DoT based Fire Trap has been popular this league, but typically requires pretty heavy currency investment to produce solid results and also requires things to stand still. I posted a hit based Fire Trap build prior to the league starting and wanted to show the build’s progress.

There are very few things that actually give me any pause in this build. The biggest concerns are bleed/poisons and a few of the minus resistances or reduced aura effect map mods. “Monsters steal your charges” is a massive DPS reduction. The build is extremely charge reliant, but builds them naturally with Fire Trap so outside of that mod it isn’t an issue. For the most part, you can mindlessly run content with little fear of dying outside 100% delirious stuff and the aforementioned DoTs.

Videos:

Sim30 – my first ever Sim30 completion. Still had a few portals. Still not even sure what killed me unless that teleport hit is just much much stronger than everything else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDDCoLCnWe8

Sirus – you’ll see me eat a beam to the dome around 4:10 and it basically does nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0eDVh_PS0

Elderslayers – I drank too much whiskey this night and spent a lot of time trying to kill the unkillable snakes. Story of my life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLYP_4OR8k8

Formed – Phoenix is actually dangerous so you’ll see me get a little hesitant here. I basically fell backwards into Hydra so I killed him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H_PhtysXwU

Twisted – I cant ever tell what thing is Eradicator and what thing is a Maven Mirror Image of A Guy so he lives the whole fight. I never said I’m good at this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEm74b7fMsc

POB: https://pastebin.com/xb7hgBtH - swap in an Inspired Learning at the position by Shadow for Sim30. You’ll need another notable but the chaos resistance one is great.

Budget: 15-30ex. I briefly thought about a clickbait title like “CHEAPEST SIM30 FARMER EVER” but decided against it. Even still, it’s a pretty cheap all content character. I am using a wide range for the budget because many of these items can be had very cheaply if you are willing to build this over a few days (unless a lot of people like it then the opposite happens of course). The exceptions are enlighten/empower/watcher’s eye, but if you already have those everything else is cheap. Realistically, if you already have Enlighten/Empower/Woke Ele Focus, then all the rest of the items themselves are probably <8ex with even modest patience. Budget notes are in the PoB.

Why the build works:

Aegis Aurora + Melding: Right now, the combination of Aegis Aurora, Tempest Shield, Glancing Blows, melding of the flesh, Determination/armour stacking and Purity of Ice is so stupid strong its ruining building for me. This is a lot of investment, but the return is basically “most content can’t kill you” and the cost is <1ex in gear and some gem slots. This really needs a nerf. I would say Aegis Aurora is the third strongest item in the game behind Headhunter and Mageblood, but for the sake of honesty, I’ve never had the other two.

Fire Trap: Fire Trap has extremely good damage. Charged Traps is also severely underrated and is an awesome way to generate charges extremely easily. You can build a 50M+ DPS Fire Trap character for 1/5 (or less) of the cost of most other builds if you don’t care about defenses that much. (see here – nothing in this build costs more than 1 ex other than Woke Ele Focus, and Empower/Enlighten – don’t play this build, it would be highly squishy - https://pastebin.com/mR2jE23G).

Aura stacking: mana reservation efficiency is probably too high right now and encourages/rewards stacking to an incredible degree. I am not completely against this, it is a cool option. I wouldn’t be surprised to see GGG torch this a bit.

Notes/neat stuff:

1. Full DPS is accurate here – cluster traps 3 trap per throw isn’t accounted for by PoB. Also Divergent Charged Traps is arguably the strongest single support in the game as it provides not only charges, but also a massive dps boost and all of the needed trigger radius.

2. Skin of the Lords is wildly underused. If your build uses empower, its essentially a +4 gem levels item. Iron Will gets another 10% more dps here. I paid 35C for that, it’s 100% more DPS over nothing.

3. Megalomaniacs are awesome for max res builds and also my preferred way for getting Enduring Composure. Enduring Composure is basically 100% uptime on endurance charges on armour builds that constantly take damage. An extremely strong notable. I paid like 120C for both of those combined. YMMV.

4. 90 max res makes sustaining RF simple and precludes needing Glorious Vanity. Very nice.

5. Conviction of Power is the ideal Flesh/Flame combo. Harmony of Purpose is ok. Augury of Penitence is nice too. I didn’t mess with it.

6. Inspired Learning is usable if you grab the chaos node on right side of tree by power/frenzy nodes. Great for Sim30.

7. That Watcher’s Eye was for another build. A better one would use determination (armour) or vitality (life regen)

8. Arc brand, anomalous Assassins’ Mark and Divergent purifying flame together keeps conc ground on enemies really nicely while also adding a ton of dps and precludes needing zealotry which doesn't work well with traps anyway. Enhance is good there, I didn’t have the gem slots for it.

9. I love terrified/panicked life flasks

10. I used to run this with Badge of the brotherhood. I think Ashes is better – more defense, less reliance on charges.

11. If I had to make a genuinely low budget version it would look like this. That version doesn't have anything costly other than enlighten rank 3. https://pastebin.com/tPMmTiGj