Guild Wars 2

Traps are currently not all that useful.
While shadow trap can potentially give insane strategic advantage and abmush trap is sometimes used in PvE to bolster dps, the other traps are pretty much lackluster.
I feel like traps should keep their “niche” role, where they are something, you’d put on yout hotbar, when you need them, rather than having whole builds revolve around them(hi ranger), but currently, there is no real reason to do so.

To start the discussion:
What if Needle Trap also applied 4 seconds of revealed to the target? Would the skill be used to block entrances to sieged towers and ward off portal bombs in WvW or would it still be garbage tier?

The major problem with traps I think is that they have a chance of being dead weight on your bar. If you place the trap and the enemy avoids it, that skill is doing nothing for you and you just wasted a utility slot that could have been filled with Shadowstep, Infiltrator’s Signet or any other ability that is useful 100% of the time.

The active ability of traps needs to be good enough to justify the risk of it not activating at all, but in most cases it is not. Ambush trap is probably the only trap with a unique enough effect to justify bringing it, the other traps just aren’t worth it.

The alternative is to do what they did with Shadow Trap. Give all traps a skill that can be activated regardless of whether or not the trap is triggered. That way traps will always be useful, regardless of whether your opponent triggers them or not. The triggered ability should still be more powerful than the non-triggered one so that you want an enemy to trigger the trap but it’s not so disastrous when he or she does not.

In general, trap mechanics need to be redesigned to match Shadow Trap. Golden rule of traps in MMOs is: if you want traps to work, you must place them directly on top of your opponent. This is stupid, it is not how traps should work, and only trap that breaks this rule is Shadow Trap.
With this trap, you wait for a prey like a spider to fall into it. It feels epic when somebody wounded triggers it, resulting in instant death out of nowhere (although most of the time enemies wih full HP trigger it, but still you have the advantage of surprise).

The rest of traps aren’t only very weak or very situational, but worse- not fun to use.

All traps should have a destroy trap effect like shadow trap has now obvoiusly a different one on each trap that gives the thief a short term advantage boons condition removal come to mind.

Traps should be unblockable and should all have an AoE effect (with the exception of shadow trap).

The size needs to be increased to level of ranger traps.

The cast time needs to be drastically reduced.

This might make me use them.

The real problem however is there is no place on the utility bar for them because of the “must have utilities”. You got to have atleast 1 stunbreaker and shadow refuge,. You do need Signet of shadows if you do not have movement speed increasing runes, if you have those blinding powder or another stun breaker are the best choice anyway and caltrops beat the traps damage and utility wise without being pre-cast.

^Why do you NEED shadow refuge and SoS?
I run infiltrator’s signet, RFI and ShS which works perfectly fine. Makes it harder to escape a fight sure, but doesn’t make it unviable in a fair fight.

Pre-shadow trap nerf I used shadow trap instead of RFI. But I don’t like how clunky it is now when not triggered..

^Because Shadow Refuge is the best group utility thieves have and slow thieves are dead thieves.

I agree regarding pre-nerf Shadow Trap had to be on your utility bar but that basically was your 2nd stunbreaker/get out of jail for free card.

P.S:: There are not fair fights, fighting is the essence of unfairness, someone who asks you to fight fair is just trying to get an unfair advantage over you by limiting your options.

I mean a fair fight as in, going for the kill and not randomly going out of combat because you were losing.
Shadow refuge in WvW is a good utility when playing in group yes, but if you’re alone it’s just a panic button to escape afterwards most of the time. As for slow thieves dead thieves, unlikely. The speed buff in combat is hardly anything worth writing home. If you don’t use the active part of it, it’s just a waste of slot in combat (though I’ve seen some thieves cleverly use the active blinding part, so I’m not saying the utility itself is useless).

I’m just saying that those utilities aren’t a “must” in every thief build out there.
(In case this seemed off-topic discussion: This discussion means that there IS place for traps in our utility bar, IF they weren’t so crap at least)

As for shadow trap being a “get out of jail card”. In small fights I preferred using it offensively or for baiting. Only when I see a big fight incoming, I would use it to break free and escape. This second part got nerfed and trying to activate the untriggered part takes too long.

I already suggested. Reverse shadow trap! Once triggered, (on activation) enemy shadowsteps towards your location. And blinded. For the lulz.