[3.23] Poison Animate Weapon of Self Reflection Guardian

Ditect's Build Guides!

Overview:

Hello! This is yet another poison build guide by me, almost 7 years after the last! I've not really touched poison since double dipping was gutted, but we're back again today with another interesting interation.



This time, we're doing a minion build! I've used this build to complete all content in game (besides ubers) in 5 days of play time!

We use the experimented base type Pneumatic dagger, which implicit states "All Damage from Hits with This Weapon can Poison" and animate it via the all new transfogured gem, Animate Weapon of Self Reflection, which animates our main hand weapon.

This unique interaction allows our all damage types from our animate weapon's hits to poison! Hence we can take advantage of a tri-ele dagger, guardian's elemental relics (hatred & anger) and the all new spectre, Perfect Spirit of Fortune, which provides a massive wrath and lightning damage lucky aura.





Poe Ninja Builds Ladder page
PoB Link
>Warning< Spectres aren't accounted for yet in POB!

We can't accurately view the DPS in PoB as spectres aren't in yet, but from experience, it deals approximately 10Mil DPS at the cost of 10 Divs.







Gear:

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Pneumatic dagger of course for all our Animated Weapon of Self Reflection's damage to poison! This efficiently utilizes our flat elemental damage stacking from auras to poison.
Severed in sleep for the Envy aura and allows all our minions to apply wither stacks. Mobs will consistently have max wither stacks from the sheer amount of hits our minions & spectres apply.
The Devouring Diadem for the aura reservation and Life / ES sustain via feast of flesh. In conjunction with Time of Need(Every 4 seconds, Regenerate 100% of Life over one second) from our guardian ascendancy and the vitality aura from our Perfect Warlord, we have adequate sustain without leech or flasks.
The Covenant for the massive flat Chaos damage from the lvl 29 Added Chaos Damage Support 7th link.
Null and Void gloves because for life & rampage. It greatly speeds up clear, add fluff to maps and summon minions. Immunity on rampage tier while mapping is great.
Darkness Enthroned with two poison chance abyss jewels is mandatory for this build, it's the main source of our chance to poison for all minions. We top this up with two more similar abyss jewels on our tree. I have chance to avoid poison and bleed on the belt jewels as well for utility. Get chance to taunt and blind for the ones on your tree - it works well for defense!
My boots provide a whopping 75% movement speed in conjunction with the Oath of the Maji wildwood ascendancy node, which is why I don't have any gems socketed in my boots.




Passive Tree:
3.23 lvl95 Guardian - 118 points
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General Life, increased minion damage & life stacking
Suppression lucky to cover our low natural suppress chance - bumps it to cap with a suppression charm
EB from Devouring Diadem, Wicked ward to synergize with start recharge on cast from the helm. MoM for additonal HP pool from ES


Wildwood Ascendancy:
Warden of the Maji
- Oath of the Maji (movement speed)
- Wildwood blessing (barkskin armor)
- Lesson of the Seasons (ailment avoid and reduced duration)
- Detect Evil (rare & unique minimap markers)
Discourse

I love movement speed. Oath of the Maji provides a whopping 30% increased movement speed if there aren't any gems socketed in your boots! (Thats a whole nother boot for your third leg) Speed is quintessential for me, pretty self explanatory.
Barkskin gives us 150% increased armor at full stacks, an insane source of armor for minion builders!
Additional ailment avoid & reduced duration should we be inflicted by any despite having our AG's garb
Detect Evil is quite possibly the best Wildwood Ascendancy notable to exist, comparable to the backpack upgrade from the Warden of the Eaves. The minimap icons for Rare and Unique enemies helps us to see through the clutter of our minions and allow us to play better around bosses or pick up straggling rares in maps.



Bandits:
2 passive points (Kill all)
Discourse
The other bandit rewards don't really apply as well to this build as passive points do! We are quite starved on passive points, so an additional 2 passive points would be great choice!




Spectres:
Perfect Warlord
- Enduring cry taunts
- Shared Endurance Charges
- Vitality Aura
Purchase Link

Perfect Guardian Turtle
- Intermittent invulnerability
- 5% Physical Damage Reduction
- Determination Aura
Purchase Link

Perfect Spirit of Fortune
- Lucky Lightning Damage Aura
- Wrath Aura
Purchase Link

Perfect Hulking Miscreation
- 100% Damage and 30% Attack/Cast Speed buff to Constructs (AW & AG)
- 20% Phys as Extra Lightning Aura
Purchase Link
Discourse
This setup provides a perfect balance between offense and defense!
When buying these corpses, you may ignore their corpse levels. The level of the spectre is based off your skill gem!

Now explaining our choices in order:

The Perfect Warlord notably gives us and our minions endurance charges, which provides
+4% to all Elemental Resistances per Endurance Charge
4%% additional Physical Damage Reduction per Endurance Charge
He also provides 400+ life regen / second to all allies!
Costs 150c as of the first week.

The Perfect Guardian Turtle because I love turtles
But really, it gives a very strong Determination Aura (>lvl 20), allowing us to run an additional Grace Aura instead!
The 5% PDR and intermittent invulnerability is a cherry on top!
Costs 15c as of the first week.

The Perfect Spirit of Fortune casts a never before seen, insanely strong Wrath aura and also makes all lightning damage dealt by allies lucky! This gives an approximate 30% more to lightning damage dealt. Trust the math.
Costs 15c as of the first week.

The Perfect Hulking Miscreation provides the strongest boost to our damage out of all our spectres. It gives our constructs (AW & AG) a 100% increased Damage and 30% Attack and Cast Speed bonus! This scales our minion's hit, poison damage, and the rate of poison stacks! Additionally, it gives a 20% Phys as extra Lightning aura, which synergizes well with the lucky aura provided by the Spirit of Fortune.
Costs 15c as of the first week.



Alternatively, if you'd like a more defensive approach, you may swap out the Perfect Spirit of Fortune for a Perfect Judgemental Spirit. It has decently strong attacks on it's own, summon buffed skeletons and most importantly, casts a Discipline aura.
Costs 45c as of the first week.
Purchase Link




Animated Guardian of Smiting:
Leer Cast
- 50% increased damage aura

Garb of the Ephemeral
- Cannot be slowed aura
- Crit immunity aura

Asenath's Gentle Touch w/ Despair on hit implicit
- Despair & Temporal Chains curse on hit
- Blind and Explosions for mapping

Windscream
- Additional curse for Despair & Temporal Chains

Victario's Charity
- Frenzy & Power Charge generation and sharing

Pneumatic Dagger
- All damage types to poison
Discourse
Our imaginary friend here massively bumps up our survivability and clear speed. This buddy prevents nearby enemies from landing critical strikes, which is typically how most players get one shot or have ailments applied onto them. Our (and our minion's) action speed cannot be modified to below base value as well! Which means we cannot be frozen, slowed or paralyzed!

With the introduction of Animated Guardian of Smiting, our AG will now strike onto entire packs and we can now effectively use the Asenath's Gentle Touch gloves to greatly improve our clear - to the point where we can effectively drop Melee Splash on our Animate Weapon! Embrace packsplosion for just 10c.

Victario's Charity provides consistent power charge uptime for all minions while mapping, and frenzy charges if you have adequate aps on your AG. These charges give minions:

4% increased Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% increased Cast Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% more Damage per Frenzy Charge

50% increased Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge

Windscream for an additional curse if you have a curse on hit implicit Asenath's Gentle touch. Otherwise, you may use a Legacy of Fury to scorch nearby enemies (reduce 10-15% elemental resistances) and give your AG a Herald of Ash effect!

For weapon choice, you may use a Sign of the Sin Eater to transfer whatever elemental ailments you suffer onto your AG instead. The Garb of the ephemeral should cover a majority of these ailments, but some enemies have an innate chance to inflict ailments - not only from crits. This should cover all grounds. If you'd like to push your damage to the limits, you may also equip your animate guardian with a Pneumatic / Pressurized dagger for all of his damage to count towards poison as well! Dont forget to get poison chance on his dagger since he isn't supported by the chance to poison gem!







Frequently Asked Questions:
Summoning & Replacing Spectres

With 3.23 Affliction league, Summoned Spectres will now fall to the ground when the gem is unequiped.

GGG quote
"
Can you reconsider making the new purchasable corpses able to be Desecrated? There is a risk of losing your Spectre by just weapon swapping accidentally, corpse getting eaten by a trigger, etc.
We have a solution to this issue that will prevent Spectres from being lost in Hideouts/Town due to changing items around etc. If you leave town in a way that would cause you to lose your Spectres, they will spawn on the ground around you in the next area you enter. If you lose your Spectre in any way in a hideout, it will spawn as a corpse on the ground. If a corpse is spawned this way, only the owner of the corpse will be able to use Raise Spectre on it.



This prevents us from accidentally losing our Spectres whilst swapping equipments! We can also easily choose which corpses to re-raise when purchasing new Spectres!
You may use the 'Enable corpse targeting' function to highlight which corpses to raise since they often fall to the floor in a cluster. The default key is 'A' and can be changed in Options -> Input -> Enable corpse targeting.

When raising a Spectre whilst at maximum Spectre count, the overridden Spectre(first in) will fall to the floor.


No Melee Splash?

The explosions from our Animate Guardian of Smiting's Asenath's Gentle touch is sufficient for clear. Stragglers are a rare sight and we'd rather have more single target damage for dealing with wisp empowered enemies.


Why not play SRS?

Yes, the damage with SRS is admittedly higher. But unlike SRS, our Animate Weapons last for 24.60 seconds and can be recalled with convocation! The mapping and playstyle is much smoother with this build.



More TBA!

Please list down any queries or comments below! Thank you for your support!

Updates

TBA - clips
December 21th 2023 - slight improved introduction & mechanics
December 20th 2023 - updated minion charge effects (thank you monik390)
December 19th 2023 - created the guide
Last edited by Ditect on Dec 21, 2023, 10:37:30 AM
Last bumped on Jan 25, 2024, 2:48:00 PM
nice build !!
thank you random stranger.
Last edited by Ditect on Dec 19, 2023, 6:17:45 AM
baik lah sial!
"
15% increased Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge
15% increased Cast Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% more Damage per Frenzy Charge
5% increased Movement Speed per Frenzy Charge

200% increased Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge


Nope, they are not. This was fixed long ago, and only apply on enemies.
For minions, charges are like for players (https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Minion: Minions gain the same benefits from charges as the character.):

4% increased Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% increased Cast Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% more Damage per Frenzy Charge

50% increased Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge


So no biggie there. Cheers.
Oh I see! A change since 3.19. Thank you for the correction!
Cheers. 🤓
Any gameplay videos?
Fun build, working my way through maps with it now. Have you made any updates and changes?

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