2.1 Poison Bladefall Trapper (Contagion,Essence Drain,Bladefall)

Hi Guys, quickly wanted to share my Talisman build built around DoT Chaos and contagion traps. I have grown to absolutely love the trap mechanic as it can be a really fun play style. As Essence Drain did not work with traps I ended up self casting it after laying a trap, perfect as normally you would cast a curse, in this case you don't need to because of Blasphemy :) This build feels like it has a fairly slow clear speed compared to other builds, but depending on how you play you have lots of time to open chests and break boxes while everything melts away, it may not suit everyone but it is a load of fun.

New Vids: (almost ate it to chain + crit projectiles :p, also sorry for the kite at the end, better to show damage without crit shrine).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9WGBXPMXHc

Old Vids:





Gear:

Sunblast Belt, and Deerstalker boots. Std trapper staples. Carcass jack if you can get one.
The staff is just there because I wanted to build staff. Wands, daggers or scepters are also viable.



Staff needs Crit multi removed and DoT added. It came with multi and I haven't got Vagan high enough to remove it yet :(


Tree:

Bandits: Kill All or Help Oak or Help Alira (all kinda good options, think I helped oak) / Kill All or Help Alira (for essence drain, 5% castspeed makes a big difference) / Kill All

Jewels: Damage over time, spell damage, chaos damage, res, mana and life.

Current tree:




Links:

Deerstalkers:
Bladefall - Trap Damage - Poison - Added Chaos

Contagion - Trap - Iron Will - Controlled Destruction - Inc AoE

Essence Drain - Controlled Destruction - Iron Will - Void Manipulation - Rapid Decay

Leapslam - Faster Attacks - Blasphemy - Vulnerability/Temp Chains

CWDT - Summon Chaos Golem - Blind - Phaserun

Clarity, Discipline or Purity of Elements



Playstyle:

Throw a contagion trap, followed instantly with a essence drain burst. Try to hit the weakest looking dude, this rapidly melts him, which quickly spreads into the rest of the pack, often into the next mob you conveniently kite in. Stragglers (and in fact whole white mobs) can be easily cleaned up just with essence drain. Bladefall traps used to speed up clear, and snipe out single targets. Usually just one is enough, for tough bosses spam them as the poison stacks do an insane amount of damage despite not having the tree nodes (buffed by DoT & chaos nodes instead).

Essence drain does pretty much all the damage, contagion is just there to spread it around. Bladefall is there for anything that needs to disappear quickly, if it looks pretty threatening start with a bladefall trap. Also handy to quick clear blue packs.


Notes:
No there are no multitraps! This is what contagion is for. With the AOE from the tree multi traps seem unnecessary, the AOE on bladefall is massive anyway. I haven't taken poison nodes in the tree because they would only help the bladefall trap. DoT and Chaos scale all the spells and trap we're using. Cast speed and trap throwing speed are a little on the slow side, seemed an OK trade off for more ES (about 2.5K HP, 2.5K ES atm).



Open to feedback and suggestions, the build is probably far from perfect but is really fun to play and suits my playstyle. It feels pretty great being half trapper and half caster, and the theme carries fantastically.

Your build looks interesting.

Never played an trapper char, therefore some questions :

How did you leveled ? Which skills @which levels ?
Can you provide level trees for 15, 30, 45, 60 points ?
On your staff you have crit chance & spell crit, but no crit nodes in the tree.
So we only need spell damage there, respectively +1 to chaos gems ?

Please link your jewels under gear section.

Any playstyle vid ?

Thanks !

80 % of the build viability is related to gameplay, so you need to add some videos.

Why do you put contagion on a trap? It's damage is negligible imo and doesn't get much better with some support + trap damage boost.
Selfcasting contagion would probably be faster and you could wear some decent boots with permanent 30%ms and a better belt.

If it is for thematic reasons: Once your main spell ain't no longer on a trap you ain't a trapper no more.

"

Bada_Bing wrote:

If it is for thematic reasons: Once your main spell ain't no longer on a trap you ain't a trapper no more.

Exactly that. Its more for the play style than anything. I had tried to use essence drain or wither with traps but doesn't work so ended up self casting essence drain. You basically have no cast speed so self casting inst the best compared to your trap laying speed. I also like how your wall of essence drain usually hits at the exact same time your trap goes off.

Will see if I can get some videos up as it is actually starting to melt maps fairly quickly now, good fun.

Jewels are all trash so far, looking at mostly chaos damage, damage over time or trap damage.

Will get some leveling trees up too when I get home from work, I leveled through with contagion, essence drain and bladefall to get used to the mechanics, but you could level through with any spell in early, anything chaos or dot in mid. Bit rough using ele spells after act2 with no nodes!

Playstyle is very much like a shark. Always keep moving. ES/EV life hybrid, sitting at only 3K hp and 1K ES atm until I get discipline back. Don't tend to rip too often less I get stunlocked, with temp chains on blasphemy it shouldn't happen too often, usually from me misstepping.

Also if anyone could recommend something for me to record a quick vid with thatd be awesome :)

Also the staff was just first alc on a 6s, no real effort has been put into gear yet as new league and I'm still broke. I'm only using a staff because I've never built a trapper with staff before and liked the look of shadows leapslam. Usually dual crit daggers would be better, pickn up a couple crit nodes in the tree. Scepteres also good ( 4% aoe ones ).

Updated with some vids.

Updated, will try and get some new vids up tomorrow running tier 8s.

Updated: Switched Temp Chains for Vulnerability, dropped top witch chaos nodes for ES, heading back to them with next 3 lvls. Respeccd through middle of witch to use Chaos dmg jewel (more int better), uses one extra node but worth. looking forward to the changes in the future:

"What is the future of Essence drain? Will it be useable with traps or have improved cast speed in future?

We're looking at ways we can have it work on traps if possible. It won't be able to apply healing to you, just like the Totem version, but once we're able to find a way to have it spread correctly, we'll be enabling the skill on Traps."

New vids up soon.

Build revived, made it to 90 so it can't be that bad! Still a bit squishy, def not for HC! Otherwise nice mellow lazyish trapper build. I like the way the play style turned out in the end. Always looking for feedback and suggestions :)

While i'm at it... Hype for future trap skills!