[3.5] The Arachnophobic Auramaster of Death. All Content with Ease, Speed and Gore on a 1ex Budget

As mentioned this build has some required items for the mechanics to work. This will be the main aspect of this guide and what I wanted to share with this community. Notable options are covered but keep in mind that your personal goals, preferences and play-style should shape this build to make it your very own, and hopefully satisfying, experience.

This build makes use of the Death Aura from Death’s Oath to push the already fine map-clear of Raise Spiders from Arakaali's Fang even further. Additionally Death Aura will provide a unique mechanic leading to a constant (re)creation of minions whenever one or more of them die. In terms of survivability this build relies on The Devouring Diadem to replenish Life, Energy-Shield and Mana while also granting an easy access to at least 4 Auras of your choice.

So, how does it work? Well, even though the tooltip of Death-Aura states damage per second it is more like a constant stream enabling you to last-hit enemies at a very high rate. This will trigger Arakaali's Fang and create new minions whenever possible. Even if all your minions die at once it will be very likely that they had damaged an enemy enough to die from your Aura within the next few seconds. And due to the use of Desecrate in combination with Spell Cascade one dying enemy will be enough to spawn the maximum amount of spiders possible. In summary, as long as something dies you won't run out of minions. This mechanic makes using The Writhing Jar (almost) obsolete.

The only exception has to be, of course, a Boss-Fight. Due to the fact that this build invests in practically no Skill-Effect-Duration aside from Necromancer and Entropy your spiders will be on a rather short ~40sec duration. Even if unnoticeable while mapping this could be considered a problem when fighting bosses. But thanks to Pathfinder you won’t have to worry about running out flasks-charges ever. Also, thanks to the mechanic, spawning the maximum amount of minions with your flask will be practically guaranteed. Simply Desecrate > Pop your flask > Voila! There seems to be a minor issue with Line of Sight on Death Aura but in 8 out of 10 tries it should work perfectly. There is also the possibility that Feast of Flesh will occur in the split second between using Desecrate and popping your Jar destroying 10 of your 15 created bodies in the process. This might be annoying but in my opinion it is very rare and very manageable.

Just to be clear. The overall damage is well enough to kill even bosses in very short timeframes. So if you don’t do Uber-Elder and alike on a regular basis feel free to drop Pathfinder for something else like Guardian or Juggernaut. Pathfinder was simply a convenience choice of mine enabling me to do everything, anytime without worrying about anything the game throws at me. Scion as a class itself is also not set in stone. Templar’s Guardian and Witch’s Necromancer seem to be very possible alternatives even though Ascendant offers the most convenience in my opinion.

Death’s Oath, Arakaali's Fang and The Devouring Diadem are mandatory as explained above.

Besides that Cyclopean Coil is quite a decent belt-choice. Your Skill-Tree will net you with more Strength than Dexterity and more Intelligence than Strength offering an easy to acquire Shock- and Ignite-Immunity as a result. Additionally Dexterity will end up being at least 200 rewarding you with a minimum of 40% increased damage bonus. A Corrupted version can provide additional Skill Effect Duration at the costs of some Life.

This build also allows the loss of some sockets. Therefore Kaom’s Roots are a cheap and effective option to gain complete Stun- and Slow-Immunity (i.e. Freeze, Temporal Chains) in addition to a decent amount of Life. You will lose up to 30% movement speed and the ability to evade but your mobility should still be very decent and evade won’t surpass 10% anyway. All in all, not a big loss compared to the gains. The rest of the gear should offer a mixture of Life and Energy-Shield as well as Resistances including Chaos. According to which auras are chosen this can range from very easy to rather hard to accomplish. See Auras down below for details.

In terms of Jewels Minion-Damage nets the most bang for your buck. Also, adding Life and/or Energy-Shield is always a good choice and therefore advised. A personal preference of mine was Bleed-Avoidance. Even though 100% are not achievable 45% are easily done and very much recommended. I am currently at 65% and neither Uber-Lab nor T14+ Trials do any noticeable damage.

Flasks-wise The Writhing Jar is required to have minions on demand. It is mandatory for fights in which nothing dies for about 40secs and longer. Additionally Blood of Karui can be used as a cheap and effective “Oh Sh*t”-button. Besides the just mentioned, simply use what suites your needs. Just keep in mind that Kaom’s Roots will disable evasion rendering Jade-Flasks useless.

Thanks to the Skill-Tree the chosen auras are not just enhanced in effect and area, they have also their Mana-Reservation-Costs cut in half when placed inside The Devouring Helmet. That opens up quite a few of possible combinations based on your personal needs. Purity of Elements, Single Purities and Haste seem like obvious choices.

If using a Curse-On-Hit Setup with for instance Storm Brand as a trigger Hatred can be quite a damage-boost to your minions especially when combined with the easy accessible Elemental Equilibrium.

War Banner is also a decent choice to improve the accuracy of your minions.

I am currently running Purities of Light, Fire and Ice in addition to Haste granting 80% over-capped resistances and a very satisfying movement speed at the costs of damage and accuracy. Additionally Aspect of the Spider is active reserving 97% of Mana in total.

The choice is yours.

Thanks to Spiritual Command and Raise Spiders you end up with a ridiculous amount of attack-speed. This renders Whirling Blades in combination with Faster Attacks as an awesome choice in terms of movement.

My personal preference is yet another. Phase Run in combination with Increased Duration grants you about three and a half second of phasing and a huge speed-boost that is not canceled by Death Aura.

Whirling Blades might be faster especially with the maximum amount of spiders up but Phase Run feels more fluid, save and fun to me.

To be perfectly straight, this is not a Face-Tank build. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t be squishy at all but you won't be T16-oneshot-proof either and your defense partially relies on the ability of being mobile. And as a side note. Due to the majority of your damage coming from nothing but Death-Aura and your minions, you are very much encouraged to zoom around the place at satisfying speed.

Besides mobility the defensive capabilities rely on a good amount of Life with very decent Life-Regen, Energy-Shield, 80% over-capped resistances (optional), stun- slow- and alignment-immunity (optional) and a noticeable amount of armour.

Furthermore The Devouring Diadem will grand free Edritch Battery enabling you to reserve 100% of your mana. Taking Mind over Matter enables Energy-Shield be part of the defense-mechanic again.

The Devouring Diadem has yet another great feature in form of the automatic skill Feast of Flesh occurring every 5 seconds. Feast of Flesh will use bodies created from killing or by using Desecrate to replenish your Life, Energy-Shield and Mana by up to 4000 points.

Lastly the helmet also grants a 10% chance to start the recharge of your Energy-Shield when using any skill. All in all a very potent tool in terms of defense.

Arakaali's Fang is best supported by Melee Physical Damage, Minion Damage and Melee Splash Support. Damage on Full Life can be a notable replacement for the latter when doing bosses.

Death’s Oath aura damage will be increased by Increased Area Effect, Concentrated Effect, Efficacy and Void Manipulation as well as Swift Affliction and Less Duration when used in combination with Arcane Surge. This leaves 7 gems for 6 slots. None of them have to be linked. In order of highest damage to highest area covered the following combinations seem viable:

- Efficacy, Void Manip., Arcane Surge, Swift Affl., Concentrated Effect, Less Duration
- Efficacy, Void Manip., Arcane Surge, Swift Affl., Concentrated Effect, Increased Area Effect
- Efficacy, Void Manip., Arcane Surge, Swift Affl., Increased Area Effect, Less Duration

Getting the right colors on your body shouldn’t be much of a problem due to an easy access to white sockets in Betrayal. As a side note, you do not need to use 6 sockets at all. I started with 4 sockets myself and it felt not different in terms of mechanics.

Additionally, as described in previous sections, you would want to have an Aura- and Mobility-Setup of your choice. Also Desecrate in combination with Spell Cascade is kind of mandatory, guaranteeing the number of bodies needed to have the maximum amount of minions up at all times, in addition to a steady replenishment of Life, Energy-Shield and Mana. Furthermore the use of Flesh Offering and Convocation is recommended. Personally, I like to sacrifice a single socket for Lightning Warp in order to gain the ability to use shortcuts.

This should leave you with either 4 free sockets or 0 if using Kaom’s Roots. A Curse-On-Hit Setup comes to mind with either Poacher’s Mark for a reduction in evades or the standard Temporal Chains. An unleveled Storm Brand is in my opinion currently best used to trigger CoH enabling you to cover 3 areas at once for quite a long time. Culling Strike or Blind are decent choices to complete the setup.

Link

See Leveling for general directions.

In my opinion no big deal at all. Personally, I started with Spark and switched to Storm Brand at level 12. In terms of the Skill-Tree going directly for Spiritual Aid seems advisable. Using Storm Brand renders the temporarily use of the nearby node Runebinder as pretty much of a no-brainer.

After that, the route is based on personal preference. I went for all the mayor Life- and Resistance-Nodes, picking up Minion-Damage whenever I felt like falling behind in damage. Then I started to go for Mana-Reservation-Nodes in order to make use of as many auras as possible, as early as possible. I even took a temporary shortcut by taking Harrier and three Dexterity-Nodes to get to Charisma early.

At level 53 Arakaali's Fang can be equipped rendering the rest of the story a walk in the park. As soon as you hit level 54 The Devouring Diadem can be equipped enabling you to run a shi*ton of auras. Additionally Fest of Flesh will almost guarantee your survival as long as there are bodies around.

A switch to Death's Oath is possible at level 62, yet it is very much advisable to have more than 50% chaos resistance when doing so. Otherwise you will most likely end up like me popping Life-Flasks constantly.

Overall your leveling experience should be very smooth and not much of a hassle.

Arakaali's Fang is what sets the costs of this build and it seems to rise in price again. All other Uniques can be bought for literally 1c or less each. The rest of the items can be acquired at similar costs due to the low additional resistances needed when using Purities.

Due to being placed in the helmet you can (re)activate your auras almost instantly by using your secondary Skill bar. When in need, do a weapon-swap, smash your aura-buttons and weapons-swap again.

Equipping secondary weapons is generally a good idea, enabling you to level unused gems for profit and/or to make use of Portal.

The hotkey for weapon-swap can also be used to kill your minions on demand.