[1.1 SC/Ambush] High DPS Trapper with Reliable Shocking

This is a very high area damage trapper build. I've had many people ask me for the build after seeing the damage it can do in map parties, so I figured I'd post it. It uses fire trap for the main damage dealer and relies on maximizing the "double-dipping" damage increases, including shocking everything (which makes it even better for parties) and elemental equilibrium (EE). Quality shock nova with Sunblast and Deerstalker is used for shock. There is a reasonable amount of flexibility for customization in this build while keeping its main effective strategies.

I'm currently level 87 with mostly mediocre gear and doing well. I haven't died since many levels ago, so the build has a good amount of survivability too. It makes use of Cloak of Defiance for Mind over Matter (MoM) for this, while running Arctic Armor (AA). Eldritch Battery (EB) is picked up to sustain the mana for this.

You could realistically start the build as either templar, witch, or shadow. All 3 would be about as equally effective. The main reason I went with witch is that I want both of her starting nodes, while templar and shadow only have 1 out of the 2 starting ones being useful. It's also in the middle of the desired nodes which makes it easier to level. The build goes to the starting nodes of all 3 classes, so there would be almost no changes to the final tree.

The build has an excessive amount of damage for soloing, but is also quite effective for it because it can handle most map mods and combinations. If you mostly solo, you could probably lay off the damage a little, but it's always fun to have anyway. Because of this and because we triple shock everything, this build works extremely well in parties.


DPS Principles (you can skip much of this if you're sure you know how double-dipping burning damage works)
The way to achieve high damage is to make use of "double-dipping." This refers to things that boost the damage of both your initial fire trap hit, and the ignite damage that the fire trap causes. By doing this, you achieve quadratic damage scaling. For example, if you had 200% total increased fire damage, you would actually do 3*3 = 9 times more burning damage.

Fire trap does an initial amount of AoE fire damage in one hit. It also leaves burning ground behind, but we can mostly ignore this because it's somewhat insignificant. The initial hit can ignite any targets that were hit by it, causing them to burn. This happens either when you crit, or by things that give you chance to ignite (such as the gem that we use). The ignite damage is based directly on the initial hit damage. This ignite effect can them be proliferated using the elemental proliferation gem, which causes everything in a large AoE around the target to burn as well. This burn is what does the majority of the damage in this build.

Some mods, such as spell damage and trap damage only increase the damage of the initial fire trap hit. Because the burning damage from ignite is based on the initial hit damage, this is good. Some mods, such as increased burning damage only apply to the ignite damage. This is also ok and helpful. However, and this is the key, some mods apply to both individually, so the extra damage actually gets applied twice, multiplied together. These mods are +% fire damage and +% elemental damage and are much more valuable than spell damage because of this.

The other two extremely important factors that apply twice in the same way are resists and the shock effect. If you get a target to -100% resist (through a curse and EE), you'll do double the initial hit damage, causing double the burning damage, but then the burning damage would also be doubled, resulting in 4 times the damage. Likewise, if a target has 75% fire resist and you can't punch through it, you'll only do 1/16 of the normal burning damage (ouch). Shock works the same way -- a triple shocked enemy takes 1.9x damage, for 3.61x burning damage. Notice that the boost from resists and shock is multiplied together, so if a target is both triple shocked and at -100% resist, it will take a whopping 14.4x as much damage as normal. This is why EE and the instant triple shock nova setup (described below) is so important.


Defense
The build has about 180% increased hp from passives, which is not super high but is reasonable. I have 3500 hp currently. To improve survival, we use Cloak of Defiance which gives MoM and reduces all damage taken by 40% (except DoT), and takes it away from mana instead (assuming you have enough). The cloak isn't strictly necessary though. Unlike armor, this works on hits of even high damage.

We also run Arctic Armor which further takes off a flat 150-200 physical and fire damage, after it's already been reduced by MoM and armor. This means that, for example, a 500 damage hit ends up only doing 100 damage.

Both these mitigation techniques require lots of mana and mana regen, which is why using Eldritch Battery (and consequently ES gear) is necessary. Traps cost quite a bit of mana, so we'd likely want EB anyway. Might as well make use of the synergy.

We also get the witch 30% increased flask effect nodes. Combined with the high damage mitigation and not relying on huge life pools, this means we can easily recover HP from life flasks. I'd recommend having one instant effect life flask (Seething Hallowed Life Flask) and one more generic one. I would also recommend a granite flask, which makes our damage mitigation even more effective when combined with AA in tough situations. Finally, I'd also run a Quicksilver and Mana flask for obvious reasons.


Mandatory Trap Setup
Fire Trap
The Fire Trap setup will go into your chest armor. I show what to do depending on how many links you have available:
If 4-link: Fire Trap, Elemental Proliferation, Chance to Ignite, Fire Penetration.
Prolif and chance to ignite are mandatory. Note that the chance to ignite gets rolled on every target individually (unlike crit chance), so if you hit multiple targets at once, there's a very high chance that at least one of them will ignite. As long as one ignites, the proliferation will do the rest. Also note that prolif remains on the target after it dies (unless it got shattered by freeze), so any mobs that come anywhere near for several seconds after will quickly die as well. This means you don't have to keep spamming traps non stop -- just throw a good one and wait for the rest to rush in and die.

If 5-link: Fire Trap, Elemental Proliferation, Chance to Ignite, Concentrated Effect, Increased AoE.
Conc Effect is the most effective damage boost, and then we need Increased AoE to completely counteract the decreased radius. The radius (including the prolif area) becomes too small without it.

If 6-link: Like 5-link, but I would add Fire Penetration.

Shock Nova (or Arc) Trap
The other mandatory setup for this build is the shock nova one. This needs to go into Deerstalker.
In Deerstalker: Shock Nova (20% quality -- the quality is mandatory), Elemental Proliferation, Multiple Traps, Reduced Duration. Deerstalker supports everything in it with a Trap gem, so this becomes a trap and effectively a 5-link. Multiple Traps is used not only because it does more hits for more chance to shock and covering a larger area, but also because shock nova has a hole in the middle of it that doesn't hit anything. If you used a single one and threw it at a mob, it would not get hit. Reduced duration is needed because when (and only when) it is combined with Sunblast, it will detonate as soon as it lands, even if no mobs are near. This allows you to shock reliably and not need large packs to be around.

Proliferation is obviously necessary. Like the burning prolif, this will also continue to shock anything that comes near the corpse even after the shocked target dies. And like chance to ignite, the chance to shock applies for each target hit. This means that as long as you hit around 6 targets in an area with it, you will most likely triple shock everything (the prolif adds more shock stacks to targets that are already shocked too). Note that the shock novas don't really do much damage at all -- their goal is just to shock.

This is the reason that Deerstalker and Sunblast are required for the build. It's the only way to have instant-explosion shock novas reliably. Sunblast provides the reduced duration, while deerstalker provides a second effective 5-link chain that's needed to fit all the required gems into it. If you were using a two-handed weapon and consequently had two actual 5-link setups, then you could do away without Sunblast and Deerstalker. But then you wouldn't have crit either and it would be a different build.

Update: With the new buffs to Arc, you can use Arc instead of Shock Nova here. I've been experimenting with it and it seems to be as good or better. You don't even NEED a quality Arc (assuming you have static blows), though I would obviously recommend working toward it.


Other Skills Setup
Curse: I use Flammability for obvious reasons. The other possible alternative that might be worth exploring is Elemental Weakness since it has similar resistance reduction for fire damage, but also applies to lightning resists which would make the shock nova traps more effective.

Cold Snap I use this mostly to apply the desired EE effect after the fire trap hits, otherwise targets will be resistant to fire once ignited. It can also be useful for crowd control in bad situations. I have it set up with Increased AoE, Elemental Proliferation, and Cold Penetration.

Auras: Clarity for mana regen, Discipline for a bigger mana pool. Although you'll have less unreserved mana with discipline, your total mana is greater, which causes much faster mana regen. With enough ES/mana on gear, you can likely use a different aura instead of Discipline. But being able to run around with AA, soak up damage with MoM, and throw traps around requires a ton of mana regen if you want to stay near full mana most of the time. Link the auras with a Reduced Mana gem, obviously.

Cast when Damage Taken: You'll likely want one of these with Decoy Totem, Enduring Cry, and something else like Temporal Chains or Immortal Call linked. This is flexible though. You could also just put some Vaal skill in there too.

Arctic Armor doesn't need to be linked to anything.


How to Engage / Trap Ordering
Most of the time, you'll start with shock novas, then a fire trap, then before the fire trap explodes, cast flammability (btw, can anyone confirm that flammability will help with the initial hit here with the way that damage is often pre-calculated?). If more damage is needed, use cold snap immediately after the fire trap detonates to apply EE.

When one such volley of traps isn't enough, instead of using cold snap, use one or more sets of shock nova followed by fire trap, then cold snap after you're done with that.

For things like bosses that need maximum damage, it'll look like this: shock nova, fire trap, flammability, shock nova, fire trap, shock nova, fire trap, cold snap. Then wait a few seconds for all your traps to be available, then repeat. It's best to wait for full recovery rather than throwing out the traps one by one as they come available.

One weakness of this build is that it does much less damage to bosses, partially because of typically high resists, and partially because it's hard to shock them (high hp, and nothing around to stack proliferated shocks). However, to counter this, you'll want to try to do your burst with mobs near the boss. You'll still do enough damage to one-shot most map bosses this way.

For weaker packs, you can just use either flammability or shock novas then a fire trap.


Passives
I show some possible lower-level progression points here but honestly this isn't the way I did it. It all depends on when you can get various aspects of your setup going. For example, I didn't get Sunblast until higher levels because it was the start of the league and it was expensive at the time (and I knew it would get cheaper). So I didn't get EE and such until later. I also got basically no hp nodes until like level 60 since I could do fine without them while progressing (it is softcore after all - for hardcore, you'll definitely want to get more hp). I also leave crit until later, but you could feasibly start picking it up earlier than I posted here.





As explained before, one of the primary goals with the passives is to get as much elemental/fire damage nodes as possible. We obviously get the efficient crit chance and multiplier passives as well. The build uses EE for a huge boost in damage, as well as EB for mana to sustain AA and MoM. We also get static blows to maximize the chance to triple shock as much as possible, though you may consider leaving this out since a 20% quality shock nova is already 30% chance to shock.

Notice that the tree visits the very starting nodes of all 3 caster classes. This is hard to achieve until quite high levels. I stayed away from the templar area until mid 80s, picking up some other useful nodes in the meanwhile until I had enough nodes I could afford to respec out of to grab all the templar nodes at once.

Help Oak in normal for the +40hp and kill all the bandits in cruel and merciless for skill points.


Gear
Here's my current gear:


Now I'll go over what to aim for in each slot. All the required items are quite cheap.

Weapon: You can use either a wand or dagger effectively. High spell crit chance + global crit chance is very important. Wands are probably best because they can roll +% fire damage unlike daggers, which is why I use one. You'll want +% spell damage as well. Divinarius (unique dagger) is a good choice because it has everything we need other than +% fire damage, plus it has increased AoE which is quite useful. For maximum burning DPS though, you want the highest fire damage +% possible, it's better than more crit chance from daggers.

Running Searing Touch and not using crit at all is also a good choice. I posted a summary of that variant at the bottom of the post.

Shield: This also needs high spell crit chance. After that, you'll likely need some resists to achieve max resists. Life and ES follow. Spell damage is a luxury, since you likely won't be able to get it as well after getting the other things you need here.

Chest Armor: There's lots of room for flexibility here. Cloak of Defiance is a good choice because of its huge boost to survivability (it gives you 66% more effective life, assuming you have enough mana). We already get EB, so it's easy enough to run this as well. If you do use the cloak, make sure to aim for high ES/mana gear. Carcass Jack would probably also be a good choice due to the highly increased AoE.

Helm: Get as much life, resists, and ES as possible. Make sure you can max your resists first (using the Goldrim unique is a great choice until late game for this), then prioritize life, then ES.

Gloves: As for any crit-based build, Maligaro's unique is a good choice. I ran Aurseize until recently for the rarity boost and resists. I still use Aurseize when soloing because the extra damage is entirely unneeded for solo. If you have trouble maxing your resists, you can also use rare gloves with resists instead.

Boots: Deerstalker pretty much for sure. You can do an effective trapper without them but it would become a rather different build. They're required because they allow us to do the instant-detonation triple shock novas.

Belt: Sunblast is required for the same reason as Deerstalker is.

Rings: You basically just need resists and life here. Because we use a decent number of uniques, you'll probably need quite a bit of resists and life on the rings. You don't need so much that they become really expensive to obtain though.

Amulet: Crit multiplier is mandatory because other than Maligaro's gloves (and maybe a weapon), this is the only place we can get multiplier. You'll also need dexterity and strength stats because passives will mostly give you int while you'll definitely need around 100 dex and strength. After this is satisfied, get luxury mods like more ES/mana, rarity, life, or resists, if those are deficient elsewhere.


Videos
I'll try to get some recorded in the future.

Non-crit Searing Touch variant

just wanted to let you know - i will be trying out this build. wanted to play a trapper witch and decided to try this particular build out.

Cool. Are you going to level as trapper or switch to it after something else? I should probably talk about this in the guide, but I leveled with fire trap and cold snap multitrap, supplemented by searing bond when needed until later when I got the sunblast, shock nova, and 5L.

"

Cool. Are you going to level as trapper or switch to it after something else? I should probably talk about this in the guide, but I leveled with fire trap and cold snap multitrap, supplemented by searing bond when needed until later when I got the sunblast, shock nova, and 5L.

yea, currently leveling as a trapper. since i have a friend who's playing a melee shadow, it's pretty easy to just place the traps down. we play together, so i never have to solo. normal act1: felt my damage was a little low, but my damage has picked up a lot in act2. just reached act3 normal - so still very early, but I've been enjoying it so far.

I actually got cold snap, too - and used that in combination with my fire traps. My combo for now is: fire trap -> flammability -> trap -> trap -> cold snap. Sometimes I might throw in a fireball if everything is on cool down.

Using clarity for aura to support myself and my friend. still very early~ but so far like the damage I've been doing.

I actually used multitrap lightning trap for a while in cruel as well and it was working great. The fire trap damage mostly takes off with EE and shock.

nice and fun build.


And would u plz link the progression passive points? thank you.

This build is really solid! I really enjoy it and shock nova, cold snap, fire trap go very nicely together.

Leveled to 52 using a 4 link wideswing (effective 5 link)

Currently at lvl 71 and clearing maps efficiently.

If you can afford the gear, I highly recommend.

"

Miracle_9 wrote:

nice and fun build.


And would u plz link the progression passive points? thank you.

Thanks. I edited the post for some possible passive skill tree progression now.

I would record a video sooner but I can't record with sound currently. I might do one some time soon anyway.

Fun fact: I calculated that in my usual trap volley (shock novas, fire trap, curse), if the target has 0 fire resist normally, and if it's a pack (so triple shock happens), a crit on the fire trap will cause about 180k large AoE burning DPS. Pretty sick. It's enough to pretty much instantly kill packs even in a 6 person party in high level maps.

Hey

I was wondering how much IIR you can stack on this build without making it too weak to run mid-high level maps without much trouble (skipping bosses if necessary). If you were to swap gloves belt and boots for aursieze/perandus/Goldwyrms, put on some rings and an ammy with more IIR and some dmg/survivability mods coming in as second priority, and run an ES circlet with more IIR while possibly sacrificing ES/life/resists, and lastly maybe run IIR+crit chance instead of conc-effect and increased AOE (hopefully the increased crit chance gem would partially make up for the loss of crit chance from losing maligaros and some jewler...

Well... Would the build be totally crippled or what? Is it possibly to spec this with 250+ IIR. I know that summoners and totem builds are generally good for stacking IIR since they usually stay far away from the danger, and I was thinking trappers might be able to do something similar. Not crazy about the idea of a summoner/totem build.

In that case I would probably not do crit at all, though you could still. A searing touch without crit can do some serious damage as well. You'd lose the ability to do insta-detonation shock novas, making it still usable for bigger packs but not small ones/single target. You'd lose about 75% of your damage without the shock, but it would still be sufficient to work fine I think.

Before I used shock novas and such, I did run a semi-MF setup and it worked well but that was before end game content. Once you drop the instant novas and crit from item requirements, you're free to gear pretty much however you want. So it would probably work. And I do think the damage would still be sufficient, except maybe for bosses and such. You'd probably want to think about how to address the single target damage if it becomes an issue.