Wake of Fire

A trap that emits waves of fire.

Wake of Fire is the Assassin's fire sentry (Traps tree, level 12, requires Fire Blast; it unlocks Blade Fury and Wake of Inferno). Laid on the ground, it sends five waves of flame toward whatever wanders into its range. The numbers that decide it are the fire damage per wave, 63–72 at level 20, and the fixed 5 shots it fires before it expires.

The numbers

The damage is EMin/EMax with a HitShift of 8, so the columns are read as written: 5–10 at level 1. The minimum grows +2 a level to level 8, +3 to 16, +5 to 22, +7 to 28 and +9 past that (EMinLev1–5 are 2, 3, 5, 7, 9); the maximum +2, +3, +6, +8 and +10 over the same brackets (EMaxLev1–5 are 2, 3, 6, 8, 10). A level 20 wave is 63–72 fire, a level 30 wave 133–152. +skills count. Shots are Param1, 5 at every level, so the column is left out; mana is a flat 13.

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 fires at targets within its own line of sight and awareness range, which it gives as 10 yards; it cannot be targeted or harmed and expires after its five shots.

Each shot, the Basin says, is a piercing missile that periodically fires two short piercing missiles out to either side of its path, which is what paints the advancing wave; a wave is 10 yards wide, and the main missile's range grows with the skill's level. Every missile can deal the fire damage, a large target can be hit by more than one in a wave, and a next-hit delay of 4 frames stops a target taking it more than five times a second.

The Basin says five waves at most once every 5 frames is a theoretical ceiling of five times the printed damage a second; reaching it on purpose is not practical.

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

Synergies and +skills

EDmgSymPerCalc reads the hard points in Fire Blast and Wake of Inferno and multiplies the sum by Param8 (10): +10% fire damage per hard point in either. +skills raise the sentry's level and base damage, not the synergy. Wake of Fire's own hard points are a +11% synergy to Fire Blast and an +18% synergy to Wake of Inferno, and they lengthen Wake of Inferno's spout (one third of a yard a point, see that page). 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

• Five shots and a flat 13 mana: the sentry is cheap to relay, and relaying is how it keeps firing.
• A hard point buys about 5 damage a wave at level 20; a hard point in Fire Blast or Wake of Inferno buys +10% on every wave and feeds the other fire traps too.
• The wave is 10 yards wide: it covers a corridor, and anything that stays in it can be hit by several missiles of the same wave.