[2.6 viable] Aegis Aurora Gladiator relying on Gratuitous Violence

This is a modern and efficient build based on a build that used to rock on open beta. It is mostly a part of history, but new updates have made this build quite efficient again. It does rely on a legacy unique, so it used to be Standard-only, but it changed with the Legacy league. This build does not look like a build that will be nerfed soon.

Power:
In most situations, the build can handle any amount of incoming damage, making it possible to facetank almost all enemies. 75% of hits recover over 700 energy shield instead of dealing damage. This makes most monsters and many bosses completely trivial. The clear speed is not bad, but I have seen many faster clearers. It gets slower with more players in party.

DPS is hard to estimate with Blade Flurry, but my guess is somewhere above 50K.

I was able to defeat the Eater of Souls, God's Chosen, The Infernal King, Ambrius (was completely trivial), elemental warbands, Izaro, Fragment of Winter and most other bosses without death.

The main flaw in defence is that there's no way to protect from degeneration and very strong attacks can be a problem too. Very strong attacks can be reasonably avoided by escaping, Blade Flurry can be quickly stopped to charge away.

I had problems to defeat Rigwald (he inflicts a really nasty degeneration, the rest can be facetanked), Shock and Horror and The Goddess (never quite managed to get away from the degeneration beam), Prodigy of Pain and chaos warbands (obvious problem with dysfunct energy shield). I mean I have managed to defeat those, but after some deaths. I have not tried the Guardians, the Shaper nor Uber Atziri.

No map mod is impossible, but Rust (reduced block and armour) and combinations of hard mods are usually a problem.

In PvP, this build is no prodigy, but is not entirely terrible either. Most PvE builds can be defeated easily, but when it comes to facing PvP builds...

It is also quite GPU friendly.


Basic function:
Legacy Aegis Aurora, with 4% of armour recovered as energy shield on block is the basis of this build's defence. Without it, it's next to useless. Using this item efficiently requires tons of block, spell block, armour and energy shield. Getting that much armour while having high energy shield requires using Grace and Iron Reflexes. Spell block can be easily obtained with Gladiator's acendancy skill Versatile. Gladiator has another useful skill, Gratuitous violence, that makes all bleeding enemies killed explode. Bleeding can be exploited with Bloodlust support to deal far more damage, but it has to be added by something else than the primary attack. But with so many blocking, counterattack skills trigger a lot, renewing the bleeding. Although the build is not using Chaos Inoculation, it is on full life all the time, so Melee damage on Full Life can be used to further increase the damage.



Passives:
It is essential to grab Versatile and Gratuitous violence ascendancy passives. It leaves space for two ascendancy points. Versatile grants free max spell block if there's enough block. Gratuitous violence is like free Infernal Blow, but it needs the enemies to bleed and does nice chain reactions (handily removing corpses).

The passive tree requires collecting a lot of block nodes, armour nodes and health nodes (Duelist and Marauder have plenty of them). Energy shield nodes are usually too far away and I found them less efficient as shield defences nodes.

Gratuitous violence can be made stronger only with pure physical damage nodes, which are, unfortunately mostly in the Shadow area. On the other hand, shadow's energy shield nodes are quite useful, because Grace is the main source of armour.

Link



Skills:
I have found Blade Flurry to be the most useful. It has been nerfed twice, but it still has good damage and many other advantages. It has a good range, making it possible to fight dangerous enemies from a safe distance. It distributes damage quite suitably, making Gratuitous Violence start blowing monsters up quickly. It also can be interrupted quickly, whenever a danger appears. The obvious supports are Melee Physical Damage and Attack Speed. Melee Physical Damage on Full Life is useful, because enemies rarely get through energy shield. Bloodlust is also useful, but it requires a method to apply bleed by some other means (read on). I also use Increased Area of Effect, because it allows attacking from a safe distance.

Using Grace is mandatory. Another possible auras are Determination and Discipline, but I found them unnecessary and prefer to use Hatred. The mana cost of most skills is small, so a level 4 Enlighten isn't necessary.

A useful skill to cause most enemies to bleed before the combat starts is Lightning Strike. It shoots a lot of bolts, hitting many enemies. Chain is a useful support to make it hit more enemies and distribute its (low) damage better. Slower Projectiles and Physical Projectile Attack Damage are good, but optional supports. It can initiate the chain reaction by itself when fighting weak enemies, but it is mostly used just to distribute bleed.

Cast when Damage Taken to cast Immortal Call isn't viable, because the build is supposed to take damage all the time. Cast when Stunned does the job better. I found Vortex to be useful to add to the link, its damage is poor here but it chills enemies and prevents them from hitting shortly again.

Riposte and Reckoning are highly useful to maintain bleed on enemies (especially bosses, most enemies do not survive until the bleed expires). I found Rallying Cry useful to regain mana in some cases and protect squishy allies.

Shield Charge with Fortify can be used to move around and make enemies bleed (allowing to skip Lightning Strike if it is a small pack). Leap Slam can be used to avoid traps (labyrinth, PvP).

Golems are unneeded.



Gear:
Legacy Aegis Aurora is mandatory.


Armour needs to be something with good armour or evasion and energy shield. 6-link is nice, but not necessary.


A good amulet is The Anvil, getting enough block without it needs too many sacrifices on the passive skill tree.


Rings should be both Ming's Heart, chaos damage is the main way how damage gets past the defences. It also increases damage nicely.


The weapon of choice is a rare weapon with Vagan's Causes Bleeding on Hit crafted mod.


Boots, gloves and belt can be rares or uniques, good uniques are Aurseize (reistances, good magic find, common enough to find a pair with Vulnerability on Hit on poe.trade) and physical Doryani's Invitation (the leech is handy, resistances are nice).


Flasks aren't really important, some life and mana are not bad to fight enemies whose attacks cannot be blocked. Some of them should be able to remove bleed (bleed is not such a problem, but Corrupting Blood is). Forbidden Taste is useful because its drawback is weaker than regeneration, it allows to survive bad situations.


Some intelligence and mana leech has to be obtained via magic or rare jewels.



Playstyle:
Rolling around with Shield Charge, hitting small packs with it and using Blade Flurry to blow them all up. If more enemies appear, using Lightning Strike to make them bleed and starting a chain reaction with Blade Flurry. Striking bosses repeatedly until they die, charging away if they prepare for a particularly heavy blow.



Development:
Simply pick up the passives skills as it suits you, the build could work for any shield using fighter without great difficulties.

Past:
Before Ascendancy, the build worked quite fine on a Shadow as well as Duelist, using a double legacy Bringer of Rain to get enough block chance and Stone of Lazhwar, Rainbowstride and rare jewels to get the spell block. There was no equivalent to Gratuitous violence.
Before Blade Flurry was added, Static Strike did its job, distributing the damage good enough.

Thanks for reading my build guide!

Imposible kill uber aziri?

"

Mrfreeman250 wrote:

Imposible kill uber aziri?

I have not tried, I see the rewards as too much of a lottery. I could do the normal Atziri and didn't have much problems with her (it took a few seconds to end one phase), but I was afraid of those 1-hit KO attacks that kill if blocking fails (I do not like to place my trust in moving away).