Level 96 Hybrid Crit Reap Mine Trickster^3.27

Notes

Pros
---------------------------------------------
S-tier mapping, exceptional clear
Scales well as a Physical Skill
Freeze is insanely good for safety
Fast
Reap has higher damage upside if you are willing to boss swap gems and push an extra button
Very high damage ceiling, 100-400m dps with investment
If you DONT want to use Reap, you can skip it entirely and still boss after a certain investment level

Cons
---------------------------------------------
Gem swapping for bossing (if you don't care about bossing, ignore this)
Reap requires additional sockets to acquire Blood charges with a second copy of Reap
Reap requires an extra button
Reap has a large life cost


Vendor Regex
---------------------------------------------
"b-b-b|g-g-r|g-[gr]-g|r-g-g|b-b|g-r|r-g|Runn|rint|me Sh"


Witch Mule
---------------------------------------------
I highly recommend spending the 1min30s needed to mule a witch through the beach.  For that you will get:  
Arcane Surge, Rolling Magma, a guaranteed B-B wand, 3 wisdom scrolls (huge for early gear), and an extra
look at the vendor for Movement Speed boots plus drops from Hillock.  Since we are a spell Shadow if you don't
have those things they all will have to be purchases which puts pressure on your A1 drops and if you have
to skip out on a damage buff from, say, Flame Wall because you didnt' have enough Wisdom Scrolls your
experience will be bad.


Leveling
---------------------------------------------
Level off the beach with Cobra Lash until Level 4 / Hailrake at Tidal Island

New stuff highlighted in Yellow.

TO SIMULATE THE NEW GEM PRE-3.27 LAUNCH - Use Wave of Conviction for Fire Exposure

Level 4: 
Rolling Magma + Elemental Proliferation
Flame Wall
Frostblink + Arcane Surge (DON'T LEVEL ARCANE SURGE PAST 1)

NOTE:  Arcane Surge was buffed in 3.26 to provide a flat 20% cast speed and 30% mana regen at all levels, and when linked 
with Frostblink (or any skill) will proc constantly.  Cast Speed is a multiplier for your damage but more importantly, makes Rolling 
Magma feel less bad on a non-caster.  This will dramatically improve your quality of life.  If you have the socket just keep it linked
with Frostblink as it will reduce your mana costs as you campaign by boosting the effectiveness of Clarity.

Level 8:
Rolling Magma + Elemental Proliferation + Combustion
Flame Wall
Bear Trap
Frostblink + Arcane Surge (Still level 1 Arcane Surge)
Shield Charge + Momentum + Faster Attacks
Clarity

Level 16:
Rolling Magma + Elemental Proliferation + Combustion
Flame Wall
Summon Skitterbots
Frostblink + Arcane Surge (Still level 1 Arcane Surge)
Shield Charge + Momentum + Faster Attacks
Clarity
IMPORTANT: Go buy Exsanguinate + Reap gems to level in your offhand

Bandits:
Take Alira, it's so much more comfortable in campaign than the other two.

Level 31: Run Library for Charged Mines, gamble for a 4L
Pyroclast Mines + Swift Assembly + Added Cold Damage + Charged Mines
Automation + Detonate Mines
Bear Trap
Summon Skitterbots
Frostblink + Arcane Surge (Still level 1 Arcane Surge)
Shield Charge + Momentum + Faster Attacks
Clarity
Flammability
Grace

1st Ascendency: Swift Killer - Use the lab font to quality Reap, which has one of the best quality buffs in the game

Bench flat fire damage to spells on a weapon after Dialla

Level 38:
Pyroclast Mines + Minefield + Added Cold Damage + Charged Mines
Automation + Detonate Mines
Bear Trap
Summon Skitterbots
Frostblink + Arcane Surge (Still level 1 Arcane Surge)
Shield Charge + Momentum + Faster Attacks
Clarity
Flammability
Grace

Level 55:
Pyroclast Mines + Minefield + Elemental Focus + Charged Mines
Automation + Detonate Mines
Flame Wall
Bear Trap
Summon Skitterbots
Frostblink + Arcane Surge (Still level 1 Arcane Surge)
Shield Charge + Momentum + Faster Attacks
Clarity
Flammability
Grace
Guard Skill, probably Automation + Steelskin

2nd Ascendency: Polymath - respec starter nodes to acquire Masteries to make it worth.  Keep qualitying Reap.

Add Enduring Cry in early maps while waiting to source another Endurance Charge generator (Enduring Composure cluster -OR- Eldritch implicit)

Entering Maps:
-Gamble for 4L bases with Life/Res, ideally dex/int bases.  In particular, find a good Eva/ES (dex/int) chest to boost defenses.
-Consider buying March of the Legion (35-50% more damage for your 4L).  This is a very common T5 unique and is not terribly expensive.
-Vendor recipe a White wand (good base like Demon Horn or Imbued) with 40% quality combined gems tagged Fire for a free +1 gems wand.  Augment.  Regal.  Bench %Increased Mine Throwing Speed.
-Use an Essence of Zeal on a good belt base which gives a considerable amount of Mine Throwing Speed for cheap damage
-Bench Mine Throwing Speed on your weapons / amulet ASAP
-Fix your flasks, they are probably terrible.  You probably want Ignite immunity from a flask as I find this the most annoying damaging ailment.  Get a Jade flask and ideally a flask with %inc evasion suffix.


Off-hand gems
---------------------------------------------
Level Exsanguinate in every offhand socket you have.  You will want to corrupt them for a level 21 the moment you can, as every gem level
is an important power jump.  If you remember to do this early you won't have to wait as long later.  Quality on the gem doesn't matter as
we are scaling the hit and not the DoT, don't feel obligated to quality them before corrupting for 21.

Reap, however, we DO want quality for as the additional damage per blood charge is substantial.

Endurance Charges
-------------------------------------------
These are a really excellent defensive layer and will be important.  Get them from either an Enduring Composure small cluster (probably what I will do) or from 
the Endurance Charge implicit on chests.  Enduring Cry is also an option but I personally hate additional buttons.  Swift Killer will ensure that Enduring Composure 
keeps your charges up all the time, even on an evasion base.


ASCENDENCY ORDER
-------------------------------------------
1.  Swift Killer
2.  Polymath (respec your tree so you have enough masteries for it to be worth)
3.  Escape Artist
4.  Spellbreaker


Cheap / Abundant Uniques
-------------------------------------------
Offense
March of the Legion is a massive damage buff to Pyroclast Mines and is a T3 unique that effectively gives a psuedo 5L
Wyrmsign is another very common 5L item, though it will reduce your clear some with Pyroclast Mines
Nycta's Lantern is another strong cheap unique which gives Battlemage and a substantial chunk of flat phys and fire
Doedre's Tenure is strong for spell mine builds since we don't care about cast speed

Defense
Kintsugi is amazing defensively and one of my favorite items, especially early
Restless Ward is common and can be found with good corruptions for reasonably cheap.  It provides substantial regen once you've sourced Endu charges
and more movement speed.  You'll want to replace this before Uber content, probably, as it's not great defensively.


Critical Strike Chance
-------------------------------------------
Crit will be crucially important as it will gate your ability to Freeze and deal damage.  I wouldn't transition over to Exsanguinate unless you have Pob'd
that you will be getting at least 70% crit chance or you just won't be freezing enough.  Early on take Winter's Embrace to make this more comfy.  There
are excellent Critical Strike medium clusters available for cheap to help, and you can take or annoint really strong Crit nodes like High Voltage, bench or
get gear with Increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells (shield / caster weapons), Diamond flasks for conditional crit chance, Hatred Watcher's eye mods
with base critical strike chance, Assassin's Mark, and so on.

If you are having a hard time crit capping, use Hrimsorrow gloves and Increased Critical Strikes support to ease the transition.


Support Gem Choices
----------------------------------------------------------
-Cold Penetration is an excellent option and doesn't have the throw delay that Trap and Mine imposes
-Chain/Awakened Chain are great for clear.  You might want the Chaining Range wheel (Trick Shot), but I don't personally find it necessary
-Prioritize Crit Capping over more Crit Multi-- if you are low on crit chance you'll get more reliable freeze with Increased Critical Strikes



Ways to get 2% CDR for the 0.198s mine detonation breakpoint
----------------------------------------------------------
-2% CDR on Abyss Jewel
-CDR on boot implicit
-Generic Gem Levels will boost the CDR enough that you won't need it elsewhere (higher budget)
-Enhance is great as it also gives Mine Detonation Speed




IMPORTANT
Transitioning from Pyroclast Mines to Exsanguinate
----------------------------------------------------------

Before transitioning you want to have acquired:
- a 5-Link minimum
- a level 18 Exsanguinate, ideally 20 or 21.  gem levels are a massive amount of damage for spells.  Quality doesnt matter.
- Ideally the correct spell modifiers on gear (+1 gem on weapon, +1 gem or high spell dmg on shield, spell crit chance)
- Kikazaru -OR- enough life regen that you don't kill yourself (250-300+)
- 100% Physical Conversion to Cold.  Hrimsorrow is great for this.  Other options (more expensive) are Watcher's Eye,
  Betrayal gloves, glove implicit, and 40% from the Cold mastery.  If you don't convert your damage to
  elemental Exsanguinate will do very little damage.

Heatshiver is nice but might be expensive, not required.


IMPORTANT
Skill Tree Transition to Exsanguinate
----------------------------------------------------------
You need Freeze Duration in order for Freeze to be an effective damage mitigation layer, particularly when
you get to late maps.  I've allocated Winter's Embrace and Physical Conversion as part of the transition
to Exsanguinate becuase YOU WANT 100% conversion to Cold for Cold damage to be effective.  At lower damage 
levels, particularly right when you transition, you will want Freeze Duration.


FREEZE - IMPORTANT
-------------------------------------------
Freeze is a critical thing to get right here or it will feel like dogshit to play.  Freeze duration is calculated based on the size of the hit relative to the
target's ailment threshhold, and as long as you are critting you will get Freezes guaranteed.  You need a 0.3s Freeze for it not to be discarded, 
however you can get Freeze Duration from the tree (Winter's Embrace and  Elemental Focus) or from cluster jewels.  If you aren't reliably freezing 
mobs path up to Winter's Embrace and take the whole wheel.

For example, to get the minimum 0.3s freeze on a mob you have to deal 5% of its health pool in a single hit.  With 100% increased
freeze duration (or ailment duration), you only have to deal 2.5% of its health pool to get the 0.3s freeze which is enough to
proc Heatshiver for the next hit,



Amulet Annoint Options
-------------------------------------------
- Early on, Divine Judgement is great for cheap
- High Voltage is great for early crit as skitterbots will shock, giving you 100% crit chance.  Also cheap
- Arcane Potency for 30% crit multi / crit chance
- Frenzy/Power charge annoints are high value, though often expensive
- Sovereignty is another excellent choice when you need RMR to fit Herald of Purity or a Skitterbots support


Crafting Basic Endgame Gear
-------------------------------------------
Necrotic Armours - Source bases from your maps and Alt spam for T1 %inc Eva/ES+Stun and T1 flat Eva/ES.  Recombinate those two mods only together, 
then bench 74% Increased Eva/ES and exalt suffixes to get the Chest in the PoB
Weapons - The easiest way to get good updates / low cost are to vendor recipe a combined 40% quality of skill gems with a Physical tag with a scoured
weapon base (wand, rune dagger, etc).  Then recombinate it with a T1 Essence of Woe -OR- Essence of Scorn depending on what your build needs.
Then either multimod or just bench Mine Throwing Speed.


Arkhon's Tools - READ THIS OR DIE A LOT
-------------------------------------------
Arkhon's Tools is an amazing power boost, but you will be inflicted with the auras your skitterbots run.  You WILL die if you don't mitigate them, guaranteed.
This means Scorch, Shock, and Chill.  Would not recommend using Flasks for immunity because they won't be up much in boss fights.  I'd recommend running
a Zeal essenced belt until you have solved ailments.  Don't yolo this.
Shock - You can get immunity from this through the boot essence + implicit, abyss jewels, Tempest Shield
Scorch - You can fix this by overcapping your res
Chill - You can fix this with Winterweave for 18% more dps

Generic ailment immunity is also available through Purity of Elements or elsewhere, but it will make things like Winterweave unavailable.

If you decide to self-chill with Winterweave, make sure you've disabled (or don't run) the 50% reduced effect of chill Pantheon.


Cluster Crafting
-------------------------------------------
- 3-mod Physical Clusters.  Buy ilvl 50-67 (IMPORTANT) 8- or 9-passive large Physical clusters.  Use 1-socket Jagged fossils until you hit 3 physical
tagged mods.  This is fairly common, the important ones are level 50.  Sell any 3-mod clusters you don't want.
- Medium Trap and Mine clusters - Reforge Speed for Guerilla Tactics+Expert Sabotage, Reforge Crit for Guerilla Tactics+Surprise Sabotage.  If you
have to prio only one mod, get Guerilla Tactics over all else.
- Enduring Composure, if you don't have a source for Endurance Charges is excellent early on.  Don't buy it off trade, just buy the 2-passive armour
small cluster and alt spam for it.  Much cheaper.


How to craft Temple Mod gloves
-------------------------------------------
For a low-budget version of this, you don't have to do the Veiled Chaos / Matron for the proper 35%, benching 25% cold conversion should still be just
fine it's only a modest damage loss, though it will reduce your ability to freeze.


1) Search trade for either a 2-suffix or 3-suffix Temple mod with a second suffix you want.  If you find a 3-suffix (generally a lot cheaper), you can use
split beasts for an excellent chance at isolating the Temple mod+good suffix.  If you fail, it's still sellable.
2) OPTIONAL - Bench Suffix Cannot Change and reforge Chaos to get a guaranteed 3rd suffix as +%Chaos Res
3) Wild Bristle Matron for Suffix Cannot Change, use a Veiled Chaos Orb to guarantee a veiled prefix.
4) Bench Physical to Lightning conversion to block it
5) Unveil Physical to Cold
6) Greater Eater currency until 15% Physical Damage Conversion to Cold
7) Use ONE of the Exceptional Exarch currencies to get a high tier sacrificial mod
8) Orb of Conflict which has a higher chance to elevate the Phys Conversion.  If you WIN, GOTO 7.  If you lose, Orb of Conflict until you at 20%.
9) Repeat until 25%


How to craft a much better Endgame weapon
-------------------------------------------
You'll want to use a recombinator to make a better endgame weapon, this is the cheapest method by far

1) Acquire a +1 all gems weapon on a base of your choice (Sceptre / Wand / Rune Dagger are all fine).  Note that it's a wand league, and wands will
be hella expensive.
2) If your prefixes are full or you have more than JUST +1 all gems, you will need to clean it down to only +1 all gems.  The easiest way is to either buy
it already isolated -OR- use a split beast to try and get lucky.  Suffixes don't matter.
3) Essence of Woe for Spell Damage also isolated as a prefix.  Suffixes don't matter.
4) Recomb using the old method for a 1/3 to have Spell Damage and +1 all gems together
5) From here there are two options, you can clean suffixes with Prefix Cannot Change + Scour, then Multimod + Prefix Cannot Change + Cannot Roll Attack
for guaranteed succes -OR- gamble and only spend 1div on Cannot Roll Attack with 2 suffixes for a 60% chance of not ripping your prefixes.  Choose your
level of risk appropriately.  Once the weapon is set you will Rem/Add Physical to guarantee +1 Physical Gems.

Finishing suffix options

a) Multimod + Crit Multi + Mine Throwing Speed
b) Prefix Cannot Change + veiled chaos orb (lots of good mods, DD, DD while Focused, Crit Multi), block one of the Dot Multi mods, Redeemer Slam, Bench 6th mod



Later Game FF Jewel Options
-------------------------------------------
- Mystic Infusion is the best one, by far, and will solve crit for you
- For Defense, Born in the Shadows (15% DR, Blind)
- Knife in the Back (Crit Chance, 100% multi, Culling)
- For the Jugular (Crit Chance, 100% multi, Culling, slightly worse than Knife in the Back)
- Opportunistic is very good for bossing
- Pyromaniac is great for life regen + ailment immunity (excellent choice for Arkhon's)


End Game Upgrades
-------------------------------------------
- The Taming is excellent both for res and damage.  Make sure you quality it.
- Balance of Terror with Elemental Weakness
- Bottled Faith (excellent unique for bossing)
- Watcher's Eye with Hatred Base Crit and/or Cold Conversion
- Lethal Pride with Double Damage / Life Regen
- Runegraft of Refraction - Massive buff to clear, probably expensive early in league.  Drop it into an empty wheel or maybe replace 10% aura effect.


HELP!! I'm too squishy!!
-------------------------------------------
- Are you Spell Suppression capped?  This is probably the #1 thing I saw in PoBs where people said they were squishy in maps
- Do you have Ghost Dance and a decent ES pool (1k+)?
- For Ghost Dance to be effective, you need a decent Evasion pool.  Is it 30k+?
- Do you have some amount of Flat Life Regen somewhere in addition to Kikazaru (or Stone Golem/Arrogance+Vitality)?
- Do you have a source for Endurance Charges like Enduring Composure on a small cluster?  If not, grab a small Armour cluster and spend ~50 alts to roll it, or roll it on a chest
- Do you have a semi-decent Chest?  If not, consider grabbing a Kintsugi, or recombing into a 2-prefix Necrotic Armour and bench 74% increased Eva/ES
- Get a Panicked Life Flask (instant recovery on low life).  They are fantastic for keeping yourself alive in bad situations