Summon Raging Minors: Cha's Tremor Rod SRS

Hi! I'm cha_siu_bao. Nice to meet you.
I've been playing Path of Exile since official release (October 2013) and I never expected to love this game so much. Between the community and the endless replay value, I'm perpetually awestruck by the degree of creative expression that PoE offers. I enjoy exploring different playstyles and mechanics, particularly those that are disregarded by the majority of the player base. I like to keep budget in mind; my favorite builds are those that can be run by a casual player.

If you want to hang out and have a chat about anything Wraeclast-related, feel free to stop by the stream: www.twitch.tv/cha_siu_bao




How did you come up with this madness? Why would you even?
I was playing a crit Fire Nova Mine build in the Awakening beta and I got my hands on a 5L Tremor Rod. Stream viewers had a huge variety of suggestions but they all seemed to lack the damage I was looking for. We were delivering a huge volume of spells, but they just didn't pack enough punch. Trappers and miners are supposed to excel in high burst damage, and I felt the lack of damage scaling in Tremor Rod made fights drag on far too long to make this glass cannon worthwhile. Why not just throw traps at this point? Why not just self-cast?

And that's how the idea of a Summon Raging Spirits miner was conceived. Let's run a skill that benefits from a high volume of spell casts, but doesn't care about the shitty per-spell damage scaling that Tremor Rod offers. Mine damage modifiers, spell damage modifiers, etc, have no effect on SRS damage. Furthermore, let's run four minion-oriented support gems in a 5L staff. So it's kind of like Pledge of Hands SRS or Soul Mantle SRS totems... but you can buy a Tremor Rod for a chaos orb or two. Moreover, unlike Soul Mantle SRS totems you get the perk of 4 support gems but don't have to give up a life roll on your chestpiece. Now that's my kind of endgame weapon!


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The basic mechanics behind SRS mines:
allows for ridiculously fast mine placement - far faster than we could find on the passive tree. Plant one mine and it can be detonated twice within a time span of about one second. Faster mine placement also enables this squishy build to spend more time maneuvering and re-positioning, while still churning out dozens of angry flaming skulls.

"But Cha," you say, "Isn't detonating mines kind of a pain? How do?" Fear not, my friends. GGG's got you covered. Behold: a totem that detonates your mines for you. With zero cast speed from the tree or gear, the totem has a cast time of 0.08 seconds. The one catch is that the totem will not cast without a nearby monster to draw aggro.


Pros and Cons

Pros:
Hipster-friendly
Great in parties (Generosity - Haste - Hatred)
Great in parties (Vaal Haste - Increased Duration)
Did I mention it's great in parties? (huge sustained single-target DPS)
Engaging playstyle
No need for cast speed on tree/jewels/gear

Cons:
Absurdly high mana cost (this has yet to be resolved. Please help!)
Slow set-up time (clunky)
Requires lots of attention to detail
Very squishy (manual avoidance and positioning for survival)
Low gear ceiling (gets outshined by a +3 6L staff, doesn't have a ton of jewel sockets)
No cast speed (Flame Dash is slow compared to self-cast SRS)



The important mods to look for on your gear:
Life
Mana Regeneration
Mana
Chaos Resistance
Gloves with a prefix free
Corrupted Helm and Amulet with Minion Damage implicit (I'm not there yet)

The important mods to look for on your jewels:
Minion Damage
Life
Attributes (strength and dexterity)
Mine Laying Speed









Thanks for reading. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to stop by the stream (www.twitch.tv/cha_siu_bao) or post a reply here.

This build is still a work in progress. It cannot run a 6L properly; it uses the Reduced Mana gem instead of Added Fire. If you're interested/crazy enough to play this build, please share your results! I see OPness on the horizon but I don't think I can get there without more input.

Last but certainly not least, I'd like to thank all my friends for the massive contributions they made to helping me get this build up and running. Flababa, Gunshowers, Hyperbear, and PrutsendePrutser, for their boundless support and patience with my bullshit ideas; Karvarousku (www.twitch.tv/KarvarouskuGaming) for sharing his knowledge and experience with self-cast SRS; WizardStrangler for helping me field-test and optimize; and all the great people I've met through twitch.tv who threw out ideas that snowballed into full-on build defining mechanics.

awesome!

Finally you lazy bum did your guide. Gz.

RiceBuild

still 1/10 vaal ground slam get yelled at on stream m80

This build is dat bomb ass shit! love it!

How does SRS interract with "35% less Mine Damage" and increased mine damage from tree and jewels?

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voiza wrote:

How does SRS interract with "35% less Mine Damage" and increased mine damage from tree and jewels?

Multiplicatively :).

"

voiza wrote:

How does SRS interract with "35% less Mine Damage" and increased mine damage from tree and jewels?

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torand wrote:

"

voiza wrote:

How does SRS interract with "35% less Mine Damage" and increased mine damage from tree and jewels?

Multiplicatively :).

Mine cast a _spell_ that cast a minion, so therefore it doesn't affect at all. Neither does mine dmg.

This is the reason why spell damage or fire damage for example do not increase the dmg output of your SRS. It would apply to a _spell_ doing said damage, but since Summon Raging Spirit -skill is a spell, that summons a minion, only minion dmg in skill tree affects their raw damage.

"

voiza wrote:

How does SRS interract with "35% less Mine Damage" and increased mine damage from tree and jewels?

It doesn't interact at all. In fact, that's specifically why I chose SRS instead of a damage-dealing spell.

Functionally you can think of SRS as a spell that deals zero damage and then summons a minion. The minion deals damage that can be scaled only by minion damage.

EDIT: also, what Karva said but in different words. Redundant post of redundancy. :D

Nice Build™, John!