Searing Bond Trap Mara | Laudamus

Hello all,

I've been wanting to make a 3 totem Searing Bond build for a while now, and I believe that I've figured it out: Searing Bond + Lightning Warp totems/Elemental Equilibrium. RESULT: Searing Bond becomes more effective as a main skill and doesn't become a support to Fire Trap.

UPDATE: I have now modified my Searing Bond with the Trap support gem, which adds damage and means that it can also be buffed by added trap damage passives and gear! (Sunblast unique belt = 40 % increased trap dmg).

ACTUAL FIGHTING: Throw a Searing Bond trap, cast a Lightning Warp (LW) totem or two. That's it. By the time the trap triggers, and the Searing Bond totem activates, the LW totems have begun casting. The Searing Bond totem connects to the Lightning Warp totems, dealing damage over a large area while adjusting the beams of Searing Bond automatically.

BEHIND THE SCENES: The LW totems hit the enemies for lightning dmg, causing Elemental Equilibrium to trigger. This gives enemies +25% res to lightning, but -50% res to fire and cold. Since Searing Bond causes burning damage-over-time and does not actually hit the enemy, it receives the benefit of Elemental Equilibrium without triggering it in the opposite direction.

Vids of the build with update to come soon!

Vids of my old build without the trap damage increase at level 75 or so.

http://www.twitch.tv/laudamus/b/498051130

Killing Kole http://www.twitch.tv/laudamus/b/498397083

The build

The gear

The Auras

The gems

The Strategy


The Pros:
-Extreme flexibility - you can use any and all totems in combination with Searing Bond!
-High strategic capability
-Relatively cheap
-Only 3 link required
-Tanky because totems draw agro
-Decent health for caster (about 3.8k at level 82, but I will probably get it over 4k)
-High health Regen (currently 370 or so health regenerated per second. Will be over 400 soon)
-Good dps (Searing Bond at my current level does around 12K burning damage per second, but this will go up. Searing Bond still needs three levels, and each level adds about 1k burning damage per second. Curses + Elemental Equilibrium add lots of damage as well.)
-3 Auras

Cons:
-Absurd rolls on curses from Soul Mantel combined with hits from the right enemies can hurt a lot, but constant use of warding flasks almost entirely eliminates this problem.
-If the enemies are quick with dmg output (eg. Museum map boss), it can be difficult to get your totems up and deal damage. Lots of decoys help (skelly totem, for instance).
-Speed. If you don't invest in faster casting with gems and/or passives, the build can be slow. Skill in trap and totem placement also goes a long way toward faster playing.

This build is loads of fun. I hope you give it a shot and figure out more ways to break it! In the next update I hope to have screenshots of current stats and vids of the trap update.

Thanks,
Laudamus

This build look fun. Any Idea on the dps so far?

Thanks for the bump!

Right now each beam does a little under 7K fire damage per second. By the end they should be over 10K per beam. The tool tip is hard to calculate, though, because beams are constantly overlapping the enemies who are being hit with Ele. Equ. and cursed with Flammability and Elemental Weakness. Here is a vid. of me fighting Kole to give a practical example. Searing Bond still needs three levels, and I am currently level 75 and only investing in damage nodes at this point. I'm just starting to play with shock stacking my Warp totems as well.

http://www.twitch.tv/laudamus/b/498397083

Build updated with the Trap support gem!

Soul Mantle is really Necessary ?

That's a good question.
There are three negatives to Soul Mantle that I have seen. First, and obviously, you get hit with level 20 curses constantly. Skill with warding flasks practically nullifies this disadvantage and grants the advantage of being immune to monster curses almost 100% of the time. The second is that the beams of Searing Bond no longer stack damage, taking away the single-target benefit of having three totems. One also does not have the benefit of some other awesome armor that he would use instead of Soul Mantle.

There are four strong benefits that I have experienced with Soul Mantle. First, the extra totem adds greatly needed speed. Two warping with one searing simply increases the "area of effect" and thus the speed of the build. As I mention above, speed is a weakness of Searing Bond imo for which compensation needs to be made. Another benefit to three totems is the cannon fodder aspect. More totems equals more fodder and survivability. I have experienced that the 25% additional totem life which Soul Mantle grants is also very beneficial. The most dangerous and even impossible situations for this build are when the monsters put out dps at a faster rate than you can summon totems and deal damage. If you don't get the additional life from SM, then you probably need to roll it into the passive tree. Finally, the extra totem allows you to add a third totem of your choosing, be it skelly, decoy, anything with spell totem, etc. while maintaining the important mobility and synergy (ele. equ.) between the Searing Bond totem and the Warping totem. I see this as an important strategic advantage which allows you to compensate for a unique situation without sacrificing too much efficiency. While mapping I have found all of these benefits very useful and even necessary.

That said, I am saving up for a new Kaom's to give it a spin with the build. The extra fire damage from the armor will benefit SB, and the life will allow some flexibility in the tree to compensate for the loss of Soul Mantle (totem life, esp.). I will post with my results, but it might be a little while :P

Thanks for the question!