Why yes, I am quite toxic.
Stats with permabuffs only, DPS for Biting Blades
I’ve wanted to make a Aegis of Menhir build for a while, 'cause I mean, shield throwing is great. Fire Aegis has been done a lot in the past though, as has chaos Aegis with Voidsoul. So I went for acid/poison Aegis, which is something I haven’t seen as much of. This particular build was essentially enabled by 1.1.9.2, when many MIs were buffed to become build-defining MIs. Some of those MIs give bonuses to Aegis and DEE at the same time - so I used those and took DEE as my secondary skill.
Generally there is a lack of acid Aegis items that give any CDR to it at all, so my solution to that was to focus on poison. By building around poison instead of acid, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have much CDR on Aegis. You can just stack up all your poison dots from different sources and watch everything melt.
The results are very stronk. Please enjoy.
Features
Pros
- Mega DOT damage, and actually also nice burst damage from Aegis sometimes when you get multiple Reprisal procs in a row
- Really fun and satisfying gameplay. Bonk n’ nuke
- Fits a cast-and-run playstyle extremely well
- Related to the above point, kills all superbosses pretty easily, if you don’t mind kiting
- Good phys res
- Aside from the phys res, is rather squishy
- No circuit breaker, I felt like living on the wild side and going pure offensive in devotions this time
- Beware reflect mobs!!! Your own poison dots on you hurt a LOT.
Gameplay
Debuff with Curse of Frailty and Bloody Pox (to proc Tainted Eruption), then throw your main two poison nukes- Aegis and DEE- off cooldown. Biting Blades is filler, and another source of poison stacking. Running away is highly encouraged when necessary.
Global lifesteal is kind of poor but you get healing from DEE and Aegis, especially Aegis. One Aegis throw is often enough to heal you to full from low health on a group of trash mobs. And of course, the Blood of Dreeg heal is invaluable, as well as Guardian’s Gaze with partial chaos conversion.
Gear
Note: Helm crafted for freeze res
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Build-defining MIs - Crimson’s Vile Scepter, Ronaprax’s Sting, and the Basilisk Fang. All three of these MIs give bonuses to both Aegis and DEE. You may notice that two of the three also give retaliation damage added to attack to these skills, which we actually have a bit of mainly from wearing the
Sentinel of the Threeset.- It’s for this reason that wearing 3-piece Sentinel is better than, for example, taking Mythical Vestments of the Great Guardian for full DEE hardcap points. Breaking the set further for 22/22 DEE means less acid retal damage, and while this is not a retaliation build (you can’t take hits), the rata damage is still quite valuable. The damage output ends up being about the same with alternate gear, but Sentinel of the Three gives some highly needed survivability, so that’s the natural choice.
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Helm - Even more weapon damage to Aegis, as well as more RR.
- Rings - Points to DEE nodes and Aegis, as well as flat poison damage on the Ring of Vile Intent.
- Gloves - More poison damage to Aegis, and general poison damage! Delicious. Also, full fire → acid conversion for Aegis so we don’t have to use the transmuter that reduces damage.
- Belt - Good bonuses even though we’re not dual-wielding and +1 to Oathkeeper.
- Pants, Boots - Nice poison items with nice procs.
- Relic - I know what I just said about rata damage above, but Meditation is BiS here, it just gives so much raw damage. Rata is just a “bonus”, it’s still better to focus on poison first and foremost.
It can be a little hard to balance resistances with this setup. You especially need to look for affixes that give aether/elemental resistance on green gear.
Leveling
This is an endgame build and will work as advertised once you have the endgame gear for it. However, if you want to get an early headstart and try leveling around these skills, I would advise farming for the green MIs that I listed in the Gear section. Early on, Oathkeeper leveling is rather slow, so I would start as an Occultist and level with Bloody Pox as the most efficient leveling skill to use early on before you can get those items. As always, Grim Tools is your best friend for looking up monster spawn locations and any additional MIs that support the skills you want. One example is Ravna’s Claw, another item that supports Aegis.
For devotions, I suggest going for Bat/Ghoul first for lifesteal or alternately Guardian’s Gaze, though without chaos conversion early on it’ll be a bit weaker than it will be later. Then work towards Murmur for RR.
If you want to take a primarily DEE-centered route, @tqFan has a very thorough beginner’s leveling guide for an acid DEE sentinel. This will also give you a large list of other good items to keep an eye out for, in general.
Performance
With both good AoE and single target damage, and the ability to kite while doing it, this build is great for content all-around. It’s extremely squishy in high SR, but that’s only to be expected for something like this. In farming range, SR is super chill.
These videos were recorded in .9.3, but nothing changed in .9.4 for the build.
SR 90 Full Run
Shards aren't too hard (can get hairy, but just keep running) but the boss room requires some RNG luck. For example, Fabius is basically an automatic F for failed run.
Crate of Entertainment
Easy squeezy.
Callagadra
Just hit-and-run tactics here.
Ravager of Minds
Same as above really. Actually more stressful than Calla sometimes I felt like, because at least she's slower.
Mogdrogen
Changed some augments for better lightning res overcap.
Shoutout to @RektbyProtoss actually for giving me the idea to use DEE for dot bombing. I got that inspiration from his Ember’s Calling Pyromancer after seeing that it works quite well with burn damage.
This little poison monster is one of my favorite builds I’ve made in a while. Ty for reading, as always comments welcome. 
