Thy's SRS Guardian SSF League Starter [3.29]

Changes to the build in 3.29:

in short, the build has not changed at all. Listed below are impactful changes, but by no means do they influence how strong the build will be. It's going to be as good as it was in 3.28.

Nerfs

• The coins of previous league are gone, meaning no free lvl 1 support gem, which is about a 15% less damage nerf.
• the breach genesis tree received another round of nerfs, making it harder to craft 6-links or other stuff.

Buffs

• "All Non-Spectre Minions no longer pause while attacking. This change will be a significant damage per second increase for Summoned Raging Spirits." - This can be massive. Or 1% increased damage.
• Socket colors no longer required, and slotting gems into the correct color, providing 10% quality. The build doesn't massively scale with gem quality, but it's definitely a buff. SRS gets a bit more increased damage, spectres are tankier, golems have more buff effect, and curses are more potent.
• several corrupted implicits added and removed, resulting in a much better pool of corrupted implicits
• Mercenaries of Trarthus are back, meaning temporary buffs while mapping
• ghastly eye jewels can roll more minion speed --> "Minions have 15% increased Movement Speed (previously up to 10%)."
• no more reflect maps. Thorns seems manageable.
• "The audio for most Raised Spectres should now be quieter"
• "Hybrid increased Spell/Minion Damage and Mana Prefix Modifiers on caster weapons have been increased at all Modifier tiers, up to 49% increased at the maximum tier on one-hand weapons (previously 39%)."
• "You can now right-click the icon for your Animated Guardian to view their currently equipped items, though you cannot remove or replace items from this window."

====

Warning: Stats displayed on the right are not correct. Please check the PoB loadouts for the correct values.

Loot Filter & PoB

Loot Filter: https://www.pathofexile.com/item-filter/aqvpmdum - 3.29 version

PoB: https://maxroll.gg/poe/pob/kmngcd0x - updated for 3.29

Content

• Campaign VOD live stream (21-07-2026: following this guide)
• T1 Maps to 2 Void Stones VOD live stream (22-07-2026: following this guide)
• Day 1 Update Video (25-07)
• Day 2 Update Video (26-07)
• Zero to Hero video for my entire journey including killing Ubers (01-08)

Overview

The SRS Guardian is a solid starter, a jack of all trades, meaning it doesn't excel at anything, but can do everything. It kills Uber pinnacle bosses and wave 15 simulacrum, after investment. Due to its versatile nature, the build should be very suitable for doing the new league mechanic, as the SRS will seek out all underwater enemies. And likely target them outside the circles too. The only league mechanic it kinda sucks at, at the start, is Legion.

This build will carry you smoothly through the league, until you're either ready to grind it out and min max, or until you've collected enough gear for a second SSF character and nuke pinnacle content with that.

It's a 1-button build, which you don't have to aim, you just cast Summon Raging Spirit. These guys will move towards your cursor, so you can send them into rooms using this tech, for example. Otherwise, they autotarget enemies.

Sentinel of Radiance is always up (although it can in theory die)

Convocation is automated using Automation

Elemental Weakness, Desecrate & Flesh Offering are triggered by the wand

Which leaves you only with 2 movement skills, Shield Charge & Frostblink

plus, you can press Vaal Haste whenever it's up for a nice boost in speed and damage

Defensive Scaling:

1. Armor. Armor is our main base defensive layer, adding physical damage reduction. Also, just the physical damage reduction stat works. It's not that easy to get endurance charges into the build, but once you can, that's a lot of extra defences. I use a perfect warlord to get it, or a small cluster jewel.
2. Block. Using the ascendancy node Bastion of Hope, it's fairly easy to get block capped. Although it requires you to shield charge every 4 seconds. That's usually not a problem when mapping. 
3. Maximum resistances. We get 80% max res using the passive tree and eldritch implicits.  
4. Physical damage taken as. We convert around 16% of physical damage into other elements or chaos damage, using eldritch implicits, which helps mitigate physical damage.  
5. Increased defences, from the Summon Stone Golem, 20%, and the Umbral Army ascendancy, at least 30%, and for every extra spectre, another 10%.  
6. Minions blind on hit, reducing enemies' accuracy 
7. Minions taunt on hit, making enemies deal 10% less damage 
8. Minions can block incoming projectiles. However, minions can also attract unwanted attention, so there's a counter argument as well 
9. Enemies are chilled, thanks to skitterbots 
10. Corrupted blood immunity, on the passive tree at first, and later using a corrupted implicit on an abyss jewel 
11. Elemental ailment immunity, thanks to purity of elements 
12. in late game, once you have good Armor / ES gear, you can combine Mind Over Matter plus Wicked Ward plus Divine Shield for massive extra hitpool. As you're blocking and mitigating so much damage, ES regen shouldn't be an issue, and Eldritch Battery should remain operational. You will need all Armor / ES gear pieces though, plus the mastery for 100% increased armor and ES on body armour, or you probably won't have enough to sustain. Just be mindful of constant DoT damage (like 600 chaos damage altar) as that messes up this layer of defense.
13. Your sentinel takes 20% of your damage, meaning 20% less damage taken.

Offensive Scaling:

1. The flat damage of minions. This is scaled by their level, which is one of the main reasons why minion levels are so important. It's also scaled by buffs such as Hatred and Wrath, by the Summon Carrion Golem, and by flat damage on ghastly eye jewels. This flat damage is used as the basis for all other scaling, so it's very important. 
2. The increased damage scaling, which includes all sources of increased minion damage, for example on the passive tree, your wand and shield, but also stats like increased minion attack speed, and that sort of thing.  
3. The multiplicative damage scaling, which mostly comes from support gems which have more multipliers on them. A buff like Hatred which adds around 30% of physical damage as extra cold damage, I also consider a more multiplier although I'm not 100% sure that's technically correct. It's the only source that provides the extra damage, however.  
4. Again, technically maybe not correct, but the 4^th category are damage scaling factors that don't directly increase your damage output, but increase the damage received by enemies.
5. 1. Punishment
   2. Flammability
   3. Elemental Weakness
   4. intimidate
   5. Covered in Ash
   6. Scorch (from Legacy of Fury on the Animate Guardian)
   7. penetrating resistances
   8. shock from Summon Skitterbots
5. Finally, after all is said and done, you can scale the number of minions you have. With SRS, the cap is 20, and you will reach that, using Unleash Support. The new support gem that gives 38% more minions is bait, for this build. I wouldn't use it.  

Trigger craft 

the trigger craft is found in the Refinery Act 9, in a hidden area with a grate with green light coming from it, just keep following the pipes on the ground.

One of the first things you should do in endgame, is get a minion wand with an open suffix, and bench craft the trigger craft. The way this works, is that it automatically triggers any skill that's socketed in the wand, starting at the top socket, and working its way down. That means it's important to first socket in desecrate, level 1, at the top, so it first creates corpses, and then below the desecrate gem, you slot in flesh offering, so it offers those corpses. The third socket is optional. I've put in a curse. You could put in convocation, if you like, or an aura, which wouldn't be triggered, but just be in the wand. Desecrate and flesh offering are the most important.  

Be very careful when managing spectre corpses that you don’t trigger the wand and blow up their corpse.  

How to Get Which Gear (WIP)

+2 Minion Helmet

1. Rog Crafting - Rog may offer a +1 minion helmet, and once you start crafting on that, there's a common step in Rog-crafting which upgrades one or even all affixes by one tier. If that hits the +1 minion affix, it upgrades into +2 minions.
2. Map runners & Ritual - I've had Kingsmarch map runners bring me back several +2 minion helmets. Also Ritual tends to offer these helmets.
3. Ground Loot - A final result is just to get lucky with ground loot and pick up a lot of helmets.
4. Harvest Crafting (video) - There's a harvest minion reroll, which has a 1 in 11 chance for +2 minion helmet. You require 3 crystallized rancours which you will get in 3.29 from an anomaly map. That means it's a very late game craft, because you need to have void stones to even spawn anomalies. This may be very rare now, compared to last league where it was quite easily farmable.

Abyss Jewels

I typically just use alteration & augmentation orbs, then regal, then exalted orb slam. With the new currency buffs, you have plenty of those. Aim for:

• minion flat physical damage
• minion flat fire damage
• life
• one source of taunt (minion attacks taunt on hit)
• one source of blind (minion attacks blind on hit)
• minion attack and cast speed
• minion damage when you used a minion skill recently

also not too shabby:

• minion flat cold or lightning damage
• stun avoidance
• bleed avoidance

Rest of the Gear (WIP)

• Rings / Amulet (Map Runners / Shipments / Rog crafting / Betrayal members)
• Chest (Genesis Tree / Rog Crafting)
• Gloves (Genesis Tree / Just a decent drop)
• Boots (Tree Crafting / Betrayal members)
• Wand (Fossil Crafting) - (video)
• Shield (Fossil Crafting, follow the same strategy as the wand)
• Darkness Enthroned (From Abyss Bosses in Abyssal Depth)
• Rumi's Concoction (random drop)

Anoint 

Use a website like Blight Helper to put in the oils you possess, and then the website will list all possible anoints.

Early & cheap anoints:

• Practical Application
• Fangs of the Viper
• Testudo

These are nice because of the block, dexterity or resistances. My lvl 100 character still uses Testudo.   

Pantheon 

how to get divine vessels in SSF: trade 1 divine orb and 5 normal quality flasks to the vendor, and get 5 divine vessels, enough to get all the pentheon points you need.

Early Mapping

1. Lunaris - physical damage mitigation
2. Gruthkul - physical damage mitigation

Late Mapping

1. Lunaris - physical damage mitigation
2. Abberath - I run searing exarch maps, and burning ground is not fun. 

Spectres 

Spectres are buffed since 3.27: when they die, they don’t permanently disappear anymore. Spectres become little white blobs, but they return in a new zone. This is huge, and it means once you’ve found your spectres, you’re good to go. 

• Carnage chieftain from act 2 - frenzy charges
• Host chieftain from act 6 - power charges
• Forest warrior from Ritual - any rarity provides Onslaught. A regular version provides culling too

Aspirational spectres (all from ritual), replace host chieftain first.

• Perfect guardian turtle - 5% physical damage reduction / determination aura.
• Perfect warlord - endurance charges / vitality
• Perfect primal thunderbird - grace
• Perfect Hulking miscreation - buffs your summon raging spirits with increased damage, attack speed, and cast speed, although this buff isn’t super consistent.

Animate Guardian 

How it works:

for animate guardian to appear, you need to drop items on the ground, hover over an item, and hit the animate guardian skill. The animate guardian will then 'pick up' the item from the ground, if he is high enough level, and if he can wear the item. The animate guardian cannot wear bows, for example.

During campaign:

Just give him random rare gear. It's an extra free minion, he does some damage, it's not bad at all.

AG Gear starting options:

• Limbsplit for culling strike or any other culling weapon
• Thrillsteel for perma onslaught on the AG / Blood Price to reserve enemy hp
• Belly of the Beast / Zahndethus' Cassock / any decent unique chest
• Wake of Destruction (farmable with div cards - common drop)
• Lochtonial Caress which may provide a few charges, especially if the AG has culling

AG Gear to initially aim for, this set will buff your army significantly

• Dying Breath or Dreadarc / Victario's Charity or Replica Victario's Charity or something similar (Dreadarc requires +1 curse on the AG or it will overwrite your curses). I like using ancient orbs on staves to get this.
• Leer Cast (random common drop)
• Cospri's Will / chest with +1 curse (hit a hunters influenced chest with harvest 'reroll caster' craft to guarantee a +1 curse)
• Asenath's Gentle Touch / Any gloves with curse on hit
• Legacy of Fury (from Maven) / Windscream (+1 curse - random drop)

Very aspirational / unattainable AG Gear

• Garb of the Ephemeral for crit and action speed debuff immunity
• Kingmaker which is GG but close to impossible in SSF to get

Atlas Passive Trees 

For atlas passive trees, I feel more and more there are no best trees, as you should just play mechanics you like to play. Also in SSF. That said, I do have some suggestions that will help you progress the build, but take it as a suggestion.

The first tree focuses on map sustain and Ritual, for your forest warrior. Later, we expand to searing exarch and add a bit of abyss. I expect this is enough to get to an abyssal depth to get the Darkness Enthroned. If not, add more abyss nodes, all the ones at the top.

The second tree for me will be more of a blasting tree which I will use to have fun, and play the mechanics I enjoy the most, while those are still useful to me. In my case, I believe strongboxes will be great, for 6-links, should you not have one yet. Shrines are just great for mapping. And several other buffs will be there too. This is going to be my tree after 2 voidstones, to blast to get more upgrades.

The last tree is a maven boss rushing tree. You can either convert the second tree into this, or use the third tree. Maven Boss rushing is a classic, really, but you need this. You want the invitations, get a bunch of maps, and it's mandatory to get 4 voidstones in SSF, which this build has no issues in getting.  

Atlas Passive Trees:
Atlas Tree 1 - Ritual & Betrayal & Map Sustain (53 Points) - https://poeplanner.com/a/6Ztu
Atlas Tree 1 - Ritual & Betrayal & Searing Exarch & Abyss (100 points) - https://poeplanner.com/a/6Ztx
Atlas Tree 2 - Buffs & Blasting Strongboxes (117 points) - https://poeplanner.com/a/6ZtF
Atlas Tree 3 - Maven Boss Rushing (103 points) - https://poeplanner.com/a/6Ztw

Flasks 

• life flask with bleeding immunity
• granite
• jade
• quicksilver
• quartz

focus on:

• charges on getting hit
• duration
• increased armor
• increased evasion
• reduced effect of curses
• movement speed

Darkness Enthroned

One item in specific you want to farm for, using abyss, is the Darkness Enthroned. This belt holds 2 abyss jewels, and can roll up to 100% effect of those jewels. Using this belt, you can gain a ton of flat minion damage, which is a hard stat to get otherwise. Also, depending on the suffixes you roll, you can get immunity to bleed, stun, or other very useful affixes. This belt provides significant power and is always a massive upgrade.

Regex Strings

To use these, download awakened poe trade, and import these into the program. Or copy paste them directly into the search bars of NPCs

Vendor Regex, shows 3/4/5-links, shows movement speed items, shows +1 skill items: "-\w-.-|(-\w){4}|-\w-|Runn|rint|ll g"

Act 1 Skill & Support Gems: "Raging|Ruthle|phanta|added lig|splas|flame To|infused cha|ld cha|frostblin|clarity|minion dama|flesh off|combustion" "!smite"

Act 2 Skill & Support Gems: "tempest shield|desecrate|elemental damage with attacks|minion life"

Act 3 Skill & Support Gems: "flammabi|elemental weakness|purity of elements|punishment"

Library Skill & Support Gems: "animate guar|haste|elemental army|feeding frenzy|meat shield|skitterbots|Raise Spectre|automation|convocation"

Act 4 Skill & Support Gems: "stone golem|carrion golem|multistrike|unleash" "!frozen legion"

Highlighting 5 or 6-link when spamming fusings: (-\w){4}|(-\w){5}
Rolling Maps T16: "!s rec|ur$|o al|f ph|tal d|non|gen" "y: r" !tified (WIP due to reflect changes)
Rolling Maps T16,5 / Nightmare: "!tanc|ce c|efl|fe a|r at|ur$|efe|vola|r li|tiles$|acl|non|gen|get" "y: r" !tified

FAQ:

Questions I got often from the streams or comments:

Q: What items to buy in trade if I don't play SSF?
A: Check the scaling sections, if you understand those, you know what to buy. Check the Animate Guardian gear, you can buy all of those. And in PoB, there's a 'trade for these items' function, you can load my lvl 100 character and trade for all his gear.

Q: why no zombies?
A: zombies die early on and deal no damage. Later, you simply don't have the sockets for zombies, they're slow, and pretty useless all in all. The only exception is my very, very late variant, where I have Umbral Army and have zombies summon a bunch of phantasms. This should not be a focus though.

Q: is the new congregation support (38% more minions) worth it?
A: No, not in this build. You're better off with 20 minions that deal more damage.

Q: I'm res capped without Purity of Elements, what can I replace it with?
A: Do not replace it. Your minions need the resistances, plus elemental ailment immunity for you and your army is huge. It's about more than just easy resistances. If you really want to replace it anyway, get something defensive, like Determination or Grace.

31-10-2025: Initial Build

31-10-2025: updated atlas passive trees and regex strings

7-11-2025: updated with the new PoB format

13-11-2025: updated build with 3.27 level 100 PoB, adjusted several sections, added more regex strings, added more defensive layers, added animate guardian gear, updated strengths and weaknesses.

27-02-2026: added changes related to the build in 3.28 based on patch notes.

03-03-2026: updated regex strings, updated AG gear

04-03-2026: updated atlas trees, spectre section, flasks, and pantheon

05-03-2026: started WIP on gearing, listed several anoints, fixed several old pieces of text

06-03-2026: made another pass across everything, build guide is ready for 3.28. Added Q&A section at the bottom. Updated loot filter to 3.28.

10-03-2026: updated PoB with 3.28 version, updated Regex strings

12-03-2026: added abyss jewel crafting tips, updated guide with various new insights after playing Mirage

17-07-2026: Added Buffs, Neutral and Nerfs for 3.29

21-07-2026: Updated regex strings and made specific ones per levelling act

22-07-2026: Completely built from scratch the Build Variants and tested them twice on stream. They now have a theme to all of them, so it's clear what the point of the loadout is, and you can follow these step by step to get all voidstones and eventually the uber pinnacle content. Added 2 VODs.

24-07-2026: released the build guide video, so updated that in this guide too. Updated Loot Filter

25-07-2026: updated PoB to the latest PoB-release (3.29 tree). Added Day 1 update video

01-08-2027: Added 2 more videos to the content section.