[3.12] Aura stacking Guardian on a budget

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askaal wrote:

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knedalah wrote:

yup i see it now.
problem is right now is i dont see any points to take out for insightfulness, any ideas?
ofc ill need to lvl up...

I would sacrifice Arcane vision, a small ES node next to Foresight, Vengeful commander on your medium cluster, and 1 rare jewel since your mana pool is too high
You normally want to keep your unreserved mana number 2 times the mana cost of your skill since the more mana you reserve - the more ES you get from ascendancy

ok ill try that.

why taking off arcane vision? you dont care about playing blind? or am i missing something?

wrong button

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askaal wrote:

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velaxi1 wrote:

In term of survivability, grace is more reliable than determination? Can you look up my gear and how do I improve my single target. I'm using arc.

https://pastebin.com/274aNGs5

I personally don't like armor as a defense in this game, because of when you really need it - it will fail you (unless you do some shenanigans like armor stacking Transcendence, with 2Mil armor)

Let's say you want to facetank boss LVL 84 basic attack, it is physical
and it has 2500 nominal damage
To mitigate half of this damage - you need to have 25K armor
With normal Determination you'll have about 15K I think, so you'll mitigate only 3rd of that damage
So if boss was supposed to hit you 3 times, 7.5K total damage, it will hit you ~5.1K damage total
In the same situation having grace:
Boss most likely will miss 1 or 2 hits out of 3, and the last one will hit you about 2.1K since you still have 5K armor purely from your ascendancy (free)

Of course it is theory-craft, but I value grace more in this case
If you have had Divergent Determination on top of Grace - it would have been lot more reliable defense, but still I would not rush to obtain that one

I do like armor to a degree.
You are right that armor doesnt work well against bosses, i dont know the math exactly, but i would say much worse even than you indicate. That is when looking at only armor though.

With the aura guardian at 300% aura effect and say 13 auras, you get 13x4 = 52% reduced physical damage. Add 6% from Soul of solaris and you get to 58%. 3 endurance charges bring it to 70%. (basalt flask can be used until you have charges up)
Now armor against bosses indeed isnt amazing, but it is added to that 70%. So getting 20% reduction instead of 10% from your armor brings the total from 80 to 90%. That means you take half as much physical damage. Granite and basalt are both very significant because of this. Getting to the elusive 400% AE is so as well.

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knedalah wrote:

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askaal wrote:

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knedalah wrote:

yup i see it now.
problem is right now is i dont see any points to take out for insightfulness, any ideas?
ofc ill need to lvl up...

I would sacrifice Arcane vision, a small ES node next to Foresight, Vengeful commander on your medium cluster, and 1 rare jewel since your mana pool is too high
You normally want to keep your unreserved mana number 2 times the mana cost of your skill since the more mana you reserve - the more ES you get from ascendancy

ok ill try that.

why taking off arcane vision? you dont care about playing blind? or am i missing something?

I've tried to play with and without it and don't see much difference

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NonExistingName wrote:

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askaal wrote:

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velaxi1 wrote:

In term of survivability, grace is more reliable than determination? Can you look up my gear and how do I improve my single target. I'm using arc.

https://pastebin.com/274aNGs5

I personally don't like armor as a defense in this game, because of when you really need it - it will fail you (unless you do some shenanigans like armor stacking Transcendence, with 2Mil armor)

Let's say you want to facetank boss LVL 84 basic attack, it is physical
and it has 2500 nominal damage
To mitigate half of this damage - you need to have 25K armor
With normal Determination you'll have about 15K I think, so you'll mitigate only 3rd of that damage
So if boss was supposed to hit you 3 times, 7.5K total damage, it will hit you ~5.1K damage total
In the same situation having grace:
Boss most likely will miss 1 or 2 hits out of 3, and the last one will hit you about 2.1K since you still have 5K armor purely from your ascendancy (free)

Of course it is theory-craft, but I value grace more in this case
If you have had Divergent Determination on top of Grace - it would have been lot more reliable defense, but still I would not rush to obtain that one

I do like armor to a degree.
You are right that armor doesnt work well against bosses, i dont know the math exactly, but i would say much worse even than you indicate. That is when looking at only armor though.

With the aura guardian at 300% aura effect and say 13 auras, you get 13x4 = 52% reduced physical damage. Add 6% from Soul of solaris and you get to 58%. 3 endurance charges bring it to 70%. (basalt flask can be used until you have charges up)
Now armor against bosses indeed isnt amazing, but it is added to that 70%. So getting 20% reduction instead of 10% from your armor brings the total from 80 to 90%. That means you take half as much physical damage. Granite and basalt are both very significant because of this. Getting to the elusive 400% AE is so as well.

To get past 300% of AE is quite expensive, most of the people in this thread most likely won't do that (thread is rather about budget solutions still)
So Phys damage reduction from ascendancy will be 13x3 (36% total)
To get some substantial amount of armor that will help with bosses - you'll need to use Divergent Determination (10+ ex I think)
For that, you'll have to sacrifice some other aura (for my character this will be Malevolence, which is clear speed eventually)
and all this for what? It won't save you from one-shot due to the way armor works, and if you were not one-shot with the amount of regen and leech you have you'll be back to full before the next hit

So what I'm trying to say, is that for small hits - you have your mitigation without investing into armor, but to get any meaningful damage reduction on bosses you'll have to make a considerable investment, and it's not all that much worth

Hey, can you again have a look at my setup and what to improve?

I run the following now:

- Purity of Fire
- Purity of Ice
- Purity of Lightning (Doryani's Delusion)
- Vitality (amulet)
- Discipline (shield)
- Zealotry
- Precision
- Clarity
- Hatred
- Haste
- Wrath
- Herald of Thunder
- Herald of Ash
- Herald of Ice
- Herald of Purity

I also decided to try
- Flesh and Stone

is Flesh and Stone in Sand stance a good idea? Or Determination?

I had to drop Aspect of the Spider as I got the Doryani's Delusion and plan to get a headhunter, so I can't craft it on the belt. Is this really bad or is the Doryani's instead worth it?

So for me the next upgrades are a Headhunter and a Bottled Faith.

With the life from the Headhunter I could fit another aura i think. Probably on the Ring?

What else, maybe on the tree or clusters can be improved?

Is it possible to use rare gloves so I can fit aspect of the spider again? How can we reach the 300% crit multi then?

My character is public: GoozHeistTheDarkside

Thanks so much!

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goozaan wrote:

Hey, can you again have a look at my setup and what to improve?

I run the following now:

- Purity of Fire
- Purity of Ice
- Purity of Lightning (Doryani's Delusion)
- Vitality (amulet)
- Zealotry
- Precision
- Clarity
- Hatred
- Haste
- Wrath
- Herald of Thunder
- Herald of Ash
- Herald of Ice
- Herald of Purity

I also decided to try
- Flesh and Stone

is Flesh and Stone in Sand stance a good idea? Or Determination?

I had to drop Aspect of the Spider as I got the Doryani's Delusion and plan to get a headhunter, so I can't craft it on the belt. Is this really bad or is the Doryani's instead worth it?

So for me the next upgrades are a Headhunter and a Bottled Faith.

With the life from the Headhunter I could fit another aura i think. Probably on the Ring?

What else, maybe on the tree or clusters can be improved?

Is it possible to use rare gloves so I can fit aspect of the spider again? How can we reach the 300% crit multi then?

My character is public: GoozHeistTheDarkside

Thanks so much!

About Flesh and stone:
- Blind gives you very little, due to diminishing returns (you have a lot of evading just from grace)
- Less damage taken is nice, but not sure if it worth it or not

Determination - only if it is Divergent and paired with Grace

About Doriany's:
- I do not understand why people like those boots, yes you get 1 gem slot for free, but you need very specific circumstances to utilize it in a really good way
In your particular build - I would rather get rare boots, with Aspect of the spider, and replace Herald of Thunder with PoL that you get from Doriany's since you are running too many heralds anyway
- HoI gives you shattering
- HoP is 10% More damage
- HoA allows you to have target ignited, so your Cinderswallow gives you 10% more damage
All those 3 together paired with 2 Purposeful harbingers gives you 40% AE
If you were able to fit all 5 heralds, then you wouldn't need a second Purposeful harbinger, but running 4 heralds is a waste in my opinion

Life from HH will give you nothing, all auras you are running on blood magic reserve %HP

To replace your Maligaro's gloves - you'll have to make a very considerable investment
- you need to gather 150%+ Crit multi across your jewels
And then you probably opt for High Templar gloves with some great corruptions
To get a Rare Gloves into this build - is gonna be complicated

Improving the cluster jewels is nearly infinite I would say
ILVL 84 clusters with 35% increased effect, ES and Int/CritMulti, if you want to change Maligaros, are the best
Each one of those might easily cost you 100+EX

Adding more RMR on your jewels (large cluster jewels, Unnatural Instinct, might of the Meek etc) will allow you to drop
mana reservation notables (Sublime Form, Self-control) to get more AE instead
Replacing Large cluster jewels with 1 Node Voices might be considered as well

If you dont go for 300% aura effect, i personally dont see the sense in building it.

I have 300% aura effect and the build is nice, but not OP. The aurastacker is a very fine mapper and using arc, excels at taking down the mapbosses as well. I do run 100% deli with it. I use my juggernaut for heisting and delve though because its damage is sufficient there but its survivability is much better. When i play together with my buddy's bladevortex assasin, it feels pretty equal. His assasin seems to be about as survivable as my aurastacker and damage is comparable as well. (we do 100% deli together) So each build has its strengths and weaknesses. The 300% aurastacker fits in pefectly and is balanced with other existing builds.

Before i had 300% aura effect, the build was rather dissapointing and most other common builds are better.

When you see a streamer running a 400% aurastacker which is totally omfg OP, dont let that mislead you in thinking that a cheap aurastacker is probably good as well. 300% = 50ex and that is the budget version.

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NonExistingName wrote:

If you dont go for 300% aura effect, i personally dont see the sense in building it.

I have 300% aura effect and the build is nice, but not OP. The aurastacker is a very fine mapper and using arc, excels at taking down the mapbosses as well. I do run 100% deli with it. I use my juggernaut for heisting and delve though because its damage is sufficient there but its survivability is much better. When i play together with my buddy's bladevortex assasin, it feels pretty equal. His assasin seems to be about as survivable as my aurastacker and damage is comparable as well. (we do 100% deli together) So each build has its strengths and weaknesses. The 300% aurastacker fits in pefectly and is balanced with other existing builds.

Before i had 300% aura effect, the build was rather dissapointing and most other common builds are better.

When you see a streamer running a 400% aurastacker which is totally omfg OP, dont let that mislead you in thinking that a cheap aurastacker is probably good as well. 300% = 50ex and that is the budget version.

You can check my latest POB in the guide
My character has 289% AE
To get past 300% I have to either sacrifice some aura or with a few more level's insert one Voices jewel and add 2 more nodes with AE
all this to have what? additional 12% phys damage mitigation?
The video showcasing the build is using much less gear then I have right now
I'm not saying that at my current state my character is OP, but it is more than enough for me
I did close t17 100% delirium within a reasonable amount of time

Bladevortex assassin(poison or elemental) with comparable durability - I do not think that it is possible
You normally have either dodge or block capped in this kind of builds, 5-6k HP
elusive and that is pretty much it, there is no more room for any other defenses (correct me if I'm wrong here)

As of damage - yes, you can get pretty good damage with Blade vortex
What is really great about bladevortex builds - explosions
you normally have huge AOE explosions, and during normal content, everything explodes once you touch it

But I have to admit, I have played only 1 build with 50+ Ex budget, and this is the build this thread is about

Normally I was done with the league with a lot fewer investments (prior delirium there was no content that required you to have this strong character)

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all this to have what? additional 12% phys damage mitigation?

Yes, that 12% is freaking huge. Just like i tried to explain about armor.

It doesnt mean 12% less damage taken. It is additive. That 12% will convert into anything between 25% and 50% less physical damage taken depending on the other factors you have. (armor, endurance charges, flasks)

It is espescially important because of the low ES the aura stacker has on a budget. See my juggernaut has 9300 life with 76% elemental resists. The juggernaut also has chaos and physical resists in the range of 70-75% when using flasks. So its defences are balanced against all damage types.

My aurastacker has something like 4500ES with 90% elemental resists. That makes its defences vs elemental comparable to the jug. Its chaos resistance is however 75%, so there it has half the defences compared to the jug. And for physical, it makes all the difference where i am within that 60-90% resist range. Thats also why he does fine when deli mapping, i have potions and endurance charges up 100% of the time and that keeps my physical resists at 90%. In heist and delve however where i dont fight all the time, those are not always up. And when they are not, thats when he can die because the pres can get as low as 60-70% ish. Causing him to take tripple-quadrupple the damage.

The juggernaut on the other hand is much less dependend on these kind of details. For the juggernaut, losing 12% physical reduction can be the difference between 70 and 82% or 60 and 72%. Very significant and nothing close to actual 12%, but not nearly as significant as the difference between 80% and 90% for a character with half the hitpoints.

of course giving up auras for the 12% is not a great idea. I dont know about your build and sorry am too lazy to check it out right now. But you say you have a 50ex build, then it surprises me. For 50ex i have 13 auras at 300%. (it is 70ex by now, but that wasn't needed)

As for the survivability of the blade vortex assasin, it includes inherrent playsyle. I notice it mostly when doing simulacrums. I have to be careful the last 2 waves and compromise between wanting to move for survival and stand still to deal damage. The blade vortex assasin of course always moves and deals damage while moving. That is a form of defence in itself. I havent investigated his build, but i do assume he has less Ehp than my aurastacker. He should have. Just like i wouldn't dream of trying a simulacrum with my juggernaut who is on paper more tanky. (but needs to stand still more to deal damage). All is of course assuming he is not within my aura range. Even though his build is the worst fit with an aura stacker, its god mode for him when he's near me.