ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Ranger/Traps

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Traps Traps

William Wallace Issue -- 16:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Issue

Traps have been nerfed so much to the point where they are useless. Sure you still have trappers around, but they do so little damage and kitting is standard amongst the pvp community that traps are basically worthless. Long recharge and easily interrupted makes traps unreliable for damage and their secondary effect only last for a couple of seconds that there are better ways to accomplish the condition.

Suggestion

Decrease the cost of traps (yes expertise already decreases it, but they are still so expensive). OR Increase the damage of traps so they at least last longer then five seconds. OR

Change the way traps work and make them more innovative instead of so simple to avoid and worthless (yes it will require the guild wars development team to actually do their job for a change). OR Increase their damage radius so players can not easily kite out of them.

I completely agree, I never bring traps because their damage output is crap unless you bring gimmick skills or a build based around trapping.

How to fix them

Issue

Bad damage, easily interrupted, recharge time.

Suggestion

Reduce recharge time of most traps to 8, 10, 12, or 15 seconds. Change them so that placing a trap clears all adjacent traps to completely eliminate stacking of them. Remove "easily interrupted", it might be replaced for -40 AL.

EDIT-Someone pointed out that this would invalidate the use of Trapper's Focus. So I'll fix Trapper's Focus as well.

• Trapper's Focus 5e 1s 20r "Elite Skill. For 10...18...21 seconds, you have +28...40...43 armor while activating traps. Your traps cannot be interrupted and recharge 33% faster.

Multiuse traps?

Placing a trap clears all adjacent traps... Just by itself a bad idea.

Would work if traps have a number of times they can trigger. They could trigger each time someone walks in their aoe, but not if someone continously stays in them. Also, making traps affect all combatants would make it more balanced then. 91.190.66.154 16:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC) (Xaero)

Huntress issue -- December 24, 2008

Issue

Traps are flawed, while they do alright to support some mixed builds, in trapper builds they tend to either obliterate opponents through massive stacking or be nearly useless in combat being easily interrupted and having very poor dps.

Suggestions

Make all traps end after 70 sec rather then 90

Reduce the recharge time of all traps by 5 seconds

In addition, adjust individual traps as follows

• Barbed trap – decrease energy cost to 10
• Dust trap – decrease energy cost to 20
• Healing spring – increase energy cost to 15
• Piercing trap – change to cause cracked armor for 3…15…18 seconds, rather then doing additional damage.
• Tripwire – increase energy cost to 15, make knockdown effect unconditional

Reasoning

Reducing the time that a trap lasts before ending helps to control the massive stacks of traps. While this may seem largely countered by the reduced recharge time this is intentional. By doing this trappers can still create stacks of traps that do roughly equal damage to what was done before but with two important differences. First, since the traps last for a shorter period they require a little more foresight as to when and where to lay them in PvP and thus require slightly more skill to use. Second, since trap stacks are still possible they can still be used to farm in PvE and can be set up a little quicker so that other members in mixed groups aren’t standing around bored while waiting.

Most importantly the reduced recharge times result in a higher over all dps for trappers. While it shouldn’t give them a high dps it should at least be reasonable allowing them to actually make a significant contribution to combat. Also, while some my argue that the dps isn’t enough especially since they can be easily interrupted I think this is balanced by the use of blocking stances and the continued ability to lay stacks of trap that can be very dangerous.

As to the reasoning behind the specific trap changes:

Barbed trap and dust trap should have their energy costs decreased to help with energy management issues that could come up as a result of the lower recharge rates on traps. Though this may not be necessary I think it’s a good idea.

Healing spring on the other hand could become a fairly strong healing skill with the lower recharges especially in groups of trappers working together so I increased its energy cost a little, since it is still easily interruptible I felt this change though small would be sufficient.

Piercing trap seems like its mostly unused, mainly because rangers have no way to cause cracked armor, I felt the best change for it would be to remove the conditional damage completely and give it the ability to cause cracked armor. This synergies well with other traps potentially increasing the damage they do as well as working well in combination with body shot. I believe this change would be a good change but not overpowered.

Tripwire is nice but I’d like to see an unconditional knockdown on it especially giving that it has one of the longer recharge rates. To help compensate I increased the energy cost slightly.

Btw I considered the idea proposed above of making traps so they aren’t easily interruptible and replacing it with –40 armor while activating, but I think that with the above changes that would be going to far and make traps to powerful.