[3.25]⚡ADHDaniel's Sprite Spectres (Wretched Defiler) Juggernaut (Become a Lightning Storm in Space)

Sprite: Sprites occur near the top of the mesosphere at about 80 km altitude in response to the electric field generated by lightning flashes in underlying thunderstorms caused by Wretched Defilers.

This is my first build guide, as I am getting many tells and messages regarding my current 3.25 Juggernaut Specter Build. This is not intended so much as a comprehensive guide as an overview of what I'm doing and some tips/tricks about the build. I will update this over time if there is interest.

Heavy credit to CantripN for the build guide format, he has put out amazing guides since beta and I highly recommend checking his guides and his discord here:
https://discord.gg/tNEmmPQfne

Build theme song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_DIqCMPwI


Build overview:

This is a pure spectre, Doryani's prototype permanent minion build. I wanted an all-rounder character capable of clearing the atlas and farming t16 maps at league start. Due to the changes in endurance charges, Taste of hate, and Watcher's eyes (both new sources of lightning taken as cold/fire), and Lake of Kalandra jewelry's return I started this build in 3.25. I wanted a tanky, low APM lazy all-rounder to clear the Atlas and league start with. I love permanent minions in general.

Doryani's Protoype is a unique chest armor that sets enemies in a generous range around your character's lightning resistance to equal to your lightning resist. This means stacking negative lightning resistance allows you (and your allies) spells and attacks to do incredible lightning damage no matter the map mods.

Why Juggernaut?
In my experience with Doryani's prototype minion builds in the past, the issue was never (excluding t17/pinnacles) damage. The issue was survivability. To address this, I believe Juggernaut is the best choice.
-Higher endurance charges and a bonus to endurance charges which help mitigate increased lightning damage AND lightning dots damage from Doryanis Prototype.
Juggernaut also helps mitigate chaos damage taken from hits, gives generically boosted armor in a time when determination is nerfed, and helps shore up what I feel is Doryani's Achilles heal, dying randomly in .1 seconds.

Let me say that in my current setup (No divine flesh timeless jewel) lightning dots CAN and WILL do huge damage, you have to manually move out of them/dodge. This never completely goes away.

Leveling
I leveled as SRS/Skeletons into Dominating blow (with resolute technique). I currently would recommend Bitterdream and Forged Frostbearers as this is potent and will carry you as far as you want to take it (best minion leveling in game currently).

This build can be transitionted into as soon as you have a Doryani's Prototype and Wretched Defiler spectres (use global 6666 for help and to obtain them).
At low investment either Ventor's gambles or lake of Kalandra jewelry can help lower your lightning resistance.
Once you are confident you can keep minions alive (good minion chaos res/max ele res/some leech recommended) - I would add Perfect Spirit of Fortune spectres (use 1) which obtainable via ritual (or trade). Lucky lightning damage and wrath is a huge dps upgrade and makes clear feel much better.

Bandits
Take the skill point, do NOT help Alira.

Path of building
None yet, my profile is public feel free to check out my current character (Account: ADHDaniel)

Offense and Defenses, general mechanics
-Uses Wretched Defilers to do both aoe screen clear as well as boss damage. The most important link is pierce, followed by spell echo.
-Get lightning resistance to as close to negative -200 as possible while capping block, spell block, chaos resistance, and armor. (I used glancing blows until I found my shield, and recommend it).
The single most important thing to do in this build is shift as much lightning damage taken as possible to other elements. The best sources of this are:
Avian twins talismans (50% of lightning damage taken from hits taken as cold or fire respectively), the new Taste of Hate, Watcher's eyes with "Fire and lightning damage taken as cold/fire) - note this shifts the elemental dot damage as well which is massive. I'm currently using an Elegant Hubris (Caspiro) to gain some damage and be int/dex/str immune, but a Dorani (Divine Flesh) would make me vastly more tanky and is an option.

Defenses
Near capped block/spell block, High armor, elemental and physical mitigation through endurance charges are your primary defenses. For recovery, life gained on block via shield is #1, but a surprisingly strong #2 is Life and energy shield dual recovery from Juggernaut's Untiring Node + Divine Flesh (Skilltree). It's not uncommon for me to see numbers north of 4000 life/4000 energy shield regenerated a second in high end dense maps.

Mapping/General Play
Run around and let your Sprites destroy the Atlas.
Wretched Defilers have a very important mechanic to understand/play around: They have a reverse Far shot (wherein they do much, much less damage at close range). To compound this, they will attempt to run away from close enemies to GAIN range. This means convocating is OFTEN a large dps-loss, and much of the correct playstyle is learning how to position so they are not constantly running away from enemies. Specifically on bosses do not convocate over and over, as this is almost always a massive dps loss. In general this is a very relaxed and chill build, run around and let your Sprites do the work.
Note: Wretched Defilers can bug where they don't/stop attacking due to running away to get range from an enemy. When this happens convocate/run to a different area if needed to fix it, you'll see when its happening.

The only frantic/high APM thing this build has is when you see the dreaded blue ground effect of lightning damage over time effects, get range/hit life potions/kill it asap!

Note/General tips
Wretched Defilers spawn a crew of undead beasts, make sure to have 1 jewel with minions have %chance to taunt on hit with attacks - its very strong for survivabilty. While doing especially minion unfriendly maps (Enemies poison on hit can be rough with other mods) I changed out a renewal medium for a Life from Death, and this is a big minion survivability boost as well (could use the minion defense mastery which does the same but I prefer 8% max minion ele res there.).

Bossing
I did not make this character to do ubers/t17 specifically, but since people are asking - just did Feared today (1 death to Atziri because i'm bad at dodging). Will update with other boss kills as I get to them. Update: Delerium wave 30, somewhat slow waves 28-30 but doable. Normal sirus down deathless.
Update: Doing Fortress and Sanctuary maps (T17) with no issues.

Wretched Defiler are not currently in Path of building, and Unending Hunger's Soul eater effect makes actual dps hard to qualify. I manually imported the Wretched Defilers, and believe current DPS to be around 8-16+ million (which is what it feels like, possibly more). It's not going to instaphase anything but it is comfortable for all the content I have tackled so far (Still haven tried Ubers yet this league). I make no gem swaps for bossing.


If you have more questions, ideas, or suggestions I'm happy to update this/help.


Sunstorm

Very nice build, could u do make a mapping and boss fight video to show the build in action?

Up!

playing that, too OP

Gonna start this tonight!

I'm currently trying it out to at level 49 atm.. It's proven to be challenging, did GGG make the game harder ?? I don't remember it being this difficult, haven't played in a few leagues now... I managed to get a Bitterdream and leveling goes smoothly for the most part as long as I have a fresh Mana Pot to chug now and then.

hello brother im really interested in playing a pure spectre build as a jugg I'm done with slammers , I currently have around 250div and would love to do a high end version of this what would you recommend? and will it be able to do ubers or t17 with high investment?

also another question does minions are aggressive good for this kind of spectres?

do you think the squire version could be a nice one?

To Hellzwraith - Yea, the base game (especially the first couple acts were buffed for no apparent rhyme or reason a while back, so acts 1-2/3 are brutal especially under-geared.

To lordofcinder6: For the high end version, I have doubts about ubers because I don't think you can scale the damage high enough to make it feel good, and you lose uptime on Spectre soul eater buff which is a big boost to the build. I will try some ubers later this week and post back the results, in case i'm wrong! T17 should be no problem, I do Fortress/Sanctuary t17 currently when I need gold. With bad mods minions can die sometimes, which is annoying though. If T17 and Ubers are your primary focus, I can't recommend this as a great build - Ubers especially should be the weakest part of build (will try them later this week and post back). Appreciate the interest, if you have other questions happy to help!

Minions are aggressive, from my testing, didn't seem to help Wretched defilers overcome their tendenc to sometimes bug out when trying to run away/gain range. The only gem that seems to fix that is Predator, its definitely an annoying part of the build. I wouldn't use minions are aggressive in this build, it doesn't seem to function right.

Ahh Ok thanks good to know - I ended up transitioning to a Bitterdream with Absolution, Spell Echo, Physical to lightning and added in some Zombies and levleing up to get 2 Spectres and its feeling much better.

Maybe should have made this on Standard to try but I wanted to try out the Settlers League Stuff too.

I've had a ton of success with this build. Leveling with Forged Frostbearers was insane. Trivialized the campaign. After swapping to Wretched Defilers I was crushing t16s at level 75 in poverty gear. I'd say I've spent about 6 divines total.

The only thing left really is getting tankier. More life, more chaos res, a better shield, watcher's eye etc. Really love the build, thank you for sharing!

SUMMONJUGGSORQUIT is my character name if anyone is looking for an example of earlier build gear.