Level 95 Hybrid Domination Guardian^3.27

Notes

Ignore the warning about too many gems in weapon - I made 2 copies of the main skill setup to split the Dominating Blow minions and Vaal Domination minions into separate calculations.

You can also ignore warnings about mana cost for Raise Spectre and Animate Guardian specifically. Just disable an aura in hideout if you need to recast them.

WHY PLAY DOMINATING BLOW GUARDIAN? (PROS):
===========================================
-High DPS and tanky league starter on very low budget gear
-More fun and involved play-style than other minion builds
-Giga-buffed in 3.28 (and 3.27 technically)
-Easily scales to tens of millions of DPS, or even to 100M+ with some investment
-Block and Spell Block capped without glancing blows (immortal to low damage enemies once you have a bit of life on block, which is free on the passive tree)
-Most map modifiers are easy (just be aware of reflect since this build does mixed damage types; you'll be fine but your minions might not)
-Good at most league mechanics, even Delve

WHY NOT PLAY DOMINATING BLOW GUARDIAN? (CONS):
================================================
-Extremely melee play-style is vulnerable to ground DoT effects
-A lot of skill buttons to manage if you want to really optimize it
-Possibly flavour of the month build after buffs, gear may be more expensive than normal
-Scion Ascendant might still be better than Guardian for Dominating Blow (big maybe)
-Summon Holy Relic of Conviction is probably still a smoother all-around league starter with similar gearing and theme (but doesn't scale as high)
-While Dominating Blow can scale fairly high (100M+ DPS with moderate investment), scaling into giga-DPS (200M+) mirror-tier builds is better left to other skills.
-Very bad at farming Legion


HOW TO PLAY Dominating Blow:
===========================
Dominating Blow summons minions if an enemy that was hit by Dominating Blow dies within 3 seconds, and has a chance to summon a minion on hit against bosses and rare enemies. 
Even with a relatively weak weapon you should have no trouble killing normal enemies to spawn your initial set of minions, and from there it just plays like most other minion builds 
except you will need to attack to refresh your minions. 


LEVELING GUIDE:
===============
You can use the Loadout dropdown in the top-right corner of PoB to change between Loadouts for each act and each stage of endgame. This will update the current 
Item set, Skill set, Passive tree, and Configuration settings all at once.

This guide is going to tell you what gems to get and when, and what items to look out for. I will not go into detail about how to complete each quest and act; find a 
generic campaign questing guide if you need that.

Act 1:
=====
We are going to use the new Holy Strike gem that the Templar starts with to level until roughly Act 5-6. Holy Strike has not been added to PoB yet as of writing this
so I have listed Glacial Hammer (the current starting gem for Templar) as a placeholder until then. Just replace Glacial Hammer with Holy Strike in the skill list if it 
hasn't already been added by the time the league starts.

Holy Strike is a melee skill that spawns minions attached to us that swing when we do (like a melee attack version of Summon Holy Relic). Since they are minions,
they scale with minion stats so we can focus on building for minion stats right from the start and ignore our own damage stats.

Upon entering town, take Smite from Tarkleigh as your quest reward. When fighting, weave one use of Smite in between every 4 or so other skills, to keep the lightning 
damage aura active. We will drop it later, but for now it is a significant damage increase.

Check Tarkleigh vendor for any Magic boots with Increased Movement Speed. Also check for any good 3-links, we will mostly be using blue and red gems so any
mix of those in a 3-link is good.

Other items to look out for while leveling are any mace or warstaff with good attack speed (for Leap Slam), Sapphire Rings and Iron Rings (which can be vendored
with a blue gem to make a Sapphire Ring), and any Amulet base that gives Dexterity (only Jade is available in act 1, but later Onyx, Turquoise, and Citrine as well).

Important: You will almost certainly not have enough currency in Act 1 to buy all the gems I recommend here. Just buy what you can.
I've tried to list the gems to buy in order of importance.

After opening the Submerged Passage, getting the Medicine Chest and going back to town, take Frostblink as your quest reward from Tarkleigh.
Take Summon Holy Relic as your other reward. 
Take the Quicksilver Flask quest reward from Nessa.
Take Ancestral Call Support as your quest reward gem from Nessa.
Buy Summon Phantasm Support. Link both support gems to Holy Strike if you have gem space for it. 
If you still have currency, buy Holy Flame Totem and another Summon Phantasm Support and link them together. This combo adds a ton of single target DPS
for the Brutus fight coming up. 
If you still have currency, buy Raise Zombie. You could have bought this earlier but Zombies are useless and die all the time until you have Summon Holy Relic.
Also if you want you can buy Flame Wall. This adds even more damage to your Phantasms and Totem, but it takes a lot of button presses to manage it all.

After entering the prison and returning to town, take Added Fire Damage from Nessa and link it to Holy Flame Totem.

After killing Brutus and going back to town, take Clarity as your quest reward from Tarkleigh. Only level it high enough that it keeps your mana sustained.
Buy these gems in this order of importance (get them later if you don't have currency or proper gem links now):
Leap Slam - this will be your main movement skill for the entire game. Learn how to animation cancel Leap Slam with Frostblink if you haven't already.
Minion Damage Support - Link this to Summon Holy Relic
Added Lightning Damage Support - Link this to Summon Holy Relic

Optional: After entering the Cavern of Wrath, you can take Absolution as your quest reward and use it instead of Holy Strike as your main skill if you want.
Absolution is already proven as a strong leveling skill for this build, but I will not be making a guide for it, I prefer to use the new skill Holy Strike.

Buy Melee Splash Support before finishing Act 1 if you can, if not you will need to come back for it later.

Act 2:
=====
Starting in Act 2, keep an eye out for Turquoise, Onyx, and Citrine amulets (in roughly that order of preference). You may also want a Topaz Ring for Fidelitas
and Vaal Oversoul. More importantly, helmets with +1 to Level of all Minion Skill Gems can start dropping now, if you find one it will carry you all the way to endgame.

After rescuing Helena from the Chamber of Sins, take Herald of Purity as your quest reward from Greust. Equip it and use it as soon as you can, it is a huge DPS boost.
Be careful not to link expensive support gems to Herald of Purity because they will make it reserve more mana.

After killing The Weaver and before heading to the end of the act, buy Culling Strike Support from Yeena (none of the quest reward gems from Silk are useful to us).
Link Culling Strike Support to any of your secondary skills that deals damage (like Frostblink or Raise Zombie). Just skip it if you don't have socket space.
Buy Minion Life Support and link it to Raise Zombie.
Also buy Fresh Meat Support if you can afford it and start leveling it in your weapon swap (we won't use it until much, much later).
Also buy Molten Shell.
Don't forget to pick up your free skill point in Act 1 from Bestel after opening the path in Act 2.

Act 3:
=====
In Act 3 the main new items to look for are usable 4-links and flasks with bleed removal/immunity on them (for Act 4).

After finding Tolman in The Crematorium, buy Determination from Clarissa.
You can either take Punishment or Vulnerability as your quest reward from Maramoa, both are good. Vulnerability is better for now, Punishment will be better later, 
but we will drop both for Assassin's Mark in Act 6 anyway.

You probably won't have enough mana to use all of your auras now. You can either ditch Clarity and use a mana flask, or skip using Determination for now (make sure 
you use Determination in the Labyrinth later though).

Skip library, no need to waste time in there. 

Take Dominating Blow as your quest reward from Maramoa after killing Gravicius. We won't use it quite yet, but start leveling it in your weapon swap.

Whenever you find a couple 4-links to wear, move the Added Lightning Damage Support from your Holy Relic setup to your Holy Strike.
Also move Raise Zombie and Summon Holy Relic to the same 4-link.
Ideally your 4-link setups should look like this:
Holy Strike-Ancestral Call-Summon Phantasm-Added Lightning Damage
Summon Holy Relic-Raise Zombie-Minion Life-Minion Damage

Don't worry about doing Labyrinth yet unless you are very over-leveled already.

Act 4:
=====
I usually go back and do Labyrinth when I find the Crystal Veins waypoint or after doing 1 more zone. Take Radiant Crusade as your first Ascendancy Node.
After you ascend, don't forget to summon your new giant minion at the start of every zone.

As soon as you get Voll's banner and open the mines, you can take Summon Carrion Golem or Summon Stone Golem as your quest reward from Oyun.
Either is fine but neither are important. I usually wait until I'm on the way out of Act 4 to pick this up.

Hopefully by now you've found a flask with bleed removal or immunity on it, there are a lot of mobs that cause bleed coming up.

After killing Kaom and Daresso (or after Malachai for efficiency), take Multistrike Support as your quest reward from Dialla.

Buy Cast When Damage Taken Support from Petarus and Vanja, and link it to Molten Shell (and your golem if you're lazy, you might need to buy Lifetap Support
from Act 1 for that though).

Act 5:
=====
Whenever you meet all of the following conditions, you can ditch Holy Strike and swap to Dominating Blow:
-You have the Resolute Technique keystone allocated on your passive tree.
-You have Dominating Blow, Multistrike Support, and Melee Splash Support gems (go back to Act 1 for Melee Splash Support if you missed it).
-You have an item with 3 linked red sockets to link them all (preferably a 4-link with 3 red sockets).

You can start looking for a good Warstaff if you want to swap weapon type early, but it will restrict your gem sockets. Vile Staff is a decent early base and usually
starts dropping somewhere around here.

There are no new skill gems in Act 5.

Act 6:
=====
You just lost 30 to all resistances, so start looking for gear with higher resist rolls, and bench craft resistances if you really need to.

After clearing the Twilight Strand you now have access to every basic gem in the game, so get all of your gems in order as much as possible.

Ideally your entire gem loadout should look something like this:
Dominating Blow-Multistrike-Melee Splash-Minion Damage
Frostblink-Leap Slam-Faster Attacks-Culling Strike (Only one skill needs to be linked to Culling Strike, and you might not have enough Dexterity for Faster Attacks)
Summon Holy Relic-Raise Zombie-Minion Life-Feeding Frenzy
Determination-Herald of Purity-Clarity (don't need to be linked)
Cast When Damage Taken-Molten Shell-Summon Carrion Golem-Lifetap (Golem is still very optional, and Lifetap is only needed if you are using the Golem)
Assassin's Mark
Convocation

Other skills you can be leveling in your weapon swap depending what colours you have available are:
Animate Guardian, Raise Spectre, Fresh Meat Support, Predator Support, Ruthless Support, Spirit Offering, Summon Skitterbots

If you want a DPS boost, you can buy Desecrate (keep it at level 1) and use it with Flesh Offering or Spirit Offering, but that is 2 extra buttons to press.

Any other gems not listed under this Act 6 section, you can ditch now.

You can automate Convocation either with the NumLock trick (look it up) or Automation Support. This is the main way we will meet the condition for +25% spell block
later, so it is important.

Act 7:
=====
Ditch Raise Zombie for Raise Spectre. Grab a Carnage Chieftain or Host Chieftain Spectre from The Ashen Fields while you are there. Carnage Chieftain is better now,
but Host Chieftain will be better in endgame (we will use both in endgame).

This is around when we can afford to start putting points into Staff block passives on the tree, so start looking for a good Warstaff to use if you haven't found one already.
The main thing to look for on a staff for now is + gem levels or + melee gem levels, along with decent attack speed.

Nothing else new in Act 7 except you can get the Ralakesh pantheon power which makes you basically immune to bleed for the campaign (great for Labyrinth).
Also equip the Brine King pantheon power so you never get stun-locked again (it will also give freeze immunity later in endgame).

Act 8:
=====
Do your second Labyrinth and take Unwavering Crusade as your Ascendancy point. This will basicall double your total DPS.

Act 9:
=====
Nothing new for items/skills, just keep going.

Act 10:
======
Do your third Lab and take Bastion of Hope. This will cap us on both Block and Spell Block, and we're not even done the campaign.

EARLY ENDGAME PRIORITIES:
==========================
-Get all of your gem links in order if you haven't already.
-Look for a 6-link staff with + to socketed gem levels, or just essence craft minion damage on one then bench craft attack speed.
--If you are super poor, there is a divination card called Flora's Gift that rewards a random 5-link staff.
-Get at least a 5-link body armour so you can put Animate Guardian and Raise Spectre together with Minion Life, Feeding Frenzy, and Elemental Army.
--The 6th link for these will be Maim which isn't important now (or ever really, so you can use this as a spare gem socket if you need).
-Keep your resistances capped while getting as much life and minion damage (and minion gem levels) on your gear as you can.
-Whenever you do Uber Lab, Time of Need is your best final Ascendancy point. 
--We will drop Time of Need later for a Bloodline Ascendancy after we get ailment immune through other means.
-You can make a cheap Animate Guardian using Dying Breath, Leer Cast, Southbound, plus any body armour and boots. It will probably die to any pinnacle boss though (or Crimson Township boss).
-The best easy to acquire Spectres are Carnage Chieftain, Host Chieftain (both from The Ashen Fields), and Arena Master (from any Warlord influenced map).
--Once you get some currency, replace the Arena Master with a Perfect Forest Warrior. It is super underrated and gives free Onslaught to you and your minions.
-Sporeguard is usually cheap and adds some much-needed screen clear to the build. It is however very rare, so it could be expensive if it's in high demand.
--If you can't afford one, just buy or essence craft a decent rare body armour with Eldritch implicits.
-If you don't want to use Clarity or a Mana Flask, you will need 1 source of Mana Leech somewhere in the build.
--The best place to get Mana Leech is on a weapon suffix because the only other weapon suffixes we care about are Attack Speed and crafted Minion Attack Speed.
--Other places you can get it easily are from rings, gloves, or Cluster Jewels (especially Megalomaniac). 
---The problem with getting it from rings is there are much better suffixes available on rings
---The problem with getting it from gloves is we want to use Admiral's Arrogance because it's a free +3 levels to Dominating Blow.
-Don't worry about getting a perfect flask setup until you are farming T16 maps. An instant life flask with Bleed removal and a good Quicksilver Flask are enough until then.
-You will need a moderate amount of +Dexterity somewhere on your gear if you want to use max level gems, because we get basically none from our passive tree.
-If you don't like pressing so many buttons for Desecrate, Spirit Offering, Convocation, and Assassin's Mark, you can put 3 of them on one button in a 4-link with Arcanist Brand, but it costs a gem socket.

Q&A:
=====
What is this build good at?
Most content except for pinnacle bosses with lots of ground degens (Sirus, Maven, and their uber versions), but most other bosses are very easy. This build doesn't use Headhunter very well either so may fall off in high end juiced farming like 100% 
Delirious maps and 5-way Legions. Consider unsummoning your Animated Guardian before fighting Sirus, Uber Atziri, or high level Harvest encounters as all of these can be dangerous to your investment in the Animated Guardian's gear.

What does this build suck at?
Legion, and the aforementioned Uber Maven and Uber Sirus.

Why are there two Vaal Domination 6-link setups in the skills tab?
It is actually just the one 6-link setup, but I duplicated it to separate the minion damage calculations for Dominating Blow's normal Sentinels of Dominance and Vaal Domination's Ascended Sentinels of Dominance, since both can be active together.
If you know of a better way to accomplish this, please let me know.

Why not Dialla's Mallefaction?
Because Dialla's has no defences and this is a melee build. Also getting a good Dialla's is expensive, while Sporeguard is usually cheap and still quite good for this build.

What about other variants like Poison or Claw+Shield?
A mirror-tier claw + The Squire is probably the true endgame for this build, but it is absolutely not worth investing that much currency into this build. This build is at it's best when played to pre-mirror budget levels, and if you want to spend mirrors
then other builds are better for that. There still is a mirror tier sample item set in this guide if you insist, but this build goes from 100M dps on reasonable gear, to 200M on mirror tier gear. Better builds for mirror budgets tend to go from 30M dps to 1B.
As for Poison, it is probably good but it would be much better on a different Ascendancy like Necromancer, and there are better minions for Poison like SRS or Summon Holy Relic of Conviction.

Where do all of the checked mods in the Configuration tab come from?
-Is the enemy Maimed? - Maim Support linked to Raise Spectre and Animate Guardian
-Is the enemy on Brittle Ground? - "Drops Brittle Ground while Moving" mod on boots, also on Animate Guardian boots.
-Is the enemy exposed to Cold? - Elemental Army Support linked to Raise Spectre and Animate Guardian. Cold should be their highest average elemental damage type based on the auras from Guardian's Summon Elemental Relic.
-Is the enemy Intimidated? - Intimidate on hit Eldritch glove implicit on Early-Mid Endgame Loadout, or Hunter-influenced weapon suffix on Giga Endgame Loadout.
-Is the enemy on Profane Ground? - Bitter Heresy notable from Lycia Bloodline Ascendancy. Must have a source of consecrated ground to work; easiest is a Magic Sulphur Flask.
-Is the enemy on Fungal Ground? - Sporeguard (only active while character is stationary).
-4 Spider's Web Stacks? - Level 30 Aspect of the Spider crafted on Rare gear.
-Is Feeding Frenzy active? - Feeding Frenzy Support linked to Raise Spectre and Animate Guardian. Buffs all of your minions regardless of which minion activated it.
-Is Fresh Meat Active? - Fresh Meat Support linked to Dominating Blow / Vaal Domination. After the buffs in 3.28 and with our passive tree, Dominating Blow minions will last 43.2 seconds, so Fresh Meat will be active for 4.3 seconds on each.
--This means they must be replaced at a rate slightly faster than 2 minions per second to maintain permanent uptime on Fresh Meat. This will easily happen while mapping, but not quite while bossing, so these calcs are slightly inflated.
--Vaal Domination Ascended Sentinels are replaced much less frequently, so their DPS calculation is more inflated. You can untick Fresh Meat in config to see the difference. The reality will be somewhere in between the two numbers.
--Despite this discrepancy, Fresh Meat Support is still by far the strongest support gem to run in this slot.  
-Is the enemy marked with Signal Prey? - Predator Support linked to Dominating Blow / Vaal Domination. This does require a button press by the player.
-Raise Spectre > Enable buffs (disabled)? - This assumes 100% uptime on spectre buffs, so instead if this is needed I will include their buffs in a custom modifier with averaged out numbers based on their uptime (currently not needed).
-Do you use Endurance Charges? - Enduring Composure cluster jewel notable on Megalomaniac (currently only on the Giga Endgame Loadout)
-Summon Elemental Relic? - All three auras are from the Guardian Ascendancy Notable Unwavering Crusade. These are all easily maintained at 100% uptime on this build.
-Dom. Blow: Count skill damage once? - Just to not multiply character damage by minion count. Irrelevant anyway because I included "Deal no damage" custom modifier just to keep the character's damage out of the calcs.
-Do your minions use Power Charges? - Host Chieftain Spectre
-Do your minions use Frenzy Charges? - Carnage Chieftain Spectre
-Do you have Onslaught? - Perfect Forest Warrior Spectre
-Do your minions have Onslaught? - Perfect Forest Warrior Spectre
-Minion on Profane Ground? - Bitter Heresy notable from Lycia Bloodline Ascendancy. Must have a source of consecrated ground to work; easiest is a Magic Sulphur Flask.
-Has a Minion Died Recently? - Dominating Blow replaces the oldest minion with a new one when going over the minion limit, so they die all the time.
-Have you Attacked Recently? - Dominating Blow is an attack, yes.
-Have you cast a Spell Recently? - Mainly through automating Convocation, which has a shorter cooldown than the 4 second condition of "Recently".
-Have you used a Minion Skill Recently? - Dominating Blow is a Minion Skill, yes.

Why take the Anointed Flesh passive wheel (North of Templar start)?
-Combined with Brine King and Garukhan Pantheon powers it gives practical immunity to Shock and Chill, and access to the Corrupted Blood immunity Mastery point.

Is this build HCSSF viable?
-I have played older, weaker variants of this build to endgame in multiple Gauntlets and in HCSSF Mayhem, so yes. You may not have access to certain uniques in SSF, but there are good craftable rares you can use in those slots anyway.

Why is there a 7th disabled link for Melee Splash Support in the main 6-link setup?
To show that you can swap out Melee Splash Support for Ruthless (the weakest support gem of the same colour in the 6-link). You will use Melee Splash 99% of the time, but you can use Ruthless for extra damage on big pinnacle bosses.

Where do the Custom Modifiers for Animate Guardian come from?
You can click on the Items tab, then "Manage" to see the AG gear sets, or you can set AG to the main skill on the sidebar and see its gear there.
It is generally from some mix of Leer Cast, Dying Breath or Kingmaker, and Rare boots.

Why no Awakened Empower?
Because Awakened Empower costs half a mirror and there are much easier ways to get gem levels. There is no point in going above gem level 30 anyway (I've done that, check my YouTube video on Level 40 Dominating Blow).

Why no other Awakened gems?
Because they don't exist anymore as of 3.28, and the new Exceptional Support Gems are not in PoB yet at the time of writing this. They will be added where appropriate to the Deep Endgame and Giga Endgame Loadouts when they are available.


CHANGELOG
===========
2026-03-02, for PoE version 3.28:
============================
-Remade entire guide from scratch because the old guide was terribly outdated (last update was for 3.21)
-The old crafting guides from the previous guide will be migrated here after I review and update them, but for now they are gone.
-We are now using Holy Strike as our early leveling skill instead of Absolution.
-Guardian has been through multiple reworks since the last update to this guide, as such some things we were taking advantage of have changed
--We are no longer naturally curse immune, but can get there with gear
--It is now much easier to cap block and spell block, but Convocation can't be cast on left click anymore, so it must be automated either with the Numpad trick or Automation Support.
--Since banners (especially Dread Banner) work completely differently now, and since Guardian now has access to free high level elemental damage auras, we are no longer building around Impale.
--Instead we can now build around crit and the insanely powerful Fresh Meat Support, getting all of our base damage from gem levels and Guardian Elemental Relic Auras.
--Since the duration of Dominating Blow minions is being increased in 3.28, they now have the same duration as Summoned Skeletons, making them perfect candidates for Fresh Meat Support.
-The old Changelog will be migrated into this guide for reference once I review it for formatting, but is missing for now.
-Moderate changes to passive tree pathing since the old guide. There is now less focus on increasing maximum resistances, and more focus on capping block chance and increasing minion damage.
-No longer using Demon Harpy Spectre as we are no longer building around purely physical damage.
-No longer using Pale Seraphim Spectre as it appears to have always been bugged in a severely detrimental way.
-Now using Perfect Forest Warrior Spectre for free Onslaught for character and all minions.
-Perfect Forest Tiger is another option but much, much more expensive.
-No longer including Scion or Champion character variants in this guide, as the builds are far too different from the current Guardian build. If I make guides for those, they will be entirely separate.
-The step-by-step campaign guide has been removed in favour of a guide focusing on which gems to take and when, and which items to look out for. There are better places than this to learn how to run the campaign.
-No longer using Frost Bomb to deal with regenerating bosses because we should have so much damage that it doesn't matter.
-No longer using any alternate quality gems since they don't exist anymore (yes it has been that long since the last update).
-The ongoing boss progression report has been removed since it is no longer representative of the current build.
-The "Key changes in Patch X" section has been removed since this is a new guide. It will return if & when this guide is updated for future patches.
-Now using Loadouts in PoB for each act and each stage of endgame to organize character building.
-No longer recommend using Ashes of the Stars because it has been nerfed since the last update to this guide (seriously, it has been that long).
-Now recommend using Replica Dragonfang's Flight with Dominating Blow rolled.
-Now recommend using Admiral's Arrogance gloves at basically all stages of endgame.
-No longer recommending a Forbidden Jewel combo as the only good one is Unwavering Faith which is always insanely expensive.
--Sanctuary would be a good option, except it conflicts with the new Lycia Bloodline node Bitter Heresy which is much, much better.
-No longer recommending any Labyrinth Helm Enchantments, because those don't exist anymore.
-Overall this version of the build has significantly more damage and higher block chance than the old version, but also significantly less life regeneration.
-Updated the entire Q&A section.