Improving Traps in the Labyrinth

At this point, I only play in Hardcore.

I tried the labyrinth on Normal with a new character that I made specifically to take advantage of the Ascendancy class system. I died instantly when I got caught in traps.

So I made another character to try again, but I found that the labyrinth was still far too difficult. I decided to keep leveling my character until I felt comfortable trying again. I actually completed normal difficulty and was at the point that I could even try the labyrinth on Cruel if I wanted to. At level 54, with over 2,000 life over 2,000 energy shield, nearly 1,000 armour and substantial evasion, I tried the labyrinth again on Normal. After nearly dying multiple times to the traps, I decided to just leave the labyrinth.

I'm playing a Whispering Ice build and cannot afford to replace my gear a second time. Because of this, I have decided to simply not go back to the Labyrinth until the traps are fixed so that they are manageable. This is especially frustrating because my character is powerful enough that even monsters appropriate for his level are virtually no threat to him.

Here are some things that I strongly believe need to be done in order to fix the labyrinth.

1: The damage from traps needs to be reduced. I understand that traps are supposed to be strong enough that players don't just try to tank them, but in order for players to learn to get good at avoiding traps, they need to be able to learn from their mistakes. Obviously, some mistakes will be fatal, but most shouldn't be.

2: Players need to be able to see all traps they will have to avoid to get to a safe area. This one is the main reason why I don't want to try the labyrinth again until it gets fixed. There are too many areas in which a player can only see the first few traps ahead, but doesn't know what's behind those traps. Usually, there are just more traps. Because of this, in order to cross some areas, the player must move into an unsafe area and just hope that they can dodge any traps that happen to be in between them and where they are headed. I've played games in which players must move from one area to another while avoiding some kind of threats. The only thing that makes those games enjoyable is that the player can actually solve the problem that is put before them. When you can see all of the threats before you, you can plan out your movement in such a way that you avoid all threats. A large area with dangerous obstacles is no fun if you can't see your way ahead; it's just a death trap. The only benefit to making it possible for characters to die in a game is that it creates a challenge that players can overcome if they play well. That doesn't apply to character death that players can't control, and it's hard to avoid death if you are forced to run into an area with traps you can't see until they're already threatening you.

3: Player defenses need to be effective against traps. Players should be able to expect that their survivability against monsters will be a reasonable indicator of their survivability against traps. It seems to me that sawblades, spinning blades, and blade sentries deal physical damage over time. I'm not sure if that's true, but if it is, then they really need to be changed so that they instead apply frequent hits for low to moderate damage. That way, armour, evasion, block, and dodge would still work against them.

Traps are pretty mindnumbingly broken because:

1. Evasion, armor, life, and especially ES are all completely worthless against them, with high max life and ES actually being literally counterproductive against the traps themselves. At least evasion and armor reduce mob damage without raising the bar for healing when you get hit by a trap.

2. Life regen and especially good life flasks with no eshield and low to moderate max life are EXTREMELY effective against them, to the point of letting a lowish life build with regen and flasks ignore them exactly the way the devs claim to want not to be possible against traps.

3. Lag combined with sequences of traps is entirely too deadly in a way that has nothing to do with skill.

Traps scaling with max hp+es just doesn't work, especially with flasks allowed, the meta is simply broken. It needs to be changed, and changes also need to be made to prevent technical issues from being such a huge risk in lab. If traps scaling with hp+es and ignoring all damage reductions is going to stay, the lab needs to be made a zone with a (low) cap on hp/es regen (possibly just a fixed rate outright while in lab) and life flasks disallowed or also savagely capped at a % of max life per second (lower than what traps deal even when combined with base regen,) to fix the current broken meta with them. That said, OP's ideas are a much, much better fix - though it will make tanking through traps more accessible instead of less. What absolutely should not happen is leaving the current broken meta in place where flasks and no es/low hp are a free ride on traps and a majority of actually good tanky builds (especially high max ES ones) for conventional play get killed near-instantly by traps simply because the meta is arbitrary, inconsistant and broken.

As-is, traps CAN easily be tanked through, it's just a matter of having to specifically exploit for it. And that's even worse than it being generally possible to do so by simply being overleveled, because it's extremely counterintuitive and unreasonable.

So even though I had no intention of attempting the labyrinth in Normal, much less Cruel, anytime soon, I did want to get through the Trials of Ascendency in Cruel, just to make sure that I didn't have to go back to do them later on, which I figured would be pretty tedious. So, at level 55, I went into the Catacombs to do the last Trial of Ascendency. Considering how much easier the trials had been compared to the labyrinth, I figured I could manage it. On the last one that I did, the Catacombs, I died, because of the exact problems that I had mentioned above.

I saw three lanes that had blade sentries going across them, and they were moving pretty fast, so I was afraid that if I tried to run through them I'd get hit. I decided to use lightning warp to get across. The problem was that I could see that using lightning warp wouldn't quite get me far enough. If I used lightning warp to get as far as I could, I would be just within the lane of travel of the third row of blade sentries. I didn't want to get hit by those at all, so, I decided to use lightning warp to get across then run forward to get out of the way. I used lightning warp, and I ran forward to get out of the way, but I wound up running straight into another blade sentry. It was on top of me before I saw it, and it killed me before I had a chance to react to it.

I've been playing in hardcore leagues since Tempest. From that, I've learned to not die, and I've learned that you never die unless you make mistakes. After each character death, I could look back and see what I clearly should have done differently to prevent it. This time, it's not like that. I look back on what happened, and I honestly don't see what I could have done to avoid the perils of this situation. Using a different movement skill or just running might have given me a chance to see what was ahead, but even if I had done so, I'm not sure that it would have helped. If, as I was running between the blade sentries, I had noticed that there was another one ahead, I might not have been able to turn around and go back without getting hit by the blade sentries. And even if I had seen the traps ahead and been able to turn around and go back safely, I still don't see how I could have managed to get across safely. If I can't see where that last blade sentry is, I can't know when it will be safe to start running across.

Avoiding character death with skill is what makes hardcore leagues fun for me, but it's no fun at all to have your character die from something that you couldn't possibly have prevented.

I didn't even know that trap damage scaled with life + energy shield.

That's not okay. It puts players who use energy shield at a huge disadvantage because they can't get energy shield back with flasks in the same way that you can get life back. It also goes against what any normal player will think based upon their experience with the game. Noone will know that unless they come across that information by chance from researching traps for other reasons. I screwed myself over because I didn't know that, and so will most other players.

Don't get hit by the traps. It is mostly possible. Some of the trap combos are really quite mean, but often there is a way around. If there isn't, you can just restart the lab, and the trap combos change. Or wait a day.

Given that your first character ripped, you can now train with it on Standard.

I can agree that maybe the trap damage should be slightly lowered on Normal and maybe Cruel, but definitely not on Merciless. I actually catch myself thinking that the traps don't do enough damage, but the perspective is different on HC of course.

Movement skills are your friend OP.

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I_NO wrote:

Movement skills are your friend OP.

I've already been using lightning warp supported by faster casting, less duration, and rapid decay, along with flame dash supported by faster casting. My greatest problem is that I can't see far enough ahead to see all of the traps between me and the next safe place for me to stand.

The only 2 things I want them to fix in laby is.

1. ES damage % scale need to rebalanced, it is either you reduce it or u stop life build from using flask when they standing on traps. Either way works.
2. Desync, (if ever happen) it should not be putting me back on top of a trap. I would rather desync back b4 the trap & rerun the trap than desync that puts me on-top of a trap.