[2.2] SAB - Chaotic Ice Trapper "safe" - in-depth guide [UBER DOWN] - 2.3 wip
  6/1 update: the 2.3 chaos conversion nerf
Spoiler
hello again! i'm sorry if i haven't updated the build in the past months, but life/work happen and i more or less stoped playing after the uber kill.
given the recent manifesto about chaos conversion i thought it was the right time to update the build post talking about what i think will be the future of the build. so, in 2.3 we'll see a 40% nerf in terms of chaos conversion. this will affect the build, but not as bad as it seems, becuase we don't lose the ele damage portion that isn't converted. after some excel calculation i found out that we are about to lose about ~20% of our damage. this, unfortunately, doesn't keep in count the various mod that can gimp ele damage (ee and mob fire res), so there's that... however, given the extremely stupid damage that we deal/dealt in 2.2, i think that the build will still be strong after the 2.3 nerfs, but only time can tell for sure :) anyway, IF the currently legacy cd will be 45% instead of 30% and if you play in standard you can grab two legacy consuming and convert 90% of fire into chaos. this will make the nerf irrelevant (-5% overall damage). another thing i was thinking about is the fact that maybe we can use the gained fire damage to proc some sort of effect, but i couldn't come up with anything useful... let me now if you found something :) hello everyone! this is my take on the Ice Trap Chaos build, hope you found the guide helpful. Quick Overview: PROS
CONS
Idea: when 2.2/perandus started like many other people i started to play with ice trap, but i wasn't completly satisfied with it. res mod on mob and maps gimp your damage (so you are forced to use a pen gem) and you need to play with a frost bomb trap setup to maximize damage (which is laggy and not fps friendly at all). the saddest part was that i liked very much the feel of the skill (both his visual and audio), so i started thinking of a chaos conversion version of it to take it to the next level. the idea was basically to use pyre to convert all cold damage in fire and then two consuming dark to convert all the fire in chaos (and to inflict poison). was only after i saw obojetnecotujest's forum post that i thought "wow, this actually might works really well!". in general i like what obojetnecotujest did, but i (even playing in sc) prefer a more safe approach on my builds, hence this guide. i must say that this is not by any means a better version, just a different one. 
DEFENCE
OFFENCE With lvl19 Ice Trap
UNBUFFED  ELEMENTAL OVERLOAD  ELEMENTAL OVERLOAD + 4 FRENZY CHARGES + 11 TRAPS  ELEMENTAL OVERLOAD + 4 FRENZY CHARGES + 11 TRAPS + ATZIRI FLASK   Main Skill: Ice Trap Reason: i like it so i made a build around it. this is our main skill. what makes Ice Trap very good is the fact that if it's used in conjunction with Cluster Trap, the 4 aoes can overlap pouring out a lot of damage. given that this mechanic is what this build revolves around, we can start to create our character Class: Shadow Reason: good starting nodes, nice access to trap nodes, but mostly the sab ascendancy Ascendancy: Saboteour Reason: Chain Reaction will make all of our traps explode at the same time. without chain reaction clearing packs could still be fine, but we would suck a lot against single targets. Ehp pool: Life/Evasion/Dodge Reason: life gear is more common and we path one point away from acrobatics. we end up using a lot of green gem, so evasion based gear is easier to color for what we need. also, 2 uniques which are very nice for the build are life and eva based (Carcass Jack and Atziri's Step) Mana Sustain: Regen + Mana pot Reason: we use a low level clarity and we take a fair amount of mana regen on the tree. with a ring/amu with mana regen i can sustain my mana pool without the use of a mana flask, but one of those is still mandatory in less regen maps. Damage type: Chaos Reason: one day probably ggg will put in the map mod pool a "monster have +%x Chaos res" mod. until that day Chaos damage will be superior to ele damage simply because mobs don't have good mitigation against it and because Chaos bypasses es. since we are a conversion build, we can also spec ele nodes to boost our damage. also: Poison Crit vs Ele Overload: Ele Overload Reason: ok, now i may be wrong, but bear with me. crit is what i really didn't like in obojetnecotujest's build, and that's because he doesn't invest a lot in it. so i decided to try to calculate how much damage crit give to his build and this is the result:
Spoiler
 basically he gains, overall, 49,5% more damage. if we took ele overload we can get very near to that number and then invest in more defence, because taking ele overload bring us to the left side of the tree which net us an addition jewel socket, more life and more aoe. anyway, if you are concerned about the damage loss, stay assured. obojetnecotujest did uber with a 33k tooltip and we can reach that number as well. in fact with a lvl20 ice trap + lvl19 supports + eo + 11traps + atziri flask i reached 37k. i don't think that damage is a problem :) Ele Overload Trigger: Orb of Storm Reason: like Macs it just works. Movement Skill: Whirling Blades Reason: since we use daggers we can use the king of movement skills. link it with fortify to add another layer of defences. Other Skill that benefit the build: Clarity: for the mana regen Herald of Ice: nice dmg boost for 25% mana reserved Blasphemy + Temporal Chains/Enfeeble: for defence Vaal Grace: nice dodge boost Vaal Lightning Trap: for some boss melting action Normal Bandit: Oak Reason: the first rule of poe is "if you are life based you help oak in normal". period. Cruel Bandit: Kill All Reason: we don't attack, don't cast and don't deal phys damage, so there isn't anything good for us in cruel. Merciless Bandit: Kaythrin / Kill All Reason: +1 Frenzy Charge is good, but a skill point may be more worthwhile in endgame.  Current tree (109 points) Final tree (116 points) lvl 94/95 depending on your choice on the bandit reward in merci
ASCENDANCY
your first 4 ascendancy points are used to get to Chain Reaction. this is mandatory, the build simply doesn't work without it. now for the last 2 points you have two option (since we don't use mines and since Explosive Expert does nothing for us): 1) you take Blinding Assault the blind immune part is wasted, cause we always hit with our spells, but the blind enemies thing will makes us more evasive. i was using this, but i couldm't see any benefit from this node, so i switched to the second option.  2) you take 2 little nodes instead of a big one this is edgy, but maybe can make sense. there are three nodes to choose from, but you always gain 20% ele damage. move speed and all res are better than trap throw speed in my opinion.   Mandatory Gear You need at least these three items to start the build: Without a Pyre and two Consuming Dark you simply cannot achieve 100% cold to chaos conversion, so these items slots are locked. Luckily, we don't need much else to do damage, so the rest of the gear is pretty much just life and res rare gear. We however need ~50 str on gear to use some of the gems. My gear as an example:
EXAMPLE GEAR
30march GEAR UPDATE
Jewels: rare jewel can have a lot of mods which are beneficial to the build. trap damage is good, chaos damage is good, cold is good, spell is good just to name a few. this is a link to a poetrade search result page that i use when i shop jewels for my character. this not include damage over time damage because while in theory is a good mod, you can actually have much better damage mods on jewels. life jewels with 2 damage mods tends to be expensive, so if you haven't much currency you can try to shop for a life jewel with a damage mod and a res mod, because those are usually cheaper and will help you if you are having difficulties on trying to cap your resistance.
my jewels
 MY CURRENT LINK SETUP i'll indicate like this the gear slot i'm using for the gem socketing Main Skill (6L): chest Ice Trap + Cluster Trap + Trap and Mine damage + Controlled Destruction + Ele Focus + Void Manipulation Cast when Damage Taken setup (4L): helmet CwDT + Inc Duration + Immortal Call + Phase Run (make sure that phase run is the last skill triggered) Aura + Vaal Skills (1L+3L): gloves Clarity; Vaal Grace + Vaal Lightning Trap + Inc Duration Movement Skill + Golem (4L): boots Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks + Fortify + Stone Golem Ele Overload Trigger (3L): main hand Orb of Storm + Increased Critical Strikes + Inc AoE Buff + Curse (1L+2L): off hand Herald of Ice; Blasphemy + Temporal Chains 
LEVELLING GUIDE
ACT 1 NORMAL start as a shadow. you can level as an ele trapper. pick fire trap and link it with multiple trap as soon as you enter prison in act1. do the prison trial. after you enter cavern buy a lightning trap from nessa. you can start spamming fire and lightning trap in rotation (trash clearing should be fine). now, there's a thing i do with all of my trapper and that is to skip the crab and fairgraves missions in normal and cruel. it's not a pro strat thing or anything like that, it's just my personal "fail-safe". bear with me, you'll see in merciless why i do this. ACT 2 NORMAL in act 2 remember to do the trial in chambers, you can skip the church one for now because is a little out of the way. after chambers take herald of ice. after the spider boss take trap and mine damage and like your trap with it. help oak. in the meantime rush for clever costruction. your tree should look like this by the end of act2/start of act 3 23 POINTS SKILL TREE ACT 3 NORMAL after the first quest buy temporal chain or enfeeble in crema do the lab trial. when you arrive in market do the trial. kill gravi and take ice trap. you can start to use it in a 4l like this: ice trap, trap damage, controlled destruction, multi trap. after piety do the pages quest, take blashpemy and link it with the curse you've taken before, and then buy cold pen in town. from now on you can swap multi for cold pen against bosses. skip maze trial because it waste time now (or do it, i'm not your boss) in the tree go north and take all the trap nodes nearby ACT 4 NORMAL if you took the trap nodes, at some point in act 4 your tree would be like this 35 POINTS SKILL TREE from now on we start to path towards the witch area do the quest, get xp, not much to say. take cluster trap for the kaom/daresso reward. you can swap multi trap out for cluster or not dependings on your likes. finish the act and start cruel ACT 1 CRUEL skip crab do prison trial skip fairgraves ACT 2 CRUEL do chamber trial kill al the fuckers for the point by the end of act 2 you should be in your middle 40s. after taking the witch aoe nodes fill the life nodes we leaved behind 49 POINTS SKILL TREE ACT 3 CRUEL do the "nearby" trials not much to say just do the act ACT 4 CRUEL by the end of the act you'll be in your middle/late 50s at lvl53 equip your two consuming dark. from now on put void manipulation instead of cold pen when facing bosses. if you don't have them yet continue the build as an ele trapper. in the tree we path for herbalism and acro/spell acro 62 POINTS SKILL TREE MERCILESS a little side note on labs and the "fail-safe" that we setted up. if you have seen the previuos tree you've also seen that we are 6 point away from master sapper. the "problem" is that master sapper isn't very useful for us now, but will be vital when we spec in sab chain reaction. so. when to take master sapper? that's the purpose of the fail-safe. as soon as you do cruel lab and spec into chain reaction you'll do the act1 easy quest and you'll get the six point to allocate master sapper. in the meantime you can continue to level and path in other areas of the tree. i don't know if it makes sense to you, but for me it works :D anyway, back to levelling. in merci to the same things you did for cruel except for bandits because +1 frenzy is nice (or kill them if you want the skill point) all of your skill point now should be spent to get to the templar area. don't forget to start to use orb of storm with increased crit strikes as soon as you allocate ele overload. 85 POINTS SKILL TREE after you get the templar aoe nodes you can start to spec into the damage nodes in the area between shadow and witch (plus fangs of the viper). by this time you should also have done the cruel lab. 101 POINTS SKILL TREE from now on you can start to spec the jewel socket and the last life nodes. if you want you can also spec out the initial ele point for the chaos ones (because poison will then double dip). i'm not so sure of this anymore, but for now i'll leave this here for consistency with the final passive tree i've linked in the passives section of this guide. this could change. 116 POINTS SKILL TREE 
VIDEO
Apex of Sacrifice 2man party a couple of fuck ups. done in party to make the challanges for the friend that was with me. t14 Twinned Palace i don't remember if i ever did palace. anyway it was the first twinned one. i fucked up the start cause my trap triggered on the adds. also, i didn't use the atziri flask until the second transformed dominus. it however put a lights on the difference in damage between using it vs not using it t11 Twinned Crema boss -9% max res Alluring Abyss run that's was my first ever attempt at uber. death to trio because i'm stupid and i stood still in the middle of them... thrash clearing was slow cause i was scared of snakes :D can definitely be deathless 
Ele Route vs Chaos Route
" good point.  the damage is the same (cause for us ele and chaos add the same amount of damage), but we end up spending one more point by taking the chaos route. so why? 1) from the chaos route we gain life instead of the shitty es, and a little bit of attack speed (which is not bad to whirl around) 2) the damage is the same but just for the initial hit. with the chaos damage that we deal we apply poison on the enemies, which is not scaled (if not indirectly) by those ele nodes. the chaos nodes on the other hand will double dip with poison. so yeah, it's a point more spent, but i think that is worth :)
Orb of Storm: a reliable Ele Overload trigger?
Hey man i like the playstyle, but...
...i want more damage! ...i really love to double curse! ...i don't like mana pots :/ ...i wonder if a fire conversion is possible :O ...lightning trap is my jam! this is a list of conversion trap builds. if somenthing in this guide didn't sounded right i suggest to check these out :) changelog:
to do:
Last edited by tufferugli on Jun 2, 2016, 11:22:50 AM Last bumped on Sep 1, 2016, 8:17:52 AM
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How much hp / evasion u have?
How much your tooltip ice trap damage? with/without EO For build - at beginning why use chaos / physical node? use elemental node and drop coordination - is Amplify better then Trap and Mine damage (near High Explosives)? 20% area damage + 10% radius VS 32% trap damage? | |
" 4.7k life 3k evasion (not much i know, but i have shitty gear in some of my slot, can be more) i'll add some screenshot with stats in a minute. i've added a section to answer the ele vs chaos route (cause was a thing i wanted to clarify anyway). " |
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Is this HC viable?
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" i really don't know, because i play sc. anyway after repseccing my old build to make this one i rarely died in maps. i have currently 4.8k life, 40% dodge, 46% spell dodge and blashpemy enfeeble, so i would go on saying that the build it's pretty safe. also, i died because i knew i was in sc, if i were in hc probably i've been played safer :) anyway if you took out some of the damage nodes to spec in more life you can get to 180% increased life from the tree without counting the potential 35% from the 5 jewel you can socket in the tree. you could also swap the carcass for a lightning coil or a belly. |
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How easy/reliable is Orb of Storms +Crit strikes to proc elemental overload?
Also: might want to include your flask setup in the OP. Last edited by mrpetrov on Mar 23, 2016, 3:36:10 PM
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" easy and very reliable :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb3fOWkIzpU added my flask in the gear section :) thanks for the inputs Last edited by tufferugli on Mar 23, 2016, 7:49:15 PM
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What did you use (mostly) to level?
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Of course crit without some invest in it won't be so great, but with just 1 diamond ring, crit build already starts to outperform significantly. Crit multi for cold spell can roll as high as 18% now on jewels (and that is just 1 single suffix!!!) making investment into crit build easier than you thought.
You also miss out the single best boss killer buff for a trap build: Vaal Lightning Trap. |
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" i used mostly fire trap and lightning trap in the same 4l with trap damage and multi trap. progressing was good, but bosses are a pain in the ass cause till you take chain reaction the single target damage sucks... you can try firestorm + remote mine + minefield in a a +1 fire scepter, cause it seems that people find it good and fast for levelling |
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