This is my league starter, and I completed my atlas, collected all the Voidstones and beat most of the Non-Uber bosses and Invitations, including The Feared and other harder invitations.
Skill Itself And Damage
Let’s see what things we got on the damage side: our skill choice is Explosive Trap. You will throw traps and these will explode 8 by default.
All the explosions can hit the same enemy. This is where our DPS coming from and the numbers of traps. When you look at the Path of Building, you can set how many explosions hitting the target. This is new and thanks to the community for that. It’s good to see this and some new POE Orbs info.
I set it to average explosions because most of the enemy is having a small hit box. The build can now use 4 curse thanks to the Anathema unique ring because we have 4 maximum power charge. So, our curse limit is 4. And our curses are the following:
- This will lower the enemy fire resistance.
- Elemental Weakness. We will reduce even more the fire resistance and we will use a defensive curse.
- Enemies will deal less damage to us. We will apply this curse with one single button, Arcanist Brand.
- Assassin’s Mark. We can even use a mark. This will increase the critical chance and critical damage the target takes. We can easily generate power and Frenzy Charges if our enemies are triggering the traps.
- We are also taking Swift Killer for extra 2 maximum Frenzy Charges. With this, we can have 5 Frenzy Charges and we can pair with Charged Traps Support to get our trap throwing speed as fast as possible.
I have few bad news for those who don’t like the gem swapping. You need gem swap for tougher bosses because we are using cluster trap and increased area effect for clear.
The Mana Problem
Also, I wanted to address a very big problem with the build. The traps cost so much mana, so we have to use the mana flask and POE 3.21 Currency Items with Enurding Mod and reduce skill cost during flask effect. That’s why you see 2 mana flask in our bar.
Also, this is why there is no Uber boss kills right now because we can’t sustain the mana flask and we are running out mana fast and can’t deal damage if we don’t have mana. But the good news is I will solve this problem for the Uber tanker version.
Defensive
On the defensive side: Because we choose trickster, we have access to a really interesting node, One Step Ahead. This will lower the enemy action speed and if we pair with Summon Skitterbots, the enemy will move like a snail, giving us enough time to react.
It is worth to mention that you don’t have to worry about the freeze and chill immunity with this because it’s also increasing your base action speed.
Also, worth to mention: with Trickster, we will get a cycling defensive layer (Heartstopper). Every 5 second, we take less damage from hits and the other 5 seconds, we take less damage from damage over time effects. I did not have any problem with that because I designed the build the way if you hit damage taken is not up, you can also tank almost anything. So, when you take a hit and the big damage reduction buff is up, you will be just happy about it.
I did not want to pay attention to the top left of the screen when you can tank or not. So, I just wanted to let you know you don’t have to worry about this. Using Grace Aura for Evasion Rating, so we almost can’t die from the monsters’ basic attacks or projectiles. Because we using Grace, we can use Ghost Dance keystone and more POE Currency. When we take a hit, we will recover 3% of our Evasion Rating as Energy Shield and we can do this 3 times in a row before the stacks recharge.
We will not use Determination in the Crucible League. They nerved the Molten shell because now, to benefit from this guard skill like before the patch, you need double the amount of armour in your build, which is almost impossible for a trickster. So, from now, we will use Immortal Call for our guard skill with cast when damage taken.
Now, we have a few words about having nearly 0 physical mitigation. We are using the body armour craft, so we take 12% of physical damage as elemental damage. It’s not too much but enough to keep us alive even versus big physical hits like the Shaper Slam. Because we have almost 80% chance to avoid attacks, I’m not worrying too much about physical damage because we just evade the attacks. But if we got a hit, the other defensive layers will come in handy, so we can recover easily.
Now, we almost can’t be touched by physical attacks. Only danger left for us is the spell damage, but we have a solution for this. Using spell suppression from the tree and we have 61% suppression alone from the tree, so the remaining percent is easy to cap. It was my league starter, so I didn’t have access to fancy stuff.
Items & Crucible Tree
There are also a few important things you need in the build. Aim on your weapon and your shield. +1 fire or physical spell skill gems, spell crit, spell damage or fire damage increase.
My Crucible tree is not even good. As you can see here, I tried to get a better one, but I did not hit a single good node that is worth to craft, so I am using this.
The shield is self crafted. I bought the base with fractured mod and spammed spell crit Essence till I got this (Chimeric Weaver Thorium Spirit Shield).
For the Crucible tree, we put a little extra energy shield and allocated Safeguard. This gives us a little resistance.
*On your amulet, you also need to be +1 to fire or physical skill gems. I just buy POE Currency a lot to get one. I didn’t craft it. Our anointment is High Voltage, increasing the crit against shocked enemies because we are using Skitterbots and our enemies will be always shocked.
We also have Anathema unique ring. With this ring, we can use 4 curse because we have 4 maximum power charge from our tree. Also, it gives us Intelligence and a little energy shield.
Implicits
The following are implitics you can craft with the Eldrich Currency. Spam till you get the following implicits:
*On your helmet: increased mana reservation efficiency of your skills, you need at least 8%, otherwise you can’t use your auras. The other mod is increased Flamability effect.
Worth to mention: you need Explosive Trap cause two additional smaller explosions enhancement.
*On your body armour: Zealotry has an increased aura effect and increased effect of non curse auras. Little side note here is that you can use the gain endurance charge mod every 10 second if there is a unique enemy nearby. I wanted to use that, but I did not get it. So, if you get it, it will increase your physical mitigation.
*On your gloves: Trap Throwing Speed and the other mod is spell suppression chance, but you can use here inflict Fire Exposure on hit. Sadly, I did not get this after many tries. I spent like 2 Divine Orbs trying to get and gave up.
*On your boots: gain physical damage as extra fire damage and drops Brittle ground. This will increase the critical chance against the enemy.
Passive Tree
I just want to highlight a few things on the passive tree that you need for the build. We are using eight passives cluster jewel with iron breaker, Battle-Hardened and Force Multipler; medium cluster jewel with Surprise Sabotage and Careful Handling; Aura cluster jewel with Sublime Form. The rest of the jewels are rare with life and critical strike multiplier with fire skills and resistance.
Ascendancy
We are taking Trickster as our Ascendancy.
In your first lab: One Step Ahead. This will increase your action speed, so you will move faster and throw traps faster.
Second lab: take Swift Killer. There is nothing really to tell about this, just extra Frenzy Charges.
Third lab: Polymath. Sadly, from this node, we only gain the more damage parts. The others do not apply to us because of the traps killing the enemies, not us.
Last lab: Heartstopper. This is our defensive part.
l Also Read: Boneshatter Juggernaut Build Guide – Path of Exile 3.21 Crucible League
Gems And Links
Gem and gem links are starting with our major link.
*In our body armor: Explosive Trap, Trap And Mine Damage Support, Concentrated Effect Support, Added Fire Damage Support, Charged Traps Support and Swift Assembly Support.
When you doing maps, you swapping out the Swift Assembly Support to Cluster Trap Support, Concentrated Effect Support and Increased Area of Effect Support.
*In our gloves, our aura setup Enlighten (level 3), Summon Skitterbots, Zealotry and Grace.
*In our boots, our curse setup Arcanist Brand, Flammability, Enfeeble and Elemental Weakness. We are applying these 3 curses with Arcanist Brand.
*In our shield, our Cast When Damage Taken setup Increased Duration, Cast When Damage Taken (level 3) and Immortal Call (level 5).
*In our helmet our movement skill setup Flame Dash, Faster Casting, Arcane Surge and Second Wind.
*In our weapon: Herald of Ash, Assassin’s Mark and Bear Trap. Bear trap will increase the damage the enemy takes from our traps.
