(Incursion>3.21>forever) Undying Faith - 8x Raise Spectre - Guardian & Necromancer

The Midnight Bargain: This gives you a lot of your minion damage and an extra spectre per wand.. They also Reserve 30% of your life not affected by reservation per wand which thankfully the guardian takes advantage of this debuff turning it into a slight advantage.

Endgame Options:
-Harvest craft quality increases aoe instead of damage
-Syndicate craft the quality to 30%
-Corrupt for aoe implicit(don't waste temples on this unless more important items are already perfect corruption)
-The AoE increase gives you more range on your aura's keeping your spectres buffed more of the time.

--replace these with rare wands if needed and you don't mind losing the extra spectres:
-the rare wands should have (minions are agressive on one of them), Minion crit multi and higher minion damage than the 70% provided on the midnight bargains preferably as much as 140% minion damage on each wand but no lower than 70%
-losing the midnight bargains returns to you 60% of your life for more aura's being reserved on it giving more options.

The Wraithlord: This defensively modest helmet adds two to the max number of your spectres while disabling all other minions and is also very powerful for leveling using the helmet for its additional skill levels during the storyline.. This is a dedicated spectre build however so we'll have it in a 5-6link if possible for maps (use the helmet until you get 5-6link)

Endgame Options:
-Labyrinth enchant Spectre's Have 40% Increased Damage (this is your ideal enchant, get attack speed or resistances in its place until the damage finally shows up)
-Immortal Syndicate for 30% Quality & White Sockets
-Corruption for 90% reservation Multiplier or +2 to socketed minion gems
--obtaining the 80% reservation Multiplier helmet is done via manipulating The Glimpse of Madness from the Ultimatum map and once its been modified is then converted by a tainted mythic orb into another unique such as wraithlord, Note this is an equivilent of a level 6 awakened enlighten.

Shavronne's Wrappings: Perhaps your most important item protecting you from chaos damage as this build is basically CI without the Immunity.

-Immortal Syndicate for 30% Quality & White Sockets (white sockets are especially important on this item if you wish to experiment with this build and try other minions and support gems, once its corrupted it can be expensive to change the colors and in general this type of build is much more fun when you can try new monsters out, keep that in mind.
-Corruption for +1 to spell or +2 to minions
--Double Corruption for +2 to minions AND +1 to Spell (this is where all of your temples should go if you can afford to burn shavronnes in it

The Presence of Chayula: This amulet provides stun immunity, 20% of life converted to ES and a boatload of chaos resistance making it hard to replace as a core item of this build.

Endgame Options:
-Annoint Champion of the Cause for its global reservation effeciency or Whispers of Doom if you can afford to lose the 8% effeciency for the huge dps increase of a second curse.
-Catalysts for 20% quality on either Life or Resistances (20-24% life or 60-72% chaos res)
-Corruption for Additional Curse or +1% all maximum resistances
-Double Corruption for Curse AND all +1% to all maximum resistances

--This could be replaced with esh's unset amulet to give your spectres an additional support gem slot for a variety of options both defensive and offensive.
-you will need stun avoidance to make up for the lost stun immunity
-chaos resistance will need to be pushed into other slots
-in exchange for the lost energy shield you will get more armor since you no longer convert 20% of your life into ES

There's no definitive option here.. Rare gloves seem to be the overall winner but there are a few unique options which are competitive to an extent.. Rare gloves can have quite a lot of damage increases for minions that are hard to pass up in the late game as well as spell suppression which this build is lacking in.

The Breathstealers giving blighted spore pods frequently can be very powerful in content with high density of monsters such as ritual and additionally allow an annointment which could be an extra curse or even +maximum resistance/etc

The Command of the pit would be the most difficult to make work because they require jewels which in the endgame can be extremely expensive if they are even available at all.



Endgame options:
-For the breathstealers annointing Whispers of Doom, Decay Ward or any max resistance node would be ideal
-for the command of the pit you would want to look for 1-20% minion damage if you've used a minion skill recently, 1-40 energy shield and ANY other beneficial stats you can cram into them in order to bring it up to a 40% damage bonus veruss the 50-60% available from rare gloves but the other stats on these jewels can make up for it.
-for rare gloves you will want to setup your atlas for farming eldrich altars to save up currency to roll the eldrich implicits, as far as the gloves themselves i have no advice on crafting them, obtain a pair with minion damage and stats that work then roll the implicits and once you get the roll you want try to obtain a new and better pair to roll higher implicits rather than potentially downgrading your working item thus rendering you unable to play at the same pace.

Rare rings are 100% the winner here and there's some options available though bone rings are so powerful there's little opportunity to edge out the usage of the other ring types.

Endgame Options
-Unset Rings in particular depending on the other equipment being used is handy to put aspect of the spider/avian on along with slotting arrogance support to put the aspect on your life, this is very painless if you can find a ring with mods you need and an open suffix you can slam the aspect directly onto the ring in the menagerie.. These rings can come with minion damage mods from delve minion nodes, keep an eye out on the market too.
-Bone Rings are pretty much the end all minion ring, You want minion damage to be 30-40% with one of your main STR or DEX attributes at 50-55 (before catalysts) ending with each ring preferably covering one stat, You can wedge in resistances especially chaos but defensive minion values here can be worth your time such as some extra minion life or minion resistances.

Boots are a bit of a tossup for spectre builds you're going to need + levels to the gem from somewhere if you want the 8th spectre and the extra damage/life from those levels so rare boots are a pretty safe bet for getting +1 levels though endgame crafting for the +2 is very expensive.. Lean towards rare boots with + levels but if you can make it work use something else that patches another part of your build.

The abyssal boots are getting a buff this league to reservation efficiency so its highly reccomended to keep your eye on those if they are affordable they could provide you with much needed reservation effeciency and allow you to slot other jewels or move some skill points around in the tree to make you stronger.

Rare boots are tough as far as i am aware you must get an elder base and roll +1 to all spectre gems as well as another modifier from that pool at which point you use an orb of dominance(check to be sure i swear this keeps changing) to turn one of them into an elevated modifier removing the other.. Hopefuly its +2 to all raise spectre gems.

In sanctum i went for a rare belt but thankfuly this league they buffed the darkness enthroned.. Its pretty safe to say with the right jewels you cant go wrong with it but getting a rare belt works too the numbers are still going to be tight unless the jewels you have are very good.

Darkness Enthroned now gives a higher buff to jewels socketed into it and you should be careful which jewels go in here you want the most of what you need slotted, For jewels in this belt you should go for Ghastly eye jewels with: flat ES, minions deal % more damage if you've used a minion skill recently, minions deal # additional lightning damage, and wedge in any life/armor/minion regen% that you can.. The corruptions on these also matter you can get 5% minion damage or 2% reservation effeciency with 100% boosts from the belt starts to add up quickly.

rare belt? if you have to make sure its a crystal belt or a stygian vise.

Since you're all energy shield you really don't need flasks for anything other than defensive reasons so that's what i've done here, You have one flask for each element and one armour flask ending with a Quicksilver unless your movement speed is high enough that you can get away with not having a quicksilver then use Soulripper for a huge boost in your ability to keep Vaal Discipline active.


Each flask should be crafted to automatically activate when the corresponding elemental status is put on you, this raises your resistances, reduces the damage you take from elemental by 20% Less and provides you important immunity while you focus on other tasks at hand, ruby/burn topaz/shock sapphire/freeze granite/bleed

quicksilver is a wildcard and the soulripper shouldn't really be modified at all unless you want it to waste your charges via (use when full) which is a strategy in itself to get a very low soul count soul-ripper and have it constantly feed you extra souls in smaller amounts.

I recommend getting a soulripper with about 30 charges the required amount for vaal discipline though it could be hard to come by so just do the best you can.. a little over is at least a full tank.. a little under might be a spell for some regret.

You want two 8 passive 2 jewel socket cluster jewels with Feasting Fiends, Renewal and Vicious Bite(change these mods if you think you can) I apologize that these aren't linked the default viewer wont allow me unless they're unsocketed they will be shown in the skill trees below.


Unending Hunger - This jewel gives your spectres a 50% chance to gain soul eater on kill which gives your minions a lot of attack and cast speed increasing your clear speed by quite a bit and helping out a lot with dense content such as ritual.

Grand Spectrum - The minion crit multiplier variant is what you want here and 3 of them.

Fortress Covenant - This jewel is extremely powerful and if you can work it in then your build will be much better for it adding offensive and defensive values in large amounts to your army

Rare(Cobalt)Jewels - On these jewels you will want to get mana reservation effeciency, minion damage and in the late game the corruption for reservation effeciency.. The other statistics on these jewels should be used to flesh out your build covering stats, resistances and other values that will bring the build together.

Endgame Options:
-Corrupt all the jewels(have a backup so you don't brick yourself)

I'm providing these tree's on PoE planner instead of PoB because i do not use PoB, I prefer PoEPlanner because its lightweight and i can throw builds together quickly to make sure my stats are in the right ballpark and work the rest out ingame as i play.

Guardian:
-3.21
Link
Guardian (if you overcome the need for the 20% life reservation mastery use this tree)
Link


Witch:
-3.21
Link
Swap the 20% life reservation mastery for whatever you want if you get enough efficiency from other sources.

Personally i run soul of abberath and arakaali for reduced chaos damage taken and unaffected by burning ground+10% move speed for farming searing exarc influenced content, it works out pretty well.

You can switch to soul of yugul for reflect content but otherwise its really personal preference imo.

You want all of these at 21/20 for the most part and level 6 for awakened gems but get all of your main skill supports and primary skill to 21 before going for level 6 awakened gems.

Main Skill (Body Armor):
Raise Spectre Level 21 (quality if you like)
Minion Damage until you can afford Awakened Minion damage(quality preferred)
Elemental Army(quality preferred) - This can be replaced with Awakened Spell Echo if you should get your minions resistances high enough without elemental army.
Added lightning damage until you can get Awakened(quality preferred)
Empower 3-4(or awakened) whatever is required to reach gem level 25 (1 level from awakened minion damage, 1 level from raise spectre gets you 22, you need 3 levels to reach 25, You can get 3 levels on corrupted body, 1-2 levels on boots.
Feeding Frenzy(quality preferred)

Aura Skills (Helmet/Glove/Boots):
Helmet:(primary auras)
Zealotry, Determination, Wrath, Enlighten(3 works 4 is nice)

Boots/gloves:(secondary aura's)
Arrogance Supporting (aspect of the spider or avian)
Vitality, Vaal Discipline, Enlighten(same as above)

One of these items needs to have Aspect of the spider or avian on it and this can be done by searching on the trade site for a pair of gloves or boots with the stats you need but also having one open suffix slot minimum.. Once you have the item with stats you need and the open suffix you just need to get the appropriate beast and craft it onto the item in the menagerie.

Given how much minion damage and some other critical stats can be on gloves its reccomended to use your boots however this league also features a reservation buff to the abyssal unique boots which would give you a lot of reservation effeciency in exchange for 1-2 sockets and forcing you to place the aspect on your gloves.

Gloves/Boots: (Guard/Curse)
Steelskin Supported by Cast when damage taken in 2 seperate slots
Conductivity(support with inspiration of mana pool is too low to cast)

Weapons: (utility skills)
Spirit Offering, Flame Dash, Desecrate in one wand.
Convocation, Enhance, Portal(optional)

This build is made primarily for Baranite Preachers, These can be obtained from Baran influenced maps and if you are having trouble finding these naturally you can buy the influenced map and run it with no enchantments to get these pets.

These minions cast Ball Lightning and on a longer cooldown a Nova skill that they only cast if enemies are nearby, They generally sit in place if a target is anywhere near their attack range and because of this they are consistently attacking when in range however this also means you need to cast convocation to move them around otherwise your map clear suffers massively, The faster you can convocate them the faster you can zoom between packs.

Early game you will want to rush for your Minion nodes then going into Aura's and finally settling in the endgame on the bulk of your defensive nodes invested into energy shield and other stats, Use summon raging spirit to level until you have enough spectres and damage for them to take over entirely while you shift to curses or spells to supliment them until later in the game.

Later in the build the 20% life reservation efficiency may no longer be required and should be put into another mastery or passive that you prefer ex: maximum resistance if life/mana are reserved, On guardian you want as much of your life and mana reserved as you can at all times giving only enough breathing room to cast your spells.. On witch however you will want to maximize effeciency and save as much life and mana as you can for other aura's or personal use since reserving more offers you no benefit.

If you insist on using the midnight bargains early on then you should look into getting a solaris lorica to stop chaos damage from bypassing your energy shield and in general just prepare yourself for the deaths early on when using them its just how it is with 60% of your life gone.

Vaal Discipline is your senzu bean, You will be hitting this whenever you are going into a fight you know for sure you'll take some damage in or sitting on it for emergencies, its highly reccomended to get this early on as it will help a lot with the storyline and having it already leveled at maps will save you from buying a leveled one.

Your minions provide you with a pretty good shield against a number of projectiles and aggro in general so you want to keep them between you and the bad guys as often as possible.. See this image for an example of how you'll go about that on this build:

Legend: Green=Player, Yellow=Spectres, Red=Enemies, Blue = activation and end of convocation.

In #1 you're running at your enemies, Cool i think we can move on.

In #2 you've run into those enemies and now procede to run parallel/in circles to them while using convocate( convocation brings your minions to you in sequence so depending on how fast you are running you can build walls out of your spectres or even entrap enemies ) But they didn't die immediately so you swing around behind them using convocation again creating another wall between you and them on the opposite side.

Usually once you've established your gear most packs wont make it to a second pass but the general idea is to keep yourself as mobile as possible never standing in the same place for long other than to cast your curse for stronger enemies.

An added benefit of this behavior is that your pets will fire off a large volley of ball lightning at the front of the enemy pack and when you shift to the other side they do the same and both of these ball lightning masses collide increasing your overall dps and this strategy is also useful for fighting bosses and harder enemies.

Sometimes in maps you'll encounter reflect mods or worse damage immunity for your pets damage type and this can stop you dead in your tracks or get you killed.. This build can get around that by collecting some extra spectre's as you travel through wraeclast, In addition to your Baranite Preachers you can grab some physical damage, fire, ice or even chaos damage pets that can be summoned in place of your usual pets to run content immune to lightning or content with elemental reflect... While this will not likely produce an ideal clear speed what it does do is allow you to complete that map and be done with it or that expedition/etc rather than tossing it in the bin.

https://poeplanner.com/ - Lightweight build planner that has empowered me to have fun for many leagues now as well as easily share builds with people who do not have PoB installed.
https://poedb.tw/us/ - Might as well be the wiki for me this site has extremely reliable data on just about everything but most importantly it contains detailed data on monster abilitys and statistics which is essential to making informed decisions on a Raise Spectre build. -Click on a league and then click its Monster tab to see almost every monster categorized by which league they were added as well to keep track of new minions from crucible and future leagues.

My MTX:
Reccomended MTX:

Should you wish to immerse yourself deeper i've taken to carrying a number of quest items in my inventory over the years settling on ultimately: This stuff is highly nutritious and guaranteed to only cause slight horrific mutation upon resurrection.

Hideout to go with the build: The Forbidden Sanctum
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3362509