[2.1] Airstrike Inbound, a crit poison Bladefall Trapper

I think you forgot poison. Bear Trap - Poison - Trap and Mine would be mandatory 3L. Depending how much duration you have on tree it would be between Increased Duration and a high level Empower for the 4L. 11% per level isn't really very good, many spells are 15% or more, so you'd need a lot of duration on tree and level 3+ Empower for Empower to be worth bothering with.

"

Fearmonger wrote:

I think you forgot poison. Bear Trap - Poison - Trap and Mine would be mandatory 3L. Depending how much duration you have on tree it would be between Increased Duration and a high level Empower for the 4L. 11% per level isn't really very good, many spells are 15% or more, so you'd need a lot of duration on tree and level 3+ Empower for Empower to be worth bothering with.

Yeah, I kind of just figured Poison was a given for the circumstances. I'm actually unsure about Inc. duration over empower as Empower offers a base damage increase on the gem itself, which is then multiplied more by trap nodes, physical nodes, more trap damage gem, etc. I'm too tired to run the numbers right now, maybe I'll do so tomorrow (5am here in London... send help)

Well, not very complicated so here goes:

Empower 3 = 24.07% more damage
Empower 4 = 38.07% more damage

Empower 3 vs Increased Duration 20:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1*%281%2Bx%29*1.2407%3D1*%281%2Bx%2B0.64%29

solving for x, you need 164% increased duration from other sources for Empower to be better. Increased Duration is the obvious choice here.

Empower 4 vs Increased Duration 20:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1*%281%2Bx%29*1.3807%3D1*%281%2Bx%2B0.64%29

68% increased duration needed for Empower to be better. My tree doesn't have this so duration would still be better.

Empower 4 vs Increased Duration 20/20:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1*%281%2Bx%29*1.3807%3D1*%281%2Bx%2B0.64%2B0.1%29

94% increased duration needed for Empower to be better.

And remember Increased Duration also has the utility of increasing the immobilize duration. I think its safe to say that in most cases Increased Duration is better (and often by no small amount).

Edit: Forgot to account for the direct damage, but honestly once you get to 85+ the poison will completely dwarf it so doesn't matter much.

Thank you for this.

I'm also levelling a bladefall trapper (started as mf contagion+pa but that didn't work out so well) and somehow only gave poison a passing glance. Aoe clear is not an issue for me, but single targets are slow and poison seems to be the answer for that, even without stacking it rapidly.

Will definitely try this out next time I get a chance.

In terms of defense I am not super tanky, but you can check out my profile if interested (charname: dominusrippedone). Level 73 sitting at 3.3k life, 2kes and 10k evasion running grace+clarity only as I don't have the mana for discipline.

Yeah I'm doing something fairly similar. Only I'm aiming at hybrid and I don't have illusions on making it crit.
I don't like your target unique belt - you can have much better go with The Magnate.
I don't think you need crit with this - considering traps are not that spammable you either go full crit or none + you can use the new spell gem that gives more damage and lower-s crit chance (too lazy to check what the name was). Either way I one-shot everything even without crit. For the same reason I'm not sold on the idea of poison on the bladefall - I don't need to wait for the poison to take effect in 2s as I can still one shot everything. So my setup is:
Bladefall + trap + multitrap + more damage less crit gem + added fire damage + increase AOE (if you need damage you can go for more trap damage gem instead).

Also I'm curious about you aura choice. I've tested blasphemy with vulnerability, but given the extremely low radius it's just not worth it. Better go for hatred + herald of fire or if needing defense since I'm hybrid ES aura.

Also for body armor I'll be aiming at carcass jack, we'll see if I manage to get one. Given how nerfed the AOE nodes are with this new patch 20% increased AOE is huge now.

Also flasks! If you get your hands on taste of hate it would be gg. Atziri's also still good.

Cheers

Please keep this active as I am doing a very similar build to this and want to keep up with how you are doing.

Currently waiting for my IRL friends to catch up to my level so I'll be laying off the grind for a day. I'll get back to leveling very soon. The issue of crit or non-crit is one I can understand as the traps oneshot, crit or not. I could probably do well non-crit but I am trying to push the build as far as it can go. Thanks for the replies guys, and good luck with your own characters.

what would the bandits be?

"

mrmarcus wrote:

what would the bandits be?

Ah, forgot to include that in the guide. I got a skill point in Normal, the physical damage from Oak in Cruel, and a power charge from Alira in Merciless. The power charge is kind of up to you, I'd say it's worth it if you use Jaws of Agony.