Lightning Arcane Torrent Wizard Spectral Blade Variation

Taking advantage of the revised Fragment of Destiny and The Shame of Delsere, this Manald Heal Tal Rasha variation allows Spectral Blade into the endgame.

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Thrown Blade Teleport Calamity 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Frost Nova Frozen Mist 3 Magic Weapon Deflection 4 Energy Armor Force Armor
Passive Skills
Illusionist Galvanizing Ward Audacity Paralysis

Offering another flashy and fun way to trigger Manald Heal, Spectral Blade replaces Arcane Torrent as the means of delivering the devastating proc. This melee primary skill has decent AoE coverage, and will attack twice as fast because of The Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny unique bonuses. You will be taking the rune Thrown Blade for its Lightning element (enabling the Paralysis proc), as well as its increased area of effect.

The Spectral Blade build takes a shielding route for its defenses over the Arcane Torrent variation's freezing approach. To that end, you will swap Magic Weapon to Deflection and change your armor skill to Energy Armor Force Armor. You will also include Galvanizing Ward in your passives for the extra shield added in between fights (ideally over Unstable Anomaly once you grow confident in handling the build). Both spells and the passive will be amplified in power with by the worn Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer.

Firstly, we have to acknowledge Spectral Blade is not a channeling skill. Second, if you followed the recommendations above, you have also dropped Unstable Anomaly's cheat death. You can make up that drop of toughness by replacing Mantle of Channeling and Illusory Boots from the Arcane Torrent setup with Firebird's Pinions and Firebird's Tarsi. Their 2-piece bonus reintroduces a cheat death in the build.

Since it does not rely on channeling a spell like the Arcane Torrent version, the Spectral Blade playstyle is significantly more mobile. This allows it to wear the strongest offense jewelry combo in the game, the Bastions of Will set — Focus and Restraint. These rings offer a 2.25 independent damage multiplier as long as you alternate primary and spender attacks, which you fulfill by spamming Explosive Blast together with Spectral Blade.

You can also focus this variation on Death's Breath farming with Sage's Journey set, whose 3-piece power increases Death's Breath drops by 1. You will be using Sage's Passage (non-conflicting piece with Tal's set) as your boots, plus one more piece of your choosing — either Sage's Apogee or Sage's Purchase. In a setup like this, you will have to re-arrange your jewelry to wear Manald Heal instead of cubing it, along with an Ring of Royal Grandeur to attain all necessary set bonuses.

Last but not least, with Manald Heal's proc scaling nicely with attack speed, you will reap immense benefits by adopting the Spectral Blade signature weapon, Fragment of Destiny, and the primary skill powerhouse The Shame of Delsere.

It is important to recognize that Manald Heal is the major damage dealer of the build, and Spectral Blade is simply the means to inflict the proc. The itemization of this build accommodates that fact in several ways. You should not take Lightning elemental damage on gear, as it does not affect the damage of the proc (likely a bug, but still in effect). You should also not itemize for primary skill damage, like taking Spectral Blade % on gear, equipping Depth Diggers or gemming Simplicity's Strength.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

Since Taeguk is not an option for non-channeling spells, you can either take Bane of the Stricken to progress this build in Greater Rifts, or use speed farming staples like Bane of the Powerful and Boon of the Hoarder in regular Rift farming.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

In regular rifts, you can choose to cube a Goldwrap in the Armor slot to complete the gold triumvirate with Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder).

The jewelry slot will be taken by Manald Heal if you are wearing the damage jewelry setup ( Focus and Restraint), or by a speedrun staple like Avarice Band if you opt for a Death's Breath farming jewelry setup (equipped Manald Heal and Ring of Royal Grandeur).

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.