[2.3] Shppy's "Prismfall" - Bow trapper/miner with Prism and Reach. Oneshotting Uber Izaro!

The build is based around taking advantage of a few key mechanical interactions that all kinda fall together to provide some impressive results.

The first is the keystone Point Blank, which effectively gives your bow traps/mines ~50% more hit damage, since the distance the projectiles have traveled is measured from the source, not necessarily from you.

The second is a set of four copies of a unique jewel:

These jewels will help out both of your weapon setups tremendously. The flat physical damage adds a significant amount of damage onto hits from Doomfletch's Prism, due to its unique "110% of bow physical damage as extra damage of each element", and the poison grants the Barrage mines an extreme damage boost due to all the double-dipping mechanics that projectiles and mines can access. (And to be fair, the flat damage still does help Reach too, and the poison still does add a decent amount of bonus damage to Prism attacks)

The third is the access to elemental penetration via traps/saboteur. Multi-elemental attackers often have some trouble with enemy resists since they can't use single-element penetration gems efficiently, but the Saboteur ascendancy can grant 10% elemental penetration, and the High Explosive notable in the passive tree grants 10% ele pen to traps and mines. In addition, there's an enchantment for boots (which I don't have on my boots as of writing this, but I plan to grind for it) that grants elemental penetration if *you* haven't killed recently, and as long as your traps are doing the killing, *you* are not, and so the penetration from that enchant also becomes pretty much always-active for trappers. And my tree is also adjacent to a weapon elemental damage cluster in the bottom-right of the tree that would give 6% additional elemental penetration to weapon attacks (I don't have it in the tree I'll link, but I plan to get it soon). So yeah, lots of penetration available.

And the fourth is Reach of the Council + Barrage. When Barrage gets extra projectiles, it fires more times, rather than firing a wide spray like other projectile skills. So these extra arrows can still hit the same target, unlike extra projectiles with other skills. In the case of Reach + Barrage, you now get 8 arrows instead of the usual 4, meaning Reach + Barrage has the potential to deal twice as much damage as Barrage with a 'normal' bow of the same dps... Barrage at level 1 normally can hit up to 4 times for 50% base damage each, for 200% potential base damage. Move that up to 8 hits with reach, and you've got a skill with a potential 400% base damage; it's... strong. And since Barrage is best at hitting the same target many times up close in particular, it syncs up nicely with Point Blank too.

and, 4x

The key items here are the bows, of course, and the 4x Coated Shrapnel Jewels. It's fairly important to have Drillneck accompanying Reach, while the quiver for Prism just should have as much flat physical damage as you can get, while still providing some other nice stats (and ideally weapon ele damage). Could use a second Drillneck if you haven't got a rare quiver like that though (can't get better flat phys than a high drillneck roll, and it's got evasion and life, though it lacks some of the other useful stuff a rare could get).

Everything else is pretty much your choice, but as you'll be using Doomfletch's Prism, you'll want flat physical on all the sources that you can reasonably get it on. Since Doomfletch's Prism adds a total of 330% of physical bow damage as elemental damage, you pretty much build it the same way you would Facebreaker, i.e. get flat physical all over the place.

I opted to use Hinekora's Sight instead of a flat phys amulet because, well, my accuracy was kinda meh without it (think it's 94% with, 80something without), and because the dodge is a pretty nice defensive boost as i'm using acro/phase acro and Atziri's Step. All in all, the high accuracy actually keeps my tooltip dps higher than going with a high flat phys rare amulet anyway. As for the other uniques... well, Megi's is high priority cuz of the flat phys, Carcass Jack is nice for the extra aoe (but not necessary... if I had a 6L Kintsugi or my Carcass was only 5L, i'd probably go Kintsugi instead), and since I've got resists covered elsewhere I can't go wrong with Atziri's Step.

Now, i haven't really bothered going overboard here on gear, either; every rare I've got linked is self-found or self-made and mostly mediocre, and it's worked for me quite well, so there's nothing drastic necessary here. Even the 6Ls aren't really necessary, I can pull things off just fine with 5Ls. Relatively speaking, you can do this build for just a few ex worth of stuff (and actually I didn't trade for anything here except 3 of the Shrapnel jewels and a then-unlinked Carcass Jack, even most of the uniques are self-found)

This is at level 78. I'm probably getting the weapon elemental damage cluster in the bottom-right next, but after that idk. Maybe the life+evasion cluster, and/or Thick Skin, maybe the frenzy charge trap cluster plus some max frenzy charges. Or maybe I'll go through the physical damage half of the phys/chaos wheel up top. We'll see.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYDAABeAdEDHgW1BiMHHgguDkgRLxGWFHUV8Ba_GY4Z_hqNGwEe8B9BI_YmlSsKMHEwfDIYNj03FzfUOkJCLElRS3hNklFHUzFVS1b6WyZd8l5FYeJiT2KsZKpnTmo2aoxsCGyMb3dwUXX9dm9313sUfXV-sH8rf_uEb4w2jX2Nv4_6kvOVLpuGnMSdqqB5oSKiQKLZpMKn1K_rsNizA7TFtUi3Ird1u-PC7MSiyBTJBtN-1CPUQthU2-fdqOXm62PsGO0_7YPuFfDV8Yr0-PVv9p_66_66_sg=

Oak/Oak/Passive. We're doing life, using physical-based attack damage but not attack speed, and not using charges. Pretty clear-cut.

Saboteur. Chain reaction and the 40% increased cooldown recovery is too good to pass up. Besides that, there's some nice penetration and the blind is a solid defense against attackers that can actually survive a volley of traps.

The order of notables should be: Bomb Specialist->Chain Reaction->Blinding Assault->Explosives Expert. Getting Chain Reaction is top priority, after that the defensive utility offered by blind is just too much more significant than the offensive boost of some penetration and added fire

When it comes to traps/mines, there's some certain enchants you want to stick with.

On gloves, most glove enchants will usually not trigger, as they require *you* hitting/killing, as opposed to your traps. So, your best bet is either Spite or Reflection, both of which trigger when you are hit. The former will create some radial lines of chilled ground and deal some damage for you when you're hit, the latter will create a decoy clone of you when you're hit (which draws a lot of aggro). I'd suggest Reflection, in general, as it can take a lot of heat off you.

On boots, go for 'X% elemental penetration if you haven't killed recently'. Because your traps do the killing, you yourself do not get credit for those kills, and therefore you pretty much *never* are in a state where you've killed recently. So this penetration is always on, and it's a nice boost. If by chance you try to work this into a crit build, there's a similar enchant you can run with, 'X% increased crit chance if you haven't crit recently', but I'd probably stay away from crit... I kinda stretched myself thin as it is, hence the low life.

On your helm, just try to get something useful for a skill in the build. The chance of an extra Blast Rain explosion would be one of the best, as would 'increased curse effect' for your curse of choice, but with the randomness of helm enchants, you can't always be choosy. If you get one that helps a skill in the build in a meaningful way, use it.

Blast Rain - Trap - Clustertrap - WED - PPAD - Ele Focus

This is pretty much the main skill. Even if it were 5L'd like my Rain of Arrows, it would still deal better average damage, especially in the center, and it'd still be good enough around the edges. Helps that it converts a part of your physical to elemental, too. You could potentially swap in concentrated effect instead of ele focus if you wanted, but I didn't particularly wanna cut my AoE.

Rain of Arrows - Trap - Clustertrap - WED - PPAD - (Ele Focus, if I had a 6th)

Same sorta thing as Blast Rain. Less focused damage, but it does disperse the damage a bit more evenly. I tend to find myself preferring to use this while clearing fragile enemies like sirens or apes, but otherwise it's just there as an alternative skill for controlling cooldowns. Both trap setups are reasonably interchangeable while clearing, but for single target (if you're not bringing out the mines) focus on using Blast Rain.

(back weapon set) Barrage - Remote Mine - Minefield - Pierce - Mine/Trap damage - Slower Projectiles

This is just a bosskiller, in particular bosses that have sizable prep time for you to get up close and set several minefields, which happen to be some of the tougher endgame bosses (Atziri, Izaro). This setup will completely annihilate even tough bosses up close in a single detonation of your max number of mines.


Ice Shot - Ranged Attack Totem - Chain - GMP

Just a nice bit of extra control, but tbh I don't find myself using it much. The 'real' bosses where I normally would use this for defense (chilled ground) kinda die too fast to notice, and it's not worth the time while clearing. Nice to have in case you need it, but you can totally drop this if you want. TBH I'm kinda considering swapping this out for a wither totem setup, just to amp the poison on my mines a bit further. Haven't really needed it for the heavy bosses so far, but maybe I'll try Uber Atziri at some point.

CWDT (level 1) - Vortex (level 4) - Immortal Call (level 3) - Increased duration

Another choice setup, passive defense. IC helps prevent dying from chains of physical hits, and Vortex lays down a bunch of chilled ground around you when it triggers, slowing down enemies in a melee-ish range. Again, if you don't care for it, don't use it, pure preference stuff.

Arctic Armor - Ele Weakness - Grace - Summon Stone Golem - Blink Arrow (one of these in an unlinked 6th socket, so if you've got 6Ls all around and you're using the rest of the setups to the letter you'll have to make some choices... probably just drop the totem setup though)

Just unlinked utility stuff. I recommend Grace highly, there's no real offensive aura to use and as the build is pure evasion/dodge Grace helps a lot. Arctic Armor isn't really necessary, but it's something to reserve a little extra mana on. The build doesn't have much mana sustain, so you may prefer to just reserve Grace and run on 50% mana, otherwise you'll likely only have 3 or 4 clustertraps thrown before you run out. Also, the curse is kinda choice... I go with Ele Weakness cuz of the enchant on my helm, but if it wasn't for that I'd probably just run Enfeeble, or just do no curse and use Vaal Lightning Trap. Could also do a blasphemy setup, probably with Temp Chains for kiting.

I will say though, do *not* use projectile weakness, even though it would be a damage amp for both weapon sets. The damage amp is nice, but the knockback most certainly is not... pushing enemies away will potentially knock them out of additional hits with Blast Rain, and will push them further away for less point blank bonus, and it will be HORRIBLE for the Barrage mines... after all, placing 9 mines firing 8 shots each, that's a lot of hits, and a lot of potential knockback to keep kicking the enemy way way back out-of-line of subsequent hits and with less damage from Point Blank. No thanks. Though if you happen to use Empire's Grasp, I suppose it could go alright... but even then I'd still be wary of them being pulled in *too* much.

So, just a few more kinda-unsorted remarks.


Like I said earlier, the build is kinda squishy on the surface, but it hasn't been an issue to me up to this point, and again that involves doing a max key Uber Lab run and an Atziri run at level 78 with 3.3k life, neither of which provided any real threat at all (because I killed them too fast for them to do anything)

As a trapper build, you can pretty much run most map mods. Reflect does nothing, blood magic isn't a problem. With my particular gear setup ele weakness barely drops my lightning resist below capped, and I could resolve that by simply crafting up a better left ring. Reduced recovery could be a bit of an irritation, because I do use mana flasks and to an extent natural mana regen to keep going, but it's nothing I can't run.

The damage in general is pretty outstanding for both weapon sets, even with my relatively meh flat phys gear. The traps clear extremely well (I usually just toss two volleys of traps into packs and they're gone... one is probably good enough, but they Chain React more reliably if I throw two sets), the Blast Rain traps are very effective against bosses (even without my curse), and the Barrage mines are ludicrously strong. I 'one-shot' the regular oversoul twins, each of atziri's split and solo phases (and really if there weren't forced phases I think it would have one-shot her outright), fell just a hair short of one-shotting uber Izaro at each phase (even with his threats fully carrying over), and roughly one-and-a-half shotted uber Argus (and in general, by 'one-shot', i mean I layed down my max number of mines and detonated them all at once, just one time).

Tactically, both weapon-swapping and placing the mines are a bit clunky, so you usually wanna reserve them for bosses where you have time before the fight starts to prep them (usually while they're giving some introductory dialogue or taking time to be 'summoned'). Luckily, most of the sturdier bosses in the game have these times to prepare, so have at them. Blast Rain traps can handle the more generic bosses pretty easily.

When placing mines in preparation for a boss phase starting, if you have time it's wise to toss some random traps out where nothing will trip them immediately. This is because 'Explosives Expert' will give you 8% increased damage per trap you have out, so that's an extra 64% increased damage you'll get for throwing a couple clustertraps quickly. Also, you'll want to place the mines close to the target, to get the best returns out of Point Blank, but don't try to place them directly on top of the target; placing them that close can cause the barrages to miss if the target moves around. You also want to try to make sure the boss isn't going to move laterally (relatively to the mines) while you detonate... that'll make for a lot of misses and wasted effort. If you can, draw the target either directly towards or directly away from the mines, to keep any motion they might make in-line with the direction the projectiles will fire (cuz they will take some time to reach the target, even if it's not much)