[3.20] Lightning Trap Saboteur | League Starter | Endgame Bosser | 4+mil dps on a 5link.

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TendoCalcanei wrote:

Hi, i have question about the Pantheon, which souls are you using and why?

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TheChosenOne_ wrote:

Is there a tanky version of this build for 10ex or less to get started?

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Xenoad wrote:

Hey,
wanna start my first trapper ever :D
can you tell me what to level first as League Starter?
I´m not the best player out there, just want to know.
Thanks for the help! :D

"

hunterm4n wrote:

Hey, got a question, seeing as there are 2 skill with critical tag isn't the crit mastery "+3 to Level of all Critical Support Gems" any good ? Taking this would require to either change one of the crit mastery and go and take another crit cluster. What do you think, should I take it ?

"

Ekule731 wrote:

This build guide is a work in progress, and I welcome any kind of feedback. Still working on different versions of a PoB.

NO CHANGES TO THIS BUILD BETWEEN 3.17 AND 3.18

* LIGHTNING TRAP is a trap that when triggered (simply by placing it near an enemy, or if its duration ends) shoots a nova of projectiles in every direction, traveling about a screen and a half. This allows it to clear an entire screen of monsters very well, while still having very good single target dps.
* As the skill is innately a trap, you don't need to use Trap Support.
* Vaal Lightning Trap is only special in that it leaves shocked ground which shocks enemies standing on it; However, our skitterbot shocks nearby enemies and our crits are guaranteed to shock so I really don't consider it worth using


HOW MUCH DPS?:

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* THESE GIFS ARENT INTENDED TO BE AN EXPECTATION OF WHAT THE BUILD SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO ON A SMALL BUDGET, BUT RATHER WHAT THE BUILD IS CAPABLE OF ON A LARGE BUDGET

- Enough I can turn boss kills into gifs (30+ mil)
- My character (LightningTrappy) in archnemesis league currently has 25 million dps against bosses like Sirus and Maven. The raw dps is around 35 million. I'm the highest lightning trap dps character on poe.ninja while still having 4.7k life, 2k energy shield, and 20,000 evasion rating. If you didn't care about survivability, 40-50mil dps is absolutely achievable.
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?skill=Lightning-Trap&sort=dps
PoE.ninja doesnt count my lightning exposure, or that I consistently 50% shock any enemy in the game.

TRAPS ARE NOT MINES:
* Unlike mines, traps trigger simply for being near an enemy, and do not require you to activate a detonate skill. Simply pressing one button to place the trap is enough.
* By default, only trap throwing speed modifiers and action speed modifiers (such as tailwind) can affect the speed you throw traps. There is a unique pair of gloves that allows cast speed to affect trap throwing speed.
* Traps count as their own entity, and gain hit and kill credit. This means reflected damage hits the trap instead of you, the traps leech instead of you, and they are hitting/killing instead of you. Modifiers such as "If you've killed recently" and "Chance to Gain ____ on critical strike" and "Curse enemies with ____ on hit" will never grant you their bonus with trap hits. Bonuses such as "If you havent kiled recently", and "If you havent crit recently" will ALWAYS be active

WHY STACK POWER CHARGES?:

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- This build stacks power charges and frenzy charges, with each maximum power charge giving MASSIVE dps. For many reasons, charge stacking actually gives significantly more dps than even low life Pain Attunement.

- Getting 9 to 10 maximum power charges is very doable with a mild investment. Getting more than 10 however can be exceptionally expensive. Having 9 charge is more than enough.

- Each Power charge gives the following bonuses:
8% increased mana regeneration, 62% increased spell damage, 48% increased critical strike chance, 20% Critical Damage Multiplier.

- Each frenzy charge gives us the following bonuses:
4% MORE damage, 14% trap throwing speed, 4% movement speed.

- At 10 maximum power charges we get a total of 80% increased mana regen, 620% increased spell damage, 480% increased critical strike chance, 200% critical strike multiplier, 40% MORE damage, 140% increased trap throwing speed, and 40% movement speed. This is in addition to everything else in the passive tree, on gear, and from jewels.

-Overall on my character from Archnemesis league, my power charges quintuple (5x) my dps, and my frenzy charges triple (3x) my dps. A simple 30% more damage multiplier from Pain Attunement is simply unable to compete in dps.

BOSSES:

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* THESE GIFS ARENT INTENDED TO BE AN EXPECTATION OF WHAT THE BUILD SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO ON A SMALL BUDGET, BUT RATHER WHAT THE BUILD IS CAPABLE OF ON A LARGE BUDGET

* Can do any boss/maven encounter in the game including The Feared and Atziri;

Pseudo Bosses:

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Eater of Worlds/The Infinite Hunger:

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Conquerors:

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Guardians:

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PROS:

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- Can do for league start, and have millions of dps on a moderate budget (<5ex)
- High dps, able to bypass many boss mechanics. Strong overall bosser.
- Can run any map mod including reflect, though monsters steal charges can be rough.
- Extremely strong in content where we can spam traps before the enemy is damageable, such as archnemesis monsters, essence monsters, and metamorphs.
- No need to use 2 main skills, or to gem swap.
- Outright Immune to Ignite and Shock (and Freeze with pantheon).
- While traps are meta, power charge stacking traps and lightning trap are not. This means many of the key items are very affordable after the first few days of a league, including helmet enchantments.

CONS:

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- Can feel squishy on a low investment, if you haven't yet learned the playstyle.
- Very early in the league, the key unique items can be moderately expensive, costing as much as 2ex for each of the wands and the amulet.
- Can be somewhat difficult to get a lot of movement speed on the character, which is its only real limiter for clear speed.
- Extremely difficult to cap spell suppression and have at least 0% chaos resistance without significant sacrifices to damage. This build does however have plenty of damage to spare, so you can choose to go that route.
- As this build is not meta, you basically have to craft a +1 power charge, +3 lightning trap pierce helmet yourself

PoB LINK:

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https://pastebin.com/3J6B7e74

This is for my character, 5 weeks into archnemesis league. Yes, I do shock everything for 50% including pinnacle bosses. THIS DOES NOT COUNT DOUBLE HITS FROM DIVERGENT LIGHTNING TRAP



This is a very budget PoB for charge stacking. With mid-league prices, this entire setup is less than 3ex (its on a 5link), and has over 3 million dps

https://pastebin.com/39qehuzz

* KILL ALL BANDITS

For builds that can be squishy, I highly recommend Cast on Death and Portal. Saves you from the walk of shame.

EXTREME BUDGET/LEAGUE START:

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- This version of the build is for when you have literally no money, or less than an exalt. It is a mediocre build, though is absolutely capable of red maps. You would start out with this version on a league start using Rares you find, and would transition to charge stacking as soon as you can afford Badge of the Brotherhood and at least 1 void battery.

PASSIVE TREE:

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This tree is for characters without a lightning trap pierces 3 enemies helmet, or cluster jewels. If you get a helmet with the enchantment, you can unallocate the 3 passives for Piercing Shots

poeurl.com/dCeE


Order of Passive Importance:
(1) poeurl.com/dEqK
(2) poeurl.com/dErs
(3) poeurl.com/dErt
(4) poeurl.com/dEri

GEAR:

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Rare wands with a few damage mods are fine until you can get void batteries. You could even use an Agnerod WEST staff if you have plenty of strength

Any Rare helmet with life and resistance, a goldrim, or if possible a basic craftable helmet with the lightning trap pierces 3 enchantment, which can be very cheap. You should get a helmet with evasion if you plan to use the spell suppression mastery that grants 10% spell suppression if the helmet, gloves, and boots each have at least 1 evasion rating.

A basic Craftable 5link, Tabula Rasa, Corrupted Rare 6link (with right colors), or a 5link Tinkerskin are all budget options.

Rare Gloves with life and resistances are fine until you can get Slavedriver's hand. Slavedrivers hand have to be upgraded in the temple of atzoatl, so may take over 24 hours to show up in trade, and may be expensive super early in the league.

Rare boots with life, movement speed, attributes if needed, and some evasion are ideal. You should get boots with evasion if you plan to use the spell suppression mastery that grants 10% spell suppression if the helmet, gloves, and boots each have at least 1 evasion rating.

A basic Rarebelt with life and resistances is ideal. You can also get some strength here if needed.

Rare Rings with life, resistances, and attributes if needed. You don't need to worry about damage in these slots until you have currency to spare.

An amulet with life, and attributes if needed. You should be careful about getting too many attributes or too much resistance on this slot as you will be replacing it later with something that doesn't have any resists or strength, only implicit dexterity, and you don't want to have to replace most of your items just to make the switch.

GEMS:

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Lightning Trap 2b, 3g, and 1b OR 1r

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Lightning Trap: In Archnemesis league, buying a level 21, 20% quality lightning trap ranges from 5-10c. You should absolutely look at the price for one and buy it if you can afford it.

Trap and Mine Damage Support can be outclassed by other support gems as your investment in the character increases, but its a very strong support usable from halfway through act 2.

ONLY USE ONE OR THE OTHER.
Cluster Traps support throws a ton of extra traps, helping clear be more consistant, and overall giving half decent damage. Swift assembly support on average gives more single target dps than cluster traps, but until you get a ton of trap throwing speed it wont feel as good.

Charged Traps Support gives crit multi, and most importantly 10% trap throwing speed per frenzy charge. While this isnt nearly as strong until you are fully charge stacking, this support is strong and worth using

Added Lightning Damage Support is a consistent and overall good support gem.

The last support gem is your choice. Inspiration support reduces the mana cost of lightning trap while giving damage and is extremely helpful until you get the architect's hand (At which point it becomes completely useless). Increased crit strikes support or lightning penetration are both good, with lightning penetration probably giving the most dps, depending on your character.

Auras: 3b, 1g

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Wrath is just a strong damage aura. Quality is irrelivant for solo play.

Skitterbots give more trap and mine damage, and the two minions have a shock aura and chilling aura, giving us 10% penetration from the Explosives Expert ascendancy keystone. Supporting it with Infernal Legion Support will also cause them to make nearby enemies burn, giving us 40% crit multi from that same ascendancy node. Once you get a stygian vise you'll use a jewel with fire damage to spells allowing us to drop infernal legion support and reduce the reservation.

USE ONLY ONE
Grace is a strong defensive aura, working against any kind of attack regardless of damage type (Armour only mitigates physical attacks) I highly recommend you use it rather than zealotry. You can choose to use Zealotry for damage if for some reason you dont feel like you have enough

Brand: 4b

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There are many debuffs we want to apply to an enemy, and casting them all wastes a lot of time and can get you killed. We solve this by using Arcanist Brand to apply our Elemental Weakness, Assassins mark, and optionally Wave of Conviction. Note that levels of these gems affects the mana cost. We need to have enough mana for all linked spells to be cast once before running out of mana. Assassins mark only gives 19% crit multi from its 20 levels, but costs twice as much mana. You can choose to keep it a lower level. I keep the brand and wave of conviction at level 1.

If you want, you can use arcane surge rather than wave of conviction, as arcane surge on flame dash wont always be up. You can instead link it to lifetap so you never have to worry about running out of mana.

Flame Dash:

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Flame Dash is just a good movement skill. You should link it to void manipulation so that it does 0 damage unless you want to oneshot yourself in reflect maps. You can keep flame dash at a low level to reduce the mana cost.

ONLY USE ONE
You can use Arcane Surge on flame dash as a passive way to gain it, or you can use lifetap so you can flame dash even when out of mana (such as in cannot regen maps)

Steel Skin:

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Make very sure you have the level requirement of the Cast When Damage taken equal to or higher than the level requirement of the steelskin. Steelskin requires a fair amount of strength, so you can use it at a lower level than I do if the strength requirement is prohibitive.

Other Gems: 1b, 1g

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You only need to use bear trap for very high health targets, such as map bosses or pinnacle bosses. It increases the damage enemies hit by it take from traps, so its a good damage boost.

Vaal Righteous Fire damages you significantly when you use it, but it does give you 19% more spell damage. Use it sparingly.

JEWELS:

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You can just use Rare jewels with % increased life until you can afford more expensive jewels.

FLASKS:

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You will need a Mana Flask until you can get the Architect's Hand gloves. Enduring is ideal, as it will not cancel its effect when you reach full mana.

My preferred Life Flask is one that gives more recovery if used on low life, and has bleed/corrupted blood removal. Life flask is personal preference.

A quicksilver for movement speed, and Jade flask for evasion are extremely suggested. You can use an onslaught flask (as trap characters dont have another way to gain it) for movement speed and (assuming you have the gloves) trap throwing speed.

Good optional defensive flasks. Phasing is extremely useful, so a quartz flask should be used, at least until you get a tinkerskin.

LOW-MID BUDGET CHARGE STACKING:

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You can do a basic power charge stacker and have dps in the millions on a 2-3ex budget (Mid league prices). For archnemesis prices of key items in budget setup at the time of writing:

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PoB Link: https://pastebin.com/0zZyWsYZ

- 5link Tinkerskin: 4c
- Void Batteries: 10c each
- lvl 21 Lightning Trap: 7c
- Badge of the Brotherhood: 75c
- Overcharge anoint oils: Crimson 2c, Black 2c, Silver 18c.
- Forbidden Flesh: 40c
- Forbidden Flame: 40c
- Slavedriver's Hand: 15c
- Lightning Trap 3 pierce: 5-10c for low ilvl craftable Rare helmet, 110c for Crown of the Inward Eye with enchantment.

Exalts at time of writing are 160c

PASSIVE TREE:

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Use a Glorious Vanity with IN THE NAME OF DORYANI
Timeless Jewel goes here:
Damage/Defence Balanced (Recommended Tree):

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poeurl.com/dCfb


Use a large cluster jewel, and only if you have the passives after taking the rest of the tree, medium cluster jewels.

Defence Focused:

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poeurl.com/dCfe


- You can choose to swap Wrath for Discipline, and fiddle around with reservations. This tree wont use a cluster jewel, and picks up spell suppression, chaos res, and a bit more energy shield which are hard to get when we use this many uniques.
- You should try to use a Crown of the Inward Eye for the amount of incresed life and increased energy shield it gives.

GEAR:

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Void Battery wands are BiS. The enchantment is FAR less important than the cast speed rolls being high.

Badge of the Brotherhood is non-negotiable. It gives as much as 7 extra frenzy charges.
- Overcharge: Crimson Oil, Black Oil, Silver Oil

While a Crown of the Inward Eye is certainly good defensively, you should aim to have a Rare Helmet with +1 maximum power charge. As this build isn't meta, you will likely have to craft this yourself, slamming a warlord exalt on a lightning trap enchanted helmet (ilvl 85+) crafting until you get the power charge (as it is a rare mod). You can alteration/augmentation/regal craft and then multimod if necessary.

Tinkerskin is BiS due to the life and energy shield recovered on trap trigger. A corrupted gem level Tinkerskin will outperform an influence crafted rare in most scenarios anyway.

Slavedriver's Hand is non-negotiable due to the trap throwing speed and it making traps spend life instead of mana. There is no way we can sustain the mana cost of over 275% trap throwing speed. Aim to have as close to 20% reduced trap throwing speed as possible.

You want Rare Boots with life, movement speed, and resistances/attributes if necessary. This is a place you can get spell suppression.
* Gain elusive on crit, tailwind if you've crit recently, and onslaught on kill are all mods that DO NOT WORK WITH TRAPS.
* Lightning damage if you havent killed recently, increased critical strike chance if you haven't crit recently, and damage penetrates 10% elemental resistances if you haven't killed recently will ALWAYS be active, so strive for boot enchantments, ideally penetration.

* A Rare Belt with life and resistances, ideally you'd have a stygian vise so you can socket a hypnotic eye jewel that grants fire spell damage, allowing you to drop infernal legion support. If you can get energy shield and/or % increased life, it will help survivability.
* Technically speaking an Arn's Anguish is BiS as far as damage is concerned, but you'd lose a fair amount of resistance as well as 3 endurance charges (Which we do generate). I don't recommend this belt.

While the double added lightning damage mods certainly look impressive, a basic Rare Ring with increased cast speed wont give much less dps. I recommend not worrying about the added damage at the cost of life or good suffixes.

GEMS:

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Lightning Trap:

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Divergent Lightning Trap has a chance for each projectile to return to the trap location, potentially hitting the enemy more than once. This can massively increase damage, though being an alternate quality, it is harder to obtain, especially as a level 21 gem.

Divergent Charged Traps support increases the trigger radius of the traps significantly. Its not particularly expensive, but not a large priority either.

Once you have 9 or 10 power charges, power charge on crit support is more damage than trap and mine damage support, as it doesnt have a LESS trap throwing speed penalty.

If you have a large amount of trap throwing speed (which you should) you can use swift assembly all the time, as it is more damage than cluster traps.

Added Lightning Damage Support gives a lot of flat lightning damage, which is one of the few damage modifiers this build struggles to scale. A level 5 awakened version will give more damage than most other support gems, partly because it gives +1 level of supported lightning gems at lvl 5.

Lightning Penetration Support, when we invest heavily into penetration and lowering elemental resistancess, is still worth using. It may give like 2-3% less dps than trap and mine damage, but against an enemy that isn't cursed it gives more. As far as awakened supports go it's generally pretty cheap.

Auras:

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No Enlighten Support needed.
You can use zealotry instead of grace for bosses like sirus or maven who only use spells.

Brand:

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Arcanist brand allows us to cast 3 spells in succession without the need to press multiple buttons. You can use arcane surge support or lifetap support instead of wave of conviction if the mana cost is an issue for you.

Flame Dash:

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Flame dash is for this build the best movement skill. Void manipulation is to avoid oneshotting ourselves in reflect maps, and arcane surge should be either on flame dash or on the arcanist brand. Divergent arcane surge increases the duration of arcane surge by a couple seconds, which is actually pretty nice.

Steel Skin:

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Watch the level requirement of steelskin and CWDT. The CWDT should never require a lower level than the steelskin or it wont work.

Other Gems:

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Bear Trap is only necessary on very high health bosses. Vaal righteous fire should be used sparingly.

Since we stack so much elusive effect with the amulet, we can use withering step to give us Elusive. Note it shares a cooldown with flame dash.

JEWELS:

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Watcher's Eye with lightning penetration while affected by wrath is the single most impactful mod. We can then get other wrath mods (increased lightning damage/increased crit chance while affected by wrath) or we can get grace/zealotry mods depending which aura you use. I personally like the movement speed while affected by grace, but there are many options.

Glorious Vanity with "In the name of Doryani" changes all nodes in its radius (making us have to go out of our way to get a socket for it). It changes keystones to corrupted soul, which effectively gives us around a thousand energy shield. As this build can be squishy, this helps a fair bit.

Forbidden Flesh/Flame The unstable infusion pair of jewels gives us +1 power charge, and is very cheap compared to many other forbidden jewels. Extremely highly recommended.

These mods make it easier to fully shock enemies, and even apply 25% chills to shaper despite my only cold damage being from snowstorm

Surprise Sabotage and Guerilla Tactics on the medium cluster jewel are maximum dps.

Careful Handling Comes with 4% increased maximum life. Set and forget increases the range a trap can be triggered from as well as reducing its duration (making it trigger sooner if there are no nearby enemies to trigger it)

Basic Rare jewels for any remaining slots. Every jewel should have % increased maximum life.

FLASKS:

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My preferred mods for a life flask. Life flask is personal preference.

Silver flask is actually the highest dps flask we can use aside from bottled faith. Quicksilver and Jade flasks make mapping smoother.

You can use any of these 3 flasks to fill your 5th slot.

FOR PEOPLE MADE OF MONEY:

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Badge of the Brotherhood corrupted with "You can apply an additional curse" saves us a few passive points that were going into whispers of doom. if you really wanted to you could even fit in a third curse, conductivity.

The Swift Killer Forbidden Jewels are exceptionally more expensive than the unstable infusion ones, and only give 100% increased damage. This is seriously not much of a damage increase per exalt, and is absolutely not a priority.

As Slavedriver's Hand are not meta, and are difficult to obtain, basically noone corrupts these gloves. If you want good implicits (Like spell crit, increased life, or cast speed for example) you basically need to corrupt a bunch of them yourself (I suggest you corrupt it in the Locus of Corruption). This can take dozens of exalts to hit something useful,

If you have more Patience and/or money than I do, you can awakener orb Rare helmets to get something better than these. It took me 3 helmets to hit my first fixable/usable helmet. If these helmets looks sub-par to you, feel free to attempt to craft something better, though it may take dozens of exalts.

As Seismic trap is currently meta, corrupted Tinkerskin can be rather expensive. Fortunately for us, siesmic trap is not a projectile gem, so that helps cut down the cost a fair bit for corrupted 6links. Still expensive though.

Bottled Faith gives us about 10% MORE dps when the enemy stands on its consecrated ground. As my character has effectively 100% crit chance with asassins mark, and we apply 50% shocks, its not as significant of a bonus as it is for most other crit characters. Certainly not a bad flask though.

Extremely expensive, but fixes our movement speed and any gaps in evasion flask uptime, as well as optionally elemental resistance/curse immunity/etc. In a build that already struggles to get effective life, using a belt that doesn't have any life apart from its strength isn't suggested, especially considering the price.

PANTHEON

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* I use the Soul of the Brine King upgraded by capturing the soul of Puruna, The Challenger to become immune to freeze.


* When farming Searing Exarch I use the minor soul of Abberath upgraded by capturing the soul of Mephod the Earth Scorcher to become immune to the high damage burning ground that the altars can cause when killing influenced monsters.

* The majority of the time I use the minor soul of Shakiri for the less duration of poisons and reduced chaos damage taken from caustic ground. The soul of Ralakesh is also a good pantheon for mitigating bleed.

* If you wish to ask me questions about this guide/build you can reply on this forum thread, or message me in game. Copy this whisper message:
@LightningTrappy Hi, I saw your build guide.



DAMAGE at all costs:

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This is only a viable strategy for if you are farming boss encounters where you can use dps to delete bosses before they can do anything. Bosses like Maven or Uber elder shouldn't be done with this variant, as only player skill will keep you alive.
This is the PoB of a real player in archnemesis league. I do not know what kind of content he was farming, but his defenses are almost non-existent so it was probably something pretty specific:

https://pastebin.com/Ybs3iMKQ

poeurl.com/dCfk