Advice needed for dual flame totem build

So I wanted to make a simple build that my daughter could play around with as well, so I thought dual totem would be nice and easy. However as I am also planning on playing this char, I've found that I'm having trouble getting used not being able to self cast anything. So what I'm looking for are ideas for traps that I can use to augment my damage. Ideally a good dps trap setup. I'm trying out lightening, fire, and bear traps but as a newer player, I'm not sure how well the damage scales and what optimal gem links would be. Any help would be appreciated.

Fire Trap should benefit from every fire and elemental node on the tree that you grab (except totem nodes). that should be plenty of burst damage while you lay down your totems.

in fact... I should probably level up a fire trap myself on my dual flamer lol. don't know why i haven't.

For the gems I'd go fire trap - increased area of effect - increased burning damage - im sure there are others but that's all i can think of atm.

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SaintIrek wrote:

Fire Trap should benefit from every fire and elemental node on the tree that you grab (except totem nodes). that should be plenty of burst damage while you lay down your totems.

in fact... I should probably level up a fire trap myself on my dual flamer lol. don't know why i haven't.

For the gems I'd go fire trap - increased area of effect - increased burning damage - im sure there are others but that's all i can think of atm.

Thanks for your suggestion. I just realized that SRS is a minion and therefore usable for damage. Along with some zombies maybe. I got some ideas to think about, although like you said fire trap benefits from a lot of the same passives so that's probably the best choice.

conversion trap + multi traps + increase duration

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spoc002 wrote:

conversion trap + multi traps + increase duration

I have seen this suggested in build guides and understand the reasoning. However I am more interested in something that does damage itself. Thanks for the reply though.

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Kaicimo wrote:

However I am more interested in something that does damage itself.

It can do damage too, kind of. Let's say you got an annoying monster with an aura which empowers a bunch of nearby mobs so your totems get killed too fast to clear the screen, Conversion trap will steal the aura and make his friends kill it. I'm using it on a few chars that either can't tank much or have limited dps output and it's great for breaking up big groups that would otherwise be tough to chew through.

However, if you use increased duration I'd advise against levelling the gem too high, it gets annoying to wait for the enemies to unconvert. You could also skip inc duration but I like to use it in a 4L like this: ConvTrap-IncDur-MultiTrap-VaalDodge/Haste.

I appreciate the suggestion. I do understand why conversion trap is a popular and strong option, however at this point in time I'm not interested in using this skill. Maybe as I level up and get more used to non-selfcasting, I will reconsider but at this point I'm looking more for direct damage skills I can use. Doesn't necessarily need to be a trap, like I said I just realized I could use SRS. At this point I think I'm just going to stick with firetrap.

One thing to maybe note about Fire Trap - annoyingly, the wiki makes no mention of this, so I am unsure of myself - but I remember hearing that Fire Penetration increases the damage of the initial explosion of a Fire Trap, but not the burning DoT effect. The reason I remember is that Penetration only works on Hits, and DoT does not Hit (this is fact according to the wiki and my memory of Mark_GGG's comments).

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adghar wrote:

One thing to maybe note about Fire Trap - annoyingly, the wiki makes no mention of this, so I am unsure of myself - but I remember hearing that Fire Penetration increases the damage of the initial explosion of a Fire Trap, but not the burning DoT effect. The reason I remember is that Penetration only works on Hits, and DoT does not Hit (this is fact according to the wiki and my memory of Mark_GGG's comments).

Thanks for the insight as that's something I probably wouldn't have realized on my own. Can you give any suggestions for supports for firetrap? Is it still worth taking fire pen for the initial hit?

First, a disclaimer that I consider myself a hipster builder, and so my recommendations may not be "optimal."

Personally, I still run Fire Penetration for powering up the initial hit. That may be because the last time I played a Fire Trapper, I went for crit, in which case the crit burn scales off of the initial hit. So it was nice because 2 out of 3 of the "damage sources" within Fire Trap scaled off of Fire PEnetration. Maybe not in your case since you'll want to avoid crit for flame totem, meaning it'd only increase 1 out of 2 of the "damage sources" of Fire Trap? I'm not sure.

If it bothers you to lose efficiency like that, area bonuses should apply to both the initial hit and the burning ground. (As nerdy proof, the Damage over Time page on the wiki claims that DOTs are tagged with delivery system, i.e. area, so area bonuses should work with them). This would include area damage node and Increased Area of Effect and Concentrated Effect.

tl;dr if I were in your shoes I would probably run Fire Trap - Increased Area of Effect - Concentrated Effect - Multiple Traps. Maybe sub in Increased Burning Damage or Fire Penetration instead of Multiple Traps IF I find myself wanting to do more focused/single target damage and less crowd-clearing damage.