pure lightning trapper for hc? [Archive] - Diablo 3 & Diablo 2 Forums

MoUsE_WiZ

09-06-2005, 22:13

Simple view:
Max LS
Max DS
Max CBS
Max SW
1 FB
1 in everything on the shadow tab except venom
Rest into shadow master

Some notes:
-if you can't get ~+10 all skills you might need to pump fade up some more...remember 1 point in fade (skill or not) = 1% DR
-if you plan on spending time doing nothing but baals shadow warrior > shadow master, as shadow master is often irritating with his mindblast casting and slowing up the run
-WB does not block ANYTHING when moving (running or walking), it block many things shields don't catch when standing still. I prefer C/C, but C/S is better if you're going to be moving around a lot near things that can hit you. If you go WB you want ~10 after skills, so if you're not getting that from the gear you might need to take some synergy points to cover it
-Mindblast is the best skill in the game, except on baal runs...if you're not using it constantly when not running baal you're playing wrong. Period.
-If your gear is quite good, then you can avoid fade as well, BoS speeds up your trap laying speed, and more importantly your speed, so if you can cover the res and the dr while keeping your skills up BoS > fade.

Going 2 trees with a trapsin is silly, DS is a second element and your merc should be able to get the first body or two for you if there's nothing but LIs on the screen.

kooshball

09-06-2005, 22:24

MoUsE_WiZ

09-06-2005, 22:43

If you're leeching to baals, go with LS, then DS, then 1 point in the shadow tab stuff, then the synergies. Otherwise just using your skills in the highest level synergy that is available works fine, they're all going to end up maxed or near maxed in the end so it doesn't really matter too much.

HCTwinJava

10-06-2005, 19:40

Simple view:
Max LS
Max DS
Max CBS
Max SW
1 FB
1 in everything on the shadow tab except venom
Rest into shadow master

If you play HCL (not SP or non-ladder), you'd be better off if you ignore SW/CBS and max LS + Shadow Master at the same time - first. Once LS + SM are max'ed, work on DS. Once DS is also max'ed, you could choose to either max Fire Blast or SW/CBS. You could max FB even if you are a "pure" lightening trapper. After this skill of your choosing is also max'ed, you're free to boost its synergy or fix other skills as you like.

You can choose to put l pt in Blade Fury so you won't feel nothing you can do when your traps can't hurt your enemies.

So, the following would be more appropriate for a HCL player:

Max LS/SM
MAX DS
Max Fire Blast
rest pts into CBS/SW

- or -

Max LS/SM
MAX DS
rest pts into CBS/SW

- optional -
1 Blade Fury

If you are "poor", you should go for C/C (dual wielding 2 claws for your asn's entire life after she gets Shadow Warrior).

If you are "rich" (or not "poor"), you can choose to either go C/C or C/S. your stat point distribution will need to be fixed, based on this choice.

After you've defeated Hell for the 1st time, aim to have at least +12-15 to your trap skills, and permanent +10 to your shadow skills. When casting SM, aim to temporarily get your shadow skills to as high level as possible.

A well-built and played trapper is able to solo virtually entire game on HCL, untwinked (= with no trade and with no help from other chars) - only Hell ancients may turn out to be too hard and too dangerous to solo. The best thing is: it won't take you much time to do that (to me, it was just 2 weekends + a few weekdays). That's the beauty of a trapsin for HCL players.

Wish you best luck!

kooshball

10-06-2005, 20:51

the reason i asked whether to max all the synergies is beecuase i have never played a trapsin before and im worried about not doing enough damage in hell if i dont go for max syn. but your suggestions sound good, max LS+SM then DS and rest of synergies.

btw i am playing HCL and am very poor so i'll have to go with the C/C route, shoudl i worry about blocking at all? does dex help claw blocking? shoudl i use fade or bos?

thx

MoUsE_WiZ

10-06-2005, 21:20

If you're poor, fade all the way...makes getting res so much easier.
No dex does not help weapon block.

It's my opinion that the order you do your skills doesn't especially matter, I didn't find myself needing an SM until hell with either of sins...I also wouldn't max SM, get it up to 17 after skills, 17 is picked because that's the level it can spawn with the best weapons it can get, and it'll never die without plenty of time to cast a new one.

Fireblast is a complete waste of skill points IMO...I had level 23 (1+22 traps) FB with 4 synergies maxed and it was killing stupidly slow. Not slow compared to my traps, just slow.

Other things:
- going c/c you should have str+dex as low as possible and the rest into vit...if you're using 2x tucs we're talking something like 50/50/400 give or take a bit
- 1 point in dragon flight is a good idea. It's a good way to teleport right up to the monster you want dead but is immune to your traps and your merc is opposed to targetting.
- LR wands break all (or all the important) inherent lightning immunes in the game. Your traps kill ex-LIs slowly as they still have 90+ res, but it is an extra bit of help without having to spend skills to get it

Full_Circle

10-06-2005, 22:08

Mindblast is the best skill in the game, except on baal runs...if you're not using it constantly when not running baal you're playing wrong. Period.

Aye, Mindblast is good, but why would you spam it constantly in areas where things die faster without it? Sure, there are some places where spamming it may be best, but there are also some where the conversion annoys and slows you down more than it helps.

Aerath

10-06-2005, 22:27

If you don't go to plan for perfect gear with this character instantly...

Aim for 80 str/dex (actually, 79 is all that's required, but I'm a freak for nice numbers...). That'll allow you to wear some decent +3 trap claws, which can be shopbought.

HCTwinJava

11-06-2005, 00:00

- Maxing Fire Blast does not imply you will have to use Fire Blast directly.

It has 2 major uses: 1) help you blast a few guys that your LS can't hurt; 2) it synergizes DS, so that your DS will fire up more times (up to 10 shots like your LS).

Fire Blast's damage:

At level 99, with 81 skill pints invested in your trap still tree, and with +15 trap skills (12 to 15 is the minimun that I suggest that you get in the end): Fire Blast does an average of ~3K fire damage to everything in a radius of 3.3 yards.

OK, even if you can't get to lvl 99 and can only have +12 trap skills: after you invest only 62 trap skills, your Fire Blast will already do 1.6K - 1.9K fire damage in a radius of 3.3 yards.

Not amazing at all, but it does help your SM/merc to kill a few LI guys in Hell.

Note: using Fire Blast is just one route for building your trapper. it's not necessary if you choose other routes.

- Dragon Flight: NO, NO, NO!!!

It will do three bad things to you:

1) instantly destroy ALL of your traps that you and your SM took 2 or 3 seconds to have laid.

2) may very well cause desync, since you play HCL: this means, you know where your asn is on your computer screen, but you DO NOT Know for sure where your asn is on the b-net game server. Once desync'ed, you may get hurt/killed without even knowing who did that!

3) you'll waste 4 skills for no good use.

- Mind Blast: do not spam it, especially if you are in a party in a Hell game.

It has its good use, - that's why you get it. But use it only sparingly and only if necessary, - even in your own solo game. If an asn in my party *spam* mind blast, I could tolerate that and say nothing, but my chars (my own trappers included) could very well hate the asn!

In contrast to Mind Blast, you are welcome to spam Cload of Shadows however you see fits - all of my chars could very well love your asn if you do so.

- Shadow Master: The only good reason to stop at base lvl 17 is that you plan to be finished with your asn at about level 75 or 80.

With base lvl 17, casting SM at 30 or 30+ becomes hard if your asn is untwinked. if you and your small team (merc + SM + your asn) can't get BO or similiar help, Hell Baal is able to kill your SM (if under lvl 30) IN ONE SECOND!

- if you use C/C, keep your base str/dex no higher than 79/79. If possible, try to keep them as low as ~60 (very hard to do so, if untwinked). This way, you'll have 300 base vita at or shortly after level 65.

Special note: that does not mean you'll have low ACTUAL str/dex. With the right gear, you can get 150-200 actual str or dex with BASE str/dex = 79/79.

If played untwinked, low base str/dex do mean 1 thing: you can't use heavy but good stuff. But the question is: do you need them? My untwinked solo HCL asn that I built in 2003 had only ~200 total defense when her traps finally crushed Hell Baal. And, if I recall correctly, half of that defense came from her 2-socket mage plate she started to wear around lvl 30.

- Low Resist wands

my own trappers have never used those wands. Why? Those guys whose light immunity can be broken by such wands are most likely NOT your real threats. The solo asn that I mentioned above had +6 shadow skill claws on switch - not a wand.

However, many have said, go for them!

Aerath

11-06-2005, 02:08

Oh...

As an aside, check the Runewords... things like Stealth and Rhyme are your friends (assuming you go c/s rather than c/c). Lionheart is a great runeword for the cost, and there's a couple other nice options.

Consider anything that can be obtained from NM countess runs or a NM Hellforge fair game. Slightly higher might become problematic.

xeyloderixed

11-06-2005, 05:43

lCE

11-06-2005, 12:42

Infinity on merc helps A LOT if u can get it, u will never need to worry about lightning immunes again, if u use a LR wand as well, even the broken immunes (that still have 80% + res) will go down just as fast as anything else. For me, damage is king - so i max all the synergies for LS, use fade with C/C (shael the claws if trap laying speed is slow), i dont understand the need to max shadow master or fireblast, mind blast + HF merc is all the crowd control u really need, and death sentry doesnt really benefit from the synergy, unless u r using it for the lightning damage which u really shouldn't.

MoUsE_WiZ

11-06-2005, 14:10

kooshball

11-06-2005, 20:54

wow im glad this thread really took off. thx for all the help.

here's couple more questions

1. where do i get a LR wand? do i buy one? i'm looking for one with charges of LR right?

2. im level 15 now and dont seem to be doing any damage. my merc is the only thing keeping me alive since i dont have LS yet and only 1 point in the pre reqs. i guess i just have to stick with c/s for now until i get LS pumped up

xeyloderixed

11-06-2005, 20:59

what i did with my untwinked trapper is to pump cbs all the way until 24 (or at least all that you can spare while having 1 pt in these: bos, shadow warrior). cbs does good enough damage to carry you through a3; you should have ls at a4.

yes, u can buy lr wands from vendors. if you are like me and are a cheapskate, just id all wands that drop and wait for an lr one (they sell for 35k nearly everytime anyway, and u wont need one till nm a5 for killing baal)

PhatTrumpet

12-06-2005, 01:29

MoUsE_WiZ

12-06-2005, 01:39

CBS is well worth dumping points into early on. Later on it can even kill large single targets, like act bosses, faster than LS. This fact is detailed in the PvM Lightning Trapper guide in the Strategy Compendium I believe. Basically, if you can click elsewhere to lay the first CBS, then hover your cursor right over the boss and place 5 traps right on top of the target, you can get all or nearly all the bolts to really lay into the boss and do some serious damage.
The fact that it's minion vs act boss negates the possiblity of "serious" damage...but ignoring the word serious then yeah, CBS can make the boss dead faster than LS if you can get/keep them set right.

Another thing that I feel I should mention is that Holy Freeze is definitely a good choice for a merc for the slowing aspect, but don't take it as a given over a Might merc (or defiance or A5 depending on your preferences). That would be because Holy Freeze mercs can have a habit of making your corpses shatter which is something that can get on a person's nerves rather quickly if it happens a few times in a row at the wrong times.

HCTwinJava

13-06-2005, 17:18

spamming mindblast definitely is good in certain areas. the one location where i usually spam it is in the balrog seal in chaos sanc: the balrogs have both high fire and light immunity. your traps (unless you use infinity) will not be able to kill them before your merc/shadow goes down (i would assume any realistic level; my 91 trapper's max shadow still goes down very fast to them)m so spamming mindblast is defnitely a plus.

generally you should spam mindblast for monsters that are li/high hp. the only other ones i can think of are the mauler types in a5 (when doing shenk runs)

Well, I guess you'd agree that there are not many places or situations where MB needs to be spammed. In fact, in those places/situations, before you cast more than 2 or 3 MB, your shadow might have already done a few casts for you, making it unnecessary for you to continue.

Still, even against Infector of Souls and his company in Hell, if you have a very tough party, you shouldn't cast even ONE MB against them! If you solo Hell Diablo in a more than 1 player Hell game on Ladder, most of the time (not always) your shadow (lvl ~30 assumed) and merc (regardless his/her lvl) will not have a chance against this group for more than a few seconds. That's when and also why you want to cast MB on top of what shadow may have done.

twinjava: the fireblast synergy for ds is absolutely worthless, when most of the time the monsters are dead even before ds fades away.

I guess you'd agree that it's a very strong statement. Have you ever actually built and played a trapsin with max'ed Fire Blast in 1.10?

Fire Blast has 2 uses. Only 1 of the 2 uses is synergize DS. Max'ed DS with the max'ed Fire Blast synergy is going to be different. It allows you to use a minimal number of DS, so that you can further optimize the overall trap damage (without further optimizing your current trap skills/gear). For example, against a stationary group, 1 DS + 4 LS is now usually enough. Since LS does more L damage than DS, 4 LS does more damage than 3 LS (if you cast 2 DS). For another example, this synergy allows you to more readily leave a DS behind and move forward: in this case, it will do a better job compared to a DS without this FB synergy. (why leave a trap behind for a short while? 1 is to make sure randomly moving monsters won't raid you from behind, 2 is to help take care of those MB-converted monsters. In a public game, this might help you against a PKer on your trail.)

It is not my experience that "most of the time the monsters are dead even before ds fades away", if that refers to a Hell game in general. if that's indeed your own experience, I can imagine that your trapper was really "passive" and might very well be played in a party most of the time (because you can afford the time waiting on your 5-shot DS for timing out).

An "actively" played trapsin will cast traps solely based on where and when she needs them. Most LS/DS traps will be gone before they shoot more than a few times - especially in a fast-pace hell game.

MoUsE_WiZ

13-06-2005, 18:13

Still, even against Infector of Souls and his company in Hell, if you have a very tough party,
Who plays in parties?
I soloed the CS from ~80-91 after soloing to get there.
Playing in parties is a good way to get TPPKed, as unlike in public baals, you actually have to pay some attention to the monsters rather than the cold sork when you're playing through.

As for FB and DS... having 10 charges in your DS does not make your DS pop corpses any faster, it just makes them pop corpses for a longer duration.
If you want your damage optimized you will have enough DSs out to keep popping the corpses. Start with 5/0, when the first monster dies go to 4/1. If more than 1 monster dies at the same time go to 3/2. If that causes a few more monsters to die got to 2/3...it's not even wrong to go 0/5 if that's what happens to be available. Just keeping 4/1 the entire fight will start you slower and end you slower because you won't be doing as much initial damage and you won't be doing as much damage as you could as corpses become available.

Now, could you please explain:
Most LS/DS traps will be gone before they shoot more than a few times - especially in a fast-pace hell game.
It is not my experience that "most of the time the monsters are dead even before ds fades away", if that refers to a Hell game in general
I agree with the first quoted statement, which is why I feel FB is a complete and utter waste of skill points...in a fast paced game you'll be at a new spot with new monsters with 5 new traps out before the previous traps have expired. Or you'll be standing in the same spot in baal's throne casting 5 new LS (as there won't be any corpses for your DS to pop when the new wave first comes out).
However the second quoted statement seems to be in direct contradiction with that sentiment. Obviously your mind is quite split on the subject or I am misreading something somewhere. If the latter is the case, please feel free to explain.

HCTwinJava

13-06-2005, 21:26

Quote:
Originally Posted by HCTwinJava
Still, even against Infector of Souls and his company in Hell, if you have a very tough party,

Who plays in parties?

You should have quoted the complete sentence, to not distort its meaning. This is what I wrote:

Originally Posted by HCTwinJava
Still, even against Infector of Souls and his company in Hell, if you have a very tough party, you shouldn't cast even ONE MB against them!

As we all can see, since you solo, this statement does not apply to your trapper!

In fact, check out my following statement, which followed the words you partly and partially quoted:

Originally Posted by HCTwinJava

[the previous quote goes here] If you solo Hell Diablo in a more than 1 player Hell game on Ladder, most of the time (not always) your shadow (lvl ~30 assumed) and merc (regardless his/her lvl) will not have a chance against this group for more than a few seconds. That's when and also why you want to cast MB on top of what shadow may have done.

Do you see anything wrong/contradictory?

Well, if you play in a 1-player game, the above statement still does not apply. If you play in a 1-player game, that's the easiest play mode - If your trapper has the least survivability in Hell (note: her survivablity is really based on what you like her to do), then she WILL actually survive as long as she does what you like her to do. In this case, spamming MB or not is just part of what you like her to do.

My trapsins solo'ed through Hell in more-than-1-player games (I can run 3 Diablo's at the same time - and I either play in a party with other players, or in a pure solo game with at least 2 of my own players). By xp, in a Diablo run game with 2+ players, I know shadow master (lvl ~30 assumed) and merc are not really strong against Infector of Souls and his group in hell. MB in this case may help - only in a limited sense. And spamming MB won't help more than using it sparingly - you'll need time to spam something like Cloak of Shadows, to say the least.

Anyway, note that: I was talking about party play, and about the Hell game with increased difficulty.

...in a fast paced game you'll be at a new spot with new monsters with 5 new traps out before the previous traps have expired. Or you'll be standing in the same spot in baal's throne casting 5 new LS.... please feel free to explain.

1) 5 traps don't always allow you to actually move forward, because you may need to lay many more traps to kill some stuff roughly in the same place. (Fast-pace games only mean everything is thrown to you fast and you must react to them very actively. For example, a fastest-paced Diablo game does not mean you can now kill Hell Diablo in virtually little time). Again, note: I rarely play a game in a 1-player game. On b-net, it's 2-3 players at least. In SP, it's ALWAYS "players 8" (this rule never changes - and such SP games are always solo, unless on TCP/IP). such games always tend to be more difficult (and more exciting/rewarding).

2) Baal, baal, baal...

After my first HCL trapsin solo'ed Hell (except ancients) and obtained her Guardian title, I considered her mission already completed...

Think about this: who takes most trapsins to the throne room in pubbies? And if they do, what expensive gear do they need just to be reasonably fast to get there? In a nice party, Baal runs are not truly hard - you could even get a lvl 60, naked char to the Hell throne room with nearly no risk, so long as your party is tough enough and is well coordinated).

Anyway, I wish no assassin would spam Mind Blast on baal's minions when you are in a tough party. You'd appear to be more "pro" to your party members, if you "spam" a bit Cloak of Shadows.

Edit:
PS - re: Fire Blast. Please tell me you actually built and played a FB-maxed trapsin before. I did, to say the least. The build troute is equally Hell viable, though it's more gear'ed towards solo. Anyway, your 3K Fire Blast damage means nothing in an 8-player Hell baalrun game on Ladder (assuming this rus is possible on HCL), just like your 5K or 6K trap damage means almost nothing to Hell Baal in a full ladder game.

xeyloderixed

13-06-2005, 23:23

i actually did (or at least close to it. one of my first few trappers that died went for fireblast instead of shadow for her remaining skills), and its complete crap. 2k fire damage doesnt do that much, especially when the first trap delay takes forever.

in regards to trap laying, all the 4/1, 3/2 etc stuff is moot anyway, once you get an insight on a merc. who cares how many u spam when u never run out of mana? i even start my runs with 5 ls, then as soon as one is dead, replace them all with ds. i can realistiscally lay 20 overlapping traps before i actually run out of mana (and by overlapping i mean just plain spamming)

i'm not sure what u meant by being "passive". i'm actually a pretty aggressive player (heck, i go to gloam filled areas with - light res) and it is especially true for my trapper. i've rushed quite a few people through chaos with my trappers, so the "single-player" mode you say doesnt actually apply. the "5ls/5ds" strategy actually works in muliplayer too; with that many ds working overtime the monsters are dead even before all 5 ds run out. you just have to time it so that you only cast the first of the 5 ds when 2-3 monsters have died.

if you mean "passive" as in "i'll wait behind my shadow/merc will my trape kill them all", this is also not the case. ive been known to herd monsters in chaos so that ds can kill them quickly; here a few mb actually helps (stuns some of them while i herd more). the convert is sometimes anooying, but the stun more than makes up for the safety u get.

i guess u meant "passive" being 'playing defensively, always casting shadow ahead of me?' if that's so, then i guess i'm very passive. but what trapsin (other than the heavily dOOped ones) would want to tank monsters? the real strength of trappers are to kill monsters from waaaaaaaaaay off, not to tank while your measly traps kill.

MoUsE_WiZ

14-06-2005, 05:04

Never played with more than 1 point in fireblast. I have however played with 2k dmg fireblast due to +2x traps. It's damage is worthless. Not worthless in 8 player games compared to 13k damage traps, worthless in one player games with the monster LRed compared to walking up to the monster and smacking it with tucs.

Mana isn't an issue drinking blues can't fix, besides if you're not recasting DS due to points in FB chances are your LS is going to be doing less which results in taking longer for the LS to work which means they might run out and all need to be recast.

Also, by cutting off a part of your paragraph nothing was taken out of context. It was still a post that was focused on playing in parties when a large number of people play trappers because they are excellent solo characters.

From there, who ever said anything about spamming mindblast on baal's minions? I sure didn't... infact in my first post you'll note that I say go with SW over SM if you plan on baaling a lot as SW won't mindblast in the runs. As to your comment about appearing 'pro'... actually if you cast CoS in a baal run you won't 'appear' anything, you'll be the only one who sees the effect -.-

Other comments about soloing in multiple player games... been there done that. Most of my MF CS runs were done solo as the seal bosses don't drop better with more players and D doesn't drop better by enough, however I still rush friends in 3-6 player games without any mana problems. And this was before the days of Insight making mana a joke. And before the days of duped Enigmas making getting around a joke.

Oh, and @Xey... I liked tanking with mine... couldn't do it as well as an ES sork but still better than a lot of folk =p

xeyloderixed

14-06-2005, 07:38

heh, i just like running around with this gear (and -71 res all when i entered/finsihed hell):

+2ammy/13mf/9 res all
shako
skullders
2x tucs
goldwrap
chancies
travs

what can i say, im a voyeur at heart ><

to all other folks, pls do not try this at home. soloing was sometimes scary; forunately i didnt encounter gloam filled areas

Rekoc

14-06-2005, 08:59

Xey did you use fade or BoS most of the time?

P.S...I lub you :)

Aerath

14-06-2005, 11:55

actually if you cast CoS in a baal run you won't 'appear' anything, you'll be the only one who sees the effect -.-

*erm* No. The screen goes black for the entire party, and monsters have a swirly cloud thingy above their heads. This is shown for the entire party, not just the Assassin.

xeyloderixed

14-06-2005, 12:54

Xey did you use fade or BoS most of the time?

P.S...I lub you :)

BoS (almost 100%, exceptions are heavy elemental attack areas that can be predicted, like travincal)

running around with -71 res all was dead secksy. not even a single close call :D

and i lub u too hun

zeskelnec

14-06-2005, 12:56

1st: I've read on many posts that Lower resist DOES NOT work with traps neither "INCREASE light dmg " items. any infos?
2nd: Playing only solo untwinked, in hell I have difficulties with LI. There I see an interest in FB which I have now to finish maxing.
I would be glad to here about how a lightsin can kill LI......

But still with only "Darkglow" armor 85 def and 1 bartuc, in total +4 skill, I ran normal and nightmare really easy with lightsin.
One good point is the HF merc with shaft, and the recently dropped "Blackhorne's face" (slow by 20%) and high Light resist+absorb in addition with the "Tannr Gorerod"pike with +15% max Fire res. The merc compensate the lightsin with his fire dmg and high resist.

You need only to summon the ShadowM at lvl 17 (including all + skill) to get her fully loaded with rare gear, saving that way some precious points in synergies.
DO NOT GO AT ALL with MA tree. I lost a HC because of a Dragon FLight who ended in a lag.

MoUsE_WiZ

14-06-2005, 16:40

*erm* No. The screen goes black for the entire party, and monsters have a swirly cloud thingy above their heads. This is shown for the entire party, not just the Assassin.
When the other 7 people in the game are using MH, you're going to be the only one to see the screen go dark, and no one's going to notice the cloud with all the blizzards being cast everywhere.

Zeskelnec: Lower Resist, as in the curse Lower Resist, definitely works with traps. Lowering a monster's resist via facets and other such items does not, similarily raising your lightning damage with facets and similar items also does not affect your damage. This is because traps are minions, so you aren't the one doing the damage, the traps are. Yes, your character screen does lie to you about how much damage you do when you have +%lightning gear on.

Here's how a trapper kills LIs:
Merc+DS+Wand of LR+LS+the Shadow Master does also help...i've seen it take down LI/PI bosses when there's no corpses around. Throw in some mindblast to make them stay still and stay off your merc.

If all else fails just mindblast them a few times and run to somewhere else.

Dragon Flight DOES help, just gotta know when to use it.

Aerath

14-06-2005, 16:51

Never even considered Maphack :p

Zeskelnec: You don't need a big armour for a trapsin. You're not supposed to get in the way of Meleeing anyway, really... As to a better armour, I'd probably advice a Stealth. Really really nice li'l armour and damn cheap.
There's a few other Runewords that are slightly more expensive that work really well (e.g. Lionheart).

HCTwinJava

14-06-2005, 17:39

finally there is a post from someone who actually does SOLO or UNTWINKED SOLO with a trapper. just checked the very first post for this thread. That's definitely from someone who will have tremendous difficulty getting 20+ trap skills.

On HCL, if you do have +21 to +29 trap skills with any asn, please honestly tell us how easy for you to get those extra skills for actual game play, and how hard for a HCL beginner to get there.

Fire Blast, compared to LS
==========================

A trapper with very expensive gear and some like 13K MAX LS damage (=6.5K lightening average) may have all the reasons to mock on 3K average fire damage from max'ed Fire Blast with +15 trap skills. But a level 90 trapper with only good enough gear may only see her LS do 6.5K MAX LS damage = 3.3K average per shot. Can this trapper reasonably mock on the 3K AVERAGE fire damage from Fire Blast???

Please note:

1) Fire Blast will work on all monsters in a nice area.

2) The 13K max (=only 6.5K average!!!) LS damage cannot all come from trap skills unless your trapper does fully synergized level 52 LS (or have level 52-equivalent skills+gear) - how hard to get there on HCL? Or, even on SCL, how hard to get there without dupes? However, 3K fire average from level 35 FB, as quoted here, is ONLY from skills. Comparing 3K level 35 FB to 6.5K level 52 (or equivalent) LS and claiming FB is worthless is not based on comparable assumptions. In fact, level 52 FB with the same amount of trap skill investment as with level 52 LS does 5.9K - 6.9K = 6.4K average fire blast damage!

Claiming FB is totally worthless is not justifiable. Max'ing FB is ONE of the Hell viable ways for building a pure trapper.

Lack of actual experience with a blasting trapper is probably the major reason for not being able to see this.

actually, the only issue here is how to best optimize a pure trapper build and the play style to fit the player's needs for a trapper. surely, you can always lay only 3 traps instead of 5, get 300 energy instead of 300 vita, or do anything similar, and still call that a pure trapper great fun. But any1 can see this type of pure trapper is not optimized.

With 20+ traps skills from your gear, have you best optimized your trapper build and also best optimized your play style with that trapper? Or, with only +4 or 5 trap skills, are your trapper and play style best optimized?

For example, a pure trapsin using 2x Bartuc's is definitely not best optimized in a general sense. If I load very expensive gear with 20+ trap skills (and special items that boot trap damage) on my own asn, I will not even consider Bartuc's as an option for my highly optimized PvM trapper.

For anyone who has actually done an untwinked solo through entire Hell on HCL, it will be obvious that a pure trapper won't have real difficulty in more than roughly 1/4 of all the game levels in Hell. There are probably only less than 10% places where such a trapper would have tremendous difficulty. It is not unusual that a trapper has actually solo'ed most places in Hell (like 80%) but never really touched those areas (like 5% or even just 1%) that are most difficult to such a trapper.

Also, you may have played a trapper for 100s of hours without even remotely experiencing some actual challenges in playing such a trapper UNTWINKED SOLO through 100% of all places in Hell. for example, given a just good enough asn, I can try to kill Hell ancients 10 times and succeed 10 times without any need even for a re-roll. But the chance for an untwinked solo asn to kill them for the quest reward without re-roll or dying is... not high if still possible.

The bottom line is: an asn who is played in budget gear and has to solo most of the time will need to be built and played accordingly. This is just like a PvP asn having to be built/played in a different way than a PvM asn - because of the different needs with such an asn.

MoUsE_WiZ

14-06-2005, 18:29

On HCL, if you do have +21 to +29 trap skills with any asn, please honestly tell us how easy for you to get those extra skills for actual game play, and how hard for a HCL beginner to get there.

My assassin WAS untwinked.
She got through the game untwinked and solo.
Then she started running CS/E/S/P untwinked.
The gear she didn't find on her own (which was just sojs/trap charms) she traded for with gear that she did find on her own.
She was running CS with res ranging from -10 to 20 and 1k life when she started and had absolutely no troubles with 5k LS and no fireblast.
When I got to A5 hell I was using:
2x tucs
4 topaz gothic plate
+3 traps ammy
bloodfist
+3 traps helm
resist belt/rings/boots
as many resist charms as I'd found
I had no trouble getting there on my own without fireblast and with only 17 SM after skills.

A trapper with very expensive gear and some like 13K MAX LS damage (=6.5K lightening average) may have all the reasons to mock on 3K average fire damage from max'ed Fire Blast with +15 trap skills. But a level 90 trapper with only good enough gear may only see her LS do 6.5K MAX LS damage = 3.3K average per shot. Can this trapper reasonably mock on the 3K AVERAGE fire damage from Fire Blast???
Yes, fireblast is still mockable. Like I said, LI monsters take more damage when you walk up to them and smack them with tucs than they do from 2k fireblast. I honestly don't expect a 3k fireblast would be any better. Not that I'd use either myself, getting a high damage insight shouldn't be a problem for any player... 4 sock col voulges drop like candy for me anyways.

Here's the thing, you're comparing average FB to 1 shot of 1 trap hitting 1 monster. Yes FB can do splash too, but it's not nearly as the amount of targets one trap will hit. And you've got 5 traps out. And to make the traps more mana efficient they all have more than 1 shot.

EDIT:
Just out of curiosity:
What are these "special items that boost trap damage"? Because other than wand of LR I can't think of a single thing that isn't +skills that makes traps do more damage... (well amp technically would too with the DS I suppose).

HCTwinJava

14-06-2005, 19:42

Never even considered Maphack :p

MHMHMHMHMH....

/Rant begins and continues...

I played D2 for a few years (mostly HC/HCL only), and only used MH briefly and only used it when I played SC on US-WEST. I believe I only got just enough experience to fully understand what MH is.

Once in a while, it puzzles me when some supposedly "experienced" players are just unable to see some of the most obvious truths with the game.

I can see, Map Hack is a good explanation: MH users don't have the same game experience as I do. Their chars are able to run/teleport to Baal's thrones (each on 1 diff lvl) with virtually no time, but I can't without best luck. Because of the chicken feature, their chars can also go dancing "wild" without worrying too much about dying HC/HCL.

I also think either trading, duping or both are other good explanations. HC/HCL, I have never traded! - all items I used in HC were found by my own chars or by my party members when playing together. That's why I felt it very hard to even get just 1x Bartuc's in HC or on HCL, while many others might have never had a real problem getting 2x tuc's at only lvl 42. To me, it's next impossible to get 20+ traps on my HCL trappers (several in total), while some others may have every reason to implicitly assume every trapper on HCL can get level 50+ LS or 13K max LS damage.

If I had gone for trading/duping, I would have stopped playing HC. And that's actually what I chose to do lately. I switched to SCL. On SCL i started to trade for whatever items i need, duped or not. On SCL, I've already built 2+ rushers and done quite a number of Hellforge rushes, I'm now able to load tons of goodies on any of my chars without too much trouble. I guess I'm a bit thankful for rune duping on SCL-EAST.

Still, I'm a hard-core player. So far, with roughly a dozen SCL chars already built, I have not had a single death in any Hell game on SCL (excluding my level 1 babies I rushed for Hell forge drops). My first SCL trapper again solo'ed Hell Act1-2, and got to lvl 80 before reaching Hell act3 (I was then bored of killing LI's and got help for her with the rest of Hell). My 2nd SCL sorc in very budget (well, I mean poor) gear solo'ed entire Hell in a 2-player game, except for Hell ancients - this sorc used nothing better than a Shako and an occulus (might be spirit sword), and had 145 (no more no less!!!) unused stat points when facing Hell ancients for the 1st time at lvl 80. whether HCL or SCL, none of my chars has died even once for solo'ing Hell (or in any Hell game), and I did solo many times.

I still remember when I posted in 2003 on this d2 forum saying that 1.10 was not really hard at least to asn & necro, many disagreed - very surprising to me! Many tried to convince me of how hard 1.10 was, and that I picked up only 2 best chars in 1.10 for untwinked solo HCL play. Well, I guess many would now be more ready to agree that 1.10 is not really hard. Thinking 20+ traps skills (or equivalent skills+gear) are readily obtained to a HCL asn nowadays (well, I might be wrong here as i don't trade in HC), I believe even on HCL this game is no longer as hard as it was.

Anyway, I guess my game experience is just different from that of many others'. I build my chars only for game play as it is meant - not for using other programs or other players' items or for exploring cheats.

I believe there are still many hard-core players like I'm. Just that, many of them might have left d2 forever for good. There should be still many, though i don't know how many.

/Rant ends here...

MoUsE_WiZ

14-06-2005, 21:24

I guess my game experience is just different from that of many others'. I build my chars only for game play as it is meant - not for using other programs or other players' items or for exploring cheats.
:lol::lol::lol:
Hate to break it to you, but playing solo and only using items you find is essentially just playing single player. If you think playing this game as it is meant involves not using other players' items then perhaps you're missing the fact that the game was designed specifically for multiplayer, and trading is specifically meant to be in the game (hence the existence of the trade screen).
Now, if your idea of enjoying the game means playing what is, in essence, single player, then by all means play that way. I really don't care how you play the game. But when I offer build advice based on the knowledge that I can start a new assassin today and trade for 2x bartucs by the time I'm finished with normal, don't say things like "that's not the way the game is meant to be played."
That sort of talk might be applicable to things like endless baals and mf runs (I wouldn't say it is, but I wouldn't argue if someone claimed it), but saying the act of trading isn't the way it's meant to be played is just stupid.

while some others may have every reason to implicitly assume every trapper on HCL can get level 50+ LS or 13K max LS damage.
This has at no point been assumed. It's only been assumed that this late into a ladder season someone who hasn't stated "I want to play entirely untwinked" can aquire gear that costs gems at the most. Hell even if he couldn't aquire tucs, I'd still assume he could get 2x +3 trap claws, +2-3 trap ammy, +2-3 trap circlet just by shopping and gambling. Claiming fireblast is worthless does not assume you have traps >40, it assume you have traps >20.

I'm just going to ignore your comments on dupes and maphack because I'm not entirely sure why you're even mentioning them as they have nothing to do with this thread in any way.

HCTwinJava

14-06-2005, 21:31

My assassin WAS untwinked.
She got through the game untwinked and solo.
Then she started running CS/E/S/P untwinked.
The gear she didn't find on her own (which was just sojs/trap charms) she traded for with gear that she did find on her own.
She was running CS with res ranging from -10 to 20 and 1k life when she started and had absolutely no troubles with 5k LS and no fireblast.
When I got to A5 hell I was using:
2x tucs
4 topaz gothic plate
+3 traps ammy
bloodfist
+3 traps helm
resist belt/rings/boots
as many resist charms as I'd found
I had no trouble getting there on my own without fireblast and with only 17 SM after skills.

You are trying to over-generalize limited experience with 1 non-pure-trap/shadow-skill-based trapper in a small Hell game.

I can tell that my latest SCL rusher sorc with much better gear, 80/75/85/75 resists with complete absorb of F/C/L, 7K defense (or 10K+ with BO), and 2K+ hit points after BO, still feels not very easy to clear Hell Chaos in a rush game. But as you claimed, your asn with only 1K life, poor resists (at most ~70%), and mediocre trap damage (at most 2.5K * 5 per second on average) had "absolutely no troubles" when tearing through Hell Chaos!

When your game has more players, you will have different game experience even in your most familiar areas.

BTW, your "untwinked" trapper actually traded the items she found for the items she would need.

In a previous post, you wrote this:

Here's how a trapper kills LIs:
Merc+DS+Wand of LR+LS+the Shadow Master does also help...i've seen it take down LI/PI bosses when there's no corpses around. Throw in some mindblast to make them stay still and stay off your merc.

If all else fails just mindblast them a few times and run to somewhere else.

Flee is always an option, agreed. Is this what you meant by saying "I had no trouble getting there on my own without fireblast and with only 17 SM after skills"?

My first HCL trapper (built in 2003) killed every monster she ran into, up to Hell Baal, in her Hell solo game. Never did she knowingly skip a single monster she ran into. to her, flee is only tactical and tentative. This is a play style for a hardcore player. Obviously, your trapper does not fit into this play style. What would you do if you would swear to kill everything (except ancients) in Hell on your own?

BTW, how hard was it for you trapper to solo through Hell Maggot's Lair? How did she handle LI to finish the Hell anya/ancients quests? Did she solo Hell Baal and his minions for the request reward? Was your lvl 17 shadow master able to survive Hell Baal and his minions very well? With no more than 70% resist, you were not scared at all by lightening-immune black souls (or their variations) scattered throughout hell act3/4/5?

You might have done all this (or not?). But I guess you must have done "non-tactical" flee many times. So, correct me if this is not true: your trapper avoided the 10% game levels in hell that would give a typical trapper tremendous difficulties.

Again, correct me if this is not true: your trapper did not have full, complete experience with the Hell difficulty level of this game, because she skipped some monsters/places when questing through Hell.

Yes, fireblast is still mockable. Like I said, LI monsters take more damage when you walk up to them and smack them with tucs than they do from 2k fireblast.

What is your major source of AR (attacking rating)? Where comes enough AR that allows your trapper to reliably reach 2K average damage with 2 tucs per attack?

How high is your asn's total defense? What's the chance of your asn to get hit by a typical act4 Hell monster?

Bottom line: Was your trapper a trapper, a martial artist or really just a hybrid?

getting a high damage insight shouldn't be a problem for any player... 4 sock col voulges drop like candy for me anyways

what's the str requirement for using a Colossus vougle? How many trappers, when still being developed, are able to load a CV on their act2 mercs?

Without the right gear how high your act2 HF merc's level must be just for having 210 str enough for CV? - in case you don't know, that's level 99! Or, the more correct answer is: he'll never be able to use CV without the right gear to give him +str.

Here's the thing, you're comparing average FB to 1 shot of 1 trap hitting 1 monster. Yes FB can do splash too, but it's not nearly as the amount of targets one trap will hit. And you've got 5 traps out. And to make the traps more mana efficient they all have more than 1 shot.

How fast can LS/DS traps attack per second?

Just to be fair, you'll really need to play or at least test with a high-level blasting trapper through Hell, instead of just "mocking" max'ed FB based on speculation.

Fire Blast is more or less equivalent to a nice extra trap. During the time between laying two traps (note: max'ed fire blast means all LS/DS will shoot a while before going away), spamming FB is an option to get extra damage that is more or less like an extra LS trap, except that it does FIRE instead of Lightening damage. The faster you cast Fire Blast and the more monsters each FB splah touches, the more damage you do with FB. Using your numbers: with the time LS needs to do just 1 shot (= 4K max or 2K average), your trapper if built differently could roughly cast FB twice with 2K average damage each (= 4K average total).

Since you've never used FB, you probably don't know how to use it most effectively and just speculate that it must be useless.

Rekoc

14-06-2005, 22:06

HCTwinJava

14-06-2005, 22:29

playing solo and only using items you find is essentially just playing single player.

You are wrong:

1) SP is easy, easy to play, easy to cheat, easy to do whatever you like with no potential penalty from Blizzard. I only play SP with "player 8", and still never felt SP is hard.

2) Untwinked solo is a play style. I really like this style, though I did lots of party play and many of my chars are fully twinked.

3) B-net is harder than SP (or TCP/IP). L is harder than NL. HC/L is the hardest mode. I like HC/L because it makes the game feel still challenging.

4) You probably have noticed I did lots of solo in HC/L without ever having a death. Just imagine what if I switch to SP with player 8. There would be no more challenges.

5) many of latest runewords are L-only. Without cheats, you wouldn't get all them in SP.

About trade:

6) if you choose to trade, that's fine. I have started to trade too. But if your "untwinked" trapper also trades for stuff she needs, then... how do you define the word "untwinked"?

This has at no point been assumed. It's only been assumed that this late into a ladder season someone who hasn't stated "I want to play entirely untwinked" can aquire gear that costs gems at the most. Hell even if he couldn't aquire tucs, I'd still assume he could get 2x +3 trap claws, +2-3 trap ammy, +2-3 trap circlet just by shopping and gambling. Claiming fireblast is worthless does not assume you have traps >40, it assume you have traps >20.

7) You wrote this earlier: "I have however played with 2k dmg fireblast due to +2x traps. It's damage is worthless. Not worthless in 8 player games compared to 13k damage traps, worthless in one player games with the monster LRed compared to walking up to the monster and smacking it with tucs."

If you don't do 13K dmg, why would you have written in a way that your dual-tuc-wield trapper was able to do that? Why would you compare a much lower level FB with an extremely high-level LS your trapper could not get even remotely close to??? I hope this is not the type of argument you'd love to logically bring about.

8) Here, you were not completely honest, or you were just plain wrong:

- Given your description about your HCL trapper, even at her level 95 after all her skill points were used, she would still need +27 to trap skills to just deliever 2K fire damage from her FB! That's +27 skills from a dual-tuc wielder!

- More realistically, your trapper was never able to get even close to 1K MAX fire damage from her own Fire Blast. How could you reasonably had some real experience (other than speculation) about Fire Blast???

I'm just going to ignore your comments on dupes and maphack because I'm not entirely sure why you're even mentioning them as they have nothing to do with this thread in any way.

9) Unlike me, you are fully aware of the special effects of MH on a game screen, insofar as a trapper is concerned.

I built and played trappers quite several times on ladder,and I pushed a couple of my HCL trappers almost to the very limit of their abillities. I believe I'm very familiar with virtually everything about a trapper, except for how she fares with some of the latest and (supposedly) rarest runewords.

However, given a trapper like what you played, who has only 1K life, barely positive resists in Hell, mediore shadow master, and modest +skills, I would be very hesitant to quest her through many places in Hell act2/3/4/5 on HCL. How could she suvive countless LI souls? But you claim you did all, even in an untwinked solo mode. I can't find a sound explanation, to say the least. Maybe you were just extremely lucky. Maybe something else that only you know for sure.

10) Anyway, I just wish you had given all your advice based on your own actual game experience and your authentic knowledge about the game, not on your imagination/speculation or (your memory/knowledge about) 3rd-party-program-augmented game experience.

HCTwinJava

14-06-2005, 22:58

Actually hell CS is not hard to clear with a trapper...I find it easy actually. Light immunes are no problem. 1 corpse = a dead group of monsters next to it. Maggot lair is easy as well merc takes out 1 or 2 of them then your DS takes care of the rest. This thread has turned into you and Mouse trying to prove who is better then the other. I think we have given the guy who started the thread enough advice to help him along the way. Leave it there. It is done you both have your own opinion.

- agreed. Hell CS is not particulary difficult to a solo trapsin - a small enough game is assumed, however.

- When a solo trapsin has to quest through Hell Maggot Lair, her merc's level can hardly reach 80 already. Without decent gear, her merc will die fairly fast, and may just die too many times if she ever intends to do full level clearing.

My most recent experience with it is to clear it in a 4-player SCL game with my lvl 78 or 79 trapper. Her merc had no chance. My trapper was forced to kill 90+% of all LI's in her way, before and after enter the lair, with virtually no real help from any1 else in the party. Easy or not, it took an hour or more, and many potions. I wish i could do meaningful non-L-based damage, but her level was not high yet and her gear was not good enough.

(In contrast, my rusher sorc could just quickly walk/run (not tele) through the lair to find out the big worm in a rush game - her merc can slowly kill everything and has virutally no chance to die there even in a full game - in fact, the entire Hell act2 rush at full speed should only take her only about 10-15 min, no cheating/MH ever used or needed)

- What disturbed me most was the misleading advice/arguments soly based on speculations or very limited experiences. Without seeing those directly aimmed at my posts, however, I wouldn't have written so much in this thread.

advice taken, i should stop here.

xeyloderixed

15-06-2005, 00:45

we bow to your infinite knowledge

forgive us mortals

MoUsE_WiZ

15-06-2005, 00:52

Dropping this flame war, to the point where I'm not even going to bother defending myself against random accusations (aside from referring to them as random in this sentence), but I am not going to drop my statement that FB is useless:
20/1/20/20/20, +10 all = 3800 LS / +15 all = 5100
1/20/20/20/20, +10 all = 5300 LS / +15 all = 7100
Now, you could go 20/20/20/20/20 but that'd leave you with significantly less points for the "max SM" route that you propose (and which I don't disagree with to nearly as large an extent).

+15 all is slightly higher than what I'd consider easy (3/3/3/3/1/1/1...involves getting 2 harder-than-easy to get items), but it's not out of anyone's range provided their goal isn't solely to play through the game once for the fun of playing the character and leave it at that.

As you push your LS higher the gap gets larger, but so far as I'm concerened once you hit +10 (which is easy for a trapper to hit) it is already large enough to make a rather noticable difference.

We're talking 1-7500 damage per trap salvo (3750 avg if you like) to earn a 2100 damage fireblast.

1650 less damage vs 1/4 of the game (FIs)
2100 (assuming that you don't break them with your LR wand) more vs 1/4 of the game (LIs)
3750 less damage vs 1/4 of the game (CIs)
1650 less damage vs 1/4 of the game (non-ele immune)

Granted, these numbers are made up, and non-immunes still have varying levels of resists which I would have to assume are equal across each category even if monster immunes were split like that, but the numbers shouldn't be too far off from the truth. It also involves assuming FB rate of fire is equal to that of a trap. Since it's a variable rate depending on gear that's not too horrid an assumption. If you build for FB it's going to be firing faster than your traps shoot I'd think, but since you won't be firing FB the entire time that your traps are firing (there's herding, mb, cos, recasting traps, dodging, etc that you can be doing, and most trappers clear the screen and drop traps at the edge of it where FB couldn't hit whenever possible) I'm going to call it a fair assumption.

So you're going to be doing something like 1350 less average damage throughout the game with shop/gambleable gear if you go the FB/SM route.

Before you pipe up about "blah blah blah assumptions", remember, traps will hit more monsters than FB provided there are more monsters to hit. FB will cost you more energy. Throw in the LR wand and most LIs will start taking LS damage, whereas most FIs won't start taking FB damage. I'm ignoring these things in hopes that if my set of assumptions favors LS rather than FB (it could very well favor FB for all I know) that LS still has some room to work in where you'd be better off just pumping synergies for it. Oh, and if you don't pump Shockweb as the synergy you can't use that (not that it does huge damage, but it's not a large amount of mana to throw one or two out there and unless you're playing with someone else with a NextHitDelay it won't hurt) or if you ignore CBS then you can't use CBS for bosses.

This lower overall damage compared what you'd be getting with LS isn't the only reason I consider FB worthless, but it is the easiest one to back up.

xeyloderixed

15-06-2005, 00:59

oh, and directly attacking a person when they are giving THEIR opinions is [expletive]

sorry if we dont actually kill 100% of the monsters. but by pointing out that we dont and you do, and that MAKES YOU BETTER EXPERIENCED is also an [expletive] argument. sorry if i didnt clear the hole in a1, but i was busy killing gloams in a4. oh, and i forgot blood raven in hell? whoop tee do.

Rekoc

15-06-2005, 02:27

sorry if i didnt clear the hole in a1, but i was busy killing gloams in a4. oh, and i forgot blood raven in hell? whoop tee do.
lol :) i Lub TeH Godly blood raven skipping, hole not filling, whoop tee do da'ing xey

PawnOfChaos

15-06-2005, 03:55

Umm... This is very amusing, a flame war between people I'd never imagine taking part in one.

I've solo'd a pure light trapper in players 8 sp... I've solo'd acts 1-4 of hell with a pure light trapper (I have no issues with playing with a party, I only solo this because it can be hard to find said parties).

I never use fb. I won't knock it, because I know some swear by it. However, I will knock someone saying you need it to kill li's. YOU DON'T!

I find trappers ludicrously easy to play. You meet some li's? Okay, let merc/shadow kill. Merc/shadow too weak to kill them before dying? Okay, lead them back to the pile of non-li corpses you just created in the last pack you met, and ds them to death.

You talk about not being about to use a coll voulge on your merc... Try p-amethyst armor/helm... Then again, thats assuming you need such a high dam weapon... you don't. You can use excep uniques/insight in an excep weapon (still plenty of damage)/crushing blow/whatever.

Another thing you can use to decent effect (and its just plain fun), is to get some cb yourself and blade fury (I think thats the name I'm looking for) monsters. You don't need a high damage weapon, cb will take effect and BAM, much quicker deaths for li's/high life monsters. However this is not needed, just a fun 1 point wonder.

Lets list a few abilities of a pure light trapper:
-You can scout with traps
-You can lay down traps and run around evading getting hit
-You can use lr (I always used this on switch and highly recommend it, it breaks immunities and vastly speeds up boss-killing)
-You can use fade, even a low lvl fade with the + skills you should have will get you close to max res
-You can load up on mf/+skills/whatever you want because you really shouldn't be getting hit, you needn't worry about being able to tank
-Gloams are easily absorbed with a decent fade (half of gloam's dam is phys) providing dr and the res you so need, and a t-gods, which since you can mf quickly and effectively with a trapper, you should be able to afford before running into gloams
-You have a nice tank in your shadow (lvl 17 is ideal, I do like going higher sometimes just for the life)
-You can mb/cos a mob, let the ones still capable of fighting take on your merc/shadow and laugh while your traps destroy them, its very easy and very little work
-you can go c/c for nice blocking/+skills AND no need to pump dex so extra life (I sometimes prefer c/s if I go all +trap skills, I hate putting hard points into claw block)

Its plain to see that pure light trappers have it very easy compared to many characters. So, not to knock fb, but why the need for it? The synergy it provides for ds IS worthless: recast if you need to, but you probably shouldn't even feel that need, especially in hell where corpse life is so high.

Meh, waaaaay too long of a post, but whatever, felt like commenting after reading all these pages.

Jeff

HCTwinJava

15-06-2005, 17:12

Dropping this flame war...

I didn't want to continue, but really want to say this: I don't see a flame war going on in this thread.

Reasons -

I don't think I got flamed or I flamed any1 else. Arguing based on logic, reasoning and facts is not flaming, to say the least.

The only thing that was really disturbing is making up facts and numbers and arguing based on those fake facts and false numbers: for example, 13K LS dmg and 2K fire Blast damage were claimed for a trapper who could not possibly get even close to doing 13K/2K, an untwinked trapper admitted that she had actually traded stuff for the items she would ever need, and things like that. I did mention my own opinions about MH and duping, but that was only because I forgot the fact that many HC players use MH a lot, and they have different game experiences. As I said, however, I don't know if any1 here actually relies on MH for playing HC: I asked for some explanations, but did not make any speculative accusations.

The above quoted post immediately followed this post:
we bow to your infinite knowledge

forgive us mortals
This is the most useless post in this thread, and the only post that might actually have caused a flame war. It does have a point, however: the opposite to knowledge is ignorance. BTW, for any1 who believes in God, saying a mortal having infinite knowledge is rather insulting... your God and your intelligence are insulted by yourself - better to do this in private :-)

kooshball

15-06-2005, 17:50

MoUsE_WiZ

15-06-2005, 18:04

I'd have been happier to just completely drop the side conversation. No it's not a flamewar in the sense that most forums have them, however for this forum it was getting pretty bad. But since you're posting and making vague implications that I might be a liar or a hacker or both again...
The only thing that was really disturbing is making up facts and numbers and arguing based on those fake facts and false numbers: for example, 13K LS dmg and 2K fire Blast damage were claimed for a trapper who could not possibly get even close to doing 13K/2K, an untwinked trapper admitted that she had actually traded stuff for the items she would ever need, and things like that. I did mention my own opinions about MH and duping, but that was only because I forgot the fact that many HC players use MH a lot, and they have different game experiences. As I said, however, I don't know if any1 here actually relies on MH for playing HC: I asked for some explanations, but did not make any speculative accusations.

1) In Diablo (IE the original) untwinked general referred to not loading your character up with starting gear. Essentially 'starting from scratch'. Not trading for items/playing with only what that character found was referred to as playing a 'pure' character. I still use the definitions of words that were applicable at the time I learned them -.-

2) I also know that with maphack you can view another player's gear. That still doesn't mean I use it. Gloams ARE a joke for a trapper (compared to things like extra fast cursed spearwomen), the ONLY character that has any trouble with gloams is an ES sorc. Yes their damage is highish, but it's the energy drain combined with that that makes them as feared as they are... I don't see how knowing how to kill them effectively could possibly imply anything.

3) You want gear? Most of my assassin's life was spent carrying 1 tucs and 1 rare claw with just over 10k ls and god only knows what FB. The start of her life (after aquirring them) was spent with 2x tucs. However there was a period in the middle of her life when I was just pushing the damage as high as it could go. During this period 12.5 and 1850 would be the LS/FB numbers...sue me I was rounding.
That was:
-3 circlet
-3 ammy
-1 viper
-1 arach
-2 sojs
-11 charms
-2 all 3 ls 1 ds claw (that's the rare I used with the tucs later)
-2 traps 2 ls claw
for +30 ls/+25 traps

Yes, this clearly does mean that I couldn't have compared FB damage to claw damage at the exact same time, however early in her life when she was using dual tucs she would frequently walk up to stormcasters and smack them around when there were only 1 or 2 left because there was no danger in it. This gave me a vague idea of how slow the claws drop the life, which is quite slowly. With the above set up FB also dropped the life of a stormcaster in a fairly similar amount of time. When I say "worthless compared to" I don't necessarily mean that the FB damage is lower, just that it's damage is low enough that comparing it to the claw damage that an unenhanced dual tucs gives and is therefore worthless in general.

MoUsE_WiZ

15-06-2005, 18:08

i love the discussion here, but i got a more immediate problem
im level 30 now and every LS costs me 20mana. i have about 90 mana with gear. should i just dump couple saphire in a helm or is there actually a good point to invest in energy. i dont really want to do the latter since i get 1.5mana per ene andthat's just crap. thx
Mana can generally best come in the following forms:
-saphirres
-Bahamut (or anything over 60 really) mana rings
-cubing charms
Just grab it where you can, and where you lose the least life/res as a result of having it.

Don't dump points into energy, if you ever end up with halfway decent gear you'll regret it. Remember, your mana pool is likely to keep increasing but your trap cost never will.

rachil0

15-06-2005, 18:15

I like fireblast too. It's a fun diversion when all your traps are out and you're just waiting for things to die. I don't think it's a greatest dual element skill, but it is a terrific bargain since you have so many synergies pumped for it already.

My trapper:
PTopaz Shako
PTopaz Vipermagi
Rare magekillers bladetalon of quickness (socketed with IAS jewel for 55 claw IAS)
Cunning Blade talon (2 open sockets, 29 res all)
Ravenfrost (rock bottom, 154 AR / 16 dex.. just for CBF and a smidge of stats)
Goldwrap (+10 IAS, to hit 9 frame trap laying with fade)
Azure Light Plated Boots of Fortune (50 str)
Bloodfist (life/FHR)
+3 trap / 89 life amulet
4 trap GC's
Two +3 shadow masteries blade talons for buffing fade on switch. If I was rich I would add sockets and Ist them for an MF boost.

Skills:
20/20/15/20/20 - Fireblast/Shockweb/CBS/LS/DS
1 pt claw block, cloak of shadows, mindblast, fade

Stats:
Base strength and dex (lookie, her heaviest item is a blade talon 55/55 req's)
Vita galore (450?) - 1950 life
Base energy

About +15 to the traps tree. 6.7K LS, 4K Fireblast. The only thing I don't like about her is she has ZERO faster run/walk. She is extremely slow-footed. She uses fade all the time to get her resists up, so no BoS except when I am running through zones I already cleared. Good rare boots would make her a lot better (FRW/MF/resists).

HCTwinJava

15-06-2005, 21:40

since you're posting and making vague implications that I might be a liar or a hacker or both again...

I've never tried to hide my interest in knowing more. but I won't make conclusions based on speculation, or knwowingly make overgeneralization mistakes. BTW, I'm not interested in whether or not others use MH. It's good to them. - I used it for a short while in the past too, not a big deal.

1) In Diablo (IE the original) untwinked general referred to not loading your character up with starting gear. Essentially 'starting from scratch'. Not trading for items/playing with only what that character found was referred to as playing a 'pure' character. I still use the definitions of words that were applicable at the time I learned them -.-

by this definition, since all PvP/PvM chars have to "start from scratch" in the beginning, they are all "untwinked" now - regardless what you put on them for Hell or for PvP... At least, using a term in its odd or obsolete sense should have indicated that much earlier.

Obviously, your trapper is not an untwinked char in the proper sense of "untwinked" (though she had to have an untwinked origin at level 1 at least, just like all other chars).

Gloams ARE a joke for a trapper (compared to things like extra fast cursed spearwomen), the ONLY character that has any trouble with gloams is an ES sorc. Yes their damage is highish, but it's the energy drain combined with that that makes them as feared as they are... I don't see how knowing how to kill them effectively could possibly imply anything.

how many players can agree on your comments on gloams, the rather weak variation of burning souls? Note the facts: 1) your traps won't put a dent on burning souls (or gloams) in Hell act3/4/5, without special combinations of other offenses - 2) they are able to kill many chars in a blink, - I guess they can make joke of many chars of all 7 classes (your trapper included) more easily.

3) You want gear?

No. I know how to get 13K+ LS. I was only interested for a moment in knowing how you could load tons of +skills on your *dual-tuc-wieldidng* trapper who had only 1K life and poor resists during Hell Chaos runs. How you describe your trapper is up to you. but you have changed your trapper's profile many times by now: 13K, 4K, 10K, 12.5K... 2x tucs, 1x tuc, no tucs... your trapper created all those numbers.

Given your list of gear with exact +25 trap skills and extra +5 to LS and no item slots left unfilled, because you have also told us two things that your trapper used Dragon Flight and had lvl 17 SM, your trapper MUST have reached exact level 99 ("in the middle of her life" as you said) in order to have the possibility of getting 12.5K LS with 1850 Fire Blast using that gear.

Is that really your HCL trapper? If so, congratulations for having a level 99 trapper on HCL!

MoUsE_WiZ

15-06-2005, 23:16

Given your list of gear with exact +25 trap skills and extra +5 to LS and no item slots left unfilled, because you have also told us two things that your trapper used Dragon Flight and had lvl 17 SM, your trapper MUST have reached exact level 99 ("in the middle of her life" as you said) in order to have the possibility of getting 12.5K LS with 1850 Fire Blast using that gear.
1) I never said that that trapper had DF, I think I mentioned that I've played a few trappers. She was the first and I hadn't thought of adding DF to the build, the other two both used DF. But even if that wasn't the case, learn to count please:
+7 all in that gear
81 points in traps tab
4 points in MA tab (just to show you that you were wrong REGARDLESS of the fact that you didn't know DF wasn't part of this sin's build)
18 points in shadow tab (1 everywhere except 0 venom, 10 SM)
-----
103
Hmm...now, let's see here...that would make me, what, 92? Gee...92 is about halfway between 0 and ~96.5 in terms of play time, so yes not only is that possible, but it is infact the case.

by this definition, since all PvP/PvM chars have to "start from scratch" in the beginning, they are all "untwinked" now - regardless what you put on them for Hell or for PvP
Not exactly, it's "use what you find, or trade what you find for stuff you can use", most characters (aside from the first one on a new ladder season or whatever) are "use what you find, or trade what you find, or trade what other characters you have find". There is a rather significant difference in that there's no MF sorc (or whatever) involved finding the gear for the rest of your characters. But whatever this is beside any point ^^

how many players can agree on your comments on gloams, the rather weak variation of burning souls? Note the facts: 1) your traps won't put a dent on burning souls (or gloams) in Hell act3/4/5, without special combinations of other offenses - 2) they are able to kill many chars in a blink, - I guess they can make joke of many chars of all 7 classes (your trapper included) more easily.
Gloams just aren't a problem for me, and they shouldn't be a problem for almost any build even with limited gear. Yeah, they have huge damage potential, but it's a type of damage that is easy to negate and even easier to just dodge so that it doesn't need to be negated. Not to mention mercs kill them in 1 or 2 pokes even if your own skills can't touch them.

I'm not saying that you should run around trying to see how many you can get into one place at once then sit there laughing at them, but there's no reason for them to be anywhere near as feared as some people think. Extra fast cursed anything in hell is a much bigger threat than they are.

but you have changed your trapper's profile many times by now: 13K, 4K, 10K, 12.5K... 2x tucs, 1x tuc, no tucs... your trapper created all those numbers
That's simply because she did hit all those numbers (the 13k is admitted rounding, the 4k though she likely was at 4k before synergies all got maxed, is a misquote from 5k). Why did she live all those numbers? Because she started with nothing, mf'd her way onto the top 16 sins page, then baaled her way into the top 16 overall. Most characters don't live lives like that.

HCTwinJava

16-06-2005, 00:56

1) 1) I never said that that trapper had DF, I think I mentioned that I've played a few trappers. She was the first and I hadn't thought of adding DF to the build, the other two both used DF. But even if that wasn't the case, learn to count please:

You have kept talking about your "trapper", about "she" (her), about your 1 and only 1 trapper. But now, this trapper is magically "split" into several. And what "if that wasn't the case"? Then just think about how easy for you to jump among different subjects at will without even mentioning your underlying subject has been implicitly replaced: how bad is this type of logic? I now just started to doubt you ever had built and/or owned a trapper on HCL with 11 trap skillers loaded into their stash.

2) You can, of course, keep twinking your untwinked trapper and still talk about her as untwinked.

3) Gloams just aren't a problem for me, and they shouldn't be a problem for almost any build even with limited gear. Yeah, they have huge damage potential, but it's a type of damage that is easy to negate and even easier to just dodge so that it doesn't need to be negated. Not to mention mercs kill them in 1 or 2 pokes even if your own skills can't touch them.

Not or should not be a problem with almost any build whatsoever??? This is just an another example of how you overgeneralize things based on very, very limited experiences.

There are 7 different classes with tons of different fun builds and billions of possible gear combinations in this game. Not to mention only 1 out of the 4 different types of merc can ever poke around.

- Here is the fact that your overgeneralization mistakenly ignored:

Every burning soul or gloam in Hell has roughly 5K hit points, not to mention their decent damage resists (up to 80!) and blocking.

How many mercs can deal out - with just 1-2 pokes - 5K effective damage in a 1-player game, or 40K effective damage in an 8-player game, in order to kill just 1 soul/gloam?

Those souls have killed, and will continue to kill, many player chars and mercs (and same chars/mercs many times if SC). If you have played Hell games extensively throughout all the game levels, you'll see all such in person. And you might even lose a char or two if HC/L.

even if that wasn't the case, learn to count please

To be honest, your ability to present a logically coherent argument is very unimpressive to me to say the least. Yes I might need a Math PHD to learn how to count 123.

I'd suggest to you to learn how to use logic and how to reason based on logical rules and on facts - not based on speculation or on the facts/numbers that you have made up out of nowhere or out of your inaccurate memory. Such an ability should benefit any1 for life, and should be good to you too... sure, this is OT - but if you keep speculating, overgeneralising, and/or following other type of bad logic, such a discussion will surely have to end up nowhere.

xeyloderixed

16-06-2005, 01:05

i love the discussion here, but i got a more immediate problem
im level 30 now and every LS costs me 20mana. i have about 90 mana with gear. should i just dump couple saphire in a helm or is there actually a good point to invest in energy. i dont really want to do the latter since i get 1.5mana per ene andthat's just crap. thx

i'll just answer this one since i'm sick of actually arguing about something i am obviously "ignorant" about

do not under any circumstances put any in energy. it is really a waste, for reasons you already stated above.

there is no harm putting saph in gear, if you dont mind the loss of gems.

and there is also no shame in drinking them blues. heck knows i drank more blOOs than [insert famous name here] in my time in normal (especially a2-a3, where your merc cant wear insight, and a single round of traps doesnt necessarily kill 1 monster)

MoUsE_WiZ

16-06-2005, 03:23

You have kept talking about your "trapper", about "she" (her), about your 1 and only 1 trapper. But now, this trapper is magically "split" into several. And what "if that wasn't the case"? Then just think about how easy for you to jump among different subjects at will without even mentioning your underlying subject has been implicitly replaced: how bad is this type of logic? I now just started to doubt you ever had built and/or owned a trapper on HCL with 11 trap skillers loaded into their stash.
The first 2 or 3 posts I made about dragon flight were well before this thread turned into any kind of 2 person conversation, and also well before I started talking about the one trapper that recieved the most play from me. The next post I made about dragon flight was directed specifically to someone who wasn't you, as can be figured out by the way I quoted Aerath for the first part of the reply, then wrote "Zeskelnec:" for the second part. However, in said post I still didn't say "my trapper" or anything of the sort, I just wrote that "it helps, you just gotta know when to use it" or something like that. It's not my fault you've decided that everything I've said has applied to one trapper, it's yours for taking posts and putting them into the context of a completely different discussion.

Also, of course I haven't played a trapper on HCL with 11 trap skillers in the stash. Why would I have 11 trap skillers, and why would I keep them in my stash?
If you doubt that I had a trapper with 10 skillers and an anni in her inventory on HCL, then you're just wrong.

But anyways, all your crap involving arguing based on numbers...there's a term for a similar situation that frequently arises in Starcraft that players use called 'theorycraft'. People play theorycraft when they start arguing about how n amount of unit x would own m amount of unit y based purely on said units' hp/damage/rate and range of fire. Not only does such arguing completely ignore player skill levels, but it also ignores random chance, such as a unit getting stuck outside of range and any number of other countless things that could come up and is never valid at all. The only arguements that are valid on Starcraft are "n amount of unit x can deal with m amounts of unit y" and the only way to back those arguements up is to prove it in game. The same is true of D2, there is more to it than "player has n% chance to hit monster, and upon hitting will deal x-y damage, monster has m% chance to hit player and upon hitting will deal w-z damage". It doesn't matter what numbers you throw out there, it's just theorycraft.
Want to talk about overgeneralisation? Assuming that any numbers you throw out there will apply in anything resembling the same way at all times sure sounds like it to me. This is why I argue on experiences and memory rather than "facts" as you'd prefer me to.

Ok, I take back the overgeneralization that any build can handle gloams without trouble. I replace it with the significantly less general statement that almost any build that can solo any gloamless area of hell without trouble can solo gloam infested areas of hell without trouble. I say almost any because I can think of 1 exception, a summoner without dim vision might have trouble with gloams above all others due to the frequency of piercing attacks being used as opposed to any other area. What do I base this on? Purely my own experience. Go ahead, ask me for facts to back my experience up, but if you think that gloams are a special problem for almost any character that could otherwise solo the game if not for them, then I'll just laugh at you more than I already am.