Overview
Today, I will be discussing a new strategy I discovered that is incredibly useful against ogres on NMHC and other enemies with high HP.
The Basics Of A Trap Stack
So, for those of you who don’t know (skip Part 1 and Part 2 if you know what a trap stack is already), the basics of a trap stack is something that can inflict high amounts of damage for low Defense Units. TrapsTraps and Trap Stacks are commonly used in later game, such as NMHC (Nightmare Hardcore) maps like Tavern Defense, Winter Wonderland, Akatiti and stuff like that. A trap stack is pretty much always used in builds where there are high-health monsters, such as ogres, harbingers, djinns and potentially dark elf warriors. All of these monsters I just named usually on tough NMHC maps have over 1 million health (an exception to the warriors). The reason I said warriors is because they can easily jump over defenses so traps are ideal for stopping them in their path. Mostly, people use traps for Ogres because they can potentially have 15 million health (that’s alot of health) and with good enough stats, traps can kill them in 5 seconds. Yes, 5 seconds. Traps are very useful and that is why some people have thought to do a trap stack. Some additional information about why you should use a Trap Stack is I can do Nightmare Hardcore Tavern Defense with only 54 defense units, and 0 minion units (well it was pretty difficult but I got there).
What is a trap stack?
A trap stack is multiple traps in one place. These traps are different types of traps, e.g. Proximity, Ethereal, Gas. Well, the trap stack I’m going to be showing you today is similar to this, but different in the same way. This allows you to have 5 Proxys in one place. This is most effective with buff beams but also packs a lot of damage by itself. This trap stack works with many different traps, so you could have 5 Proxys, 5 Ethereals and 5 Infernos in one place which would make some extremely high dps.
EXTRA: You can have multiple different stacks, such as Aura stacks and Minion stacks. Whilst the Minion Stack has the same effect as the Trap Stack (you can have multiple types of the same minions and different types of minions in one spot), the Aura Stack is quite different as you can only use different types of auras, not the same types of auras multiple times.
What do you need?
All you need is some equipment that boosts the radius of a trap. It is more effective with higher boosts. If you cannot obtain this gear to boost your radius over 500, keep on grinding and once you’ve got the gear, you can start the stack. On my huntress, I have a 5k trap radius which is perfect, but if I were to increase it with EQUIPMENT, NOT HERO POINTS, then it would be even more effective. This strategy isn’t really needed for Insane Difficulty and below if you have good builders, but is more useful for tough maps on NMHC. I usually use this for low DU builds, but it works with any map just different effects on different maps. Trap stacks aren’t really needed for the starting waves, so maybe for the first wave use auras, and then when ogres, djinns etc. start coming you should have enough mana for this method.
Can you get banned for this?
Nope. It’s just a glitch basically.
Do you have to download anything or edit the game files?
No. This isn’t changing the game files in anyway, and no programs will need to be installed (except Dungeon Defenders of course ) But, optionally, you can download either DDDK (check out Plane’s guide if you are having issues with it) or another modding tool to get your radius high enough for full potential. The higher the radius, the higher the effectiveness.
How do you peform the trap stack?
Ok, follow the steps that are shown.
Method 1
1. Drop all your equipment on the floor (this includes decoration, shields and stuff like that)
2. Place as many traps as you want (they have to be green so you can place them, also they should be very small and it will take 5 – 10 secs to place one) 
3. Now you’ve done this, equip all your gear, repair your traps, and that’s it! You’ve done a trap stack.
Another method you could alternatively use is:
Method 2
1. Respec your hero when you’re in the tavern, and put all hero points on things other than Trap Radius (the less hero points on it the more of the effectiveness).
2. Go into a map and follow steps 1 – 3 from the first method.
Or you could use:
Method 3
1. Equip gear that gives quite low trap radius (so the lowest you can get is a minus number e.g. -182)
2. Once you’ve done that, place the traps like told to in Method 1, Step 2.
3. Equip your gear that you usually use and BAM!
All the methods I mentioned have their own strengths and weaknesses. You can try them out for yourself to see which one suits you.
Extra
So I have some extra things for you. Firstly, this does not work with auras of any sort (if you want proof, try it in the tavern.)
Linking on to this, if you want to test this, just go into your tavern and do the exact steps but instead your traps won’t detonate so you have to manually detonate them (press the middle mouse button, then click on Hero, then it will say Detonate Traps and click that)
You can do this with as many traps as you want.
A bit of mana is required e.g.
If a proxy costs 40 mana, and you want a trap stack which has 5 proxys, get around 270 mana to repair them. If you need more mana, you can of course collect as much as you want.
Also, if you dont have ANY hero points in Trap Radius, it will work to its full potential as having none will allow the traps to be tiny.
Oh, a word of warning: I don’t think this works with Gas Traps, but feel free to let me know if I am wrong.
Some more things: the way to get maximum potential is by:
Either losing ALL your hero points in Trap Radius or
Having a super high Trap Radius (without hero points in it)
But to get it to its full potential you have to get a high radius without any hero points invested in Trap Radius, but instead investing it in Casting Rate, Trap Damage and Trap Attack Speed.
Effectiveness of the Trap Stack
As I am quite a hardcore DD player, I could (r.i.p) do most maps on NMHC, and now I can’t. But with this, it is definitely easier. It’s most effective with a buff beam, as it saves DUs. Also, if you want to have a mass of damage cheap in one spot, this is perfect. It works well with bosses as they usually have a lot of health. It works extremely well with Ogres when they stand still as you can inflict (with good stats) at least one million damage with this. If you have a quick trap speed, the Ogres can’t really do anything. Also, say you have a few DUs left and you have no idea what to do with them, use this on the crystal which is taking the most damage. Also, I found that because the traps take so little DUs, I could do maps like The Ramparts on NMHC Survival Mode with like 40 DUs (0MUs) and all I did was the trap stack. In most maps, only 2-3 traps can hit the enemies- with my stats I managed to get 3M dps with all 5 traps on one dummy. I would say this stratergy is ideal for ogres, but for WW, Akatiti, Tinkerer’s and probably King’s Game (unless you had a perfect build), you would probably struggle using this alone. Combined with other towers and maxing out DUs and MUs, most maps on NMHC are quite easy if you have other good stats. Where it is weak is that once you’ve done a trap stack, you cannot add to it unless you sell all the other traps in the trap stack.
EDIT: ‘Where it is weak is that once you’ve…’ This is not true. You can just do the exact steps again and again, you’ll just have to repair the traps which if they are tri-star will be quite expensive. Luckily, the steps of this can be repeated so you don’t need to do the following. Also, some more effectiveness of this is NOT to use multiplie Gas Traps or Darkness Traps, as their effects do not stack.
Final Notes
So something to say. This is a stratergy that I figured out ages ago, but I didn’t know if it would ever be useful. But, recently Ogres have been super OP so I decided to upload this. If you are reading this at the time of Harry’s giveaway (check out the DD forums) then I think this would be a good strategy to do some low DU builds. To be honest, I’m not gonna bother entering considering that I posted this guide so someone will probably use this and another strategy I am not aware of to get super low DU builds.
Big thanks to aLoToFDAmAGE for reading this guide and making sure it was all good.
I hope you enjoyed this guide and in a day or so I will be posting a new guide so be sure to check that out. Peace out guys!
– Nightmare <3