Theorycrafting: Burning Bear Trap

Bear Trap is notable mainly for its extreme damage output per hit (the immobilisation effect is OK but a bit hard to really exploit). This is offset by various weaknesses: it's single-target, it uses the awkward trap mechanic, and its damage can't easily be boosted. But it occurred to me that most of these disadvantages can be overcome as follows:

- get a big source of phys -> fire conversion such as Blackgleam

- support with Added Fire Damage, Elemental Proliferation and Chance to Ignite

- use Flammability

- get passives/gear to support fire, ignition, burning

Has anyone tried this? How does it compare damage-wise to the simpler approach of just using Fire Trap?

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Incompetent a écrit :

Bear Trap is notable mainly for its extreme damage output per hit (the immobilisation effect is OK but a bit hard to really exploit). This is offset by various weaknesses: it's single-target, it uses the awkward trap mechanic, and its damage can't easily be boosted. But it occurred to me that most of these disadvantages can be overcome as follows:

- get a big source of phys -> fire conversion such as Blackgleam

- support with Added Fire Damage, Elemental Proliferation and Chance to Ignite

- use Flammability

- get passives/gear to support fire, ignition, burning

Has anyone tried this? How does it compare damage-wise to the simpler approach of just using Fire Trap?

have u consider mana cost + the recharge time of bear trap? bear in mind u can only lay 3 traps without the trap passive.

Level 20 Fire Trap: 812-1218 fire damage
Level 22 Fire Trap w/ Searing Touch: 1074–1610 fire damage

Level 20 Bear Trap w/ Blackgleam (50% conversion): 1668-2334 fire damage, 1668-2334 phys
Level 20 Bear Trap w/ Blackgleam and Added Fire: 2969-4154 fire damage, 1668-2334 phys

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About double the initial fire damage hit without added fire, nearly four times as much with added fire (level 20).

Not having 100% chance to ignite hurts the build significantly.
Sources of Ignite Chance:
+ Level 20 CtI: 44%
+ Level 20 Flammability: 14%
+ (Blaze Passive: 5%)
+ (Cloak of Flames: 10%)
+ (20 quality Increased Burning: 9%)
= only 82% chance to ignite, and the options in parentheses are a stretch, so 58% baseline.

The build really needs every bear trap to stick, otherwise it's throwing ~2 traps per mob pile and will end up waiting around for traps to recharge. Slotting more 4L Bear Traps would eat up most of your link-space or would require a 5/6L to function (which is a painful place to be in).

No AoE hurts it quite a bit. When you ignite a bunch of people with eleprolif, they end up taking the highest dps burn of all available burns, so the more eleprolif piles you can stack, the much higher your average damage will be.

Also not mentioned is that Searing Touch make Fire Trap absolutely amazing due to the +2 levels, passable offensive stats, and the massive 70% increased burn damage and can't be used with Blackgleam.

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Now the interesting parts. The damage is quite high, and the burns will be just about the highest damage burns in the game (just barely higher than 5stack level20 EA but loses to RemoteMine and/or ConcentratedEffect 5stack level20 EA) once they stick so it should have no problem melting down mobpiles. Getting double curse and running elemental weakness is very important for all burn builds due to the way fire resist counts twice (first the initial hit, then the dot), so getting that resist negative gives an exponential damage increase.

Since a Cloak would be the best body option, since you're getting lots of dex to satisfy Bear Trap's requirements, and since you won't have many mana problems (bear traps are expensive, but not thrown rapidly), Arctic Armour is very attractive. The synergy it has with Cloak of Flames is insane since it guarantees that both the -phys and the -fire of AA apply to all incoming physical damage.

Furthermore, since you're forced into a bow due to Blackgleam anyway, this build is in the peculiar position to use Darkscorn defensively. Take CI and another 25% of incoming physical damage is negated outright. Between this 25% flat reduction, the 25% conversion to fire and -phys/-fire of AA, you'll be amazingly tanky despite having a low ES body and no ES shield. You will need great ES helm, boots, and gloves, but that should be well within budget given that you're using 3 relatively inexpensive uniques with more or less fixed stats.

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Basic outline for the build. CI, lots of ES, will probably need some more mana stuff from the tree, Pyromaniac, Blaze. Avoid cast speed (doesn't help Bear Trap), avoid spell damage (doesn't help Bear Trap).

Expanded to 104 points. ZO is also 1 point away, so might be worth taking and running Vitality. Your mana is going to be stretched pretty thin though, even with 400 int and multiple mana/regen clusters. Clarity, Purity, Grace, and Discipline are probably all you can afford to run, and that would require some good +mana pieces.

It's probably worth slotting a Poison Arrow with Increased Duration just to give yourself something to do during Bear Trap downtime or against highly fire resistant enemies. You can slot it in a 3L with Arctic Armour for maximum link efficiency. :)

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More random thoughts in no particular order:
- Death's Harp gives 100% global crit multi for the really big crits if you do take some critical strike passives (but not spell crit!).
- Silverbranch is excellent for the +bow skills and mana-on-kill for early levels.
- Rainbowstride are pretty amazing for solving mana problems, Shavronne's pace are awesome at early levels.
- Your amulet and/or rings are going to need to provide nearly 100 dexterity and strength. Keep an eye out for good +dex stuff. Atziri's Foible might also be a good pickup for this build due to the mana bonuses and helping with getting dexterity/strength solved.

Final Verdict: Sounds fun as hell. I think this will be my next build.

As pneuma says the fact that you dont have an acutal AOE makes it a bit tedius, BUT you can use fire trap for AOE and bear trap for singles, max out crit chance, get the extra trap passive, start as a shadow.

Maybe something like this:Passive skill tree build

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VictorDoom a écrit :

Maybe something like this:Passive skill tree build

Ghost Reaver doesn't work with traps.

The trap passives really don't help very much.

Spell damage and spell crit doesn't affect Bear Trap.

Not sure how you'd get power charges. Maybe a bow skill + power charge on crit, but would need a high base crit bow to make that work.

Looks very fun. Glad to see darkscorn is being put to a good use :D

Spell Power vs Mental Acuity? (saves one point)

Is fire trap effected by 'increased spell damage'? Would it make a good second skill when more AOE is needed?

do the increased AOE passives increase proliferation distance?

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AnnanFay a écrit :

Looks very fun. Glad to see darkscorn is being put to a good use :D

Spell Power vs Mental Acuity? (saves one point)

Is fire trap effected by 'increased spell damage'? Would it make a good second skill when more AOE is needed?

do the increased AOE passives increase proliferation distance?

Spell Power helps. Mental Acuity, as mentioned before, doesn't help since Bear Trap doesn't use spell crit. (Spell Power is global crit, which is odd since it's named Spell power.)


Yes, it would make a good second skill (alongside poison arrow, though it doesn't solve the fire resistant enemy problem).

Yes, increased aoe on gear, tree, wherever increases the proliferation pile.

Wow, I never thought about using Bear Trap this way. I think I'm going to try this at some point too.

On the subject of having to use a bow, you would be able to use e.g. Burning Arrow or Exploding Arrow (depending on which bow you use) as a backup attack if you run out of traps. Not optimal, but should be decent with all the burning spec. Poison Arrow is also sensible as it has relatively little gear dependence and gives something to kill fire-resistant mobs. Like all trap-based builds you also have the option of using Ancestral Bond.

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Incompetent a écrit :

On the subject of having to use a bow, you would be able to use e.g. Burning Arrow or Exploding Arrow (depending on which bow you use) as a backup attack if you run out of traps. Not optimal, but should be decent with all the burning spec. Like all trap-based builds you also have the option of using Ancestral Bond.

You could, but you only really need a backup attack of a different element than the one you're using. Anything that's not fire resistant is going to eat a bag of dicks as soon as that trap hits the ground.

Poison Arrow is good since it requires very little investment to make it work.

Ice Shot might be okay, as would Lightning Arrow and Split Arrow and Rain of Arrows, but you have no attacking investment and it'd be a stretch to make them worth the effort of using them.