[2.3] Aegis DoT EQ Gladiator -- Super Tanky - Any Map Mod - High Clearspeed

My internet sucks, so I get pretty frequent lag spikes. A lot of the time, this resulted in me dying, which got a little irritating. Thus, I made a build that was essentially invincible without relying on things like leech or just killing mobs before they got to you.

The build started with the Aegis Aurora shield, which provides the bulk of our defenses. This thing basically lets you AFK in the middle of everything and take no damage, while also killing them with counter-attack skills.

Aegis, however, restricts us to 1-hand weapons, as it is a shield, meaning that our damage won't be anywhere near as high as a build using Marohi Erqi or similar weapons. This turned out to not be much of an issue, though, as there are some little-used synergies this build takes advantage of to achieve pretty stellar DPS.

Pros:
- Can do any map mod (though vuln+phys reflect is a little sketchy)
- Virtually invincible
- Insane AoE clearspeed through Gratuitous Violence
- Good single target through poison stacking with Breath of the Council
- Counters many of the game's more annoying enemies (porcupines, spell casters, necros)
- No corpses saves a lot of hassle and potential danger
- Safe against both physical and elemental damage (unlike Juggernaut)


Cons:
- Damage is a little lower than a 2h build
- Costs a 3-4 exalts to get started

Currently filling out the Bloody Bludgeon cluster next to Iron Grip, after that will be jewel sockets and then endurance charges.

Note: Don't worry about taking the shield or armor nodes while leveling, as those are really only need once we start using Aegis at level 66.


Bandits: Oak, Oak, Oak

Leveling: For skills, I used Cleave until I got Sunder, then switched to Earthquake at level 28.
Helpful items to have are Limbsplit, Geofri's Baptism, and The Cauterizer, as well as the Goldrim, Wanderlust, and Tabula Rasa that you should be using on any character.

We use the Gladiator ascendancy for the block buffs and the explosions from Gratuitous Violence.

In normal, you can either pick up Painforged or Gratuitous Violence; at this point you should be facerolling the game with leveling uniques so it doesn't matter too much.

In cruel, take whichever you didn't take in normal. I did cruel lab

In merciless, take Versatile Combatant. This will help significantly when running Uber Lab for your last two points, as you can block many of Izaro's mechanics.

In Uber Lab, take Violent Retaliation. The movement speed is very nice for mapping, and the extra damage helps a lot with bosses. You can also cheese some bosses to stack this incredibly quickly (explained below in "Fun Facts").

Earthquake: Melee Phys > Less Duration > Fortify > Melee Damage on Full Life > Rapid Decay

Rapid Decay isn't super important, and a 6-link should only be of major concern after buying all of the luxury gear mentioned above.

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Warchief: Bloodlust > Conc Effect > Melee Phys

If you're like me and can't be bothered to get the right colors for this on a pure ES item, Faster Attacks is good enough.

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Reckoning + Vengeance: Melee Phys > Endurance Charge on Melee Stun

This may seem like a strange inclusion, but these two counter-attack skill actually do a ton of damage and generate endurance charges quite reliably. Plus, there's not really anything you'd use anyways, so why not?

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CWDT (level 6): Immortal Call > Vuln (quality is important on this) > Increased Duration

I run Vuln on a CWDT rather than blasphemy for a few reasons. First, it allows me to run other auras instead. Second, we will often be out of blasphemy's range anyways, as the DoTs do a lot of our killing from afar. Finally, we don't really need the extra damage for anything but bosses and tough rares, at which point it will trigger anyways through CWDT.

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CWDT (level 3): Tempest Shield > Flame Golem

This is more for convenience than anything, but still useful.

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Hatred, Herald of Ash, and Leap Slam should go wherever you have room left.

- You can block reflected damage, though it can't trigger the ES regen from Aegis.
- Bleed and Poison damage aren't reflected
- You can stack Violent Retaliation really quickly on some bosses, like Dominus or Daresso, by standing in fast-hitting abilities (Dom's lightning projectiles / Daresso's sword cloud things), for extra damage and ES regen.