[1.3] The Nuclear Trapper

Hello everyone, I am having a lot of fun with my new trapper so I decided to share it with the community. Hopefully it will evolve in something very good.
I am currently running maps lvl 69 (fingers in the nose), I will update the thread when I will hit 70+ maps.
Please consider that English is not my native language and don't hesitate to point out mistakes.

I will be grateful to have any info about what software you use to record videos, I am currently using Fraps and I can only record 30 seconds videos :(

Video to see the build in action :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhN0pBN5q4w


EDIT: I'm currently not sure about the best way to generate power charges. We have two choices: HoT+PCoC+CoH+AM or just let the fire trap do the job (it will from time to time). Either way we can't really sustain our charges unless we run the maps like crazy chickens.

General Play Style

1) Find a pack of monsters
2) Throw a Fire Trap right in the center
3) Curse with assassin's mark while your trap is in the air
4) Watch everything burn, if the trap crit you can go to the next pack, if not throw an Arc Trap to finish the monsters
5) When you crit with Fire Trap, Herald of thunder will go on and generate power charges / curse everything.


Synergy

1) The purpose of this build is to use elemental proliferation to proliferate burning (nothing original here).

2) Because of the way burning and proliferate work, we want to do one very big hit instead of multiple small hits.

3) To stack crit chance and crit multiplier is a good way to obtain enormous damage from a single hit.

4) We do not want to have to deal with reflect so we choose fire trap as our main skill, this is an excellent choice for multiple reasons (it scale with spell/fire/aoe modifiers, and we can throw it from a long distance, so this is safe) but there is one drawback, it's low crit chance (5%). Hopefully, we will have enough crit chance at the end.

5) In order to improve the clear speed and to prevent humanoids from running away of the proliferation zone, we want to have as much "increased area of effect" as possible. This is done by wearing a Carcass Jack and putting nodes in the tree accordingly.

6) The assassin's mark curse benefits from the good aoe, but we do not gain power charges with the curse, indeed... the traps do!

7) We use Herald of thunder + PCoC + curse on hit + assassin's mark to gain power charges. Herald of thunder cannot crit in normal circumstances but it can with assassin's mark. Moreover, HoT benefits from good aoe too. Last but not least, HoT adds lightning damage to our fire trap (remember this is a spell) and since we have lots of crit multiplier, the fire trap now burn and shock for a long time when it crit, proliferating both and activating HoT.

8) When a pack is proliferating both burn and shock, it melts everyhing around so fast that you can consider the place where the pack is as a "safe zone". More aoe means bigger safe zone. You can throw a trap to the next pack from this safe zone.

8) Isn't it wonderful ? :)



Pros and Cons

--------------------- Pros --------------------
- One shot big packs, rares and bosses
- Cheap (4L is enough to get you to maps)
- Reward smart play, reflexes and good positioning
- Dynamic play style
- More crit multi means more survivability
- You don't know what "reflect" means and Corrupting blood is not really dangerous (only the HoT will proc it)
- Strongboxes are easy. Just put 4 fire traps, hit potions and open it. BOOM... everything is dead in a fraction of second... yes exiles too.

--------------------- Cons --------------------
- Not tanky, you may die very fast if you put yourself at risk
- Traps can be hard to place sometimes
- When you are out of traps, well, it's bad. Don't do that.






Bandits

Normal: Help Oak for +40 life
Cruel: Kill all for 1 point
Merciless: Kill all for 1 point or help Alira for +1 Power Charge (e.g. if you play with a friend who run Conduit)



My current Gear




Explanations on gear

Try to have enough dex on gloves / rings / amu so you can wear the carcass jack and use fire trap lvl 20. It can save some points in the tree too.

Weapon


I made the choice to use a staff, this is not mandatory. Catarina sold me this one for 1c.
Divinarius / good shield with crit chance could work too, but you will miss some crit multi in the tree, loose the possibility to dual curse with a 5L carcass jack and finally loose the +# level of gems in the staff.


Chest


Insane AOE bonus while giving a fair amount of life and resists. Fits the build perfectly.


Boots


Trap throwing speed is very important to survive and kite, you don't want to stay at the same place for more than 1 second if there is an army of titty bitches in front of you ! Moreover, this is a cheap 5L. Best would be one corrupted with "+1 to level of gems".


Belt

Very good damage increase and the reduced duration is important to obtain instant arc trap.




Gem setup

Fire Trap

4L :

5L :

6L :

or

if the staff gives +1 level of all gems and the empower gem high level enough (some maths might be needed here)


Arc Trap

+ (trap) in the unique boots.

The arc trap is used to kill monsters that move very fast and are difficult to hit with the fire trap.
It can be used to finish a pack when the fire trap doesn't crit or to hit behind a corner. Be creative!


Herald of Thunder

4L :

5L :
(if you go dual curse)
6L : no need for 6L except if you want to tri-curse but that will be very very end game... instead use this spot for AA or Lightning Warp.


CwdT




Auras



I will replace purity of elements by discipline when I will have better gear, so I can run AA hopefully. I like to keep a way to curse manually, this is useful when you have a big pack in front of you and HoT is off.

Last edited by Nephryo on Mar 11, 2015, 4:53:21 AM
reserved
added a video to see what the game play looks like
I'm gonna try this build. It looks fun!
my next char will be this one.
well explained btw.
I see nothing anywhere that supports the idea that the charges are applied to the traps themselves. Considering the charges are an on kill effect and the trap dies when it is triggered. Can you explain where you got this idea from? Just curious.
IGN: aMonsterTruck

Because I'm Based.
Any reason you're not using Concentrated Effect on the fire traps?
Hello everyone, thanks for showing some interest in the build :) I will do a small update.

About Power Charges:
I made some changes about the way I could generate Power charges, the HoT + PCoC combo wasn't satisfying enough because I lost the charges too often.
One way to make it work better would be: 20Q PCoC + 20Q assassin's curse + the two nodes of PC duration in the tree.

I tried the old fashioned way : Ice spear + Faster casting + GMP + PCoC. It was reliable (if I use it I'm 100% sure to create charges but it was a bit annoying (you have to do it before every pack, and it seems like a waste of time :(

I tried also to only curse and have the burning ground from the fire trap to create power charges. I sometimes had 3 charges like that but it's not very reliable. It allowed me to run a third trap though.

"
bbblame wrote:
I see nothing anywhere that supports the idea that the charges are applied to the traps themselves. Considering the charges are an on kill effect and the trap dies when it is triggered. Can you explain where you got this idea from? Just curious.


I made some tests myself with arc+trap and I didn't get any charges during 2-3 runs of City of Sarn. I asked people in global to have other confirmations.
The fire trap can generate power charges with his burning ground and I actually get power charges when I use fire trap (sometimes, it is not reliable).


About survivability :
I ripped thx to a big pack of devourers ^^ My only defense was a CWDT (EC+IC) setup and it didn't work (maybe the EC was on cooldown right at the bad moment ? I heard that CWDT doesn't work with devourers though and I saw some videos that "prove" it)

I think you need to have a CoD or high lvl AA (or both) to survive HC, with better rings and amu, it is doable (just go for mana regen).

I was planning to play carefully but without strong defenses except my reflexes and a CWDT setup. It works for a lot of things but Immortal Call didn't trigger with the devourers and well...
I will continue to play the build in Standard though :)


About damage :
"
TimeDilation wrote:
Any reason you're not using Concentrated Effect on the fire traps?


Because I had enough damage to one shot rares without it :)

I ran some 70-72 maps and I was able to kill big packs of (white-blue-yellow) with only one trap with 4-5 people in the group (when I crit of course).

The more increased area of effect you have, the better it is imo because you will annihilate the whole screen.

You could swap increased burning damage for conc effect if you could manage to not have a red socket in your staff (or if you have your fire trap setup in chest). You will have better damage and less area, it could be better for very high lvl map (I never tried those so you will have to test yourself).
you cant corrupt +1 power charge on boots.
"
you cant corrupt +1 power charge on boots.


I just checked on wiki and you are 100% right. I guess I wanted that to be true and I misread the wiki :/
You can have a frenzy charge but it's not any good for us.
+1 to level of gems is nice though

thx for the info, I'm going to correct it.
Last edited by Nephryo on Mar 5, 2015, 5:16:05 PM

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