TB - Death Trap Poison Tank

This build revolves around Poison Imbuement's ludicrous damage potential. Although the skill has a pretty long cooldown, by using Bursting Venoms we manage to constantly reset its cooldown, allowing us to make it our build's engine. Through the use of synergizing aspects and unintuitive stat scaling we can unleash its true devastating power.

In this variation we focus on the strength of Death Trap in combination with Preparation, Flickerstep and No Witness to complement the build.

1. Walk to the next pack of enemies.
2. Engage with Poison Imbuement already active.
3. Cast Shadow Clone
4. Evade.
5. Cast Heartseeker.
6. Hit enemies with 2x Poison-Imbued Twisting Blades.
7. Dash or Shadow Step to next pack or priority targets (Elites).
8. Cast Poison Imbuement.
9. Cast Twisting Blades
10. Bursting Venoms procs.
11. Cast Poison Imbuement once.
12. Cast Twisting Blades until enemies are dead.
13. Repeat.

• Cast Heartseeker every 4 seconds to refresh its own buff and Close Quarter Combat.
• Shadow Step to remove CC and/or gain Energy.

This build without an Ultimate is stronger but if you don't care about that keep reading.

By using Bursting Venom, which has a chance to reset the cooldown of Poison Imbuement when used, we regularly reset its cooldown and also create a three second puddle that allows every Twisting Blade to be posion-imbued when we stand on it. This, in combination with Preparation resetting all our cooldowns, and therefore creating more Bursting Venom proc opportunities, means our blades will always be dripping with poison.

We further potentiate this combination by scaling it with Corruption - [x]80%, No Witness - [x]20%+ and Close Quarter Combat - [x]100%+.

We combine Flickerstep and Preparation to constantly lower our Death Trap's cooldown and keep No Witness's buff active, because of this we want to Evade as often as possible to lower our Ultimate's cooldown and activate Metamorphosis, which grants us Unstoppable for Tibault's Will.

With our gameplay we seek to have Poison-Imbued Twisting Blades returning to us while we are killing high priority targets such as Elites. While it's seemingly an inconsequential change in the way we operate, this accomplishes multiple things that enhance the build's effectiveness:

• It funnels and kills monsters following us.
• It creates maximum damage Bladedancer blades that spawn right on top of the Elite we are killing.
• It creates more Bursting Venom proc opportunities around the Elite we are killing.

All in all, this smoothens the build's gameplay which can be hamstrung by lack of Bursting Venom procs when they are most needed.

[x] means multiplicative damage

Build Requirements and Replacements

Unique Items

• Flickerstep: this item is MANDATORY as it enables us to constantly reset Death Trap, without it it´s not worth playing this version of the build.
  If you do not have Flickerstep refer to this build for a version of the build that does not use it and works just as well.
• Tibault's Will: this item can be replaced with Tassets of the Dawning Sky or with Aspect of Might on top of replacing your chest with Shared Misery or Quickening Fog.
• Cowl of the Nameless: this item can be replaced with Shared Misery or Quickening Fog.

If you do replace one of these items with Quickening Fog make sure to remove two points in Deadly Venom to pick up Enhanced Smoke Grenade.

Aspects

• Bursting Venoms is mandatory. The rest can be replaced momentarily.
  Remember that Expectant and Condemnation do not buff Poison Imbuement's damage.

Paragon Board Stat Requirements

• Str: 620
• Int: 630

Poison Imbuement Hidden Mechanics

Poison Imbuement has some hidden interactions that make it even stronger than it already is.

• Core Skill and Cutthroat Damage contribute to their own damage bucket, which is why we prioritize these stats on our Gear and Paragon Board.
• Although Bladedancer's blades do reduced damage they are considered a normal Twisting Blade for Poison Imbuement and therefore apply the full poison damage amount.
• All Damage, or how it's shown on the Paragon Board, Damage, gets double the normal value which means 12.5% Damage is really worth 25%.
• Combo Points increase Poison Imbuement damage.
• Expectant, Condemnation and Tricks of the Trade do not increase Poison Imbuement damage.
• Critical Strike Damage does not increase Poison Imbuement damage.

Skill Choices and Explanations

Basic Skills

Puncture used to be a mainstay in all Rogue builds, with the Season 2 nerfs to Vulnerable it's no longer mandatory to apply it and scale at as much as possible. For this reason, we use Heartseeker in this build to get Attack Speed and Critical Chance against bosses mainly. Heartseeker's secondary function is to maintain Close Quarter Combat fully activated.

Core Skills

We use Twisting Blades in this build for various reasons: not only is it overall the strongest Core Skill in terms of AoE damage, single target damage and crowd control, but also Bladedancer interacts with Poison Imbuement in a very potent matter as detailed in the Hidden Mechanics section.

Flurry is an alternative Core Skill you could use but the power level of the build would suffer quite significantly.

Agility Skills

In this build, and most other Rogue builds, we use Dash and Shadow Step.

Dash is overall a very strong mobility ability that lets you dash across the length of your screen. It's especially good in Preparation builds because using your Ultimate refreshes both charges.

Shadow Step is a mobility skill that is also the best source of Unstoppable for Rogues. Due to its low cooldown with the Disciplined Shadow Step modifier it's perfect to maintain Tibault's Will's [x]20-40% damage buff and to gain 50 Energy on use.

Subterfuge Skills

We do not use any Subterfuge Skills on this build.

Imbuement Skills

As detailed in other parts of the guide, Poison Imbuement is our build's most important skill and what we base every Aspect, Skill and Gearing choice on.

Ultimate Skills

We use Death Trap in this build because it's great for clearing due to it's mob pulling ability. On top of that, with the Legendary Node No Witness*, we gain [x]60% of our *Ultimate Skill Damage as multiplicative damage for 8 seconds after using our Ultimate.

By using Preparation and Flickerstep we should be able to mantain that buff indefinitely.

Armor and Resistances

Armor

As of Season 2 it's much easier to reach the Armor cap so we no longer have to stack + Armor% on every slot.

You need roughly 5500 Armor to cap with a maxed Disobedience on your amulet and 6600 when the aspect is on an armor slot.

Resistances

As of Season 2 the Resistance cap is 70% and up to 85% with +15% Maximum Resistance. This is now a very strong stat for damage mitigation.

In my opinion, the most important overall resistances are:

• Poison because it's very prevalent and unavoidable.
• Lightning because the game's toughest monster, Wraiths, do lightning damage.

For general play one should look to get as close to the cap for those without completely neglecting the other resistances. Use All Res Elixirs and Incense for general play when needed.

For Bosses that do specific damage, if you're lacking in survivability, consider swapping in gems on your jewelry that have the correct resistance and drinking the corresponding elixir that increases your resistance and more importantly, maximum resistance.

Paragon Glyph Placement and Leveling Order

Placement Order

1. Cutthroat on the first board.
2. Skip the Glyph on the second board until you have a Level 15 Canny Glyph then place it there.
3. Place Control on the third board.
4. Place Versatility on the fourth board.
5. Place Tracker on the fifth board.
6. Place Efficacy on the sixth board.

Leveling Order

Level 15

1. Control
2. Canny
3. Closer
4. Versatility
5. Efficacy
6. Tracker

Level 21

1. Control
2. Closer
3. Versatility
4. Efficacy
5. Canny
6. Tracker

Leveling

Multiplicative Damage

Close Quarter Combat

When we attack an enemy with a Marksman Skill we get a 10% Attack Speed buff. In this build we use Puncture.

When we attack an enemy Cutthroat Skill we get another 10% Attack Speed buff. In this build we use Twisting Blades.

Once both buffs are active for a total of 20% Attack Speed, we now gain [x]40% of our Damage vs. Crowd Controlled Enemies as multiplicative damage. Since we can get over 400% Damage vs. CC this means we effectively double our damage against crowd controlled enemies.

No Witness

When we use an Ultimate Skill we get [x]60% of our Ultimate Skill Damage as multiplicative damage for 8 seconds. In this build we use Death Trap.

Since we can get almost up to 200% Ultimate Skill Damage, this means we double our damage whenever No Witness is active.

To try to maintain 100% uptime on this massive buff we use Preparation and Flickerstep alongside high attack speed and resource generation.

Bossing

This build should have no trouble with bosses given that it has a considerable amount of Stagger due to Artful Initiative, Surprise and Improved Twisting Blades. On top of that, it has very high sustained single target dps that gets greatly amplified during Stagger because of Close Quarter Combat and Glyph of Control.

However, if you're still struggling and wish to play a dedicated bossing build refer to this link.

Vampiric Powers

Vampiric Powers are the Season 2 mechanic.

• Metamorphosis grants us Unstoppable when we evade and applies Vampiric Curse to monsters along our path. This synergizes incredibly well with Tibualt's Will which increases damage by [x]40%. On top of this, our build already wants to Evade as often as possible for Flickerstep.
• Flowing Veins is a straightforward [x]60% buff to our damage on cursed enemies.
• Anticipation further reduces the cooldown of Death Trap and increases its damage.
• Ravenous because all Rogue builds regularly are at the Movement Speed cap or very close to it this power is essentially 40% Attack Speed.
• Prey on the Weak rounds out the build by giving it Vulnerable, which gives us [x]20% damage, on top of another [x]16%.