First time I ever play this class, following a guide asking me to use the fire trap: it puts a miniature cannon on the ground which turns, aims and shoots some kind of rolling fireball at nearby mobs.
It is exactly like the Hydra, only the Hydra can shoot over obstacles and the fire trap cannot.
I am level 27 now and getting ready for Ancients, but am not sure I like the indirectness, you got to keep running around mobs and putting fire traps down. Like you’d do with Hydra. And consuming a ridiculous amount of mana pots.
In addition, like so many other classes, it simply does not work (or, it is a major pain) without Insight on the Merc (which you cannot get before 27 anyway).
Melee damage, IAS and FCR does nothing, so it is just +Skills to aim for on gear. For now.
I have not checked on any other Assassin skills, just levelling (public, solo).
So, IAS does do something, it increases the speed at which you can lay traps. Though if you are using Burst of Speed, IAS indeed becomes rather redundant. I have a Wake of Fire trapper with Death Sentry support, utilizing the full Naj’s set, Magefist, etc, and it’s really great for a place like Stony Tomb farming
its one of the fastest leveling builds there are its a shame that mana per kill doesn’t work with them tho there reasoning behind it makes no sense either. they say its the trap that does the killing so therefore you shouldn’t get mana back for it… but based on that same argument you shouldn’t get experience for it either or credit for boss kills…
The traps will remain active off screen (but not too far). If you use stairs/waypoints/town portals to leave a zone they will disappear.
Gaining mana on kill from traps would be nice. I recently used those flame-thrower traps for the first time to level an assassin up to 79 in the maggot lair. The fire traps are… not as bad as I expected them to be (I never tried them back in the day… as there were no respecs at the time I did not want to bother, what with all the fire immunes in Hell difficulty and all). The Natalya’s Set, however… is as disappointing as the new Martial Arts reworks
Here are some tips from an experienced assassin player, how to make it more better and more fun.
While I see the similarity, there are more differences than that.
Wake of Fire hits targets much more reliably (monsters cannot dodge it as easy as firebolts), and it just hits more targets at once, much bigger AoE.
There is also a nuance of Next Hit Delay (4 frames, or 0.16 seconds), where if 2 wake of fires attack a target at the same time, damage will be dealt only once. To take advantage of multiple traps, i recommend placing them away from each other, so they hit enemies not at the same time (pay attention to attack patterns and you will get better at it with time).
On the other hand, hydra is much better at dealing single target damage - all heads of all hydras can fire at the same target and deal full damage.
Get mind blast. Now instead of running around you stun and convert mobs. And you converted 1 or 2, throw fire blasts at the enemies, it deals good damage!
Mana pots are just a couple hundred gold per.
Pay attention to the next hit delay (see above). It very often is not helpful at all to lay all the 5 traps for a single target or pack of enemies. I think 2 or 3 achieve the maximum damage, and save mana and time.
The character is also very survivable, so don’t hesitate to put some points into energy. It really helps a lot, I always get some on early fire trapsin.
IAS does a lot - laying traps faster makes the character so much better. It also affects Fire Blast DPS very significantly.
FCR helps with mind blast too, so getting a little bit of it is helpful.
And getting some +mana gear isn’t bad either, as you have noticed, there is some mana intensity to the build.
My assassin, now level 76, and I gave up on her, things became much harder, it is not steamrolling with Wake of Fire and Lightning Sentry, as it has been all this time. It has got progressively harder and now at Act 4 there is a step change. I have gone back to my lightning sorceress to do some MF/Runes killing Countess countless times… And Pindle/Eldritch/Shenk/Thresh circuit.
