[2.2] Odas' Occultist Poison Nova Mine Guide [Budget][SC/HC viable][Uber Viable]

Cheap
Extremely high damage
Safe
Good for group play
Uber Atziri viable

Clear speed is capped

Main : Fire Nova Mine- Minefield- Void Manipulation- Trap and Mine Damage- Elemental Focus- Controlled Destruction


Auras: Discipline Blasphemy-Temporal Chains-Enhance

Totem: Wither-Spell Totem-Faster Casting- Increased Duration

Pets: Flame Golem-Animate Guardian-Minon Resists-Life on Hit
Movement: Whirling Blades- Faster Attacks- Fortify

Utility: Enduring Cry- Vaal Clarity- Increased Duration

In the case of a 5 link you should drop Controlled destruction because it doesnt double dip like Trap and Mine damage or Void Manipulation and provides less damage than Elemental Focus. That said, I would suggest using a Tabula Rasa over having a 5L body with stats, they are largely unnecessary.

The auras should avoid having discipline linked with the enhance as it provides only increased radius. I only added enhance once I got my Vertex, and the build functions perfectly fine without it. I also used purity of elements before I was resist capped and I still use it on elemental weakness maps instead of discipline.

The damage from the wither totem is largely overkill and I only included it when I started doing Uber. I also haven't yet bothered to use Animate Guardian mostly due to laziness. I would animate the guardian with Dying Breath for more curse effectiveness, Leer Cast for more damage, and probably an Ambu's Charge for life regen and possibly endurance charges. The rest of the pieces should just be life and resists.

The only two mandatory uniques are the Consuming Dark Daggers. Since this patch's nerfs of the dagger, you need to dual wield them instead of using one plus an Infernal Mantle to achieve 100% fire to chaos conversion. The downside is you lose a shield for defenses, but you gain an extra aura in discipline, so it balances out.
For chest I suggest a Tabula Rasa until you can afford a 6L. Even the least useful gem provides 43% more damage so every link is important. I use a Carcass Jack for increased area and extra life. You could also use a rare energy shield chest.

The helm I use a Vertex as it provides everything I need: energy shield, evasion, chaos resist, and most importantly +1 gems. The +1 gems really boosts the enhance attached to temporal chains. A geofri's crest could also be used as a budget helm.

The rest of the gear is just rares with life, es, and resists. You could get fire damage or cast speed on rings, but I find it uneeded. I have been pretty lazy about updating my gear as I have managed to clear all the content with just self-found rares. Jewelery can also roll mana regen which is useful, especially on low regen maps.

For flasks I am running 1 slow healing potion, 1 instant healing potion, a divination distillate, a jade flask, and a stibnite flask.

The divination distillate is mostly for the max resists. I was running a regular mana potion before I found it and still swap back for no regen maps. The stibnite flask was added for Uber to blind the spear add. A sulfur flask is helpful for damage as it double dips, but I don't really need it anymore. You can also run a granite flask if you prefer armour, but I like the synergy between the jade and stibnite.

For jewels just look for increased life/es, chaos damage, area damage, mine damage, untyped damage, spell damage, spell damage while dual wielding, or fire damage. Although you can also look for mine placement speed, usually what prevents me from placing mines is mana.

Enchantments:
Most of the enchantments aren't that appealing. I luckily managed to get an edict of flames on my gloves which triggers from whirling blades and does chaos damage so it poisons. Its enough to kill most packs in <70 maps but falls off quickly. There is a boot enchant for both chaos damage and fire damage but most of the damage is an afterthought. The helm enchants can be very strong, but are obviously hard to get. I would probably value Temporal Chains effectiveness over the Fire Nova Mine enchants, but either one would be appreciated if you managed to find it. The Temporal Chains effectiveness enchant could actually be more beneficial against act and map bosses due to their inherent curse effectiveness reduction.

I am sitting at 3100 evasion (25%) unbuffed and 21000 (61%) with both flasks. I have 4496 life and 3843 energy shield which could easily be pushed to combined 9000 if I got better rares. The main defense from this build comes from Temporal Chains. With curse effectiveness regular mobs are slowed by 67% and bosses are slowed by 38%. With a level 4 enhance this would go up to 75%/45%. It could be even higher with an Animate Guardian. Most mobs are too slow to even get a single attack animation off before they die. The bosses which have enough health to survive get an amplified Enfeeble further reducing their damage. I so rarely get hit, I ran a Tier 13 Waterways with minus max resist and added fire/cold/lightning and never dropped my energy shield.

Because of the increased duration from the tree and the amplified Temporal Chains, the poison from hits lasts nearly 4 seconds on bosses and because of double dipping the poison does over 100% of the initial hit per second.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAAPuBLMHHgj0DR8NfA5IDo4RLxGWEcIbJRzcHb4i9CNfJpUo-ipTKwoyGDLRM4c2PTrhPAU8KD1fQYdCekVHRZ1FuUlRSbFLrk5tUlNTUlRHVGJVS1fJXEBd8mHiYqxo8mnYakNsCGwLbIxtGXBRdZ52b3pwfPB-oX6wf8aCx4R3h8uMNo8aj_qRB5MnlS6XlZf0muCcMpy-naqd2Z7En9-gQ6EvogClxKa-p5uycLMDtAy0xbVItz63dbiTvorAVMBmwcXK088V18_YVNi92Vvb59-K6QLquutj6-7sGO4V73zviPAf8NXxivJF-Tf56P4K

For leveling I went for Clever Construction and Volatile Mines early. After that you can pick up life or damage nodes at your leisure. I was able to 1 shot most packs including rares up until Merciless with just a 4 link. Avoid the chaos damage nodes and void manipulation until you have the Consuming Darks. I ran rallying cry for most of the time, although a mana potion is probably sufficient.

Ascendancy:
I chose occultist primarily for Void Beacon. With it most mobs are vulnerable to chaos which both amplifies the initial hits and the poison dot. Profane bloom is a 10% increased damage taken which is effectively a 10% more on top of everything for you and your group (it would probably be additive with a vulnerability curse for example), and the explosions are quite helpful. Because of Consuming Dark the explosions cause poison and with the increased chaos damage from the tree its not uncommon to see a pack explode, poison an adjacent pack which also explodes drastically increasing our clear speed. Malediction seemed like the passive to take since I already grab so many curse nodes but was only running one curse. The extra damage is basically wasted since we already do 100% chaos damage, but the extra curse is nice to run Enfeeble for the rare times mobs survive. An alternative would be to pick up Wicked Ward for more defenses without having to cast Enfeeble.

You could probably also run this build with Necromancer if you wanted to have some zombie meat shields and run bone offering for more block. I believe the damage and surviability from Saboteur would be less than Occultist. The only benefit they get is the increased area of effect if you have extra traps active. I would run something like conversion trap-cluster trap-multiple traps- increased duration on a 4 link and just throw out traps to increase aoe.

Bandits:
Normal: Oak for +40 life
Cruel: Kill all for the passive
Merciless: Kill all for the passive

The cast speed from Cruel Alira would theoretically make the mines cast faster, but that only really matters on Atziri when you want the mines to finish casting so you can place more. Now that I am running enduring cry I could probably switch to a 4th endurance charge, but I often don't bother to maintain them.

Atziri
Uber Atziri
153 rarity 54 packsize Waterways