pob: https://pastebin.com/GyyeAGY1

#Intro

Sorry if you guys are getting tired of all my aura stacker builds. Decided to put this out since I had never done a minion-based aura stacker, and I had seen some comments asking about that style of builds (and there is not that many guides and such on it this league). Budget is probably ~200 ex but I threw money in a lot of weird places and you could probably get something similar in strength for ~120 exalts.

##Pros

• great single target damage (as shown)

• tanky (obviously): massive pdr, 90 ele res, CI

• bigger regen since you're guardian and not using RF (rather than more common necro/scion for minion builds)

• actually really fast movement speed. With phase run + all buffs up you're closing in on 400% move speed

##Cons

• SRS mapping even with a gem swap to melee splash does not feel good. its workable, just barely.

• SRS playstyle in general is not for everyone

• acquiring some of the really niche gear this late was a pain

#Ascendancy

I guess the big question most people would have is ascendancy choice. Why guardian over necro/scion? The main reason is honestly just because I didn't want to level a scion... being lvl 98 gives me a LOT of power.

I'd say necro is probably not the way though since you'd be severely lacking in pdr.

Scion is most likely better than guardian due to attack speed/cast speed being insane for the build (both enabling you to get your minions out faster and giving huge damage to them). You don't scale damage as well with your auras since you can't do shenanigans with CotB/nebulis.

That being said, guardian is honestly not as far behind as I would've thought. The regen and extra energy shield/armor is nice, and they get a nice movespeed buff. You also do get a solid 40% attack/cast speed and movespeed.

#Gear

I'll talk about some of the more interesting slots.

##Staff

Craftings quite basic. Get a battery staff, redeemer slam, roll aura mod, awakener with fortify, and then craft what you can to finish. Battery staff is nice since it lets you leave not enough mana to cast your main skill, and of course, the 165 flat ES is nice. Alternatively, you could use a high es rmr shield + wand but that would most likely leave you with lower damage, and the build is tanky enough as is.

##Helm

A es 15% aura effect base is hard to buy at this point, all the ones on trade seem unreasonably priced to me (but hey if I'm considering buying it I guess it is correctly priced). I wouldn't pay more than 10 ex for the base; you'll get more mileage elsewhere. You can try to get a aura effect alphas howl or just a normal alphas howl. You can also go for an elevated rmr helmet.

##Chest

The two options for CI minion aura stackers are saqawals and victarios. I was looking at victarios, but while a juicy +4 victarios would give way way more damage, it would also come at the cost of a ton of survivability. Auras you donate with generosity no longer grant you pdr.

Saqawals is great QoL with all the attributes it gives you. It also grants more flat es and juices up your aspect skill, and is quite cheap (got mine for 1 ex).

##Amulet

Kinda interesting for an aura stacker. 15% aura effect is nothing to sneeze at after cluster nerfs. What you're looking for from your amulet is some combination of rmr, EHP, granting skills, and damage. The spectres mod is basically an 11% increase in EHP, and the aura effect can either give you damage or let you drop some notables for rmr notables while maintaining 3x threshold.

The corrupt was super cheap, picked it up for 40c.

##Boots

To copy/paste from my other build:

> These boots are a massive help to our rmr needs since they make the reservation of 4 of your auras temporary, meaning you only need the mana to reserve one of them at a time. This means that I can fit in 15 auras to my build with only 50 rmr (which is the standard aura stacker tree + 5 rmr corrupts) which is much much less than most aura stackers who are usually at least at 65 rmr. And gives us much more flexibility in item/jewel choice. > > With the changes this league to reservation (meaning you dont need to have sufficient mana to reserve an aura), the main downside to march of the legion is now that it is annoying to recast it constantly. However, as an aura stacker, we already pick up 6x first among equals which gives us 120% skill effect duration, and with our malevolence, we have nearly 200% increased skill effect duration. This means we only need to recast once every 34 seconds, which I think is more than manageable (especially given pretty much every boss fight has a phase letting you cast buffs).

##Belt

Torrent's reclamation is pretty hard to beat. I think 5k es is the 'safe' threshold for aura stackers. If you're at that point you don't really need to go for more. A budget damage option would be darkness enthroned (doesn't have to be rmr abyss jewels, though they can be). You would be looking for dmg if created recently + minion attack speed.

##Rings

Looking to just get ES from the rings. It should also give 1 gem slot, either through implicit granting a skill or from it being an unset ring.

##Clusters

my large clusters are trash. Should be upgraded to: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ultimatum/kG4GqmwT5

This saves 2 passive points. But since I'm pretty high level I'm fine with spending a couple extra passive points on damage.

Medium clusters are just a combination of fae/replenishing and fae or replenishing/rmr notable. For me this was 3x fae/replenishing and 4x rmr notables. You may need to tune this to your specific build (depending on your amulet/helm).

##Timeless Jewel

more copypaste:

> A brutal restraint socketed in the standard mana reservation might of the meek jewel socket will not only give you a bunch of dex (which guardian needs to reserve grace/haste) but also tag a bunch of notables potentially with aura effect. I became a brutal restraint peddler until I found a good one, but you're probably better off saving yourself the trouble and just divining until you hit aura effect on harrier or leadership.

I ended up selling my old one, so I just bought 30 brutal restraints from somebody who had a ton for 18c each, found 1 aura effect one, and resold the rest for 15c each.

#Minions

I tried pretty much every minion skill I can think of. Nothing comes close to SRS single target damage wise, but zombies were good enough for clearing heists.

For support minions, I used to run AG but it somehow managed to die so I just ended up dropping it. Had king maker/ele weakness gloves/windscream/mask of spirit drinker/life as es chest. I'm a bit confused as to how it died since none of my spectres have died even though I'm pretty sure they of tul has quite low life. Your auras affect minions, so they should be good on survivability.

I used to run raise spectre in my hands of the high templar which gave me +1 spectre, but I didn't really know what to do with the 3rd spectre, so I just moved it to helm. I don't like charge monkeys much since they feel super inconsistent to me, especially when I don't have convocate (can't afford the gem slot) to force all my minions to group up. Moving it to helm also let me add feeding frenzy as a link which is a nice damage boost since guardian doesn't get as much attack speed as necro/scion.