Cooldown & Energy
This build revolves around one goal: 100% uptime on 
Death Trap, so you can infinitely cast it. To make this work, there are four non-negotiable breakpoints you need to hit:
- The Cooldown: You must reduce your Death Trap cooldown to 15 seconds or less through gear and tempering.
- The Energy Bank: You need a maximum energy level of at least 225.
- The Restoration: You need to be able to restore 225 energy back immediately.
- The Reduction: You need Trap Arm Time Reduction
Why 225 Energy? Because we use the 
Preparation Specialization alongside 
Beastfall Boots to fully reset that cooldown the moment we spend our energy.
Cooldown Reduction:
Greater Affix Cooldown Reduction on as many pieces as possible (e.g. Helmet, Gloves, Rings, and Amulet), and Greater Affix Cooldown Tempers on your Rings and Amulet. There is also Trap Cooldown Reduction on the 
Deadly Ambush Paragon Board.
Equal or more than 225 Maximum Energy:
You get this through +Maximum Resource on your Chest and Boost and only use +Maximum Resource on your Charms if necessary. 
Sea Lord's Fine Gloves provides you 25-39% more Energy once fully stacked.
Restoring 225 Energy:
To restore 225 Energy we utilize the 
Aspect of Aftermath on one of our Rings. To do that, you need 40 Ranks of Death Trap with a min-rolled or 25 Ranks with a max-rolled one. We get an additional 25 Energy restored by Beastfall Boots. Now how do we get that many Ranks of Death Trap? Simple, via 
Vehement Brawler's Aspect, Charms and our Amulet. Charms can get up to 4 ranks to Trap Skills each and our Amulet can roll Ranks to Trap or Ranks to All Skills. Get as many ranks as necessary to fulfill the requirement.
Trap Arm Time Reduction:
You need to temper it on your Gloves from the offensive category and get it in the Paragon on Deadly Ambush. This is necessary because there can only be a finite amount of Death Traps laid out before they are overwritten, unless they spring before that happens. Meaning, with maximum Trap Arm Time Reduction, they spring in 0.15 seconds.
Death Trap Skill Ranks vs Maximum Energy:
You want to balance these out to always restore about exactly as much Energy as you are spending.
Leveling
You can not level with this build. I would recommend you level with the Dance of Knives Leveling guide.
Runes
Cir
Que is best in Slot due topping up your Barrier consistently.- ZanGar is mandatory to get closer to 100% Critical Hit Chance.
Alternative Runewords:
- PocMot is a choice if you are lazy do not want to press
Dark Shroud manually. 
Cir
Sol for more damage reduction.- CirVex for slightly more damage.
Masterworking and Greater Affix Priority
If you want to learn more about Masterworking and Tempering, check out our Masterworking and Tempering Guide.
Attack Speed Breakpoints
The optimal Attack Speed Breakpoints are different for each variant. Check the respective description in the variant you are using.
To avoid wasting Attack Speed, you can calculate the Attack Speed Breakpoints for your skills using THIS SHEET.
You might be wondering how frames translate into actual Cast Speed. Because the server runs at 60 frames per second the way we translate frames into Cast Speed is with the formula: 60 / Frames = Casts per Second.
Affix Choices
With Season 13 reworking the damage affixes on gear, for this build we have a simple priority:
Critical Strike Damage Multiplier > Vulnerable Damage Multiplier > Shadow / All Damage Multiplier. Note that Shadow and All Damage fall into the exact same damage category, so you always want to pick the higher of the two. These make a real difference in your build and can be very important to great damage output.
If you want to calculate your relative damage gains properly, use this sheet by Avarilyn.
Frequently Asked Questions
I can not spam Death Trap infinitely, what am I doing wrong?
Make sure to:
- Have your Death Trap below 15 seconds Cooldown.
- This requires a lot of Cooldown Reduction, Death Trap Skill Ranks and good Tempering rolls and Masterworks.
- Have means to restore 225 Energy.
- Actually have 225 Energy in the first place
- Get +Maximum Resource on your Chest and 2-3 Charms, supplement on Amulet if required.
Sea Lord's Fine Gloves multiplies your Energy by up to 30%.- So with at least 173 Energy in town, you get 173 * 1.3 = 224.9 Energy which is perfectly fine.
- Have Preparation as Specialization equipped.
- Have Trap Arm Time Reduction on your Gloves and in the Paragaon Board Deadly Ambush.
I feel very squishy, what to do?
Stone of Jordan stacks all your resistances up to your highest Resistance. Stack as much Shadow Resistance as you can and enjoy being unkillable.- Put
Splinter of Pain in 
Leoric's Crown instead of 
Splinter of the Black Soulstone. - Equip CirSol.
Where can I get 
Rustbitten Dirk?
- Rustbitten Dirk is a random drop from Lair Bosses, so no target farm. You can upgrade white Daggers in the Horadric Cube to Unique. If you do not have white Daggers, use the remove affix recipe on blue or yellow ones until they are white.
I can not find Aspect of Aftermath, what to do?
- Gamble Rings
- Check the Bartering Girl for Resource Aspect Caches
- When using the Upgrade Rare to Legendary Recipe in the Cube you can also optionally add a Resource Tuning Prism to narrow the pool down significantly.
I can not get Shadow Step Cooldown below 3.25 seconds, what can I do?
- If your reset works otherwise, but you are just short on
Shadow Step Cooldown, you can get Mobility Cooldown Reduction tempered on your Beastfall Boots. 
Shadow Step has a cast time of around 15 Frames at 100% Attack Speed, meaning it roughly takes 0.25 seconds to cast. Therefore, less than 3.25 seconds Cooldown is ideal.- All of this, is on top of having Masterworked Greater Affix CDR everywhere.
+Trap Ranks vs +Maximum Resource on Charms
- You need to balance these out so that you restore at least equal to the amount of Maximum Energy you have. There is no point in having more Maximum Energy, if you can not restore it with every cast.
What about 
Melted Heart of Selig?
- Equip it only if you really do not want to die. It's a significant damage loss to run it.
Why are we playing 
Insight (Bow)?
- Insight gives you a massive amount of Crit Chance, allowing you to run
Splinter of Hellfire. - It also provides a higher than normal Critical Strike Damage Multiplier AND can be enchanted to have another Critical Strike Multiplier instead of Weapon Damage. On top of the Attack Speed it provides, it is just a massive powerhouse. It becomes even better the more GAs you have on it. Ideally, you want Quality or [x]Shadow Damage on it as Transfiguration. In my setup a regular Legendary with
Opportunist's Aspect is roughly 12% less damage than Insight (Bow) with the same # of GAs. - This gap becomes even larger if you have a Mythic Leoric's Crown with Gem-Strength.
Sets: 
Fer of Applied Alchemy vs 
Fer of the Sightless
- I had Legacy of the Sightless listed in the Death Trap guide. In S14, we ran both sets. 4 Pieces Applied, 2 Pieces Legacy and
Seal of the Diamond Mind made it 5+3. For S15 with 
Hellfire Torch, I forgot about the following fact: - In practice, Applied Alchemy is more dps.
- Applied Alchemy has two seperate multipliers that are factored together.
- 60%[x] => 1.6x and 250%[x] => 3.5x.
- 1.6x x 3.5x = 5.6x
- Legacy of the Sightless' multipliers are additive to each other.
- 60%[x] + 250%[x] => 310%[x] => 4.1x
- So its 5.6x vs 4.1x and a solid 37% difference in favor of Applied Alchemy.
Rogue
Artifice Shadow Step without a Cooldown. The concept of the build is to use 
Beastfall Boots and 
Preparation to reset 
Aspect of Aftermath.
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