This is an issue
Also monsters might not resist entrapment but they resist freeze and yet people still find OFF worthwhile to invest into
BT doesn’t get any love, it should be reworked
And Assassin’s can’t have AOE? If an actual assassin was to make a trap, that trap would HAVE to be AOE, because the assassin wouldn’t be there when it was set off, and they need to be sure of their success.
Also, Demo and Arcanist don’t have the market on AOE, by any stretch.
And if the trap WORKED for that, it’d sort out… But as it stands, the Devs have made it so we barely need CC against trash, where it works, and the bosses we need CC against, we can’t get any benefit out of it. CC in general doesn’t sort out in Crate’s current version of Grim Dawn. Debuffs DO work well, but unfortunately the Devs have tied the Debuff of Blade Trap to the CC, and that’s dragged the whole skill down.
That doesn’t mean more is bad. Do you have a better suggestion for how to make Blade Trap desirable to use?
As with your other posts talking about bad skills and items Chthon, I agree completely.
Blade Trap has to be worst active skill in the game, it’s a trash management ability that is clunky, point hungry and deep enough in the skill tree to make it a poor leveling choice.
OFF gets used because it’s so damn convenient. For a good part of the game the skill vaporises entire screens of trash mobs with a single button, and is fairly forgiving around obstacles too. Late game it stops doing good damage but it still keeps the trash in check with zero micromanagement for a low skill point cost. It helps smooth out the gameplay of many arcanist builds.
Blade Crap has a much smaller AoE and way worse application method. It doesn’t do impressive damage either and the lifesteal rarely works in a situation where it is needed. Also, RoS is a much better emergency CC than Blade Trap will ever be on top of CoS working on bosses.
IMO the skill should be changed to do actual damage and apply some debuff to enemies (reduced DA, though not nearly as much as currently ?) without trying to be a hard CC skill. It should be a worthwhile addition to one’s rotation against bosses, and Nightblade could use an active offensive debuff anyway.
I’m not saying the skill could not be improved, but I look at it differently. I try to make it work respectively use it to complement the rest of my skills. My WPS Blademaster benefits from it in multiple ways, which are otherwise not available to me - at least not in this combination:
- Ranged CC
- Kills trash mobs and softens champions
- Debuffs their DA which increases my damage output
- Sustain ability transfers health to me
- Can trigger its celestial power multiple times, and the trigger chance is increased due to Blade Trap having a recharge time of 4 seconds
I saw a few mentions, that Blade Trap is obsolete due to other item procs. But new players might not have access to such items.
+1
It’s functionality is the same as OFF except it affects less enemies per cast, but in return you leech life from them and reduce their DA. Any Nightblade mastery combo that specializes in single target DPS exclusively would benefit from this skill to handle adds. Crucible is where this build would shine the most, since the immune bosses are typically accompanied by adds that you can snare, and then they turn into a healing source to help you tank the bosses.
That being said, 24 skill points is just too much for its current power level, and 4 second cooldown is too long.
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Make the ability 100% pass-through enemies at base level. It’s already clunky enough to use as is when compared to OFF. Having it scale with Devouring Blades is obnoxious.
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Give weapon damage scaling on the base ability, start at 15% and go to 35% at 12/12 and 50% by maxed. This will make the skill more versatile and set it apart from OFF which can be more caster-based. I don’t know if ADCtH double dips if both weapon damage and skill have it, but the more life leech the better as that should be the main trait. Maybe reduce skill damage a bit to compensate.
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Give Devouring Blades reduced cooldown with scaling to 2.8 seconds @ 12/12, 1.8 seconds @ maxed. This will allow people to actually perma-trap a whole screen of mobs if you invest in the skills, which seems fair because again OFF does the same thing for half the skill points. Maybe reduce duration to 3 seconds to compensate.
Those three things would allow an AWESOME kind of build that focuses solely on single target DPS, and actually tries to avoid AoE damage because your Blade Trap turns trash mobs into healing batteries and you want them to stay alive to heal you.
I tried a cadence ranged blademaster with blade trap (yes that is like the worst combination of worst skills). Surprisingly, it does work.
But I still have one thing I cannot forgive blade trap, you have to actually cast it on a mob for it to work. Please at least make it usable on ground like DEE
I personally don’t stress too much if a skill doesn’t work on bosses. Sometimes it’s good to trap mobs for a chance to run away and not get overwhelmed (only the boss chases you but it’s important to not get overwhelmed).
It’s great especially if you don’t have BIS gear.
A way to make the skill better (something that has been discussed on both BT and OFF for ages): make the debuffs apply whether the enemy is trapped (or frozen) or not. This way it wouldn’t ensnare the bosses, but still debuff them.
Naturally, the debuffs that BT and OFF apply are huge, and doing that to bosses would be very strong. So maybe there should be a transmuter that allows them to apply as debuffs (albeit weaker ones) as opposed to CC.
People think twice about investing 12 points into it and yet no one bats an eye going for OFF
So i don’t think simple transmuters can fix anything, they need to rework the core skill imo
I like the idea of making it look like a real trap. You deploy it on the ground (one, two tiles or a small area) and when enemies step on it BAM! impaling debuffing blades in a small radius. Maybe it would be cool to make it work like Amarasta Blade Burst or something like that.
Why not just scale BT debuff down to reasonable level and make it work for the duration of spell, not entrapement?
No, he cannot.
In the general RPG/ARPG/MMORPG lore, the assassin is a quick duellist: a 1v1 specialist who focuses on a single target that he/she kills fast.
Now the nightblade is a nightblade, not exactly an assassin. So what is a nightblade exactly? I don’t know. I am just under the impression that he is more or less supposed to fill the assassin role in the Grim Dawn universe, though he lacks the stealth options the usual assassin is supposed to have, and get massive options into health regeneration and some mass attacks, which just makes very little sense to me.
I have a couple of ideas, but since I may have a very different understanding of what the related mastery is supposed to be, it may just turn out into confusion. But I will give it a try:
- The Blade Trap can only trap 1 single target, but for a long time (>10 seconds), with a low cooldown. Only 1 Blade Trap can only be used at any single time: when 1 Blade trap is cast on a target, it cancels the one currently active on another target. The cooldown has to be low (<3.5 seconds) to enable the player to reposition it quickly if needed.
>> The point with this setup is to maximize the crowd control/defense reduction on a single target: if we stick to the idea of NB supposed to be master into 1v1s, that could make sense. To make full sense, the BT would require 12 points at most to be maxed (no more upgrade) and be a little earlier in the skill tree.
- The Blade Trap is renamed Blade Wave and now works like the Flash Freeze: AOE with massive radius around the character, unless it does piercing and bleeding instead of cold.
>> If you want your Flash Freeze equivalent for the NB for some reason, here is your NB’S FF: mass piercing/bleeding around you. The entrapment duration is moved from the primary skill to its upgrade for balance purposes: maxing the primary skill increases the radius and damages, and maxing its upgrade now increases the entrapment duration. The defense reduction feature is removed. The skill is moved to late skill tree levels for balance purposes and its energy cost and cooldown are massively increased to make it some kind of fury attack.
- The Blade Trap is now a persistent AoE attack, like the Sigil of Consumption: it can be cast at middle range (5-8 meters at most) and lasts at least 4 seconds and traps and slashes whoever hostile enter its perimeter. Think of it as a Blade Spirit that cannot move but with an entrapment function.
>> For those who are more into the trap idea, that blade trap could enable the players to trick the monsters at some narrow places (like a door) and then attacking them safely from a distance. The upgrade could increase the ability duration (up to 8-10 seconds), which could then make it a key skill into crowd control. The cooldown is pretty high here.
- The Blade Trap is now a passive ability that has to be enabled, like Solael’s Witchfire, which grants a %chance on attack to trap the current target into a blade trap.
>> This could give the option to the NB to trap his targets and have their defense (and some health) reduced, and to switch to other targets, possibly stacking many blade traps effects. This would be a melee feature working on a single target though, more fitting for “mobile” tanks. The primary skill increases the %chance of activating and the damages and the upgrade reduces the ability cooldown and increases the entrapment duration.
Option 1 for the people who consider the NB a 1v1 specialist.
Option 2 for the people who consider the NB a piercing/bleeding specialist.
Option 3 for the ranged builds.
Option 4 for the tanks builds.
In all options I consider the %damage converted to health removed, since I consider that feature here completely cheesed. One has to confirm once and for all if the NB is supposed to be some vampire or not and why he does need some many health regeneration/steal compared to the other masteries.
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Fails miserably. A large part of the current issue with Blade Trap is that it doesn’t work on Bosses. If the rework is CC focused, it’s bound to fail, because CC in general fails the majority of the time.
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Wouldn’t be a trap anymore, but could work if it had no CC. Would rather it was a trap that had that effect ON it, though, because then it offers something new in gameplay.
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Involves CC, and doesn’t seem much like a trap at that point. Blade Turret? It’s interesting, though. Worth considering.
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Again involves CC. Also, what’s the point? You’re hitting 1 target, you’re killing 1 target, unless it’s a Boss. So why trap them, when you’re killing them? Nobody would use it except against Bosses, where it would do nothing.
Generally, the CC on Blade Trap is holding it back, because CC in Grim Dawn has major issues. Remove the CC and maybe it can be something.
Also, Assassins did use to set traps, so traps aren’t un-assassin-y, and if you set a trap, it HAS to be AOE. The whole point of a trap is that you aren’t there when it goes off. If you aren’t there, you need to be certain that it will kill whoever you set it to kill… Thus it needs to be AOE, so you can be certain.
Yeah traps fit the assassin theme
Place a trap which kills stuff and then pass by a cadaverific wasteland like an “innocent” looking adventurer
Random stranger: My God, who is responsible for this slaughter! ಠ_ಠ
Us: No clue¯_(ツ)_/
Someone said i could find the owner of these pants here
Random stranger: What is that brown thing dripping down?
Us: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I have never said they were not. If you read more carefully my comments, I am talking about AoE attacks. And no, traps are no AoE attacks, not directly. An AoE attack is like canister bomb or grenado: you aim a target and it hits a whole area around.
I agree that assassin-like chars may enjoy traps options. I however disagree that traps may make much sense in Grim Dawn: the game is too quick and messy to really enable traps abilities. I just can’t see any situation in the game where the level would enable the players to prepare some place with some traps, then lure some monsters into them, as much as I can’t see many players here who would be going to enjoy that kind of game mechanics. This just sounds too slow for the average player type as I see it here.
I agree that Grim Dawn has a problem providing real crowd control options. My suggestions were however CC focused as you say because this is what I understand that skill is about. But we can also turn that ability into another more-damage-more-resistance skill if the game and the community cannot really handle anything beyond the rawest tank style. Let just make the NB a piercing/bleeding arcanist and that’s it.
Although I do not agree 100% with you, keep the refreshing ideas coming… 
PS - I am imagining blade trap somewhat similarn to Demolitionist’s mines.
So what did you have in mind?
Kind of like enemy walks over them and a thousand blades slice them into pieces right?
A trap like skill?
It’s not the COMMUNITY that can’t handle it. It’s CRATE. In fact it’s many game devs, so it’s hardly their fault overall. Balancing CC effects against Bosses is a NIGHTMARE, and if they apply, the community is going to constantly find ways to trivialize Boss fights with CC, over and over again, forcing the devs to patch and patch. Or, the devs can skip that, and go right to the end, where CC effects don’t apply to Bosses anymore. But see… Bosses are the threat. Bosses are where you NEED CC. If CC doesn’t apply to bosses… What good is it?
Since CC is only needed against Bosses, but specifically cannot be balanced if it applies to Bosses… CC in games like this simply never sorts out very well. Unless you can solve that issue that games have been dealing with for years… I don’t think CC will suddenly get any better in Grim Dawn, regardless of what the Community or Crate does or does not think/do about it.
As for the rest of your comment… I suggest you look up what POE does for “traps”. It’s not the most popular build style ever, but it has some adherents that very much enjoy it, and POE does do a good job of it. That’s at least what I was thinking of when I mentioned it. Probably Ball Lightning Trap, but with blades.
I still can’t understand the part of the argument that says Assassin’s shouldn’t have AoE
Well maybe traditionally most “assassin” themed classes in RPGS might not but that’s not stopping crate from adding something like that
Traps fit perfectly into the stealth theme of Nightblade class
Heck, they must have some sort of knowledge of traps. After all Ulgrim by passed the traps set by Creed himself