Tanky Trickster. Is There Any Point?

I've been trying to come up with a tanky Trickster build that takes advantage of the Trickster's defensive skills: Ghost Dance and Shade Form. However, I can't come up with anything more than mediocre. They try to make you want to do an Energy Shield/Evasion build, but then they give you dodge bonuses which are only worth a damn in an Acrobatics build, in which case Energy Shield is worthless. That's on top of the fact that it's so difficult to gear for an energy shield/evasion build, and that energy shield without ghost reaver is near-impossible to regen in the middle of a fight. But then a Ghost Reaver build wants pure energy shield, and gets nothing from the More Evasion Chance perk.

Shade Form's +20% More Evasion Chance perk is huge, so I figured it might be worthwhile to ignore energy shield and just go evasion, but even so it seems much worse compared to what I could have with another build, like Aegis Aurora.

Is there any build that can make these passives worthwhile for a tank, or is this just intended as a way to give a little bit more tankiness to DPS builds that for whatever reason didn't go assassin?

Dodge gets twice as good with acrobatics. ES gets twice as good without acrobatics. these bonusses are valuable whether you go with acro or not. I mean, don't you want 250/2 ES on top of everything else these nodes provide? (500 dodge + 20% more eva?? + 20% AS ??? and ES on top). The weakness of dodge/eva build is having to go with high EHP pool so you survive this random powerful crit. 125 ES surely help there. This is not mediocre at all.

Alternatively, go with ES/evasion, maybe even CI, why not. Evasion aura + Ghost Dance + Shade Form will make you take much less damage overall, and you will have massive ES pool to tank occasional hits.

Can't really say how/if it compares to aurora. Aurora is not used with acro. Aurora doesn't provide AS bonus. You are supposed to heal with potions / Vaal pact when going dodge/eva, rather than random ES gain on block.

One more thing, Aurora is expensive, while things like set +500 eva +250ES work regardless of your items. It means they are much more valuable on budget builds, and their value diminish as you get better gear (although these ones are good even with top gear). Trickster is perfect for budget tanks ;)

I've also been theorycrafting a build for trickster. I feel like this class bolsters defensive options for the shadow considerably. The node that jumps out to me the most is Weave the Arcane. This alone makes Mind over Matter incredible. The second set is Ghost Dance and Shade form. At first, these feel unintuitive together, as Acrobatics inherently has anti synergy with ES builds. If we consider Eldritch Battery however, these two nodes look much more manageable due to the fact that we can dictate ES levels.

Example of the synergy:


That all said i made a generic crit spell tree focusing on Life/Mana. Our BiS weapon would be Pledge of Hands, as it gives us more mana, a pseudo 7-link and spell damage. Since this staff is BiS, we can elect to take the efficient staff crit nodes near the templar start.

Here's the first draft of the tree


So we have 3 forms of defense, Evasion, Dodge, and MoM.

Items considered would be Pledge of Hands, Hyrri's Ire(high Eva + Dodge), Cloak of Defiance(save 1 point from tree), Atziri's Step, Voidbringers, Bated Breath, Maybe Call of the Brotherhood. The rest would be Rare Flat Life/Mana/Resi/Eva gear.

If i went Crit Arc i'd elect to take Call of the Brotherhood so i can Freeze/shock and utilize hypothermia. Also i might take Storm Weaver in the tree. I'm really not sure what spell would be best honestly, just one that scales well with crits (maybe even ball lightning?).

With Hyrri's and Atziri's step, our dodge is 55/58 (ghost dance gives us 5/5). Couple this with high Evasion and Mind over matter EHP, i believe we'd have one tanky trickster.

Auras would be Clarity + Arctic Armour + Herald of Ice curse on hit Assassin's Mark

i guess links would be <Lightning spell of choice> + Faster Casting + Hypothermia(with call of the brotherhood) + Power Charge on Crit + Life Leech + Slower Proj/ Empower

Tree for call of the brotherhood lightning spells

Hey mate

As soon as I saw trickster I knew it was for me. I'm level 94 and already have max chance to crit with high enough DPS.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1505925

This will provide me with the extra 1000 ES I badly need and it will also provide me with mana-free whirling blades and up to 40% increased attack speed at times.

I can't seem to get high enough ES and my goal after 93 was all about getting more defence, so this was more than welcome.

I currently have 11% chance to evade which isn't much as I have 0 gear with evasion. I'm not concerned with the evasion part of the tree, however useful it may be for some.

Trickster all the way!

So i was also theory crafting a build for the trickster and I think i'm going to path down to IR as a LA build. Probably won't be able to get past level 80 content without great gear but i still enjoy these types of builds.

you get 4 extra frenzy charges from the tree (3) regular tree, (1) ascendancy, plus I'll take the frenzy charge from the bandits, and hopefully can get myself a pair of +1 frenzy boots which will give you a huge boast to evasion which is then morphed to armor with IR. The 500+ ev given to us from the ascendancy tree is huge.

http://poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwYBAF4DHgUtBbUGIwceCC4NjQ5IES8RlhR1Fr8Y2xmOGdcZ_hsBG60fQSFgI_YmlSmlKwoshTIBMpQ2PT7PQKBEnka3SVFKfU2SUUdTu1T-VUtVhVoaW69d8mHiYetirGegaoxsjHTtdPF1_XpTeu97FH11fwKEb4d2jX2Nv5OVlLiVBZUumyabjZ2qotmjiqXLpuCn1K0zsNiyGbTFtUi7473mwuzEosgUz3rTb9N-1ELZxuOf6NbrY-2D7g7w1fVv-WP8xf66_sg=

good luck theory crafting!

I guess, based on this new Ascendancy subclass, that Acrobatis will be less severe to ES shield. I think that the "Less 50% energy shield" will be changed, maybe values between 25/30%.

Maybe the new Acrobatics can be:

30% Chance to Dodge Attacks, 30% Less block spells, block attacks, energy shield and armour.

I'm building a low life evasion incinerator around the trickster

MoM with 2500 mana easy, using incinerate to recover mana quickly, 10% of 2500 with about 900 unreserved is awesome

Grace, anger, discipline, haste

consuming dark, shavs, high es/eva helm, es shield, lioneyes boots (skyforth would be OP)

seems super tanky with still decent dps

i don't think its that bad ci/eva is not 2 hard you sacrifice es on chest,since you get +250 from trickster; get like 500es/500eva for a few c. shield expected medium shield would be like 400eva/250es also a few c in the current league, ideal is like 400 on each
as for build you can play ci/es pretty nicely with daggers

hmcg020 is right +500 flat eva is real nice since its like having a second shield
EDIT* forgot to include % stats from trickster now included


these ofc can be modified for more aoe and more gems or for better gear but they serve as a nice baseline for a trickster build


also pm me if any one comes up with a decent elementalist tree that enables burning discharge enabled by elemental conflux(takes care of shocking and ignition)

Hey guys, I was planning to play a Trickster CI tank with max leech and claw, dunno what skill I'll use for now, maybe wild strike cause I like it, dunno what build three I'll go for for now, but I love the idea of tanky CI claw :) I would maybe try hybrid claw too.

we'll see !

I came up with the same idea. Check out my build: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1631253

I am clearing maps easy and experience it as very effective and high defensive