Mixed Trappers ver. 1.0 - Phoenix-Hawk


Introduction:
These trappers use both the blade skills and elemental traps but with these you should pick either the fire or lightning traps as you won't have enough skill points for both and do much damage with either. One advantage here though is that you'll be able to use Blade Fury to keep your life and mana up by using leaching items and those that give mana and/or life after a kill. You can adjust the balance in different ways based on what you want but the balance for +skill items will be the hard part as a lot going to your Trap skills makes the mana cost of Blade Fury too high while too much going to your Shadow Discipline skills limits the power of your elemental traps.

Haven't played around with these builds too much but they'd let you do some good lightning or fire damage as well as decent physical damage from the blade skills and Death Sentry blowing corpses. If you look at the "Monster Resistance" post you'll see that for two damage type builds without magic physical and lightning as well as physical and fire are the two best ones, this build type lets you do either of those two damage types from range.



Skills: (110 points)

Martial Arts:
none

Shadow Disciplines:
15-20 Claw Mastery
1-20 Venom
0 or 15-20 Shadow Master / Shadow Warrior
1 in the rest (unless skipping a shadow)

Traps: (lightning variant)
1 Blade Fury
1-10 Blade Sentinel
1 Fire Blast
20 Death Sentry
20 Lightning Sentry
1 Wake of Fire (Blade Fury prerequisite)
the rest go to lightning synergies

Traps: (fire variant)
1 Blade Fury
1-10 Blade Sentinel
20 Death Sentry
20 Wake of Inferno
20 Wake of Fire (a must for Wake of Inferno to be useful)
1 in each of the Death Sentry prerequisites
the rest into Fire Blast



Example Skill Placements:

Martial Arts:
none

Shadow Disciplines:
20 Claw Mastery
1 Venom
0 Shadow Master & Shadow Warrior
1 in the rest

Traps:
1 Blade Fury
1 Blade Sentinel
1 Fire Blast
1 Wake of Fire (Blade Fury prerequisite)
20 Death Sentry
20 Lightning Sentry
20 Charged Bolt Sentry
19 Shock Web

This focuses more on the elemental trap damage while your blade skill damage backs it up and helps you leech.



Martial Arts:
none

Shadow Disciplines:
15-20 Claw Mastery
10-15 Venom
10-15 Shadow Master or Shadow Warrior
1 in the rest

Traps:
1 Blade Fury
1 Blade Sentinel
1 Fire Blast
1 Wake of Fire (Blade Fury prerequisite)
20 Death Sentry
20 Lightning Sentry
the rest into lightning synergies

This offers more protection due to the shadow and lets your blade skills do more damage due to Venom. Your elemental traps would still be useful, just not as powerful.




Stats: (505 points)
Strength: 90-130 (enough for your gear)
Dexterity: 165-265
Vitality: 150-200
Energy: 0-100




Picking your Skills and Stats:
There's a fair bit of picking and choosing here which will be based on what you want to do and the gear you're using. Now Blade Fury and Blade Sentinel can do some decent physical damage as well as poison damage from Venom if you have enough points in it but can't quite compare to what Lightning Sentry and Wake of Inferno can do unless you have a powerful claw (like a Chaos rune word claw or better yet, an ethereal Chaos Suwayyah/Scissors Suwayyah claw) to use with them. So if you don't have the high damage claws you may want to scale the blade skill damage back a bit and boost your traps more. Using a shadow helps more when working around the blade skills while with the way things are now in 1.10 can be kind of annoying if your build works more around the elemental traps. Your gear also decides what kind of skill placement you should use, if you lack a good high damage claw working off of the elemental traps more will make things easier. If you do have a good high damage claw if you don't already have Open Wounds available get it socketed and stuff an Um rune in as the damage from that property scales up as your level increases and can be a big help. You could then use your blade skills more and add elemental traps to enhance things. Also don't ignore Blade Sentinel, while its damage is lower and can't use as many properties as Blade Fury its ability to passively attack while you do other things and to move through a crowd should not be overlooked. At higher levels it will have a pretty good duration and so you could have several moving around in an area adding to the damage you do.

With stats that mainly depends on if you play alone or in groups and how much you'll be using the elemental traps. If you play in groups your need for mana won't be as high and if you don't lean on the elemental traps as much you won't need as much mana then either. If you do play alone, use elemental traps a lot and don't have much mana leaching or mana after kill items you'd need more points in energy to boost your mana level.



Two Weapon Sets are a Must:
With these you will need to have two weapon sets working for you. On one you'll have two +skills claws boosting your traps, all your skills or one of each, this is the set you drop all your laid traps with. Your second weapon set has one high damage claw in the left weapon slot and a +skills claw that boosts just your Shadow Discipline skills, all you do with this one is toss our your two blade skills.



Dual Claw or Claw Shield:
This is basically the same as for the other two trapper builds I posted so you could refer to those for more info. Basically though as you're fighting at range and can use Cloak of Shadows as well as Mind Blast to keep critters off your back to great effect in addition to a merc, shadow (if you get one) and other players blocking would not be as big of a worry as for melee builds. Then your could use your second claw for +skill bonuses so I'd say keep the shield till you get some +skill claws then just use those.



Gear:
Here you want one good damage claw and three +skills claws, one with Shadow Discipline bonuses for the blade skills weapon set and two with either Trap bonuses, to all skills or one of each. The rest depends on how you focus things, if you want to use blade skills more the skill bonuses should lean more to the Shadow Disciplines so Blade Fury costs less mana and does more damage as well as boosting your other Shadow Discipline skills. Then try to pick up helpful properties from various sources including charms such as Open Wounds, Slow Target, +min/max damage, Deadly Strike, +% damage to undead/demons, attacking rating bonuses, leeching, +mana/life after kill and so forth (see the blade skills info post for a list of what works with these skills). This would also reduce your mana needs since you can leech with Blade Fury and it would not cost much mana as it would if it were at higher skill levels. If you want to focus more on the elemental traps look for items that boost all your skills and the +skills on your claws for just the Traps. This would enhance your trap damage but due to the higher cost of Blade Fury leeching would not be quite as effective as it would cost more mana but you could offset that at least somewhat with more items that boost its physical damage. The rest of your gear would be for resistance and some damage reduction. If you want to you could use Natalya's Odium (Nat's set) but working off of two weapon sets would switch the full set bonuses on and off unless you had two of the claw from that set. If you do want to use that set you could keep Natalya's Mark in the blade skills set then when you want to drop your traps just switch to the traps set, quickly drop your traps and switch back.



Your Merc:
Like with the other two trap builds a defensive Act II merc or for their auras or a Act V barb merc for the damage see those two builds for more info on this matter.





Last Edit: Jan. 04/2004