[0.5] PhazePlays Disciple of Varashta — Campaign Leveling Guide

[0.5] PhazePlays Campaign Leveling Guide for Disciple of Varashta

This guide is currently ready for 0.5

The new Archon of Undeath and Puppet Master are incredibly strong!

• LOOT FILTERS HERE
• • 0.5_Varashta_Leveling_PZ
  • 0.5_Minion_Mapping_PZ

0.5 Leveling Adjustments

• Passive Tree reworked around the new powerful Command Skill nodes
• • Archon of Undeath wheel is high value as it has a nice chunk of minion command skill cooldown recovery
  • Puppet Master chance and Puppet Master chance
• Effects of Re-Ordered Passive Tree
• • The new nodes may delay a full Muster setup for a bit
  • They'll also delay Splintering Force, so just run Armour Break I on Kelari, the Tainted Sands for awhile
• Early Levels
• • Entangle until Essence Drain, dropped Flame Wall
  • Added Frost Bomb for early Raging Spirits boss damage

Sandscorcher

This build utilizes Kelari, the Tainted Sands and Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword to demolish the campaign. These Djinn deal extreme damage and also provide a fun and unique playstyle!

• After the campaign, check out the Endgame build guide to destroy all content in the game:
• Sandscorcher Endgame Build Guide

Campaign Summary

• Level 1-5: Entangle and Contagion
• Level 6-21: Essence Drain, Contagion, Frost Bomb for exposure, and Volcano spam to summon Raging Spirits
• Level 22+: After Ascending, take Kelari, the Tainted Sands and Kelari's Deception, unspec all spell damage nodes and go full minion. Command skills carry for the rest of the campaign
• Level 40+: Take Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword and Ruzhan's Trap

First Ascension: Kelari

Kelari, the Tainted Sands is a Sand Djinn that deals massive physical damage, has high base crit, and applies the Critical Weakness debuff for extra crit

Kelari's Brutality

• Throws a volley of knives at your cursor, then 12 knives erupt from the ground dealing damage
• Holds 2 charges
• Great for both clear and bossing

Kelari's Deception

• Causes an area blast at your cursor, chaining this repeatedly makes clones duplicate a blast and consecutive blasts deal 50% more damage
• This is the heavy hitter used for deleting rares and bosses
• Save up 3 charges, then triple cast it back-to-back for huge burst damage

Alternatively, you can use Brutality and then Deception to trigger a duplicate blast. This is position-dependant however, as the duplicated blast will occur where you were when you cast Brutality

Second Ascension: Ruzhan

Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword is a Fire Djinn that attacks when you cast a damaging skill and applies exposure (4 second cooldown). In our case, we can trigger this by casting Volcano

Ruzhan's Brand

• Attaches to an enemy similar to Living Bomb
• Maximum of 3 active brands, explodes after 3 seconds or when the enemy dies, multiple can attach to the same enemy, no cooldown
• Brand is low priority. The main use-case is to squeeze out a bit of extra damage on single target when everything else is on cooldown by quickly casting it 3 times

Ruzhan's Trap

• Ruzhan throws a sword at your cursor that places 8 Ground Runes scattered randomly in the area. If an enemy steps on a rune, it erupts in a fiery tornado for 4 seconds
• This is fantastic for clear and solid for single target
• Ideal combat opener

For a more in-depth explanation of the mechanics of each Djinn Command Skill, look at the How it Plays section of the Endgame Build Guide and watch the Build Guide Video

Clear

With only Kelari, the Tainted Sands: using the Brutality then Deception tech to proc a duplicate blast can be useful for clear

After Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword:

• Cast Trap on cooldown
• Weave in Brutality and Deception while Trap is on cooldown
• Rare enemies can be deleted by casting Brutality then 3x Deception

Bossing

While Archon of Undeath is active, spam Kelari's Deception

Otheriwse: with only Kelari, the Tainted Sands: If you can be in melee range, Brutality then Deception combo is ideal, otherwise wait for 3x Deception then quickly spam all 3 charges from range

After Ruzhan, the Blazing Sword:

1. Maintain Elemental Weakness
2. Spam 3x Deception if 3 charges (or Brutality → Deception)
3. Cast Brutality, prevent it from reaching 2 charges
4. Maintain Trap
5. Occasionally cast Volcano to apply exposure, get extra damage from Ruzhan's attack, and proc Emboldening Lead
6. Optional: Cast 3x Brand on the boss if there's any downtime

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

Vendor Regex

"y: r|\d+% i.+mov|^\+.*ills$|\d.+life|s: sc"

This highlights movement speed boots, +level gear, rare items, and sceptres on the vendor

• Regularly check vendors throughout the entire campaign for these mods
• Minimum item level required for specific mods:
• • +Minion level Sceptres ( +2: ilvl 25+ // +3: ilvl 55+ )
  • +Minion level Helmets ( +1: ilvl 5+ // +2: ilvl 41+ )
  • +Minion level Amulets ( +1: ilvl 5+ // +2: ilvl 41+ )
  • Movespeed Boots ( 10%: ilvl 16+ // 15%: ilvl 33+ // 20%: ilvl 46+ )

Gearing

Level 1 - 21

• Run a wand+shield (or a wand+sceptre after Raging Spirits)
• For early levels, staves are also viable
• Wand mods to look for:
• • increased spell damage
  • +spell levels, +chaos levels
  • cast speed
  • increased chaos damage
• Prioritize life and resistances in every slot

Level 22+

• Sceptre: Rattling Sceptre & Omen Sceptre are better than other bases, but use any sceptre base that has the best stats
• • +Minion levels, Allies deal % increased damage, spirit
• Shield: Armour/ES base, life / resists / defense
• Helm: prioritize +Minion levels over everything
• Rings: resistances, life, cast speed
• Amulet: +Minion levels if possible, otherwise life / resists / castspeed
• Boots: prioritize highest movement speed
• Gloves / Body: high energy shield and resists

Start working on getting Energy Shield gear from late Act 2 onwards, most of it will come from body armour, gloves, shield, and helmet if not running a +minion level helmet. Armour/ES gear is also solid

Keep an eye out for Attributes on gear, as the build is support-gem heavy

Leveling Items

Here are some ideas, don't equip all of these and then wonder why you're dying in every other zone

• Wanderlust (highly recommended if you have access to it)
• Enfolding Dawn with Muster
• Carrion Call
• Fixation of Yix
• Trenchtimbre offhand

If you have currency from a previous character, buying decent +minion level Sceptres, Amulets, and Helmets for various points in the campaign are big gains

Muster

Once you're in Act 3 and have a decent spirit pool, aim to run 1 of as many different types of Skeletal minions as you can. This lets us take advantage of Muster (Tier 3 support) — which is a great source of generic damage scaling for Djinn, and we'll need eight Muster gems in the endgame anyways. Even when persistent minions are dead, they still grant the damage bonus! The Djinn also count for the Muster bonus

When you make the swap to Muster, drop Raging Spirits

Minion Priority Order

Reserve 1 of each minion going down the list until you're out of spirit

1. Skeletal Reaver — Tier 9, level 31+
2. Skeletal Arsonist
3. Skeletal Sniper
4. Skeletal Cleric — Tier 13, level 52+
5. Skeletal Storm Mage — Tier 11, level 41+
6. Skeletal Frost Mage — Tier 5, level 14+
7. Skeletal Brute — Tier 13, level 52+

This list is campaign-specific as some minions aren't available until later on

• May 27
• • Updated for Patch 0.5
• June 2
• • Bossing Section: While Archon of Undeath is active, spam Kelari's Deception