⚔️💧Blade Trap Hierophant💧⚔️







You just fell into my trap. Let me ask you....

Ever wondered what that old magician is good for except totems and Arc?
Actually he's pretty versatile if you open your mind for ideas. In this build guide you'll see him as an old pirate using Lightning-infused traps to purge and slice his enemies.


Overall Performance (1 to 10):
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Endurance: 6 (mediocre)
Map clear efficiency: 5 (mediocre)
Single Target damage: 8 (very high)
Budget: 5 (mediocre)



Ascendancy: Hierophant

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1. Conviction of Power.
2. Divine Guidance.
3. Sanctuary of Thought.


No, you don't need to run the fourth labyrinth.


Pantheon:

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Major: Arakaali or Brine King. I chose the Brine King.

Minor: Abberath - it is a personal choice since I hate burning grounds - especially for ES builds.

Both of them fully upgraded.


Bandits:
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Kill them all.



Gear and Sockets:

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Jewels:
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Unique Jewels:
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A pair of Forbidden Jewels with Augury of Penitence.

A Watcher's Eye with Mana as Extra max ES while affected by Clarity and Attack damage while affected by Precision.



Cluster Jewels:
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We need two identical Large: A Lightning base with Overshock, Scintillating Idea and Widespread Destruction.

And four identical Small: A Mana or ES base with the Willshaper Notable. Try to get additional bonuses for Mana, Intellect or ES on the small passives.


Other Jewels:
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We do not use any other jewels.




Flasks:
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- Recommended using Wise Oak for some damage/defense boost (make sure you meet its requirements). I always put it on automatic use while fighting rares or bosses;

- Rumi and Overflowing Chalice are a personal choice for quality of life.

- Additional utility and bonus Evasion. Anti-bleed is a must.



Detailed build description:

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The idea for this build is to stack up Mana and Energy shield as much as you can. This will boost both your attack and defense.

Damage scaling:
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We should benefit from the transformations of Mana to Energy shield as much as we can. Our damage scales with the Energy shield through the Ephemeral Edge swords. Blade Trap swings our weapons to deal damage, so the more ES you get, the more dmg you deal with the trap. The Ascendancy Divine Guidance provides additional damage based on your Mana increments. And if you're using Arcane Cloak as a guard skill, it also gives added lightning damage.
Make sure you have enough Accuracy since the trap inherits your Hit chance.



Defenses:
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The defense is based mainly on four things:

-The Ivory Tower which will absorb all Chaos damage we take (both direct hits and damage over time) by taking Mana before Life;

-Stacking up Energy Shield as a basic defense mechanic;

-Evasion as the other basic defense mechanic;

-Frost Shield for safer boss fights.

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Please note that Mind Over Matter and that same part of Divine Guidance won't work efficiently for this build since the Mana will protect Life only when you have 0 Energy shield left.




Uniques:
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We're using 5 unique gear pieces:

-Two Ephemeral Edges. This weapon is the heart of our build. The more ES we stack - the more damage we deal.

-For every 100 Life you reserve, The Ivory Tower body armour provides a flat bonus of 30 ES. Thus we reserve nearly all of the Life. The Chaos damage (both Hits and Damage over time) is then taken by our Mana. This is a great substitute for Shavronne's Wrappings.

-Mindspiral also fits perfectly into the picture with all of its unique properties. Best enchant is "Blade Trap Rotates +1 time"

-Atziri's Foible A very simple, yet very effective amulet which will boost the performance a lot by providing an incredible amount of Mana bonuses. It also helps with the Attribute requirements.

-Sunblast. This belt has been reworked this league and is an amazing way of adding "Cluster Traps Support" onto your skill as well as avoiding the 50-60% LESS DAMAGE penalty which this support gem would usually come with. There is only one very small downside - preventing your traps to be activated by an enemy meaning that you're going to have to wait 1~2 additional seconds before the traps activate. Fortunately the belt itself has 'Reduced trap duration' mod which helps us a lot. If you want a smooth gameplay try to find a belt with maximum roll of 75% reduced Trap duration.



Rares:
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We use four rare items (two rings, boots and gloves) with as much, of the following stats, as you can find:
-Evasion
-Energy Shield
-Mana
-Resistances
-Attributes where needed


The Skill:
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Blade Trap is the 'cyclone' for trap builds. It's universal and can be played in many ways. It basically swings our weapons dealing Attack damage instead of our character. It would benefit from all Attack mods, global On-hit mods and Trap mods. Please note that it is not affected by any modifiers to Attack speed since it has a fixed number of Rotations (4 by default) which can only be increased with the Lab enchant and +1 more while dual wielding - for a total of 6. Recommended Divergent quality for better effectiveness in DPS.

You can check my poison Blade trap I made in Kalandra here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3318549.


Links explanation:
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Helmet: I have habit of placing my auras in the helmet. If you find a Mindspiral with 90% multiplier on socketed gems it's useful.

Gloves: This is the other 4L item with auras. We can allow ourselves having multiple auras since we have a lot of Reservation efficiency.

Boots: Another 4L - for our Curses. Put an Enhance support for better effectiveness.

Body Armour: Our Blade Trap goes here. Supports are:

-Trap Damage;
-Lightning Penetration;
-Elemental Penetration;
-Elemental Damage with Attacks
-Awakened Increased AoE or Concentrated Effect.

You may want to change the Elemental Penetration with Advanced Traps. I highly recommend this because the build feels too slow too often - especially when throwing the traps.
Please note that if you don't support it with Advanced Traps, the timing of the Throwing + Activating + Rotation time is just enough for you to benefit at 100% from all 15 traps. And if you put that Advanced Traps, a continuous spam will lead to destroying the first traps you've thrown because they need time to activate and you'll overlap it - they are not triggered by the enemy instantly and need that additional 1 second to activate. This is an important choice and it's all based on your game style.

Additional links:
-A standard 3L (one of the weapons) goes for a Guard Skill + Flame Dash + Enhance. I recommend using Arcane Cloak but Steelskin is also viable;
-A very useful way of dealing with boss fights is using Frost Shield. I socketed Frost Shield + Empower + AoE in the other weapon and it feels GREAT.
Starting the boss fight with a Frost shield while preparing the first wave of traps is just what you need.



3 Keystones:
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-Elemental Overload: This is a non-crit build and even if we have had 1% crit chance, our Blade traps can keep up with the activation frequency of this keystone due to the large number of hits they perform in a short time. The crit chance of this build is around 20-25% which is more than enough to keep 100% uptime of Elemental Overload;

-Wicked Ward and Ghost Dance: Every Evasion + Energy Shield build goes for these two together. I would assume it doesn't need an explanation.


Masteries:
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10% increased effect of auras;

Stun Threshold is based on 60% ES instead of Life;

Increases and Reductions of Mana also apply to Shock effect at 30% value;

+20% Life Reservation Efficiency;

1% Increased Evasion per 5 Intelligence.



Gameplay:

Leveling:
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I'm always happy when it comes to leveling a Lightning build. Arc. Just Arc all the way.

Mapping:
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Throwing Traps, kiting monsters, predicting and manipulating their positioning, while trying to avoid their hits. Same as most trapper builds. Note that due to our ascendancy Sanctuary of Thought, our UNreserved mana helps with adding AoE. At 5000 Unreserved mana you have the maximum benefit from this passive which gives you 100% increased AoE. This helps a lot for the clear speed.



Budget:
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Weapons: This weapon by default (even with the max roll of 50% ES) is very cheap - around 10c. This league it's a lot more interesting since you can get a crucible passive with 'chance to deal double damage with Attacks' - up to 30% per weapon. For example, if you have two weapons with 30% chance to deal double damage crucibles, this results in an average of 60% more damage at all times. The downside of the crucible is reduced attack speed but we don't care because our Blade Trap doesn't care about attack speed either. This crucible is a bit expensive - you can find swords with 20/25/30% chance to deal double damage for respectively 1 divine to 7 divines each;

Helmet: It is cheap - even with highest rolls. Even with a very useful corruption it won't go more than 1~2 divines;

Armour: High rolls Ivory Tower is around 1 divine. Perfect rolls may go around 2-3.

Boots and Gloves: These are Rare and will be between 1 divine ~ 4 divines;

Belt: Usually cheap - around 10-15c for any roll. Should be around 1 divine for a perfect roll with 75% reduced Trap duration;

Amulet: The foible is rarely used by any build and is cheap because of that. Although, with perfect rolls like mine, will be around 1 divine;

Rings: Go wild with Mana, Resistances and some Attributes. Should not cost more than 3 divines for each ring;

Jewels:

-Watcher's Eye: It is important that you find one with Mana as Extra ES with Clarity due to the effectiveness of this mod. Anything like Attack damage with Precision or bonus chance to Evade with Grace, or Faster Start of ES recharge with Discipline will do. I bought mine for 4 divines;

-Forbidden Jewels: Augury of Penitence is surprisingly cheap - 2 divines for both jewels.

-All the Cluster jewels are around 4 divines. The small clusters are a bit harder to find with the desired bonus stats on the small passives;

-Skill and Support Gems: I like to play with 21/20 jewels, as well as using Awakened for the additional bonuses. In our case it's highly recommended to use an Awakened Lightning exposure so that you actually benefit from exposure.

OVERALL BUDGET: between 15 and 40 divine orbs.



Pros and Cons:
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Good:
-Trapper game style;
-Low-to-medium budget;
-Very good damage;
-Does not require specific items that are expensive;
-Maps with Reflect don't matter;
-Tanky;
-Very good for both clear speed and single targets;
-Unique.

Bad:
-Slow with the trap throwing;
-Scaling the Damage can get a little expensive.



Videos, Screenshots and Links:

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Videos:


Screenshots:
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Links:
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PoB: https://pobb.in/3i4lWdsYeSmf (Full tree at level 100)

Shock Calculator: https://saveriodesign.gitlab.io/shock-calc/




Ideas and Alternative options:

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-You can use the Ephemeral Edges in a Crit build on Assassin/Saboteur but there aren't many interesting mechanics to play around with - just simple Crit/ES stacking;

-You can go with a shield instead of dual wield. This is only recommended for the early stages of the build when your defenses are too low. Using just 1 weapon reduces the trap's rotations by 1, meaning 16~20% less damage. It also means that you cannot increase the chance to deal double damage through the Crucible passive;

-My previous Poison Blade Trap in Kalandra: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3318549


Oh, and if you want to play with Energy Blade... No. Just no.




P.S. This post will be updated every now and then.
Last edited by fostaa on Oct 8, 2023, 9:51:55 AM
Last bumped on Oct 4, 2023, 4:43:10 PM
looks good!
What's the dps comparision of Mind Spiral vs Mind of the Council?

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