Blade Trap

Hello! I have been playing blade trap for a few days now in ESC. I have about 20 exalts invested in my build, and have downed Sirus and t16 8 mod corrupted maps, and done most of the league content. I figured now would be a good time to leave my feedback on this skill gem, and my suggestions.

So, overall, i LOVE this skill gem. It allows you to use your weapon skins as a cosmetic override for a SKILL, which is just sick. It has amazing AOE coverage, and great animations. That being said, the damage is definitely under par. With how much gear and currency ive invested in this build, I could have triple to quadruple this damage with other traps like seismic or ice trap. This trap also requires an enemy to be stationary whilst dealing damage, which puts it at a disadvantage to other traps that just pop and do huge damage.

Here are my suggestions:
1. Raise the damage effectiveness of added damage from 68% to about 80% and the Attack Damage scaling to be at about 90%, to make up for the fact that this skill is weaker than the more commonly used traps, and that it requires a stationary enemy, which in turn makes fights harder if the bosses move. This gives us better burst windows.
2. Allow attack speed to scale the trap throwing speed of this trap (or make a unique that would allow us to do so), since non attack traps get uniques that allow the cast speed of their character to scale their trap throwing speed
3. I've noticed that the cosmetic of the skill only copies your weapon, and not the effect on your weapon. Could be really cool to see the weapon have its effect copied too (especially more gore!!!)

For reference, my build is Dex Stack Blade Trapper, using dex to scale my cold damage insanely high.

+1

With the recent buff to aoe, that's no longer an issue.

However there are a few points that make this skill very dangerous.

1. LOTS of blades on the screen make it difficult to see anything that a boss is doing.

2. The upfront damage is LOW making any fight against an enemy that moves a chore.

3. The cost. I've stopped leveling the gem because it costs so much. Cluster traps is a must for consistency, but swift construction makes it so you can actually use the skill.

Wishlist would be two things. Increase the hit damage and reduce the amount of spins that the traps make. This way if enemies move a lot, it's not as big of an issue and doesn't feel like as much of a waste of mana.

Overall, the skill is very very strong for sustained damage. It doesn't take a whole lot of specific items to reach really high damage... on sustained dps. If I don't have full wither stacks, bear trap and assassin's mark, the hit damage is at 22k average. Some other more creative players will likely abuse it better than I can.

The only other issue is the same issue with any trap setup, the trigger time is a bit annoying for a stationary skill.

atm using a Bino's since that's the absolute best dagger for this skill. Only thing that could compete would be a perfect dagger with % chance for double damage.

https://pastebin.com/cf2WTPd6


I'll disagree with the previous poster's request for attack speed to scale please please don't do this. The key appeal of this skill is that you can ignore the attack speed, making a lot of other underused daggers more appealing. If attack speed scaled, then claws will be best just like with every other skill.

Also playing around with vulcanus, you can reach similar damage.

A agree with what the other posters have said.

The damage is a little lackluster with this skill. I've taken it into T16s and done what I can to make it work with Vulconus. It's not total trash, but considering its limitations as a trap that doesn't do all its damage instantly upon triggering it really needs to be stronger when instantly attacking projectile builds with 2 screens of range can do more dps. Attack and Damage Effectiveness should be more like 90% or 100% at gem level 20.

It needs to rotate a lot faster (like one rotation per 0.25 seconds). It already has trap delay so it feels really awful against mobile bosses and hinders the clear, Divergent Blade Trap shouldn't feel like such a requirement.

It does create a lot of visual clutter. Toning down the skill effect is a must, but also if it rotated faster it would cut down on a lot of the visual clutter since there would be a lot fewer concurrent blade traps active.

The cost is just ridiculous for the returns, if it weren't for the new +radius it wouldn't even feel worth leveling past 1... nothing like paying 150% more mana at level 20 for a whole 20% more damage.

It should have a static cost, same as any other 'melee' attack with this kinda damage scaling.

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Shppy wrote:

The cost is just ridiculous for the returns, if it weren't for the new +radius it wouldn't even feel worth leveling past 1... nothing like paying 150% more mana at level 20 for a whole 20% more damage.

It should have a static cost, same as any other 'melee' attack with this kinda damage scaling.

A bit late to the party but might as well chime in, i think you are underestimating that damage bonus, the skill hits 2 times per rotation and does 4 rotations, +1 if dual wielding, so it hits 8-10 times per cast.

At lvl 1 a full Bladetrap can deal up to 550% weapon damage per cast

At lvl 21 a full Bladetrap can deal up to 682% of weapon damage per cast

That is a 105-132% increased weapon damage per cast, witch compares quite decently to the gain strike or slam skills have with level. Btw thats not having in mind the +1 rotation enchant on helmet that rises it up to 158% extra weapon damage per cast.

Also just getting the radius is a game changer, the skill is straight gimmick at first vs decent when leveled thanks to the radius alone.

Quite excessive visuals while using specific weapon bases.

Bugged hit rate scaling.

Gem level scaling feels like a waste and (usually) postponed to the very late game thus the skill lacks of AoE for entire campaign and early maps.

In order to match Explosive Trap endgame stats Blade Trap needs 900 avg. attack damage. Good luck on that.

As a tool the skill is decent at applying Poison, and that's basically it.

Blade trap of Greatswords Shouldn't have cooldown time ,its not clunky enough GGG ? please fix.

Hello, I hope your day is marvelous.
Please please consider allowing blade trap to work with one-handed axes. I think it would be really cool and not impact the game balance too much.

If not, I would really appreciate a response as to why not, I know I am not entitled to such, but I do ask greatly.