Poison trap

So after a long hiatus from the game I've been back the last few weeks, and have had some serious altitis. One of the characters I've played is a bots/traps which is now 21. While it soloes along just fine, I'm aware that it's really at an awkward level. Only one protbot, no SOs, and missing the powerhouse of an upgraded assault bot. I expect in a few more levels it will feel a lot more potent.

One question I have is in regards to poison trap. How should this be slotted? I've heard a lot of good things about this power but with just one level of using it unslotted it has felt underwhelming. Is this a power that gets a lot better once it's heavily enhanced?

Please note I'm not talking about endgame. I'm just looking for opinions on how many slots to prioritize for this power, and what kind of enhancement values you'd be going for with SOs and frankenslotting. I notice that it doesn't take accuracy enhancement, but sometimes powers like this benefit anyway from accuracy in set IOs. Wondering for example if some acc/hold/rcg from hold sets would be a good fit.

Thanks.

It's autohit so no need to slot for accuracy. I can't recall what's in mine, but it's six slotted and definitely has the chance for +2 hold proc. I'm pretty sure I aimed to max out recharge and get as much hold time as possible.

End game or not, it's the AV killer - lots of -regen. Toss some end reduction in it with heavy recharge and hold enhancement.

It's not autohit - or, rather, the part that offers the initial mitigation isn't.

Poison trap has two effects when it's set off. The first is the pulsing -regen -recharge chance to vomit, which is autohit and lasts for 30s. The second is the initial hold, which goes off once, lasts 6s by default, and is *not* autohit. It's this non-autohit component which provides most of the power's mitigation (generally you plant it in the middle of the spawn at the start of a fight), giving you time to toss a couple more traps - if it hits and lasts long enough.

Poison trap doesn't take accuracy enhancements, however accuracy from hold set IOs *does* improve the initial hold's chance to hit. Nowadays the power isn't a damage proc monster like it was before they fixed it, so I like to slot it for acc, hold, and recharge along with the lockdown proc. A 4 pack of basilisk's gets you some decent numbers to start, and you can fill it out with the lockdown proc and something else to round off the enhancement numbers.

It can still accept all 4 of the hold set damage procs; the difference is that the power is no longer capable of the truly absurd number of proc rolls it used to be. A digression:

When you lay the trap, the little green orb has two powers - one that gives it status effect immunity, and one that causes it to self destruct and summon the gas effect when an enemy gets close. Originally, the self destruct/summon power either had no target cap or an extremely large one (I don't remember which), so it would summon one copy of the gas for *every* enemy in its effect radius (16 feet, according to city of data). *Each* gas cloud would then proceed to make its proc rolls against every foe in its 25 foot radius.

So, if you had two procs in the power (both original hold set damage procs) and there were 20 enemies in range when it detonated, the power would make *80* proc rolls against *each* enemy when it went off (because the gas cloud has 2 effects, the one shot hold and the continuous debuff). It would then make another 40 rolls on each foe every 10 seconds after that until the cloud expired, assuming that anything was still alive.

That's what they fixed by giving the gas summoning power a 1 target cap. Nowadays it's still an ok proc power. It gives two chances for each proc when it first goes off, plus another chance at 10s, 20s, and 30s - it's just not the overwhelming proc nuke it used to be, and it's probably not worth slotting too many procs at the expense of enhancement percentages given the power's mitigation role.

5 slots of Purple and the lockdown proc

Thank you for the replies. Some good info in here.

Sounds like the best way to enhance poison trap is very similar to an AoE hold from a control set.

Was playing this character a little yesterday and wow, I'd forgotten that bots masterminds can feel pretty painful in the early 20s. I know it will get a lot better soon.

Poison Trap's Hold isn't very useful due to interrupt and how your assault bot will be knocking everything away from you. The big use for Poison Trap is to kill AV's Regen. Assuming SOs:

3 Recharge
2 Endo Redux
+2 Hold Proc

Thats really all you need.

Poison trap isn't interruptible. As for the KB, while I will admit I've never played bots to a high level, if you're first into the spawn is he really knocking everything away from you within the first 3-4 seconds? Poison trap takes a bit more than 2 seconds to cast and in my experience goes off within a second after that if you lay it right next to an enemy, so unless he's *really* quick on the trigger with the knockback it'd be hard to knock them away before it goes off.

It definitely is very good at killing regen, but I really don't think that the hold isn't useful. Besides, it isn't too hard to get plenty of hold enhancement in there anyway if you use IOs (and you can get some accuracy too so that the hold hits).