Is it just me, or is Saboteur the weakest Ascendant?

While I might be new to all this, I can't help but notice most ascendancy classes have benifit for a wide range of abilities. Chieftain is similar with only putting it to one skill set but Sabotuer just gives you blind and trap bonus. It's rare that a monster makes you blind and totems give life and distraction (so do minions) while traps just weaken enemies more then kill them. The artwork design of the class is greater then the actual skill?

(I should clarify I think he's one of the best for PvP but suspect it's one of the worst for bosses like Kitava)

I haven't made a build mainly using mines and traps yet, so I didn't touch the Saboteur, but I think there should be builds that actually make use of it.

I've read, that glacial cascade based mine builds have high dps against bosses. Also, with mines you should actually be pretty mobile compared to a skill that requires you to keep channelling for instance.

If you specialize in traps/mines he works great. Well, he´s lacking good defensive option besides blind but that´s not rly a problem. You can invest into more defensive nodes in the passive tree.

Good trap/mine builds are in fact one of the best boss killers out there (offer lots of singl target dps).

Its pretty bad, almost any trap/mine build is usually better as an assassin for the crit bonuses but there are a few mine builds that gain a great deal of power from the additional 2 mines and 8% area per mine stacking.

It probably is about the weakest, the numbers are a bit skewed though as trappers are fairly rare to begin with.

It's an awful sub because mines and traps in general are awful and clunky. It was incredibly generous of GGG to even create a sub for this incredibly niche and underused play style.

GC Miner is best as a saboteur, but the last 2 lab points are basically wasted (Was fine for Turmoil as not going to bother with uber lab anyway)
For trap gem builds it's probably the best option too for the cooldown bonuses.
But 'natural' trap skills like ice/lightning trap etc usually are better as something else as the cooldown isn't to bad.

It could do with a new/buffed ascendancy option though, a better defensive mechanic perhaps, something phasing related would be good and kind of fits thematically. A move speed after trap/mine detonation would be good too, but that's basically a copy of a unique item mod which GGG may not want to do.

Ascendancy itself is ok, the problem you have is using traps. Traps are unplayable.

Just an extra note if you want to kill bosses with a trapper you generally need to make use of shotgun mechanics, the build of the week a couple of months ago for shrapnel shot is a good example of this, alternatively you can use the old faithful (vaal burning arrow) which is the only ability i've one shot an old merciless act boss with my way through.

For the really tough bosses however like guardians and shaper its very difficult to get enough damage out of traps outside of a few specific interactions (chin-sol point blank does 150% more damage), you used to be able to double dip with traps to get huge rolling ignites or poisons but they are dead currently, so spell traps are very difficult to use. Mines are in a similar place but certain mines (fire nova mine with the helm enchant, GC, magma orb) more than make up for how poorly some skills fare.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Just an extra note if you want to kill bosses with a trapper you generally need to make use of shotgun mechanics,

It's kinda hilarious that GGG proudly announced that they completely removed shotgunning from the game, yet they managed to allow different skill overlaps to stay, which means people still constantly build around "shotgunning" (players' definition instead of GGG's definition).

Traps are fine. Saboteur is fine

To keep the answer short: to be good against single target you need a way how to trigger multiple traps effectively against single enemy. Chain reaction does that.

The other way (to make cluster trapper with any ascendancy) is to use sunblast, but it costs you 2 jewel slots, lots of Life compared to rare belt, you cant use things that proc on trap triggers (Unstable payload, the power/frenzy charges generation passives, or life/ES from that unique chest)..

The blind ascendancy passive is simply great for defense, because it blinds enemies on hit = halves their chance to hit you with attacks

PS: At shotgunning, well, I don think that the situation where you throw 4 traps (4 different instances of the skill) can be called shotgunning.