[3.18] Davydavidsson's Armour Stacker Champion | 90% ele Res | >1M armour | 10M~600M DPS

I've had a bunch of people checking me out on poe.ninja and asking me about this build. I personally also feel very content with this build, and it arguably might just be the greatest build I've come up with so far, so I've decided to make this little write-up.

Summary:
This build aims to maximize armour through aura stacking to scale damage with Replica Dreamfeather and to offset the downside of Doryani's Prototype for a versatile build that is both tanky and aggressive in both map clearing and boss fights.

Inspiration:
I always like to invent my own builds that are off-meta and explore new avenues. Normally speaking I'd wind up playing some mediocre build with poor defensive layers. This time I wanted to play something more tanky, so I took the newly buffed defensive auras, mixed in some synergistic uniques, and the rest is history.

Pros:
- Fast clear speed
- Very few map mods you can't run
- Respectable bossing dps
- Very resilient to most damage
- Great for party play
- Playable on a middle-sized budget (2ex~3ex) with much room for investment
- Smooth levelling
- Does not use March of the Legion

Cons:
- Weak to damage over time
- Relies heavily on build-enabling uniques
- Difficult to optimize without refined understanding of damage calculation

HC viable: yes
SSF viable: no

Stats (lvl 95, ~5 exalts):
- 4.2K life
- 350K armour idle, 1M armour with flasks
- 90% fire and cold res
- 90% physical and lightning hit reduction
- 13M peak Sirus dps (24M if you double dip Smite)
- All endgame content viable (comprehensive list in FAQ's)

Stats (lvl 100, ~200 exalts):
- 705K armour idle, 2M armour with flasks
- >350M Sirus dps (>600M if you double dip Smite)

Top dps champions week 2


Top dps champions week 7


Me, hitting #2 on Scourge dps ladder for shits and giggles (don't try this at home):
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?time-machine=week-13&sort=dps

3.16:
Sirus A9
Sirus A8
Maven
Uber Atziri
Uber Elder
Aul D650
Simulacrum 30/30
Feared at once

3.17 (WIP):

Final version of my build in 3.16:
https://pastebin.com/MUyZxbF1

Final version of my build in 3.17:
https://pastebin.com/5E4crrgu

3.18 baseline version:
https://pastebin.com/6KaNnYNh
This PoB includes two alternative trees; one with Elemental Overload and one with Precise Technique. The version with Elemental overload is easier to get started with and has access to more life nodes. The one with Precise Technique requires more finetuning, but can pull off more dps and has greater speed.

Keep in mind that for Elemental Overload you'll want to keep the Precision level at the minimum required to cap youy hit rate, whereas for Precise Technique you'll want to maximize the Precision level.

Ascendancy:
I picked Champion because it has great synergy with armour, auras, and provides permanent Fortify.

Smite:
We use Smite because it gives you an aura, which synergizes well with increased aura effect. It also has a very respectable added damage effectiveness, which is the main way this build scales damage.

Molten Shell:
Eventhough Molten Shell won't do any damage in this build; it is still the premier defensive layer. Because we have more than 50K armour, Molten Shell will always shield you for 10K damage, effectively tripling your lifepool when activated.


Body Armour:
Doryani's Prototype is the centerpiece of this build. To get the most damage out of this item, you need to minimize your lightning resistance so that you and, most importantly, nearby enemies will no lightning resistance. You'll also want to maximize your armour to mitigate incoming lightning damage. Note that, unlike with resistances, armour only reduces damage from hits and does not reduce Damage over Time. This means you will take lightning damage over time as though you had 0% lightning resistance.


Weapons:
Because we're stacking armour, Replica Dreamfeathers will be our obvious weapons of choice. The attack speed roll is the most important one to maximize, because this build does not scale off of physical damage that much.


Helmet:
Alpha's Howl will help out a bunch with mana reservation, additionally it will also boost a couple of your auras. The best enchantments to get are aura effect for Smite, Defiance Banner effect, and attack speed with Ancestral Protector.

Altenatively, there are also very good rare helmets with similar mods that can amplify your auras even more.


Amulet:
Ashes of the Stars does a lot for this build; it helps out with mana reservation, it adds a level to your skill gems, which is especially strong with aura gems. The boost to gem quality also works very nicely with a couple of the skills, especially some alternative quality gems like Anomalous Defiance Banner and Divergent Determination.

If you need more mana reservation efficiency you can annoint Charisma. Otherwise you can annoint either Sovereignty or Influence (whichever one you have not allocated).


Boots:
Doryani's Delusions (evasion, with Purity of Ice/Fire, and lightning damage) work great for this build. Stormrider boots can give even more stats, but require you to finetune your accuracy (especially with Precise Technique).


Gloves:
For gloves you'll want to use rare gloves with some life, resistances, and maybe attack speed or attributes. If possible you should also get additional strike targets, which allows you to double dip smite and is a huge clearing QoL.


Rings:
Thief's Torment is a nice ring to level with, while its lightning resistance reduces your damage, the mana and life sustain it provides paired with this build's defensive layers, will make it very hard for anything to kill you.

Alternatively you can roll life-on-hit mods on Elder/Hunter influenced rings, which will provide similar sustain, and you can craft mana cost reduction on them to circumvent mana costs.


Belt:
The belt is another flex slot in this build; the main aim is just to get some life, resistances, and maybe some armour. Alternatively you could use a String of Servitude with increased Determination/Grace effect, but only if you don't need any other stats. It goes without saying that Mageblood is best in slot, more so even than for most other builds.

You'll see that some people might opt for Arn's Anguish, which is a valid alternative, as it provides some useful stats and Brutal Charges. I personally don't use it though, as I prefer to have a rare belt with more stats (in the absence of a Mageblood), and because it's a bit of a hassle to generate endurance charges on this build.

Jewels:
This build uses quite a lot of Cluster jewels, these are the passive mods you'll be looking for (only introspection is strictly necessary):
- Introspection (x6)
- Combat Rhythm for more mobility
- Martial Prowess/Momentum for more accuracy
- Bloodscent for Rage

If you want to use a Watcher's Eye, you should look for these mods:
- Lightning resistance penetration with Wrath
- Attack Speed with Precision
- Life gain on hit with Vitality
- Movement Speed with Grace
- Physical conversion with Wrath


Flasks:
Flasks are not hard to get, but very important for this build, because damage scales with Evasion and Armour. Use these flasks with these mods to maximize your damage, or with whichever ailment prevention you prefer:
- Anti-bleed life flask
- Rumi's Concoction
- Stibnite Flask with increased effect
- Jade Flask with increased effect
- Basalt Flask with increased effect
- Attack speed during effect
- Increased Evasion during effect
- Increased Armour during effect

Auras:
These auras are of core value to this build, it should not be difficult to reserve them:
- Defiance Banner (free reservation)
- Grace
- Determination
- Wrath
- Purity of Fire
- Purity of Ice (if you have Melding of the Flesh and can cover your resistances with just one Purity; you won't need to run both)

These auras (in descending order of impact) mostly just increase dps and QoL, but require some planning to fit into your build. Keep in mind that Precision and Vitality can easily be reserved using Arrogance Support:
- Precision (unless you can cap accuracy without it)
- Haste
- Vitality (mostly just for Watcher's Eye)

Double dipping Smite:
Every time you smite, there is a strike component and an AoE component; when a target gets hit by the strike component, they won't also get hit by the AoE component of that smite. If your smite targets additional nearby enemies, you can smite the ground near your target, so that they get hit by both the AoE component of the original smite as well as the strike component of the smite copy; you'll deal effectively 80% more single-target damage this way.

There are several ways to get additional strike skill targets (you'll only need one in order to double dip on a single target, but having more will greatly increase your clear speed):
- Tier 1 Searing Exarch implicit for gloves (tier 5 gives two additional strike targets instead)
- Hunter prefix for gloves (elevated gives two additional strike targets instead)
- Tribal Fury passive
- Ancestral Call Support
- Ancestral Cry (this will not work with Multistrike Support)

Molten Shell:
To maximize your Molten Shell uptime, you can bind it to whichever mouse button you use to walk around with; this way it gets cast pretty much off cooldown. For specific bosses with telegraphed burst damage abilities you can bind it to something else; for example when you want to want to facetank the Phoenix Boom or Sirus Maze. If the map feels rippy, you should keep a couple flasks up during the Molten Shell downtime.

Lightning Damage over Time:
As mentioned before, armour only reduces damage from hits, and not damage over time. This means that Doryani's Prototype will make you take lightning damage over time as though you had 0% lightning resistance. Fortunately there are not many sources of lightning damage over time in the game, but you should still know and beware of them, these are most notably:
- Shaper Beam
- Baran Tiles
- Boss in Mineral Pools Map (just don't run that map, you'll die every time)

Map mods:
Because this build is very resilient to many damage types, it can run pretty much any map mod/combination of map mods except for elemental damage reflect (unless you have reflect immunity). Besides that you should keep in mind that aura effect reduction might uncap your elemental resistances, Enfeeble might unproc your Precise Technique, and maximum resistance reduction will make you take more than double cold and fire damage.

Party play:
This build is great for party play, especially with other lightning damage builds; you provide a lots of defensive auras, you take the targets' lightning resistance down to -200%, you can shock, intimidate, and taunt targets. Keep in mind that your damage will be reduced if someone runs Purity of Lightning and/or Purity of Elements.

Gem Swaps:
When mapping you can swap out Ruthless Support for Behead Support, which massively boosts your clearspeed by extending your range and also gives you a nice Headhunter effect. When you want to run a map with anti-leech, you can also swap it out for Lifetap Support.

Adrenaline:
When you're about to face a boss, you can swap to a secondary weaponset with an Arrogance Support setup that gets you just below 50% life to proc your Adrenaline and swap back before the fight starts. Keep in mind not to socket any auras into your main weapon set for this.

- Pick up Smite, Ancestral Call Support, and Added Fire Damage Support
- Pick up Herald of Ash and Herald of Purity
- Kill all bandits
- Path your way towards Tribal Fury, drop Ancestral Call Support
- Pick up Unstoppable Hero ascendancy and Fortify Support
- Path your way into Feed the Fury and Fuel the Fight
- Pick up Multistrike Support and Faster Attacks Support
- Path your way to elemental Overload
- Pick up Foritude ascendancy, drop Fortify Support
- Path your way to Iron Reflexes
- Once you transition to Replica Dreamfeathers, swap over to Determination and Grace
- Pick up Inspirational ascendancy
- Do Uberlab whenever you want and pick up First to Strike, Last to Fall ascendancy

Useful uniques for levelling:
- Thief's Torment (I still used it going into red maps)
- Tabula Rasa (duh)
- Goldrim (goes without saying)
- Wake of Destruction
- Any strong melee weapon

Stat priority:
These are the stats which scale your dps the most (in descending order of impact):
- Aura effect
- Negative lightning resistance/lightning resistance penetration
- Flat lightning damage
- Attack speed
- Flat evasion
- Flat armour
- Increased armour
- Increased evasion

Keep in mind that this build does not scale well on increased damage of any source, due to Replica Dreamfeather.

Furthermore, in damage calculation a resistance will never be regarded as being less than -200%; i.e. if your target has -180% lightning resistance and you have 20% lightning resistance penetration, neither lowering their resistance, nor increasing your penetration will further increase your damage output.

Also keep in mind that Doryani's Prototype will lock your target's lightning resistance value; exposure, Elemental Weakness, and Conductivity will not reduce their lightning resistance.

These are the stats which you want to fill out for your defenses (in descending order of importance):
- Capped cold and fire resistances
- Life
- 300K armour (should not be hard for this build)
- >30% chaos resistance (only relevant for applicable content)

For sustain in late game content life-gain-on-hit will be more valuable than life leech, because life leech is capped by our relatively small life pool. On the other hand, this build can leverage life-gain-on-hit very well due to it's naturally high attack rate and area coverage.

Alternative quality gems:

Supreme Ego: