[3.19] Lightning Dancing Dervish

Core component. To clarify what it does: When minions "hear whispers" after dealing a critical strike - they get +50% increased minion damage and attack speed but they degen 20% of their health with chaos damage every second for 5 seconds.
This helmet flips the idea of what summoner is on it's head and many classic setups don't work under it. Dancing Dervish has hidden super mitigation layer that stops like 99% of all incoming damage so chaos degen for it is not a consideration at all. Choice of a temporary easily replenishable support minions as skeletons also has been made for that reason.

{On high budget}
Look for enchants that give either Assassin's mark effect or Smite aura effect. Look for corrupts: +2 socketed Aura gems, +2 socketed AoE gems or both.

Core component. Converts most of physical damage that our minions do to Lightning. Why it's not 4 blue? Because I can't find a way to fit in 4 blue and it's not a big damage loss.

{On high budget}
Look for corrupts that give +%maximum life or +1 to socketed gems. Or both.

Any rare with nominal resistances, life and movement speed would do at first.

{On high budget}

This exact configuration. They need to have at very least T2 cold and fire res, Movement speed, life and brittle ground implicit with open suffix to craft combo res. Base itself doesn't really changes a lot but lean towards armor base with armor preffixes.

Core component. As you can see with it we can scale our damage by dumping OUR OWN lightning resistance into deep negatives. Effect is so strong NOTHING in the game can negate it. This is why our normal DPS and Boss DPS is basically equal.
Apparently straight physical protection from armor adds as lightning mitigation from hits so with recent armor scaling buff now it's not necessary to have a redirect talisman. But beware of lightning degen such as Baran floor traps, Shock and horror boss and newly introduced "Mana Siphoner" Archnemesis modifier. You're taking degen damage as if your resistance is zero.
Also it's not important to 6-link it right away. 4-5 linked skellies are fine at the beginning. Effect of the armor is what makes it's all work.
Also it makes it so you don't have to bother with exposure sources or curses. Very nice.

{On high budget}
There's really no point investing here for meager bonus it will provide. Priority number 1 is harvest fire/cold resistance enchant on 30% base. But if you want to spend money I'd say go for +1 to socketed hems or +2 "Socketed duration gems" since skellies are there. PREFFERABLY with the enchant.

Here comes the boy. The chonkster. The most unwieldy minion in the game. The best.
*It's quite hard to hit RRRBBB socket colors, roll it with benchcraft "one blue socket" and eventually you'll hit it.
*Reminder: you don't have to link weapon at all. It works like that.
*Quality on the weapon seems to directly contribute to Dervish damage output but because we pump it with flat elemental damage bonuses externally it's more beneficial to use harvest enchant "+1 melee range per 10% quality" and beastcraft 30% quality afterwards.
Rolls on the weapon also contribute the minion damage so try to find as high as possible.
*in fact almost any modification on the weapon counts. Including Heist enchants and Keystone or stat corruptions. But beware GEM SUPPORTS IS THE ONLY THING THAT DON'T WORK. So no to lvl 10 fortify support for us. And generally global accuracy implicit is good nowdays anyway.
*I've said keystone corruptions. And I've meant "Resolute technique". it bricks this build completely.
*Dancing Dervish has something around 99.9% of natural mitigation from all damage and it's generally considered to be immortal. But it's not. "No regen" map modifier can occasionally destroy them and "no leech+elemental reflect" if occured together is more or less impossible. You could turtle through it tho if necessary. This is why I have at least some source of leech. Minion regen is not quite enough by itself and when you go above 4 mil DPS even leech is not enough to keep them alive under reflect. Also because of that mechanic - They could be used as a target for link spells. But that's for you to theorycraft. Buy awakened [Elemental damage with attacks] to resolve reflect issue.

{On high budget}
People like to have blinged out Dervishes that look cool.
To make it - buy a regular Reaver sword with shaper influence and awaken orb into it another two hander with a crusader influence,
apply Perfect fossil until you'll get 30% quality, apply Gilded fossil for a bling implicit and try to chance/scour it into Dancing Dervish. It's 50/50 chance of getting either DD or Hiltless. Then spam divines untill rolls are perfect.

Rings and amulet Must have open suffix for you to benchcraft minion movement speed. It is VITAL and always should be a consideration. Annoit [Replenishing remedies]. It will enable Darkness enthroned early on.

{On high budget}

Amulet could be just life, resistances, open suffix for minion movement speed. Maybe find one with mana preffix as well. It's tight too. Annoit it with [Replenishing remedies] and when your chaos resistance is situated reannoit [Cleansed thoughts]. Do not attempt to squeeze perquil's toe yet. Resistances are very tight even without it. But don't forget it exists.
Get life, cold res, fire res ring with open prefix and suffix. Fill suffix with minion movement speed and slam Redeemer orb on prefix. Pray to hit minion damage.

The other ring is an abomination that I came up with to fit resistances and aspect but it's somewhat disposable and easy to make.
Steps:
1)get at least 84ilvl Amethyst ring(not unset) and while it has normal/white rarity put prismatic catalyst on it. 4 catalysts is enough to "20% resistance quality" it.
2)alteration spam T1 elemental resistance and T1 life. Flip resistance with harvest if it's rolled to be lightning resistance.
3)try to hit any prefix with regal. If you've failed try to fix it with beastcraft "remove suffix add prefix". Life and one resistance must remain.
4)Beastcraft "aspect of spider", Benchcraft minion movement speed.
5)Slam redeemer orb on last remained open prefix for minion damage.

Early on use Darkness enthroned.

Another very important component of this build is Writhing jar. Not only we use it to upkeep rampage but also to sustain ourselves because it's basically the only way to do so.
With masteries, "Profane Chemistry", "Arcane chemistry" notables and "Mender's Wellspring" cluster notable - Writhing jar now removes all elemental ailments and bleed and regenerates 5 charges every 3 second
Belt is a vital synergistic component of this flask because if you'll get a belt with affix "Reduced flask charges used"(RFCU) then Writhing jars could be popped three times instead of two.

There's a little problem in pointing out how much you need though. PoB says that you need only 13% belt RFCU and 16% flask RFCU but it's not enough ingame. 14% belt RFCU and 19% flask RFCU work, so I'd suggest to get 1%-2% off max on both. Thankfully belt RFCU is an affix with just one tier so it's a question of a couple of divines to get it right.

{On high budget}

Stygian vise 84ilvl. Open suffix and prefix. Life, RFCU and one resistance that is necessary for your setup. Benchcraft combined elemental and chaos resistance of your choosing, and slam hunter for +% life.

Running 3 Writhing jars feels most optimal but the other two must be swapped according to situation.
Quartz and Quicksilver are amazing for regular mapping and delve. Ruby and Sapphire(including taste of hate) are helping if you've rolled -max% player res or elemental weakness map mods. Granite flask with armor roll helping if you prefer molten shell. Roll poison immunity until you've situated chaos resistance.

And "Replica Sorrow of the Divine" If you've chosen to play in sweat mode.

{On high budget}
Theoretically "Bottled faith" could help bossing and give minions additional boost to their damage.

Min roll "Brute force solution" very precisely solves all problems with intelligence. We are starved on resistances on gear and DEX/INT/STR are a suffix so it's a good solution in this situation.
I like to use "From Dust" because you summon all skellies in one go. Due to low mana regen and small mana pool without it there will be a delay between casts and that feels very bad. Also both of those gems could be target for Corrupted blood immunity. Prioritize "Brute force solution" because you might consider removing "From dust" for another damage jewel.


Ghastly jewels are a significant help to our damage. There are many variations of those that could fit and be very helpful but at first you can buy ones that are just having flat lightning or phys damage to minions...


later though we need as much damage as we can squeeze out of any source to do endgame bossing. In this case mandatory should be tier-1 added lightning and conditional minion damage.

{On high budget}
Perfect jewels don't exist so don't sweat about it too much.
Mandatory mods should be: Added minion lightning damage, conditional minion damage(+damage after casting minion skill).
And after that it's either: +maximum life, Minion movement speed, Added minion physical damage, Added minion attack speed.

Large Minion damage cluster 8 passives that should have Renewal notable(50ilvl requirement). Vicious bite(75ilvl requirement) is good as well and could be guaranteed with harvest that rolls items for crit.
Two mediums 4 passives. One is minion life cluster with blessed rebirth(68 ilvl requirement) will make skeletons to not die instantly and you can start relying on them. Other medium cluster is Flask duration cluster with Mender's wellspring(68 ilvl requirement) With it you now can clear bleed with writhing jars. One small Mana reservation cluster with Uncompromising notable(50ilvl requirement) and your reservation will be resolved. Those could be rolled by harvest, fossils or even alt spam.

{On high budget}

They should be somewhat like these.

just follow PoBs. Those a quite generic.

There are ways to lower your Lightning resistance. Selfcurse with rotblood promise, Using negative lightning res Vientor's, thread of hope, Malachai artifice...But the biggest of them all is the new jewel called Melding of flesh.

To fit in both Melding of flesh and Divine flesh from Glorious vanity it takes very tight management for elemental and chaos resistances. Every rare armor piece has to have at least T1-T2 resistances with open suffixes to shift some of them and prismatic catalysts are mandatory. Either follow my PoB very precisely or weight every bit of resistance yourself. Basically all of the clusters has to have some amount of chaos res. After 3.19 it's even tighter than before.

[Mark on hit]-[Assassin's mark]
Smite is what's going to apply mark. Keep in mind it's quite expensive manawise and it might not go off all the time, so generally try to get a reflex to pre-pop one of your jars before intent to mark with smite.
But if you feel like you need that last boost of damage against something obscenely beefy like fat metamorph or pinnacle boss consider removing [Mark on hit] and replacing it with 20% normal quality [Poacher's mark]. With it you can generate frenzy charges on Dervishes that could tip the scale in your favor. Just keep alternating marks manually.

[Flame dash]
Self explanatory. Could be frostblink instead.

[Void sphere]
Quite enjoy this little thing. Helps to flock packs closer especially in heist and harvest, helps to run away from fast packs and quickly start up Dervish by popping worms. Remember to keep it level 1 because it's becoming too expensive and we're not interested in damage
{OR}
[Flesh offering]
Divergent variant. If you won't be lazy it speeds things up a bit.

So the idea is to generate frenzy and power charges on DD's without specters because they die due to ancient skull. To do this I have a mark trick:
Socket colors should be: B=G=B
[Arcanist brand] - [Poacher's Mark] - [Assassin's Mark]
Arcanist brand alternates marks on a target with a set interval. While dervishes hitting a boss they're generating both types of charges. Very important part is to make it so the FINAL mark that will remain on the boss after brand disappearing should be Assassin's. It's possible to whiff it with modifiers to cast speed. In that case in this color setup it's possible to simply swap the mark order:
[Assassin's Mark] - [Poacher's Mark] - [Arcanist brand]
Still Adrenaline from "First to strike, Last to fall" ascendancy point interferes with the setup constantly since it's granting cast speed modifier.