800M Peak DPS Golems | Virtually Immortal | Destroys T19 100% Delirium | "Cheap" Aurastacker

Highest DPS in game. Although not budget friendly, in comparison to an Scion Aura Stacking budget, this build is cheap (~500 Ex). This build does not rely on any perfect rolls or super expensive cluster jewels.

Immune to virtually all hits in game.

Can do all maps: including no regen or reflect.

Reflect: Get the two Sibyl's Lament + Soul of Yugul; we run plenty of supplementary DPS auras, dropping two won't break the build.

No Regen: Nothing to regen if you don't take damage.

Low ES without insanely high cost cluster jewels. Vulnerable to high DoTs. The only thing you will die from in this game is higher tier DoT effects (i.e., Sirus storms). Max rank Vitality counters most DoTs in game. If you have Vaal Grace or Discipline available, practically immortal.

Like all Minion based builds, can't PvP or Hall of Grand Masters.

This is a brief introduction to aura stacking. For more detailed coverage, I recommend you to visit: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2913007.

PoE offers an incredible amount of auras in this game, some enhances offensive capabilities, other enhance defensive capabilities, and few can do both. The key strength to this build is to run as many auras as possible. We do this by stacking items, jewels, and passives with reduced mana reserved.

Item example with reduced mana reserved:


A defensive aura example:


An offensive aura example:


We also run cluster jewels that increase aura effectiveness, the more auras you have the more important increasing aura effect is. Because with enough mana reserved, that you can almost run as many auras as you have gem slots available, you can build a character that is extremely both offensively and defensively, therefore making such builds extremely popular and expensive.

A cluster jewel example that increases aura effectiveness:



The intention of this build is to show case a very strong aura stacker without going for the ultra expensive items.

Vaal Anomalous Grace + Divergent Determination + Transcendence + Flat Physical Damage Reduction Stack + Purity Auras (Anomalous Lightning) + Anomalous Dread Banner

Grace and Divergent Determination has been an aura stacking staple. Grace offers dodge while Divergent Determinations gives additional armor based on dodge. With aura effectiveness, this can easily result in 20K+ armor. I currently have ~120K.

Combined with Transcendence (Militant Faith Unique Jewel - High Templar Maxarius), you become virtually immune to Elemental Hits. Transcendence transforms your armor to be applied to Elemental Hits instead of Physical. Combined with 90% Elemental Resistance, T19% 100% Delirium monsters tickle. The largest damage hits in this game are mostly elemental based.

However Transcendence leaves you vulnerable to physical hits, since you no longer have armor to reduce physical hits with. This is why we look for modifiers with flat physical damage reduction.

Anomalous Dread Banner significantly reduces the amount of damage enemies deal with aura effect and enhance.

Flat physical reduction sources: Bone Barrier (10%) + Endurance Charges (4% per) + Pantheons (Up to 16%) + Basalt Flask (15%).

We run Anomalous Grace + Anomalous Purity of Lightning to become shock immune. Shock is the only Elemental Ailment that actually kills.

The build on its face does have low physical damage reduction without flasks. However because most of the high damage hits in this game are elemental, most of the time, it is irrelevant. You can easily double up your defenses by running Flesh & Stone Sand Stance, a Watcher's Eye with two damage taken as elemental mods, and additional endurance charges.

Enhance + Divergent Vitality + Anomalous Discipline + Divergent Clarity

What really drives the damage of this build is the Alternate Quality versions of Vitality, Discipline, and Clarity. With aura effect nodes and quality boosts, they provide absolutely insane DPS. I highly recommend using the crafted bow and quiver setup linked above.

I can solo T16% 100% Delirium with Animate Guardian alone. I run double explosions + double curse on hit.

Helm: Mask of the Stitched Demon.
Chest: Crafted chest with (+1 curse limit, 10% max life to energy shield, explode mod).
Gloves: Asenath's Touch (another curse on hit implicit - I have Elemental Weakness).
Boots: Windshriek or Windstorm (need +1 curse limit).
Weapon: Kingmaker.

Stitched Demon and crafted 10% max life to energy shield provides a very high regeneration that makes him practically immortal.

Kingmaker is a standard AG offensive item.

We need +1 curse boots and +1 curse on chest for the exploding curse glove and the Assassins' Mark on hit ring we run.

This Animate Guardian alone clearly faster than some entire builds I seen in game.

Stone Golem is tanky and gives you an additional gem slot because it does not require Raise Zombies to fulfill the 10 non-golem minion count that Carrion Golem requires. Stone Golem's clearing is subpar.

Carrion Golem is much better at clearing compared to Stone Golem and very similar in single target dps compared to Stone Golem. The only noticable downside with Carrion Golem is that it can die in T19 100% Delirium without management.

Syndicate Operatives blow through weak maps with its projectiles (GMP + Echo), but single target dps is rather subpar relatively speaking.

Generally I would recommend use Carrion Golem as default. Use Syndicate Operative to clear super easy content, and Stone Golem for difficult content.

Balancing budget and effectiveness we are running two 5 Voices large clusters, with standard aura effect medium clusters. You can arrange them in anyway really. You need the reduced mana reservation notables for the three Purities, Discipline, Determination, and Grace. You can start with two each of the mana reserve reductions if you don't have enough mana reserve reductions and eventually go down to one each, or none with mirror budget.

Nothing crazy here.

Taste of Hate - physical damage conversion.
Bottled Faith - regen and damage.
Basalt - flat physical damage reduction.
Quartz Flask - phase + dodge.
Overflowing Chalice - because there are no other useful flasks; you can't benefit from the speed flasks due to the blight unique capping your movement speed.

Some folks will stack more evasion/armor with flasks to benefit more from Transcendence, I haven't found that necessary.

~200M DPS per Golem. ~800M Peak DPS. Most expensive item I have is a 50 Ex 6 Passive aura effect medium cluster.

https://pastebin.com/y8XiiKgb

Note that in the PoB I modelled AG's effect along with various nodes and alternate gems as a flask. It is my best approximation of the effects. Not 100% accurate.

Weapons: Dual Iron Point. Incredible DPS budget items, much better than 30ex convoking wands from a DPS perspective. If you need survivability, consider Iron Point + Whakatutuki o Matua (absolutely incredible shield to slot your AG and support Spectres in). If you Iron Point, you must use Stone Golem - it is a physical spell.

Helmet: Alpha Fowl with no mods is very cheap.

Chest: Victario's Influence. If you run this, you would need either a Minion helmet or two hander 6L to slot your main DPS minion in.

Amulet: You can start with any mana reserve amulet, 6% is fine. Even Jinxed JuJu as a starter can be okay.

Belt: Darkness Enthrone with 2 RMR abyss jewels.

Boots/Gloves: no real alternatives if you want to run the triple large clusters. If you don't, then it is whatever. The more auras you run, the less useful every other node on the tree is. The blight uniques are really good.

Rings: Profane proxy and unset rings are cheap. You don't need high stat rolls on the unset ring to start - get whatever stats you need to meet attribute requirements.

Necessary Alternate Gems: Divergent Determination and Militant Faith with Maxarius/Transcendence. The most important thing is to get the Grace + Divergent Determination + Transcendence going. The rest is just steady improvements and the normal rank 20 Non-Alternate/Vaal versions can work just fine.

Aura Priority (drop the lower/later priority ones if you don't have enough RMR): Dread Banner, Grace (Anomalous and Vaal if possible), Divergent Determination, Vitality (Divergent if possible), Discipline (Anomalous if possible), the three Purities (Divergent Ice and Anomalous Lightning if possible), Haste (Vaal if possible), Pride, Hatred... Once you have this setup, you should understand this build and mix the auras as you see fit with more RMR.