[3.17] Reap/Exsang mine Saboteur. | League Starter | | Great Bosser | low budget

1. Why reap? Why Mines?
2. Strengths/weaknesses
3. Basics
4. Skillgems
5. Gear
6. Skill Tree/PoB
7. Leveling
8. Tips and Tricks
9. Boss Video links

What inspired me to make this build were two main things:

1. in 3.17 they buffed selfcast spells by buffing their numbers but also nerfing trigger supports, such as mines, traps, cast on crit etc to compensate.

However, the buffs scale exponentially the higher your skill level, which means, if you can go above gem level 20 you'll "outscale" the compensation nerfs more and more, and since physical spells are the easiest to get super high thanks to Cold Iron Points, I went with Reap/Exsang

2.

The other reason is, that Minefield Support Received a substantial buff to its throwing speed penalty, which means, that with a small investment into throwing speed, you can get it to super comfortable levels, making it a very powerful multiplier

Single target damage 10/10

Clearspeed with gemswap to Exsanguinate 8/10

Clearspeed with no gemswap 6/10

Tankiness 7/10

Sustain 7/10

The builds biggest strength is obviously in its bossing, it can delete bosses very fast even in crap gear, it's also relatively good at tanking bosses thanks to 100% spell suppression, decent sustain, and high evasion.

Since Reap cost life, you can also reserve most of your mana, which other mine builds cannot do, and the high regen you have basically counteracts the life reservation costs.

The weakpoints of the build are: pretty much no physical damage mitigation, and very poor damage over time mitigation, both of which can be helped with some retooling (like using Determination+armour flask for phys dmg, and taking the Lethe Shade keystone for dots)

The Clearspeed is actually insanely good if you gemswap exsanguinate, you can also forgo some utility links and run a 4-5 link exsang in your gloves/helm, or you can just run with reap as your clearskill as well, it's perfectly fine.

you can run basically any mapmod, however reduced life recovery and noregen can be a big pain to run(but not impossible) so if you can, skip them.

However, the build takes quite a bit of micromanagement to maximize for bossing, and the mine playstyle is not for everyone, so be cautious before you jump in (more info in the next point)

So basically Reap is a physical spell that's cast on an area and deals damage in a circle, and also applies a damage over time debuff to targets hit. we largely ignore the damage over time debuff (altough it does help trigger on kill effects, since enemies that die from damage over time counts as your kills, and not as your mine's).

It has an extra mechanic in the blood charges.

Every time you cast reap (and hit with it) you gain a blood charge, stacking up to 5 which gives reap 15% more damage per charge (so 75% more damage total when at 5 stacks). But you lose 1 charge every time you kill an enemy.

Now 75% more damage is amazing for single target, HOWEVER, the issue is that if you use the skill with mines, you won't get blood charges, since technically you're not the one hitting with the skill, but your mine.

But we get around this issue, with having a separate setup with Arcanist Brand and Reap that we cast on bosses, which will generate us blood charges, which also affect our main Reap link.

Other than that, the build plays like any other mine build, you stack up mines, then detonate them once stacked up for the highest possible damage. When clearing you just bind Detonate mines to left click and they'll auto detonate while you run.

When you're bossing you basically throw down a bear trap, put down the arcanist brand stack up mines, put on Assassin's Mark and go to town.

1.

Your main link, we use high impact mines over blastchain, cos it's overall less micromanagement, and has a smaller damage penalty. Before Awakened Brutality you'll just use regular brutality. You can also use Trap and Mine Damage instead if you have sources of Chaos damage. The order of Importance is:
Reap>High-IMpact Mine->Minefield->Charged Mines->Crit Strikes>Brutality

2. Auras



These are the 4 auras that you'll run. Before you have reservation reductions, you can skip Pride

3. Arcanist Brand Setup



this is basically our "blood charge" generator, we use faster casting and Inc duration so its smoother to keep up.

4. Movement+frost bomb/siphoning trap


keep Arcane Surge on low lvl so you get it for every flamedash cast

as for Frost bomb/Siphoning Trap, it's pretty much up to you. Siphoning trap will give you extra sustain, Frost Bomb will help with high regen mobs/maven heals etc. I would generally go for Siphoning Trap, but there were so many regen mobs in Archnemesis that I just went with Frost Bomb instead.

5. Defensive CWDT



Basically just a CWDT Steelskin setupm we use lifetap so it will cast regardless of the state of our mana

6. Utility stuff


Both Bear Trap and Assassin's mark are huge dmg multipliers, and now in 3.17 assassin's mark never expires from your target so its great. We use it with lifetap because our manapool is rather low.

7. Exsang/clear setup



If you're gonna go gemswap you'll need to get a white socket or use Trap and Mine Damage Support instead of Brutality Support and then you can gemswap that for Chain.

What I do instead is I swap Body armours with the different gem setups, however, that is a high budget option for QoL.

You already got a small glimpse of it in the gem secition, but I'll give a longer breakdown here

PSA: You'll see many different Eldritch mods on my items, that doesn't mean those mods are the specific ones you need and nothing else, or that they're even the best, generally I just use stuff that was good enough to keep. Please don't spend all your currency trying to get the specific mods I have, it's not necessary.

Basically just try to get useful stuff on your items like: spell suppression, crit chance, spell damage, anything with mines, movement speed, resists, evasion, energy shield, physical damage etc.

you can find the full list of mods here: https://poedb.tw/us/The_Eater_of_Worlds#TheEaterofWorldsImplicit
https://poedb.tw/us/The_Searing_Exarch#TheSearingExarchImplicit

1. Weapon


Your most important item, get two of them as soon as you can. Until you get it, just run any wand/dagger with +1 phys skills/spell damage/spell crit chance/crit multi/flat phys to spells (obviously not all of these mods, just some of them)

you can craft on an ilvl2 wand with till you get a +1 phys spells roll, and that's a pretty good wand.

2. Body Armour


Get high Life +resists and an Open Prefix for the "Gain 10% of Maximum Life as Extra Energy SHield" mod which you can Unveil from betrayal encounters.

I recommend just getting four of the "Sacrifice" divination cards because it will give you an easy to off colour 6 link relatively cheaply that has Eva/ES on it.

And just craft it with:

for your super high investment options you can get a Sadist Garb/Assassin's Garb with +1 curses (Hunter influence), % maximum life (Hunter influence or temple mod), % increased Spell Critical Strike Chance (Shaper Influence)
these however will be hard to off colour, and you wont be able to use eldritch implicits on them. And will cost a lot more.

The Shaper Crit chest is relatively easy to craft by just using harvest for Crit Rerolls on a shaper chest(preferably ilvl 84+)


You'Ll need to cap spell suppression, so if you get that with good rolls keep it

3. Helm



A high eva/ES base with as much life/res you can get. Get a helmet with the "Reap deals 40% increased damage" enchant and then craft it with .

IF you want a super high investment one, you can get an ilvl85 Elder helm with the reap enchant, then craft it with physical rerolls or fossils till you get a good life roll with the elder mod: "Nearby Enemies take 9% increased Physical damage", however helmets in general have very powerful eldritch mods so I don't recommend doing that, unless you just want to burn currency for a small upgrade.

You can also run a shaper helmet with "Socketed gems are supported by level # BlastChain Mine SUpport" and run a 5 link exsang setup for clear and forego the CWDT steelskin setup

You'Ll need to cap spell suppression, so if you get that with good rolls keep it



4. Gloves



A high evasion base with a lot of life/resists. This is an ideal slot to fill out Spell Suppression, but wherever you can get it is nice.

for high investment you can run an ilvl 85 Hunter Gloves that have the mod "% chance to unnerve enemies for # seconds on Hit" which is a hefty damage multiplier.

You'Ll need to cap spell suppression, so if you get that with good rolls keep it

5. boots



For most of the game, you'Ll most likely run an Atziri's Step
but boots like these are actually pretty easy to craft by just spamming on a slink boots.

I recommend the regen enchant because the 120% crit if you havent crit recently enchant gets screwed by our Arcanist Brand Reap setup unfortunately. You can still run it for better clear though, or you can run the "increased Spell suppression chance if you've been hit by a spell recently" enchant, and run with less spell supp.

You'Ll need to cap spell suppression, so if you get that with good rolls keep it

6. Belt



Lots of Life/Res and as much strength as you can afford, Belt is a good place to fill out strength (you can also get them on rings/amulets of course)

7. Ring



Vermillion Ring (preferrably) with high life, some res and if you can the "minimum endurance charges" craft before you get a vermillion just run any resist ring with as much life as you can.

8. Amulet



Life/res/Attributes and most importantly "+1 level to all physical skill gems" or "+1 level to all strength skill gems" or both if you can get them but that costs a lot.

the best annointment is Whispers of Doom(once you have your Curse on Hit ring) or alternatively "Arcane Potency" or "Mark the Prey" or "Heartseeker" for a cheap option.

9. curse ring



once you get a source of +1 curse (either from chest, corrupting your amulet or annointing Whispers of Doom you can get a ring with Curse on Hit Vulnerability, preferrably on a Vermillion, but any ring will do really.

10. FLasks

Standard Life Flask with bleed immunity
Quartz flask, mainly for phasing, but the spell supp helps if you can't cap without it. you can also get phasing from other sources if you can, and run a different flask like a granite, or a stibnite flask. Look for more charges/duration the suffix doesnt really matter
Evasion Flask, try to get the increased evasion % during flask effect mod, but it doesnt matter on which flask it is, it doesnt need to be on the jade flask.
if you switch your main setup from "Brutality Support" to "Trap and Mine Damage" Support, you can also use a sin's rebirth for Unholy might instead of the sulphur flask which is a decent damage boost, but Sulphur gives regen. You can also obviously swap it for a Bottled Faith, but that flask costs more than the entire build and isn't worth it imho.
Quicksilver, look for the Increased speed mod, and either more charges/duration or extra charges if you're hit.

These are your basic flasks, you can obviously swap out some of them (like the quartz or sulphur) for something that fits you more.

For Jewels, look for: % maximum life, Mine throwing speed, mine damage, increased damage, increased global physical damage, or global critical strike multiplier

you can use a Pride Watcher's eye also with either the increased physical damage mod or the chance to deal double damage mod.

As for Forbidden Flame/Flesh

you want Opportunistic, it will make you tankier AND give you more damage.

Alternatively you can also take Ambush and Assassinate or Harness the Void (BUT this will require you to swap out Brutality support
for Trap and Mine Damage Support), you can also take Deadly Infusion which would allow you to swap out the Increased Critial Strikes Gem for Trap and Mine Damage Support.

the other options generally aren't worth it over regular jewels.

First thing's first, here's PoB, with leveling trees included: https://pastebin.com/zbjDNfzU

The Tree is pretty Standard, you take all the mine/physical damage/crit/life nodes on the way and also get reservations.

1. For Cluster Jewels, you'll want

1 Large CLuster Jewel with: physical damage and the Iron Breaker>Battle Hardened>Force Multiplier notables preferrably with 8 points. Before you have the money for a 3 notable one, you can get one that has Battle Hardened and Force multiplier with 8-9 points and only allocate those ones.

2 Medium Cluster jewels: Trap and Mine damage and the Careful Handling/Guerilla Tactics notables. Preferrably 4 or 5 points.

Here you can go into ones with more damage if you dont want the life from Careful Handling, but I don't recommend it.

Important things on the skill Tree:

Ghost Shroud The way this works is whenever you get hit, you regain a portion of your evasion as energy shield, so if you get energy shield to be roughly 10-20% of your life total it adds an extra buffer.

it will regain 3% of your total evasion, which means that with ~30k evasion you'll recover around 1k energy shield each time you get hit. and since we're evasion based, we dont get hit that often, so having an extra 1k energy shield to our 5k life basically counts as having 6k life

only take this node once you have at least 10% of your max life as energy shield

You might notice that we anoint Whispers of Doom, and yet its only 3 points away on the skill tree, which is correct, and you can absolutely sacrifice some life% minor points to get it, however the extra annoint you'd get instead isnt gonna be a massive dps upgrade anyway and I'd rather have the life.
you could of course annoint Discipline and Training for a lot of life, however you still come out with slightly less defense overall. so Imho this is the most efficient one to allocate.

you'll also notice that I'm overcapped on spell suppression, but I'm basically playing around not having my quartz flask up all the time, nor being on Full Life to Benefit from "Revenge of the Hunted" all the time.

lvl 2: StormBlast Mine+Swift Assembly+ Added Lightning damage (lvl8)
lvl 4: Orb of Storms +Added Lightning damage (lvl8)
Frost Bomb
War Banner
Frostblink Arcane Surge

lvl8: Flame Dash Arcane Surge

lvl12: Arc+ Blast Chain Mine+Added Lightning damage (lvl8) for clear, keep StormBlast Mine for single target

Start Levelling Exsanguinate
lvl 18: get Summon Skitterbots

lvl 24: get Grace and Pride (you won't be able to use both of them yet, but start levelling them anyway.

lvl 31: get Reap

Once you complete normal lab, and act 4 and get chain support you can switch over to Reap/Exsang if you want to.

Exsanguinate+High Impact Mine Support+Chain Support+Swift Assembly Support

Reap+High Impact Mine Support+Charged Mines Support+Minefield Support

if the throwing speed penalty feels too awkward on low level, then just use Swift Assembly Support and Brutality Support or Trap and Mine Damage Support over Minefield+Charged Mines

once you get Cruel Lab it should feel fine.

don't forget to regret the elemental damage nodes and penetration nodes on the tree once you switch over (check the "After Merc lab" levelling tree for details

If you feel like you need more defense, change War Banner to Defiance Banner whenever you wish.

I recommend allocating the reservation mastery for life reservation in the tree, while you're low level, you can take it out later.

1. Binding "Detonate Mines" to left click makes the build a lot smoother

2. If you dont want to detonate yet, but have Detonate bound on left click, you can always use flame dash to reposition before detonating

3. always try to get as many mines down before having to detonate on bosses, but only if standing still wont cause you to die :)

4. You're not a "Facetank" build, its key to keep moving

5. if you're facing a very deadly monster, you can always stand behind corners and throw the mines in the door, they will autotarget the monster so you can safely kill it (especially useful vs beefy archnemesis, or very juiced expeditions)

6. Tremor rod is overrated as well as bugged right now, so I dont recommend ever using it

7. There arent really any good alt quality gems to run unfortunately, which is why I didnt talk about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXIw4soQ-OA Sirus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tMJKgXl0Do Feared (lame 2 deaths :()
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzNK-VTlBYM Maven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsaVEkIq_JM Elderslayers Maven Invitation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIuLRdrJIJQ Searing Exarch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_4kBdR4AGw 60% Delirium t16 mapclear with exsanguinate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcw5sB6OtW4 Eater of Worlds kill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7j9cwvPDHs Uber Atziri

I'll upload more videos later if I get the footage.