How to Minmax Your Explosive Trap Trickster in POE 3.22 | Self-Chill Explosive Trap Min-Max Guide

This is a POE 3.22 min max guide for explosive trap. This guide is intended to help you push your own build, past the end game. We’ll help you hit important damage break points and discuss gearing decisions so that you have the tools to make your build the best it can be. 

How to Minmax Your Explosive Trap Trickster in POE 3.22

In Path of Exile, the Trickster is a versatile Ascendancy class that excels in damage over time, traps, and evasion mechanics. One popular build is the Self-Chill Explosive Trap Trickster, which leverages the unique interactions of chilling oneself to gain significant bonuses. In POE 3.22, this build continues to be a powerful contender for both clear speed and boss-killing potential. This guide will provide an overview of how to maximize this build for the best results.

AoE Breakpoints

The first and easiest thing to min max for explosive trap is hitting specific AOE overlap break points. There are some cheap ways that you can modify your AOE like adding Harvest enchants. And we’ll tell you how to do so in a way that maximizes your overlaps in your single target.

So first off, explosive trap as a skill has baked in AOE depending on the gem level. So explosive trap is a level one, it has no additional AOE. Divergent explosive trap is a level 21, it has plus 0.7 meters to radius, it's the second to bottom line on the card. And then on the gear Kraken Peak, give it an extra 8 levels and it goes up to +0.9 meters. The gem level of your explosive trap impacts the AOE.

The second thing is how much increased or reduced AOE you have on your gear, so things like concentrated effect reduces your AOE and things like this bench plus one of socketed gems will increase it or the harvesting gem. 

Explosive Trap Trickster Build

The Self-Chill Explosive Trap Trickster build uses a unique interaction with the item "Winterweave" which inverts the effect of chill on you, thereby increasing your action speed instead of reducing it. By using the "Auxium" belt, which allows chill effect to be based on your energy shield instead of life, you can chill yourself for a significant amount using the "Icefang Orbit" which makes you chilled when you are hit. This increased action speed boosts trap throwing speed and trap detonation speed, greatly enhancing the effectiveness of your Explosive Traps.

Gear and Gems

Gear-wise, prioritize items that provide increased trap damage, elemental damage, and mana regeneration. Aim for rare or unique items that grant bonuses to fire and cold damage, critical strike chance/multiplier, trap throwing speed, and defensive stats like life or energy shield.

For your main skill setup, use Explosive Trap as the core skill. Link it with supports such as Trap and Mine Damage, Increased Critical Strikes, Controlled Destruction, Swift Assembly, and Immolate to amplify its damage output. Utilize Empower or Enhance to further boost gem levels for increased damage scaling.

To min-max your Explosive Trap Trickster, several key items are required:

• Winterweave: This ring inverses the effect of Chill on you, making it a speed boost instead of a slowdown.

• Auxium: This belt allows chill and freeze duration to be calculated based on 100% of Energy Shield before Life. This allows you to chill yourself for a significant amount.

• Icefang Orbit: This amulet causes you to be chilled when you are hit. It also provides a nice bonus to cold damage over time.

• Tinkerskin: This body armour provides life and energy shield recovery whenever your traps are triggered by an enemy, along with a chance to generate Frenzy and Phasing, improving your survivability and speed.

Ascendancy and Pantheon Choices

Choose the Trickster Ascendancy subclass to amplify the strengths of your Explosive Trap build. Prioritize the "Prolonged Pain" and "Patient Reaper" nodes for DoT scaling, increased damage, and mana regeneration. Additionally, "Shade Form" provides powerful defensive bonuses.

For Pantheon choices, consider the Lunaris and Gruthkul pantheons. Lunaris provides mitigation against projectiles, whereas Gruthkul reduces physical damage taken from nearby enemies.

Harnessing Self-Chill Synergy

Self-Chilling is a crucial mechanic for an Explosive Trap Trickster. By utilizing sources of self-inflicted chill, you can significantly amplify your damage output. Equip a Unique item like "Frostferno" that grants "60-100% increased Cold Damage with Hits and Ignites" and apply Herald of Ice. Utilize sources of increased chill effect, such as the Frigid Wake cluster in the passive skill tree, to enhance your traps' damage potential.

Flasks and Utility Skills

Optimize your flask setup to enhance survivability and damage. Utilize unique flasks like The Wise Oak, Dying Sun, and Atziri's Promise, along with utility flasks like Quartz Flask for dodge chance.

Include utility skills like Cast when Damage Taken (linked with Immortal Call and increased duration) to provide brief moments of invulnerability. Flame Dash or Blink Arrow can help with mobility and positioning during combat.