[3.7] MoM/Acro Toxic Rain Miner - Making it Rain in Style! Uber Elder Down!

Very little has changed for this build in 3.7. The nodes behind Mind over Matter got removed, but putting the passive points you would've put there into other mana clusters makes up most of the difference - there's a 100 mana net loss or so, but you get more regeneration to make up for it.

Additionally, some of the new jewels added with Legion look very promising - in particular, I've seen some good results with Glorious Vanity, but I'm still poking around to figure out what the best setup is. In the short-term, if you get a Glorious Vanity that grants you Ritual of Shadows without losing Acrobatics or Mind over Matter, take it and drop Withering Touch from your gem setup. Otherwise, stick to the build as written.

I gave up on trying to get any sort of decent quality videos, since my poor potato can't handle both playing this build and recording it at the same time without dropping the video quality through the floor. So, sorry about that, but it's as good as I can get it for now.

Saboteur Maze of the Minotaur Run

Saboteur Shaper Kill

Deathless Saboteur Uber Elder Kill

Deathless Ascendant Uber Elder Kill

Pros:
Gets going for relatively cheap
Lots of room for expansion with funds
Reasonable damage
Neat playstyle if you like mines
Great crowd control
Decent effective health pool with lots of regeneration
Capable of running most combinations of map mods on most maps
Hearing 50 plants explode a quarter-second apart sounds like popcorn

Cons:
Not so neat playstyle if you don't like mines
Being unable to pick targets can suck sometimes
Range can be somewhat limited compared to normal Toxic Rain builds
Can struggle a bit with no regen maps against particularly tough enemies (fuck you, Guardian of the Minotaur)

So I've played this build across a couple leagues, and have found that there are actually a couple variants worth running - one with Saboteur, and one with Ascendant. Here's a quick summary of the pros/cons of each:

Ascendant:
+ Cheaper/easier gearing
+ Faster clearing
+ Easier flask management
- Lower defenses
- Less bossing DPS

Saboteur:
+ Higher boss DPS
+ Much better defenses
+ Extra utility (Ignite immunity & mana cost reduction)
- Harder to gear
- Slightly slower clear

So, for those who are familiar with more advanced theorycrafting and just want to get rolling with the tree/gear I used, here's the Path of Building codes for my characters in their current not-so-budget state. I tried to not check too many bullshit boxes; everything there should be a reasonable representation of what the build can do with some money poured into it - both builds were run from the start up until this point, so it should still function even without the most expensive gear. Also, remember that the tooltip DPS will be low since most of the damage of this build comes from multipliers that aren't accounted for in the tooltip.

Saboteur:
https://pastebin.com/QiRBFRqU
Note that this version's gear is based on my 3.5 build, and does not have the Essence Worm I'd usually recommend for running Malevolence.

Ascendant:
https://pastebin.com/gndX577b

I realize I can be a bit wordy when it comes to guide-writing, so for everyone who just wants to know how this works, here's the short version.

The endgame tree is here. Don't be afraid to take extra INT/DEX nodes until you have the gear to meet the 500-stat barriers on Curtain Call; quests will give you more than enough respec points to cover that. Thief's Craft and Agility are your friends. Go for Clever Construction first, then path over to MoM, then down to Constitution, taking life nodes along the way. After that, start stacking into attributes and damage.

For bandits, kill 'em all.

For gear, the mandatory bits are Curtain Call, Astramentis, and Cyclopean Coil. These three in tandem, combined with a tree that branches heavily across the INT/DEX area, gets most of the attribute bonuses necessary to enable Curtain Call’s extra mines, which comes out to roughly 50% more DPS when compared to having a Shaped helmet. Additionally, a +levels or Vicious Projectiles (or ideally, both) bow is going to be very good for endgame DPS, get one if you can afford it. If not, Death’s Opus or Silverbough are workable substitutes, although they might struggle some against the late-game content. Gear is otherwise pretty standard stat-stacking stuff; if you’re lacking in one attribute or another due to having not finished the tree, make it up on gear. I can heartily recommend Shaper’s Touch and Loreweave if you can make up the resistance loss from those slots on the rest of your gear; if not, just use random rares. Rare chestpieces in particular can be very strong for very cheap on this build, since it’s likely you’ll be able to fit your main skill into just your bow and won't have to pay extra for a six-linked chestpiece. If you can afford the stat/resistance loss, I would also recommend getting an Essence Worm for use with Malevolence.

On pantheon, I tend to use Soul of the Brine King because I hate being CC'ed and Soul of Ralakesh/Ryslatha so I don't bleed as hard (or to fill up flasks in the Labyrinth.) Overall, just use whatever souls seem best for the situation, they're not exactly the most impactful things anyways.

The main gem setup is Toxic Rain/Remote Mine/Vicious Projectiles/Withering Touch/Void Manipulation/Trap and Mine Damage Support. Switch one of the last to supports to Empower if you have a bow with +levels on it. If you can afford it, this build does benefit greatly from Malevolence in an Essence Worm, but otherwise everything else is utility. I've switched between the usual CWDT/Immortal Call/Increased Duration for safety (with a Detonate Mines thrown in for if you get stunned and can’t detonate your stuff), Blink Arrow and Phase Run linked to Faster Attacks and Increased Duration for mobility and distraction, a Detonate Mines/Spell Totem setup for when you feel like being lazy and not detonating mines manually, a Vaal Blight setup for extra damage, a CWDT/Curse on Hit/Storm Brand/Despair setup for automated cursing, and Smoke Mine/Increased Duration for even more mobility. Pick a few of these setups and use them to fill your extra gem slots; or just use those slots to level gems for fat stacks of cash. Up to you, really.

So. Why did I choose to build this way, and why did I handle gear the way I did?

First and foremost, I started with wanting to build something with Curtain Call. In particular, I wanted to do something with bows, since mines do a great job with bows that have a lower IAS. After browsing around a bit, I looked at Toxic Rain and thought “hey, that looks like fun, let’s try that.” Everything between then and now has been slight tweaks and evolution of the build to get it to where it is.

Now, as for the gear, I just picked up a random +2/Vicious Projectiles bow and 6Led it. A +3 without Vicious Projectiles works too, but is around 17% less damage overall.

One last couple notes on gear: get mine laying speed on all your jewels. Every last one. Curtain Call lets you get away with much faster minelaying than you would be able to handle with just Saboteur, so take advantage of that.

Get a Curtain Call, Astramentis, and Cyclopean Coil. Slap the first 2 on as soon as you can, then the third when you hit the necessary level. The better the rolls on these, the easier your life will be.

Otherwise, getting attributes on gear makes your tree easier to build and vice versa. So long as you hit 500 INT and DEX at the end of the day, you’re fine. If you can afford it, Loreweave and Shaper’s Touch bring great defenses to the table, but rares to help cover res, attributes, and life are just fine too. I like getting most of the attributes on my jewels, along with life and mine laying speed, because the damage/utility boost is still great while the jewels themselves are relatively cheap.

A lot of your damage will come from a few affixes on your bow; +level to gems and the Vicious Projectiles Elder mod will both offer oodles of damage. Get either of them ASAP - the Vicious Projectile bow will probably be cheaper, but a well-crafted Synthesized bow will beat it in the absolute endgame. Otherwise, go for as many additional arrows as you can get without using support gems (that means picking them up on your quiver) and have fun.

Helmet: Curtain Call. Get the best roll you can, it’s probably cheap. With this particular building method, there’s no replacement – it gives a buncha damage and utility.

Amulet: Astramentis. Same reasoning as Curtain Call, enabling it and giving a fair amount of life, mana, and Strength so that you don't need to ever grab strength anywhere.

Belt: Cyclopean Coil. Damage for the massive STR we get from Astramentis? Yes please. You can also use a well-rolled Stygian Vise and make up the attributes on the rest of your gear, but that’s probably going to be far more expensive than it’s worth. Also, Cyc Coil makes you immune to freeze, which is amazing.

Bow: For starters, use Death’s Harp or Death’s Opus with Toxic Rain in your chestpiece until you can afford a 6L bow. Then, abuse fossilcrafting to get +2 or 3 to bow gems on that sucker – this build doesn’t care about too much else at this point, although attack speed and proj speed are both nice for Blink Arrow if you get them, and DEX is a godsend for covering that 500 requirement. From there, your best upgrades are going to be Elder bows with some combination of the Vicious Projectiles support and +levels to bow gems. Even just a +1 6-link with the VP support is going to handily outdo a +3 bow. If you want to spend a lot of money, get a +3 6-link with the VP support and some of the fossil mods; +1 to DEX gems would be very, very good. After that, you can start looking at synthesized bows - +1 to all support gems is the big winner here, but in order to beat a level 20 VP you're going to need other implicit modifiers with that. Look for an extra arrow or +levels implicits - +level to supports works just fine, since at that point you should be able to afford a level 3 Empower.

Quiver: +1 arrow is a great damage boost if you can afford it. Otherwise, aim for at least 30 DEX, then resistances and life. Hyrri’s Bite is a very solid quiver for the earlier stages of this build, but lacks life that you’ll want later on, so don’t get too attached.

Body Armor: A solid rare will take you a long way – don’t bother with a 6L once you have a 6Led bow for your Toxic Rain, since not bothering with links makes your options much, much cheaper. Aim for res, then whatever attributes you’re lacking for Curtain Calls’ requirements, then life. You can usually get a whole bunch of all three for well under 10c. Alternatively, if you can afford the res loss, life loss, and hefty pile of currency, Loreweave offers attributes and some very nice elemental defenses – and if you just want damage, Cherrubim’s Maleficence offers a lot of that at the cost of res and attributes.

Rings: Your main source of res and attributes if you need them. Aim for whatever attributes you need to fill, then res, then life, then utility stats like attack speed or chaos damage. If you can afford the slot loss, grab an Essence Worm and a Malevolence gem and enjoy the extra damage and duration.

Gloves: Basically the same as rings but they don’t come with implicit resistances. If you can afford to cover res with the rest of your gear, Shaper’s Touch offers a very beefy chunk of effective health that more than makes up for the loss of res on the slot. One final note on gloves: there's a corruption for cursing enemies with level 12 Despair on hit. This is very useful, since it lets you drop 2 gems in one of your support setups in exchange for more utility; and this corruption in particular is pretty easy to find on Shaper's Touch, so if you're using those try to buy one with that corruption if you can.

Boots: I generally buy these last. Fill whatever resistances you need, get at least 25% movement speed, and then try to snag as much life as you can afford. You shouldn’t be aiming to fill attributes with your boots slot unless you’re in a really desperate situation or found some really nice rings that just barely don’t cover that 500 requirement.

Here’s the endgame Saboteur tree, and here's the endgame Ascendant tree.

For Saboteur, go out through the DoT stuff over to Clever Construction, then up the path to Volatile Mines, taking life nodes as is necessary. From there, go back to the DEX side of the tree and pick up Acro + Phase Acro, the jewel socket, and Herbalism. At this point, if you have an Astramentis and some DEX on your gear, you can start to shoot for the 500 DEX threshold and get an extra mine from Curtain Call by taking Alacrity and using DEX-heavy jewels. If you don’t, no sweat, you’ll probably hit that threshold when you slap on the Cyclopean Coil a few levels down the line anyways. From there, head through Witch, take MoM and go up to Cruel Preparation, then dive down into Constitution. Only after you have Constitution do you really need any more damage nodes than the simple mine ones that get picked up early on; and since there’s not much else to do with your points, go get Potency of Will, Heavy Draw, and Destructive Apparatus in that order.

For your Ascendancy, take the mine nodes first, then Pyromaniac, then Born in the Shadows. You can swap one of those latter two for Explosives Expert if you really have a hankering for damage, but I prefer the heavy defensive nodes to the general utility of Explosives Expert.

For Ascendant, things are a bit trickier. You'll want to first go take Constitution to prevent yourself from dying, then start the long journey up through Witch until you hit Volatile Mines, then head down to grab Clever Construction. All along this path, take life as necessary to keep yourself from keeling over. After that, head down to Destructive Apparatus; at this point, you'll probably be close to having enough INT for the extra Curtain Call mine, so aim for INT-heavy jewels and maybe allocate a few extra points in the Shadow area to INT that you can respec later. After that, head to Acro, then Mind over Matter, then start grabbing the rest of the damage and utility nodes.

For your Ascendancy, aim for Saboteur first, then Pathfinder and Path of the Ranger. There is no shame in spending your Normal ascendancy entirely on stat points to help with Curtain Call's thresholds.

Oh, and one final note about leveling: don’t be afraid to take temporary +10 dex/int nodes to hit the Curtain Call thresholds. If you’re close enough, it’s worth it, and you’ll have more than enough respec points thanks to quests to get rid of those extra nodes when you have better gear or a more expansive tree. Hell, you can even make improvements to the current tree if you can afford spectacular gear – there’s a few points to be gained by cutting superfluous +10 dex and int nodes that are scattered around the place that could go into more damage, jewels, life, or all three.

In terms of the actual process, if you can afford gear to level with, I'd pick up a Silverbranch, Tabula, Death's Harp, and Death's Opus along with the required Curtain Call, Astramentis, and Cyclopean Coil.

Use Silverbranch with Caustic Arrow up to level 12 with like... Void Manipulation, I guess.

At 12, throw Toxic Rain with Remote Mine and Minefield into your Silverbranch. Use that until 31, where you can swap to Death's Harp + Tabula; at that point you should also have access to a bunch of support gems that are good for Toxic Rain's DoT to go along with it + Remote Mine + Minefield in the Tabula, and Harp's +1 arrow gives you a pretty nice overall coverage and damage boost.

At 20, put on Astramentis and Curtain Call. The build might feel a bit slower at first, but you'll get used to it, and it'll pick up much faster as you go on.

Swap Harp for Opus at whatever level that comes in. Drop Minefield for a different damage support when you have enough INT or DEX to get an extra mine from Curtain Call - when I leveled this build, this happened in the mid-level 40s, but I was heavily prioritizing attribute gear so for you it might not hit until the mid-50s or even after Cyclopean Coil. Speaking of, put Cyclopean Coil on at level 68; and then this setup should carry you through earlier maps as well as up to Merciless Lab.

Use those earlier maps to farm up currency to buy a 6L bow with at least an itemlevel of 64, then abuse fossilcrafting to turn it into a +levels 6L bow. Then use that to farm up more currency for a +1 arrow quiver - there are some fossilcrafting methods to try and get those, but they're not as reliable as the +3 method in my experience. From this point on, you can probably handle Shaper with little issue, and put in a solid attempt at Uber Elder.

All gems are listed in order of importance.

For damage:
Toxic Rain/Remote Mine/Vicious Projectiles/Withering Touch/Void Manipulation/Trap and Mine Damage/Swift Affliction. Substitute Empower for the lowest-ranked gem if you have a +1 all-gems bow

The rest of these setups are optional; pick whichever ones seem to suit your playstyle best.

For utility:
Low-level Cast when Damage Taken/Low-level Storm Brand/Curse on Hit/Despair/Culling Strike, or Cast when Damage Taken/Storm Brand/Culling Strike/Item Rarity/Increased Area of Effect if you have Despair Curse on Hit gloves.
This should pop on bosses whenever you need it. Swap Despair for Enfeeble if you’re more fond of not dying than you are of making other things die.

For movement/utility:
Blink Arrow/Faster Attacks/Phase Run/Increased Duration
Blink Arrow to cross gaps and move short distances quickly, Phase Run for longer distances.

For survivability:
Level 1 Immortal Call/Level 1 Cast when Damage Taken/Increased Duration/Detonate Mines
The Detonate Mines here is just so you’ll get the occasional detonate when you get stunned and can't detonate on your own. It's saved my ass more than I expected it to.

For more utility:
High-level CwDT/Vaal Cold Snap/Bonechill.
Cold Snap gives you some charges while clearing and slows down bosses. You can even pop the Vaal version yourself to get extra chill on enemies in dire situations.

For extra damage/CC:
Vaal Blight/Increased Duration
Vaal Blight makes enemies take some extra chaos damage and slows them significantly. This is highly effective against certain enemies; Guardian of the Phoenix in particular is an absolute joke with Vaal Blight, chill from Vaal Cold Snap, and the natural slow from Toxic Rain.

For extra mobility:
Smoke Mine/Increased Duration
Smoke Mine gives an extra 30% increased movement speed for a long time with very little investment. The one downside is that it can be a bit finicky to activate in rough situations, but overall it's great for getting around.

The bow and Dying Sun are really, really nice and really, really unnecessary if you’re a better player – I had a few close calls with just a +3 bow and a second quicksilver that I would have won if I had some more practice.

Because I spent even more on this build and found some new things to add.

Because I like spending ludicrous amounts of cash on Synthesizing gear.

"But Theros," I hear the cries in the distance, "what if I want to spend unholy truckloads of cash? What if I want to see this build go as far as it can?”

Well let's talk about that. The first and most obvious upgrade would be to get the most godly 6L bow in existence - synthesized with +level to all gems, +level to support gems, and an additional arrow. I'm fairly sure no bows like this currently exist, but if you have enough money you could probably change that.

Oh, and there's enchants. If you can get a Toxic Rain damage or additional shot enchant on your Curtain Call, first off I’m phenomenally jealous and will liquidate half my organs to buy it from you. But if you really want to keep it instead, it’ll do a good job of powering this build up by a fair margin. Otherwise, enchants are pretty much worthless – some minor enchants for the utility setups can be nice, but they don’t do very much overall so it’s not worth spending on them.

If you're running Saboteur, the listed gear and tree don't have space for Malevolence in an Essence Worm, because that version of the build is one I ran in 3.5 and haven't managed to test gearing in 3.6 yet. However, if you have fucktons of cash, you could probably afford to make the space for an Essence Worm and put extra resistances on the rest of your gear.

There’s also always room for improvements on gear as well; if I could squeeze out just a little more DEX, INT, and resistance on my gear, I’d have the tree look something like this instead, but alas, I blew too much of my money practicing Uber Elder, so I can’t.

For the HC folks, you'll want to modify the tree to have more life at the very least, pushing the endgame tree into something like what I showed in the previous paragraph – you’ll also have a much higher bar for what sort of gear will and will not work, since you’ll want more life overall. I haven't tested it, and I'm not sure if it'll handle uber as well as its SC counterpart, but it's got substantially more survivability built in in exchange for pushing much of the attribute requirements onto the rest of your gear.

4/1/19 - removed all mention to Concentrated Effect that I could find, since it's technically not that much damage and decreases clearspeed. Added Ascendant version, discussion of Malevolence, and tweaked some phrasing for changes made in 3.5 and 3.6.
10/24/18 - switched Trap and Mine Damage for Withering Touch, since it's more damage with no downside. Improved gear and added a current gear section, added more description to leveling section. Added Minotaur video too.
10/5/18 - added Uber Elder kill
10/4/18 - added Shaper kill
10/2/18 - published guide