Traps - August 5, 2015

Daily posting, on the topic of traps.

There are two types of trap weapons, exploding Barrels and C4. They function similarly enough; pressing the Left Mouse button will place a Barrel or C4 and pressing the Right Mouse Button will detonate each trap in the order of placement.

Barrels and their abilities are more offensive, risky and speed-oriented than C4. Barrels deal Attack x 6 over the C4's Attack x 4, and Barrels also deal Fire damage (the only other weapon type that deals Fire damage naturally is the Flamethrower), making it effective against various Symbiote Monsters. The Barrel Launch Competency also is able to launch all Barrels that are in play at an angle between the user and itself, and it keeps going until it hits a wall or a character. This has huge range, and can act as a sort of makeshift Rocket Launcher.

Barrels do have a trait to them where they will explode if hit by an area of effect attack, which include Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, C4, Sulfur Balls or any weapon with an area boost added to it, so when focusing on Barrels, it may be best to avoid customizing your team to not have any area of effect attacks. The Thrive In The Chaos Competency provides protection in case a character is caught within exploding Barrels.

This area of effect trait also allows Barrels to detonate other nearby Barrels instantly. The Barrel Chain Competency boosts the strength of each Barrel exploded in a single triggering. Each consecutive barrel boost the multiplier by 3. In other words, if 11 Barrels are blown up in a single triggering/chain, the 11th Barrel would have a multiplier of 31 (1 + (3 * 10)), making the 11th Barrel deal damage at Attack x 186, ignoring any other combat modifiers.

C4 is more defensive, tactical and requires more foresight to effective use than the Barrels. To start, C4 has double the base ammo than Barrels (16 as opposed to 8), allowing it to not only be used more frequently throughout dungeons to create noise distractions, but can potentially set up a bigger chain than Barrels.

Though C4 is generally weaker than Barrels (Attack x 4 at base compared to Attack x 6), the C4 Chain was buffed in Gachduine compared to Skylight Freerange 1, and its chain modifier rises at a rate of 4 as opposed to Barrel Chain's 3. On the 11th C4 in a single triggering, the modifier will be at 41 (1 + (5 * 10)), with damage at Attack x 204. While C4 Chains can be stronger than Barrel Chains, C4 don't detonate other C4 through blasts, and you must instead wait for each C4 to be detonated in order, instead of one big explosive chain. This means that you must know the order you placed each C4 in, as it is the order of detonation, and therefore, the order of increasing C4 strength.

While C4 requires a lot more foresight with its chains, it has other abilities to lower enemy damage output. Ion Choker is a basic, yet powerful one: Any enemy within range of the user's undetonated C4 will have their damage cut in half. Blast Shield is another one, but more complex to set up: If the enemy is NOT in range of undetonated C4, but their target is, the target will take 80% less damage. Generally used for sniper-on-sniper combat.

A third type if trap involves placing a Symbiote Cloud and immolating it. Normally difficult to do, as Symbiote Clouds cannot be targeted and a Fire attack must hit the Symbiote Cloud within the area of effect of an attack or while the target is in the Cloud (Rifle attack with Fire Shot, for example, will keep your characters out of the Clouds to immolate). The Secret Burning Competency immolates all Symbiote Clouds in play and has unlimited uses, making it easiest to use for this. Immolation damage starts at Attack x 8 and each Immolation Boost Competency adds 4 to this (16 Immolation boosts will give Attack x 72).