[3.7] [OUTDATED] Simple Spectre Summoner

Raise Spectre allows you to turn almost any enemy type in the game into a minion that fights for you by resurrecting its corpse. To do this, you hold down the 'corpse targeting' hotkey ('A' by default) and mouse over a defeated enemy, then use Raise Spectre when you have the desired target selected.

Note that your spectres base stats depend on the level of the corpse they were raised from. Usually this is equal to the area level, but there are exceptions to this rule. For detailed information on this subject, check out these links:
Desecrate
Raise Spectre

While there are hundreds of different enemies in the game that all come with their own unique abilities, the only one we care about for this guide are Solar Guards. These guys shoot long range, high damage fireball projectiles at enemies and sometimes cast a fire beam attack. They can be found in the Solaris Temple in Act 8. Get them here first, then once you have them you can use Desecrate in higher level zones to create higher level Solar Guard corpses for you to raise. The highest possible spectre level you can achieve is 84, by using a level 19+ Raise Spectre on corpses created by a level 20 Desecrate inside the Shapers realm.

We use zombies and SRS (Summon Raging Spirit) for leveling. Both are available in Act 1 and are good enough to carry us through the acts. The recommended gem links are:

Raise Zombie
Melee Splash
Minion Damage
Melee Physical Damage

and

Summon Raging Spirit
Melee Splash
Minion Damage
Melee Physical Damage

While leveling, use flame dash and quicksilver flasks for mobility. When it comes to items, all you need is the linked socket groups for your zombies and SRS (4L is great but 3L is good enough), some elemental resistances, and as much life as you can get your hands on. nothing else matters. if you can find movement speed on boots or minion damage on some items, that is nice to have, but it is not necessary and not worth sacrificing lots of life or resistances.

Important Note: Even though you will not be using them right away, pick up Raise Spectre and Desecrate skill gems as soon as they become available. You get Desecrate after the Chamber of Sins in Act 2, and you get Raise Spectre after Gravicius in Act 3. It is really important to start leveling these gems as soon as you can and keep them up to date, otherwise switching to spectres later on will be a real pain.

You can start playing with spectres once you get to the Solaris Temple in Act 8 where the Solar Guards live. Usually you also finish cruel lab around that time, so you also get the big boost to spectres from soul weaver. But in my experience, the spectres kind of suck at this point, and your zombies will still be doing most of the work. I kept playing with zombies until i hit maps, but around level 70 the Solar Guards really picked up steam and the zombies quickly became obsolete.

We start by taking minion and life nodes around the witch starting area while making our way to Death Attunement:

Next, we path towards the minion nodes in the templar area, picking up life along the way:

Now we move towards the scion start to grab gravepact, then we continue on the left and take Purity of Flesh for more life and some nice chaos resistance:

We continue by getting Righteous Army and Redemption, and the Devotion life cluster:

We are mostly done with the templar area, so we move to the right and grab the life nodes next to shadow start. We also take Whispers of Doom to get our second curse:

Time to fill some gaps by taking our three Jewel Sockets and Elemental Equilibrium:

Almost done - we continue moving through the shadow area towards Phase Acrobatics, and we pick up some powerful life nodes along the way:

Now all that's left to do is picking up the scion life wheel, and the build is finished:

Necromancer is the only Option, due to the unparalleled amount of minion power she provides. The nodes we take are:
#1 Invoker - The generic minion bonuses are nice, the cooldown reduction for convocation is invaluable. Very important node.
#2 Soul Weaver - A massive boost to our spectres power level.
#3 Commander of Darkness - Some damage for our spectres, and some resistances for us. Very convenient, this partially counteracts the resistance penalty from A10 Kitava and makes gearing up for maps a bit smoother.
#4 Puppet Master - A few nice conditional bonuses to minion cast speed and damage. Not great, not terrible.

Kill all.

Main Skill Setup (Body Armour)
Raise Spectre - Our main skill. Get a level 21 gem if you can, quality does not matter on this one.
Greater Multiple Projectiles - This is necessary to get good clearspeed out of your solar guards, and without it they will not hit moving targets at all.
Spell Echo - Makes them shoot very fast. Great for DPS.
Minion Damage - More Damage.
Elemental Focus - More Damage.
Controlled Destruction - More Damage.
20/20 supports are recommended, 21/20 if you are very rich.
IMPORTANT! Remember to remove the Spell Echo gem from your spectre setup before summoning your spectres! If you leave it in, you will raise two spectres per button press, which will probably result in you raising some random useless corpse that is not a solar guard!


Movement Skill Setup (Weapon or Shield)
Whirling Blades - Fast and reliable movement skill. 20% quality is highly recommended. Spiritual Command on the tree gives us a huge amount of attack speed, which makes this a very nice movement tool. Can be replaced by Shield Charge or Leap Slam if desired.
Faster Attacks - Makes you whirl faster. Get it to 20/20 for maximum effect.
Fortify - Makes you take less damage! Free defense like this is great.

EE+Curse Setup (Boots/Gloves/Helmet)
Storm Brand - You throw it out once, it will keep hitting enemies for a while. This applies Elemental Equilibrium and two curses to everything it hits, which will push the damage of your solar guards to insane levels.
Curse on Hit - This makes storm brand apply your curses to enemies. Quality gives increased curse effect, so getting it to 20% is recommended.
Flammability - Lowers enemy fire resistance so your spectres can deal more damage. Can be replaced with Projectile Weakness for a slightly stronger damage boost, but at the cost of a substantially increased Dex requirement for your character.
Elemental Weakness - Same as Flammability. This one gets better with quality so make sure to get it to 20%.

Auras:
Zealotry - More spell damage for your spectres. This should be active at all times.
Flesh and Stone - Blind around you, and reduced damage tagen from distant enemies. Nice general purpose defense for mapping.
Purity of Ice - Increased Maximum Cold Resistance. Worth using against Shaper, Elder and Hydra instead of Flesh and Stone.

Utility:
Convocation - Teleports your spectres to your current position. Very useful when they get stuck doing dumb shit like they sometimes do.
Flesh Offering - Makes your spectres shoot a bit faster. Nice damage bonus on long boss fights, but you don't have to worry about keeping this up during regular gameplay.
Desecrate - Create corpses on Demand. Very important to get high level spectres, also useful if you want to use flesh offering and there are no corpses nearby.
Flame Dash - Whirling Blades can't go over cliffs and holes in the ground, that's what this is for.

This leaves us with four empty gem sockets. i use two of them to support my flesh offering with increased duration and faster casting, and in the other two i just level empowers for profit because i'm greedy.

Vis Mortis: Mandatory item, +1 maximum spectre is extremely powerful. The item itself is dirt cheap, but getting it six-linked will cost multiple exalts. If you can't afford a 6L Vis Mortis, you can use a Tabula Rasa instead, it is slightly better than a 5L Vis Mortis, but eventually you really want to get your hands on a 6L Vis Mortis because the additional spectre is just too good to pass up.
For really rich players there is an alternative: In delve you can get the +1 spectre mod as a drop-only affix on chests. If you can find and afford one of those with good stats, you hit the jackpot. they are extremely rare and extremely expensive though.


Bones of Ullr: Another Mandatory Item, for the same reason as before: +1 spectre is insane. Also dirt cheap, to the point where many players consider it vendor trash.
Like with Vis Mortis, there is an alternative for Bones of Ullr: The +1 spectre mod can be fossil-crafted on rare boots using a bound fossil. For a few dozen chaos, you can buy a pair of these +1 spectre boots that will be a lot better than bones of ullr.


The Scourge: This thing gives us a bunch of minion damage - our storm brand counts as a hit for this, so the minion damage bonus from this claw will almost always be active. and it costs almost nothing! available for 2 chaos when i last checked.
This weapon is more expensive at league start, but it's not mandatory at all, so you can afford to wait a few days before buying this. Alternatively, you can use pretty much any one hand weapon you want in here: Something with high minion damage if you want offense, an advancing fortress if you want defense, a midnight bargain if you want to die, whatever. It's not a very important slot for us.


Ahn's Heritage + 2x Fragility: 3% maximum resistances is some very nice defense, and permanent Onslaught makes everything we do (walk or whirl around the map, use any skill) faster. And faster is always good.


Unending Hunger: This little jewel is like steroids for our spectres. Soul eater gives 5% increased cast speed per stack, and your spectres will gain tons of stacks while clearing maps or delves. This item is an enormous boost to your damage output in maps, it also works well on boss fights that have lots of killable monsters around, and is just a lot of fun to play with.

All Other Items:
Rings, Amulet, Belt, Gloves and Helmet are open slots. They should be used to get your elemental resistances up to 78%, get as much flat life as you can, and meet your stat requirements - the finished build needs 35 strength from items, but depending on where you are on the passive tree progression and what level your gems are you might need a bit more str and dex from your items.
You do not need to worry about offense at all with these rares, just get your stats and then focus purely on defense.

One life flask is necessary to sustain our life, because we have no leech or regen. You can use an instant flask or Blood of the Karui, i personally prefer the latter.
The four other flask slots should be used for defense. I use stibnite, jade, quartz and basalt. Make sure you get immunity against bleed, curse and freeze on your flasks, otherwise you will find yourself dying to stupid shit in maps a lot.
Here's my flask setup as an example:

Major: Brine King for Uber Elder, Lunaris for everything else. Make sure to get all the Upgrades.
Minor: Ryslatha for Uber Elder, for everything else use whatever. Gruthkul, Garukhan and Shakari are all fine.

Very simple and relaxing playstyle: You move around the map (walk if you want to go slow, whirl if you want to go fast, flame dash if you want to jump over something) while your spectres kill everything on the screen.

Against tough enemies that don't die instantly, put storm brand on them to apply Elemental Equilibrium and two damage curses. This greatly amplifies the damage your spectres deal to the target. Make sure you don't get any "adds fire damage to spells" mod on your equipment, this would fuck up your EE and ruin your damage.

Your spectres will automatically try to target enemies near your mouse cursor position when you do something. This can be used to your advantage if you want them to focus a specific target, simply point the mouse at it and repeatedly cast your storm brand on it.

Use convocation when you want to bring your spectres to your current position.

Use flesh offering to give your spectres a nice little damage boost when you have nothing else to do.

Minion AI in this game takes a while to get used to, but once you know how it works and how to play around it, it's pretty alright.

While progressing through the atlas, remember to resummon your spectres whenever you reach a new tier of maps. Alternatively, you can get into someones Shaper instance once and raise level 84 spectres, then you are set forever and never have to resummon them again.

Also, remember to remove the Spell Echo gem from your spectre setup before raising new spectres, and don't forget to put it back in when you're done!

Elemental Reflect is bad. Spectres will kill themselves on it.
No Regen is annoying but doable. Put blood magic support on your whirling blades and convocation and you're good to go, all you lose is fortify.
All other map mods are no problem. Curses are negated by a warding flask, damage mods don't matter because spectres are pretty much immortal. Some combinations of damage mods and beyond can be rippy, but that's something every build has to deal with.

Probably yes, the build has good defense and mobility. Depends a lot on your personal playstyle though.

Probably not. Too many unique items.