much stronger slow, and I consider the must-have curse; the other Blasphemy setup (in which I'm using Enfeeble) can host whatever curse you prefer, play around with them. I suggest you to look for 20/23 gems for the curses and Blasphemy (gems level 20 with 23% quality).
You can also see that now we are affected by Grace too (while, with the original setup, it was support by Generosity), so we can use a Watcher's Eye that grants up to 15% increased movement speed while affected by Grace.

The "new" tree is looks something like this: 123 points (level 95) with additional curse

As usual, gonna leave also a PoB link (level 95 character): https://pastebin.com/wUEMBEH4

Defence in H/O:

I do not really see any reason to post videos for this kind of build, since I literally just walk and spam Enduring Cry the whole map. It would just showcase the carry/party I'm supporting in that specific istance.
If you want to see some specific video, I'll try to upload it.

Q: Which version of the build should I play?
A: The base version is the easier to start with, it's "cheap" and works well in any party composition and for any challange. The "Aspect of the Spider" setup is the most expensive option, but also the one I prefer as a pure aurabot and for speed-farming maps. The Hybrid setup (with curses) is more effective if you always play with specific carries (KB Wanders and TS Windrippers) and offers a more defensive approach, while also being pretty cheap.

Q: You're not using any movement skill, how are you keeping up with carries?
A: Full buffed I'm at about 150% movement speed, which is not mind blowing, but is enough to keep up. Fast builds usually have about 200-250% speed, which means that they are gonna stay a little ahead, but as soon as they attack something you close the gap. Moreover shield charge is really good only on linear maps, while most of the maps that commonly get run right now are a pain for charging around.

Q: Can I enhance my speed any further?
A: You can use Phase Run if you want to and if you find a socket for it; if you are using the "base" version of the build you can just use an Unset ringm if you are using any of the two other setups (Spider or the Hybrid one) you need to sacrifice something (either V. Discipline or the Shavronne's Reveletaion and use two Unset rings). In any case you need to have at least -14 Mana cost of skill (one Elreon ring and the Watcher's Eye for example) to use the lvl20 gem. You can also use a Bisco's Leash to gain the Rampage bonus, which gives additional Movement Speed.

Q: I don't like relying on a flask for surviving (or I wanna play HC), what should I do?
A: If you don't wanna rely on a flask, you are forced to use a Shavronne's Wrapping. Sacrificing the Victario's you are gonna lose a lot of potential for your auras, but it's a tradeoff you can consider. You won't be able to run the whole setup without the Victario's and you won't have auras up to level 27, but you are definitely a really strong support anyway.

Q: Why Blood Magic? I don't get it.
A: The important part is not just BM itself, is that after BM you can take Mortal Conviction, which offers 50% less mana reservation, essentially doubling your "reserving capability". If you go with life+mana, you need to use the BM gem to reserve stuff in your life, but the gem has a massive mana multiplier (which multiplies also the reservation cost). This means that you will never be able to use all those auras without going BM.

Q: After using the Elixir I find myself with 1hp so I can't use Vigilant Strike anymore; what's wrong?
A: The problem is that you are probably not using an Elreon ring with -X mana cost of skills (or a Watcher's Eye like the one I'm using). Doing so you will have a Vigilant Strike that costs no mana at all.

Q: Since we have problems dealing with chaos damage, why are we not using Chaos Innoculation?
A: If you use CI it forces your max life to 1, which means you cannot reserve any life (this means you can't even use Prism Guardian). Therefore you can just use your mana pool to activate auras. I haven't really tested it, but you can probably use 4-6 auras if you have just your mana pool to reserve.

Q: Which items should have the priority?
A: Try to get Prism Guardian, Alpha's Howl, Eye of Chayula, Steppen Eard and the Victario's Influence; those should be your priorities in my opinion. Then you start looking towards a Presence of Chayula, an Alpha's Owl with the enchant, +1 Prism Guardian and so on.