Shield Crush Gladiator League Starter (Crit Variant)

Hi All,

Inspired by Phreak's spreadsheet breakdown today, I decided to look into a Shield Crush Glad. I looked at POB Ninja's first week of gladiator builds and put a few ideas together and optimized the tree a bit to get the following result: https://pastebin.com/2iXzYL5b. I'll probably be league starting this until I know what the best build is for Sanctum farming.

This is a fairly standard Crit Glad build that should crush maps and have enough dps to get through t16s and the first set of bosses comfortably. Why Glad over Slayer? Glad has QOL(10% less damage at full endurance charges and automatic charge generation, bleedsplosions, maiming), speed(challenger charges), that make it a better league starter in my opinion. You also can be quite flexible in leaning more towards offense or different types of defense. This build goes for max spell suppress as the secondary defensive layer, but you could easily instead choose to invest more into life on block/spell block/max res.

The first unique you will need for endgame is a GGB Prismatic Eclipse. You'll use that until you can get a well rolled Viridian Jewel with a mana leech affix.

You rely on 3 items to speed progression past level 90 - Emperor's Vigilance as the shield. You can't go crit without it. Until then, I suggest taking a few bleed nodes instead and leveling that way with a pure armor shield. You will need a Seething Fury jewel as well when you go crit.

The next aspirational level of the build which is the *fun* part is going Dark Seer as your MH weapon with a Nasima's Brutal Restraint to give you Second Sight. You will also benefit from Malediction. You should consistently be at full frenzies and endurance charges from Enduring Cry, Outmatch and Outlast, Blood Rage and the Mark Mastery. You will likely be at ~2 Power Charges and crit capped as well with just Assassin's mark vs most non slippery bosses.

The build can be optimized further with every slot being upgradable other than the shield.

I want to stress that the build above is very doable in the first week, and the items are real items from someone's week 1 build, but obviously they are *good* items. This is what you are building towards. What you will be building towards, in order, is res capping, then getting hit to 100% - you can probably use some accuracy nodes until you get there. Then Spell Suppression to 100% (you have about 50% on the tree and can use the 12% mastery with eva gear until you are overcapped), then finish ailment avoidance. You can also choose to use Flasks and the new abyss jewels to get avoidance to specific ailments more easily.