Remote Mine

Remote mine could be viable, but what is really holding it back right now is the cast animation for detonate mine and the fact that the mines can be destroyed.
The animation for actually detonating the mine is completely killing the viability of the spell and also a no-go for the fun factor.

While other builds can immediately attack enemies (and therefore trigger stun) you have to place a mine first (or several) each with a separate casting animation, and on top of that you have to detonate them with another casting animation.
Your character is prone to being stunned while planting the mines, and then prone to being stunned while detonating the mines, during both animations you aren´t actually dealing any damage yet that could stun your enemies, while you can immediately trigger stun with traditional attacks (because you immediately deal the damage).
On top of this, your mines can be destroyed while you are planting them (or while you are having the casting animation for detonate mine).
This makes remote mine vastly inferior to traditional supports.

Remove the casting animation for the detonate mine part of the skill, thus enabling the character to detonate the mines while running, and also make the mines invincible.
Right now there are only very few applications for this support, but if these 2 changes were to be implemented, it would open up a lot of possibilities for great skillbuilds.

Quite simply I cannot find any useful skill to put on remote mine. Just nothing is strong enough to offset the extreme weaknesses of remote mine. The only useful thing to do with it is to use it with a spell totem and I doubt that's what it was intended for.

I've tried almost everything and nothing seems to even get close to what you can do with direct attacks. One of the biggest problems is that your mines can be destroyed as you place them, even by arc (nevermind trying to place them beforehand, being targeted by any sort of AoE renders any mine build useless, while traps can still work if you just throw them directly at enemies).

Any combination of skills that I've tried with remote mine is weaker than a single firetrap. So yeah I can link 5 gems to remote mine(except spell totem though) and it will be weaker than just a firetrap without any supports. While remote mine might have more dps, it is just not sustainable at all and is very rarely useful, you will be lucky to trigger it once in any real battle and even if you do, it seems rather lacking.

I'd be better off just casting ten normal fireballs instead of spending that time -trying- to place mines (while dealing no damage and making myself vulnerable). Then when I trigger the mines, most of them miss anyway.

Because the remote mine was so limited I wanted to use a targetable AoE like fireball so that I could use it from a range, but found this extremely ineffective. No amount of extra support gems would add enough advantage to offset the extreme time and mana it took to place the mines.

-- Solutions --
1. Mines are invulnerable.
2. When a mine gets released it starts burrowing itself for +-one second during which it is inactive(this is to compensate for the invulnerability).
3. Mines can be thrown in a direction (maybe the distance thrown determines cast time)
4. Mines can be detonated at the press of a button (i.e you don't have to stand still and make a humping motion), you already took enough risk setting them up.
5. Mines grant an increased AoE bonus to non-projectile & non-attack AoE skills which improves with higher levels.
6. Mines reduce the mana cost of AoE skills.
7. Adjust the %more damage to be slightly greater at lower levels but slightly lesser at higher levels(relative to current progression) but still increases with each level.
8. Mines should have a lower required level.

-- Suggestions --
I suggest mines to convert any linked non-attack skill into an AoE skill centered around the mine's origin having radius and damage based on the skill's damage type, damage effectiveness, casting time, level requirement and whether or not it is already an AoE skill(in which case it receives a radius bonus). Though this might be against game mechanics...

I sort of agree with the above poster. I actually read through the thread because i was thinking of incorporating Remote Mine and/or Trap into my fireball templar build for additional dps. What i'm reading is making me very disappointed and disheartened.

It seems a lot of skills have the potential to be great but always ends up falling way off the mark.

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TinyAngryCrab wrote:

This feels very meh. It simply isn't competitive with a conventional brute force build. I have no idea what would constitute a fix.

Dont forget the +more dmg!!

And that you can kite a boss to you mine and diliver a HUGE burst, instead of just nipping at the shield!!

furthermore it is a godsent for dual totem builds!

PM exchange with Mark_GGG:

From the way I interpreted your previous explanation, it sounds like "mine trigger radius" mainly affects targeting for mines - this only comes into play once they are detonated (by the player's detonate "spell"). In other words, if the mine trigger radius was 10, and there was a zombie 15 units away, triggering the mine would cause the spell it casts to go off in a pseudorandom direction rather than targeting said zombie. Is the targeting impacted by the skill's radius/projectile speed/range/other at all? For example Fireball vs Freezing Pulse - one will generally go much farther than the other: would fireball have a farther targeting range than freezing pulse or does Remote Mine have its own set targeting range (Trigger Radius) that's unaffected by anything but modifiers to that stat?

"

For the specific example you give, no. Projectiles can be targeted even if they will fail to end up reaching a point - freezing pulse's animation time is not accounted for in targeting.

The actual trigger radius used is either the distance something could be targeted at/affect a thing, or the trap/mine's trigger radius - whichever is lower. So if you have a trap with 20 trigger radius, using cold snap (radius 16) it will use 16 for the trigger radius (thus it won't trigger when a monster enters the 20 radius, and then fail to hit with the smaller spell). So AoE can have an effect on trigger radius, if it's smaller than the trigger radius.

Mines would be far more viable, and far more fluid to use, if the detonation was instant.

Changing traps and mines from invisible and destructible to visible and indestructible would make them much more reliable as main skills and quite a bit less cheesy in pvp.

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Dechef wrote:

I've a question, since all placed mines detonate at the same time it's pretty much impossible to determnine this myself: if, for example, I link remote mine with Arc, and then I place 5 of them. Suppose the 1st of these 5 will shock a target, will the other 4 Arcs immediately get the damage bonus from shock? Or do you have to shock a target first, and THEN the remote mines will get the damage bonus?

Also, 5 remote mine Arcs will hit the same target, even if the 1st or 2nd Arc already killed it (not a 100% sure on this, as once again... hard to determine when they all go off at the same time) In my opinion it would be a lot better if detonated skills didn't target an enemy that is already dead.

I started using Arc Mines tonight and had this very same question. I feel like the other 4 should and would benefit from the first one Shocking, but as you point out it's nearly impossible to tell.

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gh0un wrote:

Remote mine could be viable, but what is really holding it back right now is the cast animation for detonate mine and the fact that the mines can be destroyed.
The animation for actually detonating the mine is completely killing the viability of the spell and also a no-go for the fun factor.

I completely agree with this, Remote Mine itself is fine, it's the Detonate ability that needs some love. As I understand, it's technically a spell and is therefore affected by Cast Speed, but it doesn't make sure for a Mine user to seek out Cast Speed just to get Detonates off faster when it has no impact on anything else the build does.

There should be a passive in the tree that buffs Detonate in some way.

I have another question about Arc mines. Let's say for example 9 mobs with 1 hit point each are approaching 3 Arc Mines (Each Arc mine capable of hitting 3 targets) that I laid directly on top of each other. All 9 mobs are within the trigger radius of the Arc mines, but the mobs are forming a conga line and behind each other. When I trigger the 3 mines, is the AI going to have all 3 mines target the 3 closest, leaving the 6 mobs in the back alive? Or will the AI have one mine kill the closest 3, the second mine kill the middle 3 and the last mine hit the last 3? Essentially, how important is positioning and can mines be wasted by stacking them on top of each other?

I'd like to offer some feedback as a Remote Mine + Arc player. I have a 5 Link chest using Remote Mine, Arc, Added Lightning, Lightning Penetration and Added Chaos Damage. The mines do an incredible amount of damage and I've gotten some comments from people I group with about how cool the concept is and how surprisingly nice the damage is. The main hurdle is dealing with Mana costs, each mine costs me 164 Mana to place, but I've managed to deal with this as of level 53.

Pros

Excellent damage
Very fun play style
A rather unique and different play style which is also nice

Cons

-The fact that mines can be destroyed pretty much immediately after you set them down is a huge detriment to the build, specifically when using Arc Mines which I feel is one of the most powerful combinations at the moment. With a high Shock chance, if the first hit Shocks, the damage from the subsequent ones goes up, same if you get an early 2nd or even 3rd Shock stack. When fighting against mobs that can easily destroy your mines, you have to place one, detonate, place one, detonate. It completely kills the enjoyability and viability of the build.

Remote Mine players already have to constantly be on the move and positioning mines correctly in order to hit the right amount of targets, because if you stack all of the mines in the same place, when Detonated they will all attack the same target, which is generally a waste unless it's a rare or something.

In my opinion, Remote Mine needs 1 of 2 quality of life buffs for PvE purposes.

1) Gives Mines immunity for X amount of seconds after being laid. I was thinking 5 seconds would be a good number, it would give the player enough time to lay some traps and deal damage without a mob instantly destroying them as you lay them. Perhaps a new Skill Tree Passive could be added to increase this number.

2) Remove the cast animation for Detonate and allow it to be instantly casted on the run. GGG seems to be a fan of having things make sense, like why would an Exile have fancy looking gear when he/she is an exile? Likewise, the Detonate icon looks like a button that is just being pressed, logically, we shouldn't have to stop to push a button =) Again, this could also be a Skill Tree Passive for Remote Mine players.

If I could choose one of two buffs, it would be option 2, when I group with friends or other players, in a lot of cases they've pretty much killed the pack of mobs as I'm done laying my traps and about to Detonate. Having an instant Detonate allows me to get damage out faster and compete with more viable builds like Lightning Arrow, Elemental Cleave, etc.

How does remote mine interact with point blank? Say for a skill like fireball or explosive arrow, is it the distance of the mine to the mob? Or the player at the time of the detonate? Help would be appreciated