(PoE - 3.22 Ancestor) Dominating Blow Guardian - Showcase, No Commentary

Main deviations from previous build - -Minion Crit. Tree, items, skills recently added another vector of scaling damage and the new Maata's Teachings Unique Sceptre this league finally completes the missing puzzle piece. Splashing in a little bit of crit instead of going the standard Triad Grip Hatred cold convert (gem colors wouldn't work for me) or minion damage cluster jewel stacking (trading damage for defense). -Ancestor League Tattoos. Set aside a skill point for the nifty Notable Attribute +1 gems. Shifted overcapped resistances to STR rolls to convert them over to Global Defenses for more ES/Armour and capped spell block to save a skill point without the expensive Divergent Tempest Shield. -Defense investment. There is the minion glass cannon route with more attack speed and Blessed Rebirth but I wanted to see if Dom Blow minions could survive without it. I'm missing probably 40-50% more damage not using an offensive crit minion shield or Darkness Enthroned belt. -Duration investment. Radiant Sentinel feels bad to keep resummoning and duration just adds a lot of qol to everything else. It's a lot of skill points compared to Necro's 2 pointer Ascendancy. 3.22 Reworked Guardian. Offensively, it really hurt physical Dom Blow with the loss of its old nodes and finding new sources of intimidate and self onslaught which I didn't have a glove suffix for. The loss of all that free shared attack speed definitely hurt summoning minions after seeing just how much Ghazzy's necro has in comparison. I've also seen other mixed elemental builds that go full Life with The Surrender Shield. Jank. Ramping has insane variance when pinnacle bossing at the start with nothing, slowly summoning all normal sentinels, Assassin's Mark giving power charges over time on hit, Demon Harpy phys debuff scream, Monkey Frenzy Charges, Pride aura, Brittle Ground. Brittle Ground is a little awkward where you have to move through a boss while hugging them before bunkering down with melee. Dance shimmy occasionally to upkeep Brittle while standing still for increased Consecrated Ground damage Tanky? Barely get dented to anything not an Uber boss because Aegis Aurora is op. Loss of visual clarity from being inside a cluster of minions means it's hard to see slams so pray 75% block saves you. Regen counteracts degens to a degree, Time of Need will save you a lot of the time and cleanse off Ignites. Only counter to bleed/corrupted blood is flask in this build. Not an Uber Bosser. It's definitely more doable compared to back in 3.18 where I was still learning them on release with Dom Blow, but it definitely takes some good play with juggling melee uptime. Any deaths mean restarting the ramp up to summon minions again which can be a hassle with area denial and uptime. The three I really wouldn't bother with at all are: Uber Maven: Her standstill beams shut off regen. This kills the AG and Spectres. Her teleports are also kinda annoying Uber Sirus: The first few phases storm with his teleports is just too obnoxious. I did it before in 3.18 but it was a struggle and not fun. The degen grounds shut off regen so this threatens AG. Uber Exarch: No counterplay to the meatball phase unless you can reliably tank 3-4 hits with a Ruby Flask and/or you cheese it with skeletons or something. The add's slam is also something to watchout for in melee range. Area denial hurts Other Uber matchups are: Uber Eater: Easiest, most fair fight. Uber Cortex: RNG Map mods but doable. +1 Strikes op here Uber Shaper: Managing area denial is hard, I prefer to put them in the center of the screen to allow more outer circular movement to dodge and kite. Maps between phases let you cap off minions and Vaal. Just don't die... Uber Uber Elder: Another fair fight that can spiral out of control with deaths but even the sloppiest portals can brute force it. Hard to kill elder poop adds with no minions Guardian Blessing Support. Early on I couldn't sustain a max blessing level even with the minion nodes for life regen, phys reduction, meat shield support, convocation regen. Consecrated Ground worked but still too much management. Opted to later on move it over to AG from Holy Relic once gemslots got tighter and only leveled it up once he got more regen from Gruthkul's. I didn't bother with Doppelganger Guise only tested 33% less roll, max Alt Blessing degen is still too much outside of Consecrated Ground while moving even with its phys mitigation. Fresh Meat Support. I really wanted to push it with 4.6s-6.4s duration with Anomalous, but it's at odds with things like power charges, Vaal Domination not counting as being summoned, and even higher reliance on melee uptime. The 'variance' leans more toward the lower side unfortunately. I can see a use case if you have a lot of attack speed. Against a dummy target it's definitely worth, but those are pretty rare. +2 Minion Elder Helm. No idea how to craft these, really wanted to get one for AG to boost his life even higher but he largely never needed it. PreAshes, Divergent 40k Life with his life regen net positive from Blessing degen and Gruthkul's, 5% heal per minion death/resummon, Consecrated Ground, Convocation, Decay Ward 2% heal on block, he has a lot of of bulk. Opted to just get a good ES helmet instead. Ashes of the Stars. It cost me 40div for a 30qual one on day 19. You'll mainly only have 14 minions outside of bossing and anything with little uptime will be rough. I think it takes about 8-10 seconds on average to cap out 14 minions which is an eternity. Mostly a "win-more" sort of purchase with caveats. Increases Power Charge gain on hit from 5% to 12%. Very noticable. Frostblink Cooldown reduction on hitting a boss. Lets you blink out back in instantly. Very nice. Stronger Molten Shell for the full 5000 shield without flasks. Lowers Cooldown for Convocation even more. Bread and butter for mapping. Demon Harpy. Demon Harpy physical damage taken debuff from her scream stacks up to 20. The scream itself is 2 cone waves of 6 stacks each for a total of 12. 4s Duration, 9s Cooldown. Some stacks will miss if she's too close. Around 5~ radius, 4 of 12 stacks will miss. All stacks are independent and do not refresh unless you're at 20 and replacing the oldest ones. No idea how much physical damage taken each stack gives as it's not reflected in the ingame character stat sheet. tl;dr: To get all 20 stacks, you need 2 Harpies or 1 with Spell Echo Animate Guardian. Beware Executioner RED RING OF DEATH rare mobs shutting off regen until 50%. Beware chunky corpse explosions. Dom Blow hits won't leave behind corpses but be wary of 10-way Maven boss explodes Beware of big degens notably Sirus Storms and Shaper beam, some of his regen is being reserved by Blessing Support so Convocation him out often. Most big slam attacks have a minon damage penalty but it's good practice to convocate minions out anyway Do not bring him into TOTA as damage spikes very high into oneshot territory for anything in rank 400-1000+. He does nothing for you anyway. Replace him with Stone Golem. Do not bring him into Uber Maven or Uber Sirus. Spectre Survivability. Meat Shield came last with the Corrupted Aegis Aurora. Largely never needed it as they never died in normal content, not even Sim30. Convocation into Consecrated Ground and Alt Feeding Frenzy kept them healthy alongside other layers.