Trap

I think this gem is the first thing I've found in Path Of Exile to be 100% useless. Unless I'm missing something obvious.

Hey Mark, can you please give us an example of "envisioned" or "intended" use for this skill? Like Blood Rage is obviously awesome with CI which when combined with flicker strike is even more awesome. What about Trap...how can you make trap be awesome?

Ah thanks, I didn't actually realize that you can put multiple traps down at the same time (derp!)

Could this ability be changed to not be destroyed by leap slam? Makes it pretty impossible to use against Goatmen. If they jump onto your traps, the traps should trigger. It's like jumping onto a land mine? Leapslam should only destroy traps, if the aoe hits the trap without being in the trap trigger radius.

I think arc destroys traps as well, and arc isn't an AoE ability.

I really would like quality of this gem to do something decent. I never see people use traps. I tried using lightning warp with trap. But, found it severally underwhelming due to its long cd. It would become more viable if Gem quality would decrease the cooldown to something close to bear and fire traps.

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Horvath wrote:

Could this ability be changed to not be destroyed by leap slam? Makes it pretty impossible to use against Goatmen. If they jump onto your traps, the traps should trigger. It's like jumping onto a land mine? Leapslam should only destroy traps, if the aoe hits the trap without being in the trap trigger radius.

I think arc destroys traps as well, and arc isn't an AoE ability.

I have no problems with mines being destroyed. Traps are a bit underwhelming, but, its a good mechanic to have the ability to destroy mines easily.

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PSGMud wrote:

I really would like quality of this gem to do something decent. I never see people use traps. I tried using lightning warp with trap. But, found it severally underwhelming due to its long cd. It would become more viable if Gem quality would decrease the cooldown to something close to bear and fire traps.

"

Horvath wrote:

Could this ability be changed to not be destroyed by leap slam? Makes it pretty impossible to use against Goatmen. If they jump onto your traps, the traps should trigger. It's like jumping onto a land mine? Leapslam should only destroy traps, if the aoe hits the trap without being in the trap trigger radius.

I think arc destroys traps as well, and arc isn't an AoE ability.

I have no problems with mines being destroyed. Traps are a bit underwhelming, but, its a good mechanic to have the ability to destroy mines easily.

I am not talking about remote mine, but traps, I was just making an analogy with landmines, they would blow up if you jumped on them.

The rule/restriction on this gem, which also applies to Ranged Attack Totems should be removed!

I understand the restriction on Ranged Attack Totem, as it keeps attacking with the supported skill till it is gone. But traps are one time things. If it still requires me to equip a bow in order to set a "rain of arrows trap", why shouldn't I just use that skill outright if I have to equip it in my hand??? When I saw this gem, I thought that the main purpose of this gem is to give you access to skills that requires you to swap/equip correct weapons.

Giving an example; "rain arrow trap" requires you to equip a bow. If I need to equip a bow, I'd use the spell myself; there is no need for trap. This gem should be used when you don't have the relevant weapon, but would like to use the skill anyway.

Again, the restriction needs to go.

Finally got this gem, and have used it with a variety of abilities to test them out. Build is a shadow archer/trapper. It's a lot fun, but underpowered overall. I'll explain.

My favorite use so far is for dropping Frost Walls on enemies that are charging/leaping at me, by dropping the trap somewhere between me and them. Seeing them stop in midair and start walking around the wall is never boring. All the other things I've used it for have been similar utility skills- cold snap, ice nova for crowd control, etc. Linking it to curses is interesting and can quickly curse a very large group. It also works with totems, which is neat, but I'm not sure how useful that is.

In the end however, this has come off my skill bar and been replaced by conversion trap. Two reasons: The damage penalty, and the very long trap cooldown (which does get better as it levels I realize). There are 3 major penalties to using this gem:
1. Mana Cost
2. Damage Penalty
3. Cooldown

This is completely overkill. I'll break it down by point:
1. 150% is too large IMO, but easily managed with a flask, so this is pretty minor. A penalty seems right to me, to pay for the burst damage potential, but I think 130% or so would be better considering the natural restrictions of the trap mechanic (limited charges, depends on enemy movement).

2. This is a dex gem; to use it effectively requires a lot of dex investment, and the majority of builds won't have lots of spell damage and enough dex to use a leveled gem at the same time. That limits the potential for overwhelming damage right there. Of those builds that do, the cooldown should be enough balance considering the stat investment required. This penalty is thus unnecessary. If a restriction to counter Spell Damage/Ele builds is needed, increase the scaling so low level gems are less desirable and putting more emphasis on the dex requirement. All this penalty does in it's current state is prevent it from being fully used by an archer, melee trapper, or really any non-caster build. These builds already have low spell damage, so burst will be controlled naturally.

3. Completely warranted. A highly specialized Ele/dex focus build might be able to use this at full capacity for massive burst damage, but the long cooldown for each charge limits the frequency of that burst. However, Flame Trap has the exact same functionality. Since the cooldown drops with gem level, I think this is balanced as-is. The scaling could be changed to penalize lower level gems more, requiring more dex in order to offset the reduction of other penalties (see #2), but there should be at least a 8 second cooldown (to match flame trap, which also provides similar burst damage. Level 20 Trap should currently have about 7.25 secs if I counted out the steps right, since the stats are not listed on the wiki). A 15 (level 1) to 8 (level 20) second cooldown would provide appropriate dex restrictions, and make it comparable to other traps at the same time.


Final verdict: Fun idea, but overpenalized. Won't be used by my trapper in it's current state.


Notes:
-Used with Frost Wall, the wall is cast oriented from the trap (perpindicular to the vector from trap to target). This is an awesome utility use for this gem, but this almost completely negates it- often the wall ends up lengthwise (parallell to the vector from Character to Target) and becomes useless. Try to set it up so that the wall still casts relative to the Character.
-Used with Lightning Warp, it creates two warp circles (on on the target, one nearby in a seemingly random direction) that zap anything they touch. Nothing is teleported. Not sure what use this is, or if it's a bug, or what.