[3.14] Gannicus, God of the Arena – Deathless Uber Elder for Everyone

1. There is a section in the guide called "Why Gladiator?". Doesn't that answer your question ?
2. Blade storm is an attack and not a spell. As I state many times in the guide it benefits greatly from attack speed.
3. Of course I auto attack. Why wouldn't I?

Since you're very new to the game I suggest sticking to the build (and re-reading the guide) and not making your own. It's a complex game and you need time to learn how things work.

How about Ungil's Harmony as an amulet? Reduce to crit multi doesn't imply if you are wearing Maligaro's gloves.
EDIT: found that flat phys gives way more inc than that unique and you have additional perks of having more affixes like life etc.

I guess I was expecting block to be more efficient, with 78% chance and 5k life I'm really struggling at endgame.

Nah, definitely not for me. Same experience was with Hank the tank. I get it that it seems easy to you, maybe you guys spend tens of exalts on character, but don't have currency or patience for it. And it is just rip after rip, while being ok geared, anything else to add it would be in exalts range at least, weapons even themselves are near exalt worth and survivability is abysmal, you block, but the minute you don't it's a good bye in current meta of 243235 mobs with 2342552 stuff throwing at you.

Tens of exalts ? With about 15ex worth of gear you can farm Uber Elder deathless. Swords are more expensive this league but you can get a good block sword and a Rigwald's and still be fine.
Anyway, no build is for everyone.

there will be likely much less shaper swords next league. any thoughts if use it as a league starter in that case?

GGG has stated that most of the shaper/elder mods will be available as conqueror (or whatever the new bosses are called) mods. So the block chance swords will probably still be available just from a different boss.
Rigwald's command will also be available as a cheap unique.

This build is performing wonderfully for me, first character over level 90, and in hardcore to boot.

I did up to about 82 with less than 10c of gear. Dropped an exalt on a 6l chest and really enjoyed 5x'ing my damage just like that.

I'm still using a Prismatic+Scaeva for weapons, and a Thief's Torment ring so my gear has a long ways to improve still.

I have 2ex raw and a third in loose chaos. Maybe a 4th if I convert all my other currency up. Multimodding a weapon is pretty much instant bankruptcy. Is fossil crafting viable? I don't see any fossils that would help or hinder rolling the block-while-dualwielding mod, but I'm not an expert and not sure if the information I'm looking at is good.

Congrats on getting 90+ in HC.
I'm not an expert on crafting but I don't think that you can get shaper/elder mods with fossils. If you're feeling lucky you can try chaos spamming a good shaper base. This is pure gambling though.

As a less expensive alternative you can use a Rigwald's command in your main hand. Or get a corrupted amulet with block chance and use a normal sword. You'd still lose a few % block chance like that though which is ok for standard but might be bad for HC. Maybe an Anvil for even more max block ?

Thank you for the build guide. I know a few have asked about posting a leveling tree and the OP's response of it being a pain to maintain with all the league changes, which I understand. But can anyone or OP advise on what part of the tree was rushed first, as in left side sword wheel or right side sword notables? I think that will help out to at least early on spec points. Thank you

Hey, if we talk about play on Standard league, so is it viable to use Legacy Bringer Of Rain and legacy Anvil? Or it will be too weak?

I assume you mean the quadruple legacy version (i.e. the first one). Well blind won't give you any damage and faster attacks isn't that great so you'll lose DPS. You'll also lose some life compared to a good chest/helmet combo.
On the other hand you get permanent endurance charges and the added block chance means that you can use normal swords to make up the loss of DPS at least partially.
It'll work I suppose but a good Elder chest is so much better these days. You get mana cost reduction (essential for running all auras), tons of life and you can even get a 7L. Someone posted a great one a couple of pages back. Old OP items like the BoR as not as OP any more with all the power creep since they were introduced.

The Anvil (legacy or not) is a good defensive choice for HC. I wouldn't use it in normal, you just lose too much speed, life and DPS.