Thy's SRS Guardian SSF League Starter

Warning: Stats displayed over here are not correct. I clearly don't have 177% movement speed :) Please check the PoB loadouts for the correct values.

Resources

Loot Filter: https://www.pathofexile.com/item-filter/lqLz4NS1

PoB Levelling Guide: https://pobb.in/goior2nzNCKU

PoB level 100 3.27 SRS Guardian: https://pobb.in/rL3LCVbbG81k

Overview

The SRS Guardian is a solid starter, a jack of all trades, meaning it doesn't excel at anything, but can do almost everything. This league, in 3.27, I managed to kill several Uber pinnacle bosses and wave 15 simulacrum. While we lost the mercenary which added a lot of power, 3.27 has brought sizeable buffs to minion builds, like permanent spectres, guaranteed hitting for minion, plus some very interesting bloodline ascendancies. On top of that, you can grow 2 arms out of your body, for additional player power.  

The build performs well in circles with enemies, because the raging spirits automatically seek out enemies and aren't hindered by terrain or other obstacles, which can come in handy in Breach 2.0 as well. I'm convinced 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.  

This build is pretty tanky, under normally, balanced circumstances. The level 94 PoB has 7k max phys hit, 50k effective hit pool, and okay recovery. My level 100 PoB in 3.27 has (without flasks up):

• 186k EHP
• 75% block
• 72% spell block
• ~11 million DPS (with high uptime, because it's minion DPS)

the level 85 loadout has a 5-link

the level 94 loadout has a 6-link, including the support gems I would recommend

Finally, a word on the playstyle. It's rather simple, really, after you've automated a few skills with the trigger wand, and we automate convocation as well. You just shield charge around as this is the attack you need to do every 4 seconds to get your block chance up. You can frostblink over ledges or other obstacles. You summon your minions, you need to summon your sentinel roughly every 30 seconds, and you can press vaal haste whenever it's up for a nice damage and speed boost. Everything else will be taken care of for you, by your minion army. Which is kinda the point of the build.

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.  
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 stone golem, 20%, and the Umbral army ascendancy, at least 36%, and for every extra spectre, another 12%.  
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 tree crafted 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. Just be mindful of constant DoT damage (like 600 chaos damage altar) as that messes up this layer of defense.

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 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 I think 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. You do this for example using the punishment curse or by intimidating enemies, or lowering enemies' elemental resistances, or by covering them in ash, or by scorching them, which again reduces resistances, or by penetrating resistances, or by shocking them with skitterbots which increases damage taken. I think most of these are damage multipliers, but I tend to describe them separately as it's not always immediately apparent they impact the damage a lot.  
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. But if you would play a pure spectre build, and you go from 4 to 5 spectres, that means 1 more spectre with all this other scaling and damage, is very significant. In this build, spectres do some damage, but are mostly utility focused and buffing either you or the minions. They're not the primary damage dealers.  

Trigger craft 

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

• Helmet (Rog or Map Runners)
• Rings / Amulet (Map Runners / Shipments)
• Chest (Tree Crafting)
• Gloves (Tree Crafting)
• Boots (Tree Crafting)
• Wand (Fossil Crafting)
• Shield (Fossil Crafting)
• Darkness Enthroned (From Abyss Bosses in Abyssal Depth)
• Rumi's Concoction (random drop, I got it from the tree)

Anoint 

Once you have some oils, you can google blight helper, you can put in the oils you possess, and then the website will list all possible anoints. I would take something with block, dexterity which you'll sorely need, or resistances. Those are typically cheap. Later, we have more oils and more anoint options, but at first, cheap anoints are quite good.  

Pantheon 

For pantheon, I take Lunaris and Gruthkul, in early mapping. By using a divine orb, should you have on, and 5 normal quality flasks, and vendor those, you can get 5 divine vessels, enough to get all the pentheon points you need. Lunaris offers physical damage mitigation which is great. Gruthkul does the same. Late game, I swap to Abberath minor pantheon, because I run searing exarch maps, and burning ground is not fun.  

Spectres 

Your first 2 spectres should be a carnage chieftain from act 2, and a host chieftain from act 6. Those provide free frenzy and power charges to your army. After that, I advise you to do ritual and just farm that for a bunch of other spectres. 

The main buff to spectres this league, is that when they die, they don’t permanently disappear anymore. Previously, spectres from ritual would not be resummonable, but that’s a thing of the past. Spectres will now become little white blobs, but they will return in a new zone. This is huge, and it means once you’ve found your spectres, you’re good to go. 

Some great spectres from ritual are the forest warrior, which provides culling and permanent onslaught. There’s the perfect guardian turtle, which provides 5% physical damage reduction and a determination aura. There’s the perfect warlord, which provides endurance charges to allies and a vitality aura, the perfect primal thunderbird provides grace, and the hulking miscreation buffs your summon raging spirits with increased damage, attack speed, and cast speed, although this buff isn’t super consistent. Depending on which one you find, these are all worth taking.  

Animate Guardian 

Some words about the animate guardian. I’ve put a section in the loot filter with items that are useful on the animate guardian. At first, you’ll give it items such as a leer cast, which drops fairly often, a dying breath staff, a wake of destruction. Later, if you keep grinding, you can upgrade its gear significantly and deck out the animate guardian with many rare uniques, such as a garb of the ephemeral, legacy of fury, asenaths gentle touch, and more. It’s SSF, it depends on what you find, but I’ll do my best to have the loot filter indicate decent items, similar to how it worked for mercenaries.  

Aspirational AG Gear (in level 100 3.27 loadout):

• Dying Breath
• Leer Cast
• Cospri's Will
• Asenath's Gentle Touch
• Legacy of Fury

Atlas Passive Trees 

For atlas passive trees, I heavily recommend you make a beeline towards ritual and use that to gear up your character, get spectres, and just have some fun. Ritual is amazing I feel for SRS guardian, you can easily run it, it provides a ton of player power, and early on, it never disappoints. You can get so many good rewards from it, it’s quite insane, in SSF, so I personally prioritize it over anything else, even over atlas progression.  

A second tree is a bit more up to you. I would likely go with some atlas progression, some kirac missions, some map nodes, some player power and abyss. You’ll be doing yellow and red maps and pushing for 2 voidstones at this point, so you can use some extra power, and you can use the maps. You should be pretty powerful however, if you did a bunch of ritual.  

The last tree is a maven boss rushing tree. It’s a classic, really, but you need this. You want the invitations, get a bunch of maps, and if you are planning on getting 4 voidstones which this build can definitely achieve, you’ll have to farm the guardian maps, for at least a little while, and this tree allows you to efficiently do that.  

Atlas Passive Trees:
Atlas Tree 1 - Ritual (50 points): https://poeplanner.com/a/fVP
Atlas Tree 1 - Ritual & Searing Exarch (110+ points): https://poeplanner.com/a/tHG
Atlas Tree 2 - Map Progression (51 points): https://poeplanner.com/a/fVa
Atlas Tree 2 - Map Progression and Abyss (100 points): https://poeplanner.com/a/tHH
Atlas Tree 2 - Maven Boss Rushing (107 points): https://poeplanner.com/a/tLH
Atlas Tree 3 I would leave open until you know what you want to farm

Mapping Progression 

In terms of overall endgame progression, I suggest you focus first on Ritual, get your character into a good place. You can run endgame all the way to yellow maps on a 4-link and crappy gear, but once you start pushing into red maps, you should get a 5-link. Ritual provides plenty of those, gambling works as well.  

Once you have that, early red maps shouldn’t be an issue, you can also check the loadouts in the PoB to see what I had in terms of gear and gem levels. If you want to start Maven boss rushing to get a bunch of fragments, I advise you get a 6-link, so those bosses don’t take 3 minutes to kill. Again, Ritual tends to give those, you can farm divination cards if you please, you could do a bit of Legion for geomancer’s incubators, or set up a safehouse in Betrayal. I have a whole video on how to get a 6-link, but I think having a 6-link and swapping all your support gems so they have 20% quality, which is by selling a level 20 gem plus a gemcutter’s prism, is the starting point for you to take on tier 16 content.  

Then once you have 4 voidstones, or once you’re working towards that goal, you can take a look at the endgame gearing loadout, the aspirational gear, which has a few more items to chase. Very manageable items, I feel, such as the darkness enthrones, from Abyss. That belt is very good and easily farmable. That’s why I take abyss in my second atlas tree. And there are a few more items too, especially the ones that provide +1 minion levels. Minion levels are very strong and provide many advantages.  

Automate flasks 

On automating flasks, I would take a granite, jade, quicksilver and quartz flask, and get some charges on getting hit, or duration prefixes. Plus some increased armor, increased evasion, reduced effect of curses, and maybe movement speed or something. And of course, a life flask with bleeding immunity. 

Darkness Enthroned

One item in specific you want to farm for, using abyss, is the darkness enthrones. 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

Campaign Vendor: ts:.+(?=(\S*r){1})(\S*b){3}|b-b-r|b-r-b|r-b-b|nne|rint|Flam
Campaign Vendor level 30+: ts:.+(?=(\S*r){2})(\S*b){2}|Flam
Rolling Maps T16: "!efl|ur$|gen|s rec|o al|non"
Tier 16s YOLO (you will die but you can run these): "!efl|gen|s rec|re he"
Tier 17s YOLO: "!sters r|m en|'v|teal|uct|acl|rune|gen|r li|pet|vola|s rec|k at|hex|ever|' mi"
Highlighting 5 or 6-link when spamming fusings: (-\w){4}|(-\w){5}

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.