Cold Exsanguinate Trap Assassin | max 1 div budget | 6.5M Shaper DPS | 2M Uber DPS | Freeze Every Uber

Hi there,

Even before the patch notes I wanted to do a exsanguinate trapper (cold convertion) because I've played that back in Ultimatum and it was an absolute breeze, and as I think the league mechanic is going to be quite similar and I want only 1 character that could potentially be good at mapping and doing ubers, day 2 of the league with really crap gear, here we go :

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PROS :

• Excellent mapper because you can hit 66 targets with 1 click of a button
• Safe mapper because you just permafreeze all screen
• Moderately good bosser
• Still capable of freezing Uber Sirus on a budget to have Heatshiver working to its full potential
• Only requires Hrimsorrow (1c) and Heatshiver (maybe 40c on league start, 5c otherwise) to be playable with literal trash gear. I purposedly put thrash gear in (t4 life/resist all the way) to demonstrate

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CONS :

• Kind of squishy if you get hit
• Not the best skill to scale (maybe 30M dps upper limit with really good gear, but I did not check)
• You'll need a small thread of hope to get the best of it, might get pricy this league I don't know
• Low regen due to the lack of Pyromaniac, but Trap sabo has been hit so hard that it's barely playable now. You could probably fix it with foribdden jewels Pyromanic depending on the price

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PoB link : https://pobb.in/KFoMzuBKQMfW

This PoB include 2 different trees, the first one being focused more on damage, while the second is more focused on survivability. It requires 15 refund points to switch from one to the other so you can adapt the focus on which area you feel like is lacking

DAMAGES w/o any flask, with a ramp up the first 10 seconds for the increased damage from chill/freeze to kick in

"More damage" tree :

• On Pinnacle Bosses :
  • 100% to 50% monster life : 5M DPS, 1.6M per trap
  • 50% to 0% monster life : 9.3M DPS, 3M per trap
  • Average : 7.2M DPS
• On Uber Pinnacle Bosses :
  • 100% to 50% monster life : 1.5M DPS, 0.5M per trap
  • 50% to 0% monster life : 2.8M DPS, 0.9M per trap
  • Average : 2.2M DPS

"More tanky" tree :

• On Pinnacle Bosses :
  • 100% to 50% monster life : 3M DPS, 1M per trap
  • 50% to 0% monster life : 5.7M DPS, 1.9M per trap
  • Average : 4.4M DPS
• On Uber Pinnacle Bosses (probably forget until you have better gear, due to not being able to freeze Sirus until 50% HP) :
  • 100% to 50% monster life : 0.4M DPS, 0.13M per trap
  • 50% to 0% monster life : 1.6M DPS, 0.6M per trap
  • Average : 1M DPS

DEFENSE w/o any flask:

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• Freeze all Screen (our main layer of defense while mapping. While bossing, you'll have to count on your mechanics)
• 90%+ spell supression (you could have 100% with better gear)
• 24% block
• 70% evade (with Flammability, 75% with Enfeeble)
• 20% less damage taken from Opportunistic while mapping, doesn't count on bosses
• 18% less damage taken if you chose to run Enfeeble instead of Flammability in the 2 curses Arcanist brand
• Ghost dance for when you're hit (we just keep enough ES to cover those 3% evasion rating to act as a buffer)
• CWDT Steelskin or Immortal call
• Ailment immunity
• Prayers and smashing the life flask

GAMEPLAY LOOP while bossing (hypophermia + increased critital damage setup, or hypothermia + added cold damage setup if no white socket available):

1. Put down the arcanist brand for curses + exposure
2. Put down 1 bear trap under the boss
3. Put 16 exsanguinate traps under the boss if you have the time to do so
4. BOSS appears/go out of immunity phase and take a bunch of damage
5. Bear trap every 5s to keep the debuff up
6. Brand recall or recast brand if needed
7. Dodge and put down exsanguinate traps whenever you can
8. Repeat step 1 if boss goes into immunity phase

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GAMEPLAY LOOP while mapping (cluster trap + chain setup / hypophermia + chain setup / chain + increased critical damage setup ):

1. Put down the arcanist brand for curses + exposure
2. Flame dash across the map
3. Brand recall on left click or recast brand if needed
4. Put down exsanguinate traps whenever you can on packs
5. Repeat until map is cleared

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HOW DOES IT WORK :

We're using Exsanguinate, which is one of the best skill in the game for mapping (with divergent quality, cluster traps and chain we can hit 66 targets with one press of a button), and it has a really high base physical damage.

We're then converting all of this physical damage into Cold (Hrimsorrow for the 1c option, or with eater implicit + phys to cold unveil + convert cold mastery for 3 skill 3 points for the better late game option), taking advantage of Hatred to further scale it. We're also scaling freeze duration so that we're able to consistently freeze even Uber Sirus. Then we utilize Heatshiver for 130% of the cold damage as extra fire.

Now that Halcyon got Freeze spreading, it's even better in large packs of monsters as it's a garanteed screen-wide freeze Halcyon freeze prolif will not work on traps, but will work with our movement skill and WoC on the arcanist brand, making us really safe. You can basically only die if you mess up while mapping.

Then we take of all that, and we try to scale crit as much as we can being an assassin, and stack power charges/frenzy charges along the way. If the boss is either on Full life or low life, we have 100% crit, and our DPS skyrockets. Luckily we are a trapper, which means we can frontload a bunch of damage and try to get as close to 50% monster HP as possible on bosses to make the encounter easier.

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Let me think what you think of the build, as I'm more than welcome to ear any suggestion/improvement/question that you could have

Edit : Updated the PoB to include a tankier tree

Thanks, and to everyone, I wish you the very best fun and RNG going into Crucible