Preface, I am technically illiterate so don’t expect any screenshots, videos, or fancy formating with this post. I am also not a great build designer. But this little home-brew of mine has great campaign clear speed and facetanks just about everything the campaign has to offer and is up to Glad 150 friendly. It sometimes has to disengage superbosses and is not Glad 150-170 friendly (but I hope by sharing it I can inspire a real build designer to do something with Ortus and Nex).
While others have been exploring the Cataclysm Set, the Sacred Harmony Set also got an update and does pretty much the same thing as long as you are willing to stand in melee range. The Aura of Censure damage reduction changes make this a much more feasible option these days and so I dusted off my old Auramancer to give it a whirl.
My Classic Auramancer w/o Ortus and Nex:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQRqoR2
Auramancers were never big and fell further out of favor when offensive devotions stopped being bindable to offensive auras and the Reign of Ice and Fire rings got a cool down nerf. And amongst the auramancers, infiltrators were less desirable because they were squishy.
I got around these issues with my classic build by having a lot of defensive proc devotions and having a limited selection of offensive proc devotions and letting offensive gear procs and resist reduction do the damage. With every debuff running, my classic set up enjoys 157% cold RR and a more modest 109% fire RR before factoring in the 20% multiplier from Viper. Meanwhile, good old Biting Cold is there for the DA debuff on bosses. Under these conditions the layered damage of 5 permanent damage auras, 2 temporary damage auras, and then the aura like effects of both Winter Veil procs and Ice and Fire procs added up.
That said, while the damage was there, it was still squishy as heck and needed the maxed blade barrier so I never bothered sharing it.
The damage reduction on Aura of Censure has fixed the squishy aspect and then some. The 500 damage absorb when Phoenix is up and you are in Inquisitor Seal now goes a lot further. My classic build runs quite well now.
The New Auramancer with Ortus and Nex:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe1XWYZ
However inspired by all the recent Cataclysm Set builds, I slapped on the new Ortus and Nex. The set is less punishing to infiltrator use with the new +1 to Nightblade to it. Meanwhile the change to the set proc closes most of the dps lost from switching off of Winter Veils and feels like a single target dps increase although it does feel like a minor crowd dps loss. As an added bonus, the basically on cooldown Nex procs adds a lot more sustain.
While my classic build can mostly facetank all campaign content, the Ortus and Nex set up removes the uncertainty entirely and in campaign at least I may as well unspec Blade Barrier entirely. And as I said in the preface, while this is not a gladiator 150-170 ready build (capping out around 150), perhaps this post can give inspiration to those who are better build designers to look at Ortus and Nex instead of just the Cataclysm set.