How Flamethrower Trap of Stability felt as a league start skill
This is a write-up on how Flamethrower Trap of Stability (FToS) felt as a league starter skill. This write-up is meant for a generic league start character and not specifically for Bog Shaman: which is the ascendancy I played. I played the skill up until early maps and stopped, since the reason for playing this event was for TotA. However, after playing this skill I am confident that you could continue in maps, get your void stones and farm currency, without the skill falling off and you needing to switch skills.
TLDR: Feels really nice as a league starter and is a fun skill, high damage, usual trap playstyle, low defences.
What is it like to league start:
You can pick this skill up after first lab and (should) be able to switch without any re-spec. The damage is A tier, as any trap skill should be. You can stack a huge number of traps on a stationary single target, meaning the campaign is a breeze. Clear is also good since this skill has a duration and doesn’t just go off then disappear. It is a trap play style, which if you know you know. The defences, like any trap build, are low and you need to run Grace. I ran Purity of Elements and regretted that decision.
Ascendancy Choices:
In the core game your best bets are: Elementalist, any Shadow ascendancy or Scavenger. The witch and shadow both offer good offensive options, but only Trickster gives any meaningful defences. I do not love Trickster as a choice though. All of these options give damage, but don’t provide a complete package unless you are looking to be a glass cannon. The best choice would be a Scavenger if there are good nodes; this way you would have easy access to both skill effect duration wheels in the centre.
A few people have played the skill with Chieftan and Inquisitor. These also work mid-late game, but at league start are harder to pull off vs Shadow/Witch and Scavenger.
Scaling the skill:
A part from the usual damage scaling nodes for a fire spell skill, there are a few additional scalers which are needed.
Cooldown reduction is mandatory and you should run Advanced Traps during campaign. After campaign more CDR can be obtained through gear, you only need the support gem in the campaign.
Skill effect duration is actually one of the biggest scalers for both clear and single target. This is because the longer the trap burns for, the more overall damage it pumps out and the higher the chance of it hitting/killing enemies. On single target, it allows for more than your trap limit, since once they are activated, they no longer count to your trap limit (from my understanding) and you can stack huge amounts of traps onto the enemy. In practice this does feel true, if it is false, then it still is a valid sentiment since you can still stack to your trap limit quicker thanks to the duration.
AoE is not as essential as you may think, but still has the usual large benefits since this is an AoE skill. There is a duration on the skill, it is therefore not essential that the initial hit does hit the target and this is why AoE is less important vs duration.
Passive Tree:
The biggest early damage pickups would be: the skill effect duration wheels in the centre of the tree, Elemental Overload, Overprepared wheel (not essential), fire damage nodes and at least 1 trap wheel for the mastery options.
Bog Shaman:
My idea for this Phrecia event was to take Bog Shaman specifically for Toad Pact, which is the most powerful FToS node anywhere in the game. The rest of the ascendancy is C-B tier. The build goal was to life stack and go low life with pain attunement and Petrified Blood, for a high max hit. Take regen for mana and life as your recovery. Steal Gladiator’s Determined Survivor and run Kongming’s Stratagem, taking block nodes to get to 75:75 block. Overall, we have high damage from the nature of traps, high avoidance from block, high max hit from life stacking and low-mid tier recovery from regen. I still believe this is a good build package for the future.
Summary:
Would I recommend this as a league start skill? Yes. It is very strong during campaign and was fun to use. The scaling options make this skill really fun vs a generic build damage trap build. The game is not very pro trap at the moment and it would be helpful if GGG buffed some of the trapping options i.e. passive tree wheels, Sabo Chain Reaction and improving the trap playstyle delay. I am hoping that we have good Scavenger options for FToS in the future i.e. Sunblast, and look forward to playing this skill again.