[2.2] Playing a spider.

The concept is simple enough, we take on the role of the spider, our build drawing on the strategies of one of natures most successful predators. Focus will be on delivering chaos damage both directly and in the form of degen as we suck the vital essence from our prey. Another focus will be managing our movement, we must be both fast and in direct control of where we are in relation to the prey, for even the smallest prey item could fatally wound us, given the chance.

This build is at a midway in terms of cost but offers access (not necessarily completion) to every aspect of the standard game. However, in order to emulate the tactics of the spider the tree requires some minor spreading and investment in int and dex that combine with the spreading to some what lock you out of the greatness of being the apex predator, but your resourcefulness combined with no particular abuse of higher level meta means you will likely be able to enjoy this build through many many patches like I have, ever watching from the safety of your web.

First we cover our choice of weapon, taking a page from the Mygalomorphic spider, we take up the axe.
Don't look at me like that, there's a league on, go grab one of those good ol league deals.
Ideal, this weapon offers awesome damage and bleed, bleed is a spiders best friend. The gem set up is a fairly standard cyclone set up and fortify is great both for not dying and it's extended period of duration after striking an opponent either makes the traps of the labyrinth less dangerous or at least makes me feel like I'm taking less damage.

Now we get a little more generic, we take up the venom that makes us famous, except for Uloboridae.
This is a multiple step set up for optimal emulation of the spider and will make apparent the reason why we start as a marauder.

These represent the "dry" bite, we don't truly envenomate with these bad boys but we remind the prey that what we are capable of. Also not instantly dying whenever the game reminds you about it's various chaos based mechanics is a nice side benefit.
Oh but this is the central mechanic of the emulation, this is when we hunt!

This is also why we play the berserker. You're expected to take cloaked in savagery to make use of this item to it's fullest, but you're also expected to keep a modest health pool to increase your likely hood of pulling this off. When you take a savage strike, you not only get a nice damage bonus, you also take on an impressive 100% damage leech. While current leech mechanics make this nearly useless in actual combat, when it interacts with this belt you get a "wet" bite.
Your prey is stricken with a deadly venom! Believe me, even when struck down, the venom will kill all but the hardiest opponent.

Once again we take advice from the Mygalomorphic side of spider life style, and coat ourselves in a loose layer of irritating hairs!

Not only will the additional strength offered give you a nice little damage and health boost but the intelligence and dexterity will allow you to make use of several other strategies vital to taking up the mantle of the spider. As we will need to close in on the prey to bite, the degen aura will help us push through the high regens we might encounter in pvp as well as add a nice dps boost.

Finally, we move to the most famous of spiders, Araneomorphae and from there, we focus in on the Scytodidae!

Now it should be painfully obvious what is expected here, but I'll say it anyway. Caustic arrow.
This is important because I suspect that while poison bear traps would be more accurate to the spitting spiders actual tactic, it would experience a lot less cross over with our melee tactics and ultimately be less effective in the long run. You see, we'll be making use of degen, area damage buffs and chaos damage buffs, which will also buff our poison arrow degen! Drillneck gives poison arrow a massive degen damage buff if you have a pierce gem socketed.

In terms of other gear, it's fairly up in the air. Spiders are very varied in the tactics they take when hunting and this build has a sort of jack of all trades master of none vibe to it, making it a sort of skeleton for building your own tactics onto (assuming those tactics are derived from the spider). Personally I favor the following items.

This allows for run down hunting tactics that can be found in the Sparassidae, the gladiators of the spider world while not sacrificing resists or leaving you overly open to being bled (okay, that's more a Limulidae thing but they are Chelicerates!). The combination of the retch and bloodgrip also gives you immense flexibility with your pots, PVE generally encourages me to take health pots where as in pvp I tend to hold onto dps pots to go with the idea of have limited venom reserves and encouraging you to take proper resource management into account.
In terms of optimal enchants, helm should have cyclone damage (good luck with that), boots should be movement speed unless recently struck and the important enchant will be spite on gloves, this will be our glued web for catching prey!

Now for the nitty gritty!

For bandits you'll want oak for normal, this is the standard procedure for melee. From there on it's up to you, I went with attack speed in cruel and passive point in merciless (you will have charges but they won't be that in focus).

Gem combos are integral, skills are how you interact with the environment and this is where it becomes important to think about how a spider would interact with Wraeclast when using only your movement speed and skill gems. Cyclone doesn't immediately jump to mind, but I ask you, how does Carparachne aureoflava escape the horror of parasitic wasp infection!? That's right! BY SPINNING! This is KEY to your success, you need to be constantly trying to draw blood from your opponent both for harmful letting and for sustenance! By spinning you can maul your prey whilst keeping on the move and avoiding taking more damage then you can sustain.
Next we think about how we maximize damage, both raw and degen.
Vengeance is currently sitting in our chest as a potential six link (almost halfway to buying it from vorici), ready to strike like the great Mygalomorphic spider. We link it up with melee damage, aoe and concentrated effect. This gives us raw damage. Next we added endurance charge on stun which we can swap out for added fire damage in pvp (you're almost certainly not going to stun someone in pvp with this build) and bloodlust as you'll be layering bleed on with cyclone.
Like wise we set up a four link with blasphemy, enchant, enlighten. This will be our spider sensory array (as we'll have taken bloodmagic, we'll be limited to one curse aura at a time).
Vulnerability is our hunger! We bite hard, our venom burns and dissolves with vigor!
Enfeeble is our wary nature, we are vulnerable at all times and we must be prepared to minimize damage to ourself by autonomising a limb rather then our head!
Temporal is the beautiful nature belying our bristly body! For every little movement our opponent makes creates air pressure differentials and our hairs pick up on these! We cannot be surprised by the movements of the prey or the predator!
It is clunky having to swap these out in a four link, but ideally we will roll three blues and two greens on our 6L oath and make it a matter of pressing a button.
Ultimately, you want to roll a 5 off colour oath so you can have all three curses a buttons push away with the addition of empower to maximize their effects.
In one of our remaining two four links we place a nice lightning warp (so you don't need two movement skills when swapping between offhand and primary, also kinda looks like you've ascended a strand of web only to descend somewhere else), less duration, faster casting and portal (your proverbial trap door).
Finally we take the classic cast on damage taken with immortal call, bloodrage and increased duration. I'll leave it to personal choice on which levels you want for this and you'll want a phaserun to replace bloodrage when you start really needing that regen you loose to bloodrage.

Now for the web, our base of operations

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAECAASzBS0LYQxfDc0OPBNME8kUIBRNFHEW6RfhGJEaOBo-GlUcpxzOJDclvCb4Jy8pLitQLlMwdzboOlI8BTwtPfxFqUZpR35OMlBHU6VYY1nzWf5an18_X9BhIWRSZU1lp2ZUZrZoZWjyah5qO3IPcql07XasfLh82X31ggeDX4PMhNmE74ZghymHapBVkGyUb5hXogCpJ6mUrKqtja5Qr2yvp7c-vJ-9Nr6nvwjAZsGjxBXEWMT2xq7G2M9-0iHTb9i92XzawdtP37_gw-Jh5FHqGO8O73zwH_Iv8kHyRfPd9kj3Mvhf-Ov8S_4K_lT-aw==?accountName=Alpha_Dragon&characterName=Mygalomorphae

This may look like a horrid mess of strands collecting dust and fly husks,
but,
it,
works (this build is largely unchanged since torment league, passive tree changes aside).
You see, buy having a good portion of your resists sequestered on the passive tree, you open up the item slots you need for thematically important items like mings and the retch as well as nice bonuses like bloodgrip. It's true, you won't be tackling the core any time soon, but it can defeat the regular Atziri and higher tier maps once you adapt to the concept of moving around attacks. A similar method can be applied to pvp, pick your fights and you'll have that lovely imperial garden to string your home up in.

For your ascent, you will want to take the path to cloaked in savagery, this is key to your wet bite. For your last two points take crave the slaughter, this helps establish the mentality, when you're not feeding you're on the move.

Jewels are also very important to the build as their interchangeable nature allows you to lean towards different tactics you favor as you play the build out and begin to find your niche.
At the moment I'm running four jewels covering health (of course), area damage, degen damage, chaos damage and resists. Note the aforementioned cross over between a chaos cyclone and caustic arrow build, allowing for in the field flexibility.

Another thing you might consider doing is taking a lesson from the most successful of all the spiders, Salticidae. Take up a couple of Fidelitas' spikes and swap out one or two of your more arrow focused jewels with attack speed jewels and set up Whirling blades with enchant and attack speed you can navigate the more dangerous settings of Wraeclast, particularly handy with Atziri's flameblast (or make friends in arena, up to you really... just don't forget Agelena consociata, even spiders believe in teamwork!).