[2.5 Guardian] Sekkna's Low Life Penta Curse Quill Rain Support [HC]

I'll include screenshots once I get gems leveled up.

What I have at the moment:
- 6200 Energy Shield.
- 15 000 Armour
- 10 000 Evasion

- 81% Fire Resistance
- 81% Cold Resistance
- 82% Lightning Resistance
- 72% Chaos Resistance (Hideout. 12% Merciless)


What is coming up:
Aura levels, 2x jewel and Evasion ES Passives.
With these I'm expecting to Reach around 6.5-7k ES and 15k Evasion.
Level 21 Purities will bump the max resistances to 83%, since at level 23 they give 5% max resistance and at the same time the 60% effectiveness kicks in with and extra percent.

Here's a small clip showcasing the defenses at level 88 in Merciless Dried Lake, note the time it takes for es to start regenerating once I get out of the harm's way. The downside is that any ailment causing a degen will prevent the start of regeneration (Burn, Bleed, Poison).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9mnapp8Ic

Since we are using seven unique items, it is kinda easy to gear and replicate, but at the same time it sets high requirements for the remaining items.


Uniques:


Note the ring corruptions. I will talk more about these in the Jewel section.

Rares that I'm currently using:


What you should be searching for:

A good +1 Curse amulet. I went long with a +1 curse Tear of Purity, until I found a good enough rare. The new one allowed me to swap my other gear aswell and drop a 30 strength passive resulting in around 300-400es gain.

For the rares you should look for the following stats (listed in order of importance):
- Resists to ele weakness cap you
- Energy Shield
- Chaos Resistance
- Strength

Alpha's Howl:
All three Purities + Grace.

Purities have to be in an Alpha's Howl to get to level 23. Technically you could switch one of them to Discipline but I don't see it worth it. Also the fourth aura has to be a 50% one to not screw the reservations. And well, Grace benefits more of the levels than Determination. Technically you could run Haste instead of Grace, but that would be a 10-15k evasion dropped for a little bit of speed...

Quill Rain & Shavronne's Wrappings:
Curse setup one: Ice Shot - GMP - Curse on Hit - Enfeeble - Temporal Chains - Blind
Curse setup two: Ice Shot - GMP - Curse on Hit - Warlord's Mark - Damage Curse - Damage Curse

1) First of all, keep your Ice Shots at level 1.
2) My logic is to keep the defensive curses in one setup in one setup which you spam all the time. Some say Enhance would be the sixth gem of choice. My decision is to use Blind.
3) I find Warlord's Mark really useful since it grants your party: Leech, Endurance charges conduited for everyone (Immortal Call) and lastly you actually stun things with your no damage Ice Shot.
4) Damage curses are up to what your party needs. Most likely a combination of Assassins Mark, Vulnerability, Elemental Weakness, Frost Bite, Flammability or Conductivity.

Boots & Gloves:
Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Vaal Haste - Increased Duration
Blood Magic - Determination - Discipline & separate Blink Arrow

1) Keep your CWDT IC at a level where you can manually use Vaal haste.
2) Blink Arrow has to be separated from Blood Magic

There are two main properties you want from Jewels
1) Increased Energy Shield
2) +2 Mana Gained on Hit

What makes this complicated is the fact that they can't spawn on same jewel as MGoH is specific for Viridian Jewels, which can't roll Energy Shield

You will be just fine without MGoH until you start encountering Less Regen in maps.
Your Ice shot Mana Cost is 9 so in a No Regen Map you'd actually need 5 jewels to maintain against a single target. Luckily that's a rare occurrence and just one or two of these jewels should do just fine.

Also what I have done is got rings with some nice corruptions. Mana Gained on Hit on the other one saves a jewel socket and Damage Taken Gained as mana, should save us if we have ended up in the middle of a pack with no mana left. The damage taken will restore the mana and you can blink away.

Note that in a No Regen map, you really have to control your use of Blink Arrow.

As for the remaining jewel stats, use them to fill in your resistances and strength.

I decided to simply kill all the bandits at all difficulties for the much desired skill points.

The core Ascendacy points are Randiant Faith, Unwavering Faith and Harmony of Purpose. For the last two points I would suggest going for Time of Need, unless you have compromised something else and have a socket for a War Cry, then Prayer of Glory might be the way to go.

Planned out Skill Tree at level 100

poeurl.com/EZE

Skill Tree suggestion for level 77 which I would see as a good level to spec into the build

poeurl.com/EZF

Leveling:
I have to say leveling is something everyone have to figure out themselves. I went with dual flame totems using Tabula Rasa with Flame Totem - Faster Casting - Controlled Destruction - Elemental Focus - Fire Penetration - Faster Projectiles.

I was able to do Normal and Cruel Labyrinths by myself, but really suggest getting a rush for Merciless. Also Low Life is quite a bad choice for labyrinths so they should be done before the re-spec.

My leveling tree looked something along these lines and cost around 50 re-spec points to spec out of:

poeurl.com/A8P

Couple points to concider when you've respecced and proceed with the tree:

- Aura Effectiveness node at Sovereignty. This should be specced at the moment you get 21 purities, since it puts us at 64% effectiveness and there by bumps the maximum resistances granted by purities to 8%

- If you are not playing consistently with same group of people benefiting from fire Elemental Equilibrium, you might be better of just dropping both Elemental Equilibrium and Avatar of Fire.

- You will most likely have to compromise and give something up to keep the +30 to strength nodes.

I was damn close to just ditching this build idea and just keep going with my life based version because of the amount of compromises I would have to make. Pretty damn glad I still went for it though.

The main problem is the lack of gem sockets:

1) I had to drop Enduring Cry and Frenzy from the gem setup, which is kinda sad waste of Conduit. Luckily it is countered well with the party Conduit Ascendancy. The other chance would be to drop CWDT - Immortal Call.

2) I feel Vaal Haste is too important part of a support to be completely dropped off. It would be more consistent to have two which you could chain in a boss fight. Also Dropping off the second Skill Effect Duration Wheel and Getting the other only at very late levels is very bad for this. But again Compromises.

3) No Vaal Discipline. This is something that might get me killed, but I'm simply too stubborn to give up anything else. If you are going with 5 links you would be able to fit this in. Do what's best for you.

4) Dropping Stone Golem. I had no idea how nice it is to have. It was there for the labyrinths. But damn I'll miss this little fella once he has to make room for six links. 100es regenerated a second is huge.

Gear is also something I'm sure will be argued about:
Alpha's Howl is needed to get enough reduced mana reservation and to get Purities to level 23.
This leads to Discipline having to be on Blood Magic and thereby not gain any extra levels further reducing the amount of ES we have.

Romira's Banquet isn't exactly a necessity, but c'moon constant power charge conduit for your friends and a bit of accuracy to help your terrible aim.

This leads to use of Doedre's Damning, Windscream and a +1 curse corrupted amulet to get the desired five curses. If you're lucky you might get some es on your ammy, but other than that say good bye to it.

Using Windscream also causes a lack of Movement speed. So good luck keeping up with those damn whirling blade builds. I've been lucky enough to get a 6% Movement Speed if you Haven't been hit Recently Enchant on my pair. You could also get a pair corrupted with extra MS. An Alpha's Howl with Reduced Blink Arrow Cool down Recovery is also something I've kept my eyes open for.

Gear-wise I feel quite set, but the skill tree has some points I have to consider.

1) Life nodes. With this build Life = Armour. But since our accuracy is already low the Templar Start area might be better to be changed from Discipline and Training to Precision.

2) Hex Master. Since spamming curses is your only duty, I don't really feel the curse duration is that important, leaving this cluster to be nothing but 10% Curse Effectiveness for three points. I still haven't figured if it will be worth it. At least I'm leaving it to be amongst the very last points spent.

3) Essence Surge. I sure as hell prefer having this, but yeah, your call. Dropping it would give you a chance of getting more es. Your call.

Defense Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9mnapp8Ic
Gorge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuS0e2FUBC4
Dry Peninsula: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQSMwW_lWwA
Haast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHm_r8p5Up8
Bearers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVcm8j2RuIA
Ice Nova Box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngdo7NHPu_c
Palace Dominus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC6Lvwlw75I
Level 100 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcRhJEq2bCs
Abaxoth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MopyAj3fGOo
Shaper Slam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkgASFRfGVY
RIP at level 95 in Essence HC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYJeoE2J7iI These totems were confirmed to be bugged in Patch 2.4.2. "Fixed a bug where the damage dealt by the Herald of the Obelisk variation which created areas of Lightning Clouds had too much variance in how fast it could apply."