⚔️ Poison Blade Trap Saboteur ⚔️ [3.19]

Large: A base with 8 points. On my build, I am using only 2 out of 3 notables. Priority would be increased Chaos damage.
Medium: DoT or Chaos DoT base with Flow of Life and Circling Oblivion - trying to stack more Life for the character and more duration for our poisons.
Small: A 3-point Aura cluster is mandatory due to the fact that we actually stack many auras. The notable can be for any of the large auras - Malevolence, Grace or Determination. Try to roll +35% increased effect for the small passives if you can; or to get as much Life as you can.

Rare jewels, including Abyss jewels are recommended to provide Life, Poison Damage, Chaos Damage, Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier, Damage Over time, Added Chaos Damage (to attacks), Added Physical Damage (to attacks). Any combination of these mods will be of great help.

We're upgrading our poisons and aim to stack as many as possible to peak up the DPS:

-Stacking added physical/chaos damage. Much of that added damage is gained from the two Coated Shrapnel jewels - placed on the most beneficent jewel sockets;

-Stacking Damage over time multiplier and Chaos damage over time multiplier;

-Upgrading our Wither since it's our best damage multiplier;

-Having so many Auras and the Herald makes it perfect for the mastery of +8% increased damage for each aura/herald affecting our character;

-Using Despair for bonus damage and Temporal chains for poison duration and overall defense;

-Overall the curse effect is 24% + 10% for each gem making 34% increased curse effect for both Despair and Temporal Chains providing both Damage and Defense boost;

-The helmet enchant for +1 rotation on the Blade trap provides 20% overall DPS since our traps will rotate 6 instead of 5 times therefore hitting 12 times instead of 10;

-Herald of Agony provides +10% more damage with poison. Although our Blade Traps do not activate the scorpion (since the traps are poisoning, and not our character), the buff still provides the bonus damage to poison;

-Skitterbots provide 10% more damage with Traps and Mines;

-Malevolence, with the aura effects we have, provides around 30% more damage to our poisons;

-Precision makes sure our Accuracy is high enough so that we never miss, therefore every hit means +1 poison on the enemy;

-Skitterbots' Shocking aura provides 15%~18% damage taken to enemies;

-Overall the Trap passives on the tree including the increased Area of Effect like Unstable Munitions and the ascendancy Chain Reaction makes sure that our traps don't need Poison proliferation simply because they cover a lot of area on the screen. That is why I would recommend using Cluster Traps and not Multiple traps support;

-Frenzy/Power charges on your character will also affect the damage you deal with your traps/mines.

-Eldritch implicits are a very nice addition to the picture since you can easily (and cheap) get bonuses on your armour, gloves and boots like: curse effect, maim, added damage, extra damage, etc.

The defense is based mainly on four things: Armour, Evasion, Blind and Temporal Chains.

The armour and evasion are mainly obtained from gear, Determination, Grace and Defiance Banner. Rare gear items can be either Evasion or Armour based - your preference. My build has around 10k armour and 17k evasion.

Blind: As you can see our Armour and Evasion aren't super high but the Blind effect that we're using from the Ascendancy actually makes the difference. Being one of the best defensive passives in the game, Born in Shadows provides both Blind immunity and the ability to Blind enemies on Hit, as well as for nearby enemies to be passively Blinded. This is an absolute win since it also reduces enemies' chance to evade our attacks, thus providing additional accuracy. This blind-on-hit effect works for the traps as well.
Additionally, the ascendancy provides 15% reduced damage taken from blinded enemies which is as awesome as it sounds.

Temporal Chains is the cherry on top of the cake. It makes our enemies so slow that we're just roaming around unbothered by their attempts to kill us. The curse also provides additional duration for our poisons.

Additional defense: Because of the ascendancy "Pyromaniac" and the Brine King pantheon, we're immune to Ignite, Shock and Freeze, as well as only suffer 50% of any chill effects. Recommended enchant for boots would be Stun avoidance to contribute to the smooth gameplay.

-Using your unique Replica Innsbury Edge to fully convert all your trap's Physical damage to Chaos damage.
The blade also gives the unique mechanic of inflicting Wither on every hit with this weapon. Fortunately for us, Blade Trap swings a copy of your weapon making that every time it hits a target, it applies a Wither stack as well.
It also gives you a little bit of extra defense by making 2x10% (dual wielding) of Physical damage you take to be taken as Chaos damage.

-Using The Devouring Diadem helmet solves your problem with the mana by providing Eldritch Battery and a lot of Mana reservation efficiency. You can additionally (and highly recommended - even mandatory) craft/buy one with a corrupted implicit of 90% mana multiplier for socketed gems making it the perfect item for socketing large auras and utilizing your resource for throwing all these traps.

-Due to the positioning in the passive tree, your Saboteur can't really benefit from many helpful Notables, thus we use Stranglegasp to take the best from the tree's notables for our build. Corruption and Sovereignty are the most desired ones since we want to boost our Wither and Aura efficiency. Champion of the Cause may not be mandatory if we find other jewels with mana reservation efficiency or the small cluster with 35% increased effect so that we get to have enough mana to use our Auras.

-Profane Proxy is one of the best unique rings in my experience - providing a curse aura of your choice which will replace one of your Skitterbots' auras. Since Temporal Chains is crucial for any Poison build, we're using it on our Skitterbots. The Skitterbots are very aggressive and swift and will already be on the spot - even before your traps activate.

Rare items in this build are nothing too special. They are common items that will add up to our idea by capping our resistances, stacking up Life and very importantly - stacking more Added Chaos/Physical damage to our attacks wherever possible.

Blade trap is considered an Attack, therefore benefits from Attack mods and not Spell mods. As an attack it also requires Accuracy and can miss if you don't have enough.
Blade trap is not affected by any modifiers of Attack speed - its damage is dealt by rotating and it has 4 rotations by default, 5 while dual wielding, and +1 more from the helmet enchant. For each rotation, it will hit twice.
Like all traps, Blade trap will also apply any on-hit effects (but not any effects that state "your hits").
For example:
-Replica Innsbury edge's Wither on hit will be applied;
-Ephemeral Edge's added lightning damage will directly increase the damage of the trap;
-Eater of Worlds Gloves implicit "Maim on hit" will be applied.

Please note that Life/ES/Mana Leech or Gain on Hit also work but unfortunately your character won't get any benefit but rather your trap and this is useless, so don't go around it.

Helmet: As explained earlier, the helmet makes the perfect item for socketing big auras due to the overall reservation efficiency including the fact that gives +1 to level of socketed gems which will also increase the level of the Enlighten that we socketed.

Gloves: Either gloves or Boots is where we put the other set of Aura skills. Maybe try to find or craft +increased AoE and level of socketed AoE gems either as a Craft or as Corruption. But this is definitely not necessary. Especially not for a corruption since we want free implicits for the Eldritch mods.

Boots: If not in gloves, then we put the guard and the movement skill in the boots. As you have noticed, there is an Empower support here which boots both Steelskin and Despair (we manually cast Despair only for bosses, etc). Flame dash won't really care about that Empower but yea.

Armour: Of course a 6L Blade trap is here. Divergent Blade trap is mandatory since it will literally increase the Damage Per Second because the blades will rotate faster. Cluster Traps is better than Multiple Traps. Trap and Mine damage increases the damage of both hit and ailment caused by traps/mines since it is considered "Global damage" specifically to the trap. Added Chaos Damage, Void Manipulation and Deadly Ailments are the best supports since we rely on the added damage and poison damage. Please note that support gems that boost the Direct Damage such as Vile Toxins will not increase the base for the Poison damage. Only weapon damage and Added Damage increase the base for the Poison.

Main hand setup: Vengeance + AoE + Life Gain on Hit is a defensive setup for the moments when we actually get hit so we proc Vengeance (just in case with +AoE) to instantly heal us back as soon as possible.

Off hand setup: The CWDT + Desecrate, both level 1, actually proved very helpful for longer boss fights where you non-stop spam the traps and your resource (ES) is wasted but you still have time to spam more. To avoid such moments, creating any corpses ASAP will make our helmet (The Devouring Diadem) consume up to 10 corpses to replenish A LOT of our Life/Mana/ES so that we do not waste time running around while our ES is recharging.

-Grace: Main source of defense;
-Determination: Main source of defense;
-Malevolence: More Damage over Time;
-Skitterbots: Mandatory for applying Temporal Chains and Shock in AoE;
-Defiance Banner: works very well with both Grace and Determination;
-Precision: Helps us cap up our Accuracy needed for the Blade Trap;
-Herald of Agony: Provides 10% more damage with poison and Chance to poison if needed.

+1% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier per 4% Chaos Resistance

+50 to maximum Life

15% increased Duration of Ailments on Enemies, 15% increased Skill Effect Duration

20% increased Effect of Withered

20% increased Poison Duration

8% increased Damage for each of your Aura or Herald Skills affecting you

Auras from your Skills have 10% increased Effect on you

Grace has 25% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency

Precision has 100% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency

Recover 30 Life when your Trap is triggered by an Enemy

Summon Skitterbots has 50% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency

You get Blade Trap on level 12. Until then the easiest way is either Cobra lash or Caustic Arrow. But everyone knows leveling is not hard with anything, so I'll leave that part to you.

If this is your first trapper, it won't be the easiest at first but the better gear you have, the better it will feel - both defensive and clear speed. With capping your resistances and going over 4000+ life, and, after taking Born in Shadows ascendancy, along with Determination + Grace + Defiance banner, the defense will feel not only 'enough' but actually quite heavy and reliable. Damage-wise, it requires better and better gear and it may feel a bit slow there unless your pockets are fully prepared to gear up your Saboteur with proper items right from the start.

T16 Mapping:

T14 Eradicator:

T16 Drox:

T16 Veritania

Elder:

PoB Paste Bin: https://pastebin.com/n9ZQQGuC

PoE Ninja: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/fostaa/Innsbury