HP cluster on the right side of the tree (around acrobatics)

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UnderOmerta wrote:

I'm not sure how "shadows are the best trappers." A lot of the good min/trap nodes are more accessible as a scion, and scion has no issue with getting life nodes considering they have that bigass life wheel right by their start. Shadows and witches do have difficulty in getting enough life. The witch start, in particular, is pretty nightmarish unless you go pure ES.

Saboteur and High Explosives are immediately accessible to shadow. They are ridiculously efficient clusters. Clever construction is no less accessible to shadow than to scion, they're getting it in roughly the same timeframe if they want it early for mine laying. Of the mine/trap clusters the only one that really favors Scion heavily is expeditious munitions, but saboteur is better for burst damage anyway.

The only thing that makes scion a better trapper is if you want to be a life-based trapper.

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UnderOmerta wrote:

I'm not sure how "shadows are the best trappers." A lot of the good min/trap nodes are more accessible as a scion, and scion has no issue with getting life nodes considering they have that bigass life wheel right by their start. Shadows and witches do have difficulty in getting enough life. The witch start, in particular, is pretty nightmarish unless you go pure ES.

I think it started since shadows are the ones that are listed as dex+int (which the trap skills use both of) and under the old tree (prior to scion) had quicker access to nodes that increased those, remote mine nodes, spell damage, elemental damage, global crit (through dual daggers) and trap nodes.


It may be a outdated idea with the new skill tree but usually ideas like that persist long after they are no longer the case anyway.






and ya, the witch got hosed on getting life.... my old hybrid multi-aura HP/ES iron will tanky culling summoner in particular ended up getting deleted by me at launch because it was no longer able to be remade the way it used to work and I had no desire to completely re-gear and remake yet another character. Now those hybrids with es/hp are no longer nearly as viable and going cross class to stack hp as a 'es class' is a pathing nightmare.

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Jiero wrote:

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UnderOmerta wrote:

I'm not sure how "shadows are the best trappers." A lot of the good min/trap nodes are more accessible as a scion, and scion has no issue with getting life nodes considering they have that bigass life wheel right by their start. Shadows and witches do have difficulty in getting enough life. The witch start, in particular, is pretty nightmarish unless you go pure ES.

I think it started since shadows are the ones that are listed as dex+int (which the trap skills use both of) and under the old tree (prior to scion) had quicker access to nodes that increased those, remote mine nodes, spell damage, elemental damage, global crit (through dual daggers) and trap nodes.

There used to be all of one (3 point) cluster for traps and it was right by shadow, yeah. But now there are multiple trap and trap/mine clusters, 2 of which are near shadow, 2 are closer to scion, and one is down under ranger which is pretty much equidistant from shadow and scion, but the scion has a much better path to it (including IR and thick skin). Combine this with how the scion has the much better life clusters than Shadow and a trapper generally goes up towards shadow for Crit and EB anyway, and I think it's pretty much indisputable that Scions make better trappers than Shadows.


ETA: Problem with the witch start is that it's only decent for pure ES builds, and even then the witch ES nodes are the weakest ES nodes in the tree.

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UnderOmerta wrote:

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Jiero wrote:

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UnderOmerta wrote:

I'm not sure how "shadows are the best trappers." A lot of the good min/trap nodes are more accessible as a scion, and scion has no issue with getting life nodes considering they have that bigass life wheel right by their start. Shadows and witches do have difficulty in getting enough life. The witch start, in particular, is pretty nightmarish unless you go pure ES.

I think it started since shadows are the ones that are listed as dex+int (which the trap skills use both of) and under the old tree (prior to scion) had quicker access to nodes that increased those, remote mine nodes, spell damage, elemental damage, global crit (through dual daggers) and trap nodes.

There used to be all of one (3 point) cluster for traps and it was right by shadow, yeah. But now there are multiple trap and trap/mine clusters, 2 of which are near shadow, 2 are closer to scion, and one is down under ranger which is pretty much equidistant from shadow and scion, but the scion has a much better path to it (including IR and thick skin). Combine this with how the scion has the much better life clusters than Shadow and a trapper generally goes up towards shadow for Crit and EB anyway, and I think it's pretty much indisputable that Scions make better trappers than Shadows.


ETA: Problem with the witch start is that it's only decent for pure ES builds, and even then the witch ES nodes are the weakest ES nodes in the tree.

The following trap clusters are....

Saboteur: Max traps are increased burst now that traps stack by type. Immediately available to shadow.

Clever Construction: Equidistant for scion and shadow, Neither path to reach it is really "better".

High Explosives: resistance penetration is actually a strong damage boost. More accessible to shadow than scion.

Expeditious Munitions: Mildly easier for scion to reach, but not a deal breaker in terms of throughput.

Master Sapper: Is only "better pathing" from the scion under the assumption that you want IR. Given how powerful Acrobatics has become and the general acceptance of it as a viable tactic its proximity to ondar's and quick access through the acrobatics route makes it easily as storng from shadow as from scion.

Scion pathing is overrated.

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Autocthon wrote:

Master Sapper: Is only "better pathing" from the scion under the assumption that you want IR. Given how powerful Acrobatics has become and the general acceptance of it as a viable tactic its proximity to ondar's and quick access through the acrobatics route makes it easily as storng from shadow as from scion.

Scion pathing is overrated.

You generally want IR for a non-leeching class because you're going to 'manually dodge' most of the hits anyway simply by playing defensive and staying out of the fray/moving out of the way. Most HC trappers get IR over Ondar's. In those situations where you do get hit, you want to be able to mitigate them. This doesn't even begin to mention the vastly superior life (and evasion) nodes along the way from scion to Master Sapper.

And what do you meant how powerful acrobatics "has become"? Acrobatics has always been this powerful. Same as Ondar's Guile. If anything, the introduction of a number of physical spells in A3X make evasion builds less attractive unless you build a very big health pool backing up the times you do get hit.

ETA:

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Autocthon wrote:

Clever Construction: Equidistant for scion and shadow, Neither path to reach it is really "better".

Clever Construction is 8 points from the very root of the tree for most scions. It's only shorter/equal for Shadows if they go straight for it, a path that NO trapper is going to use. If you're going to through Mental Acuity and then out Spell Power like the conventional shadow trapper build, you're obviously going to take a route that's much longer.

In the long run, both builds are going to get most of these nodes anyway, but Scion has much better accessibility to survivability nodes.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Yeah, somehow this dovetailed into a Shadow discussion. Partially my fault, because I was talking about the lack of life options as a Shadow and that I feel MOST Shadows will make a beeline for Ondar's Guile, and that the life semi-cluster in question is on the way.

To get this back on topic: I do not feel those six nodes should be connected. I think the ridiculous ten-node mega-circle of life near the Scion sets a really bad precedent.

While I agree that the Scion circle of life sets a bad precedent and I don't believe simply connecting the life nodes are going to solve the problem (personally I have a lot of problems with the majority of builds being funneled into massing HP, but that's nothing new). The Ranger tree does need some better alternative paths to reach the outer portion of the tree. You're pretty much limited to either frenzy charges or str/int/dex which can lends itself to inefficiencies.

Instead why not just connect the outside of the tree to Gymnastics it's basically the same as the Templar has it with Athleticism.

The last major overhaul of the Ranger tree was a big step in the right direction. Unfortunately what I see now is quite a few under-utilised rings either on the outside of the Ranger tree or between Ranger/Shadow. There just doesn't seem to be enough "bang for your buck" as it were.

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UnderOmerta wrote:

And what do you meant how powerful acrobatics "has become"? Acrobatics has always been this powerful. Same as Ondar's Guile. If anything, the introduction of a number of physical spells in A3X make evasion builds less attractive unless you build a very big health pool backing up the times you do get hit.

Prior to 1.0.0 Acrobatics was significantly weaker. At least learn your patch history.

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Autocthon wrote:

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UnderOmerta wrote:

And what do you meant how powerful acrobatics "has become"? Acrobatics has always been this powerful. Same as Ondar's Guile. If anything, the introduction of a number of physical spells in A3X make evasion builds less attractive unless you build a very big health pool backing up the times you do get hit.

Prior to 1.0.0 Acrobatics was significantly weaker. At least learn your patch history.

You're right, they did buff the dodge chance. It's still not going to do anything against physical spells which were added in bulk in A3X, nor is it going to the change the fact that non-leech builds (which trappers are) are going to depend on manual dodging through clever positioning and would prefer to mitigate the damage they do take rather than depend on a chance to avoid it.

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UnderOmerta wrote:

You're right, they did buff the dodge chance.

That wasn't the big change.
Acrobatics used to be ES=0, Armor=0.
1/2 ES and 1/2 Armor is a huge increase from that.