Bringing Fire Trap Back! [Ongoing]

I would suggest you watch Ziggyd's youtube guide on firetrap. The mechanics didn't change much over the number of patches.

Anyway, firetrap is a trap (spell) skill. This is important because as the damage from the firetrap cannot be reflected. In endgame, it means you can stack as much damage (or even crit multi) to the skill without worrying about killing yourself. And traps have only 3 in store. This means after throwing 3 traps, there is a 3 secs cooldown (after the first trap is thrown) before you can get another (fire)trap to throw. The passive nodes will NEVER increase the number of firetraps that can be stored, that includes those "number of traps allowed" nodes. Those "number of traps allowed" are for those ACTIVE traps on the ground.

Like all trap skills, basically you throw a trap and when the enemy comes close, the trap triggers. The radius of trigger for firetrap is 15, whatever that means. For the firetrap, once it triggers, it exlodes causing fire damage and leaves a burning ground which does DOT damage. Enemies in the burning ground will be burnt (aka take DOT damage). However once they leave the burning ground area, they will not take any DOT damage.

Interestingly, firetrap has three damage sources - from the inital hit (fire, trap & spell damage), the burning ground DOT(fire damage and burning damage) and the ignite DOT damage from the initial hit if crit or otherwise ignited(fire, spell, trap and burning damage).

As you can see, the nodes you should prioritized are fire damage/elemental damage as they "double dip" both the initial hit and the burning ground effect. Burning damage is also quite good because for a firetrap build, you want things to ignite. In fact, most firetrap builds will use either the chance to ignite gem or passives or use crit to ignite their enemies. Spell will adds to the initial hit damage but not the burning ground damage thus it does not "double dip". However for crit builds since they mainly depend on the damage of the initial hit, the spell & trap damage passives are also good choices. And most importantly, the ignite damage and the burning ground can be stacked! Yes, the damage from both sources stacks! With Elemental Proliferation, this is the basis for almost all firetrap builds.

AOE is also very important - you want to kill your enemies with as few traps as possible. AOE affects the area of the burning ground as well as your proliferation. It is even possible to light up the entire screen with just one single firetrap if you stack enough AOE nodes. However, note that AOE passives DO NOT affect the trigger radius of the trap itself.

Ignite chance is also important. You want things to ignite! They ignite and they die. Either go for direct passive nodes or crit. However there are some issues with crit firetraps which I will go through later.

The templar, witch and shadow has some very good access to fire, elemental, aoe, spell crit, burning and spell damage nodes. The shadow has the advantage of easy to access trap (and crit) nodes. But I honestly don't think trap nodes are that good if you go for a firetrap build. With fire/elemnetal/aor/spell nodes, you can have a secondary backup damage spell like flameblast or flame surge just in case.

Like all trap builds, enemies that do AOE damage will destroy your traps before they can trigger. With some skill (or the Clever Construction passive), you can avoid this.

Firetrap greatly improves with level. So if you should always level up your gems. A lvl 19 firetrap does 424 avg fire damage and 268 burning ground damage. A lvl 20 firetrap does 475 avg fire damage and 295 burning ground damage. 12% MORE damage for the initial hit.
For reference: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Fire_Trap
Quality on the firetrap is also very nice, since it increases the burning damage.

And oh, you can't leech from traps. So life/mana leech does not work with firetrap. But as mentioned above, you don't have to worry about reflect.

Actually behind it all, it is quite easy - you throw a trap, it explodes, killing your enemies. Of course when playing a firetrap build, it is not that simple. What is the point of throwing a trap if the enemy is not going near it? Or if the enemies are just going to destroy your traps before it procs because they do AOE damage or they are arc mages? How do you manoeuvre your char to ensure that your enemies are in the burning ground area for maximum effect?

Movement speed is your friend. Unlike other skills which require to keep on casting spells or hitting your enemy, firetrap builds depend on just a few traps to kill roomful of enemies. In fact, with the right gear and passives, you can demolish enemies with just one trap, and that includes blues and rares. So throw trap, kite a little to avoid being killed (or manuovre to lure your enemies to the burning area), they all die and then run to the next pack. Repeat.

Movement speed also helps when facing enemies that can destroy your traps with AOE or arc or whatever. All you have to do is if you see leapers or other AOE monsters is just to run to another pack with them chasing behind you. Then all you have to do is to throw the trap at those non-AOE monsters, they burn/ignite/light up and those AOE ones die as well.

And movement speed helps clear speed. Clear speed is everything apparently nowadays.

Firetrap is all about fire damage. Curses like flammibility and elemental weakness are your friends. Not to mention, vulnerability which helps improve your DOT damage. If you go crit, crit weakness will also help. However, casting curses can be time consuming, especially if you have two or three curses to cast. For me, I use arc with curse on hit to deliver those curses. Might even get some shock out of it if you are lucky.

Sadly, auras do not do anything to your firetrap. But they will help indirectly. Defensive auras like discipline, determination and those purities are great. In my previous builds, I actually use vitality for a life regen fire trap build. Well, it works so so. Seems like life regen does not really help when it is most crucially needed. I myself use arctic armor (with EB) and shield for defense, which conveniently the templar and witch areas has plenty of nodes to support them.

For ignite proliferation build (the most common and effective firetrap build):
Firetrap + Chance to Ignite + Elemental Proliferation
These are the two most important supports gems.

You can add the following as well:
1. Increased Burning Damage
2. Concentrated Effect
3. Increased AOE
4. Fire Pentration
5. Empower
6. Iron Will
7. Increased duration

If you have enough AOE from your passive tree, Con Effect is very good. Multiplicative damage!! And since it affects all AOE sources, the burning ground DOT damage is also affected.

Increased duration will affect both how long the trap remains and the burning ground effect. I think it will affect the DOT from the ignite as well. I have never used increased duration in my firetrap before.

A qty 20 increased burning damage gives you an additional 10% chance to ignite, which is pretty cool. You want those ignite chances, baby!

For Crit firetrap build
The biggest advantage of a crit firetrap build over other crit builds is that you don't have to worry about reflect. So you should stack as much crit multiple as possible for maximum effectiveness.

Firetrap + Increased Crit Chance + Crit Multiplier + EP

All other supports from the EP build also helps.

The major problem with a trap crit build is sometimes it just wont crit. Firetrap has a 5% base chance to crit. If you are stacking crit chances and cri multiplier nodes, you probably wont have enough spell/fire/burning damage nodes. So if you don't crit, you don't do much damage. And unlike other builds, they can keep on attacking and casting till they crit. However for firetraps, you only have 3 in store with that 3 secs cooldown penalty. So if you don't crit, you cant kill your enemies....they in turn might just kill you. Of course when it crits, the damage can be huge.

Everyone likes their cool gear! Firetrap is able to utilized cool gears as well. But overall, firetrap builds are much cheaper and EASIER to gear compared to others.



1. Searing Touch: Extremely good piece of offensive weapon. I always use searing touch to level my firetrap characters. They are "relatively" cheap and they can work effectively to endgame. I admit my current build does not use the searing touch at the moment since I am using Doryani's Catalyst but honestly, it is one of the best weapon for firetrap. That 70% burning damage and +2 to fire gems will result in you burning hordes of enemies. However, I would not recommend it for crit builds. Also you lose some defenses with a two handed weapon.

And they are priced quite reasonably. For a 5link, maybe 2-2.5ex on standard?


2. Doryani's Catalyst: Another good piece of offensive weapon. Gives you very good fire/elemental damage. However, that is about it. The rest of the catalyst mods do not really help you, which is kind of disappointing. The increased cri chance would be just so-so for a crit build but there are just so many other better weapons to use. I am using the Catalyst for my current build because my defense is mainly block and arc armour. If you are using flameblast as your secondary skill, socket into the catalyst for that lvl 20 elemental proliferation.

Priced about 2-3ex? For those good rolls, maybe even 5ex on standard.


3. Geofri's Crest: A cheap version of the Vertex. But it is still good. In fact, I am running my firetrap gem setup on the Geofri's. The + 1 to gem improve your firetrap damage overall. Once I get a lvl 4 empower, I will replace conc effect with it. If you are using searing touch, then there is no need for the Geofri's Crest. Use a good rare helmet.

Price is like 1 chaos?


4. Carcass Jack: Though actually designed for detonate dead builds, this nice chest piece works very well for firetrap builds as well. AOE and AOE damage is greatly increased with this Carcass jack. I used conc effect (which reduces the AOE) and it still burns huge packs of monsters. It also provides some resists and life, which helps. Yes, I have to admit, it is not a real defensive chest piece (that is why I am using shield and AA).

Price about 2-3ex on standard. Seems to be getting more expensive by the day though. Oh yes, I know, I have a very low roll piece.


5. Divinarius: Mainly for the crit build. Decent spell damage, good crit chance and AOE. What is there not to like? I dual weld these babies for my YOLO crit firetrap. But as I mentioned before, crit firetrap has its flaws and they can be rather squashy. But it comes with super crazy damage.

However a good rare dagger or wand can also be used without too much issue. A good rare dagger can even give more crit chance than the Divinarius.

The advantage of using daggers is that you can use whirling blades for movement. Whirl to one group, throw fire trap, then whirl to another while they burn to death, repeat. Pretty cool actually. The problem is that there are times that you won't crit.


6. Sunblast: Actually a good item for firetrap. The increased trap damage is nice but what really matters is the reduced trap duration and the self trigger. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to get enemies into the trap trigger radius. The self trigger helps generate burning ground for me. However, at endgame, you should replace the sunblast with a real defensive belt.

Price like 5-10c?


7. Doedre's Damning: Very good for dual/triple curse. Remember, firetrap is all about fire damage. If you lower your enemies' fire resists, at certain levels you are actually doing MORE damage to your enemies. Elemental Weakness is self explanatory. Flammability increases the chance to ignite as well. Vulnerability works wonders for DOT builds as well. And almost all firetrap builds are DOT builds.

Price about 1-2c?

Belts can be vaaled to have increased radius of skill. This will help ensure hordes of enemies are burnt to death. I have gotten one before. Pretty nifty when stacked with other AOE skills.

Rings and amulet with increased fire/spell damage, life and resists. Shields with spell damage, life and resists.

As previous mentioned, boots are extremely important. They do need the +30 to movement speed. You want to be fast since you will need to kite quite often. The main damage source is the DOT burning damage but it still takes a while for your enemies to burn to a crisp. In the meantime, you kite around, luring enemies to the fire inferno or you can just move on to the next group. Hence the need for speed. I actually wanted to use Windscream boots for my firetrap (it has elemental damage and curse) but I found out that it was a bit dangerous to be walking like a tortoise and I was hit too frequently.

In my opinion the best starts are the templar and shadow.
For the ignite build, your priotity is fire/elemental damage, life, ignite chances and other defensive mechanism. I am sure this tree is quite familiar with any one who has done firetraps before. Nothing fancy.

Passive tree: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUAAnEEBwSzBVsG6QceCPQOSBGWEmkUTRVQFm8XHBhlGjgabB7wHwIhsCSqJ2EnqSlPKo0rDS0fLpQ09zbFNtg26TpYPAU9X0JLRZ1G10kbSVFMs1JTU1JVxl3GXypgbWpDbRlxeXRVeuZ9U35Zf8aCHoKbgziD24XFi4yQVZUglS6XhZeVl_Sa4J2un9-iAKKjpwinhKyYtoa3dbiTvOrAVMHz1HzYJNrd2wvd89--4XPjauQi5wvnauvk6-7sOOxV7SDvfPAf8NXxbPO-

I will get the crit version up soon. Still leveling and ironing out issues with the build.

Flamesurge:
Would you believe once I created a dual totem flame surge build with firetrap as its support? Apparently I though I could wipe out hordes of enemies using flame surge in record time because with firetrap everything will be "burning". However it turns out that flame surge suck at AOE and it took longer to kill the hordes. Most of them will die from the fire trap first before the flame surge totems hit them. Haiz.

But flame surge works marvelously with firetrap. Used mainly for bosses or fire resistant rares. As long as they are burning, either from ignite or from the burning ground, flame surge's 50% MORE damage against burning enemies will apply. Not to mention, all your passive nodes (except for trap) will benefit flame surge as well. I think flame surge is the best support skill for firetrap. And damage wise, it is quite impressive.

Detonate Dead:
Very good support skill for firetrap as well. I remember a while back before they introduce the desecrate skill into the game, most detonate dead builds make use of firetrap to kill enemies before using detonate dead to wipe out the rest. The idea here is the same. When you run out of traps, use detonate dead! All (except trap and spell) passives will benefit detonate dead as well. And we also have vaal detonate dead, which is cool (but overall not too useful in my opinion). If you have good number of AOE nodes, they can deal damage to quite a large area as well.

Flameblast:
Missed this but thanks to Mathil, I think this might be a very good support skill for firetrap. If you are out of traps, you still have something rather powerful to fall back on. Very good vs bosses, especially Dom. Throw firetraps, charge Flameblast to Max and Dom is dead. The flame "dab" idea works great for crit builds as well. And with good movement speed, you will not be hit that often either. I kind of like it.

Will be updated soon

Shore Map Clear:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIpiu-ZI3MQ
Jungle Valley Map Clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SMPblW_a2E
Gorge Map Clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psy-F6wAxUQ

Will be updated soon

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUAAnEEBwSzBVsG6QceCPQOSBGWEmkUTRVQFm8XHBhlGjgabB8CIbAkqidhJ6kpTyqNKw0tHy6UNPc2PTbFNtg26TpYPAU9X0JLRZ1G10kbSVFMs1JTU1JVS1XGXcZd8l8qYG1h4mKsakNsjG0ZcXl2gnrmfVN-WX_Ggh6Cm4M4g9uFxYuMjDaQVZUglS6XhZeVl_Sa4J1jnaqdrp_fogCio6SxpwinhKyYtNG2hriTvOrAVMHzyAzUfNgk2t3bC93z377hc-Nq44TkIuWO5wvnauvk6-7sOOxV7SDvfPAf8NXxbPO-