Ice Trap

After making 3 different trap characters, Ice trap honestly feels weak in comparison to its peers.

After properly getting into the League while using Ice Trap among Fire Trap via my build here (Tri-Element Trapper), I can savely say that the former is utterly outclasses by the latter. Personally, I considered Ice Trap inferior to Fire Trap even before 3.3 where it had one real feasible upside, namely the 1 second lower cooldown, but now I see nothing it does Fire Trap doesn't do better.

The reason is fairly simple even at first glance, in my opinion. On level 20, Ice Trap deals 4 more points of damage than Fire Trap. However, Fire Trap adds a Burning Ground effect and deals additional damage against burning enemies, doing far more damage than Ice Trap could ever accomplish.

Second thing is that after level 20, Fire Trap will even deal more damage with its unmodified base damage than Ice Trap, while still gaining bonus from its Burning Ground and added damage against burning targets. To boot, Fire Trap has a damage Effectiveness of 200% while Ice Trap only has one of 90%.

Meanwhile, Ice Trap has no unique bone in it. Now, after testing around, it looks like that rarely you can hit twice with the same trap, if the enemy is in a very specific location within the Ice Trap's explosion, but is it far too specific and rare of a happening to be of great note, especially when one manages to increase the AoE range of Ice Trap, as the effective range for this to happen stretches further out from the trigger radius.

Even if not comparing Ice Trap to Fire Trap, it just underperforms. It does nothing but damage yet still deals very little of it, has only a base Critical Strike Chance of 5% (where most other Traps sport one of 6%) and it has a small area of effect, yet is it somehow too big to take advantage of its strange double-hit feature even with Concentrated Effect.

I even compared it with Ice Nova and Vortex linked with Trap Support. Both came dangerously close in damage on even a 4-link with one being used up with Trap Support (which actually also means that either has a faster trap throwing speed than Ice Trap) and Vortex outperformed it through its DoT. On a 5-link offering a free Trap link (Deerstalker or Shaped Gloves) both deal clearly more damage.

I would have a few suggestions on how to change it. First, remove the rare double-hit and increase the damage greatly. Either a flat increase or something similar to Fire Trap's effect, like it dealing more damage against chilled targets. That would cause it to work well together with Siphoning Trap as it automatically chills enemies. I would personally prefer a flat increase just to keep things simple. And increase in its Area of Effect would also be nice, unless the damage gets boosted a lot to turn it into a sort of “Single Target AoE” skill.

Second, to keep it interesting, maybe a unique effect. It could leave behind Chilled Ground, the standard non-damaging type you can get as a Map effect, maybe get increased Trap Throwing Speed per level to make it a very spammy skill, or maybe it could have a high chance to stun targets. Then again, if it merely deals a lot of AoE Damage, it would already be unique, considering about every other AoE skill does at least something else past damage.

I hope my Feedback helps! I really want this skill to perform better since it loos real neat, even without its micro transaction effect.

GGG has revealed the skill gems for Fire Trap, Ice Trap, and Lightning Trap. With these details being finalized and ready to be shown off, I want to highlight a really weird inconsistency that these three trap gems have. Specifically, how Ice Trap was left untouched at best and nerfed in practice compared to its sister skills. But let's first take a look at the three skills so those unfamiliar with Ice Trap can see why people who play trappers frequently do not have too high regard for this skill, even after 3.3's changes.



* Average Base Damage per Trap (ABDpT) at level 20 - 513
* AoE at level 20 - 16
* Obtainable at - Level12
* Mana cost at level 20 - 20
* Base Critical Strike Chance - 6%
* Base Added Damage Effectiveness - 200%
* Modifier at 20% Quality - 20% increased fire damage

**Bonus**

* 1362.8 DoT per second explosion that lasts 1.75 seconds
* 160 Damage added against burning enemies, which scales to average of 320 due to Base Added Damage Effectiveness
* Gains AoE as it levels, and gains a further +1 radius at level 21, bringing its AoE to 17 units (Important later)



* ABDpT at level 20 - 558.5
* Projectiles fired - 8 (Albeit in random directions now)
* Obtainable at - Level 12
* Mana cost at level 20 - 20
* Base Critical Strike Chance - 6%
* Base Added Damage Effectiveness - 100%
* Modifier at 20% Quality - 10% increased effect of shock, and 20% increased lightning damage

**Bonus**

* 118% Increased critical strike chance against shocked enemies
* Powerful Vaal Lightning Trap component
* Projectile Scaling




* ABDpT at level 20 - 517
* AoE at level 20 - 16? (From own testing, Ice Trap has the same AoE as a level 20 Fire Trap, but would still prefer confirmation from a developer. A level 21 Fire Trap however, has slightly more AoE, leading me to believe Ice Trap has a base AoE of 16 at all levels)
* Obtainable at - Level 28
* Mana cost at level 20 - 22
* Base Critical Strike Chance - 5%
* Base Added Damage Effectiveness - 110%
* Modifier at 20% Quality - 10% increased area of effect (Sort of useless after the AoE scaling nerfs. I can't tell the difference between Ice Trap with 0 quality and with 20% quality)

**Bonus**

* Area of Effect increases as it levels - 0
* Pretty MTX?


When the patch notes immediately came out, quite a few people on Reddit and the forums, myself included, mentioned how Ice Trap was nerfed and it made little sense, since Ice Trap was already not performing too well even before the patch. The "But there's no cooldown now" replies were technically correct, but missing that even with that change, the difference in power between Ice Trap and the other spammable traps just grows even wider this patch, because Ice Trap really has nothing redeemable about it outside of pretty MTX.

With 3.3, Ice Trap has **4** more average damage per trap compared to Fire Trap, which is almost identical to it's Patch 3.2 state of having **7** more average damage per trap compared to Fire Trap. However, Fire Trap always had its DoT component, which just got a massive big dick damage and damage scaling buff. Not to mention, Fire Trap has 1 more AoE at level 21 than a level 21 Ice Trap. Finally, Fire Trap has better critical strike scaling, a more useful quality bonus, and a massive damage buff against enemies that happen to be burning, which is essentially an added 320 damage against all enemies that will encounter a Fire Trapper. The final nail for Ice Trap is that it has 10% higher mana cost than Fire Trap, so you spend more mana to do even less, which is a problem for a skill that is supposed to be spammable. It won't be too crazy to sustain, but why spend more mana to do less damage with a skill that doesn't even have better AoE?

The comparison against Lightning Trap starts out about the same. Lightning Trap has better damage per trap, critical strike chance, mana cost, and a much more useful quality bonus. Lightning Trap does have a lower Added Damage Effectiveness of 100% versus Ice Trap's 110% modifier, but Lightning Trap also has up to 118% increased critical strike chance against shocked enemies and very tempting projectile damage scaling. Finally, Lightning Trap gets Vaal Lightning Trap as a core part of the skill without any extra gem links, which is a crazy amount of more damage for bosses and difficult rares.

The weird thing to me is that you get Ice Trap 16 levels after Lightning Trap and Fire Trap. GGG is sort of moving away from this philosophy, but the later you get a skill gem, it tended to be much higher damage, which is not and certainly has never been the case with Ice Trap, which just feels odd. You get a lot of downsides, especially compared to the sister skills it is supposed to compete with. In fact, the only positive to Ice Trap is that until Fire Trap hits level 18, Ice Trap has more AoE than Fire Trap.

I just checked the damage scaling for Fire Trap, Ice Trap, and Lightning Trap at level 21 and 22 of the gems, and it just got even more hilarious just how bad Ice Trap is.


* Level 21 Ice Trap: ABDpT - 566.5
* Level 22 Ice Trap: ABDpT - 621
* Level 21 Fire Trap: ABDpT - 578
* Level 22 Fire Trap: ABDpT - 651
* Level 21 Lightning Trap: ABDpT - 608
* Level 22 Lightning Trap: ABDpT - 660.5

So any even miniscule damage bonus that Ice Trap had over Fire Trap is immediately negated in any setup with +1 gems, with the gap widening even further with every level.


**TL;DR**

GGG, why did you nerf Ice Trap and make it so much worse than the competition?

GGG, check out my characters Backel and Jurgein which both use Ice Trap. Fire Trap ends up being better every time. Not to mention things like Arc trap.

Now a couple of weeks have past it`s safe to ask:
GGG what is the logic behind icetrap? Why nerf an already bad skill but buff other already powerful traps?Am i missing something?

Ica Trap was forgotten during the traps rework. Will it get some love with the cold skills rework in 3.5 ?

Aaaand Ice Trap is still garbage.

Can we get an Radius for Ice Trap. There are aoe nodes that are 100% unless nodes if say the base rad is 18 instead of 20 (etc.). Just want to know like we know for most skills.
Thank you.

can Ice Trap can become just an spell without the trap feature?
maby this would be more fun.

thankyou
JeckNoTree

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Jess_GGG wrote:

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Hi ppl.

Playing IT sabo, lvl 89, and have a question about skill interaction with aspect of the avian, to be more to the point the double damage part, because pob is not helping :(.

Traps are like totems, totems like minions, but in pob didn't get any dps increase, and tried other aspects and they are not working as intended...

So AotA has the minion part dps and the 10% chance to deal Double Damage, and it's spelled like a global modifier, but because of the all complication involving traps does it work on them ?

Tried crafting to my wand in pob 5% chance to deal Double Damage and i lost 0.5% dps, don't know why because all the other mods were the same XD, so pls help if you have any info on DD and traps and mines.

Ty in advance.