Mastering Traps for Protransers by Ironfox

[Ironfox]

Mastering Traps,
Well if you picked Protranser you already know that are claim to fame is our traps.
This guide is all about teaching you what to look for before deciding on wether a situation could use a trap and if it does which trap to use for which situation. These are just the humble basics of course.

This guide is broken down into Simple Lessons

Lesson #1: To Trap or to Not to Trap?
Not all monsters and mobs are even worth taking the time or effort to trap, and others are well worth venture of doing so. "Well how do I figure out which ones are worth it?" I tend to ask myself a few questions in my mind really fast.

Question #1: How much time will the Monster(s) in question take to kill?
Monsters with a ton of hp are in the fight for a loooooooong time and the longer they are around the more resources the rest of the party is going to waste, and the more time you and your party will be spending on it. Which means more trips to the Item station, charge cube, and slower mission times.

Question #2: How dangerous to the party is/are the Monster(s) in question?
Lets face it there are a few monsters that simply pose a more life threating situation than others. Some have amazing atp, others are extremely dangerous in groups, others can KO characters left and right with technics.

It is extremely important to Identify the root of the problem and turn it off, provided the monster isn't Immune to the SE you need. A simple Shock trap can turn the tide on a battle with a high atp powerhouse for example.

Question #3: Monster(s) Status Effect Immunity?
Alot of the bigger monsters have Immunity to specific status effects, Learn the Immunitys so you will not waste your limited supply of traps, This usually comes with experiance. My advice is to test monster Immunity with G trap and get in a habit of remmbering during your adventures.

Here is wonderful A+ refrence chart by Amesani to use:
http://tinyurl.com/36mkr8

Lesson #2: Normal Trap, or G Trap?
Well there are a few things to take into account.
1-Mob size. Is it easier to 1 normal trap on a single monster or are they grouped together that 1 or 2 G traps will get the job done with less effort?
2-How often does the monster(s) Move around? Which would be easier to knock them over and use a normal trap, or use the G traps Denator?

Lesson #3: Trap general uses.

Burn: Damage over time based on enemys health, great for making long fights with hp monsters much shorter. Burn ticks faster than Virus but less damage and duration.

Damage: Generally for dealing Damage but the real handy aspect is the Launching ability. Great for tipping big creatures and Breaking organized Mobs.

Confusion: Great for fast mobs that stay grouped together so they have the speed to tear themself to shreds. Its important that the monsters are extremely agressive and fast so you can take advantage of this. The other use for this trap is for grouping a mob together. This trap also makes spells and projectiles unable to do any damage to Players and NPCs, they will however damage each other. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AVEH3pBb0

Freeze: One of my favorites that doesn't get used alot. Has a few uses one is Stopping jumpy mobs that hunters have a hard time hitting because they move everywhere. The 2nd use I have found is using a batch of them to keep dangerious enemy (Like Jarbas) nice and occupied. 3rd use is helpful for staging for a another trap.

Poison: Less damage, lasts longer. See Burn.

Shock: Great for removing melee ability from Melee based monsters extremely handy one of my favorites. A monster that cannot attack is my kind of monster! =D

Silence: Great from removing technics from pesky spell casters, like Sorcerors and some hybrids.

Sleep: Used too make monsters go sleepy night night. This tricky trap is great for when numerous big threats are on the field. So your party can concentrate your efforts on, the biggest threat or simply working together to kill the monsters while only dealing with one or two at a time. Atleast until the SE wears off. This status effect is turned off by one attack to a sleeping monster, good team work is involved to make use of this trap.

Virus: See Burn.

Lesson #4: Traps and Item palette balancing.
Alright you may or maynot have noticed you only get 6 Slots for Items!
Finding room for both your traps and your healing items can be a real pain, but no worrys I have some suggestions for ya! Before you decide on which ones to carry with you you'll find out it varies on your Protranser level. Low level Protransers have so little hp that Monomates and Dimates seem to be plenty. High level Protransers will find monomates aren't worth the effort of putting them in the palette. Knowing this could save you some room for other things. Antimates and Sols when I'm soloing I use Antimates and when In a group I use the Sols If I run out of ether I will switch to the other. These take up 3 slots for healing items leaving you 3 trap slots free.

The setup I used is a Reccomended Balanced setup:

Low level setup
- Monomate
- Dimate
- Sol/Antimate
- Trap Slot
- Trap Slot
- Trap Slot

High level Setup
-Dimate
-Trimate
-Sol/Antimate
-Trap Slot
-Trap Slot
-Trap Slot

Pros: Balanced, Less palette switching
Cons: N/A

I found this worked best for me but I have tryed a few others which i will explain below.

The other setup I have seen that works really well.

Low Level Setup:
-Star Atomizer
-Monomate
-Dimate
-Sol/antimate
-Trap Slot
-Trap Slot

High level Setup:
-Star Atomizer
-Dimate
-Trimate
-Sol/Antimate
-Trap Slot
-Trap Slot

Pros: Less healing item palette swapping
Cons: Alot of Trap palette swapping

Lesson #5: Trap & Status Effect Combos,
(Under Construction)

Not all SE's Stack, there are alot combatible SE's, and vise versa.
The first thing to learn before doing this is which SE's Stack and which do not.

Here is a quick Status effect compatibility Listing:

Burn:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Damage:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Confusion:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Freeze:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Poison:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Shock:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Silence:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Sleep:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Virus:
Will NOT stack with the following SE's:
Will Stack the following SE's:

Common reasons to combo SE's
#1:
#2:
#3:




Other methods are of course possible, Experiment and if you find one that works well let me know about it! ^_^ If you have any Suggestions and/or Comments on this guide don't hesitate to Contact me!

Thanks
-Ironfox


Contributers (Thouse who made this guide possible.)
- Inunabe
- Fexus
- Lethe
- Bato-Kage
- KaffeKane

[Fexus]

yeah, my setup is usually as follows when grouping:

Trimate
Star atomizer
Sol atomizer
trap
trap
trap

When soloing i usually have my mag, so it goes like this:

Trimate
Star atom.
Antimate
Sol atom.
Photon charge
G trap

I tend to Melee/Shoot more when soloing because in groups i usually have hunter classes and ranger classes doing the damage. I also support the forces alot. (It's a good idea, i mean my friend list is mostly Fortechers, so i always can get one to join a party. ^^ )

[Inunabe]

Also what I'd like to add is 1 my palette and 2 the importance of trap combinations.

First off as a lower level transer ( lvl 46 PT lvl 3 ) dimates heal me almost to full. Also I tend to look at transer thusly. We can do some decent damage with our weapons, but at a lower lvl it's very easy to think of yourself as more of a supporting role. This means 2 things for my palette. 1. The use of Sols more then antimates.
2. Using traps more defensively.

My Palette.

Dimate
Sol Atomizer
Damage Trap
Virus Trap
Shock Trap
Freeze Trap G

Variation: In the support aspect my palette sometimes looks thusly also

Dimate
Sol Atomizer
Star Atomizer
Trap
Trap
Trap

All the traps can be swapped out equally with others. I tend to categorize my traps.

1 Damage. That one's kinda obvious. Yes the knockdown is helpful but I use these more for dealing some quick spike damage to annoying mobs.

2. DoT
Virus, Burn, and Poison fall into this category. They're used for taking down the higher hp, more annoying mobs that are found.

3. Disabling
Shock, Freeze, Sleep, and Confusion ( yes I include confusion )
These traps I almost exclusively use as a defensive measure. If you're worried that the Force is about to get overrun, drop a few shocks or freezes to let him get away. If the rest of the group can't contain all the mobs drop a Shock or Freeze G so they can situate themselves. Confusion is kind of the last resort of these. It doesn't keep the mob from attacking, but if there are lots of them they can be used, at the very least, to help keep your team from being targeted. Sleep is difficult to use as it can be broken in 1 hit. But extremely handy when soloing.

4. Silence
Use and trap is obvious.

When using the traps, it is also helpful to determine what trap combinations are helpful.

Freeze traps work well with all traps but Burn. You can't freeze a burning enemy. But you can blow freezing enemies up with damage traps without them flying everywhere. That's handy if you see a force attacking with slower spells like Diga.

Shock and Burning go together excellently. A burning enemy can be shocked if that enemy needs to be disabled. If you have rangers, guntechs, or forteguns using their fire PAs then don't bother wasting your freeze traps. Shock em instead.

Also for Iron's lesson 2, you asked questions but didn't exactly explain what to do in that situation.
This point can probably be considered personal opinion, but I find that unless you're facing a group of mobs, don't waste the G trap. Go ahead and just knockdown that mob and then trap it with a single.
That's the only point I thought that could use an answer.

Great advice though Iron. ^^; Really getting a nice transer guide going.

Is it possible to get a stick on this and the other transer guide thread?

[FACE]

mate. It is a nice long guide. I haven't finished reading yet. But when I do I'll put some feedback in. ^^
*goes back to work* T T

edit: your self-asking questions were spot on. The fact that you can only use 5 of any particular G-trap does prevent you from spamming and encourage to ask these questions. Which....ultimately probably makes us utilise normal traps more. great guide, thanks guys.


p.s. I am not 100% sure but G traps SE's don't seem to affect multi-targets of the same monster. If my observations were true, that's a shame. Too bad they can't pwn so much with virus/burn. But......hey, there ya go.

[Lethe]

Normal and G traps will both land SE on anything.
G traps hit multiple locations on a single target, much as a grenade will.

If anything else was incorrect and i didn't mention it, it's because I only half-read this. Kinda already have a trap/se guide on this forum.

[Ironfox]

Also what I'd like to add is 1 my palette and 2 the importance of trap combinations.

Great area to cover! Most definitely will have to add a section on combing traps.

Also for Iron's lesson 2, you asked questions but didn't exactly explain what to do in that situation.

This point can probably be considered personal opinion, but I find that unless you're facing a group of mobs, don't waste the G trap. Go ahead and just knockdown that mob and then trap it with a single.
That's the only point I thought that could use an answer.

I suppose a little more depth on the questions would help, and after some more experimenting with the normal traps I agree on your 2nd point as well.

p.s. I am not 100% sure but G traps SE's don't seem to affect multi-targets of the same monster. If my observations were true, that's a shame. Too bad they can't pwn so much with virus/burn. But......hey, there ya go.

Did I write that somewhere? Might be bad wording on my part could you show me where that came from?

Normal and G traps will both land SE on anything.
G traps hit multiple locations on a single target, much as a grenade will.

You are right Edited, Thank you.

If anything else was incorrect and i didn't mention it, it's because I only half-read this. Kinda already have a trap/se guide on this forum.

Even thou they are both trap guides, yours refers to how much damage they do and SEs, Mine is a guide on some basics of using them. Your guide is great man. ^_^

[Ironfox]

The guide is looking decent still plenty of room for improvement. Also I have some changes and areas I will be adding very soon. Thank you everyone for your wonderful posts they are really helpful!

[Inunabe]

I'm glad you're taking the time to write up all of this. I know it's been a great help since I started transer lol. Now that I've gotten the grove on how to think as a transer it makes alot of sense.

I covered the trap combination thing a bit in my post so atleast there's a good start for you to use Iron.

[Bato-Kage]

Here's my take on sleep traps:

they are widely overlooked and often misunderstood. It is true that a the sleep SE is undone by any hit reciebed by the monster, BUT no monster (save for bosses) that I've encountered is immune to sleep. They can be tricky to use outside of solo situations, but i found my method.

Picture this: You're doing an S2 run at the Seabed Plantbase and you get to the last room where you face an armada of Jarbas and polavohra (is that spelled correctly?). If you have a good party with a nice sense of teamwork, there will most likely be an annoying jarba off on the side spitting hot megids at you/your friends.
MY solution? GO TO SLEEP YOU HATER!! (ahem...)
Yes, well, I go over to that Jarba and plant a sleep trap next to it. Now, if a sleeping monster goes undisturbed, then that creature is rendered inactive for about 9 seconds. This allows eveyone to concentrate on killing certain monsters while keeping the others at bay for a while.

I'm not sure if the random parties I've been in ever realized I was doing this, but I find it helpful. But unlike the other traps, these are very situational. I only use them when there are numerous "big" monsters around. the small ones are better off freezing or shocking.

Anyway, if anything in this reply doesn't make sense or sound right, quote me and I'll look at it when I'm more awake =_=

[FACE]

sorry that was bad writing on my part.
about traps, that point just popped to my head and I just wrote it down. It had nothing to do with any point you made.