[2.2] Tactical Decision Summon... err Saboteur - Pure Fire Dmg Fire Nova Miner - SSF HC Atz Viable

Please read the YouTube video descriptions for more information.
- Gorge Run
- Atziri Run
- Approaching Strongboxes
- When to: Temporal Chains Example
- When to: Enfeeble Example
- When to: Arctic Armour Example
- Don't Stop Moving Concept
- Annoying Mine Mechanic

- 208% maximum life w/ no jewels, 207 hp/s regen, 30% evasion, Acro and Phase Acro and a Basalt flask of Reflexes = decently durable
- Decent damage and clear speed for the investment (considering my investment was zilch)
- Zero reliance on unique items
- Efficient in a 4L (and very efficient in a 5L)
- No reflect issues to worry about :)
- Very budget friendly if not playing SSF
- Can start playing the build as soon as FNM is available (lv 12) with no respecing
- Atziri viable
- Scales very well with better budgets

- You're playing a mine build - No sense of beating around the bush here. Mine builds are a totally different type of build and it is something that takes a lot of time to get used to. You basically have to retrain your PoE muscle memory and even after that you'll find yourself feeling flustered at times. Having to mash your detonate button while constantly moving and trying to maintain good flask usage can be frustrating.
- It's no 2.2 LA/Spark Voltaxic - You will probably not be racing to the top of the ladder with this build. That being said, I hear that in Perandus 2 week flashbacks there were some very high leveled FNM Saboteurs that were pushing the top of the ladder!
- Mines have INSANELY high mana costs.

Clicky

Looks like crap, I know. Luckily, FNM has a nifty little line in the description that states, "(20 to 29)% more Damage per Repeat". So essentially by the time FNM is on it's 4th stage it is doing a lot of damage. Oh, and that "damage per use" is factoring in the damage reduction from minefield but not accounting for the fact that you'll always be having at least 3 mines detonating at one time (and often 6+).

Not too much to say here. If I had better gear I could easily squeeze well over 6k life (6.2k with good life rolls) thanks to the 208% life from the tree. Also, a pure evasion shield + better gear (*coughglovescough*) should net a fair bit more evasion.

Level 88 SSF Version

This is the skill tree that I was playing with on my character. If I were to make it to 90 I would have completed the Witch flask nodes and anything after that would be going towards jewel sockets. I was weary of jewel sockets in this build because I have crap luck rolling them and could not trade in SSF.

As you can see, I had mixed luck with gearing. I have some really nice pieces of gear and I have some gear that's really mediocre (ty glove RNG).

Refer to the "gearing section" to see where I would go with my gear in a non-SSF build

Main Hand - You have your choice of a wand, sceptre or dagger. A dagger would unlock the ability to use whirling blades but if you do WB + FA + Fortify you'll have to get a socket for clarity elsewhere. You're looking for a good spell damage roll and some mana regeneration. Other decent mods include: fire damage, max mana, resistances.

Off Hand - A good pure Evasion shield is what you're looking for. BBG is not too difficult to roll on a pure evasion shield but an EV/ES hybrid shield can work too. You're looking for a high evasion roll, life, and some res. Additional block chance is always welcomed as well.

Helmet - I prefer a good rare pure evasion helmet here. Life + Res is basically all you're looking for from this slot. The more evasion the merrier. If you're having a hard time getting the colours you need you can go for a hybrid Ev/Arm helmet.

Chest - An Evasion/ES hybrid is almost mandatory here unless you want to use a plain ES piece (remember that ES gets chunked in half by Acrobatics). The more links the better. Carcass Jack is a decent option here for sure. For a rare chest, high ES, life, and res is what you're looking for.

Gloves - If you can roll the required colours on a pure Evasion set of gloves, that would be ideal here. If not, an Armour/Evasion hybrid set of gloves would be fine. Life, evasion, and res here.

Boots - Windscream, Windscream, Windscream. Windscream unlocks some very cool gameplay for this build and I'm really sad I never found a pair for my SSF character. See "Windscream variation" section below for more details. If Windscream's aren't in the budget, a set of pure evasion boots are ideal. Movement speed should be your highest priority here (as we do a lot of running) followed by
life, ES, res.

Jewellry - Aim for life, mana regeneration, and some resistances. Other good stats include: spell damage, fire damage, maximum mana.

Belt - Life and Res here. I also used my belt slot to fulfill a lot of my strength stat requirement. Flask mods, and the Tora movement speed prefix or mine damage suffix are also great.

Flasks - I run 2 Divine Flasks, one Quicksilver, a Hallowed Hybrid Flask, and a basalt flask. You can check out the "My Character's Gear" section to see what rolls I have on each flask. There is wiggle room here for sure and unique flasks can be incorporated into the build.

- Clarity should be on at all times.

- Summon Stone Golem should be up at all times.

- Don't forget to move. With instant detonation, miners are actually fairly mobile. You really don't stop moving at all when playing a miner. Even on high HP foes that require constant spamming, I am constantly moving. Refer to the "videos" section for an example.

- As a default, my blasphemy curse of choice is temporal chains. While it is weaker as a defensive curse to enfeeble it adds a lot of utility and really helps with the overall feel of the build. Not being swarmed to death makes playing mine builds much smoother. If a map has the monster crit chance/multi mod or has several rippy map mods (ex. Minus max res + added monster lightning damage + monster damage) I drop temp chains for enfeeble. Refer to the "videos" section for an example.

- If a map has the "monsters are immune to curses mod" I drop any blasphemy curse and run Arctic Armour. It's not the best spell, but it's better than nothing. Refer to the "videos" section for an example.

- General rules for clearing packs:
- If it's white, 1 is alright (one minefield on white packs)
- If it's blue, 2 will do (two minefields on magic packs)
- If it's yellow/rare, I can't come up with anything clever but use 3 minefields.
- You'll eventually figure out which mob types and which mods require you to go outside this scheme. That takes time to figure out but it becomes second nature.

- For difficult packs, or unique monsters/bosses it is worthwhile to use two casts of your bear trap setup (throw them off to the side where they won't be stepped on). This rewards you with 96% increased damage thanks to the "Bomb Specialist" Ascendancy passive. Refer to the "videos" section for an example (The Approach to Strongboxes video highlights this technique).

- Speaking of unique monsters/bosses - I usually start the fight out with 3 casts of minefield for maximum initial burst (if setting up the 3 is possible). Once I start spamming mines I generally only use 2 casts of minefields before detonating to not run OOM. It is also the spamming rotation that felt the best. Sometimes I'd use three depends on how much I was moving, and sometimes I would just use the one.

- Kiting can be a saviour for this build. Difficult Bosses/Uniques like Kole or heavy hitting packs of monsters should never even get a chance to touch you. Good placement of your mines and kiting enemies into the area of effect will save your life will letting you laugh at your melting enemies. Keep constantly moving and place your mines in smart zones to maximize damage dealt while minimizing damage taken.

- The "tactical" part of this build is a combination of temporal chains allowing you to have better positioning, CWDT phase run to save you when you've made a mistake in your positioning or you need to run through a pack to get somewhere, and clever placements of your mines to maximize clearing. In Perandus, I often found myself circling around packs (which was easy thanks to temp chains) of Perandus mobs in order to avoid taking damage while maximizing the area of effect in each detonation. I could generally wipe out the entire Perandus pack every time I detonated my mines. I also mentioned above that you will begin to understand how many mine clusters you need in each situation. You will also learn to kite monsters over your minefields (hello, Kole) and laugh as they melt and never get a chance to touch you.

Oh boy, am I ever sad that I couldn't find myself a set of Windscreams. These unique boots give us some movement speed, some resistances, and some elemental damage. However their biggest draw is the "enemies can have one additional curse".
With these boots equipped, you can permanently keep up a blasphemied temporal chains (for more "tactical" and better feeling gameplay), and add enfeeble to your CWDT setup in place of the increased duration gem. You may also have an Elemental Weakness gem socketed to manually curse those pesky resistant mobs. So much win!

Before I start here, let me be clear that it is perfectly fine to grab pure stat nodes while leveling (I.E. a +30 strength node). You can obtain plenty of free respec points through the questing system so that when you no longer need all the extra stats from the pure nodes it's easy to remove them.

Any questions that frequently come up will go here.

- Q: Why is bear trap part of this build?
- A: Thanks to the "Bomb Specialist" Ascendancy point, in two casts of bear trap (w/ cluster trap and multi trap) we get a massive 96% increased damage modifier. I chose bear trap because it's already a trap skill and if enemies are to step on it (which we don't really want) it does have some utility.

- Q: Why don't you get Explosives Expert as an Ascendancy Point
- A: Essentially the only useful thing we get from that node is 8% ele pen. That's not bad, but I prefer to just grab blinding assault for additional defence.

- Q: Why do you invest so much into mana/mana regeneration?
- A: This was a choice I made playing a SSF character. Mines are EXTREMELY expensive to spam. I specially decided to go with the mana regeneration path because I was already naturally picking up a good chunk of mana regen % on the tree and without a pair of Windscream boots I was only reserving 35% of my max mana so clarity was easy to run. I was considering trying the EB/MoM/ZO combination in this build. It is something I should definitely test out in the future as not only would it help with mana sustain but it adds an extra layer of defence.

- Q: Why elemental focus? Don't you want to be able to ignite?
- A: Unlike poison, ignites (without any unique item influence) do not stack. Having a skill that repeats multiple times and gets stronger every repeat really doesn't have good synergy with igniting. I'd prefer the huge more multiplier of Ele Focus and treat FNM simply as a nuking spell.