[0.5] PhazePlays SANDSCORCHER — Varashta Endgame Destroyer — Even Stronger This League!

PhazePlays SANDSCORCHER Build Guide for 0.5!

This build utilizes the powerful ascendancy Disciple of Varashta to command the Djinn Kelari, the Tainted Sands and Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword. It destroys all content in the game, even on leaguestart — and it's even stronger this league!

• CAMPAIGN LEVELING GUIDE
• LOOT FILTERS HERE
• • 0.5_Varashta_Leveling_PZ // 0.5_Minion_Mapping_PZ

0.5 Changes:

• This build is even stronger this league
• Minions deal around 25% more damage in the endgame, Djinn included!
• New Command Wheels
• Brand New Command cooldown recovery rate wheel at the top of the passive tree — this is huge quality of life for mapping!
• Energy Shield Recharge nerfed across the board, not that big of a deal for Varashta
• Command Skills: 50% movement speed penalty (previously 70%)
• New jewellery minion mods from Breach

0.5 Build Adjustments

• Passive tree re-worked for Puppet Master and Archon of Undeath
• Optimized weapon swap sets for even more cast speed, curse activation speed, and mana efficiency
• Dominion Annoint

Sandscorcher

This build is extremely fun to play, has incredible burst damage, and has a surprisingly unique playstyle. Despite commanding minions, this build feels entirely like a spellcaster — the ascendancy is fantastic!

• Tons of damage, a comfortable mapper, and a unique playstyle
• This build deletes bosses and it's a blast to play!
• The playstyle feels like a spellcaster — minions are for passive damage

Be sure to watch the attached build guide video!

Djinn Command Skills

Kelari, the Tainted Sands

Kelari's Brutality

• Throws a volley of knives at your cursor, then 12 knives erupt
• Applies multiple stacks of Critical Weakness to boost crit chance
• Use this before a big burst damage combo for extra crit chance
• Great damage for both mapping and bossing
• Holds 2 charges, ~2 second cooldown

Kelari's Deception

• Creates a blast at your cursor, which also briefly leaves behind a clone
• If cast consecutively, the clone also creates a duplicate blast
• Chained blasts deal 50% more damage
• Holds 3 charges, ~2 second cooldown
• Save up 3 charges, then triple cast it for huge burst damage
• Deletes rare enemies, and it's also huge damage for bossing

While Archon of Undeath is active for bossing, spam this!

Brutality → Deception Combo

Casting Brutality then Deception also causes a duplicate blast. The duplicated blast will always occur where you initially cast Brutality. This can be a minor gain in some cases and is slightly more efficient for damage at the cost of more complexity and a positional requirement

• It's most useful in these two cases:
• • when in melee range of a boss and want to deal damage efficiently
  • deal damage around your character and another target at range

Utilizing this combo isn't required but it can sometimes be useful

Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword

Ruzhan's Trap

• Sword throw that places 8 Ground Runes scattered around your cursor
• If an enemy steps on a rune, it erupts in a fiery tornado for 4 seconds
• Tornado damage can overlap
• This is fantastic for map clear and also solid for boss damage
• Roughly 3.3 second cooldown (endgame setup)
• Fantastic combat opener

Ruzhan's Brand

• Attaches to an enemy (similar to Living Bomb)
• Explodes after 3 seconds, or when the enemy dies for moderate damage
• Maximum of 3 active brands — multiple can attach to the same enemy
• Spammable, has no cooldown
• Occasionally useful for bossing if everything else is on cooldown
• Entirely optional: don't use it if you prefer a more relaxing playstyle

Spamming this is a great way to ensure Puppet Master stacks don't drop

Mapping

• Ruzhan's Trap and Kelari's Brutality handle most clear while mapping
• Use Trap on cooldown — use this as your opener
• Weave in Brutality when Trap is on cooldown
• Triple-cast Kelari's Deception on dense monster packs
• Combo to delete Rare enemies: Brutality, 3x Deception

Bossing

1. Maintain Elemental Weakness and Frost Bomb
2. During Archon of Undeath, chain spam Deception while weaving in Brutality if it's on cooldown
3. Otherwise:
4. 1. Cast 3x Deception at 3 charges (or Brutality → Deception combo)
   2. Cast Trap and Brutality on cooldown
   3. Optional: Cast 3x Brand during downtime

• For Pinnacle bosses:
• • Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword: swap out Magnified Area II for Rearm II or Prolonged Duration II
  • Convalescence is also an option

Weapon Swap

• Weapon Set 1: General Gameplay
• Weapon Set 2: Curse Magnitude

As of this patch (0.5), it's no longer possible to assign Djinn skills to weapon sets, as something was changed at a fundamental level

The best work around at the moment:

• Assign Elemental Weakness to Weapon Set 2 (your curse-magnitude set)
• Assign Frost Bomb to Weapon Set 1 (your main damage-dealing set)

Any time you cast Elemental Weakness, quickly follow it up with a Frost Bomb to put you back in the correct weapon set for dealing damage

Lock your Sceptre and Focus to both weapon sets (right-click the "I" above your weapon and focus)

If anyone has a better solution than this, let me know!

Ascendancy Order

1. Barya of Kelari
2. Kelari's Deception
3. Barya of Ruzhan
4. Ruzhan's Trap
5. The Fourth Teaching
6. Sacred Rituals

Optional: Lategame, swap Sacred Rituals to Baryanic Leylines for a large damage boost

Leveling

Campaign Leveling Guide is Here!

Damage Scaling

• Minion Levels — this also increases minion survivability!
• • +4 Sceptre
  • +3 Amulet
  • +2 Helmet
  • +2 Focus (abyss desecrate mod, can't be targeted)
• Increased Minion Critical Hit Chance and Critical Damage Bonus
• • Jewels and Sceptre are the best source of crit mods
• Increased minion damage
• Cast Speed is nice quality of life as it speeds up the cast time of Command Skills

Armour Break

Armour Break is vitally important to Kelari's physical damage, and it also has a secondary benefit of buffing the passive damage from many minions

• Earlygame/Midgame: Generally recommend simply running Armour Break III on Kelari since Splintering Force is a pain to path to on the tree with so many new high value notables, though it is an option. In the midgame, annointing Splintering Force is ideal to gain an extra support on Kelari
• Lategame: The ideal setup is the Dominion annoint paired with either:
• • The Breach Genesis Tree mod: (2-4)% Minion Armour Break — prefix from either an Altered Collarbone desecration or the Genesis Tree
  • Uul-Netol's Embrace (expensive) on Kelari

Armour Break on Skeletal Reaver, Skeletal Sniper, Skeletal Warrior can sometimes be okay for bossing, however it is no substitute for instant full armour break from Kelari — particularly on tanky rare enemies for mapping

Annoints

• Earlygame: Splintering Force or Long Distance Relationship
• Lategame: Dominion — expensive!
• • Emotions: Potent Liquid Contempt, Concentrated Liquid Suffering, Concentrated Liquid Isolation
  • Best endgame annoint for high Archon of Undeath uptime, but is quite expensive — only put it on your final endgame amulet
  • Must have another source of reliable Armour Break if annointing this, either through Armour Break III on Kelari or Uul-Netol's Embrace

This Build Without Minions?

• While this could be played without minions, you'd lose a large amount of damage from Muster, At your Command, and all of the passive damage from minions — so it's not recommended

Minion Resistances

With Crystalline Flesh and the entire Living Death wheel: Minions have 78% elemental resistances with a maximum of 86%. Either spend 1 point on the 8% elemental resistance pathing node inside of the Lord of Horrors wheel, or get 8%+ minion elemental resistance from a Sapphire jewel

With Dominion, minion resistances become less important as each time you gain the buff your persistent skeletons are revived

Attributes

Attributes will likely be tight on this build as we have an extra two ascendancy skills worth of support gems — keep an eye out for attributes on gear!

Chaos Innoculation

After reaching somewhere around 6000+ energy shield is a good time to start thinking about pathing to Chaos Inoculation. This will let you ignore all chaos damage, chaos resistance, bleed, and poison entirely.

NOTE: Unspec Heavy Buffer when you take Chaos Inoculation. If you don't, you will die instantly when you get hit by any damage — this is not ideal, especially in Hardcore!

Lategame Additions

• Add Brutus' Brain to Skeletal Cleric
• • Drop Meat Shield II & Last Gasp
• Uul-Netol's Embrace on Kelari, the Tainted Sands allows us to drop Splintering Force, however it's rare and expensive
• Xoph's Pyre on Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword, swap out Hulking Minions, this is also rare and expensive
• Dominion annoint (expensive)
• Wolf Pack setup can be useful for 2 things: damage mitigation through Loyalty, and possibly Abyss mods through Amanamu's Tithe

Time-Lost Jewel

Sacred Rituals could be dropped for Baryanic Leylines if more damage is desired lategame at the cost of physical mitigation, however the best mods on these jewels are very expensive:

• The Ideal 3 mods on a Time-Lost Sapphire:
• • Notable Passive Skills in Radius also grant Minions have (5—10)% increased Critical Hit Chance
  • Notable Passive Skills in Radius also grant Minions have (6—12)% increased Critical Damage Bonus
  • Upgrades Radius to Very Large (crafted with Ancient Potent Liquid Melancholy — Prefix)

As of 0.5, it's possible to make extremely strong 5-mod Time-Lost jewels — making this option even more attractive

Jewel Placement Options

• Top-Center
• • Can be paired with a From Nothing Ritual Cadence
• Top-Right
• • Can be paired with a From Nothing Conduit

Limb Upgrades

From best to worst:

• Arms:
• • (6—10)% increased Cast Speed
  • (15—25)% increased Presence Area of Effect
  • (12—16)% increased Curse Magnitude
• Legs:
• • (5—10)% reduced Movement Speed Penalty from using Skills while moving
  • (6—10)% increased Movement Speed while Sprinting
  • (15—25)% increased Stun Threshold
  • (20—30)% increased Mana Regeneration Rate while moving

• May 26
• • Build Guide Updated for 0.5
• May 31
• • Changed the Weapon Set Swap section as some Djinn can skills no longer assigned to weapon swap sets
• June 1
• • Modified boss priority: Spam Deception during Archon of Undeath
• June 2
• • Added: spam Ruzhan's Brand to maintain Puppet Master stacks
• June 3
• • Removed Evergrasping Ring, replaced with rare ring with Breach Minion mods
  • Reworked passive tree, additional investment into Archon of Undeath
• June 4
• • Added +2 Minion Level belt mod from the Breach Tree
  • Added Armour Break III to a couple of minions
• June 5
• • Reworked Annoints section
  • Annoint is currently Splintering Force for earlygame/midgame, consider Dominion lategame with an endgame amulet
• June 7
• • Amulet annoint changed to Dominion in the gear set
  • Slightly re-worked passive tree for Dominion (removed Archon recovery nodes) — removing some minion elemental resistances and/or Skeletal Cleric may also be fine as Dominion also regularly revives minions and the Muster benefit remains even while they're dead
  • Added an Armour Break paragraph section
  • Added the +5 Puppet Master Stack mod on Sceptre (Adaptive Alloy — Suffix)
  • Changed Glove Rune: From Fenumus' Rune of Spinning to Cadigan's Epiphany for an extra Sapphire Jewel
  • Changed Body Armour base from Vile Robe to Sacramental Robe — Both bases are good though
  • Changed Body Armour Greater Iron Rune to Perfect Iron Rune
  • Skeletal Frost Mage: Swapped out Minion Mastery for Cold Attunement
  • Skeletal Storm Mage: Swapped out Rapid Casting II for Lightning Attunement
• June 9
• • Added (2-4)% Minion Armour Break ring mod option — prefix from either an Altered Collarbone desecration or the Genesis Tree
• June 13
• • Kelari, the Tainted Sands: Changed Heft to Vorana's Siege
• June 22
• • Baryanic Leylines section updated
  • Skeletal Reaver: changed Heft to Minion Splash II
  • Skeletal Warrior: changed Hulking Minions to Minion Splash II