[Brittleknee] Explosive Trap league starter - 3.17

-===========================================- Brittleknee's Explosive Trap Leaguestart -===========================================- Quick Overview: Explosive Trap is some of the best single-target in the game. It draws its strength from overlapping multiple hits and while it starts a bit clunky, with gems levels and AoE investment, it can have moderate clear. This has been chosen for its bossing potential, seeing as both the new end-game and the league mechanic have a lot of single-target demands. We'll also pick new Atlas Passives which are suited for the built, and make a fair bit utilizing those and farming the Atziri encounter early. -===========================================- Table of Contents -===========================================- 1.) Leveling 2.) Farming Focus 3.) End-Game 4.) Explanations 5.) FAQ -===========================================- Leveling - Gems, Bandits, Pantheon -===========================================- Level how you prefer, switching in BA or after 4th Lab if you are experienced and know what you're doing. I recommend leveling as Trap Mines, but that's probably a result of my weird fascination with them. I think you're fine to use Explosive from level 1 if you're not in a huge rush. Explosive or Lightning Trap Mines if you want to try to hit a target of 5-8 hours to maps. Gem Progression: Lv 1 - Explosive Trap, Lesser Poison Lv 4 - Explosive Trap, Lesser Poison, Swift Assembly Take Bear Trap as a Reward. Lv 8 - Explosive Trap, Added Fire, Swift Assembly -or- Lv 8 - Explosivce Trap, Swift Assembly, Blastchain Lv 10 - Unironic Siphoning Trap Obtain Vitality, Clarity, Precision, use Clarity/Vit Lv 12 - Swap to Lightning Trap Mines if you'd like Lv 16 - Obtain Skitterbots, Herald (Ash or Thunder) Lv 18 - Obtain Trap and Mine Damage Lv. 24 - Obtain Grace, Assassin's Mark, Flammability or Conductivity Library - Charged Traps, Fire Pen, Defiance Banner Bandits, Lab Order, Pantheon, Other: Bandit: Aliira Lab Order: Perfect Crime, Pyro, Born in the Shadows, then either Chain Reaction or Explosives Expert Pantheon Major: Brine King, Get Freeze Immune ASAP Minor: Whoever, Rhyslatha or Garukhan Early Masteries: + Trap: Recover 30 Life (drop for Extra Traps) + Trap: Trigger AoE (or you obtain Hair Trigger) Uniques that Are Comfy: + Chernobog It provides 25% P to F conversion, has good stats. + Hair Trigger Increases Trigger AoE, giving a Mastery back, and allowing for EZ Corrupting Blood Immunity. + Xoph's Blood Provides 50% P to F conversion, at the loss of gem level scaling, but if cheap can be a good bandaid. Mana Problems with Traps: Initially we'll use Clarity to get through the story along with Aliira's Mana Regen and Some Flasking. It should not be too uncomfortable. Once we're settled in maps the idea will be to switch to an enduring flask with some flask charge gen for it to be comfy. -===========================================- Farming Focus - Atziri & Atlas Passives -===========================================- Early Economy Focus: As a Trapper, your bread and butter will be early Atziri farming, as you're reflect immune with high single target with the ability to pre-load most of your damage for her split phases. Keep the first flask and pair of boots for yourself, then sell sell sell. Flasks will rapidly lose value but the boots should retain it for a time. Other early bosses are found in Delve and Abyss. Atlas Focus: For Atlas Passives, you should pursue the mechanics that are most interesting to you, personally. If you were concerned about 100% optimization, you wouldn't be here anyways. I will tier the mechanics by the build's ability to handle them, so you can plan things out based on what you like. Does Exceptional: - Anything you can preload damage. + Metamorph + Essences + Strongboxes + Harvest Does Good: Things where high single target is nice. + Harbinger + Blight + Ritual + Bestiary + Abyss + Heist Does Poorly: Things where lack of clear is apparent. + Legion + Breach + Non-Time-Dilation Alva + Delirium Mirrors (Maps are Okay) -===========================================- End-Game Plans, Possible Branches -===========================================- Scaling Your Damage: Explosive Trap is very, very hungry for Gem Levels. Not only do you get damage, but gem level scales your AoE as well as secondary explosions.We'll also be using the inherent Saboteur/Trap nodes to scale Crit and Crit Multi. Since the Cluster Trap Support change, we'll be testing out high values of Throw Speed + Swift Assembly to see if it can be comfy. Solving Conversion: There's a few ways to scale conversion which come at various opportunity costs. Initially Temple Conversion Gloves + Chernobogs will get you there. Eventually, you will be able to craft the 25% for gloves. Losing the slot to Chernobog's isn't the worse thing, but you miss out on a rare shield that could grant Gem Level, Crit, and otherwise. Similarly there's Xoph's Amulet which grants Avatar of Fire, but that's the cost of a possible +2 as well as other potentially useful Amulet modifiers. You could use Skin of the Lords with Avatar of Fire, but that leaves out all the goodies you can get from Body Armor such as base Crit and otherwise. Getting Tougher The tree is meant to dump you off at the early end game with close to capped spell suppression, reasonable Evasion, moderate Life (5.5k in starter gear), with Blind and Generic Damage Reduction built into the Ascendancy. We'll unironically use Siphoning trap to pump up our recovery a bit more, as it's more effective than Vitality and doesn't require a reservation. There's end-game potential to dabble a bit more into block and armor for extra security. Future Plans for Late End Game My goal with this build is to open up the end game, get a lot of my atlas done, farm a bit of currency, then make another character that is primarily targeted at clearing, leaving this guy as a bosser. I really enjoyed my Alt Ailment DD Necro last league, and may pull some of that tech over into this build if I can properly utilize it. -===========================================- More In-depth Mechanics, Reasoning, Etc. -===========================================- 1.) Can you use Concentrated Effect? You see a bit of arguement in different places about this one. A lot of folks operate under the misconception that Conc Effect affects Explosive Trap's AoE, but not it's spread pattern, resulting in less overlaps and damage. However, the AoE of the secondaries is unaffected, meaning you have a tighter grouping with more overlaps. 2.) Why Charged Traps/Swift Assembly? With Cluster Traps getting a bit of a smack, I'm going to try to focus on sourcing Throw Speed and utilize that with Swift Assembly to hopefully create a comfy synergy. This will absolutely be something I will have to feel out, and is an idea, not a proven thing. 3.) Why do you use that Three Dragons Modifier? Explosive Trap damage in PoB is misleading and tends to over-value Ignite as a result. Remember, ignites don't stack like poisons and wants big thicc source hits, which isn't how Explosive Trap does damage. This mod will turn off the Ignite for consideration so you can work with a more accurate number. 4.) How do I know how much damage I'm doing? Avg Hit * Traps Thrown per Second * Number of Traps per Throw * 60% of Total Explosions per Trap that Hit 40k Avg Hit 2 Throws a Second 2 Traps per Throw (Pessimisted Swift Assembly) 6 Explosions out of 11 (Counting Helm enchant) 40,000 * 3 * 2 * 6 = 1 440 000 sDPS -===========================================- Frequently Asked Questions -===========================================- 1.) Why Explosive Trap? Isn't ____ Better? F is for Firey insane explodey death sounds U is for Ugh, meta N is for None, which is how many fucks I give And that's why it's the start for meeeee. 2.) Explosives Expert vs. Chain Reaction? This depends on your gear and overall AoE situation and is largely a decisions you can make based on feel. At lower gem levels, Chain reaction may feel better as it will produce more overlap opportunities, but as you have better gear and higher gem levels, the multi may pull away and be more valuable. -===========================================- Contact and Socials -===========================================- + Twitch - twitch.tv/brittleknee + Twitter - twitter.com/brittlekneetv + Discord - discord.gg/brittleknee There's a Build Discussion channel in the Discord! Please route questions there to be answered by myself or the community. Thanks!