GhazzyTV's Golem Guardian Build Guide (PoE Affliction 3.23)

Out Of Date

March 26th, 2024, 23:51

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

The golems are back, and this time we’re doing it on a Guardian!

Below you can see the build in action from the YouTube Guide. Do note that the video might be outdated in terms of information, and you should always look at this guide to make sure you have the updated version. The video showcases the gameplay of the build so make sure you give it a look!

Build Overview

In this section, I will outline the pros, cons, and general playstyle. This will allow you to determine if this is the right build is for you!

Pros

+ League Starter – Clayshaper carries hard and other than that there are no absolutely needed items.

+ Laidback Golems have a relatively laidback playstyle

Cons

Playstyle

You walk around with your Golems and they kill stuff. Occasionally you resummon a zombie or a golem, should they die. You curse tanky enemies and you shield charge between packs. That’s more or less it. As previously stated, very laidback.

Damage Scaling And Defensive Layers

Our minions will do all the heavy lifting in terms of damage scaling whilst our defenses are ramped up via the 100% taunting Guardian Sentinel of Radiance ascendancy minion. Outside of this we are looking at a decent life regen combined with capped block chance for both attacks and spells. It is by no means a giga tank build, it does however bring enough defensive scaling to easily manage end-game pinnacle bosses in the low budget version.

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

Below you’ll find a couple of different PoB links, it is strongly recommended to start with the low budget PoB, it includes leveling sections throughout the acts as well as skill-point progression.

Here’s the low budget Golem PoB: https://pobb.in/NYP4OLGE4nSi
Here’s the medium budget PoB: https://pobb.in/DYU6Y5mdyxZJ

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.

There currently are no stand-out Affliction Spectres for this build. This will be updated if this changes.

I would strongly suggest keeping the Primal Crushclaw as it is despite the available high-scaling new options one of the best in the game for this build. 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. For a general overview of crafting and to learn how to craft specific items, check out my crafting guides here!

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 or end-game: a helmet with “+ level of all minion gems)	Rare
Amulet	Life then Res/Attributes as needed or Replica Dragonfang's Flight with +3 levels to Carrion Golem	Rare/Unique
Chest	Life then Res/Attributes as needed or end-game: Replica Covenant	Rare/Unique
Gloves	Life then Res/Attributes as needed or end-game: Triad Grip	Rare/Unique
Boots	Life then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Belt	Darkness Enthroned	Unique
Rings	Life then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Weapon	Clayshaper	Unique
Shield	Life then Res/Attributes as needed or end-game: include #% life recovery on block	Rare

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Recommendations

You can read about the Ascendancy, Bandit choice, and Pantheon Power recommendations for this build on our dedicated page.

Levelling

You can level with essentially any minion of your choice until you beat act 4. Once you beat Malachai and you hit level 38, you can start using golems. It is not recommended that you fully dive into the golems this early, unless you already have a Clayshaper, but you CAN opt to do so. At which point you would have to change pathing in the tree to reach Golem Commander earlier. As stated, the recommended levelling method for this build will be to reach maps using other minions such as Summon Raging Spirit or Absolution, but if you really want to go Golems earlier you can do that. It would be slower, but you can do it. This guide will focus on Summon Raging Spirit

A baseline effective way of levelling in the early acts is to utilize Freezing Pulse, Stormblast Mines, Frost Bomb, Frost Blink and/or Orb of Storms. A useful method of dealing with tougher enemies, such as Brutus, is to include a Holy Flame Totem which not only deals damage but also works as a decoy for the boss(es) to hit rather than yourself.

For levels 1-8, you will use the following gems:

Freezing Pulse or Rolling Magma for clearing.
Frost Bomb for clearing when you get it instead of the Freezing Pulse.
Frostblink
Holy Flame Totem

Once you reach level 8, you are able to Melee Splash which will allow us to start using minions to level with which would be the following gems that replaces our main source of damage output for both clearing and single-target:

We also add a mobility skill after Brutus:

Flame Dash or Frostblink

We keep and level our Zombies, even though they die a fair bit this early. We will need them later in the build.

Around this point you should also pick a Clarity Clarity to help with mana costs. Keep this fairly low level, as the reservation becomes incredibly high as you level it early on.

Upon beating Chamber of Sins, you take Tempest Shield as the reward. For now you may use it, it will be dropped for a while through campaign in favor of Skitterbots. Keep it in your weaponswap when that happens, you will need it levelled later.

Little changes until you get access to Purity of Elements in Act 3.
Later in act 3, upon beating the Library, you will purchase a Summon Skitterbots from Siosa. If you’re short on reservations, prioritise this over Tempest Shield.

Towards the mid half of Act 4, you will go do Labyrinth and Ascend to become a Guardian. This is when you acquire the Sentinel of Radiance and he will quite literally carry you through campaign. Make sure to pick up a convocation if you have not already, because he is as slow as he is strong.

Tail end of Act 4 you get access to Unleash Support. At this point you really, really want to find yourself some fourlink to enable the use of unleash as it is gigantic Quality of Life for Summon Raging Spirit.

That’s pretty much it. You clear through campaign with this setup, get yourself a Clayshaper and go play Golems. Happy Hunting!.

Questions?

To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, you may have questions. Please join the PoE Vault discord and they will attend to them as soon as possible.

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 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!