[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Saboteur Builds That Wreck Hard!

“Set and forget.” That’s usually how Saboteurs work. They lay their mines and traps and reap the rewards when fools even breathe near them. Masters are instantly phasing bosses and deleting them from existence, Saboteurs are often regarded as the cheapest with the highest ceiling for damage on a budget, but also able to scale well into the late-game, demolishing any opposition in their way!

And here are some of the best Saboteur builds in Patch 3.17, The Siege of the Atlas!

5 – Seedmole’s Poison Seismic/Exsanguinate Trapper

Seismic Trap

This combo of Seismic Trap and Exsanguinate for clearing was the most played build in 3.16, and surprisingly, despite the nerfs it received, it still is a fantastic pick for league-start up to the endgame, with nearly no investment needed!

What Seedmole’s Poison Seismic/Exsang Trapper Excels in:

• Extremely and deceptively tanky
• Amazing single target damage
• Good, aimless clearing with Exsanguinate
• League Start, SSF, HC viable

Seedmole’s Poison Seismic/Exsanguinate Trapper full details:

• Our defenses come mostly high evasion, a substantial amount of energy shield, Ghost Dance, a massive amount of life for a right side of the tree build (over 7k), as well as 100% chance to Suppress Spell Damage, giving us a whopping 110k+ EHP!
• While this build is a lot tankier than what most people want in Softcore, as it is a HC-focused build, it still carries a punch and can whittle down anything from a distance. You just lob a trap at the boss and run around, being able to focus on dodging and staying alive instead of having to stop and hit them.
• The main thing you need to be sure of is to get 100% poison chance, and there are a few ways you can do that. You can use a Coated Shrapnel jewel, some Poison Mastery nodes on the tree, anointing Toxic Strikes for another 15% chance to poison, some chance to poison on weapons, and 5% on regular jewels. The most important thing to make sure of is that the spells have to poison, and not attacks!

For a full breakdown, check here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3187371

4 – Brittleknee’s Explosive Trapper

Brittle using Explosive Trap against the Uber Elder

Brittle is a very well-known content creator who enjoys giving back to the community, and in this league, she decided to work with her guildmates so she’d be the dedicated bosser of the guild. As such, she designed a build that could tackle all endgame bosses with nary an issue and on an extremely low budget to boot.

What Brittleknee’s Explosive Trapper Excels in:

• Very Tanky
• Massive single target damage
• Respectable clear
• Extremely budget-friendly, but scales superbly with investment

Brittleknee’s Explosive Trapper full details:

• While not as tanky as the previous build, as this is a softcore-focused build, it is still deceptively tanky with the Ghost Shrouds, extremely high evasion, Spell Suppression, and deleting bosses and enemies without any sort of issue.
• With the advent of Forbidden Jewels, where before you had to choose between Chain Reaction and/or Explosive Experts, now you don’t have to, achieving essentially 5 Ascendancy points!
• You’ll want to eventually get to Avatar of Fire so you can fully convert to fire, making Spell Suppression much more needed on gear, since you barely get any from the tree.

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Qmr1yUSG8&t=2s

3 – Badger’s Ice Trapper

Ice Trap Sabo

While most trap builds tend to look the same, Badger’s take for a league starter worked great for me and is currently carrying me through the endgame, having killed Maven, all the new Pinnacle Bosses, and still able to clear rather well, with a lot of tankyness, despite low levels of life that I have. If you want to constantly freeze bosses and tough Archnemesis rare mobs, Ice Trap is the way to go!

What Badger’s Ice Trapper Excels in:

• Reliable and simple to play
• Perfect for League Start, and viable in SSF and HC
• Scales extremely well with investment but can work on a budget
• Amazing single-target
• Safe clearing through Freeze

Badger’s Ice Trapper full details:

• This skill scales supremely well with gem levels, so getting your hands on a +2 weapon, or even dual-wielding two of those (I’m using a shield with +1 and life and other stats I need) makes it so Ice Trap’s base scaling goes through the roof.
• We’re surprisingly tanky with Ghost Dance, lots of Evasion, lots of Energy Shield, fully Spell Suppressed and because we freeze everything, we’re fairly safe behind our veritable machine gun of traps.
• The biggest issue is mana sustain, and you can fix that in a few different ways. You can either go Eldritch Battery (using Devouring Diadem), so our ES essentially becomes our ‘mana’ and makes it so we can reserve yet another aura, for more damage, at the cost of the inherent defense that is Ghost Dance and ES protecting our life, or you can use Divergent Inspiration and with a lot of gear investment, get yourself some really strong Clarity to sustain your mana costs, as well as a Replica Conqueror’s Efficiency. I went with the cheaper route of simply speccing into the Mana Flask nodes for permanent sustain of Enduring Mana flasks, which has served me well for 3 points.

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSdFilGS43E

2 – Qosmoz’s Low Life Blazing Salvo Mines

Qosmoz's Illustrative Guide Poster

With the buffs that GGG gave to spells in 3.17, it bumped up a lot of less used spells into viability, and as result, being used in mines or traps made it that much stronger on already pre-established builds. With how the overlapping of Blazing Salvo and its numerous projectiles, combined with the auto-aiming of mines, make for this build a monster at single target as well as great clearing.

What Qosmoz’s Low Life Blazing Salvo Mines Excels in:

• Deletes Pinnacle Bosses near-instantly
• Easy to level and League-Starter friendly
• Fairly tanky with some layers of defense

Qosmoz’s Low Life Blazing Salvo Mines full details:

• You’ll start as Life Hybrid and when you get yourself a Shavronne’s Wrapping and Prism Guardian, you’ll be able to respec into purely Low Life. Another desperately needed unique is the Presence of Chayula, which grants a boost in Energy Shield as well as providing Stun immunity and a whopping 60% chaos resistance.
• As a Low Life build, we get access to Pain Attunement for 30% more spell damage, and we get to reserve our life with Prism Guardian for 3 extra 50% auras. This is where you can choose to either go for Determination or Grace. Personally, I prefer Grace, when combined with Ghost Dance makes for a great defensive layer when you’re getting bombarded by enemies!
• The Saboteur gives us the much-needed Shock and Ignite Immunity, and with Soul of the Brine King, we’re Freeze Immune. With some special gear, we can also become Chill immune and then be practically ailment immune, since ailment threshold is calculated based on life instead of ES.

For more information, click here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3128489

1 – BattleTrapper by DissentXTV

Lightning Trap against The Shaper

Similar to the rest, this build is a great league-starter that can take you to Simulacrum wave 30 or 80~100% Delirious maps with nary an issue, able to farm any content to your heart’s content! It can get very expensive very quickly but it’s still able to do most of the content on a budget!

What the BattleTrapper Excels in:

• Amazing clear with Lightning Trap
• Insane single target
• League Starter friendly and very easy to play
• Fairly Tanky with lots of ES, Evasion and Armor, and Capped Block/Spell Block.

BattleTrapper full details:

• Our first goal is to get a Shav’s and Presence of Chayula, so we can go Low Life for massive extra damage. Unlike the previous build, however, we don’t use a Prism Guardian and instead go for an %ES on Block, as we’re capped block through Glancing Blows.
• We also scale a lot of Evasion, making fantastic use of Ghost Dance, and some fairly healthy amount of Armor to ignore most basic hits from mobs. As before, you’ll want to be Freeze and Chill immune, either through Pantheon, Boots, or Arctic armor.
• As Saboteurs, we also have a massive ES Regen, since our Life regen from triggering mines gets converted to ES Regen! And with Forbbiden Jewels, we also can grab Explosive Expert without sacrificing our survivability!

For a full breakdown of the build, check here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2661748

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