PoE Guardian Build - The Best Utility in the Game?

PoE Guardian build 2019

Guardian is a class which can be used as aurabot, tank or support. He focuses on protecting party members and enhancing their attack or defensive stats. The class can specialize in defensive auras which boost allies survivability or generating and giving charges. There is a possibility to generate three types of charges: endurance, frenzy, and power charges. Each charge gives different bonuses to your stats. The class perfectly finds himself in a party but can be as well played solo.

As a solo character, he mainly focuses on buffing and summoning minions. Thanks to his passive skills, he can block incoming attacks, increase his armor or energy shield. He can be compared to a monk from Diablo 3. He can be a perfect supporter and also damage dealer. The class is not hard to play so newbie players can feel free to choose it to start the league. Additionally, the passive tree is mostly based on boosting your survivability so it will be hard to kill you.

Almost all builds (there is one exception) are cheap and newbie friendly. If you are looking for the class which is similar to the necromancer, you can try summoner PoE Guardian build. The class offers very fast maps clear speed and perfect single target damage in most situations. It makes the guardian perfect to run high tier game content like Atziri or Shaper. What is more, you can buff yourself and allies so you can be sure that you will be always useful, in a party or when playing solo. The only problem can be in a situation when you summon too many minions and you will not know what is going on the screen, but do not worry. Many builds have the same problem. If you wonder about playing the class in hardcore, the answer is YES! Now I will introduce the most useful passives and describe them in detail.

path of exile Guardian passive skills

Radiant Faith - this ascendancy passive skill can be considered as a buff. It boosts you and your allies maximum energy shield with an amount equal to 15% of mana which is received by herald buffs. That's why it is worth to invest in increasing mana if you choose such passive. Additionally, you and your allies get increased armor which is equal to 160% of life which is reserved from different conditions. The passive is typical survivability booster.

Unwavering Faith - a very interesting passive skill which also works like a buff. It decreases you and your allies received damage by 1% when your skill auras are activated. Additionally, it gives you a boost to your life regeneration. For each aura gained from your skills, you and your allies get 0.2% life regeneration per second. This passive will be very useful when mapping with a party or going for higher instances.

Harmony of Purpose - this passive skill can be called as a debuff and at the same time a buff. It debuffs enemies and causes an inability to gain frenzy, endurance or power charges. Also, thanks to this passive, you and your party member can share charges with each other. What is more, you get a 10% chance to obtain any of the charges on every successful hit.

Radian Crusade - this passive skill mainly focuses on increasing the effect of Herald of Purity skill. It boosts your damage by 10% when there is at least one party member near you. Additionally, your allies gain 20% more damage when they are affected by your aura skills. What is more, if you are using herald of purity buff, its effect is increased by 40%. When it comes to summoned Sentinels, they gain increased aoe effect by 50%.

Unwavering Crusade - the second passive skill which is focused on boosting the effect of Herald of Purity buff. Thanks to this passive summoned Sentinels gain Crusade slam skill and also increased accuracy rating by 100%. Additionally, summoned minions can intimidate opponents on every successful hit for 4 seconds. What is more, it regenerates 3% of maximum health for you and your allies when you land a successful hit.

Time of Need - this passive skill has the same effect as cleansing ability on other characters. It removes Curses and elemental ailments from your every 5 seconds. Additionally, it regenerates 30% of your life every 5 seconds. It regenerates 30% of your health in one second every 5 seconds. What is more, curses effects are reduced by 25%. Perfect passive for mapping when we roll any curse effect attribute on a particular map.

Bastion of Hope - a passive buff which boosts your stun and block resistances. It gives you and your party member stunt immunity if you have blocked any attack in past 10 seconds. Additionally, it gives you a chance to block an attack or spell damage if you casted a spell or attacked recently.

Passive skills are one of the most important factors when building a character. Every champion is characterized by different passive skills which give various bonuses. Thanks to the passive skills you are able to boost your damage, survivability or gain additional ailments which will help you when fighting with bosses or minions. Every build needs different skills configuration in order to work correctly.

In this part of the guide, I will introduce the most powerful and most played build for the templar guardian. The chosen build is called 3.6 Dominating Blow Guardian. The build is mostly focused on summoning spectres and dealing damage from dominating blow skill. The build requires many unique items, especially in the late game, but you don’t have to be worried. Those uniques are not so expensive. Thanks to that the build is a very good league starter and newbie friendly. If you like playing summoning classes like for example necromancer, this class will perfectly fit your playstyle. This build is great for mapping and bosses, especially if you are playing with other party members. You will very good damage and at the same time buff your teammates. Below, the pros and the cons of such a build will be mentioned and shortly described.

Advantages

Good league starter - the Dominating Blow Guardian build is considered to be very good to start a new league. It does not require any special abilities to be played since the build is mostly focused on summoning sentinels and using one skill. What is more, it is cheap and pretty tanky so you don’t have to be worried about dying a lot.

Easy to play - which was mentioned in the introduction is based on using dominating blow ability and waiting for sentinels to be summoned. When it comes to building your character, it is also very easy. You mainly focus on increasing the level of your auras and energy shield.

Perfect party member - thanks to guardian passives, this build is perfect when playing with friends or other party members. The guardian class is very good at tanking the damage and at the same time buffing nearby allies damage output and resistances.

Safe to play - thanks to the high amount of energy shield and elemental resistances, your class will be very hard to kill for bosses and minions.

Cheap gear - when it comes to buying proper items, you will need many uniques which is some kind of disadvantage but they are cheap, so it disclaims farming over and over for late game gear.

Very good single target damage - because of the fact that your build will be based on sentinels of purity, your damage output for single target enemies e.g bosses will be very good. There will be a problem if such minions die.

Can run any map mods - you do not have to care about map mods. You can run every kind of map, even with elemental damage reflect or curses.

Disadvantages

Endgame damage problems - since sentinels can be killed you might have problems with damage after minions death. You summon sentinel when you kill an opponent. If your minion dies, you will have to wait for minions wave to resummon them.

Minions artificial intelligence is terrible - minions AI is the main problem of this class. Sometimes you will not know what is happening on the screen.

Equipment

In this part of the guide, I will introduce the best itemization for dominating blow guardian. It is crucial to pick proper equipment for this build. Without good items, you will lack survivability or damage. You have to keep in mind that path of exile is a typical grinding gear game. As in every game of such type, you will be forced to pick out new gear in every game stage. Below I will show you items required for the build with a short comment for each part of the gear. What is more, links for each item will be provided.

a) Weapon

For the best starting weapons, you should buy two The Screaming Eagle Jade Hatchet. This weapon will increase your early damage. Also, it will scale perfectly with early passives from the skill tree. What is more, the weapon has flee ability built so it will help us to clear minions and bosses without any unpleasant situations.

Then, you should look for a weapon called Dreadarc Cleaver. It gives us a nice boost to elemental damage, attack speed, and survivability. Additionally, it supports us with flammability curse which will increase our elemental damage even more. At level 29, try to find Relentless Fury Decorative Axe. This weapon will give you onslaught buff,  life leech and what is most important, culling strike. The culling strike will help you with killing minions faster than with dreadrac cleaver. Also, when onslaught buff is activated, it gives you chill immunity. Mandatory weapon when you reach mid game.

After 10 level ups, you should consider buying Moonbender's Wing Tomahawk. It significantly boosts your physical damage and elemental damage. This one-handed ax converts your physical damage into cold and lightning damage. Thanks to this factor, you will kill ascendancy boss without any problems. What is more, such a weapon increases your critical strike chance by 49%. Because of that, you will literally melt the opponents with your damage.

In the late game, you will have to choose between two weapons. The first one is Soul Taker Siege Axe. It boosts your physical damage, attack speed and gives you the possibility to chill the enemy on a successful hit. The most important boost from this weapon is the elimination of mana cost for a dominating blow which is high mana cost skill. The second option is Essentia Sanguis Vaal Claw which will be combined with a unique shield. This weapon increases your maximum energy shield, attack speed, and physical damage. Additionally, it changes your life leech into energy shield leech which will be very useful especially in delve depths and t16 maps.

B) Helmet

In order to boost your early game survivability, you should look for the helmet which will increase your elemental resistances and possibly maximum health. You can choose between a rare helmet with such attributes or unique Goldrim Leather Cap. A unique goldrim cap boosts your survivability by increasing elemental resistances by 35%. In the early game, it is more than enough. Rest of the resistance caps will be filled by boots, shield, and gloves.

When you reach level 60, you can buy Starkonja's Head Silken Hood. This helmet will reduce your damage taken on low life and give a nice boost to your damage. It will be enough until level 64. Then you switch your helmet for Alpha's Howl Sinner Tricorne. It has very useful attributes like mana reduction or two maximum level boost to your aura gems. Because of the fact that you will use many different auras in this build, Alpha’s tricorne is the mandatory helmet for this build. Additionally, it gives you immunity for getting frozen or chill what makes this helmet perfect for the late game.

c) Belt

A perfect belt to start a game should have attributes necessary for leveling your gems and resistances. It would be also nice to have some mana and life leech since in the early game you will mostly fight in melee range. A belt which contains all these attributes is called Wurm's Molt Leather Belt. You can wear this belt on level 8. What is more, it is very cheap so even newbie players will be able to afford it. Then, at level 20 you will need to buy Belt of the Deceiver Heavy Belt. It gives you everything you need on this level. Nice amount of physical damage, elemental resistances, boost to maximum health and damage reduction make this belt perfect mid game item.

On level 45 try to change deceiver for Soulthirst Cloth Belt. It gives you maximum health, mana reduction and boost to all elemental resistances. In the late game, you will need Phoenix Clasp Stygian Vise to fill resistance caps, maximum health, and strength which you need to level up your gems. Focus on the stygian vise which will boost your lowest resistances, increase your energy shield and maximum health. Additionally, the belt gives you an abyssal socket in which you will put specific jewel that will be described in the further part of the guide.

d) Gloves

In the early game, your gloves should have a good amount of resistances (at least 25%) increased energy shield and boost to attack speed. Unfortunately, there are no unique gloves which could give you such attributes. You have to focus on getting rare gloves and possibly craft some additional mods, or simply buy a ready one. You can also wear Lochtonial Caress Iron Gauntlets if you are only looking for damage boost but I strongly recommend rare gloves with attributes described above.

In the late game, there are no better gloves than Shaper's Touch Crusader Gloves. These gloves provide a massive energy shield boost, huge evasion and accuracy boost, increased damage, mana and what is most important they are cheap. The additional 2 levels to Aura Gems is a nice bonus for our build What is more, it allows us to have Purity of Fire on level 23 which will give us extra max resist. Remember to get the one with four linked sockets.

E) Boots

The main attribute for all starting boots is increased movement speed. It will allow you to clear story maps really fast and thanks to that, reach endgame faster. Additionally, you can look for boots which will increase your missing elemental resistances by 25%. There is also the possibility to get Wanderlust Wool Shoes if your helmet and gloves give you enough resistances. This boots gives you nice mana regeneration, increased movement speed by 20% and frozen immunity which is very nice buff since many early game minions can freeze you on hit.

In the endgame, there are two possible options to be worn. The first one is Sin Trek Stealth Boots. These boots give you a nice boost to your maximum energy shield, 30% of movement speed and attributes which will boost your damage and survivability thanks to shaper gloves. The second option is Death's Door Crusader Boots. Such boots are expensive but worth spending one exalted orb. It boosts your energy shield by 200%!!!, movement speed by 25% and survivability by adding one more endurance charge to your build. Additionally, the boots give you immunity for a bleeding attribute which is really nice to have, especially in the late game.

F)  Armor

For the first armor in the game, you should choose the one which will let you socket 6 different gems on it. It is required because in the early game you need to clear everything fast. Thanks to six linked sockets in armor you will be able to socket your main ability and support it with 5 other gems. What is more, you will be able to level up the gems straight from the beginning which is a huge boost to your damage in mid game and end game.

The best armor of such type is called Tabula Rasa Simple Robe. It is quite cheap so there will be no problems to get in the early game. Armor of this type has no specified sockets for gems, so you can test your own ideas about skills and create something completely new. The Tabula Rasa robe will be enough until you reach hard end game (something around 70 level). Then, you will have more than one option of possible armor. The first option is Death's Oath Astral Plate. This armor increases all of your attributes which will be perfect combo with Shaper gloves, boosts your armor and attack speed. What is more, it gives you an additional aura which gives you an additional source of damage in this case chaos damage. Very good armor if you prefer more damage than survivability.

The second option is Shavronne's Wrappings Occultist's Vestment. This armor is perfect for this build because you are basically focused on getting as much energy shield as you can. It gives you 149% more energy shield which is a huge boost for your build. Additionally, the armor boosts your lightning resistance and prevents chaos damage to bypass your energy shield. The last armor you can wear is Queen of the Forest Destiny Leather. This armor is typical survivability booster. You should buy such armor when your resistances are not made up. It gives you a nice boost to fire, lightning and cold resistance (almost 35% of each). Additionally, I hardly recommend corrupting this armor. When corrupted it increases your aura gems level by 2. With other parts of the gear, your aura gems can be boosted even by 6 levels. It is a very strong boost especially in the late game when you maximize your gear.

g) Amulet

In order to choose perfect starting amulet, you should focus on elemental resistances, attributes which will be necessary to increase gems levels and life. It is also possible to wear Sidhebreath Paua Amulet which is an enhanced version of magic paua amulet. Why this amulet is good? Because it mainly boosts your minions, in this case, sentinels of purity. This amulet gives your minions 15% more damage, maximum health, and movement speed which is a very nice boost to have. What is more, it boosts your survivability by increasing your cold resistance and mana regeneration rate.

In the late game, you can choose between unique and rare amulet. The rare one should be chosen when you have problems with making up resistances caps. The best rare amulets can boost your resistances even by 45%. What is more, the boost to maximum life would be nice. Be sure that, you can craft at least one additional attribute for your rare amulet. It will allow you to add the third kind of resistance of which particular amulet lack.  When it comes to the unique amulet, the perfect choice will be Presence of Chayula Onyx Amulet. It gives you a very nice boost to your chaos resistance. Additionally, the amulet will perfectly work with shaper gloves thanks to all attributes boost. The most important factor this amulet offers is the conversion of life into energy shield. Since your character will have only an energy shield, the amulet will perfectly fit for the build.

h) Rings

The early game rings should boost your elemental resistances, life and attack speed if possible. Remember that the number of resistances should not be less than 25%. What is more, you can look for rings which will give you strength attribute which will be needed to boost your gems level. In the late game, you will need one unique ring and one rare with specific attributes. When it comes to a unique one, be sure to have Circle of Guilt Synthesised Iron Ring. It boosts your main damage source which is the herald of purity and increases your sentinels damage by 95%. What is more, it will also cooperate perfectly with shaper gloves. Mandatory ring for this build. The rare ring should contain the following attributes:

•         One socket in order to put a discipline gem into it
•         It has to boost the level of the socketed gem by 2
•         Increase to your maximum energy shield
•         Increase to your maximum life (life conversion)
•         Boost to all attributes

I) shield

In the early game, you will mainly focus on using two weapons of the same type. The shield will be not necessary. When you reach the late game, the situation is completely different. Dual wielding is not that effective in the late game, so you should get a shield called Prism Guardian Archon Kite Shield. It boots your aura gems by 2 levels, elemental resistances (just from this shield you get 40% of all elemental resistances. SICK boost) and reduces mana reservation of socketed gems by 25%. In this shield, you will socket hatred, purity of ice and haste aura gems.

J) Potions

Potions are pretty important when it comes to fighting with monsters. In many situations, potions can save you from sudden death or give you a huge boost to your dmg. In this version of the build, you will need very simple potions which are slightly cheap. If you are looking for the best possible way to get proper potions, go and search path of exile market.

The first potion I recommend having is the one which will recover your health when needed. Simple life potion always needs a place in your flasks configuration. Additionally, look for additional mods like bleeding removal on use. Since the build is mostly focused on energy shield, such potion will be used only to remove bleeding.

The second recommendation will be Alchemist's Sulphur Flask of Heat. This potion increases your physical damage by 40%. Additionally, it removes Freeze or Chill on use and give you immunity for this aliments during flask effect. Mandatory potion when you are fighting with an Elder boss.

The third potion you should have in your configuration is Quicksilver Flask. The potion role is to increase your movement speed. Thanks to that you will be able to make maps faster and also escape from opponents on low health. The flask should have at least 60% of increased movement speed. What is more, it should regenerate a charge on a critical hit. The potion with all these attributes is in this link: Experimenter's Diamond Flask of Adrenaline.

Next potion which is very important for this build is called Lion's Roar Granite Flask. It is mostly used because of its boost to physical damage and the knockback when used. The potion is very cheap and useful in mapping. Also, it perfectly works in combo with atziri’s flask because of physical damage conversion into chaos damage.

The last mandatory potion for this build is Atziri's Promise Amethyst Flask. This potion boosts your chaos damage by converting your physical damage. Thanks to that, your boss and minions damage will be significantly boosted. You gain 15% physical damage as extra chaos damage during flask effect. The potion also helps you to leech missing mana and life on hit what is very useful especially when you roll the map on which you cannot regenerate mana or health.

K) list of gems

Armor - 6 linked sockets ( five  red sockets and one blue socket)

• Dominating blow – your main attack skill. It deals physical damage to the target and inflicts a debuff thanks to which you summon sentinel of purity when you kill an opponent. What is more, summoned sentinels have the same mods as killed minion from which he was raised. Remember to increase the gem quality to boost minions damage by 10%.
• Melee splash Support – a support gem which makes single target attack gem deal area of effect damage. A very useful gem for mapping. By increasing quality, your AoE damage will be boosted by 10%.
• Multistrike Support – a gem which doubles the effect of linked attack skill. To simplify this. The multistrike gem will repeat dominating blow twice after you use it. So you will not attack once, but three times in one use. Also, it automatically targets enemies. Remember to increase quality in order to get a nice boost to physical damage.
• Melee Physical Damage Support – a support gem which increases the physical damage of linked attack skills by 50%. What is more, you deal more damage when opponents bleed or have poison. Remember to increase the quality in order to boost your damage even more.
• Ruthless Support – a gem which supports your dominating blow with ruthless strike every third attack. Ruthless strike deals 113% more damage with supported skill.
• Minion Damage Support – a support gem which boosts the damage of summoned minions by 50%. At level 20, this gem increases not only physical damage but all kinds of damage.

Weapon - 3 linked sockets (two red sockets and one green socket)

• Leap Slam – an attack skill which performs a jump into targeted location. Additionally, it deals damage and knocks back enemies. Very good skill for mapping because it makes you travel through maps faster.
• Faster Attacks Support – a support gem which increases supported skill gem attacks speed. In this case, Leap slam will be used much faster.
• Blood Magic Support – a gem which makes your linked skills use your health pool instead of mana. Since leap slam is not high mana consuming skill, you can put it there.

Offhand – Shield – 3 linked sockets (two green sockets and one red not necessarily linked)

• Hatred – an aura gem which gives you a buff that increases you and your allies ice type of damage. Also, it converts 25% of your physical damage into cold damage. Thanks to your unique shield, mana reservation will be reduced from 50% to 35%.
• Haste – the second aura gem which buffs you and your allies. It increases attack speed, casting speed by 15% and movement speed by 9% on the maximum level. A very important gem in this build.
• Herald of Purity – a buff gem which increases your physical damage output and allows you to summon additional sentinels of purity on kill. Additionally, it boosts your minion’s damage by 90%. A mandatory gem for this build since we will base on our sentinel's damage.

Gloves - 4 linked sockets (3 blue sockets and one red)

• Animated Guardian – a gem which allows you to summon an animated guardian created from weapon or piece of armor that will fight by your side. A gem is not only used to summon a minion but also to increase minions damage and life. Remember to increase the quality of the gem in order to get a 20% increased minion movement speed.
• Raise Spectre – the second summon gem which allows us to resurrect killed enemy which will fight with us. Resurrected minion has increased damage and elemental resistances but at the same time decreased maximum life.  
• Summon Holy Relic – the third summon them which gives us the possibility to summon holy relic minion. This minion is more likely to support us with a nova which increases our health regeneration rather than fighting.
• Minion Life Support – a support gem which increases your minion maximum life by 50%.

Boots 4 linked sockets (3 red sockets and one blue)

• Cast When Damage Taken – a gem which triggers linked buff skills after you take a certain amount of damage from enemies.
• Increased Duration Support – a support gem which increases the duration of your buff skills by 63%.
• Enfeeble – a gem which curses all nearby enemies and decreases their damage, chance to deal critical strike and also accuracy. Also, cursed unique bosses have decreased damage by 15%. In order to level up such gem, you will need a lot of intelligence. Remember about that.
• Immortal Call – a buff gem which uses all active endurance charges and makes our character invulnerable for physical damage. It increases the duration per consumed endurance charge.  

Helmet 4 linked sockets ( three blue sockets and one red)

• Convocation – a spell gem which forces your minions to teleport back to your character. After you recall your minions they gain life regeneration.
• Flesh offering – a gem which increases your minion's stats by corpses consuming. When you consume a corpse your minions gain increased attack and casting speed by 30% and movement speed by 29% on the maximum level. It lasts 3 seconds and last 0,5 sec longer per consumed corpse.
• Faster Casting Support – a support gem which increases casting speed of supported gems. The casting speed is increased by 40%. Remember to boost the quality of the gem to gain an additional 10% of casting speed.
• Blood Magic Support – a support gem which makes convocation and flesh offering use life instead of mana.

L) Skill Tree

Skill tree for Dominating blow Guardian with ascendancy (viable on 3.6 Synthesis)

m) Bandits

For this particular build, the best option is to kill all bandits. Helping any of the bandits do not give you as many additional benefits as two more passives. 

n) Pantheon                       

major god - Soul of Lunaris – thanks to Lunaris blessing you boost your survivability by reducing damage taken from minions and bosses. Additionally, the blessing gives you increased movement speed for each nearby enemy. When you upgrade Soul of Lunaris, you will gain additional bonuses like a chance to dodge projectiles and spells cast by enemies. It is the best choice because we are supposed to be as tanky as possible.

Minor god - Soul of Tukohoma – thanks to Tukohoma blessing we are able to survive more damage taken and increase our health regeneration. Such a blessing is perfect when facing stronger bosses at the end of the maps or when fighting with atziri or shaper.

o) Jewels

There are three unique jewels that are mandatory for this build:

Violent Dead Cobalt Jewel – this jewel increases your minions attack damage by 15%.

Conqueror's Efficiency Crimson Jewel – a jewel which reduces skills mana usage by 3% and every herald or aura mana reservation by 2%. What is more, it increases your buff skills duration by 4%.

Energy From Within Cobalt Jewel – thanks to this jewel our maximum energy shield will be increased by 6%. Also if you put it correctly in your skill tree, it will convert your life bonuses into energy shield bonuses.

In jewels which you put in the skill tree you should look for:

• Increased energy shield
• Increased minions damage
• Minions have a chance to blind on hit
• Minions have a chance to taunt on hit
• Increased maximum health
• Increased minions health
• Increased minions attack speed

In abyssal jewel which can be socketed in your belt you should look for:

• Increased maximum energy shield
• Increased maximum life
• Increased minions damage if you have been used minion skill recently