[1.1.5] 1MHC Tri-Ele Crit Trapper

Level: 76
Highest Map: lvl 71

Trappers were always something that interested me. In my mind, they combined the safety of mobility with the potential to hit very, very hard. I knew off the bat that I wanted to do a crit-trapper build; however, the issue of powercharges was always something that annoyed me. I hated using a manual powercharge generation method, so I opted to use a Jaws of Agony, an item that I viewed as only so-so. It's really around this item that I've built this entire build. Thus, after playing an arc witch into the top 100, I decided to try out this build that I've been thinking about for a while.

High Mobility - The ability to use traps as your source of damage means you don't have to stand still and directly hit the mobs. As such, after throwing the traps you are free to kite and dodge packs effectively.
High Flexibility - For the most part, the gem setups are very flexible. This allows you to adjust for certain map or party setups.
High CC - Cold Snap trap allows you to literally freeze entire rooms, providing exceptional safety in potentially dangerous situations.
Prolif Burns - Huge fire-trap crit prolifs can provide the damage
Indirect Damage - Due to the mechanics of how traps work, you are completely safe from reflect, lightning thorns, and corrupting blood.
Very Strong End Game Scaling - This build provides perhaps one of the highest end-game potentials of any I've played. Up through lvl 90 almost every passive point is essential and powerful, providing a meaningful boost for the character from start to end.

Leveling Pains - Leveling as a trapper is quite difficult. The gem setups are though flexible, required, and may be hard to obtain in a new league.
Gearing Difficulties - The gear requirement for this build is actually moderately high. Nothing like 6l Shavs or ridiculous end game, but to achieve a safe margin of health and damage requires an investment of a few ex.

I do not have pictures at the moment, but I'll list the character stats below for reference.

How to Progress:

Personally, I would suggest going to the shadow area first, picking up all the trap nodes and crit nodes, grabbing life nodes as needed; then filling in the templar side of the tree. Get elemental equilibrium when you get all three element of traps setup.

Trappers are a very mobile character that requires a fair amount of apm on your part. The typical trap rotation for me goes:

Arc Trap -> Fire Trap -> Critical Weakness -> Cold Snap Trap

That's just the typical dps rotation that I prefer. A safer rotation would be:

Cold Snap Trap -> Critical Weakness -> Arc Trap -> Fire Trap

Since traps are at their maximum effectiveness when enemies are bunched up, a typical map involves a heavy amount of kiting and baiting. In addition, to maintain powercharges you will be sprinting inbetween packs, which overall with the kiting leads to a fast-paced and extremely fun play style.

This is not a build where you can just hold down the right-click button and watch everything die *cough arc cough*. Positioning of yourself and your traps is essential to getting maximum effectiveness. That's something I'm still working on, and comes with experience playing.

Against bosses/ rares curse critical weakness and spam your traps in any order. Like seriously, just go full on StarCraft apm mode on them.

Fire Trap + Conc Effect + Elemental Prolif + Fire Penetration + Increased Critical Damage (5) + Empower (6)

Cold Snap + Trap + Multiple Trap + Elemental Prolif OR Added Chaos OR Added Lightning

Arc + Trap + Multiple Trap + Lightning Penetration

Clarity + Discipline + Reduced Mana

Purity of Fire + Reduced Mana + Critical Weakness

Gearing is a bit difficult on this character. The use of many uniques means that capping resistances can sometimes be tricky. However, Jaws of Agony is the only "required" piece of gear. When I can, I'll be buying or 5l'ing a Cloak of Defiance.

NOTE: I an NOT using Sunblast or Deerstalkers. After testing, I found their benefits to be very minimal, and very much not worth the huge lose in HP and resistance.

Otherwise, this is the gear that you should look for in each slot:

Main Hand: Dagger with high spell damage and spell crit.
Divinarius is the perfect choice of this. A truly high end dagger will beat it, but for just 1ex it provides a great boost.

Rings: Life + Res. As much as possible. Mana-Regen would also be nice, though possibly quite expensive. My rings are very nice, and probably run in the ex range.

Amulet: Crit + Crit Multi if possible. However, survivability always takes precedence in HC, so a Life + Res amulet would also be acceptable.

Boots: Life + Res.

Belt: Life + Res. (Notice a pattern?)

Gloves: Maligaro's are best, though a rare one with Life + ES/ Mana + Res would be decent.

Chest: Cloak of Defiance OR Lightning Coil. A rare one here would not be acceptable. You really need the survivability provided by these two chests. Personally, I would prefer a Lightning Coil, but the -60 lightning resistance is not easy to juggle.

Just my preferred setup. Using a Cloak of Defiance, I would recommend including a sanctified mana flask in those situation where 20 rhoas charge you and eat up all your mana.

Normal: Oak
Cruel: Kill All
Merc: Alira