[2.4] CI Bladefall Trapper - High tier mapping - EV/ES/Block - Updating for 2.4.

My original plan was to craft faster start of energy shield recharge on rings and take those nodes near Eldritch Battery but i was quite satisified how build performed defensively without it so i never did it because i didn't think it was worth it

you could run dual Vaal discipline, but even with just 1 i could map comfortably even in highest tiers

but if you are really worried about it roll an occultist and Vile Bastion will solve all your ES regeneration issues and then some

I'm playing this on HC perandus. as saboteur. Currently at lvl 80. 8.3k ES, Done a few T8 maps. Never been under 80% ES while doing it. Burst down every boss i meet in just a few seconds.
Great build.

Respecd my ice trapper to your build, am now lvl 88 and finally got double blasphemy worked out. 8.2k es without disc, will replace clarity with enlighten once it's lvl'd.




I could work on getting some better gear but will probably focus on 6 linking the chest next. Just wanted to know what you thought about the last 2 ascendancy points, I'm currently specced into Explosives Expert. Do you think the blind is worth more than the added fire + pen?

i think blind is worth it for sure, added extra damage is nice i guess but i was proccing blind on bosses pretty often and the smoke cloud when hit helps a lot against melee attackers

i'd personally take 50% evasion multiplier over 10% extra damage any day

@xmirin

glad to hear it's working out well for you

Howdy, just hit 50 with this build and loving the damage output. However, I acted like I've never played this game before and rushed all the damage nodes, and I'm still wearing exactly the recommended leveling gear in the OP, so as one might expect I get crushed on the reg. Should I start looking for rare ES/resist gear now (esp head/chest/dagger/shield/ammy) or are there any good uniques in this range?

i'd just buy some HP gear because it's going to be hard to find ES gear for lvl 50, most of good ES gear is min lvl 65 requirement

i had ~1900 hp when i did cruel lab and i leveled with roughly the same amount all the way to dried lake

IIRC it was around 2100 when i respecced to CI at lvl 70

Just try to get some 70+ life 1c pieces and wear goldrim + double le heup to sort the resists and attribute req

and spec into some life nodes which you can respec later with free respec points from quests, you shouldn't need more than 6-8 nodes for leveling outside of those Life/ES nodes you already take

also buy eye of chayula, stuns are the biggest killers while leveling especially when you have that low HP

it's going to be night and day difference

What do you think about using Darkscorn + Soulstrike for hc CI occultist (or even CI sab)? 25% mitigation from darkscorn, 25% phys to chaos dealt and much faster recharge time. Mobility certainly won't be as good and spell damage will be lost but is it a viable option for hc?

truth be told im actually quite satisfied how the build performed defensively against even the hardest content that i think its completely HC viable even in hardest of hardest maps given at least decent gear(over 10k es total)

I think nearly every red map i did had at least 2 damage mods and only deaths i had with the build were while leveling and from mistakes on Uber, i havent ever died to Uber trash which is more dangerous than 90% of the mobs even in t15 maps but there werw few close calls mostly because im stingy with my flasks because i wanted to have them full for bosses


I personally value the ability to manually evade fast with whirling blades over any amount of mitigation, i've had numerous cases where i'd have just straight up died without WB

I also think losing the block and es from shield evens out the 25% mitigation

Even though block is only "soft" mitigation and not actual reduction i think that it proves it self strong coupled with ridicoulous evasion(jade flask + enfeeble + blind) and you have the high EHP buffer through high ES pool, basalt and fortify for that odd case where something actually hits you

"

Justifi3d wrote:

truth be told im actually quite satisfied how the build performed defensively against even the hardest content that i think its completely HC viable even in hardest of hardest maps given at least decent gear(over 10k es total)

I think nearly every red map i did had at least 2 damage mods and only deaths i had with the build were while leveling and from mistakes on Uber, i havent ever died to Uber trash which is more dangerous than 90% of the mobs even in t15 maps but there werw few close calls mostly because im stingy with my flasks because i wanted to have them full for bosses


I personally value the ability to manually evade fast with whirling blades over any amount of mitigation, i've had numerous cases where i'd have just straight up died without WB

I also think losing the block and es from shield evens out the 25% mitigation

Even though block is only "soft" mitigation and not actual reduction i think that it proves it self strong coupled with ridicoulous evasion(jade flask + enfeeble + blind) and you have the high EHP buffer through high ES pool, basalt and fortify for that odd case where something actually hits you

To be brutally honest, I am a disgustingly lazy person, I always hated having to use Rumi's and I am looking for a way to be "immortal" and farm without cares in the world without it. WB is really great though, as you said and I am going to think twice about sacrificing it for some extra mitigation. But how would you value the 25% phys to chaos damage dealt conversion darkscorn does?

I am leveling a SAB atm - I love the occultist which you also suggest in the build for a more defensive build since I play in hc too, but I really wanted to see chain reaction in action. Have you tested it more extensively? It should be much better for bosses, yes? And if going for occultist is cluster not worth using at all?

And btw thank you for the great guide, it's one of the most well written guides out there :)

ok lets say you go darkscorn, what you do now is you'd have to find what the average hit for a lets say lvl 78-80 monster is, because if you are concerned with mitigation you probably plan on running at least t10-12 maps and monsters in those maps are around those levels

then you'll probably want some pack size on your maps so youll run plenty of vlun maps, also you have to account for an occasional crit here and there

so you'd find what the average hit is, multipli it by 130% for vuln and 150% for crit and then multiply it by another 130% for those cases of extra phys dmg auras

then lets say you had 400ES shield over soul strike which is 120ES i believe

so thats 280 flat ES you lose without shield which with my tree ends up being at least 1200 total ES

now you need to find out if the 25% reduction is better than 1200ES for those hits

and then even without rumis which i would use over a regular granite with a shield anyways because it's so strong with flask effectiveness nodes you still lose base 25%+ block from a shield and 6% from sai dagger

take account that the conversion type reduction makes your fortify, armor and basalt better

how mitigation works:

conversion applies first(darkscorn, taste, lightning coil), then it gets reduced by armor, then it applies percent base reductions like endurance charges, basalt and fortify which stack additively with each other

I personally dont believe the 25% reduction beats 31%+ block and 1200+ ES depending on how good of a shield you can realistically get but if you want to you can do the math and see for yourself

However Soul strike gives a pretty nice ES recharge reduction which is hard to quantify and i haven't played with it enough to give you a clear answer to how good that is

Ont the Ascendancy class choice:

I can't recommend Saboteur + chain reaction enough to anyone trying out any trap build out there

cooldown reduction is just a massive QOL for trap builds and will improve your clear speed so much

i haven't had this smooth of a trapping since forever like i had with Saboteur

it does lack defensively even though i think blind is underrated compared to Occultist and even trickster so if defense is your primary concern those classes will offer much more

Occultist can also completely mitigate the need for Chayula and you could net you additional 20% ES from a rare amulet on top of already pretty substantial ES boosts both percentage and flat that the class offers

However if you can afford at least decent gear(600+ es chest, 350+ es helm, 200+es gloves and boots) i think i would chose Saboteur

if you're gonna attempt the build with hobo gear go Trickster or Occultist depending on whether you value regen or flat ES more

i would try out to make cluster trap work even withou chain reaction and defualt to Binos prolif if it isn't as satisfying but overall responses to cluster trap from people that have tried it were owerwhelmingly positive even those who weren' Saobteur

I'd try to stack as much %trap trigger radius as i can to make it feel good with other classes, i think that way is much better than going Sunblast, Sunblast can fuck up the bossfights for you because you cant pre-setup the traps if you aim to go 100% reduced duration with Sunblast + those new jewels

also as far as Cluster trap being a better single target, it both is and isn't, i talk about it in one of my videos and cluster trap spread can be quite rng, if the spread is low, it means all 4 traps hit the same target and end up being better single target than slotting in any other multiplier but if you get fucked by rng spread it can be pretty huge and you can only get cases where 2-3 traps hit the target and then you're doing less damage

that's why i had issues with Double Vaals in Alluring Abyss because that rng can make you instakill one while other lives with half hp