GhazzyTV's Herald of Purity Guardian Gear Progression (PoE Necropolis)

Introduction

While the PoB shows you what gear we believe belongs in which budget, it might still be a bit unclear in what order we think you should prioritize what.
On this page, we will do our best to explain what we prioritize when, and why. With that out of the way, let’s dig into the gear progression.

Campaign

During the campaign with this build, you will for the most part pick up items that have the links and colours you desire and hit them with an Orb of Alchemy or an Essence with an appropriate function to make them rare. You will be hoping for a resistance when doing this, and should you end up having an open suffix on the item the crafting bench will let you add on a second resistance roll or an attribute roll, depending on your current needs.
Keeping your resistances as high as possible, ensuring you have the attribute rolls and getting some life modifiers is all you need to worry about at this stage. Do keep in mind that resistances are not very important in the first couple of acts but becomes extremely crucial for your survival around Act 5 and forward and reaching the cap (75%) is preferable for all 3 elements at this point. If you’re struggling with gear to reach this you can always replace any of your offensive aura(s) for a Purity of Elements to help solve this potential problem.

Low Budget

We are going to make the assumption that you have kept your resistances capped going into this budget, and will be working with that assumption. If you do not have capped resistances when hitting maps, you need to get that sorted as soon as possible. Any attributes you might need to keep leveling your gems and/or equip gear will also need to be sorted either via gear or by deviating slightly from the skill-tree by picking up any needed “+30 attribute” nodes on the tree. Gear wise, pieces such as a Heavy Belt and/or Jade Amulet are great pieces to solve attribute issues.

Early gear

The great pro of being a Guardian is that you literally just need to get yourself in to the first Lab to get the Sentinel of Radiance which single-handedly will carry your clearing all the way to maps by using your mobility skill and Convocation. So gearing during the campaign is all about Life, resistances and making sure you have enough attributes to cover your gear and gem levels. Due to this you are mainly looking to keep the defenses up with your gear and look for the end-game unique items when you’re able to afford or find them.

A helmet with +1 or 2 if the wallet can survive that investment level of all minion skill gems is preferable, don’t forget to make sure the helmet has a life modifier!
Triad Grip is a massive damage output bonus for the build with proper colors this would allow you to change Melee Physical Support from your Herald of Purity to the Elemental Damage with Attacks support instead as well.
Maata's Teaching is an insane damage increase for the build with the added crit.

Utula's Hunger this is the only tricky part with this builds gear progression. When you equip this you have to make sure you don’t have any life modifier on any of your gear pieces outside of your jewels. Since this will force you to re-gear most of your gear pieces it is highly recommended to aim to use gear pieces where you have bench-crafted your life so that when you get a Utula’s Hunger you can simply remove those life-modifiers and go on about your progression.

After this I would recommend aiming for the Replica Dragonfang's Flight with +3 levels to Herald of Purity, since a rare amulet is such a great slot to sort attributes and/or resistances you have to make sure the rest of your gear covers you when you do this switch!

It is finally time to prioritize our old friend Darkness Enthroned. Minion builds like Ghastly Eye Jewel and this build is no exception.
Getting a very well-rolled belt, especially early on, is extremely expensive and not advised. Get a roll of 50-75% or so, and look to upgrade the belt later. The values above that simply aren’t worth their price early on, we can spend our currency better elsewhere.

Anything after this is mostly preferential as the above pieces brings the best upgrades to start with.

Jewels

The main modifier is to make sure that literally, every, single, jewel you have slotted has a Life modifier increasing your health. Outside of that you can go for a variety of different damage modifiers ranging from “Minions Deal X – Y Additional Physical (or Cold, Lightning, Fire) Damage” as any of them will work fine, physical is the better one but can cost a bit more. Other modifiers could be increased attack speed for your minions or “Minions deal #% increased damage when you’ve used a minion skill recently”

Shield

With our offenses reasonably solidified at this point, it is time to take care of our defenses.
The primary defensive layer in this build is block, combined with acceptable regen. We are by no means super tanky or a raidboss, but we should be okay.

The rest

A rare amulet & Rings purpose is to help solve your attributes and/or resistances with these pieces!

Concluding low budget

If you have not already, it is high time that you sort your flasks. Get flasks with the modifiers that correspond with the guide as best you can, and be willing to spend a little extra to get better rolls on your Rumi's Concoction. Moving forward you’ll also want to give yourself Chaos Resistances when possible to help build your defenses higher.

Medium Budget

There are Medium Budget versions, one includes the Trial of the Ancestors tattoo mechanic and the other does not. This build has one of the smoothest gear progression between budgets in the entire game. Mostly it’s all about higher numerical values on gear such as a better rolled Maata's Teaching or even a corrupted Utula's Hunger with + Level of Minion Gems. The only real difference is the addition of cluster jewels & moving our Animate Guardian in to a The Hungry Loop on top of changing our skills and auras by having our second ring being a Circle of Guilt rolled with “Herald of Purity has #% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency” and “Sentinels of Purity deal #% increased damage”. We also add a The Red Nightmare jewel and 2x Grand Spectrum (Minions Gain Critical Strike).

Because of how straight forward the progression is I would strongly recommend putting high priority on both rings and the cluster jewels to adjust the skills as well as your tree and then after that move in to the Red Nightmare whilst taking the Grand Spectrum jewels last. However, getting a The Writhing Jar should be the very first thing you do!

Medium Budget WITH Tattoos

Once you’re done with progressing in to the Medium Budget version of this build you simply add another Nightmare jewel and get yourself the Trial of the Ancestor tattoos which will help you cap resistances and provides you with the extra layers of block that you are sacrificing for your cluster jewels on the tree.

High Budget

With the risk of sounding boring here;
This build is, as stated, extremely straight forward with gear progression. The difference between Medium and High Budget is literally just higher numerical values across the board and/or better corruptions on your unique items. Thanks to this, the build has been able to keep the costs down whilst still bringing insanely effective performance in both speed and damage output.

Final Notes

Initially, any rare item you get should always have a life modifier and make sure you always keep an eye out for your resistance(s) and/or attributes so you don’t end up creating a mess as you upgrade piece by piece. However, once you get the Utula's Hunger you don’t want ANY life modifier (including life modifiers such as increased life regen). Due to this it’s recommended to use gear where you have bench-crafted the life modifier so that you can easily just remove the life with the bench-craft when you equip the end-game body armor.
Outside of that the build is hilariously straight forward and I hope you enjoy it as much as I am!

HoP Main Page / TL;DR