Elemental Trappers ver. 1.6 - Part 1 - Phoenix-Hawk


Introduction:
In the trap skills there are two main types, those dealing with the lighting and fire elements and the blade traps. To separate the different trapper types I'll be referring to the ones that focus on the lighting and fire traps as elemental trappers.

Elemental trappers are like with other skill based characters, at the beginning things can be rather rough going if all you use are your skills but later on you can dish out a lot of damage when your skills are used properly. One advantage assassins have over sorceresses though is that assassins can go melee more easily early on with the skills and stats you're developing, by the time your melee skills start showing their limited usefulness you should be able to use just your skills fairly well. So that early game rough period isn't so rough here and you can level at a good rate.



Before you Start:
When you start an elemental trapper you first need to ask yourself four main questions to help decide your skill and stat placement.
1 - Will I be using a shield throughout the game?
2 - Will I be playing with others most to all the time?
3 - Do I want to use a shadow?
4 - Will I be maxing Fire Blast for an added attack skill?


1)
If you decide to use a shield throughout the game this will mean you will need to put some 150+ dexterity points in for your stats. As better shields need more strength this may also mean putting more into that stat as well than you'd otherwise need.

Now as you don't need dexterity or strength to hit or do damage their only use past a point will be to use a shield. Then as you're fighting from range and have two very useful crowd control skills (Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast) if you use them correctly you should rarely be attacked. Finally with at least one melee target to draw fire from you (your merc, more if you have a shadow or play with others) then you can use Mind Blast to create a few other targets for critters to attack which limits the attacks against you even more so really blocking shouldn't be much of a concern for these builds so you could save yourself some stat points and gain some added +skill points by dropping the shield once you can start getting +skills claws.


2)
Playing with others means you won't be using your crowd control skills (Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast) as much and allows you to specialize in one element type more easily so you could then drop more points into the Shadow Disciplines tree rather than having to stuff just about everything into your traps. So playing with others reduces your mana needs and changes how you place your skills.


3)
A shadow gives you more protection when you play on your own but if you always play with others you can skip them without any worries. The big concern you'll have with using shadows though is that their traps cancel out yours in 1.10, due to this the Shadow Master can get to be a real pain later in the game as mentioned in an earlier post in this thread. So if you decide you want a shadow stick with the Shadow Warrior then when you finish dropping your traps switch to a different skill like Fire Blast, Fade or Burst of Speed so she does not mess your traps up on you. With proper use of your crowd control skills and if you protect that merc of yours you can go solo with no shadow. The big advantage of using one is in the big act boss fights as you can then just recast her when her life is about empty, keeping your merc alive in those fights mean you need to level them more and keep a close eye on their life level. Using a shadow will give you more protection but pulls up to 21 extra skill points out of other uses so can mean you'll be more protected but do less damage and could get your traps messed up frequently by your Shadow Master if you choose that one.


4)
Fire Blast is a great little skill that can do a good bit of damage over a small area but with it at a high level you'll be using up a good bit of mana in fights as you could toss about 2+ per second and they could cost about 5-6+ mana each. Using Fire Blast actively means you need more mana than if you only used the traps you lay.



Personal Notes:

• I would advise using a claw and shield up until you can equip two +skills claws then drop the shield. This could save you up to 100 stat points or so which you could then drop into vitality and energy thereby reducing the need for items that increase your mana and life later in the game while at the same time increasing your skills which lets you do more damage and protect yourself better in those times you are attacked.
  
• I don't know if it was an error or not but in 1.10 shadow traps cancel out yours so I would say don't bother with one and use those points in your Traps tree. Once you learn how to use Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast well as well as how to keep your merc alive and kicking you can go with out a shadow with out much trouble.
  
• If you can play with a necromancer using the Lower Resist curse or a paladin using the Conviction aura as it will boost the damage of your traps.
  
• Wake of Inferno can do more damage per trap but Lighting Sentry attacks more quickly so could in the same period of time do on average about 50% more damage than the slower attacking Wake of Inferno. Due to this Lighting Sentry should be thought of as your main attack skill then you can use Fire Blast, Wake of Inferno or both to deal with the lighting immunes.

Skill Placement:
The below skill placements are more for if you play alone, if you play with others you could use the same build frames or you could concentrate on just one element and put the rest into your Shadow Discipline skills.


Blade Fury
I'll be mentioning Blade Fury and a Blade Fury set now and then in these builds. Now Blade Fury can be a rather handy skill with the right properties helping out, the idea of it in these builds is to help out with the critters that are immune or highly resistant to the trap elements you're using. What you'll want is to buy a claw with Ignore Target's Defence then if you can get it with sockets included or just get them added by Larzuk. Then drop in an Um rune for Open Wounds and then you could add a Mal rune for Prevent Monster Heal if you get two. You could get this from a dagger, rod or some rune words but using a claw lets you hold a second claw. Your second claw would either have Blade Fury on it so you don't actually have to invest the points or could have +skills to your Shadow Disciplines for added blocking. There are a few other ways to make your Blade Fury set but this would be the easiest. As the damage you're doing is coming from the Open Wounds property which will scale up in damage per second as your character level increases the type of claw and if it has any enhanced damage doesn't really matter then as you're using Ignore Target's Defence to hit you can't use Blade Fury on anything stronger than regular critters in Hell and expect to hit much.

Lower Resist
Another option to the Blade Fury set is to get a wand, dagger or stave that has charges of the necromancer skill Lower Resist. This will bring your target's resistance down some thereby increasing your damage but would still not help with those immune to that element (I think). It is also possible to get this on a helmet so you could then have both Lower Resist and Blade Fury available.


In build type 1 you have no shadow and would have one point in all the other Shadow Disciplines but Venom, Shadow Warrior and Shadow Master which are all at zero.

Type 1a

20 Lightning Sentry
20 Death Sentry
20 Wake of Inferno
20 Wake or Fire
1 Fire Blast

Put your remaining points in the lighting synergies.
Shock Web
Charged Bolt Sentry


The advantage here is that if you just use Wake of Inferno for fire damage you are then free to move around after you drop your traps and you can also drop them then lead critters though them as well as hold them in place with Mind Blast and/or Cloak of Shadows if you loose your merc for a while. You'll do less damage with but it's easier to protect yourself and if you make a Blade Fury weapon set you could then switch to that while your traps are blasting away. If you max Wake of Inferno, Death Sentry and Fire Blast Wake of Inferno will be a pretty poor skill as it will do about half as much damage over times as it would have if you maxed Wake of Fire and Death Sentry instead and will not shoot as far out either meaning it will not be able to hit as many targets. If you try mixing Fire Blast and Wake of Inferno Fire Blast won't do enough damage on it's own to be useful and Wake of Inferno will not be as effective.

So with this build you would use Lighting Sentry as your main attack trap which would cause less damage than if you could fully max the synergies but as it attacks very quickly it doesn't slow things down too much. Then When you run into those lighting immunes you'd be able to attack with a laid trap then could switch to your Blade Fury set or cast up Lower Resist to add to that damage.



Type 1b

20 Lighting Sentry
20 Fire Blast
20 Death Sentry
20 Shock Web
20 Charged Bolt Sentry

If you use this build you'd have three extra skill points to work with which you could put into Wake of Fire to boost Fire Blast a bit more and use as an attack skill while in the earlier part of Normal, into the Shadow Discipline skills of your choice, mix those two or get Blade Fury with them.


With Fire Blast at level 20 and enough synergy points going to it Fire Blast will do a good bit of damage with some +skill items boosting the base damage. Here you'll be relying almost completely on Lightning Sentry then would use Fire Blast or Blade Fury to deal with the critters that are immune or highly resistant to lighting. In those fights you could try to keep the groups as tightly packed as you can so more get hit by the small blast range of Fire Blast or spread out as you try to pick them off with Blade Fury then draw them in closer when you blow the corpses with Death Sentry. As Fire Blasts base damage scales up at a higher rate as its skill level increases than Wake of Infernos and as you can toss them at a fast steady rate it could bring small packs or single targets down faster then Wake of Inferno, it just prevents you from doing anything else while attacking since you need to keep tossing them in.




In build type 2 you have a maxed Shadow Warrior and would have one point in all the other Shadow Disciplines but Venom and Shadow Master which are both at zero. Basically these are the same as type one builds, they were just modified to take the loss of 20 skill points into consideration. You'll move along more slowly but would be better protected and have an easier time in those act boss fights when you're on your own.

Type 2a)

20 Lighting Sentry
20 Fire Blast
20 Death Sentry
20 Charged Bolt Sentry
3 Shock Web

Here you'd be moving through with Lighting Sentry as fast as you would in the type 1a build but once you hit the lightning immunes things will take even longer than in either type 1a or 1b so you'd need to lean on your merc, Blade Fury set or the Lower Resist charges more to make your lower trap damage more useful.



Type 2b)

20 Lighting Sentry
20 Wake of Inferno
20 Death Sentry
10-20 Wake of Fire
1-10 Charged Bolt Sentry
1 Fire Blast
1 Shock Web

or

20 Wake of Inferno
20 Fire Blast
20 Death Sentry
20 Wake of Fire
1 Lighting Sentry
1 Charged Bolt Sentry
1 Shock Web


With this one you could either use both a fire and lighting laid trap or just focus on the fire tree and make this a fire trapper. If you use both a laid fire and lighting trap though to make Wake of Inferno more useful you'd need to stuff at least 10 points into Wake of Fire or else due to the long pauses between attacks it will take a very long time to kill things in Hell multi-player games. Doing this means Wake of Inferno would be well boosted but Lightning Sentry will be rather weak. You could still use Lightning sentry as your main attack skill since it does attack quickly but more likely this would be more of a fire/lightning build so Wake of Inferno should make a decent main attack skill and may even do more damage over time than Lightning Sentry. You're not going to be doing that much damage with any of your skills in this build if you mix the two though and unless you add to Wake of Inferno with Fire Blast the pure fire version would take a while too so you'd certainly need to add to your laid trap damage with Blade Fury, Fire Blast and/or Lower Resist charges then need to build up a strong merc. You would also really want to pour on as many +skill items as you can here.

Continue to Part 2.