Assass In Hell

[shavenlunatic]

Which is move hell-solo viable? Trap or Martial arts? Im fairly new to ladder, managed to find a couple of nat's items and a half-decent unique claw. I'm sure I can do a few more MF runs to find some more gear.

I cant seem to find an trap guides around, does this mean that trapassins arent really hell viable?

[Munkay]

Warning! I haven't played an asn in 1.10, I may be completely wrong.

Unless a lot has changed to asn traps, trappers aren't 'viable.' It is possible to play one through hell in single player, but speaking only from personal experience, as soon as a few people entered the game I was toast. In parties I was some what of a help, but not being able to kill, and only assist, in parties drove me nuts.

In 1.09 I had two asns, one 83 and one 85. Using martial arts (tigerstrike, burst of speed, claw mastery, dragon tail, phoenix strike) I was able to hold my own. I'd be a bit leary with the insane life regeneration 1.10 monsters have, but a martial arts asn should still be viable (just make sure you havea bit of crushing blow, with her insane attack speed it helps immensely!).

My second asn, whom I leveled to 83, actually used the lightning skill to attack instead of phoenix. Truthfully, I found it about par with my tigerstrike asn. At the time I had 'stacked' equipment, 08 vamp, shaft, 08 string, but still used basic items like bartucs and whitstans guard. Both asn's used the same equip, and both stayed alive very easily.

It seems the majority loves dragon flight more than tail, so its worth looking into. Though I must say, dragon tail has saved my asn's life innumerous times; by kicking repeatidly groups get knocked back, allowing her time to run away and re-adjust to a more preferable fighting angle :)

But I'm just a crusty old asn player who doesn't know one hoot about playing them in 1.10. Hope I helped a little bit.

-Munk

[Guest]

The problem I see with traps is that for traps to do the kind of damage you need to do in Hell, you need to max out 3-4 skills. This means that unless you are rich, it's hard to pull off a viable Trapper that does 2 kinds of damage. The trapper's lightning traps are arguebly more powerful than the Sorc's entire lightning skill tree, but specializing in one element leaves you helpless to Lightning immunes. If you want to go a trapper, I am of the opinion that you should focus on building up a Merc, or joining games that have fighter type characters in them.

Here are some numbers for you:

Lightning Sentry, slvl 20, with all synergies slvl 20 does 8-2574 damage, shoots ten times. To get this damage, you must max 4 skills. I consider it the most viable of all traps.

Death Sentry, slvl20, with all synergies maxed, explodes corpses/shoots lightning 11 times. Corpse explosions will deal 40%-80% of the corpses life to offending monsters in a radius of 9.6 yards. When there are no corpses handy, it will do 3-1040 lightning damage.

Wake of Fire, which never did that much damage, is one of my favorite traps, in that it looks cool -_- . There's a thread about this topic that was posted fairly recently by yours truly. Click here


A martial artist has no problem with immunes, because it can summon Meteors, Chain Lightning, and um Ice Bolts, in addition to their physical damage. How viable they are depends on what equipment you have, as is true for any fighter type.

[bigeyedbug]

Here is an excellent untwinked trapper guide by JRichard. They've been having some problems with their server, so just try later if it doesn't work right away.

First, I should echo Munkay's comment: I have yet to play a trapper built with 1.1 in mind. I've played my 1.09 trappers in 1.1, and they got their butts kicked (but no worse than my 1.09 martial artists). That being said, I've played nothing but Assassins in 1.1, and consider myself pretty well-informed on matters that pertain to them.

Lightning/Fire Blast trappers are always mentioned as being among the easiest builds in 1.1, and are especially well suited to playing untwinked. A lot of people chose them as their first ladder builds because of their lack of item-dependancy and ability to magic-find.

Unrealshadow's numbers don't take into account easily acquired +skills, or the long range and piercing of LS, or the incredible safety of all the traps. He mentions the number of shots of LS and the radius of (a simple level 20) DS, but doesn't emphasize how powerful these attributes are. Also, a well built trapper will have a built-in LI solution through FB. LI/FI's are still a problem, but 95% of 1.1 builds have trouble with dual-immunes.

I think you would find a Lightning trapper much easier than any Martial Artist, if only because of the overwhelming bias of 1.1 toward ranged attacks.

The question of what would be more fun is different of course. I'm a tremendous fan of the martial arts tree. :)