[b25] Atalanta -Lvl 32 Cornac Rogue - Trapper - dead

[TheRani]

http://te4.org/characters/735/tome/42ba ... 1cc000edf0

Heartened by the fact that someone finally won with a Rogue, I thought, "Maybe it will be possible to win with a rogue build based largely on traps?" It was not to be for this particular rogue. She never even made it to the East. Golbug the Destroyer claimed her last life just as she was on the verge of exiting Reknor.

So.. traps. The greatest weakness of traps is that there are many enemies that do not step on them. Trap damage is reasonable, though you won't ever see really big numbers from a trap, because a trap doesn't Crit. As enemies get tougher and start having hundreds of HP, you will just have to make them step on More traps. Just like when a Fighter may need to use more than one talent to kill a tough enemy. Same thing.

Earlier attempts at trappers resulted in much earlier deaths because I failed to consider the necessity of being at least reasonably competent in melee. There are an awful lot of enemies who are very good at Not Stepping on Traps, and for those enemies, you Must have a backup plan. For the rogue, the best backup plan typically involves stuns and stabbing combined with controlled phase door runes or movement infusions.

Who are these enemies who avoid your traps?

- They are the ones who Cannot step on anything, because they are immobile. Molds, venus fly traps, honey trees, etc.

-They are the ones with Rush, who will completely avoid your traps and end up in your face, perhaps even standing on top of a trap unfazed.

-They are the ones with Phase Door, who laugh at your carefully laid traps and disappear to another location.

-They are the ones who teleport You.

-They are the archers and casters who would rather shoot or zap you from the other side of your minefield.

-They are the cunning bosses with a magnificent AI who are like, "Oh. There's a trap. I will wait patiently over here until it goes away."

- And they are the Summoned creatures who got summoned right on top of your traps and do not set them off.


Why no Stealth? - Laying traps breaks stealth, so you'd have to not only max Stealth itself, but also Unseen Actions. And unless you like to Unstealth to announce to your foes from the other side of your minefield, "Here I am! Come get me!", you'd probably also want to max your Lure. And even if you have All of that, you'd Still have problems with pretty much every single enemy I mentioned above, and since you put so many of your points in Stealth, you'd have that many less to spend on making you reasonably decent at melee for when you need a backup plan.

Early game is generally pretty tough for a trapper, because you don't have Trap Launcher yet, so you have to be pretty close to the enemies in order to trap them. You can't set them in a far-away place and then lead enemies to them, because they disappear after a few turns. By the time the enemies arrive, the traps will be gone. If you want to use the explosion trap effectively early on, you pretty much either have to start as a Cornac and spend that bonus category point on Field Control and start with Disengage (and even for that, you must have enough open spaces behind you for it to work), or rely extensively on Bear Trap and hope like crazy that you obtain a movement infusion early. Or at least a Wild infusion that protects from Magic so that you can stop the burning after it goes off in your face. With Atalanta I went the Cornac Disengage route, and was happy I did, because it was a ridiculously long time before I found a wild infusion that helps with magic, and even longer before I found a movement infusion.

Lure is nice, and it proved a very helpful distraction in many situations. It's helpful for trying to take some heat off your escort, for instance! Or distracting enemy fire when you're dealing with archers and casters. Once you have Trap Launcher, you can set traps clear across the screen from you, and then plop a Lure down next to them to make distant enemies want to step on the traps to get to the Lure. The main problem with the Lure is that it dies too fast. Adding additional points to Lure makes it attract enemies from farther away, but I don't notice anything about it making the Lure more durable. If a Lure gets shot by an archer or caster in one or two hits, then that Lure is not doing its job anymore, and by the time the Lure cools down, the traps will have all disappeared, and the enemies will be turning their attention to you.

Once I got to level 12 and got Trap Launcher, I was able to spend less time worrying about setting myself on fire, and more time blowing up enemies with Explosion trap. Not only does Trap Launcher help you not blow yourself up, it also allows you to set traps right in front of enemies from a greater distance, so that you can set More traps in front of an enemy. Early game, you're lucky if you can get an enemy to step on one trap before it closes to melee. After that, even if you're just planting traps under your feet and backing up, you're still getting beat up while you set them, and hoping like crazy that the enemy doesn't stun you. Trap Launcher changes all that. It makes it easy to get an enemy to walk on multiple traps before it starts hitting you. After that, you mainly need to worry about the ones who won't step on them. Which is like the other half of them.

I didn't find Sticky Smoke to be particularly helpful. It would be more useful if it blinded enemies instead of reducing one enemy's field of vision by a certain amount. If it turned into an AoE with additional talent levels, like Flare without the fire damage and light, that'd be even more helpful. And Flare is a talent archers Start with. Rogues have to get to level 8 to get Sticky Smoke, and it's not worth waiting 7 levels for. Right now it's just a speed bump on the road to Trap Launcher.

I found Quick Recovery to be an absolute must. Setting lots of traps really goes through stamina quickly. Once I got Quick Recovery maxed, I never had that problem again.

For the melee backup plan, I maxed Combat Accuracy and Flurry. I also maxed Backstab, because I had 3 stuns (Dual-Strike, Dirty Fighting, and Nightshade trap). The idea was to stun and flurry anything that wouldn't step on my traps. The accuracy would mean most of the Flurry would connect, and the Backstab would increase chances of critical hits. I put a lot into Knife Mastery, too. I had to have melee skills I could count on whenever some enemy wouldn't step on my traps. Especially when those enemies are Bosses!

I knew things were going downhill for Atalanta when she lost several lives in Dreadfell (lots of enemies there won't step on traps, and the Lure was getting one-shotted). Then she met her match in Golbug at the end of Reknor, who Rushed past her traps and critically hit her, not being stunned by her Nightshade because of his Movement infusion, and then when she Disengaged, he promptly finished her off by breathing ice on her. I think in retrospect having an extra Heal infusion or a shield rune instead of the Rune of the Rift might have been helpful, but I don't know if it would ultimately have made a big difference. Maybe Atalanta was just unlucky. When more traps get added I'll probably give this another shot.