My PoB in video: https://pastebin.com/ZwCLTct0

Mapping Showcase: https://youtu.be/A7ucCDY01-o

#Introduction

I'm back again with another aura stacker using march of the legion. This version is my cheapest yet! I've spent <10 ex on this build so far. While current prices are most likely higher (except for prism guardian/shavs), you also don't need rsr corruptions on any jewels for this setup (no grace/determination/malevolence). I simply have them because I know they will become more expensive later and I will need them when I upgrade, but you can see how much excess mana/life I have unreserved. I have edited this into my pob on the nebulis (+4 skill reservation).

The rare items also may look fancy but were crafted with 1-2 essences (10c each) and I got the bases for <5c. I would definitely recommend the jinxed juju corrupt, but the corrupts is also cheap - I got mine for 20c, and the supply is quite good since pretty much no other aura stackers use them. The reason supply of corrupted jinxed jujus is high is since cursebots want them for +1 curse implicit.

#Ascendancy

Now that the curse change has gone through, I may swap to time of need which with my ring will make me unaffected by the map mod curses. I would also swap hop to HoI if I do so.

However, radiant crusade is honestly pretty good and very underrated. Especially this league, silver flasks are unreliable for onslaught uptime. With all our skill effect duration, the HoP minions will stay with us for quite a while, and spectres are permanent which means we have great uptime on having the necessary number of allies.

#Theorycrafting a budget aura stacker

Reference Budget PoB: https://pastebin.com/ThEYLx6F

This is what I theorycrafted for leaguestart. I planned to leaguestart as an 'aurastacker'. I'll spare you the details because it was... painful and I don't really recommend anyone to follow what I did there. Feel free to skip this section if you don't want the nitty gritty breakdown.

In order to make a budget aura stacker, there are two main hurdles: Aura effect and reduced skill reservation. We are looking for 200% increased aura effect as the breakpoint for 3 pdr/aura and 90 max res.

##Passive Tree

The standard setup of grabbing the sovereignty, Influence, leadership, and charisma passive clusters with champion of the cause annointed gives us 60% aura effect. If you are running a might of the meek by harrier (which is imo not worth it for reasons I'll go over later) you would drop leadership and end up with only 57% aura effect but 2% more rsr.

##Gear

I've really liked taking a Jinxed Juju for 15% aura effect. It also basically increases our EHP by 11% (throw in some stone skin flayers or arena masters and they will never die due to your auras). Other sources of aura effect are the synth implicit helm (15), victarios influence (15), Whakatutuki o Matua (20), elevated rare chest mod (30), and rare shield mod (10). My example is a budget caster aura stacker so we will be LL and not have our chest/shield slot free. However, a budget minion aura stacker could definitely consider going CI and picking up a different chest.

##Ascendancy

If you opt for a guardian, you will get 10% aura effect from your ascendancy's small nodes. Scion will need to run a 5th cluster instead, but gets additional passive points so that shouldn't be too difficult. I would still recommend guardian for starting out.

##Jewels

You can throw in a conqueror's potency for 3% aura effect. Other than that, the big thing will just be a timeless jewel.

CI builds can get fairly reasonably priced aura effect through a glorious vanity with aura effect on arcane vision. You can also grab a militant faith with aura effect per 10 devotion. However, for LL builds and especially guardians, I believe a brutal restraint is by far the best timeless jewel (socket by harrier). There are 9 relatively close notables touched by the timeless jewel in that position. 2 of those notables (harrier/leadership) require ZERO travel points since we already take them. 2 of them (path of the savant, true strike) have okay travel nodes. The other 5 are not really great but entirely usable for starting out. Brutal Restraint also doesn't delete potentially helpful nearby nodes like glorious vanity; instead it gives you a decent amount of extra dex which is nice since the build does need 159 dex for lvl 21 haste/grace auras.

There are extremely pricey glorious vanities that you can buy which give aura effect, but I believe they are not worth it (and certainly not on a budget).

Clusters

Clusters basically just need to fill out the rest of our aura effect. For the setup I am using, we have 60 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 95% aura effect from the aforementioned things so we need 105% from clusters. One FaE/Replenishing cluster gives 21% aura effect, which leaves us 18% short. We can bridge this gap by using clusters with only PH (PH + 1 is hard to roll and expensive for starting out). If we have 3 heralds, clusters with just PH give us 32% aura effect each, which brings us to a total of 42% + 64% = 106% aura effect. If you have PH + FaE/Replenishing, then you can instead run 2 heralds + conqueror's potency.

This enables you to hit 300% aura effect at lvl 72 (69 if you use intuitive leap).

#Reservation

Now, how are you going to reserve 11 auras + 3 heralds with 0 rsr corruptions? It certainly is very difficult... but not impossible due to March of the Legion and Prism Guardian.

The reference PoB's only sources of global rsr are Alpha's Howl (no enchant), the passive tree, and conqueror's efficiency. None of these things cost much (passive tree and conqueror's efficiency cost nothing and alphas howl <10c).

##Prism Guardian I think everyone knows by this point how good Prism Guardian is. On top of a natural 25% reduced reservation for socketed auras, it also makes it so you don't have to use arrogance which takes up a link and has a massive 2x reservation multiplier.

##March of the Legion

March of the Legion makes it so that your auras are temporary but also only reserve mana temporarily. It also gives +2 and +12% aura effect to socketed aura gems. This means you only need enough mana to cast the reservation of one of the auras socketed in the boots at a time. If you have 4x 50% auras, this is essentially 75% less mana reservation for the socketed auras.

#Changes from reference to currrent PoB

• changed to spark since mechanically, it is just one of the best skills in the game and I enjoy playing it a lot
• opted for a helm pseudo-6l to avoid purchasing a 6l (which would eat up pretty much all my budget)
• dropped the alpha's howl which means I needed to fix reservation, so I did that by dropping a herald for war banner (smaller reservation). You can also play around with vitality/precision/clarity levels in the arrogance setup depending on your needs.
• dropped 2nd cotb, switched to unset ring for gem slots and used trinity (cannot use trinity with phys spell as hatred will make your cold damage do too much more than lightning). This lets you do immune to cold remnants as well
• changed belt to give cannot be frozen (replacing alpha's howl) and also to have a lot of chaos resistance

If you want more details on aura stacking, check out my previous posts. A lot of things remain unchanged, and I didn't want to just copy/paste or repeat myself.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/nl2sj2/aura_stacker_ft_march_of_the_legion_smashes_the/gzg7zja/

https://old.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/o0qw4y/srs_aura_stacker/h1wl2gf/