Second mastery options for a rogue trapper

[Nathiri]

Continuing in my AE pet odyssey, I would like to try some iteration of trapper and was pondering which way to go.

I know Violos (is that you Vio, I sort of assumed it was?) had a nice Trapsin guide in the old days, but now that traps are pets I was wondering about incorporating it with another solid pet mastery.

I was leaning towards earth for earth enchantment, stoneform and dwelly-poo (largely because I confess I really dislike volcanic orb and can never actually progress on a proper pyromancer, so it would add novelty). It might be fine in the bginning but I wonder how well it's actually going to work in the long run. It doesn't exactly scream synergy to me, I'm probably missing something since I never played Earth, or Rogue.

I suppose nature is the most obvious pet choice with plague and wolves. It just seems like it's not going to help me with the problem areas of my primary mastery.

I pondered dream also, but I've used dream in 3 of my AE builds thus far, and diversity is the spice of life.

Any thoughts (and pet discussions) welcome.

Edit: I started fresh for AE, so no extensive gear collection but I do have a couple of pieces of the black pearl jewellery so I will have nice elemental damage mods for pets later on.

[Danny]

I currently have two characters using Nature mastery (level 50 Hunting+Nature) and a new guy going for the <100 kills achievement with no secondary. The fact that you can get up to 3 wolves (even 2 can be deadly) and the un-aforementioned Sylvan Nymph, a Nature master can really wreck some stuff. Briar Ward is great for CC, and although I don't think it benefits from "pet" bonuses, at higher skills it gains a poison retaliation to enemies that attack it, which could mesh well with Toxin Distillation and Mandrake. Plus, Heart of Oak and Regrowth are like two of the awesomest support skills ever.

However I can also attest to the effectiveness of Hunting, and while having not yet used Monster Lure, it does benefit from the "pet" status and could be a useful addition to your kit. Also, Herbal Remedy and Art of the Hunt are strong passive skills; and to complement your Rogue mastery, you can still benefit from Blade Honing while using spears, to devastating effect.

That's what I can say from my experience; I haven't played more than a dozen levels with Earth so I personally can't speak to the Core Dweller's effectiveness, but everyone I've met online says it's tanky as all hell. And Earth Enchantment certainly would have some good synergy with any damage-dealing character. I haven't played Storm (Summon Wisp), nor Spirit (Summon Liche King), nor Dream (Summon Nightmare), nor put any points into Ancestral Horn on my Warfare+Rogue character; thus, I cannot speak to their effectiveness.

Whatever you choose, I'm sure you'll do great. GLHF!

[CRCGamer]

Earth is mostly about big damage, the little utility in there is typically on long cooldowns. Additionally its damage buff is a very low set amount that relies upon %fire scaling. This would lock you into having to find elemental pet gear all the time. And the core dwellar unfortunately is a very weak pincussion from early Act 3 until you hit Epic. Health buff doesn't do enough for him, he is very reliant on multiple-source armor stacking... and piercing and vitality damage removes him in seconds.

You have two strong options.

Storm because of no range limit on the pets being buffed by the enchantment and the Wisp serving as a great distraction because of the 99% dodge and projectile evasion. And the ever useful Squall and Frost Blast.

Or going into Defense, which seems odd until you realize that the traps are pretty darn weak and work best when they aren't drawing aggro. A defense character can just plop down a couple traps with some decent pet-gear in the jewelry and use the rogue utilities to make tanking impossible odds much easier while the traps kill the crowd. You're going to have a maxed out Flash Powder as one of your best friends if you go that route. Basic play pattern is set up a trap or two, throw the poison flask in to get attention, and once they come rushing in drop a flash powder and start sitting on top of the highest priority target with rogue poison and batter.

[Maleta]

Where did you read that traps are pets?

[CRCGamer]

http://titanquestgame.com/pcchangelog/TQ_AnniversaryEdition_FullChangelog.txt

PETS AND ALLIES
---------------

- Bolt Traps are no longer "monsters" and now receive pet scaling and pet gear bonuses
+ Bolt Trap base damage was doubled while rate of fire was halved to balance for the above
- Bolt Traps are less likely to ignore enemies, and vice versa

[Nathiri]

Thanks for the replies guys! I really have to think this over a bit more. My original aim was to mess around with something that felt "different" to the other pet builds since I have a ritualist and a diviner and they feel like much of a muchness truth be told. Diviner is in legendary, so they're perfectly functional, but it perhaps lacks some... flavour.

CRCGamer is perfectly right, of course, the fire buff radius is so tiny that I'd have to stand basically on top of the traps for them to benefit, so that's a big fat nope for earth. I also have residual bias against dwelly-poo from back in vanilla though, when I did try to run a summoner.

Storm did look interesting with squall for sure, and yes, I thought the same as you regarding taking the defensive line. But I have no idea how much damage those traps are going to be pumping out, and whether it's going to be enough.

I also pondered spirit for deathchill aura and having mr liche king in the midst of the fray.

But ultimately I just don't think I have the right gear yet to make an experimental build work. It would be nice though, to find a combo to go with those traps...

[CRCGamer]

Well... I do have a Magician in epic (Rogue + Earth) but they certainly aren't using any summons. I unfortunately came to the conclusion that short of being dripping in ultra rare greens it falls apart hard middle of act 3 normal even with the pet buff from the quest.

Fortunately I was able to salvage the character as I'd built it melee because you can *do* that with Earth in AE. So now its an incredibly stabby character with some Volcanic Orb and Eruption action as needed on top of the usual Rogue tricks.

Oh and the Defense tree build with Rogue has a few tricks in play... the traps aren't the strongest, but they don't have to be with poison & bleed from flask and damage reflection from defiance which is the top level skill of rally chunking the crowd. As long as you have even a couple pieces of decent pet jewelry for your level it *will* work. I'd not attempt the 100 kills challenge with the build though, you will be racking up kills just from residual poison and reflects stealing last hits from the traps.

[Nathiri]

Nope, I'm not going for that <100 kills thing. I'm lazy enough to want pets, but too lazy for that. Achievements are one of those things that happen sometimes but I don't chase them. The ones I care about most were my hardcore torchlight ones because I actually felt it was an achievement to finish that game without dying. In TQ it feels like more of a crapshoot, and they're bugged anyway :)

I have some pet jewellery to level with, and the black pearl pieces for 40+, but I haven't got any puppetmaster stuff. My staves are the blue level 3x ones, Shivas (pet ele dmg) and Azi Dahaks (pet vitality dmg), plus miscellaneous greens and yellows for levelling to that point.

Right now I'm pondering dream (diversity schmiversity), ie Dreamkiller.

Thinking, is that my other dreamies all use ToC, but for the traps I could instead aim for ToW, and later ToE.

Stating as caster with distortion wave, and temporal rift, later branch into traps and the nightmare to buff trap damage. I'll lose phantom strike, but I feel like if I want to go pets then I want to use a pet staff. The nightmare is tanky, and TR stuns are tasty.

Cons: It's, again, not the most obvious synergy. The masteries are not fantastic for the stats I'd be aiming for 170 dex + int for days. And, I think I have a problem, I keep rolling with dream!

Edit: and when I come to my senses, I will pick storm as my second mastery instead of going rogue for traps. I think I just have trap nostalgia (Diablo 2 and TL).

[Nathiri]

Seems, at least according to this post on TQ-net, that my idea was not so mad after all :)

http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/55725-AE-Dreamkiller-Trapper-advice?p=520486#post520486