Stricken or Trapped?

Demon Hunter
1

Well, it’s been long enough, I wonder if the knowledgeable DH GoD players have come to a consensus on whether to use Bane of the Trapped or Stricken in higher GRs.

I have been using Trapped, Taeguk, and Simplicity, but I swapped Trapped for Stricken at GR 95 just now. I did complete GR102 in 4:47 with the Trapped, but there was previous discussion about the RG taking too long to kill at higher levels.

Now, for me, “higher levels” is 95 on up, and I’ve only ever done 108, so you guys might have been talking about GR120s, ect., in which case I could stay with Trapped, but that’s why I’m asking.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

2

If you’re not after the highest ranks, then use the gem which gives you the better results.

For high end DHs there may be a “best option”, but in these rather low GR that doesn’t really count. Here your personal preferences and your playstyle matter more.

I for on like Stricken more with GoD (even in lower GR), because I don’t like the gap between ultra-fast-trash-killing and super-slow-boss-fights. In very low GRs I sometimes use Zeis as a third gem.

But I’m not playing that much recently, neither EU nor US.

3

Neither lol. True story, am using Wreath of Lightning up to 115, after that I swap to trapped till 125, then stricken if I go higher - this for SOLO play, in groups you need every bit of dmg you can squeeze cause we’re not BS necros (then again I don’t dps as DH in groups even in speeds, unless they are like 110 top).

The rule of tumb is: are you killing the RG in a reasonable amount of time w/o power pylon and stricken? Then go trapped. No? Get stricken.

Even if you manage to get awesome maps and pylons and clear in 5m and spawn RG, if you don’t have stricken and you spend 3-5m to kill it, you just invalidated your fast clear fighting the RG.

In other words, for speeds use whatever gives you fastest clears, for pushing use stricken. For example in my 130 clear, my RG kill took 2 mins without power / condu / speed - with stricken (no adds boss, that would have speed it up considerably, at least by 30s). If I did not have stricken but trapped, I would be looking at 4-5m kill of RG.

PPS: higher levels means levels starting from where you are out of your comfort zone (ie: you can clear the GR irrelevant of what maps / mob types / elites you get), where getting a bad map, bad mob types, elite affixes - can ruin the run. And this is not a set number, it is based on your build, skill / passive / gear choices, paragon levels, skill to play the build, damage / toughness etc. So for you 110 can already mean high, while for others high means 120 or 140.

PS: all that changed, got a primal focus identical to my primal restraint, so it’s dex / chd / AD on both and socket (not perfect I know but hey it works), a better quiver, and now am up from 108% AD to 148% AD, losing only 7% ChC (still close to 1:10 ratio, 51% crit, 480%ish CHD). With that I actually feel confident to give 140 a go :wink: Did 125 with 1 bs necro, 1 zbarb and 1 zdh, and I was melting stuff, felt really good (I mean like instantly popping trash just by passing through, no spears from necro, just DH debuff + bolas).

1 Like
4

do you mean you completed 102 IN 5 minutes, or with 5 minutes left? either way, its not gonna matter much, a 10 min total rift cant be a very long rg fight. when you start getting to the top, and you need the last 3 minutes at least to kill rg, is usually where stricken comes in.

if you are using this for speed, there are much better options that retain a 3rd dmg dealing gem slot. SS displacement, comp → prep for instance.

at a 2 min rgk, stricken is barely ahead dealing dmg. trapped would have been very similar.

5

Hmm, I don’t think so.

Stricken damage to RG (a single-target RG, anyway) is equalized with Trapped in less than 5 seconds, and beyond that Stricken exceeds Trapped. Remember that the 25% secondary is multiplicative with the primary. And Strafe stacks Stricken roughly 3x/second, so after 5 seconds you have a cumulative buff of around 1.68x vs Trapped’s 1.6x.

By 1 minute you’re up to 6.42x, and by 2 minutes it’s 11.6x…

2 Likes
6

What Rage said is true, pretty much if my RG kill takes longer than 30-40s w/o a pylon, I will use stricken.

I already use all the movement buffs / passives you mentioned, and wreath stacks with all of the above = more speed. I don’t need more dmg for the tiers I am using wreath, also at that GR level clones pack a real punch, all I need is to pop 1 pylon, irrelevant of type, and then I will spawn within 2m (unless really bad map) the RG and kill it.

More speed in speeds is best, you don’t need overkill dmg. Let’s say you get a maggot lair or the forgotten realm w/e name map with small density, scarce enemies, and the only elites you find are 2 juggs. With that much speed I can go to next map anywhere between 20-30s depending how large it is, and not waste time to kill random stuff and waste even more time.

I mean I am consistently completing 110 irrelevant of maps in about 1:40-2:30m depending on maps I get and pylon order (speed / pow / condu being highest impact). 5m spawn for RG is in 120-125, can happen faster with a good starting map.

7

People sometimes focus stricken as only useful on the Guardian. In a trash mob in a higher GR or with an elite in a high GR it works much the same way on ones you hit repeatedly so it’s most useful in higher GR’s .
Each to their own of course.

8

Well to me Stricken is the best gem in the game and it features in every build I make. Depending on the build you are running will determine your gems really. If you are running a primary then Simplicity is great and if you are channelling your primary them Taeguk is the go. If you use Impale for instance then Zei’s is what I would replace the Taeguk for. Trapped is good if you are using cull the weak or thrill of the hunt as passives or if you want to slow your enemies with a certain meterage from you. I have stopped using trapped lately and got better results. It all comes down to personal preference, passives, armor sets, weapons and skills really.

9

stacks are about 2 per second and you are only counting that hits dmg. trapped will have been at 1.6 the whole time, so stricken/2 for the average dmg bonus. i forget what it works out to but its definitely not 5s

10

I tested it a few months back. (Here). When dual wielding, I was getting stacks every 18-20 frames, i.e. 3+ stacks per second.

So, after 1 second, you have 1.25 * 1.069 = 1.336
2 seconds, 1.25 * 1.138 = 1.422
3 seconds, 1.25 * 1.207 = 1.509
4 seconds, 1.25 * 1.276 = 1.595
5 seconds, 1.25 * 1.345 = 1.681

You’re right, it’s actually only about 4 seconds…

11

It really does take a long time to beat up the RG at high levels, but if you want to keep BoT, you can keep the power pylon for the boss fight. Besides, you won’t get permanently the full stack of BoS against bosses, that summon minions

12

Pylons are random, you may get power on 1st map and not spawn till 3rd map (or not get power at all / miss it).

I have yet to see a GoD disappointed that the RG spawns adds and they eat stricken stacks once in a while (due to their very short life), I mean – hello AD? Those are best RG’s for a GoD.

With no pylons and no stricken I doubt you could kill GR150 RG in the 15m timer (if you had an instant spawn when you enter the GR for example). Too much hp, too low dmg single target.

That’s why the meta grps have a dedicated BK which does pretty much not a whole lot during the clear, to cut the time it takes - WITH stricken - to kill the RG.

13

For sure. I mean, if it took you 1 second to kill an RG at GR 100, without Stricken, at GR 150 it would take you over 2500 seconds (about 43 minutes)…

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14

Yeah. In my 130 clear, I had yet to see hundreds of T’s popping on RG (CoE cycle + occu @2.5kparagons), you start with thousands of B’s and slowly move into T’s, dozens of T’s etc. This was with ~4.8m sheet dmg, attack speed only on quiver (17% if memory serves) and paragon speed (cause BP’s irrelevant due to travel time of strafe projectiles for 4pc procs, and you can’t be inside a single target 100% of time).

In density I see hundreds of T’s popping left and right but that’s a whole different story.

Yes we stack stricken relatively fast, yes HA pierces up to 3-4 times on a single target (but not every HA pierces or gets that many pierces), but the base dmg for HA is still low even with all the multipliers vs single target.

I said it and will say it again, if we had 2 clones that shoot our primary at 30.000% dmg, we would solo GR150 in 5m at 2.5k-3k para. But we don’t, and except our quiver, we have nothing close to what BS necro has as far as dmg multipliers go.

Last example, let’s say I engage in GR120 a pack of 4 blues. Templar pulls them together as I get occulus under them and CoE comes on. I will murder 3 of them in 3-4 seconds, then last one will take me another 10-15s to take down, that’s how bad our single target is.

15

It doesn’t really matter where you find the power pylon. If you get it on the 1st map, you can just go right to the next floor, do the clear until you reach 97-98%, teleport back to town, enter the first map again and spawn the boss next to the pylon. There are enough strategies to make the power pylon really useful regardless of its location.

yep, AD is pretty good against RG’s with minions, but as a DH you have to be lucky with pulls :wink:

16

As someone who’s never used a stricken gem in a front page clear, I can tell you that god6 is fairly flexible in 3rd slot gem choices for solo up to a certain point of course.

You are not at that point to where stricken starts show heavy gains over the other gems. If you do not prefer to use stricken, you can stick with trapped (or even zei’s), but understand that you have to be more proactive in applying slows for your trapped gem on a consistent basis (running through mobs, proper gear on follower, icy trail strafe if you want, etc) so that you get the full effect.

As you climb higher and RG is taking more than ~3 minutes, do note that if you still want to continue not using stricken, simply just using trapped won’t be enough. You’ll have to consider upping your raw damage in other departments. A non stricken user typically likes things like squirts (near 100% up time on RG), wolf pet, windchill, bait the trap, mantle instead of elusive ring in 4th cube slot, and favor avg damage on ring slots.

In this season, while the higher you go the less clones help you during the rift, the clones are actually still somewhat useful vs the RG. You’d want to save the last pylon you spawn, doesn’t matter which, until you spawn the RG. The clones presence will help you chip down the health pool a little, which is especially helpful when you don’t have stricken (every little bit counts). Obviously the game plan is to save a power pylon, but any pylon will “do”.

A fairly geared DH with proper raw damage can pull off a GR 140 without stricken this season around the 3k paragon mark. Some personal numbers of mine:

Cleared a 137 with 2500 para with 40 keys. In that same 137, I had enough raw damage to kill a blue pack in less than 30 seconds. Killed 5 elite packs with a shield pylon (100% squirts on every oculus circle) in 1 minute. RG with power pylon took right under 3 minutes to kill.

Hamelin RG in one of my few 138 attempts, without a pylon, took 4 minutes to kill.

EDIT: 138 down in 13 keys.
EDIT 2: 139 down in 47 keys.
EDIT 3: 140 down in 17 keys.

With that said, I am in no way recommending you or anyone to do this. I typed all of this to simply state what’s “possible” without stricken and to understand it’s limitations and how it effects the way you play a rift.

3 Likes
17

A fairly geared DH @3k para is still very much map / mob type / elite type dependant (and RG to some extent as well).

You can do the clear in 10-12 mins let’s say, or fail because of the above.

I tried the double gen, and honestly can’t say I felt a big difference in the clear compared to the CoE setup (as you replace 1 ring with the 2nd bow, and I can’t drop elusiveness). If we had on demand grouping of mobs like necro brigg’s, maybe would be more visible, but with all the stuff going on, you spend more time debuffing than dealing dmg feels like (cause mobs don’t stand in place if they are not zombies, so in those 4s of the debuff you are not guaranteed to strafe hit them to proc 4pc and the HA’s to pierce / proc AD etc).

I think it was you DieoxidE who said that the higher you try to push, more glaring the problems of the set are - and I am more and more inclined to agree.

18

I can push somewhat high, 132 in non season, but I also tend to play the easiest style for me.

Up to around 125 (could have been 128) I used BotT, but I also used Icy Trail over all the other Strafe Runes. After that, the Guardian fight was costing me successes when I used BotT. Switched to Stricken and got 4 to 7 more Grifts out of it.

What I’m saying is use whatever you’re comfortable with using until you’re no comfortable with it and only then should you switch.

19

All builds and all classes are subjected to fishing in high GR’s. This is implied.

Yes. God6 is rather weak, until it’s not. It gets carried hard by outside sources not directly related to the set itself in very high GR’s.

Pretty much this.

20

Oh yeah completely agree, just so happens that some builds have better average results.

A sadder or BS necro isn’t as bad affected by non open maps, they can still kill smaller packs of trash to get some progression while navigating to exit, on GoD you literally waste more time trying to kill groups of 10’s.

Hope the upcoming balance patch will either make some changes to GR, or balance the classes / sets etc to be more consistent.

Necro will skip MD because it’s a waste of time for them, meanwhile for us is a godsend, if you were to luck out and get battlefield / festering with 1 MD and 6-8 other elites non wallers on same map… the dream - prolly could clear ~5GR higher than you normally could.