Lightning Sentry

A trap that shoots lightning to scorch passing enemies.

Lightning Sentry is the Assassin's fifth trap (Traps tree, level 24, requires Charged Bolt Sentry; it unlocks Death Sentry) and the skill a lightning trapper is built around. Laid on the ground, it fires ten bolts of lightning at whatever comes into range. The numbers that decide it are the maximum damage per bolt, 314 at level 20, and the +18% a hard point it takes from two cheaper traps.

The numbers

The damage is EMin/EMax with a HitShift of 8, read as written. The minimum is 1 at every level (EMin 1, all EMinLev 0). The maximum starts at 20 and grows +10 a level to level 8, +16 to 16, +24 to 22, +34 to 28 and +44 past that (EMaxLev1–5): 1–314 per bolt at level 20, 1–654 at level 30. It reads the full level, so +skills count, and past level 20 every level is worth 24 to 44 more on the maximum. Shots are Param1, 10 at every level, and mana is a flat 20; neither changes, so neither is in the table.

How it works

The sentry is a summon (pet type "assassintrap") and takes one of the 5 sentry slots (petmax) the Basin says the Assassin and her Shadow share across Blade Sentinel and the five sentries; a sixth dispels the oldest. The Basin's page says it is laid with the attack rate, must be placed in line of sight, and then shoots at targets within its own line of sight and awareness range, which it gives as 16 2/3 yards; it cannot be targeted or harmed and expires after its ten shots.

Each shot, the Basin says, is a single piercing lightning bolt, fired once every 31 frames, whose range grows with the skill's level. The bolt is size 2 and is not destroyed on collision, so the Basin notes a single bolt can strike two adjacent targets alternately and hit each of them twice before it runs out.

No attack rating is rolled; the damage is lightning, and the row's three passive stats pass the Assassin's Lightning Skill Damage, Enemy Lightning Resistance Reduction and lightning sundering to the trap (the Basin's page says the same of D2R). There is no weapon damage in it: no leech, Crushing Blow or Open Wounds. See Dealing Elemental Damage and Resistances and Immunities.

Synergies and +skills

EDmgSymPerCalc reads the hard points in Shock Web and Charged Bolt Sentry and multiplies the sum by Param8 (18): +18% lightning damage per hard point in either, +720% with both at 20, applied to the maximum only, as the Basin notes, since the minimum is 1. +skills raise the sentry's own level and base damage, not the synergy.

Lightning Sentry's own hard points feed four traps: +11% to Fire Blast, +17% to Shock Web, +9% to Charged Bolt Sentry (and one extra volley there per 4 points), and +12% to Death Sentry. The Basin says the Shadow Warrior and Shadow Master can lay it too.

Against players

A player's hit on another player, and a pet's, is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before resistances, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page says nothing else specific about players.

Build notes

• Twenty hard points here and twenty in each synergy take 1–314 to 1–2,575 a bolt at level 20, before +skills.
• Past 20, +skills add 24 to 44 to the maximum a level, before the synergy multiplier: a +3 claw takes a level 20 sentry to 396, 82 more base and about 670 more after a full synergy pair.
• The average bolt is half the maximum because the minimum is 1; the printed range is not the typical hit.
• Flat 20 mana a trap and 10 shots each; with five slots, relaying is the rhythm.