[3.3] Whispering Ice Trap Sabo w/ Mask of the Stitched Demon, Slavedriver's : 1600+ int, 7.8k+ life

INTRO

This is a quick guide on the build I've been working on that uses The whispering Ice staff and two new uniques which are the Mask of the Stitched Demon and Slavedriver's hand. This build can get insane single target damage as well as tons of life (7.8k+) by stacking intelligence (over 1600 intelligence). It easily clear the content that I have reached (Uber lab, T14 maps) and I will update when I get further into harder bosse.

VIDEO OF T11 MAP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1af2_awLY&feature=youtu.be

Excuse the poor FPS, will explain later in the guide. Also character is only level 85.

GENERAL INFO/MECHANICS

We stack tons of intelligence through different uniques and the passive tree to acheive very high damage with Whispering Ice traps while getting an absurd amount of life at the same time with Mask of the Stitched Demon. This helm grants us around 2.5k life by itself!

We also get around 1.7k ES, which provides us with a free 3% life regen. Paired with Vitality, the Slavedriver gloves and the newly removed cooldown on Trap support, we can easily spam our traps to get nice clearspeed and insane single target damage (Since I am poor I haven't had the chance to do the endgame bosses, but T13-T14 melt easily. However this build is really well suited for immobile bosses as you can stack many Icestorms on them, and it struggles a bit against very mobile bosses.

Since we are using many uniques to give more intelligence through %increased attributes and with Perandus Signet, we have very little gear slots to fill our resistances. But since our traps have Blood Magic, we can use Purity of elements to cap our resistances.
BANDIT:
I killed them all for the two points but you can save Alira to make your res capping easier.

The items used for this build are pretty cheap. Astramentis, Slavedrivers and Perandus Signet will cost you maximum 20c each, and the rest is pretty much negligeable. The most annoying and expensive thing you will have to do is coloring your Whispering Ice staff. Mine has 5G1B which cost me around 150 chaos to get, but you can also use 4G2B by switching Hypothermia for Controlled Destruction. I suggest using Vorici technique to get 4 green, then craft 6 sockets until you get 2 additionnal blue (I got 1G1B before I got 2B so I kept it).

One thing that might sound silly is that this build is really hard to run smoothly. Unless you have a great computer your frames will probably drop under 30fps. I cannot record footage because with my GTX960 and i5 processor I sometimes dip below 10. This is one of the main reasons I don'T want to push this build to lvl 100 because your frames can drop significantly.

PROS AND CONS

Pros
- Insane single target damage
- Very tanky : High life pool (7,5k easily achievable, 8k life with good rares), lots of life regen, blind from Saboteur
- Relatively cheap

Cons
- Annoying to color the staff
- Using a staff = relatively bad movement options
- VERY difficult to run on an average PC, do not recommend this build on older PCs
- Clearspeed is pretty bad (traps + wait time on icestorm creates a lot of down time)


GEAR



Can't link the Jewels for some reason, they are in the full PoB pastebin.
- x2 Brute Force Solution
- x4 Fertile Mind
- x2 rare jewels, at least one with %all res

FULL POB SKILL TREE/BUILD

https://pastebin.com/F0HFa6Nm

Notes:
I decided to use Explosives Expert instead of Pyromaniac because a lot of the benefits from Pyromaniac we already have beause of our gear. Otherwise you want to get the most intelligence possible because it grants us lots of damage and life. I like a silver flask and a lightning golem because it increases our trap throwing speed through Slavedrivers and makes our Lightning warp faster.

Whe have a whole bunch of skills that only boost our damage against bosses. Orb of storms with Curse on Hit Frostbites procs Elemental Overload and curses ennemies. This setup increases your damage significantly and is fast to use so I suggest using it on pretty much every boss. Bear trap, and Frostbomb are great for bosses that have a long startup animation like Izaro and very hard bosses. Decoy totem is great for really dangerous bosses so you can thwo traps safely.


LEVELING

Leveling with traps is really smooth now, get Explosive traps until merveil cavern when you can get a 3-Link Arc, Trap, Multiple Traps which will carry you a long way. This build is also nice beacause you can equip most of your endgame gear (except Cyclopean Coil and maybe your two rares) at level 59, so you can start your actual build earlier.


COMMENTS ON LINKS/TREE/GEAR

My gear and links are not optimal. This is my first attribute stacking build so my tree might need some rerouting. Also I would add an Arctic armour + Enlighten for more defense. Kaom's chest would also be a great choice for the cheest piece. My resistances are also not balanced to use the Wise Oak flask which would really bosst our damage. Finally, my gems are not fully levelled yet which would help to do a little more damage.

CONCLUSION

While this build is not the best out there, it manages to use two of the new uniques and the updated trap mechanic to get a high damage and tankiness boss killer. If you have any questions you can post them in the comments. Thank you and enjoy!

Cool build you got any gameplay vids?

I will try recording one but especially when recording my frames will be terrible haha

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HarkYonderHeathens wrote:

Cool build you got any gameplay vids?

Video added!

I'm playing basicly the same build, but going heavier into int, for the life and damage it gives. And Coldpen is just a ridicilius extra cost to try and get so many green sockets, controlled destruction and elemental focus works just fine, the chilled ground makes sure that hypothermia Always works. So really you only need 3 green.
I'm on My phone now, so can't really check your tree atm, but I'll look it over when I am back home.