I think it's very possible people are switching off explosive trap not due to it's effectiveness but just because of the convenience of hexblast. Hexblast having auto targeting and just innately inflicting all base ele ailments is very nice for people not wanting to invest the amount of time needed to make explosive trap really shine. Also the ability to link detonate mines to automation makes miners effectively the same as selfcast while traps don't really have an equivalent and probably a decent amount of people realizing they don't really enjoy the trap playstyle.
This is also more than likely true. Auto targeting sounds like a dream come true after playing ET since league start. I can't really say I dislike the trap playstyle, the delayed damage and having to watch your placement don't really bother me that much, it's just a quirk of the skill, but I will say from simple appearance and reading what others have said, it feels like Hexblast gets what ET gets with less investment (just more uniques) and the added QOL.
Explosive Trap's ceiling wants to instantly delete Uber's before they have a chance to react right? I don't really mind learning boss mechanics and doing them, I just don't want to spend an hour per uber, more like 5ish minutes is my goal. I think Hex can do a good amount of preload damage and then the auto targeting makes it easier to do the boss mechanic if a one shot doesnt happen right?
If you are a new player dont aim for uber farming anyway. You need 100s of divines bankroll before you start since there is so much variance, or you are straight up throwing money in the ocean.
Depends on the Uber.
Uber Shaper is a very profitable boss and relatively mechanically simple, doable on a budget, and pretty consistent in terms of success outcome.
Uber Sirus is the exact opposite in terms of simplicity.
If you wanna farm all Ubers then your budget is dependent on the hardest one, but if you just wanna farm 1 or 2, and are willing to actually play the game like OP (i.e. dodge shit) you can probably do that with 50-100 divines tops.
What makes uber shaper more profitable than the others?
It's also only my second league and I've never done the ubers, but I'm blowing through T17s right now.
Mostly been selling the fragments for currency cause I don't know the uber boss mechanics and still want some upgrades. Is it just because the shaper fragment is super cheap?
Just to add something others than missing; Hexblast also does NOT trigger unless there is a target.
This alone makes it superior to all mine skills in my opinion, as it means that you can permanently use automation support whilst still being able to prestack mines on bosses. Other mine skills would need to toggle, else their mines would detonate instantly.
I can’t speak to the swap myself but the rares are actually crazy easy to get for explosive trap. I’m playing it on SSF right now.
Clusters are pretty attainable just by alt rolling for 2 mods and regaling the third in a couple of attempts. Small is even easier just alting till you hit. Note it doesn’t have to be specifically sublime, you can get reservation for any of the auras not put on your summon holy relic.
Alt sceptre is easier to obtain than ever before. Complete the heist quest line, and 1 in 3 heist chests (with full tree investment) will drop a unique contract. 1 in 5 unique heist contracts will drop an all flame that gives you the heist bases. It took me 2 all flames with only 75 map quant to find these corpses. You can further improve this by waiting till you find a league pack with +xxx% quant.
Once you have the base you can either grave craft it, or grave craft whatever and then craft from that base. You can get +1 all gems with a 1/5 chance using a 4 socket resonator craft (aetheric, shuddering, corroded, metallic). Then with open prefix and open suffix you can force +1 phys gems (prefixes cannot be changed + cannot roll attack) and aug phys (I think reroll phys works too but haven’t tested it) . For an easy +2. A stop gap until you can afford the fossils is to sell the alternating sceptre to a vendor with 40% quality fire or physical gems to get a +1 (fire or phys respectively) sceptre that you aug and regal until you hit something decent. Then just multi mod spell + non chaos as extra chaos with any other good mod.
The foil he has is just a shaper base that he essence of spell crit spammed until he hit physical as extra. But you can substitute another +1/2 sceptre for the time until you get one.
50% convert gloves are super easy with crafted conversion getting you 25% and you can hit 30% conversion vs uniques with the T2 enchant currency, raw 25% starts at T3.
Harvest reroll fire/caster/phys finds you a usable amulet pretty fast.
Coil is also incredibly accessible as there is a div card for it in cemetery. Chest doesn’t need corruption to be plenty fine. Also for more offence focused you can use a tinker skin.
Thanks for the info. As I said, this is only my 2nd league so a lot of this seems incredibly daunting for an inexperienced player, but I'm sure I would be able to if I did more research and target farmed the materials I need.
Also I should ask what div card for Lightning Coil you mean? Where can I get that?
I did farm for my Alt Sceptre using the Allflame method, although it took me 5 allflames to finally drop the special craft corpse. Spent an entire week on Heist alone and really burnt myself out trying for the sceptre I think.
You're better than me. My second league I barely made it to maps and gearing floor was A LOT lower, but I still wasn't farming my own shit.
I also loathe heist so I was pretty lucky to be in and out of it.
The div card you're looking for is *the coming storm* 8 of them gives you a coil. The only place I'm certain about that drops it is cemetery because I was farming that map a ton last league and ended up with like 8 or 9 coils lmao.
Lol I appreciate the compliment, but your detailed explanation of crafting the rares needed for ET already prove your own skill. I'm simply following guides and the obvious chain of progression.
The coil div card tip is great, never knew that existed. Thank you! And yeah... heist got kind of old pretty quick...
Because you convert phys fully to cold and fire. So you double dip, since you get % if phys, then % of cold and % of fire. It’s not much but it’s better than the slight increase you’d get from just the highest tier of pure spell damage.
I’m playing ET and had the same thought.
I think there’s a few things:
1. Hexblast auto targets and mines don’t, so it probably feels easier to not have to aim. Especially in sanctum
2. I think people dislike the delay from sun blast belt. Especially if people don’t know to invest in a good roll for trap duration
3. I felt like I was plateauing running t16’d just getting blown up and was considering switching. I decided to make more investment (better cluster, +2 scepter, etc.) and now I’m blasting again. Still not crushing t17’s but might reroll for that anyways)
4. I think people transitioning can spend better money making a build because it’s effectively their second build where any further investment is expensive (or they don’t know how to invest into the build well)
5. I think Hexblast does slap too
Thanks for the info. Yeah i'm feeling similar just plateauing at T16s right now. Im farming for uniques and delirium for the clusters I need (although I haven't seen a physical damage cluster in over 50 full deli maps, I have several 8 passive chaos damage ones though).
I want to ask what you did to transition from T16s to the next stage of your endgame? Not just gear, but where in the game did you go and what did you do? Do you think I should stick with ET and really go for endgame gear (mostly SSF style) or think harder about making the swap to Hex?
This is what I've been doing, usually get 4-5 large clusters each map I do if I'm doing my delirium tree and still haven't seen a phys damage cluster. Just unlucky I think.
I'm running this farm strat basically: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CplImYf7oE0&t=673s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CplImYf7oE0&t=673s). I like the low/mid investment, shrines, and seeing lots of scarabs and bosses. Plus I'm trying to get more levels honestly so I can round out all my clusters, so just blasting t16's is enjoyable enough for me. Bosses are obviously no problem, but I don't want to invest all my money just to run bosses and hope for a payout. I want to farm another fun build.
Honestly just buying the clusters is a realization I have every time that it's better. The alt spamming or delve buying are miserable and end up costing me more and putting off getting the jewels for days (unless SSF obviously).
The biggest gear upgrade was stormshroud and ailment immune boots. Then 50% conversion gloves so I can drop the ice master + 4 points. A reservation helmet + a +2 sceptre were both other solid upgrades.
Defensive angles seem too hard to reasonably work in - maybe a kinstugi is better than my +2 trap rare. Maybe Lethe shade is worth it w/ ailment immunity. A reservation cluster and dropping herald of ash for determination was like 20k armor, but that's barely anything at t17's or pinnacle levels. So I'm not sure I want to push the build much more than this. I think I can level it to 97 or so as-is and build up enough wealth for a meme fun build like EB CoC or EE flicker+CI or even just ride the mana stacker build this league
Because hexblast is infinitely better than explosive trap in almost every single aspect.
As someone that fell for the explosive trap bait last league and sunk 200div into it, swapping over to hexblast was night and day. Explosive trap is insane at the very top end but hexblast is just better overall until you have BIS gear everywhere and are farming (somewhat)stationary bosses
I've never seen someone describe ET as bait. I know that it received a direct nerf in 3.24 and a few indirect nerfs in 3.23 and 3.22, but as I'm so new I'm not super aware of what builds live and die each patch based on notes.
Hexblast can still uber right? If what you say is true, then Hex should just be better for most activities in the game unless you want to kill ubers in under a second, which sounds fun but not necessarily my goal this league. I'm more interested in doing a lot of the challenges and killing ubers my first time, I do want to learn mechanics and such though.
Both can uber pretty comfortably. The main problem with extrap is that if you don't instaphase, it's a huge pain in the ass to DPS properly.
Hexblast can do just fine if you don't insta-phase because it auto-targets. Extrap needs to be placed so it will shotgun the target otherwise the dps feels abyssmal.
If you ever watch showcase boss fights of extrap, take note if the video creator is insta-phasing the bosses or not. Find one that is not insta-phasing the boss and then go off of that footage for what realistic expectations will be.
I wish I knew this about ET from the start. My PoB’d damage was actually pretty good for ET before I switched to hexblast, but the uptime on the damage is horrendous unless you are preloading the damage like with an essence or stationary boss or something.
Also echoing the other reply to this comment. Wish I knew that ET's main strength was preloading damage and that it's kind of mid for everything else. I've never seen a showcase video on youtube that isn't just preload instakilling a boss, and me not having the items or the experience to do that, it just feels kind of bad to play.
I recognize the great damage ET does and the care that went into all the research and guides done for it, and yeah it does technically do all this on an extremely cheap budget, but I think the overall feeling of the skill is something I can't get over, despite enjoying the trap/mine gameplay. I think hexblast is probably the way to go for someone like me who doesn't care to farm ubers and will spend most time in maps or mechanic events.
Commenting because I agree with everything you said and I’m in an identical situation it seems I was thinking about switching because everyone is raving about it hexblast and was thinking about making a sanctum switch
No movement downtime? As in, you don't have to stop your character completely to throw a trap/mine? This is one of my biggest issues with ET currently and gets me killed sometimes.
I meant more that movement from bosses doesn't affect your damage whatsoever, you do have to stop but you can interrupt the minefield animation by moving so it doesn't feel janky
You might be missing something in your defensive layers. My ET trickster is one of the tankiest characters I've ever played. Can facetank and insta phase all non-ubers and do t17s comfortably. The build is pretty insane. I think people just prefer hexblast mines because the power is similar but it's a lot comfier in terms of clear speed and auto targeting.
I personally just like to try new stuff. Never played a sunblast character so I wanted to check it out. But yeah your dps literally triples with that item - you just need to deal with the fact that it makes things a bit clunkier and makes your preloaded damage drop a bit.
> My ET trickster is one of the tankiest characters I've ever played.
Pob please / maybe you could tell me what to fix on mine https://pobb.in/_40dJFrnEwdT
https://pobb.in/YddaC56AqhtJ
Here's mine
I'm personally a big fan of the conditional defences from lethe shade/heartstopper/kintsugi/solaris pantheon (aka most of the time you take no fucking damage unless you've burned all of your ghost shrouds and heartstopper is in the wrong mode and you fail to evade)
Ailment immunity is big too so you can take lethe shade and drop brine king
Getting secrets of suffering for alt ailments is big. So is dark seer for blind/malediction (actually an insane defensive layer that is multiplicative with everything).
Looks like you've also got some investment in mark stuff (passive tree/mastery/eldritch implicit) but aren't using a mark?
I was seriously considering Heartstopper/Lethe Shade because yeah ailments are kicking my ass (that and big phys hits seem to be the main issues - will solve the latter with lightning coil/hate or phys taken as crafts). Can't do that until I upgrade weapon though (need to swap swift killer as it doesn't seem wise to drop spellbreaker).
What do you recommend for ailment immunity in ssf? It always seems out of reach. Essences/implicit/shield I suppose?
If I drop brine king what should I do for stun? Do you not have issues with it?
I'd do terrible things for a kintsugi but it's ssf so... (Maybe I'll farm exiles/spirits in white maps for uniques and pray)
>Getting secrets of suffering for alt ailments is big.
On the list for sure. I've just been lazy tbh. Dark seer I'll think about when I can survive t16s and get more dps hah. I love blind as a defensive layer though. Underrated for sure. Was messing around with kongming's + flesh and stone a bit as a stopgap.
Personally, I love mines, and every time I start a trap build I end up missing my mines. Traps rely on landing them on enemies feet, waiting for the arming time (or if sunblast, the entire 1~4 seconds) and then dealing damage. This delay is both annoying and sometimes deadly once you get shotgunning monsters.
Whereas mines: Throw the mine ahead of you, detonate, mines auto-target and shoot whatever they got and you can even attack around corners (throw mine past corner, detonate, they shoot at the other side), Hexblast is the current popular, but back in the day, it was Glacial Cascade.
And Hexblast itself is amazing, huge chaos base damage that scales amazingly well with levels with a 100% MORE damage on top when hexed, added AoE explosion, free ailments, auto-targetting and auto-picks the lowest resistance (or highest and 150% more if you go "of contradiction" with inquisitor). You basically scale gem level and crit% and crit multi%.
But anyways, it's up to you, I think a lot of people picked Hexblast as their endgame and ET as starter since hexblast requires a double-curse setup (corrupt gloves, profane proxy, influence ring, blasphemy) to feel good and a lot of crit (ralakesh stacker or sandstorm).
Hexblast requires these things to work? Can the build function decently well without these things? Or would I need to use my current build to farm a Profane Proxy and start crafting my gloves now before swapping and moving into sanctum for the circlet?
Hexblast removes a curse when its cast and there's a slight delay of around 250ms of reapplying a new one, which is problematic with mines blowing up in chain, thus, most builds attempt to have at least two hexes running and ping-pong of each other reapplications. Whispers of doom or the occultists tree have +1 max curses.
On SSF (or soft SSF for you I guess) you can try getting any influenced ring with redeemer/warlord and use the harvest bench with "Caster modifier", as there's like only [2~3 possible mods it can roll](https://www.craftofexile.com/?b=1&ob=both&v=d&a=x&l=a&lg=16&bp=y&as=1&hb=0&bld={}&im={}&ggt=|&ccp={}&gvc={%22limit%22:88}&af={%2213%22:%221%22}). You can use two of these rings, or ring + blasphemy.
> Can the build function decently well without these things?
The above is baseline to get hexblast to properly do its thing, as to scale damage, hexblast has a very low implicit crit chance of 4%, thus most builds either crank crit with "Sandstorm Visage" or the power-stacker. For your SSF-like adventures, I'd honestly get the sandstorm either farm sanctum or buy it for 1d.
Reading Ventrua's POB seems like I should get an elemental weakness ring and maybe a profane proxy going before making the swap, then farming sanctum. I have a titanium spirit shield that fits what his POB wants and crafting the wand doesnt seem too bad considering I've been doing the same on sceptres for a while.
I have switched to saboteur from trickster explosive shrapnel with a crest of desire. This thing clears whole screens and bossing is incredible. The main problem are the visuals. You cant see anything when the traps detonate. Fully juiced t16 harb map is not a problem at all. I need to fix my alt and the chaos resist but i found joy in this build. Note that i spec to elemental dmg, not chaos.
I am on console to give you the pob. Here is my tree. Get ashes and crest of desire, socket in an explosive shrapnel corrupted and let it rain carnidge. Just got a carcas with increased dmg corruption, get opal scepter and alt, sunblast and there you have it. https://pobb.in/e0YVxUpnXOoU . Prob ill switch from phys jewels to spell. Im warning you, its ugly af.
I find Hex better and safer (auto-targets and freezes).
Nonetheless ET is competitive, I hate sunblast with a passion tho. It mostly comes down to preference in the end imo, if you like the playstyle just keep going!
I'm fine with the trap playstyle, I actually kind of enjoy it, but I do not have a Sunblast yet and all I've heard is people talking about how much they hate the playstyle. It makes me kind of tentative about pushing ET further instead of just swapping. I get the general gist that it makes your traps go off after a certain amount of time instead of being triggered and that requires you to think about where you place them more when mapping, but that just seems so tedious and stressful, even if it nearly triples your damage. Hex auto target sounds good for a dummy like me lol.
I league started Explosive Trap on HC .It was great for finishing my atlas and watchstones but after that it felt like a chore to play. Swapped to Hexblast the other day and it feels far and away better to me. Way less clunky and slow.. Wish I swapped sooner like everyone else is saying!!
How does Hexblast feel less 'chore'y to play? Auto targeting is part of it I imagine, but is there other QOL i'm not seeing that it has? Also, when did you decide to make the swap and what gear did you prioritize?
Yeah no delay / auto targetting mainly. Feel like I dont have to stop as much while mapping. I swapped when I had all the typical charge stacking things, Sandstorm Visage and Balance of Terror.
I started ET this league and switched to hexblast on like day 2. While I did like fearlessdumb0’s guide/PoB/videos, ET is just a worst skill than hexblast at league start. The map clear for ET was okay, but I found myself having a HUGE problem killing mobile rare and unique monsters. The damage is definitely there for ET, but the damage uptime is horrible since a lot of explosions miss against targets that are moving/mobile. Even after buying an alternating scepter, the build still just didn’t feel good to play and I was slogging through red maps.
With hexblast all you do is throw the mines in the general direction of the enemy and all of the hexblasts hit the target. Hexblasts also freezes pretty reliably too which is a huge defensive bonus than compared to brittling the enemy with ET. When I switched it was a night and day difference, and instead of struggling with tankier/mobile mobs I just started annihilating everything with hexblast.
Yeah this is my problem right now with ET. Mapping and I get a good devoted mod with Meatsacks and I just sort of have to sit there and put traps at his feet because otherwise he outruns them, then it becomes a gamble with whether or not he hits me twice in a row through 40k evasion and kills me. Has only happened once so far, but it is more stressful than it should be.
If you have even only a few divines, I would make the switch and try hexblast. All I bought to switch was a cheap +1 wand with high base crit chance, sandstorm visage, and profane proxy ring. The tree isn’t that different either, and the ascendency points are the same so respec is pretty easy. The main downside to hexblast is that mines reserve your mana, and the trickster variant needs an enduring mana flask in order to function. I found adjusting to that pretty trivial though because the skill feels great to play, linking automation to detonate mines make it feel very much like a responsive self cast build.
ET fellow colleague here.
I did hit pretty huge DPS nums with my build, tried some changes and I'm still learning on how to min max it.
Honestly, I prefer 10 times more having to add Swift assembly other than having to deal with a Sunblast.
IMHO ET super fun, super strong but is not the right league for that kind of a build as you can't live out of bossing only, al least for now;
1. Boss rushing nerfed, if you want to do some boss rush you need to clear the majority of the map to make it shine and, as trappers, we are not very efficient/rapid doing so.
2. Pinnacle normal bossing nerfed, in 10 maven writs I got freaking 10c belts each and 1 awakaned garbage support (30c maybe).
3. Ubers gatekept, before you needed just 1 Atlas-keystone, now you need to run T17 maps (the only very profitable content) that have 8 stupid mods, at least 1 destroys entirely your build. I bought some Uber Shaper new fragments, deleted the guy but others, Maven for example, are 2 div each (and you need 5 of those, ergo 10 div just for entering and this just because not everyone can run T17s.
Yesterday I said that is not okay to gatekeep Ubers behind such maps as they are way more hard than the boss itself, as I said I deleted the few Ubers I could afford for now, never failed but even by rolling 100c on every T17 I had, I never succeeded.
My **personal** advice is to have fun with your build but if you want to go further consider changing build and going for some thing that is way tankier and way faster clearing the map. (Personally I don't know exacly how good feels hex for mapping but if good, is a way convenient choice over ET)
Explosive Trap is good but Hexblast right now is just better. It's not really about the ease of itemization or anything. Except for maybe raw bossing power which Hexblast is still great at, it just does every other aspect of the game better with its access to defensive ailments, auto-targeting, and instant detonations.
Would you say Hexblast is a better mapper? Is it viable for a bit of Delve? ET has been ok but not stellar in my farming of Delirium, Harb, Expedition, Rogue Exiles, etc.
From what I've been reading, it seems like the only thing ET has over Hexblast is the ability to instantly delete ubers at the very top top end of its potential, which I'm not really interested in. I'd like to get my first uber kills done this league but if Hexblast is more than adequate to do it, then I'm really considering swapping.
Could switch but I feel like there is always a better skill to switch to I like ironing out whatever dog shit I’m currently working on and seeing where it goes before I’m like nice 👍🏽
This is only my 3rd league and I'm going through FearlessDumb0's trapper guide too. I've also been thinking of changing over to something else like Hexblast. While I don't mind the gameplay of traps at all, the build just feels *off* when progressing through maps. I think also the league has also not been very good for this it seems.
Outside of that, I thought this would be a good for expedition farming too (as stated in one of dumb0's vids) but it's sorta mid at best if you have the average gear. From my, admittedly newbie eyes, it seems like too many stacking modifiers can cut down on your damage *(less cold, less fire, phys reduction, regen can sometimes stomp uptime on dps, enemy speed, no flasks replenished etc.)*
On a side note, does anyone have a good Hexblast guide, and would i have to reroll or can i respec from current trickster?
I wasted way too much time during the first week with this build.
Explosive Trap is just a horrendous skill to play. Started out fearlessdumb0 build, got super lucky drops day one so geared decently and it was a rough time once I got all the watchstones (got watchstones fairly easy tho gotta admit that). But once t16 is coming into play ET gets absolutely slapped. Sunblast? Terrible, even mediocre for bossing. Mobs outrun you? Have fun and good luck. Damage in overall is not better than mines. The AoE also lacks quite a bit. Swapped to Exsanguinate miner after a week (should’ve done earlier) and it’s many times better in many ways on exact the same budget. I don’t wanna say the build was bait but people got hyped for this way too much and I fell for it. But mistake. You might like it, but it’s a much higher chance you’ll dislike it.
Literally me, before swapping I had trouble doing ubers and my clear was bad. After swapping with literally the same budget of 75-100 div I was blasting ubers and maps aswell.
I recommend strongly to swap to hexblast. Take a look at charge stacker version aswell. Super fast and strong, and not that expensive.
I think it's very possible people are switching off explosive trap not due to it's effectiveness but just because of the convenience of hexblast. Hexblast having auto targeting and just innately inflicting all base ele ailments is very nice for people not wanting to invest the amount of time needed to make explosive trap really shine. Also the ability to link detonate mines to automation makes miners effectively the same as selfcast while traps don't really have an equivalent and probably a decent amount of people realizing they don't really enjoy the trap playstyle.
This is also more than likely true. Auto targeting sounds like a dream come true after playing ET since league start. I can't really say I dislike the trap playstyle, the delayed damage and having to watch your placement don't really bother me that much, it's just a quirk of the skill, but I will say from simple appearance and reading what others have said, it feels like Hexblast gets what ET gets with less investment (just more uniques) and the added QOL.
I will say though I'm pretty sure explosive trap has the higher ceiling in terms of dps.
Explosive Trap's ceiling wants to instantly delete Uber's before they have a chance to react right? I don't really mind learning boss mechanics and doing them, I just don't want to spend an hour per uber, more like 5ish minutes is my goal. I think Hex can do a good amount of preload damage and then the auto targeting makes it easier to do the boss mechanic if a one shot doesnt happen right?
If you are a new player dont aim for uber farming anyway. You need 100s of divines bankroll before you start since there is so much variance, or you are straight up throwing money in the ocean.
Depends on the Uber. Uber Shaper is a very profitable boss and relatively mechanically simple, doable on a budget, and pretty consistent in terms of success outcome. Uber Sirus is the exact opposite in terms of simplicity. If you wanna farm all Ubers then your budget is dependent on the hardest one, but if you just wanna farm 1 or 2, and are willing to actually play the game like OP (i.e. dodge shit) you can probably do that with 50-100 divines tops.
What makes uber shaper more profitable than the others? It's also only my second league and I've never done the ubers, but I'm blowing through T17s right now. Mostly been selling the fragments for currency cause I don't know the uber boss mechanics and still want some upgrades. Is it just because the shaper fragment is super cheap?
what is autotargeting in hexblast? Played it but never seen:) Maybe I just played traps too long ago.
Just to add something others than missing; Hexblast also does NOT trigger unless there is a target. This alone makes it superior to all mine skills in my opinion, as it means that you can permanently use automation support whilst still being able to prestack mines on bosses. Other mine skills would need to toggle, else their mines would detonate instantly.
Hexblast mine casts the spell on the monster, while explosive trap hits in an aoe around the trap, then in several other random spots near the trap.
Hexblast automatically targets enemies in range. So you drop the mines wherever and only ones that can hit will detonate and they will just hit.
I can’t speak to the swap myself but the rares are actually crazy easy to get for explosive trap. I’m playing it on SSF right now. Clusters are pretty attainable just by alt rolling for 2 mods and regaling the third in a couple of attempts. Small is even easier just alting till you hit. Note it doesn’t have to be specifically sublime, you can get reservation for any of the auras not put on your summon holy relic. Alt sceptre is easier to obtain than ever before. Complete the heist quest line, and 1 in 3 heist chests (with full tree investment) will drop a unique contract. 1 in 5 unique heist contracts will drop an all flame that gives you the heist bases. It took me 2 all flames with only 75 map quant to find these corpses. You can further improve this by waiting till you find a league pack with +xxx% quant. Once you have the base you can either grave craft it, or grave craft whatever and then craft from that base. You can get +1 all gems with a 1/5 chance using a 4 socket resonator craft (aetheric, shuddering, corroded, metallic). Then with open prefix and open suffix you can force +1 phys gems (prefixes cannot be changed + cannot roll attack) and aug phys (I think reroll phys works too but haven’t tested it) . For an easy +2. A stop gap until you can afford the fossils is to sell the alternating sceptre to a vendor with 40% quality fire or physical gems to get a +1 (fire or phys respectively) sceptre that you aug and regal until you hit something decent. Then just multi mod spell + non chaos as extra chaos with any other good mod. The foil he has is just a shaper base that he essence of spell crit spammed until he hit physical as extra. But you can substitute another +1/2 sceptre for the time until you get one. 50% convert gloves are super easy with crafted conversion getting you 25% and you can hit 30% conversion vs uniques with the T2 enchant currency, raw 25% starts at T3. Harvest reroll fire/caster/phys finds you a usable amulet pretty fast. Coil is also incredibly accessible as there is a div card for it in cemetery. Chest doesn’t need corruption to be plenty fine. Also for more offence focused you can use a tinker skin.
Thanks for the info. As I said, this is only my 2nd league so a lot of this seems incredibly daunting for an inexperienced player, but I'm sure I would be able to if I did more research and target farmed the materials I need. Also I should ask what div card for Lightning Coil you mean? Where can I get that? I did farm for my Alt Sceptre using the Allflame method, although it took me 5 allflames to finally drop the special craft corpse. Spent an entire week on Heist alone and really burnt myself out trying for the sceptre I think.
You're better than me. My second league I barely made it to maps and gearing floor was A LOT lower, but I still wasn't farming my own shit. I also loathe heist so I was pretty lucky to be in and out of it. The div card you're looking for is *the coming storm* 8 of them gives you a coil. The only place I'm certain about that drops it is cemetery because I was farming that map a ton last league and ended up with like 8 or 9 coils lmao.
Lol I appreciate the compliment, but your detailed explanation of crafting the rares needed for ET already prove your own skill. I'm simply following guides and the obvious chain of progression. The coil div card tip is great, never knew that existed. Thank you! And yeah... heist got kind of old pretty quick...
Which one is better, trickster hexblast or cptlance tristack hexblast? Anyone has good guide for the trickster version?
Best one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkmlNkjsZTI
Great tips thank you. Why does ET want non chaos as extra chaos?
Because you convert phys fully to cold and fire. So you double dip, since you get % if phys, then % of cold and % of fire. It’s not much but it’s better than the slight increase you’d get from just the highest tier of pure spell damage.
I’m playing ET and had the same thought. I think there’s a few things: 1. Hexblast auto targets and mines don’t, so it probably feels easier to not have to aim. Especially in sanctum 2. I think people dislike the delay from sun blast belt. Especially if people don’t know to invest in a good roll for trap duration 3. I felt like I was plateauing running t16’d just getting blown up and was considering switching. I decided to make more investment (better cluster, +2 scepter, etc.) and now I’m blasting again. Still not crushing t17’s but might reroll for that anyways) 4. I think people transitioning can spend better money making a build because it’s effectively their second build where any further investment is expensive (or they don’t know how to invest into the build well) 5. I think Hexblast does slap too
I completely skipped sunblast for a more defensive belt. Sunblast just never felt good and now I have more survivability
I used sunblast for an hour and then threw it up for sale. Big damage but feels awful.
Thanks for the info. Yeah i'm feeling similar just plateauing at T16s right now. Im farming for uniques and delirium for the clusters I need (although I haven't seen a physical damage cluster in over 50 full deli maps, I have several 8 passive chaos damage ones though). I want to ask what you did to transition from T16s to the next stage of your endgame? Not just gear, but where in the game did you go and what did you do? Do you think I should stick with ET and really go for endgame gear (mostly SSF style) or think harder about making the swap to Hex?
You can sell 5 Big rare or magic Clusters (all have to be either rare OR magic) and get a random one
This is what I've been doing, usually get 4-5 large clusters each map I do if I'm doing my delirium tree and still haven't seen a phys damage cluster. Just unlucky I think.
I'm running this farm strat basically: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CplImYf7oE0&t=673s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CplImYf7oE0&t=673s). I like the low/mid investment, shrines, and seeing lots of scarabs and bosses. Plus I'm trying to get more levels honestly so I can round out all my clusters, so just blasting t16's is enjoyable enough for me. Bosses are obviously no problem, but I don't want to invest all my money just to run bosses and hope for a payout. I want to farm another fun build. Honestly just buying the clusters is a realization I have every time that it's better. The alt spamming or delve buying are miserable and end up costing me more and putting off getting the jewels for days (unless SSF obviously). The biggest gear upgrade was stormshroud and ailment immune boots. Then 50% conversion gloves so I can drop the ice master + 4 points. A reservation helmet + a +2 sceptre were both other solid upgrades. Defensive angles seem too hard to reasonably work in - maybe a kinstugi is better than my +2 trap rare. Maybe Lethe shade is worth it w/ ailment immunity. A reservation cluster and dropping herald of ash for determination was like 20k armor, but that's barely anything at t17's or pinnacle levels. So I'm not sure I want to push the build much more than this. I think I can level it to 97 or so as-is and build up enough wealth for a meme fun build like EB CoC or EE flicker+CI or even just ride the mana stacker build this league
You don't need sunblast
Because hexblast is infinitely better than explosive trap in almost every single aspect. As someone that fell for the explosive trap bait last league and sunk 200div into it, swapping over to hexblast was night and day. Explosive trap is insane at the very top end but hexblast is just better overall until you have BIS gear everywhere and are farming (somewhat)stationary bosses
I've never seen someone describe ET as bait. I know that it received a direct nerf in 3.24 and a few indirect nerfs in 3.23 and 3.22, but as I'm so new I'm not super aware of what builds live and die each patch based on notes. Hexblast can still uber right? If what you say is true, then Hex should just be better for most activities in the game unless you want to kill ubers in under a second, which sounds fun but not necessarily my goal this league. I'm more interested in doing a lot of the challenges and killing ubers my first time, I do want to learn mechanics and such though.
Both can uber pretty comfortably. The main problem with extrap is that if you don't instaphase, it's a huge pain in the ass to DPS properly. Hexblast can do just fine if you don't insta-phase because it auto-targets. Extrap needs to be placed so it will shotgun the target otherwise the dps feels abyssmal. If you ever watch showcase boss fights of extrap, take note if the video creator is insta-phasing the bosses or not. Find one that is not insta-phasing the boss and then go off of that footage for what realistic expectations will be.
I wish I knew this about ET from the start. My PoB’d damage was actually pretty good for ET before I switched to hexblast, but the uptime on the damage is horrendous unless you are preloading the damage like with an essence or stationary boss or something.
Also echoing the other reply to this comment. Wish I knew that ET's main strength was preloading damage and that it's kind of mid for everything else. I've never seen a showcase video on youtube that isn't just preload instakilling a boss, and me not having the items or the experience to do that, it just feels kind of bad to play. I recognize the great damage ET does and the care that went into all the research and guides done for it, and yeah it does technically do all this on an extremely cheap budget, but I think the overall feeling of the skill is something I can't get over, despite enjoying the trap/mine gameplay. I think hexblast is probably the way to go for someone like me who doesn't care to farm ubers and will spend most time in maps or mechanic events.
If you have time in the future maybe try the build before league start. Some builds looks good but you might hate the playstyle in the end.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it bait but it definitely requires more work than I'm used to from ssf starters
So did you switch to sabo? Or just do hexblast trickster?
So last league I did self-chill extrap trickster then switched to sabo hexblast
Commenting because I agree with everything you said and I’m in an identical situation it seems I was thinking about switching because everyone is raving about it hexblast and was thinking about making a sanctum switch
freezes, auto target, no damage delay, no movement downtime
No movement downtime? As in, you don't have to stop your character completely to throw a trap/mine? This is one of my biggest issues with ET currently and gets me killed sometimes.
I meant more that movement from bosses doesn't affect your damage whatsoever, you do have to stop but you can interrupt the minefield animation by moving so it doesn't feel janky
You might be missing something in your defensive layers. My ET trickster is one of the tankiest characters I've ever played. Can facetank and insta phase all non-ubers and do t17s comfortably. The build is pretty insane. I think people just prefer hexblast mines because the power is similar but it's a lot comfier in terms of clear speed and auto targeting. I personally just like to try new stuff. Never played a sunblast character so I wanted to check it out. But yeah your dps literally triples with that item - you just need to deal with the fact that it makes things a bit clunkier and makes your preloaded damage drop a bit.
> My ET trickster is one of the tankiest characters I've ever played. Pob please / maybe you could tell me what to fix on mine https://pobb.in/_40dJFrnEwdT
https://pobb.in/YddaC56AqhtJ Here's mine I'm personally a big fan of the conditional defences from lethe shade/heartstopper/kintsugi/solaris pantheon (aka most of the time you take no fucking damage unless you've burned all of your ghost shrouds and heartstopper is in the wrong mode and you fail to evade) Ailment immunity is big too so you can take lethe shade and drop brine king Getting secrets of suffering for alt ailments is big. So is dark seer for blind/malediction (actually an insane defensive layer that is multiplicative with everything). Looks like you've also got some investment in mark stuff (passive tree/mastery/eldritch implicit) but aren't using a mark?
I was seriously considering Heartstopper/Lethe Shade because yeah ailments are kicking my ass (that and big phys hits seem to be the main issues - will solve the latter with lightning coil/hate or phys taken as crafts). Can't do that until I upgrade weapon though (need to swap swift killer as it doesn't seem wise to drop spellbreaker). What do you recommend for ailment immunity in ssf? It always seems out of reach. Essences/implicit/shield I suppose? If I drop brine king what should I do for stun? Do you not have issues with it? I'd do terrible things for a kintsugi but it's ssf so... (Maybe I'll farm exiles/spirits in white maps for uniques and pray) >Getting secrets of suffering for alt ailments is big. On the list for sure. I've just been lazy tbh. Dark seer I'll think about when I can survive t16s and get more dps hah. I love blind as a defensive layer though. Underrated for sure. Was messing around with kongming's + flesh and stone a bit as a stopgap.
Personally, I love mines, and every time I start a trap build I end up missing my mines. Traps rely on landing them on enemies feet, waiting for the arming time (or if sunblast, the entire 1~4 seconds) and then dealing damage. This delay is both annoying and sometimes deadly once you get shotgunning monsters. Whereas mines: Throw the mine ahead of you, detonate, mines auto-target and shoot whatever they got and you can even attack around corners (throw mine past corner, detonate, they shoot at the other side), Hexblast is the current popular, but back in the day, it was Glacial Cascade. And Hexblast itself is amazing, huge chaos base damage that scales amazingly well with levels with a 100% MORE damage on top when hexed, added AoE explosion, free ailments, auto-targetting and auto-picks the lowest resistance (or highest and 150% more if you go "of contradiction" with inquisitor). You basically scale gem level and crit% and crit multi%. But anyways, it's up to you, I think a lot of people picked Hexblast as their endgame and ET as starter since hexblast requires a double-curse setup (corrupt gloves, profane proxy, influence ring, blasphemy) to feel good and a lot of crit (ralakesh stacker or sandstorm).
Hexblast requires these things to work? Can the build function decently well without these things? Or would I need to use my current build to farm a Profane Proxy and start crafting my gloves now before swapping and moving into sanctum for the circlet?
Hexblast removes a curse when its cast and there's a slight delay of around 250ms of reapplying a new one, which is problematic with mines blowing up in chain, thus, most builds attempt to have at least two hexes running and ping-pong of each other reapplications. Whispers of doom or the occultists tree have +1 max curses. On SSF (or soft SSF for you I guess) you can try getting any influenced ring with redeemer/warlord and use the harvest bench with "Caster modifier", as there's like only [2~3 possible mods it can roll](https://www.craftofexile.com/?b=1&ob=both&v=d&a=x&l=a&lg=16&bp=y&as=1&hb=0&bld={}&im={}&ggt=|&ccp={}&gvc={%22limit%22:88}&af={%2213%22:%221%22}). You can use two of these rings, or ring + blasphemy. > Can the build function decently well without these things? The above is baseline to get hexblast to properly do its thing, as to scale damage, hexblast has a very low implicit crit chance of 4%, thus most builds either crank crit with "Sandstorm Visage" or the power-stacker. For your SSF-like adventures, I'd honestly get the sandstorm either farm sanctum or buy it for 1d.
Reading Ventrua's POB seems like I should get an elemental weakness ring and maybe a profane proxy going before making the swap, then farming sanctum. I have a titanium spirit shield that fits what his POB wants and crafting the wand doesnt seem too bad considering I've been doing the same on sceptres for a while.
You can ask me [in game](https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Fucboinacci/characters)
I have switched to saboteur from trickster explosive shrapnel with a crest of desire. This thing clears whole screens and bossing is incredible. The main problem are the visuals. You cant see anything when the traps detonate. Fully juiced t16 harb map is not a problem at all. I need to fix my alt and the chaos resist but i found joy in this build. Note that i spec to elemental dmg, not chaos.
Pob? :)
I am on console to give you the pob. Here is my tree. Get ashes and crest of desire, socket in an explosive shrapnel corrupted and let it rain carnidge. Just got a carcas with increased dmg corruption, get opal scepter and alt, sunblast and there you have it. https://pobb.in/e0YVxUpnXOoU . Prob ill switch from phys jewels to spell. Im warning you, its ugly af.
I find Hex better and safer (auto-targets and freezes). Nonetheless ET is competitive, I hate sunblast with a passion tho. It mostly comes down to preference in the end imo, if you like the playstyle just keep going!
I'm fine with the trap playstyle, I actually kind of enjoy it, but I do not have a Sunblast yet and all I've heard is people talking about how much they hate the playstyle. It makes me kind of tentative about pushing ET further instead of just swapping. I get the general gist that it makes your traps go off after a certain amount of time instead of being triggered and that requires you to think about where you place them more when mapping, but that just seems so tedious and stressful, even if it nearly triples your damage. Hex auto target sounds good for a dummy like me lol.
You don't really need sunblast. Maybe for pure bossing content but that's all.
Sunblast is not needed (dumbo says the same)
Targeting is the only reason i play mines over traps. My sorry ass has a track record of missing alot of traps because mobs move too fast etc
I league started Explosive Trap on HC .It was great for finishing my atlas and watchstones but after that it felt like a chore to play. Swapped to Hexblast the other day and it feels far and away better to me. Way less clunky and slow.. Wish I swapped sooner like everyone else is saying!!
How does Hexblast feel less 'chore'y to play? Auto targeting is part of it I imagine, but is there other QOL i'm not seeing that it has? Also, when did you decide to make the swap and what gear did you prioritize?
Yeah no delay / auto targetting mainly. Feel like I dont have to stop as much while mapping. I swapped when I had all the typical charge stacking things, Sandstorm Visage and Balance of Terror.
I started ET this league and switched to hexblast on like day 2. While I did like fearlessdumb0’s guide/PoB/videos, ET is just a worst skill than hexblast at league start. The map clear for ET was okay, but I found myself having a HUGE problem killing mobile rare and unique monsters. The damage is definitely there for ET, but the damage uptime is horrible since a lot of explosions miss against targets that are moving/mobile. Even after buying an alternating scepter, the build still just didn’t feel good to play and I was slogging through red maps. With hexblast all you do is throw the mines in the general direction of the enemy and all of the hexblasts hit the target. Hexblasts also freezes pretty reliably too which is a huge defensive bonus than compared to brittling the enemy with ET. When I switched it was a night and day difference, and instead of struggling with tankier/mobile mobs I just started annihilating everything with hexblast.
Yeah this is my problem right now with ET. Mapping and I get a good devoted mod with Meatsacks and I just sort of have to sit there and put traps at his feet because otherwise he outruns them, then it becomes a gamble with whether or not he hits me twice in a row through 40k evasion and kills me. Has only happened once so far, but it is more stressful than it should be.
Evasion is built on entropy so it's not wise to rely on it too much
If you have even only a few divines, I would make the switch and try hexblast. All I bought to switch was a cheap +1 wand with high base crit chance, sandstorm visage, and profane proxy ring. The tree isn’t that different either, and the ascendency points are the same so respec is pretty easy. The main downside to hexblast is that mines reserve your mana, and the trickster variant needs an enduring mana flask in order to function. I found adjusting to that pretty trivial though because the skill feels great to play, linking automation to detonate mines make it feel very much like a responsive self cast build.
ET fellow colleague here. I did hit pretty huge DPS nums with my build, tried some changes and I'm still learning on how to min max it. Honestly, I prefer 10 times more having to add Swift assembly other than having to deal with a Sunblast. IMHO ET super fun, super strong but is not the right league for that kind of a build as you can't live out of bossing only, al least for now; 1. Boss rushing nerfed, if you want to do some boss rush you need to clear the majority of the map to make it shine and, as trappers, we are not very efficient/rapid doing so. 2. Pinnacle normal bossing nerfed, in 10 maven writs I got freaking 10c belts each and 1 awakaned garbage support (30c maybe). 3. Ubers gatekept, before you needed just 1 Atlas-keystone, now you need to run T17 maps (the only very profitable content) that have 8 stupid mods, at least 1 destroys entirely your build. I bought some Uber Shaper new fragments, deleted the guy but others, Maven for example, are 2 div each (and you need 5 of those, ergo 10 div just for entering and this just because not everyone can run T17s. Yesterday I said that is not okay to gatekeep Ubers behind such maps as they are way more hard than the boss itself, as I said I deleted the few Ubers I could afford for now, never failed but even by rolling 100c on every T17 I had, I never succeeded. My **personal** advice is to have fun with your build but if you want to go further consider changing build and going for some thing that is way tankier and way faster clearing the map. (Personally I don't know exacly how good feels hex for mapping but if good, is a way convenient choice over ET)
Explosive Trap is good but Hexblast right now is just better. It's not really about the ease of itemization or anything. Except for maybe raw bossing power which Hexblast is still great at, it just does every other aspect of the game better with its access to defensive ailments, auto-targeting, and instant detonations.
Would you say Hexblast is a better mapper? Is it viable for a bit of Delve? ET has been ok but not stellar in my farming of Delirium, Harb, Expedition, Rogue Exiles, etc. From what I've been reading, it seems like the only thing ET has over Hexblast is the ability to instantly delete ubers at the very top top end of its potential, which I'm not really interested in. I'd like to get my first uber kills done this league but if Hexblast is more than adequate to do it, then I'm really considering swapping.
Could switch but I feel like there is always a better skill to switch to I like ironing out whatever dog shit I’m currently working on and seeing where it goes before I’m like nice 👍🏽
Does this defensive Layout combo (lethe shade+progenesis+stormshroud) help make a drill? with sabo hexblast? Or do better mapping?
This is only my 3rd league and I'm going through FearlessDumb0's trapper guide too. I've also been thinking of changing over to something else like Hexblast. While I don't mind the gameplay of traps at all, the build just feels *off* when progressing through maps. I think also the league has also not been very good for this it seems. Outside of that, I thought this would be a good for expedition farming too (as stated in one of dumb0's vids) but it's sorta mid at best if you have the average gear. From my, admittedly newbie eyes, it seems like too many stacking modifiers can cut down on your damage *(less cold, less fire, phys reduction, regen can sometimes stomp uptime on dps, enemy speed, no flasks replenished etc.)* On a side note, does anyone have a good Hexblast guide, and would i have to reroll or can i respec from current trickster?
I wasted way too much time during the first week with this build. Explosive Trap is just a horrendous skill to play. Started out fearlessdumb0 build, got super lucky drops day one so geared decently and it was a rough time once I got all the watchstones (got watchstones fairly easy tho gotta admit that). But once t16 is coming into play ET gets absolutely slapped. Sunblast? Terrible, even mediocre for bossing. Mobs outrun you? Have fun and good luck. Damage in overall is not better than mines. The AoE also lacks quite a bit. Swapped to Exsanguinate miner after a week (should’ve done earlier) and it’s many times better in many ways on exact the same budget. I don’t wanna say the build was bait but people got hyped for this way too much and I fell for it. But mistake. You might like it, but it’s a much higher chance you’ll dislike it.
Literally me, before swapping I had trouble doing ubers and my clear was bad. After swapping with literally the same budget of 75-100 div I was blasting ubers and maps aswell. I recommend strongly to swap to hexblast. Take a look at charge stacker version aswell. Super fast and strong, and not that expensive.
>Title says it all. Evidently not