2.2 FlashBack Solo AoF WI Guardian (Dead #1Guardian 2WFB)

NOTE:This is a short brife guide that Ill be putting out, it wont be super flashy becuase I'm also trying to keep my top 10 against all the Scold/Sparker on 2WHC ladder so there might be some infor mation missing. At the very moment I am writing this I sit at lvl 95 and rank 10 overall/ rank 3 in guardian on 2WFBHC. This guide will be repolised at the end of the 2WHC with more videos and more comprehensive indepth guide But Ill be answer every question that you have to ask, if there was something missing or doesnt make sense feel free to ask that as well.

First of all, this very build was made to push ladder on Guardian as a "Tanky Mage", rather than a full suport. There were many reasons that lead me to do this, but most of all is the fact that I enjoy killing mobs alot more, rather than watching my party member do all the jobs and Id actually like to go at my own pace since i tends to get lag out in party.

From a perspective of a guy who has been playing POE for a long time, I would rate this build to be one of the better experience while playing. I have had alot of fun, and I do belive I would beable to do so througout the whole 2WFB with this very setup.

So what is this build all about?
For starter, this build has a very balance between DPS and Defends that work out well together. You can achive high clear speed, high defend, and posibly low amount of FPS at the same time depending on your PC spec. And as for that, this build is not recommended for anyone who has a bad spec, atleast not untill GG manage to fix ground effect particle. Due to the nature of this build, you will find yourself in the middle of a beyond pack taking next to no damge in a -max extra damage map. Everytime Abeyond packs spawn there is it more than likely that you still have a few seconds of icestorm duration raining down on the area, thus stuning them and let you mobilaze or keep stunning them till they die. While on the other hand, you wont be as tanky on single boss that has no ads etc "Colosium Daresso". This is due to the fact that you leech more from many mobs than from one single mob(obv), and also the fact that all the white, blues, rares, exile and even some Uniq Bosses is gonna get stunlock. But you can still do the boss which cant get stun without dying once you get use to how the build works.

What is Whispering Ice?
Whispering Ice is a stave that grants you a uniq skill that can only be achive by using the stave. The skill mechanism is pretty much the same as Firestorm we all know. But on the other hand, whispering ice dmg can be scaled by stacking up int.

Why AoF(Avatar of Fire)?
This is because the way our tree is build, we dont have any point to spare to get out of our way for Cold damge, and also for the fact that the Snowforged is incredibly strong for cold to fire conversion builds.


What is our EHP?
With maxed out gear you will be having about 8.5-10k es depending on how good your gloves and jewels are. From the tree it might seems like we have very little %ES, but we also pasively gain a good amount from the Intelligece that we use to scale our DMG with.

And about the other defendses?
The other defendses that we have are the high amount of resistances, and the 2 curses with 30% curse effectiveness<20 from pasive and 10 from blasphemy %quality> and about 30%phys reduction from armour+Unwavering Faith.

Our elemental resistances would be passive at 81 81 82 max, and 82 82 83 max is achivable with lvl 21 purity of each elements. WIth flask up(without Alchemist nodes) you will have additional +6 to all elemental resistances


For curse choices we chose warlords mark to get Life and Mana leech + the ability to gain endurance charges and also to reduce the enemies stun recovery and flat %chance to stun on hit. So with our high frequense hit rate from Ice Storm almost any mobs in a map is stunlockable, this goes from white, blue, rares, some uniqs, all Vegan mission and all ghosts. Maps bosses have rather a high amount of HP and sutn threashold and as well as reduced curse effectivnes on them, so most of the time they are pretty much imune to stunlock effect.

lvl 95 Tree


lvl 100 Tree


Bandits


EndGame Gear


Flasks

As far as gearing goes, here are what that you should get first


Jewels
We use 2 Uniq Jewels. One is Bruce Force Solution which sit at the exit of templar to the left side of the tree. The other is Fertile Mind which convert all the dext between Shadows and Ranger area. the 3 extra jewels slot is supose to have %to all resistances(no exception) and the other good mods of your choicing(%es, differens type of cast speed modifier, area damage, spell damage, int.

Imortall Call Setup
As you can see, I am not using CWDT. CWDT have a backdrawn were you can only have your active skills gem at the same lvl as CWDT itself or lower. THus we lose out some duration from Imortall Call Setup. And as far as procing goes, some times it procs too soon which can leave us vulnerable beacuse Imortall Call would be on cooldown when it actually matter.

Cast on stun however allow us to have a higher lvl imortallcall, and it procs alot less often but everytime it procs I would usually be gaining more charges during the Imortall Call duration allready.

As for the Bone Offering, it was meant to act as a counter to ward chain vaal DD from beyond mobs and boxes. How it works is that usually when you got hit by one dd corpse and survie youd usualy get stun as a low life character, thus giving a chance for the offering skills to destroys the corpses that are closes to you. Thus saving you from the Vaal DD since the offering skills activate in an instance and detonate the rest of the corpse that would or could have explode on your feet.

Leveling Section
As you can see, the build rely heavenly on some expensive uniq, but that doesnt mean you cant lvl up and play without them. I myself wasnt able to get a shavs till second day of 2WHC. This is how I goes about and lvl it

For lvling you will be lvling with anyspells into flame totem into fire storm. As soon as you hit lvl 33 you should equiv your whispering ice.

depeding on the amount of socket you have, you will be adding faster casting->elemental focus->cold to fire-> spellecho->fire pen.

At this point you should start equiping gears with some int and ES on them. This was pretty much what i use as I lvl up

What your tree should looks like in merc


Later on we just rush to cover the basic part of the tree, picking the int nodes and try to reach all the mana reservation nodes and get dual curse clasphemy. At this point we will still be using clarity as for we have MoM as a medigation we need high enought mana regen to sustain the dmg taken.

Ascendeny points
The only thing important here to note is that only Prayer of Glory and Radiant Faith would be any use for you at the very moment since you still dont have shavs. So you can save merc lab till later when you are high lvl or could already get a shavs and ready to go low life.

Gear To Start out as lowlife
if you dont have high enought currency to get all the gear pices I mention you needed for endgame, but have enought for shavs you could still go low life. The gear would consist of high Energy Shield, Intellegence, and posibly high resistances since your purity is probably low. Unless you allready buy a high lvl ones.

Enchantment
Gloves:anything but summon base affixes, you dont want to get chained in maps.
Boots:Elemental Penetration If you havent kill recently
Helmet:Temporalchain enchant

What to rolls on maps?
In generall, you want to roll for the 80+quant and 20+packsize. Any damage combo is mostly fine becuase enemies will get stunlock thus having less to no chance to deal the increased dmg from maps multiplier to you. However, you should be avoiding these 5 Mapmods at all time: Blood magic, Monster Stun Imunity, Curse Imune, No leech and Elemental reflect. I was able to sustain t13+ for quite a long time beacus I was able to roll some insane dmg mods with high packsize that people generally want to skip over.

Videos


EDIT:Rip at rank 1 Guardian. Died to flame bearers becuase I wasnt paying attention, 100% avoidable.

EDIT:Fixed wordings, finalised lvl 100 tree. Added some more indepth lvling tree and as well some gameplay and build explanation vid.

It's a shame that noone is paying attention to this build. Looks super strong.

If i get decent performance with Ice storm i'll play this build next league.
Thank you for your post and explanation!!!

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jardocanthate wrote:

It's a shame that noone is paying attention to this build. Looks super strong.

Yes, it is. But requirement of Shavrone is the barrier, not many can break through. Expensive build, hence unpopular.

Why are you not using a lvl 1 clarity? It is a free 1% phys damage reduction for a single gem slot...

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Gosen wrote:

"

jardocanthate wrote:

It's a shame that noone is paying attention to this build. Looks super strong.

Yes, it is. But requirement of Shavrone is the barrier, not many can break through. Expensive build, hence unpopular.

Very true, but I think what might help a bit is that I doubt Shavs needs to be 5l. His defensive setup in it is good, sure. But with how WI works for you main skill, I think this would work with the cheapest Shavs you can find. (Not that it's that cheap, just saying)