Hello, Exiles! I’m back with another guide for Path of Exile. This time it’s my league start in POE 3.22, Lightning Trap Saboteur.
I chose this Lightning Trap skill because it works well with the new Returning Projectiles Support. Basically, when your projectiles hit a wall, they return. Whereas in an open area like Sirus arena, the projectile returns in a short time. So this gem helps a lot with mapping and boss fights.
Lightning Trap is considered the best mapper for trap skills. So far I’ve gotten four Watchstones with this build, and killed some other bosses like Shaper and Sirus. I even got some Maven’s Invitation.
I really like this build, so I put a lot of POE Currency on it. Its budget is about 12 Divine Orbs, but you don’t really need to spend that much to reach map level 16 and get four Watchstones. We’re now in the game.
Gear
The first thing I want to talk about is the glove, Slavedriver’s Hand. These gloves are great for trap building because they give us two things. The first one it makes our traps cost life instead of mana, so it solves our mana problem. And any cast speed we gain applies to trap throw speed as well. So we can get cast speed with things like Onslaught in the flask.
That’s why Slavedriver’s Hand is very useful. It’s not very expensive these days, around 100 Chaos Orbs. It’s probably the first thing you need in this build.
Body Armor is another important item, a rare double influenced Body Armor. It has spell crit and aura effects, and it has an additional curse. This Body Armor is about 4 Divine Orbs. If you want to get better statistics, then you can try it.
We also have access to the new Amulet, Replica Dragonfang’s Flight. This takes our Lightning Trap skill up by 3 levels, and you get a ton of flat lightning damage from each level. So you must not miss this amulet.
Passive Tree
In passive trees, there is a Large Clusters setting here. You can actually get another cluster here, which will increase the damage. It can be a little harder to get points, and you may have to sacrifice some defense. But anyway, Large Clusters has lightning damage, so we can actually benefit from Call of The Brotherhood.
Medium Cluster with Eye to Eye and Repeater also has an enormous boost to damage. This way we can adapt our five auras: Skitterbots, Determination, Wrath, Zealotry and Defiance Banner. Passive trees are also how I get penetration here, as well as mastering higher projectile velocities, which are actually quite useful.
Defenses
For our defenses, I’ve beefed up Determination with Granite Flask, Molten Shell and Defiance Banner. We have about 21k armor. You can choose Grace. But I prefer armor over evasion. If you choose Grace, you will have a higher evasion. Because we got some evasion from our gear and passive trees.
We still have 100% spell suppression. This is much better than a small amount of lucky suppression. You can get good suppression on helmets and boots.
Our Ascendancy also gives us some layers of defense in Born in The Shadows to reduce damage from blinded enemies. And we also get some nice regeneration with Pyromaniac, and immunity to Ignite and Shock. We also got freeze immunity from Pantheon, Soul of The Brine King.
If you want more defense, you can opt for a shield instead of a secondary weapon, and of course, you get some blocks, a lot of health, and a few other defensive stats. You can also run Determination and Grace, but you’ll probably have to drop one of your auras in Zealotry. This means you get more defense, but you have to sacrifice damage.
This concludes this guide. Hope it helps you get a basic understanding of Ascendancy and other info for this Lightning Trap Saboteur build. See you in the game.
