[3.15] Max Block Exsanguinate Gladiator

Hello and welcome to my Exsanguinate Gladiator guide!

This was my league starter for 3.15 Expedition League and has great clear speed and survivability. It's mostly focussed on being a safe and efficient mapper, so its not great for farming endgame bosses, but can still manage most of them like Shaper/Elder guardians and ofcourse all conquerors and Sirus 8.

For Exsanguinate a lot of people play Deadeye, which is really fast due to having tailwind and an addition chain. I decided to try Gladiator for Versatile Combatant to achieve max block and spell block to try to be abit tankier in this new dangerous patch.

Gladiator also gives a good amount of damage, around 30% more which makes it abit more well rounded overall than deadeye I would say. Some people also go Ascendant, which is probably somewhere inbetween Glad and Deadeye in terms of defense/clear speed. Unfortunately you don't benefit that much from the Gladiator explosions, but they are not entirely useless as you do apply some bleeds from Reckoning with 75% block, and from Whirling Blades which you are using to keep up Fortify anyways, and these have 50% to cause bleeding from Blood in the Eyes.

Video Guide
https://youtu.be/2OLr4z6YN7k

PoB
https://pastebin.com/eVCgifCS

Kill all bandits for 2 passive skill points.

Uniques
Spoiler
Cold Iron Point gives us a huge amount of damage and should be better than pretty much any rare you can find.
Crown of the Inward Eye just gives some life and a bit of damage and could be replaced with a good influenced rare. Kaom's roots makes us immune to stun and freeze, and helps against slows like Temporal Chains, and Cyclopean Coil is a really solid belt that helps with attributes and makes us immune to ignite


Rares
Spoiler
+ to spell skill gems gives a lot of damage so you want to get that wherever you can get it, on shaper chest, hunter/warlord amulet and shield. You also want a Vulnerability Curse on hit ring, Physical Damge over time on hunter gloves and some cast speed on jewelry/shield to make the build feel smoother, as it can feel a bit clunky with low cast speed.
You also want as much block as possible on your shield to reach 75% block


Flasks
Spoiler
Rumi's is really nice to help reach max block, you need to have bleed, curse and poison immunity on some flasks, shock immunity can be useful aswell. Quartz flask is good for phasing if you get stuck around a lot of enemies. Quicksilver is nice for mobility


Gem Links
Spoiler
Swap out Chain for Swift Affliction on Bosses, Cruelty is also a good option instead of Iron Will, but is less consistent and not very good against bosses.
Reckoning and Whirling Blades can be used to apply bleeding to give some use out of the Gratuitous Violence explosions, aswell as giving fortify and some life gain on block, Whirling Blades is also your main source of mobility. Vitality is mostly use in synergy with our Watcher's Eye to get leech.


Jewels
Spoiler
We are using 1 large cluster jewel with Increased Physical Damage and 2 small clusters with Chance to Block Attack Damage. There are a number of good notables you can get on both of these but I went with Furious Assault which is the best one for the Large cluster, and Iron Breaker. For the small ones I got Rote Reinforcement on one and One with the Shield on the other.
For my regular Jewels im using


For Pantheons i'm using Soul of Arakaali as major and Soul of Ryslatha as minor.

Leveling
Spoiler
I leveled with Frost Blades and then Bladestorm at level 28 onward at league start since Duelst does not get Exsanguinate or Reap from quest rewards.
But if you already have a character on Expedition league or a friend that can give you some gems, you can level with Exsanguinate from level 12. I have included both a Melee leveling tree aswell as an Exsanguinate tree in the Path of Building. For a 4-link leveling setup I would use Efficacy, Cruelty and Faster Casting wit Exsanguinate, and Pride+Vitality as Auras. Always go for Blood in the Eyes and Gratuitous Violence as your first labs, then Painforged and Versatile Combatant last. More details on leveling in the PoB


Passive Tree

If I missed something or you have any questions, feel free to ask or contact me in game :)

Good luck and have fun!
Last edited by Frost666 on Aug 1, 2021, 4:23:36 AM
Last bumped on Oct 26, 2021, 11:04:38 PM
Neat. I think you would gain damage and survivability by dropping the bleed ascendancy nodes and grabbing Outmatch and Outlast and Violent Retaliation instead. That's assuming you can keep up max Frenzy/End charges.
Do you have any plans for updating this for 3.16? This build looks really tanky and fun to play was thinking about starting and trying to clear the atlas with it.
would also love to see this transferred onto the new tree for scourge
Does the changes to the Gladiator ascendency tree (Removal of Versatile Combatant) make this build unviable?

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