I like bossing. I like bossing fast. Last league I put together a Sunblast based self-chill explosive trap sabo (link). In 3.20 I league started something similar but wanted to go even tankier. Generally I like to minmax two builds a league, but I've had such a good time with this one that I haven't even started my second one yet. The build is designed specifically around speed-running boss rotas and does so fast enough to generate healthy profits. It's also really fun to play.

PoB: https://pastebin.com/1H9cjjdg

More in-depth build explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2H1TEJnxw

EDIT: I'm making crafting guides for both sceptres and the helmet

Crafting guide for the +2 gems Alternating Sceptre for roughly 10divines - https://youtu.be/Tqni3eM3Cvw

Crafting guide for the +2 gems fractured spell dmg sceptre for roughly 10divines - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfdept52A7E

Crafting guide for three different tiers of Explosive Trap helmet to open up the 6L chest aura setup: https://youtu.be/VK5odZzqa_M

​

Why Trickster?

The question I get the most for this league's version is why Trickster over Saboteur. This is because Trickster is considerably tankier than a Sabo at a nominal cost to dps. We're already insta-phasing bosses, so it made sense to start investing elsewhere. Trickster as an ascendency provides:

​

- Spellbreaker, which effectively nullifies 50% of spell hits

- Heartstopper, which further reduces your taken damage by 40% for half of the time

- Small nodes and Escape Artist which boost the evasion by roughly 20% and give an extra chunk of ES

- Polymath which we take good advantage of with several masteries

Sabo has some nice defensive layers too, but the only one I really missed was Ignite immunity which I was able to fix with a 2div Winterweave corruption. It also made sense to go Trickster because I really really wanted to make ES work as a defensive layer instead of just a spend pool with Eldritch Battery. You get a ton of defensive utility that does not show up in EHP with things like Ghost Dance, Divine Shield, and Spellbreaker.

​

What makes the build work Offensively?

Sunblast - Still hugely underrated, imho. It's a better Swift Assembly and guarantees 3x the traps every time you lay one down. You also get to link an extra support in your Explosive Trap setup, which is massive. A well rolled Sunblast will start to trigger traps after 1s regardless of what is there and a normal trap takes 0.5s to arm itself. I don't find the difference to be super noticeable, but it does mean you play the skill slightly differently. It feels more like laying down an AoE than trying to get a boss to trip a trap. You also still get ALL the benefits of traps being triggered by enemies if you have Skitterbots on. This means Master Sapper grants Frenzy Charges, Arcane Pyrotechnics grants Arcane Surge, etc.

Self-Chill - For non-cooldown based traps, self-chill is pog. You are granted 30% additional action speed, which is the only mechanic in the game outside of Trap Throwing Speed which boosts your ability to lay traps on the ground. As a side benefit, it grants you a huge movement speed bonus. Self-chill is around 30% of the total dps in the build and 112% extra movement speed.

Outside of that, scaling cold/fire damage does the rest.

​

How do I abuse this to generate profit?

Several boss rotations have annoying map running mechanics gating them. If you can a) run the map fast, b) insta-phase the boss, and c) be tanky enough to reliablly do laps you can make a killing. I farmed a few mirrors doing this in weeks 1-3 of 3.20. Elder Guardian rotas using the Sunblast setup are ~6.5minutes per full rotation. Each rotation is worth approximately 1div in profit and the startup costs are very low. In week one, many of the awakened gems were 1-3divines so the profit was a bit higher. Week one a mirror shard was around 7divine so I was buying one every 45 minutes or so and hoarding them. Side note, I found Elder Guardians to be the least annoying and most chill for my hands/wrists and the most consistent profit. Shaper sets sold for not as much and everyone it seemed was running the Sirus/Elderslayer Guardians.

Once I had a mageblood I was doing sub 3-minute Uber Shaper with a good boss draw. At today's prices of ~10div per unID'd Sublime Vision it's a 12div/hr farm. Uber Shaper is way less painful to run if you are heist-speed running through the interstitial maps and insta-phasing things.