Level 95 Seismic Trap Saboteur^3.17

Notes

FAQ
Path of Building shows I don't have 100% chance to poison, but I do have it ingame, what's up?
Path of Building doesn't calculate the poison chance on your weapon(as of writing this), so you'll have to manually add that to your chance to poison

I don't have any energy shield (yet), should I still pick up Ghost Dance?
If you have actual 0 es, there's no reason to pick up Ghost Dance. Just try to get any item with energy shield on it though, Ghost Dance becomes worth it once you have about 50es or more.

How bad is not having 100% chance to poison?
Pretty bad. Going from 95 -> 100% chance to poison means you gain about 5.3% more damage. Going from 90 -> 100% is 11% more damage. And going from 80 -> 100% is 25% more damage.

I see some people run Divine Blessing + Lifetap + Malevolence, should I?
If you want some damage this is a really good choice to run, it does increase socket pressure and micromanagement though, so I decided to not include it in this build by default.
Feel free to use it if you want to, you could roll a Despair on hit ring to fit it.

What about Shaper gloves with trap support?
Since you can't put Eater/Exarch influence on Shaper gloves, it's not worth it to go for those anymore in my opinion. Just stick with Deerstalker as the available mods on boots are not great for this build anyway.
Very lategame with Essence of Delirium gloves with Trap Support as well you could consider switching to those and just using rare boots.

Help! My molten shell is not triggering!
You likely don't have enough mana, either get more mana or temporarily replace Increased Duration in the links with Lifetap

LEVELING
From level 1 to 12 we use Stormblast Mine and Orb of Storms, make sure you use Stormblast Mine while standing IN your Orb of Storms to make use of the extra procs.

You can sell a Magic Wand with a Topaz Ring and an Alteration Orb to get a wand with flat lightning damage to spells. This is very nice for damage early on.
The tier of flat damage depends on the rarity of the ring you use:
- Normal Rarity = lvl 8 requirement
- Magic Rarity = lvl 14 requirement
- Rare Rarity = lvl 20 requirement

From level 12 to 28 we use Lightning Trap, with crafted wands this should be plenty of damage. Make sure you use Bear Trap on single target.

For leveling after lvl 28 we use 3 different cooldown traps for a while(Seismic + Lightning Spire + Flamethrower).
You stack up all of these traps before a boss spawns to burst it down really fast, make sure you use a mana flask!
You can setup these 3 traps in the same links, some examples would be:
- Seismic - Lighting Spire - Flamethrower - Trap & Mine Damage
- "Lighting Spire - Flamethrower - Trap & Mine Damage" as 3L and "Seismic - Trap & Mine - Advanced Traps" as your second 3L
In general if you have to choose which trap to link up more go for Seismic Trap.

You can switch to Exsanguinate traps at level 38(when you get Cluster Trap & Chain Support).
One requirement is that you have the "Pyromaniac" Ascendancy passive though as Exsanguinate traps cost a lot of life early on. If you're really struggling you can run Vitality as well.

If you want to switch to poison keep an eye out for weapons with the "% chance to poison" mod as this will make it easier to hit 100% chance to poison early on. Note that this mod cannot roll on wands.

For twink gear specific to this build Deerstalker is a good option. You can put your Exsanguinate traps in there and use the extra link you get to link Trap & Mine Damage Support to it.

POISON vs CRIT
There's also an option to go crit trapper. This tends to get more damage endgame but is less flexible on the tree and requires more gear investment.
Crit also has less reliable on-kill effects(it still gets them sometimes though), so your onslaught and life on kill uptime will be less consistent.

PLAYSTYLE
When mapping you want to use your Exsanguinate traps mostly, and on certain tanky rares you can throw a seismic trap as well. Your seismic cooldown is not too long, so don't be too hesitant to throw it.

On bosses you want to start by prestacking your Seismic Traps, but you want to be careful that your traps don't go off before you can damage the boss, this mostly comes with experience.
Just before your stack goes off you want to press your Withering Step in range of the boss and press your Focus mod(if you have it) to cancel your Withering Step, then cast Despair.
This combo ensures that you maximize the damage of your prestack.
If your prestack didn't straight up kill the boss here's some tips for during bossfights:
- If you have the Focus mod try to time it so that you can throw 3 or 4 Seismic Traps each time you use it
- Keep Withering Stepping in range of the boss as much as possible to sustain wither stacks, be careful to watch your Flame Dash charges though!
- Bosses with teleports tend to be annoying as they'll teleport out of your Seismic Trap(Catarina, Awakener, Maven etc.), remember that their teleport usually has a cooldown though, so use your Seismic Traps as soon after a teleport as possible!

IMPORTANT: GETTING 100% CHANCE TO POISON
There's multiple ways to get 100% chance to poison, I'll list your options here and you can choose what you use based on the economy or what you have in SSF.
All poison nodes this build can take(or annoint) on the tree combined is 65% chance to poison, so you need to get 35% somewhere else:
1. Divergent Herald of Agony gives 20% chance to poison, using a Prime Regrading Lens on a normal Herald of Agony gives you a 2/3rd chance to get this so it's very farmable even in SSF if you don't mind Heist. Also scales really well with Ashes of the Stars
2. Coated Shrapnel gives a 25% chance to poison as well as a little flat phys based on where you place it
3. Before you have a Cold Iron Point you can use a dagger with the chance to poison/poison damage suffix, this gives you at least 20% chance to poison. Also take a look at the Alternative to Cold Iron Point section of the notes for another strat
4. Normal jewels can roll 5% chance to poison(with some poison duration as well)
5. Eater of Worlds influence on gloves rolls 5% chance to poison on the lowest tier, going up 5% per tier. This can become a significant source of poison chance.

EATER/EXARCH IMPLICITS
I added one of the most optimal implicit setups on the "Late Game" gearset. Some alternatives:
- Rolling maximum resistances on some pieces of gear improves your elemental mitigation
- Mana reservation efficiency on helmet might allow you to fit an extra aura(like Herald of Agony if you're struggling with poison chance)
- If you end up using rare boots, some good implicits are: movement speed, action speed, max res and phys gained as chaos

ALT QUALITY GEMS
These are by no means required, just options you can look out for, especially once you have Ashes of the Stars:
- Divergent Herald of Agony: gives you 20% chance to poison
- Anomolous Withering Step: gives you extra wither stacks
- Divergent Skitterbots: some extra chill and shock effect
- Divergent Advanced Traps Support: might bring you to the next breakpoint for Seismic Trap pulses

POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE ANNOINTS
- Force Shaper = highest raw dps
- Dirty Techniques = your dps ramps up fastest
- Expeditious Munitions = faster pulses & trigger AoE, which is nice before Uber Lab. Also quite cheap
- Entrench = 10% spell suppression for cheap
- Sanctuary = 12% all elemental resistances for cheap
- Discipline and Training = a lot of life
- Combat Stamina = some life and regen for relatively cheap

SEISMIC PULSE THRESHOLDS(ADVANCED)
One way to optimize damage on Seismic Trap is to make sure you get as many pulses as possible. There's 2 ways to do this: getting more duration and getting more trap throwing speed.
Duration is useful on bosses that stand still a lot and in Maven invitations, while throwing speed gets you DPS faster. But duration gives you more pulses easier than throwing speed does.
Because of the way Seismic Trap waves use rounding ingame, it's hard to calculate a specific throwing speed and duration threshold you need to hit. Just throw 1 trap in your hideout and count the amount of pulses you see.
Some ways to get more pulses:
- Seismic Trap duration enchant
- Trap throwing speed craft on weapon, amulet and belt.
- Trap throwing speed on jewels
- Advanced Traps Support levels
Occasionally throw a Seismic Trap in your hideout and see if you're close to getting an additional pulse. Going from 8 to 9 pulses is 12.5% more damage on bosses that stand still and it might only be a single jewel away.

CRAFTING LATE GAME CHEST
1. Roll a chest with T1 life(or find one with temple % life)
2. Make sure there are 2 open prefixes and at least 1 open suffix
3. Craft "Can have up to 3 crafted modifiers" (Cost: 2ex)
4. Craft "% life/mana" and "10% of life gained as energy shield"
5. Put Eater of Worlds influence on the item(if there's already Exarch on there, make sure your Eater modifier is higher than the Exarch modifier)
6. Use Eldritch Chaos Orbs until you have acceptable suffixes(focus mainly on suppress here)
7. Done!

ALTERNATIVE TO COLD IRON POINT(ADVANCED)
Cold Iron Point is technically not the highest DPS weapon for this build, this is a guide to deterministically craft a better weapon.
Be aware though that this is only slightly(about 10%) better single target, it's worse clear and a lot more expensive:
COST: ~6-7ex
1. Get an ilvl 82+ Hunter Sword
2. Alteration roll for the T1 dot mult suffix, alternatively you can go for the T1 chance to poison suffix if you need the poison chance, but dot mult is more damage
3. Regal without augmenting first
4. Ideally you have a 2-mod rare now with your desired mod and a random trash mod
5. Annull off the trash mod(s), if you fail scour and start over at step 2
6. Craft: "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers" and "Cannot roll Attack Modifiers" (Cost: 3ex)
7. Use Leo or Bestiary Hunter Slam(or if you're lazy: use an exalt), this slams guaranteed either +1 socketed gems or % chaos damage over time. If you got +1 socketed gems, do step 7 again.(Cost: 1-2ex)
8. If you got only % chaos damage over time you can choose: the only other remotely useful prefix you could get is +1 socketed gems, so you could just slam again. You can also just leave it though since +1 socketed gems is not that amazing.
9. Remove crafted modifiers
10. Craft: "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers", "+(18-20)% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier" and "Gain (7-8)% of Physical Damage as Extra Chaos Damage" (Cost: 2ex)
11. You're now done, if you have +1 socketed gems on the weapon I'd recommend putting your auras in there or if you have Anomolous Withering Step you can put that and an Enhance support gem in there