[Ritual] PoE 3.13 Templar Guardian Herald of Purity Starter Build (PC,PS4,Xbox)

This PoE 3.13 Templar Guardian Herald of Purity build is created to be rather defense-oriented. It has good clear, great survivability (basically unkillable), and great single target (Uber Elder and A8 Sirus down on a 5L).

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Pros & Cons

• + Good clear
• + Good single target (Uber Elder and A8 Sirus down on a 5L)
• + Great survivability with multiple defensive layers: over 7K ES, over 65K armour, 75% chance to block attacks and spells, 1300 ES gained on block, huge ES regen every five seconds, 10K damage shield with Molten Shell, a lot of reduced effect of curses
• + Can do all map mods (although no regen is more comfortable with a mana flask and less armour/chance to block can be rippy versus strong physical bosses like the Minotaur)
• + The minions we use are immortal, or automatically (re)summoned, so there’s no need to worry about them dying
• + Since this build uses almost only unique items, it’s relatively cheap to min-max
• + I don't play hardcore, but I would assume that this build is definitely HC viable, even though leveling will require some classic HC measures

+/- It's a minion build, which feels clunky to some people and relaxing to some others

• - This build is quite bad at handling blighted maps, since it doesn't have screen covering AoE.
• - This build is not the best at handling Aul, the Crystal King, since his phases are time based and not %HP-based, and we have less damage than a pure glass cannon. I still manage to kill the Auls I find, but I never went past 500-ish depth, so I don't know about deeper.

Skill Tree

Ascendancy: Radiant Crusade -> Radiant Faith -> Unwavering Crusade -> Time of Need (Please note that the 3.13 update)

Pantheon: Brine King and Ryslatha

Bandit: Kill All

Passive Tree & PoB

Path of Building Link: https://pastebin.com/7QWvHaqD (community fork)

Gems Setup

Your Herald of Purity setup should be the following (socketed in body armour):

Herald of Purity - Predator - Bloodlust - Ruthless - Empower - Awakened Minion Damage

If you don't have the mana to use HoP, Discipline and Determination yet, take out some HoP gems, not Determination! Check the FAQ for more info.

Your Raise Spider support gems should be the following: (socketed in weapon 1 (Arakaali's Fang))

Predator - Withering Touch - Awakened Melee Splash Damage

For hard boss fights, replace Melee Splash with Melee Physical Damage.

In order to summon Sentinels, we use Cyclone. We support it with Culling Strike for an effective 10% more global damage and help with summoning our minions during clear, Fortify to mitigate the damage we take from blocked hits, and Maim to increase the physical damage taken by enemies. (socketed in Helmet; for help on how to off-colour your items, please refer to the Off-colouring your items section in the FAQ)

Cyclone - Culling Strike - Fortify - Maim

We use a Carrion Golem for more damage, along with Feeding Frenzy support to make it grant us the Feeding Frenzy buff (10% more minion damage, and 10% increased minion attack, cast, and movement speed). Since we don't invest in minion life regen or leech, it tends to die every minute or so, which is why we use Cast when Stunend to summon it automatically. Since we're CI, we get stunned easily, so it's always up, and we mitigate the danger (and discomfort) of stuns through Soul of the Brine King. (See the Pantheon or Defensive mechanics sections for more info). (Socketed in Weapon 2 (Aegis Aurora))

Summon Carrion Golem - Feeding Frenzy - Cast when Stunned

As auras, we use Discipline and Determination for more ES and armour respectively. We socket them along with our movement skill (I use Shield Charge), and Desecrate to spawn corpses for spiders. (Socketed in Boots)

Vaal Discipline - Desecrate - Determination - Shield Charge

Finally, there are three useful gems that we socket in our gloves. Rallying Cry grants our minions a nice damage boost, Molten Shell gives us an extra layer of defense, and Spirit Offering gives a great damage boost. Since those three gems are duration-based, we support them with Increased Duration (which is much more important and useful than you might think!). (Socketed in Gloves)

Rallying Cry - Molten Shell - Increased Duration - Spirit Offering

Gear Setup

There some unique jewels that are necessary for this build, and some that work wonders for it. They are all listed below.

Weapon

Arakaali's Fang

40% increased Global Critical Strike Chance
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100% chance to Trigger Level 1 Raise Spiders on Kill
200% increased Physical Damage
Adds 12 to 29 Physical Damage
Adds 1 to 59 Chaos Damage
15% chance to Poison on Hit

This dagger allows us to raise spiders, one of our two minion types, which have insane damage considering they only require three gem slots. We use it in our main hand.

Shield

Aegis Aurora: Lots of armour, lots of ES, and very large ES refill on block. I recommend getting one as soon as possible, and playing with spiders only until you do, as this item is the core of the build’s survivability.

Armour

We use Skin of the Loyal to get lots of armour, ES, and +1 to level of all socketed gems.

Note that the Skin of the Loyal's sockets can't be modified, so you need to buy the right colours, even if it's not corrupted.

The colours we will ultimately use are 4R 2B, but if you can't afford it, you can work with 3R 1B and replace Empower or Minion Damage with Vile Toxins before you can afford the right colours and/or the right gem.

Helmet

This build gets a lot of mana, and Memory Vault converts it to armour, which means less physical damage taken and more ES gained on block.

Gloves

Shaper's Touch: Those gloves have several uses. First, we naturally have a lot of strength, which means those gloves grant us a lot of mana and ES. Second, we naturally have a lot of intelligence, which means they grant us a lot of accuracy rating, which is essential to spawn our sentinels.

Note that Shaper's Touch with Vulnerability on hit are pretty cheap (compared to uncorrupted Shaper's Touch), and gives our minions a lot of dps, so I recommend checking it out!

Boots

Rainbowstride. Those boots are very cheap for what they give: lots of elemental resistances, movement speed, mana, and most importantly, chance to block spells, which gets us to 75%.

Amulet

Astramentis. Intelligence grants us ES and mana, and therefore even more ES and armour. And this item is especially strong when used with the following item, Shaper’s Touch. Also, some gems (notably Withering Touch) require a lot of dexterity, which we don’t naturally get as Templar, so since we don’t really need any mod on our amulet, Astramentis also helps us get dexterity.

Note that you can use Intrinsic Catalysts to improve the attributes on the amulet, raising the explicit up to 120!

Rings

Circle of Guilt

+12% to Cold Resistance
+10% to Lightning Resistance
12% increased Elemental Damage
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+20 to all Attributes
Adds 10 to 15 Physical Damage
+355 to Armour
Herald of Purity has 21% reduced Mana Reservation
Sentinels of Purity deal 94% increased Damage

This ring allows us to use more support gems on our Herald, while also being able to increase the Herald minions' damage if you can afford the right version. It also grants us some flat armour - icing on the cake!

Note that in order to use your 6L Herald, Discipline and Determination, you will need two Circle rings with at least 19% and 20% reduced mana reserved, and apply fertile catalysts applied to them (life and mana) in order to get the "at least 19%" one to 22% reduced mana reservation, and the 20% one to 23%.

Belt

Darkness Enthroned: This belt is criminally underrated in my opinion. It can grant even more raw mana/ES than a rare belt in total, more resists, and can increase very useful stats like minion movement speed. Also, Harvest introduced belt enchants, and using this belt allows you to keep or buy an enchant and upgrade your jewels inside freely.

Here is what we're looking for on jewels in order of (decreasing) priority.

• The elemental resistances we couldn't get elsewhere. Keep in mind the resistances on the jewels will be increased by 75%!
• 2% chance to block spell damage if you've been damaged by a hit recently on one of our jewels. Since we use Glancing Blows, we take 50% of damage from blocked hits, which means that all hits damage us, and the buff will always be active in combat, bringing us to 75% chance to block spells.
• Flat mana, which grants us a lot of ES and armour.
• Flat ES.
• Minion movement speed.

Flask

The Writhing Jar

72% reduced Amount Recovered
Instant Recovery
2 Enemy Writhing Worms escape the Flask when used
Writhing Worms are destroyed when Hit
20% reduced Charges used

We use three of those. We need to kill an enemy to raise spiders, and we use this flask to easily kill an enemy. Be aware that the flask charges used are a roll, and that you can buy a cheap one to start with, but you should aim for a good roll when you start min-maxing.

Other Flask: Find Immunity to Freeze and Chill, Curses, Bleed Mod and movement, armour flask

Jewels

Energised Armour is very cheap with corrupted blood immunity, and, socketed below the start of the Templar, grants us the massive amount of 6K armour at the price of 200 ES.

The Blue Nightmare

This jewel is what allows us to get such a high spell block chance. We socket it next to the Templar start, which means that in its radius, there is 12% all res in Holy Dominion, 8% all res in Faith and Steel, and 24% in Sanctuary and the small nodes before, for a total of 14% spell block chance, doubled to 28% with Glancing Blows.

Healthy Mind

We stack up a lot of mana, and Healthy Mind helps us do just that.

Fortress Covenant

This jewel grants up to 45% increased minion damage, which is huge. However, it negates all notable in a medium radius, causing them to make our minions take increased damage. But, socketed near Mind over Matter, no notables are in range, which means we only get the hughmongous damage. Hurray!

Watcher's Eye

This should be your goal once you can afford another jewel with Corrupted Blood immunity. There are several mods that can be very useful for us on a Watcher’s Eye. The most useful ones are +# to armour while affected by Determination and #% additional physical damage reduction while affected by Determination. You can also look for You take #% reduced extra damage from critical strikes while affected by Determination, which makes us even tankier, #% chance to block spells while affected by Discipline, which can help you get spell block before you get a Blue Nightmare, #% of maximum energy shield regenerated per second while affected by Discipline for a bit of extra regen

Cluster Jewwls

Recommend 4 or 5 passives medium cluster jewel with the notables Cult Leader and Disciples, where you would socket a 2 passives small cluster jewel with the notable Stalwart Commander.