why use trap or mine?

Hi,

I played traps once, never played mines
I don't understand why you would waste a gem slot to change your spell to mine or trap instead of using the spell by itself. Aolso the trap/mine spamming before a boss has reduced efficiency now

are there advantages?
or is it just about having another playstyle?

ty

i played both before but probably wont play them again just because there is too much clicking involved especially with mines.
pyroclast mine was really strong when it first came out so that's why i played it.

If it wasn't for herald stacking, traps and mines have been stronger than self-casting in many leagues now. If you go back to previous leagues, you'd find spells like fireball and arc used by traps and mines more. The reason is because they usually feature much more potent single target while maintaining decent clear, and is easy/cheap to scale, making excellent league starter. And to top it off, you are not locked in place with spell echo, throw them out and you are free to run about dodging enemy safely. Also some skills have long cast time like glacial cascade, using mines bypass that.

Then GGG introduced stronger dedicated mines skill like Pyroclast and Icicle mines, which tend to surpass spell + mine support gem, but even then the latter is still a powerful setup when done right, and still better than self-casting barring insane herald stacking this league which is goner next league.

ok, so it's better with specific spells

and i wasn't talking about herald stacking, don't feel like cheating in games

Traps had their glory back in Incursion, while Mines had theirs back in Blight league. Both of them received back then significant changes: Skills used by traps were now bound to the skill use, Cluster Trap and Multiple Trap consumed X trap use rather than just 1, mines saw the greatest of the changes by making them throwable, reserving mana with their aura effects.

While, once, you could improve your spell's damage by just allocating damage node for its element and general spell, you can also get Trap and Mine nodes. Their nodes give some extra penetration and quite some critChance/critMulti to add to an already powerful spell.

Apart from the extra power, a Trapper/Miner build definitely solves its Reflex problems just like a Totem build, by using a delegate for casting - with the main difference that totems still have a life and usually will be oneshotted by their own reflex. Thus, it gets better to throw 10-15 traps for 1 cast each rather than 3-5 totems for 1 cast each

Last but not least, Wraeclast is pretty known for its dangerous environment. Namely, standing still too much usually gets you killed. Self-casting was usually considered a poor choice to play a Mage build also because of this. By using traps you still have some time to kite your opponents, and you can prepare yourself for a greater hit if you know where your opponent is going to appear (think about Atziri or Sirus).

That said, Trap/Mines, like Totems, still suffer for the "too much clunkyness" of their cast speed which make some player perceive them as "too slow". Traps somehow solves this problem with Hand of the Architect, which turns your otherwise not-so-important Cast Speed in Throwing Speed. As the Cyclone builds should have already suggested to you, usually people want to get the best clearspeed as possible in order to use every single second of their gameplay

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Jedam81 wrote:

why use mine?

1.Better DPS
2.Better Burst Damage, you basically can kill any boss in less than 2sec, include sirus A8.
3.Better Clear speed.
4.Longer range.
5.Autopilot, you can basically click anywhere on your screen and mine will auto-aim for you.
6.Better Survivability, because mine throw speed is very fast so you can kite very effectively.
7.no reflect.
8.no brain needs, so you can spam maps while watching Netflix.

the only spell that not good for mine that i can think of is Wave of Conviction and DOT Spells.

mines alternate with everything else as being better than selfcast, traps are redundant as mines got reworked to be the same thing but better basically

personally i love traps its kinda a grenade playstyle but they are a bit underpowered by modern measures

Cause some people like traps x'D

Mines are very good and can obliterate a crapton of mobs in one go.

"

Ozxell wrote:

the only spell that not good for mine that i can think of is Wave of Conviction and DOT Spells.

I put ED on mines once just to see how well it played with (back then) a very large contagion radius.

Shit clear, really interesting single target. would not recommend. Icicle + triggercrafted frostbomb is just so much more satisfying.