The BEST Early Boss Killer - Physical Traps Saboteur - League Start Build Guide

---------------------------------------- WARNING WARNING WARNING ---------------------------------------- Path of Exile 3.16 Scourge League is bringing some of the most MASSIVE changes to the skill tree that we have ever seen. I have done the best that I can to craft this PoB. Understand, that I will do everything in my power to properly update this PoB with information as we learn more about the new skill tree. If you have any issues or need guidance on this build join my discord, linked in the description of every one of my videos. Understand that I myself am not capable of helping so many people but the community is extremely helpful. That being said they are not there specifically to help you. They play the game just like you do and if you want to be successful in Path of Exile you have to put the work in. Don't expect them to be Google for you. --------------------- INTRODUCTION --------------------- Please check the build guide on my YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/c/bigducks Liking my Videos and Subscribing to my YouTube channel help me to keep bringing you more content like this, if you just grab the PoB please consider giving me a like to help me out, I appreciate all of your support! Keep in mind there may be multiple videos per build, always look for the most recent video. Stormblast Mine + Orb of Storms -> Lightning Trap -> Exsanguinate Trap + Seismic Trap This is a trap based build that utilizes our health to cast our abilities. We have Exsanguinate Trap for clearing, we can cast this as much as we want. We then have Seismic Trap for tough rares and bosses, this is a cooldown based ability. This build is meant to be a bossing character, it can survive and clear maps perfectly fine but excels at doing large damage to big enemies. Due to the changing of the passive tree and defenses in general we have revamped the defensive layers on this build as follows: Evasion Blind Spell Suppression -> Spell Dodge We also have 15% DR of blinded enemies from our ascendancy. Seismic Trap does "pulses" of damage every so often and releases 5 "waves" per pulse. If we increase the duration of the ability we can obtain additional pulses and do significantly more damage for enemies that do not move. AoE does scale the overlap somewhat but it is inefficient at doing so, so we do not focus on scaling it. ------------ RATINGS ------------ GOOD -> Clearing, Bossing, Survival, Cost, Playstyle, Damage Taken Over Time, Elemental Damage Taken, Chaos Damage Taken, Trade League, Softcore, MEH -> Solo Self Found, , Movement Speed, Hardcore, Physical Damage Taken. BAD -> N/A DIFFICULTY OF PLAY - LOW The only difficult part about this build is positioning your Seismic Traps to hit bosses properly, other than that you just throw traps and run. ----------------------- CONFIGURATION ----------------------- The current configuration is set to reflect the damage you would do while clearing maps and then finishing off a map boss. It does not do any "PoB warrioring" and should reflect typical boss damage you could do during a map. You will need to adjust for any alt qualities that you don't have or your personal gem levels/qualities. For accurate damage on a boss such as Sirus account for turning flasks on/off. For the Cold conversion section you will need to enable the "Effect of Brittle" which is dependent upon the amount of cold damage you are doing. I believe the build should easily be able to obtain 15% Brittle but double check bosses for their debuffs to see exactly how much you are applying to get accurate measurements. --------------------------------------------- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS --------------------------------------------- Q: Bandit? A: Kill All. --- Q: Pantheon? A: Brine King and Garukhan --- Q: I can't find an item with those exact stats what do I do? A: You don't need the exact stats on every single item, Jewels are a big culprit for people getting confused. Get what stats you can and prioritize the stats in the defensive and offensive sections below. --- Q: The leveling skills are all level 1, do I keep them at that level? A: No, this is to signify that it is a leveling skill and you level it up as you go. --- Q: I can't cast my Seismic Traps, I have no mana, what do? A: Early on this build utilizes Lifetap for our abilities to cast off of our lifepool. Later on in the expensive version we utilize Eldritch Battery. --- Q: How do I stop dying? A: BOSS SLAMS WILL KILL YOU ON ALMOST ANY BUILD. YOU CANNOT TANK BOSS ATTACKS IN PATH OF EXILE WITHOUT A *VERY* SPECIFIC BUILD. This build relies mainly on Evasion / Blind and Spell Dodge. It has excellent recovery but you are not meant to facetank enemies. That being said make sure you have the following: 75+ of ALL Elemental Resist (Resistances max at 75, having a bit over will help for ele weakness maps etc.) 50+ (Ideally 75+) Chaos Resist. Evasion and Blind are VERY important for the smoothness of the playstyle, this is something you will have to get used to with the new tree. High tier Life roll on every piece that can have life Some pieces can have % Life on this build, such as Jewels, Belt, etc. Keep your Flasks up at all times while clearing. --- Q: How do I do more damage? A: This Build scales its damage through Critical Strikes, Increased Duration and Gem levels. Crit is very important for scaling our damage and is the main focus of the build. --- Q: There are a lot of auras listed in the skills section, which ones should I use? A: There are two separate sets of auras for this build, one for Physical and one for Cold, use Physical the vast majority of the time and only use the cold auras while you are doing the early game cold convert Brittle scaling. --- Q: Cold conversion? What is brittle? A: The Galesight helmet will allow us to inflict Brittle instead of Chill/Freeze. It is a cold ailment which increases the BASE chance of an enemy receiving a Critical Strike. You can easily obtain 100% crit chance with high stacks of brittle. --- Q: What about Clusters? Do I HAVE to use them? A: Technically no, but the amount of damage that clusters give this build is absurd. Clusters are the way forward for BIG DPS. --- Q: My question isn't in here, what do I do? A: Double check that you have looked through the video and this PoB. If you can't find it you can join my discord, linked in the description of all of my videos. Please remember that the people in the discord channels are very helpful but it is not their job to assist you. This is a knowledge based game and you have to put in the work to be successful. ------------------ LEVELING UP ------------------ Prioritize The Gems you need immediately, Main Links > Movement > Auras > Utility. Check the "Skills" tab for which gems to grab. Levels 1 - 11 || Stormblast Mine + Orb of Storms Place your Orb of Storms down and then use Stormblast Mine while inside it to deal massive boss damage. Don't forget to put Detonate Mine on left click for ease of use. Levels 12 - 27 || Lightning Trap + Bear Trap + (Any other CD based traps you want) You can also use the previous skills for this time but the new skill tree does not support hybrid Trap / Mine scaling as well as before. Levels 28 - Endgame || Exsanguinate Trap + Seismic Trap These abilities will easily carry you through the campaign but it is VERY IMPORTANT that you do the FIRST LAB before you swap to the Life based Traps. Gearing - In act 2 at around level 20 you can use a Vendor Recipe to get Lightning Damage Added to Spells wands. That Recipe is -> BLUE Wand + Alteration Orb + BLUE or YELLOW Topaz Ring = Lightning Damage Added to Spells wand. YELLOW Ring will be a higher tier mod but will require a higher level, I suggest waiting until 20 and doing the yellow recipe, use an essence on the ring so you can save your Alchemy orbs. Use 2x of these and they should carry you through the campaign. You can also use Sapphire Rings for Cold Damage. - Focus on getting Movement Speed boots, Gear with the Links that you need, Life and Resists as well as Sapphire Rings for the Merveil fight. - Pick up Blue/Yellow items and sell them unidentified to the vendor for Transmutation Shards and Identified for Alteration Shards. - Focus on topping off your resists early on and re-checking them after the Act 5 Boss and Act 10 Boss, grab as much life as you can. - Do not ignore links, if you feel your damage is lacking it is 100% because you are not setting up your links properly. Every ability is important, and you should be prioritizing links in softcore. You can run a few white pieces of gear with resists crafted on them from the bench in your hideout (talk to helena in act 2) with proper links until you can get your items together. - Don't ignore Essences, they can be very powerful for turning white pieces of gear that have proper links into resist / life gear. - Don't forget about your flasks, update your life and mana flasks consistently and make sure to stay on top of getting new flasks as they become available to you. There is a quicksilver flask available from both Mercy Mission (Act 1) as well as The Great White Beast (Act 2) A Silver flask is available from The Key to Freedom (Act 5) There is a Quartz flask available from The Silver Locket (Act 7) Tips - If you are running out of life due to the traps make SURE THAT YOU DO THE FIRST LAB and take the 30 Life Gain on Trap Mastery. - If you need upgrades for your gear as you level remember that Expedition will be available from Act 6 Onwards. This is an excellent source of items and gear. ------------------------------ GENERAL PLAYSTYLE ------------------------------ The video guide will be MUCH better at showing how to do this but I will give you some basics. - Use Exsanguinate Trap for general clearing, you can spam this ability as much as you want. - Use Seismic Trap for Difficult Enemies or Bosses. It is important that you throw this trap slightly offcenter of the enemy you want to hit for maximum output. - Use Bear Trap on all bosses to massively increase their damage taken. --------------------------- BUILD TRANSITIONS --------------------------- Towards the endgame you will have a choice of swapping into a cold conversion version of this build. I only really suggest this if Cold Iron Points are too expensive towards the start of the league. The goal of the Cold Conversion is to scale brittle for maximizing your crit chance. We use the Cold Mastery for 40% Conversion and Hrimsorrow for 50% conversion ending up at 90%. We use the Galesight helmet to allow us to apply brittle and scale as much Crit Multiplier as we possibly can. This version is strictly worse than the Cold Iron Point Phys version later due to gear pressure and inability to further scale our damage. You will also need to swap to the Cold Conversion aura set as the main one helps you very little. Remember to remove Brutality or you will do ZDPS. ------------------- ASCENDANCY ------------------- Saboteur - The premier Trap and Mine ascendancy which provides ample power to our build. We obtain ailment immunity, tons of recovery and unique trap modifiers. Pyromaniac - Provides us complete immunity to Shock and Ignite as well as giving us ample recovery to account for our Life based Traps. Perfect Crime - Allows us to scale damage through additional traps as well as making our traps cost less and have a chance to pop multiple times. This is the ascendancy that enables you to randomly destroy bosses sometimes. Chain Reaction - This provides us MASSIVE CDR for our Seismic Trap as well as HUGE AoE. It also comes with the Trigger mechanic which helps with clear but unfortunately nerfs our recovery with Tinkerskin. Not worth avoiding, HUGE node. Born in the Shadows - The main line of defense for the Saboteur, we scale Blind Effectiveness in this build providing us a large evasion chance as well as this ascendancy giving us 15% DR for Blinded enemies. -------------------------------------------------- CRAFTING AND OBTAINING THE GEAR -------------------------------------------------- REMEMBER that you can always just buy all of the final pieces from the trade website. Crafting most of the time is cheaper. Typically leveling items or items in the "Budget" section that are just Life / Resists and that are not hard to obtain will not be included in this section. There will be items that simply aren't in need of detailed crafting notes, I will mention that in those cases. Weapons / Offhands Early budget wands can be obtained through a vendor recipe White Rune Dagger/Sceptre/Staff/Wand + 2+ Skill Gems with the Physical Tag that have a combined total of 40% quality. = +1 Physical Spells Weapon. Craft 2 of these, augment, regal and craft either spell damage or spell crit chance. Amulet You will need to obtain a +1 Phys Amulet and a +1 Dexterity Skills Amulet. Use an Awakened Orb on the BAD base and then on the GOOD base to obtain a +1+1. If you have room you can craft prefixes cannot be changed and harvest reforge crit is more likely for Crit Multi / Crit Chance If a prefix is still open craft life. Cluster Jewels The Physical Cluster Jewels should be very straightforward. Use Jagged fossils on Clusters until you obtain the mods you're looking for. They are very common. For the mediums you will need to Alt + Augment -> Regal and hope to get the mods you're looking for. Buying them will most likely be easier. ------------------------ FINAL THOUGHTS ------------------------ A very powerful bosskiller that doesn't require very much to do HUGE damage. If you have suggestions or just want to hangout with the community make sure to join my discord linked here -> https://discord.gg/aDtqeDC Thanks for taking the time to read through all of this! If you enjoy the build make sure to let your friends know about my YouTube Channel / Twitch Stream and have them join the discord server! Thanks, have fun and stay safe out there in Wraeclast, and I'll see you all next time!! ---