At the start of this Path of Exile 3.21 league, I finished my Atlas with Explosive Trap Trickster build, collected all Void gems, and defeated most of the non-uber bosses.

Skill Itself And damage

Let’s see what we got in terms of damage. Our skill of choice is Explosive Trap. All explosions can hit the same enemy, which is the source of our DPS and the amount of traps. When you look at Path of Building, you can set how many explosions hit the target. This is the new setup, thanks to the community for seeing this.

I set it to Average Explosions since most enemies have a small hitbox. The build now works with 4 Curses thanks to Anathema’s unique Moonstone Ring. Our Curse is to increase Flammability, which will reduce the enemy’s Fire Resistance.

We apply this Curse through an Arcanist Brand button. Player can even use Assassin’s Mark, which will increase the critical chance the target receives. We can easily generate energy and Frenzy charges if our enemies trigger the trap.

We also added Trickster for an extra 2 max Frenzy charges. This way we can have 5 Frenzy charges, and we pair it with Charged Traps Support to increase our Trap Throwing Speed as fast as possible. For those who don’t like gem swapping, this may be bad news. You’ll need gem swaps to deal with tougher bosses.

Mana Problem

Another big problem with builds is that traps waste too much mana. So we have to use Mana Flasks and Enduring Mod. And save POE Currency as much as possible during Mana Flasks cast effect. This is also why there are no uber boss kills now, because we can’t maintain Mana Flasks, and if we don’t have mana, we run out of mana quickly and can’t do damage.

Defensives

On defense: Because we chose Trickster. So we get a very interesting node where one step forward will slow down the enemy’s movement speed. If they paired us with Summon Skitterbots, the enemies would move like snails, which would also give us plenty of time to react.

It’s also worth mentioning that you don’t have to worry about Freeze and Chill damage, it also increases your base movement speed. At the same time, Trickster also has a loop in Defensive Layers.

Every 5 seconds we take less damage from hits and another 5 seconds we get less damage from damage over time effects. You can also tank almost anything if your damage isn’t going up, so when you get hit and the big damage reduction buff goes up, you’re happy.

You can also use Grace Aura to increase Evasion rating, so we hardly die from monsters’ normal attacks or projectiles. Because we have Grace's blessing, we can also use Ghost Dance Keystone. When we take a hit, we restore 3% of our Evasion rating as Energy Shield, and we can do this 3 times in a row before stacks recharge.

From now on, we’ll use Immortal Call as our Guard Skill and cast it when we take damage. We use Craft Body Armours, so we can convert 12% of physical damage to elemental damage.

Not too much, but enough for us to survive even against large physical attacks like that Shaper Slam. Since we have almost an 80% chance of avoiding attacks, I’m not too worried about physical damage. Because we’re just dodging attacks, but if we get hit, other layers of defense come in handy so we can recover easily.

Items And Crucible tree

There are a few more important things that are required in the build. Things like your Weapons and Shields, +1 Fire or Physical Spells, Skill Gems, Spell Rrit, Spell Damage or Fire Damage. For Crucible tree a little of extra energy shield and distribution guarantees this gives us a bit of resistance. Also requires +1 Fire or physical damage and skill gems on your Amulet.

We are going to kill enemies by using High Voltage to increase crit. Since we’re using Summon Skitterbots, the damage done to enemies also ramps up quickly. With Anathema’s unique Moonstone Ring, we can use 4 Curses because our Crucible tree has 4 Power charges, which also gives us an Int and a little Energy shield.

Also Read: Introduction To Five Minion Builds in Path of Exile 3.21 Crucible League

Implicits

You can craft Implicits with Eldritch Currency spam until you get the following. Increases the mana retention efficiency of your skills at your helm, you need at least 8% otherwise you can’t use your Auras. Another mod is to add Flammability effect, whether there is a unique enemy or Pinnacle Bosses nearby. The difference is small, so don’t worry too much.

On your body armor, Zealotry adds Aura effect and adds Non-Curse Auras effect. You can use the buff Endurance charges Mod every 10 seconds if there is a unique enemy nearby. If you get it, it increases your physical relief.

Your Trap Throwing Speed and another mod is Spell Suppression Chance, where you can use Fire Exposure that causes hits. Gain physical damage on your boots as additional fire damage, which will increase your critical strike chance against enemies. I’d also like to highlight something on Passive tree that is required for construction.

Passive Tree

We use eight passive Cluster Jewels with Iron Breaker, Battle-Hardened, and Force Multiplier, including Medium Cluster Jewels with Accidental Break and Careful Handling and Aura Cluster Jewels with Sublime Form. The rest of Jewels are rare, have Life and Critical Strike Multiplier, and have Fire skills and Resistance.

Ascendancy

We’re using Trickster as our advantage in the first place, which will increase your movement speed, so you can move faster and throw traps faster. But this node we only get more damage part, and others will not deal damage to us, because the trap kills the enemy and not us.

Outro

All in all, Explosive Trap Trickster really improved my game experience in the early stages of Path of Exile 3.21 league. If you have any opinions on this build, welcome to discuss it in the community and hope you can play smoothly.