[3.8] What a Shocking Tri-Element Trapper! [Fire/Ice Trap build][UberAtziri/Shaper Video]

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randomsaint wrote:

Anyone have any clever ideas for increased boss damage? I'm level 87 and my gear is mediocre, clearing trash on T12 maps (haven't played anything higher yet) is cake, and tons of fun too, but the map bosses take a little longer than I'd like. I party somewhat often with one of my friends who is playing the Frostbolt miner, and he does way more damage to the bosses than I do. It feels like an 80-20 split, or maybe worse to the point where it feels like I might as well not be there for the boss fight (I'm sure the Shock helps but he still melts them if I'm across the map).

I've never been one for making my own or modifying builds, but perhaps Explosive Expert in the Ascendancy tree would help? It feels like the Smoke doesn't happen enough or in favorable enough situations to really help, but maybe I'm underestimating it's defensive usefulness. Other ideas I've pulled from nowhere are dropping Clarity and the curse setup for the Clear Mind jewel (I imagine this will get me killed more often than I can figure in my head right now), or reaching for more Power Charges on the tree and using Inya's Epiphany (really just stumbled into this from looking at boots with high movespeed and ES, since my fourth link for Shock Nova was Increased Crit Damage even though I didn't really need it).

I have to admit, the damage seems to be nerfed somewhat since 3.0, due to the hefty nerf to Ignite, but bosses die rather quickly in my experience (If I am honest, I melted T12 bosses in seconds at your level, though admittedly, I had some pretty awesome stuff already by then).

Skilling Explosive Expert instead isn't gonna do more than Born in the Shadows. You may not have noticed, but your traps themselves actually blind targets, and with BitS, you actually gain a damage bonus of 30% damage against blinded Enemies.

You also really need to get down the rotation. Any little mess up may cause your damage to suffer greatly. As a little tip, if you skilled Blast Cascade, put Jaws of Agony in your secondary weapon set, switch over to it before any boss fight, throw a couple traps to get your charges up and switch right back.

I haven't tried it out, but maybe the Frostbolt Miner build actually could just be stronger against single target. I never admitted that this build has the optimus maximus damage to rule them all, but that it has enough to beat nearly everything, potentially everything with top gear.

If you allow people to check your characters in your profile, I may even be able to give you more in depths reasons as of why your damage isn't there, etc.

Thanks for the reply! I must have mistakenly read something about the Smoke On Hit not working for traps (probably that Life On Hit applies to traps, and then I connected dots in my mind that I shouldn't have). I originally figured that it did work but somehow I've failed to notice the Blind symbol above enemies (probably because they die too fast for the most part and for bosses, Temp Chains symbol tends to get in the way). I have recently started to notice that my rotation does get messed up sometimes on bosses because I'll miss a fire trap or some other reason, been trying to pay more attention to that. I didn't get Blast Cascade but I might try to switch into it later.

I believe I've made my character (Langeskov) public to view now. I have gloves with spell damage but I've been struggling to recolor them for the links. I also lucked into this Tinkerskin and am too poor for 6L Carcass Jack right now. I think my rings are a little messed up too right now.

And I didn't mention it before but thanks for the guide! Like I said, I've been having a ton of fun, and I definitely prefer these kinds of build with multiple active skills.

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randomsaint wrote:

Thanks for the reply! I must have mistakenly read something about the Smoke On Hit not working for traps (probably that Life On Hit applies to traps, and then I connected dots in my mind that I shouldn't have). I originally figured that it did work but somehow I've failed to notice the Blind symbol above enemies (probably because they die too fast for the most part and for bosses, Temp Chains symbol tends to get in the way). I have recently started to notice that my rotation does get messed up sometimes on bosses because I'll miss a fire trap or some other reason, been trying to pay more attention to that. I didn't get Blast Cascade but I might try to switch into it later.

I believe I've made my character (Langeskov) public to view now. I have gloves with spell damage but I've been struggling to recolor them for the links. I also lucked into this Tinkerskin and am too poor for 6L Carcass Jack right now. I think my rings are a little messed up too right now.

And I didn't mention it before but thanks for the guide! Like I said, I've been having a ton of fun, and I definitely prefer these kinds of build with multiple active skills.

Hmm, it say you only got a three link in your gloves. That needs to be fixed asap. Ice Trap gets a nice damage boost with Ice Penetration. For now, you could also go 3 green and 1 blue if you struggle with the links, putting something like Concentrated Effect or Controlled Destruction in it for now. If you want to go full damage, you could also try out using Elemental Weakness as a active curse instead of the other stuff. Blast Cascade might actually be a better choice now that ES got so heavily nerfed. You will deal more damage, get more ES, but not necessarily more life with Globe. As I said, put it in your offhand to switch over to get some quick Power Charges. Quality on Gems is also going to boost your damage quite a lot, too, but that's for when you get more rich, too.

Awesome build; really enjoyed it. Unfortunately died yesterday during the Shavronne level 13 map boss fight. Somehow the exploding books killed me when I was in a safe spot. I don't see any reason why this build wouldn't be able to progress passed T13. It melts map trash and does well VS. bosses if you hit and run. Here was my experience if you're interested:

*Stone Golem*
He's like your offensive line and you're the running back. He's the unsung hero of this build. Once your Golem's taunt hits, you have time to drop vaal lightning trap and alternate spam Fire/Ice trap for big damage while the boss is stationary. I linked Minion Resistance Support to Stone Golem and it helped A LOT. I didn't try linking Minion Health until later but I don't think it was necessary.

*Tree*
I made a few changes to the tree. I'm not a fan of ES so I dropped some of those passives and got Acrobatics. I also picked up the huge Scion health wheel. I picked up enough Mana nodes in order to keep my total mana at around 43% of my health. Supposedly that's the magic number for MoM. I decided to drop Elemental Focus for Assassination and didn't notice a big difference. I would have picked it back up after I got all the health passives and then probably would have worked my way towards either Elementalist or the Heartseeker wheel near Acrobatics.

*Gems*
I used Flame Dash for movement along with Arcane Surge. You want to level Surge to the appropriate level so that one Flame Dash procs it. My Flame Dash was 38 mana so I leveled Surge to 7 which procs at 32 mana. I dropped Controlled Destruction in favor of Increased Critical Chance. I only used that briefly and didn't notice a big difference. My Fire Trap had ~55% crit with the crit gem. I linked CWDT (lvl 1) to Immortal Call and dropped Increased Duration for Enfeeble and Increased AoE. I also picked up the small Crit Chance wheel (Annihilation) rather than Cruel Prep and the extra Power Charge.

*Gear*
I found a Tinkerskin a map or two before I died and I loved it for the brief amount of time I got to use it. I was using a nice rare chest prior to that. I got as much crit as I could on a dagger and sacrificed a lot of spell damage. I used Stibnite flasks to make sure I had extra evasion up as much as possible as well as Blind, which really helps both offensively and defensively. Before I had Tinkerskin, I was using 1 Stibnite and 1 Quartz rather than 2 Stibnites.

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I used all my passives points and a handful of Regrets while playing. I made a lot of changes because my gear kept changing. My priority was the 43% mana pool and I also wanted at least 50% Critical Chance on Fire Trap. There's a lot of different options for passives and JUST enough passive points to make things work. I chose to keep Alira alive for the crit multi and the resists as you suggested. My life pool was under 4,000 once I killed Kitava. I started investing in the big health wheel around that time and it steadily increased to ~5000 before I died. It would have been 5000+ at around 87 or 88.

Again, I enjoyed playing this build. If I manage to find another Tinkerskin, I'm probably going to try again. I'd like to hit at least 90. My character's name is EyeEeeDee if you want to check him out. Thanks for posting this thread.

TL;DR Build was FUN. Try it!

@Seyser_Koze

Wow, thanks for that detailed experience. You gave me one or two new insights on my build! Funny thing, I actually tinkered around with my build and realized that getting Annihilation is actually better than Throatseeker (Who would've thought!) due to your post.

Kinda sucks how you died, though. The Scriptorium boss is actually one of the easiest with this build, I'd say. Must've gotten unlucky with those books.

Stone Golem is, indeed, quite a lot more useful than I show, though does that sadly falter a little at T16 maps, since they caused the Guardians to switch a lot more between targets, even when taunted, since 2.6 (At least I think that was the patch they changed it in).

The Arcane Surge Idea actually seems like a nice idea, albeit sadly only half of Arcane Surge benefits Traps.

Also, you made me think. Since the nerf to Ignite and the removal of a Power Charge, increased chance to crit might actually be better than Inscresed Crit Damage. Time to test.

Again, thanks for your review! Always appreciated.

I'm level 68 and enjoying it so far. But I'm kind of confused with Ice Trap. It's my understanding that it's suppose to be stronger than Shock Nova, right? But it has a little less damage according to the tool tip. These are my links: Ice Trap - Trap and Mine - Cluster - Cold Pen. I know Cold Pen doesn't add to the damage tool tip but I don't know I feel like there's something missing. Should I switch my Cold Pen to something else? Maybe a blue support gem? That would solve my sockets problem because both my gloves and helmet are pure ES bases and it would be hard to get 4G. Thanks in advance!

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breakingdom wrote:

I'm level 68 and enjoying it so far. But I'm kind of confused with Ice Trap. It's my understanding that it's suppose to be stronger than Shock Nova, right? But it has a little less damage according to the tool tip. These are my links: Ice Trap - Trap and Mine - Cluster - Cold Pen. I know Cold Pen doesn't add to the damage tool tip but I don't know I feel like there's something missing. Should I switch my Cold Pen to something else? Maybe a blue support gem? That would solve my sockets problem because both my gloves and helmet are pure ES bases and it would be hard to get 4G. Thanks in advance!

You are not mistaking. Shock Nova looks as if it does more damage, but the Cold Penetration will throw it over to Ice Traps favor. Something else you might not noticed is that Ice Trap actually has half the cooldown than Shock Nova Trap, which means you can far more often use it to throw it between other Traps as you do your rotation. After all, it is Shock Nova - Ice Trap - Shock Nova for most multi targets and Ice Trap - FIre Trap - Ice Trap for most single targets.

I wonder how you guys kill bosses.. like for example even Strand bosses? single target damage is completely shit with traps. And that Chimara fight was painful to watch. Almost 7 minutes of running around. I am playing traps myself and bosses are ONLY problem.

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Angry_Roleplayer wrote:

I wonder how you guys kill bosses.. like for example even Strand bosses? single target damage is completely shit with traps. And that Chimara fight was painful to watch. Almost 7 minutes of running around. I am playing traps myself and bosses are ONLY problem.

I admit that that video is a bit too long due to me bumbling around in that map (as a side note, I hate The Pit of the Chimera since you tend to keep running into dead ends... at least I do all the time. I might be just stupid), but, well... What do you expect? 3-4 minutes on Guardians (Especially with the Chimera since he keeps porting away) is what you are going to get if you aren't playing any ultra face melter build that can crop the Shaper in 10 seconds.

Alright, granted, after the nerf to Ignite even I say that the main Traps (Fire, Ice and definitely Lightning) could use a damage buff, give Reduced Trap and Mine Cooldown something like Increased Trap Throwing Speed to not make it as utterly useless as it is right now and also make Elemental Equilibrium more convenient by having the enemy only get the resistance to the highest dealt element (though this would only affect this build, obviously). However, right now, Bosses die at a decent pace, in my opinion. Could be a bit better (and was a lot better with this build before the nerf to Ignite, by the by), but it isn't terrible.

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MrMoho wrote:

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Angry_Roleplayer wrote:

I wonder how you guys kill bosses.. like for example even Strand bosses? single target damage is completely shit with traps. And that Chimara fight was painful to watch. Almost 7 minutes of running around. I am playing traps myself and bosses are ONLY problem.

I admit that that video is a bit too long due to me bumbling around in that map (as a side note, I hate The Pit of the Chimera since you tend to keep running into dead ends... at least I do all the time. I might be just stupid), but, well... What do you expect? 3-4 minutes on Guardians (Especially with the Chimera since he keeps porting away) is what you are going to get if you aren't playing any ultra face melter build that can crop the Shaper in 10 seconds.

Alright, granted, after the nerf to Ignite even I say that the main Traps (Fire, Ice and definitely Lightning) could use a damage buff, give Reduced Trap and Mine Cooldown something like Increased Trap Throwing Speed to not make it as utterly useless as it is right now and also make Elemental Equilibrium more convenient by having the enemy only get the resistance to the highest dealt element (though this would only affect this build, obviously). However, right now, Bosses die at a decent pace, in my opinion. Could be a bit better (and was a lot better with this build before the nerf to Ignite, by the by), but it isn't terrible.

And i think it's terrible. Even t10 boss take forever (compared to what a classic spellcaster or a melee build can do.. hell... even a MINER). I am not even talking about anything higher. Traps simply have no single target damage for boss killer. With increased boss like it is absolutely insane and most of the time not worth it fightning bosses at all. I was so desperate i even wanted to try spell totem with scorching ray. Bear Trap is complete garbage. Ice Trap has mediocre dps but still twice less than a frostbolt mine (even full crit). Fire Trap = same. DPS is simply mot there. Also add clunky cooldowns and greatly reduced damage with multiple+cluster traps and the result = poo dps. I wish Traps were good, but they terribly suffer against bosses now and high tier maps are also a pain.
After a 7 minute fight with Chimera i really wonder how it is "not terrible". Not all map bosses stand still, waiting to be killed, most of them have very nasty and deadly mechanics. So i wonder how are you supposed to kill them with that build. I cannot even effectively kill Strand double bosses, they are very fast and both have a tonn of hp now.