8+ SRS pops per second with triggerbot Trickster; my best exploding minion build

tl;dr: triggerbots, new rune enchant on one-handed axes that triggers fire spells on hiht and negative minion res Kalandra rings give us the ability to summon 8 (or more) SRS of Enormity per second, who die in ~0.67 seconds and explode for 800k to 1mill damage (depending on boss/no boss). Could push to 2mill per pop with better gear. PoB: https://pobb.in/CqOnrM1aOfKG

Overview

This build is based around summoning as many SRS as possible and having them explode as quickly as possible, and juicing their life and minion damage to deal as much damage as possible.

There are two new things this league which enable this; the negative value Kalandra reflection rings, and the new rune enchantments. We use negative minion resistance on rings to make the SRS die very quickly from infernal legion self fire damage. The rune enchantment on one-handed axes, ‘trigger a socketed fire spell on hit every 0.25 seconds’ allows us to summon SRS, since it's got both fire and spell tags.

For double damage, we duplicate this trigger with saboteur's triggerbot notable (the damage penalty on the node, ‘35% less damage with Triggered spells’, applies to spell damage, not minion life, negating the downside and making it a 100% more damage node). We use a one handed axe along with squire for damage, and cyclone for fast hits along with cast while channeling support for activating support skills like spirit offering and flammability.

We actually steal saboteur's triggerbot notable using very cheap forbidden flame/flesh jewels, since trickster offers much better defenses, and gives us ES leech which sustains both our defences and mana costs.

In my current version of the build I'm summoning over 8 SRS a second, and they explode for about 800k damage each, giving about 6 million dps on a very comfortable one button build (though in the video showcase the map has ‘38% reduced extra damage from critical strikes’ mod, which means this is more like 4 million dps in the video).

Details

On the tree, for offence we want minion life and minion damage, which are obtained mostly from the Elegant Hubris timeless jewel. We also get minion critical strike multiplier (since the SRS of enormity always crit) and attack speed to trigger the cast on hit. Defensively, this focuses on ES, spell suppression, spell block cap and Mind over Matter. We take Eldritch Battery to sustain the costs; each SRS costs 135 ES and with summoning over 8 per second, mana regen can't keep up so we have to use ES. Zealot's Oath with Vitality gives us lots of ES regeneration.

Trickster helps us in many ways; first it gives us lots of flat ES from evasion on the body armour, and helps us cap suppression. It lets us steal the saboteur triggerbot notable, which doubles the SRS summoning rate without any penalty. Trickster also gives us ES leech, which also helps sustain ES for both defenses and the SRS mana cost. Lastly, we take the Swift Killer notable to triple charge duration; combined with the eldritch mod on body armours that gives one endurance charge every 15 seconds, we have permanent uptime on 3 endurance charges, giving a bit more defenses.

For jewels, I use the two FF jewels to get triggerbots, the timeless jewel for the powerful minion life and damage nodes, as well as for supreme ostentation, which means we don't have to try to get strength or dexterity without ring or amulet slots to help us. I also have a watcher's eye with flat ES gained on hit while affected by discipline; this has been very useful for sustaining ES.

For gear, we have some interesting choices to make. Firstly, we want the SRS to die as quickly as possible, so we use two reflected rings with negative minion resistances, with minion life and damage being nice extras. One of the rings ideally is a gloam ring; this new base increases the damage taken by minions by 15% if it's in the right ring slot. With all this, my SRS currently have -63% fire resistance, which along with infernal legion means they die in 0.67 seconds according to my spreadsheet. This is quick enough to ensure they pop before I over-summon them, given the 6 minion limit on SRS of Enormity. Given the huge negative res values I can get from the rings, I don't even need a Tavukai amulet, which means that I can use Replica Dragonfang's Flight with +3 to SRS level; the anoint is just to grab another 80% increased minion life notable from the timeless jewel radius.

The rest of the non-weapon gear is basically trying to make up for not getting resistances on any of the jewelry, so it's life, suppression, and resistances. The belt has increased cooldown rate to improve the trigger rate; ideally we'd have this on the boots too. We grab a glove eldritch mod to inflict fire exposure, and a boot mod to lay down scorched ground. The helmet and body armour gives us some physical damage taken as elemental, as well as a tiny bit of minion life.

As for the weapons, we need SRS to be socketed in the axe to trigger it. This makes The Squire obligatory, so we can add 3 more supports; luckily they're very cheap this league, less than 2 divines. The axe itself has the rune enchant for triggering fire spells, which today would cost 24 divines. For extra SRS damage, we use an elder base to get the ‘increased critical damage’ support. I crafted this by using essences of Fear, which guarantee a high minion damage roll. Crafting on ‘hits can’t be evaded' ensures we don't need to mess around with accuracy either. Ideally this axe would have +1 to socketed gems as well as +2 to socketed support gems, which would give three more levels to SRS, but that's an expensive craft to do.

Flasks are nothing special; I am experimenting with this unique tincture since it covers enemies with ash on hit, but only if they're full life, so it's mostly useful on bosses.

Skill wise, SRS is supported by the usual supports. I wish I could use fresh meat, but it only applies for 10% of their duration, which I haven't scaled so is still 5 seconds, so fresh meat would only apply for 0.5 seconds and they take 0.67s to die. I'm currently using increased AoE support for slightly better clear, but another damage support here would take the explosion damage to 1 million or more depending on if you turn on ‘covered in ash’ in the config.

Cyclone is used to trigger many hits, and also to use Cast while Channeling to trigger Spirit Offering and the Flammability curse, two big damage boosts. Automation links to Steelskin and Convocation; Convocation is to keep the triggerbots closer to us, since that's where the SRS spawn from. Tempest Shield helps us cap spell block, Discipline gives tons of ES, Grace gives some decent evasion, and Frost Shield is used in emergency situations if I remember it.

Overall, this build feels awesome, if a bit squishy sometimes especially against chaos damage. It could easily be made better in a few ways;

• a better timeless jewel for more minion damage
• more cooldown on boots
• a 6-link for cyclone to add infused channeling for more defense
• fix chaos res somehow
• add in three minion crit multi grand spectrums
• craft my own reflected rings with life and resistances along with minion life and - minion negative resistances
• a better one handed axe with +levels to socketed gems

I think it'd be possible to get to 2 million damage per SRS pop along with summoning them nearly 10 times a second, which is well over 15 million dps.