- Out Of Date
Due to the latest balancing changes, we do not recommend playing this build anymore, as it does not meet the high standards we apply to our guides in terms of fun and performance. We are leaving it up as a reference and it might be revived in a later patch.
Introduction
With the release of Trials of the Ancestors Guardian was changed drastically. It will give us all three elemental auras with an increased aura effect. This naturally pairs extremely well with Summon Raging Spirits as they hit incredibly quickly and can make excellent use of all that flat damage.
Credits go out to Healqq from the APRG Discord for the initial idea and concept, much appreciated.
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Build Overview
Pros
+ League Starter This build requires no specific unique items and will scale well as you invest little by little in multiple areas
+ *Bosser * The build will do an immense amount of damage with investment, and as such is suited for bossing
+ * Minion Build * We do little other than summon our minions and avoid mechanics.
Cons
– * Minion Build * We do little other than summon our minions and avoid mechanics.
– Cluster – Since it is essential to keep our raging spirits alive to let them deal their damage we are going to want to use a VERY cheap & easily accessible cluster jewel which is only really needed against the highest end-game content.
Playstyle
The play style is very straightforward. You summon your flaming skulls and they kill enemies. While they are doing that, you avoid getting hit by bit area of effect abilities, ground degens and boss slams. We will want to summon more of them every 4-5 seconds and between that we mostly move and convocation.
Damage scaling and defensive layers
Minion damage is the bread & butter for our damage output since it all comes from our Raging Spirits destroying our enemies. Defensive layers come in the form of life, high block & recovery of life when you block. You can invest more in defence at the cost of offence if you feel the need for it.
PoB and passive skill tree
All my guides use Path of Building. We have a simple guide for you that shows how to import my build into Path of Building, you can find the guide here
Here is the Summon Raging Spirit Guardian Low Budget PoB: https://pobb.in/502L6lIN2e-k
Since the higher budget versions are using other configurations they are separated from the low budget PoB, it is highly recommended to new(er) & casual players alike to stick to the low budget PoB first before moving into the following 2:
Medium Budget: https://pobb.in/8-nyhF4Zr8N6
High Budget: https://pobb.in/sx_wN0-XbbpC
A variation to the medium and high budget PoB’s is to skip the classic “minion helmet” and instead use the Replica Covenant unique chest.
Medium Budget: https://pobb.in/WEeDmIcAB12P
High Budget: https://pobb.in/iBraQobOj0-D
You can find more information on our dedicated page, along with all the recommended gem links.
Affliction Ascendancy
The recommendation is to start with the Warden of the Maji in which we more or less only have use of 1 of the nodes which is Oath of the Maji allowing us to avoid putting gems in our boots for a significant increase in speed as we clear the campaign and early maps.
After this we don’t care for the other nodes but we do want to keep our eyes open for proper Charms that will allow us to move over to the Wildwood Primalist. This is something you’ll do either when you have charms and you’re ready to do the switch or when you become so socket starved as you progress that you no longer benefit from the Maji anymore. The type of Charms we utilize can be a large variety of modifiers a full comprehensive list of these can be found here: https://poedb.tw/us/Charm. My personal recommendation is to aim for the “Onslaught” providing one (Guardian’s prefix) which is located on Intelligence or Strength based Charms, this will give you and nearby allies if 5 or more are in range the 20% attack, cast and movement speed increase! Second priority would be any sort of attributes and/or resistances which will help alleviate pressure on your gearing. This will fit on all budgets for this build.
Affliction Spectres
The recommended Spectres in this guide will work perfectly fine, however, Affliction league is offering a very specific mechanic that allows us to purchase corpses from a vendor, these range from different qualities and different type of monsters. As this entire topic is a very complex one I’ve decided to instead list the recommended options that could replace the original list in the guide should you chose to. Since these bad boys are a bit harder to get your hands on or can be expensive it’s hard to pin-point what budget they fit in. They are also not shareable. That said, feel free to join my in-game global channel by typing “/global 6666” in-game in which you can receive help with any questions just as much as in my stream channel over at twitch or the PoE-Vault Discord server for direct assistance with any guides.
- Hulking Monstrosity – These provide an insane buff of damage increase, though the higher quality one (Perfect) is absolutely an improvement providing extra added lightning damage on top of this insane buff!
- Perfect Guardian Turtle – These can directly replace the need to run your Determination aura and instead offer you the possibility to add other auras not in the build guide such as Purity of Elements which further boosts your defensive scaling to name one example.
There are plenty of other options most of which I talk about in this video that I’d recommend taking a look at if you want to try some different combinations our yourself: https://youtu.be/O9urpDxJIks?si=KS0bqzqtJOHXem6A
Gearing
A lot of the endgame gear can easily be crafted.
You can read more details about our gearing recommendations on the dedicated page. You’ll find a summarized version below.
Item Slot | Item Name | Rarity |
Head | Life then Res/Attributes as needed (For higher budget you can get a helmet with “+ level of all minion skill gems) | Rare |
Amulet | The Jinxed Juju | Unique |
Chest | Tabula Rasa | Unique |
Gloves | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Boots | Life & movement speed then Res/Attributes | Rare |
Belt | Darkness Enthroned | Unique |
Rings | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Weapon | Rare with + level of minion and/or spell skills | Rare |
Shield | High life, preferably with %life recovery on block or The Surrender | Rare |
Ascendancy, Bandit & Pantheon Recommendations
You can read about the Ascendancy, Bandit choice, and Pantheon Power recommendations for this build on our dedicated page.
Levelling
We can start off using our intended, dedicated skill Summon Raging Spirit at level 8 once we have downed Brutus and gotten access to Minion Damage Support and Melee Splash Support.
Until then we’ll be making use of the usual candidates for levelling a witch until you can make the transition to Summon Raging Spirit, which is a combination of Freezing Pulse and Holy Flame Totem.
Your early links should look like this:
Freezing Pulse
Elemental Proliferation Support
Holy Flame Totem
Summon Phantasm Support
Raise Zombie
Upon beating Brutus we change things up a little.
From that point onwards we do the following:
Summon Raging Spirit
Minion Damage Support
Melee Splash Support
Holy Flame Totem
Summon Phantasm Support
Raise Zombie
As soon as we get access to it we want to add a Clarity aura to help sustain our mana costs. Try to not overlevel this aura as it will cause some problems later.
In Act 3 we will get access to Summon Skitterbots once we reach The Library, and should immediately enable it. This aura will stay with us in one fashion or another through most of the campaign.
In act 3 we will get access to Purity of Elements Aura which should be prioritized above all else. This will give us massive amounts of elemental resistance and make us immune to pesky things like Chill, Freeze, Ignite and Shock. This is an incredibly powerful levelling aura.
Levelling Progression
- Levelling skill tree with jewel, 14 points
- Levelling skill tree with jewel, 32 points
- Levelling skill tree with jewel, 50 points
- Levelling skill tree with jewel, 69 points
- Levelling skill tree with jewel, 89 points
- Levelling skill tree with jewel, 113 points
This gives you a brief overview of how it’s levelled, but we strongly encourage you to please look into the PoB as it will make things much clearer.
Final Notes
As much as I love making build guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. With that said, if you’ve made any tweaks to the build compared to what I’m showing in this guide I would love it if you share in my discord! It’s an effective way to show other approaches and it helps me grow as a build guide creator!
I hope you found the build guide useful and I wish you all many Divine Orb drops!
Changelog
Updated for PoE Affliction 3.23
Added a Gear Progression page to the guide!