(3.2) All Map Mod Solar Guard Spectre LEAGUE START (SSF Viable/End Game Viable)

Hello everyone, here is a little guide to start you off strong in the 3.2 Bestiary League! It isn't ground breaking by any means, but will be sure to serve you well! It is designed to work in SSF or trading leagues, with completely garbage gear that can be scaled up. (I am not a hard core player myself but after you take a look at the mechanics of this build you can decide for yourself if it is up to the challenge of HC)

Overview
Spoiler
This build is a fast paced but easy to use tanky necro, with truly immortal spectres. (I do say "truly" because unlike some builds where there is chance of spectre death in deadly maps like shaper/ele reflect with this build they really should be unkillable. Think around 50k hp with capped res and 8% minion life regen and minion leech.) This regen is designed specifically to combat the extensive degen I expect to find in the uber fight!


Pros and Cons
Spoiler
Pros: cheap and easy to gear, automated defense along with a fast movement skill for fortify and dodging, high damage, around 10k ehp, fast clearing, can do all end game content

Cons It's a bit brainless (although for me this is actually a pro), bossing damage is never going to be the best around, takes a little bit of time to summon up your spectres initially, but with recent quality of life changes this is barely even a con, Spectre AI can sometimes be a tiny but finicky.


Skill Tree and Path of Building
Spoiler
With Victario's Charity: https://pastebin.com/fZ5y742b
Without Victario's Charity: https://pastebin.com/71GLbp9C


Offensive Mechanics
Spoiler
This build relies on a few offensive mechanics that boost its damage quite nicely. To begin with, we have the spectres. They are the bread and butter of the build. This build focuses on Solar Guards which are tanky long range spell casting spectres that do exclusively fire damage. They shoot AOE exploding mini arcane fireballs as well as a charged up beam blast which does very nice damage. These guys will be able to clear content swiftly as well as take down any boss in the game. (The Uber battle however is yet to be determined but I am quite hopeful of this builds success) To enhance these guys we take elemental equilibrium as well as arc-curse on hit-projectile weakness to both reduce enemy fire resistance by 50% and make them take MORE projectile damage from the fire balls. This is also helped by an anger aura which will be explained further in the aura section.


Defensive Mechanics
Spoiler
There are a few defensive mechanics worth mentioning in this guide. To begin with we run a hybrid life pool with emphases on life over ES. With reasonably decent gear you can expect life in the range of 6.5k with es in the range of 2.5k. This is kept topped up with two different healing mechanics. 1) For the life, we rely on the fact that we have an ES buffer and after that, high life regen. We have approximately 1k hp regen per second and an additional 50% regen when we stop taking damage over time.(This will be explained further in the pantheon section) 2) For the ES, the mechanic requires a short explanation. We run a 4 link set up with a level 1 cwdt-unearth-gmp-volley to create 7 corpses upon taking 528 damage. We run an additional 2 link consisting of a level 1 cwdt-spirit offering. So what happens here? When we take damage from hits we will constantly consume 7 corpses with spirit offering (in maps this number will be higher with a max of 9 corpses) to instantly recover approximately 700 es. The way spirit offering works is to take 1% of your base life per corpse consumed which is then modified by es% and life% from tree and gear and then add that to your max ES while also recovering that much. In other words this is a great way of getting a little more max es and buffering small hits. (It is like a poor man's block but with much less investment in gear). In Addition to this, we have a fast movement skill in shield charge-faster attacks-fortify for dodging and mitigating damage (In my opinion your best and most fun defensive mechanic). Finally we will have 2-4 spectres and a golem to soak up some damage as body blockers.


Gem links
Spoiler
The helm: lvl 20 Anger-lvl 20 Generosity and a separate unlinked level 20 vitality and level 1 clarity

The glove: lvl 1 cwdt-lvl 8 spirit offering also linked or unlinked lvl 20 stone golem, lvl 20 convocation

the boots: lvl 1 CWDT-lvl 1 Unearth-lvl 1 gmp-lvl 1 volley

the shield: lvl 1 shield charge-lvl 20 faster attacks-lvl 20 fortify

the weapon: lvl 20 arc-lvl 20 curse on hit-lvl 20 projectile weakness (flammability works fine too)

the chest: lvl 20 summon spectre-lvl 20 controlled destruction-lvl 20 elemental focus-lvl 20 spell echo-lvl 20 minion damage-lvl 20 Greater multiple projectiles (or pierce/slower proj on single target but honestly I never swap to them and the dps is just fine)

Now also importantly is this!

weapon swap 1: lvl 20 desecrate-lvl 20 Spell cascade-whatever you want I usually go with portal gem

weapon swap 2: lvl 20 spirit offering-lvl 20 Increased duration-lvl 1 flame dash


Gear
Spoiler
You can use rares for everything. Seriously, just aim for life, es and res on what you can find. only thing to really look out for is to get some dex on your gear when you can manage as well. For flasks just use a life flask with bleed removal and any other defensive flask that catches your eye. Only thing to absolutely avoid is fire damage to spells as it will screw up your EE.

Some nice upgrades would be: Bones of Ullr boots for plus 1 spectres, a Vis Mortis chest for plus one spectres, a scourge claw (which can be farmed off chimera in SSF) for extra minion damage, a bone helmet base for extra minion damage, and a victario's charity shield for frenzy and power charge generation on your minions with necromantic aegis. (For those who are unaware frenzy/power charges are highly more effective on minions then players so this is a huge boost to damage)

for an even higher boost in gear get a "6 or 7 or 8 linked" shaper helm consisting of the inbuilt combination of up to 4 effects being: conc effect-minion damage-immolate-essence crafted 30% more ele dmg. this is only for the super end game and by socketing our spectres into this we can combine our cwdt spirit offering and unearth set ups along with adding the lesser multiple projectiles gem to get 9 corpses for spirit offering instead of 7 in the 6 link of the chest giving us more es recovery. This will also leave us with another gem slot to play around with.


How to Raise your Spectres?
Spoiler
Well to begin with go to either The Solaris Concourse, The Solaris Temple Level 1 or The Solaris Temple Level 2 and use your weapon swap high level desecrate with cascade to make 15 corpses. As soon as you find a solar guard corpse target it using "A" targeting and summon it with summon spectre (DO NOT USE SPELL ECHO IN THE LINK SETUP WHEN YOU DO THIS) Now go to the highest level area you can and once again use your desecrate and re summon spectres up to your max count. You do this because spectres scale off of the level of area they are spawned into. Now this may seem tedious but there are a few things to understand! Spectres do not disappear on log out anymore and since they are so god damn tough they won't really ever die. Even if YOU die they don't and persist after you respawn. So you only really ever have to do this for each tier of maps you go up. Some nice tips if you want earlier stronger specs is to summon them in a friends shaper map, the last room of Oba's cursed trove or a masters side area in a T15 for max level i83 specs. (However maybe the new uber map will be a tier 18 and have an even higher level who knows??) If you don't do the tips/ you are ssf just resummon your specs in each new tier of map. This is easy to do as ever since the new spectre changes if you bring in a lower level spectre into a map it can spawn in your desecrate table so super easy and no more going back to campaign maps.


Auras
Spoiler
We link anger to generosity both to give our spectres more damage and to make sure we don't do any fire damage on our arc so elemental equilibrium works well! We also have a level 1 clarity just for the "gain 3% attack and cast speed per aura effecting your allies" power from the ascendancy. Finally vitality is so that we and our minions can heal up faster. These auras can be swapped up completely to your preference though.


Ascendancy
Spoiler
We take Drumroll..... The necro. Who woulda thunk. we pick up invoker first to keep minions up and running nicely, followed by mistress of sacrifice for spirit offering to effect us, with soul weaver for the spectres next and finally commander of darkness in uber as it provides a lot of nice stuff but is in no way necessary.


Pantheon
Spoiler
We pick up both pantheons that reduce chaos damage as we want our ES buffer to be as reliable as possible. We use fully upgraded Soul of arakali for chaos res and healing after damage over time has been taken and soul of shakari to forget about poison entirely. Some other nice ones to consider would be an upgraded soul of lunaris on a chaining map but I have never bothered.


Map mods
Spoiler
Do em all! Only thing to really be careful for is a no regen map. Now it's best to understand that in a no regen map your minions will still regen so your specs are just fine but you will have to bring a mana and hp flask along if you want to be able to keep shield charging and arcing.


bandits
Spoiler
kill em all


jewels
Spoiler
I go for Ghastly eye abyss jewels whenever I can. They don't provide as much damage as regular jewels for minions but they can come with minion regen which is really gonna be awesome for when our minions must sit on Uber degen all day during the fight!


How to scale Spectres?
Spoiler
Spectres don't really scale with your stats. The one exception is if you give them auras (which we do). Generally speaking except for necromantic aegis shenanigans if something doesn't say "to minions" in the modifier it wont help minions. Most of our spectre scaling comes from tree and the level of the spectre itself which is why this is so nice in SSF and early in a league


leveling guide from leary93

Spoiler
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Level 1-7: Do as normal. Grab freeze pulse or fire trap, make sure to also grab a raise zombie, do tidal island for the quick silver and complete breaking eggs. Use waypoint in submerged pass to go to town and pick up Srs and start leveling it. Make sure to pick up as much blue/rare items and try to not identify them if you don't need to, since you will need some transmutation orbs. (to be exact, you need at least 2, but preferably 5+. Then go towards prison and once u enter, use the waypoint to pick up minion damage and buy melee splash and if you can (if you have at least 1 more transmute), spell totem.

lvl 8 and after: Try to link summon raging spirits with minion damage and melee splash. From here on this will be your main clearing skill and you can drop w.e. you were using. Kill brutus and pick up flame dash, and if you can, buy summon skeletons and clarity (keep this at lvl 1), and link spell totem with skeletons. You will use this vs bosses to give more bodies. Also try to look out for a BBR sceptre that you can transmute, and sell together with a ruby ring and alt orb so you get a +1 fire sceptre. After you get flame dash, you can also decide to grab the flooded depth skill point and the ships graveyard one.

lvl 15 and after: Try to be on the lookout for a bone spirit shield. You can sell this with a transmute and a life flask for an animation flask, which you can then sell with an alt orb and an helmet (ofc u want a 4link one) for a +1 minion helmet, in which then, you can link SRS - Melee splash - minion damage - Melee phys/minion speed

lvl 28 and after: At this point you should both be able to pick up your raise spectre gem and start looking for 4links (especially helmet, see previous paragraph), so do so. Raise spectre needs to be leveled so you can use it to grab flame sentinels at solaris temple. Also make sure to pick up your auras from the clarissa and library quest (You should level with Purity of elements and haste besides your lvl 1 clarity). Just keep going with SRS and if you feel comfortable, run Lab as soon as you can run your 3 auras. (haste makes it a lot more comfortable). In act 4, grab stone golem and spell echo from the quests and it's pretty much straightforward. Act 5 same.

For gear you want to look out for besides these: Victario's charity, Nycta's Lantern and Bones of ullr are superuseful, focus on Life on all the other pieces of gear, as between commander and darkness and Purity of elements, you should already get a decent chunk of base resistances.


END GAME GEAR FOR MORE CONTROLLED ES GAIN.
Spoiler
So the concept of this endgame tree is to use a "6-link" elder helm to put your spectres into and your 6 link chest for lightning tendrils or scorching ray(one applies EE and the other reduces fire res for your minions it depends on preference and whether or not you can apply EE with your shield charge)-Cast while channeling-unearth-GMP-LMP-spirit offering this allows you to consume your own corpses along with your cwdt set up and 1000 life regen. At this point you will want to swap vitality for discipline as well and grab a watchers eye jewel for ES recharge start rate under discipline. (This is super optional) If your spectres were not immortal enough before they will now also get tens of thousands of ES per second using this method. Here is the pastebin for PoB for the end game gear, passives and links. https://pastebin.com/Skz6UCik Keep in mind once this setup is made hp regen on minions is not nearly as important and you can focus on minion damage jewels instead. (You will be recovering an enormous amount of minion ES on command now)


Phew that's all of it folks! If you have any questions shoot em below and I'll do my best to answer. Let's have a fun league everyone!





Last edited by gnew95 on Mar 25, 2018, 2:42:53 PM
Last bumped on Jun 9, 2018, 3:39:09 AM
think this could handle HC no problem?
Could it handle it? I believe so! It's tanky, fast and has some pretty crazy damage. However, I would personally go for a max block variant over the spirit offering variant I show here. Spirit offering is pretty damn good at recovering/buffering es for small to moderate hits but max block mitigates all levels of hits. You need to invest more heavily into block to get to cap however, unlike the spirit offering defense so perhaps it's a toss up.
Hmm what about leveling tips? Do we use srs and zombies to level up?
Here I'll direct you to the fantastic leveling blurb by leary93
Spoiler
Level 1-7: Do as normal. Grab freeze pulse or fire trap, make sure to also grab a raise zombie, do tidal island for the quick silver and complete breaking eggs. Use waypoint in submerged pass to go to town and pick up Srs and start leveling it. Make sure to pick up as much blue/rare items and try to not identify them if you don't need to, since you will need some transmutation orbs. (to be exact, you need at least 2, but preferably 5+. Then go towards prison and once u enter, use the waypoint to pick up minion damage and buy melee splash and if you can (if you have at least 1 more transmute), spell totem.

lvl 8 and after: Try to link summon raging spirits with minion damage and melee splash. From here on this will be your main clearing skill and you can drop w.e. you were using. Kill brutus and pick up flame dash, and if you can, buy summon skeletons and clarity (keep this at lvl 1), and link spell totem with skeletons. You will use this vs bosses to give more bodies. Also try to look out for a BBR sceptre that you can transmute, and sell together with a ruby ring and alt orb so you get a +1 fire sceptre. After you get flame dash, you can also decide to grab the flooded depth skill point and the ships graveyard one.

lvl 15 and after: Try to be on the lookout for a bone spirit shield. You can sell this with a transmute and a life flask for an animation flask, which you can then sell with an alt orb and an helmet (ofc u want a 4link one) for a +1 minion helmet, in which then, you can link SRS - Melee splash - minion damage - Melee phys/minion speed

lvl 28 and after: At this point you should both be able to pick up your raise spectre gem and start looking for 4links (especially helmet, see previous paragraph), so do so. Raise spectre needs to be leveled so you can use it to grab flame sentinels at solaris temple. Also make sure to pick up your auras from the clarissa and library quest (You should level with Purity of elements and haste besides your lvl 1 clarity). Just keep going with SRS and if you feel comfortable, run Lab as soon as you can run your 3 auras. (haste makes it a lot more comfortable). In act 4, grab stone golem and spell echo from the quests and it's pretty much straightforward. Act 5 same.

For gear you want to look out for besides these: Victario's charity, Nycta's Lantern and Bones of ullr are superuseful, focus on Life on all the other pieces of gear, as between commander and darkness and Purity of elements, you should already get a decent chunk of base resistances.
I did not like how the dark blue font looked on the background so i made the colouring a little bit lighter for easier reading.
any video you could throw up to just give a sample of how the build performs in low-mid tier maps?
Hey there, unfortunately I delete my characters after every league (I don't like the clutter of having all these characters I will never play again on my account) so I can't post a video just now. However, me and my brother will be running Group Self Found this upcoming league and I will be running this build. I can post some videos once I get to mapping (It will also be a good approximation of how the build will run on low end gear). Sorry if this isn't too helpful just now :/. If you want an approximation of the speed I searched online and found a video by a fellow named gary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQDhM7jf_os&t=85s this build uses shield charge with solar guards and can give you a feel for how the build will play. Only real visible difference is that with my build you won't be stopping to self cast offerings and there won't be any zombies.
Last edited by gnew95 on Mar 1, 2018, 11:56:58 PM
"
gnew95 wrote:
Could it handle it? I believe so! It's tanky, fast and has some pretty crazy damage. However, I would personally go for a max block variant over the spirit offering variant I show here. Spirit offering is pretty damn good at recovering/buffering es for small to moderate hits but max block mitigates all levels of hits. You need to invest more heavily into block to get to cap however, unlike the spirit offering defense so perhaps it's a toss up.

Thank you.
Is there a guide for the block variant ?
Hey there, here is a quick guide I threw together on PoB for a block variant. It requires more specific/expensive gear and does less damage but has more hp and es as well as max block and close to 60% spell block.(with a rumi's flask it would be capped for both) I am not sure myself how efficient my tree is however so it might be worth hunting around the forum for a block variant that may be better then mine! https://pastebin.com/deyaZjix
Last edited by gnew95 on Mar 2, 2018, 9:01:26 AM

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