Thief Traps Underused?
Not anytime soon. The feature pack has no changes to traps, just a nerf to fotm thief builds. I have seen nothing to indicate that Arenanet cares about traps either.
Most likely there are no plans to change traps anytime soon.
I would personally like to see one change to traps – that they all activate in a circle around the player rather than in a line.
My Sylvari thief uses a trap or two, as often as not they are against major enemies, where I run alongside them and lay it under their hit circle so it activates immediately (Ambush) or when I was running pre-nerf Orr where I’d use Needle Trap (thought this was called Caltrops?).
The Thief is in general a class, that needs just like the ranger a bigger class gameplay redesign:
1) Remove Steal from F1 and make out of the Steal Mechanic an automatism, thats based on a chance, which can be traited and buffed through sigils/runes, including an increase of “Steal Slots” from 1 to maximum 3, so that the thief can steal more often, before he is forced to use a Steal Skill to be able to steal again.
Also the Traits should affect the chance of stealing, not only the cool down time from when you can steal again after a steal.
2) Move the Venoms under redesigned effects and names (Snake Venom, Spider Venom, Rat Venom and Frog Venom to F1 to F2 as the new Thieves F-Mechanic Gameplay so that Venoms play from now on a much bigger gameplay role in the complete Thief Gameplay, as Venoms should, casue Thieves are Masters of all kinds of deathly venoms, so they should be their main gamreplay mechanic.
Stealing on the other hand is something, what Thieves do automatically always, whenever they get a chance to do so …
Just with the change, that Stealing should not include anymore a Shadow Step.
3) Replace the removed Venom Utility that left a gap with new Chakra Utility Skills to fill up the created gap and to give Thieves some new skills that would be alot more useful as overall utility skills, than those venoms ever were for basically just only 1 single build – Condition Thief Venomshare
4) Change the Trap Skilsl to be Ground Target Skills if traited, merge them with other utilities like Signets to give the Thiefe more useful Utility Skills and create again space for new better Utilitiy skills, that really feel like a Utility and not like a waste of a skill slot because of loosing too much stat efficiency for just beign able to do a certain action once every xx seconds
5) Merge alot of useless Traits and fill up the gaps with useful new traits.
6) Rebalance the Thieves Underwater Skills as they are compared to the skilsl from all other Classes absolutely underwhelming and underpowered, which is a reason, why thieves hate water, like cats, underwater combat cripples our whole gameplay down to 1/3 of our cababilities and that simply said totally SUCKS. No other class gets for underwater combat so massively crippled, like the thief in regard of the usability of class mechanics and utility skills/elite skills, where we have only this ridiculous weak basilisk venom.
7) The thief must become alot lesser reliant of stealth, by improving significantly their mobility, giving them more stability, raising their base health to the same niveau of a ranger and giving them more options to get vigor.
Shadow Steps need to be redesigned into Shadow Walks so that they can be used as a free evasive move that doesn’t cost endurance
I know, certain stuff of these suggestion might be op, but balancing is ANets work and in the end it are just examples that show how it could look like and be named, but this is somethign, how id wish how the thiefs utilitiy should be handled with a next Balancing Update
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-pure-signet-profession-makes-you-cringe/first#post4324132
And the thief coold need among their weapon skilsl some quality of life improvements to make the skilsl more fun to use.
Like addign to Heart Seeker the same mechanim, like the warriors Whirlwind Attack, that before you use the heart seeker, an arrow appears with that you can decide in a 360 degree style the direction of your heart seeker attack, what would improve the QoL for thieves to change better directions while using this attack quickly multiple times to react better on movement changes of an enemy.
I’ve tried to make an all trap build work before with both trap traits, but it was just complete garbage. The trouble is that the things that make thieves good generally aren’t in included in the trap utilities.
I’ve seen some clever use of shadow trap in PvP or people using ambush trap and tripwire in dueling, but to not take things like shadow step or shadow refuge really takes away a lot of your helpful utility and defenses.
I feel like they definitely do need a boost, especially in the traits area. The corrosive traps trait is basically worthless, particular since it competes with things like sundering strikes, mug, and venomous might. Maybe if the trait allowed them to remove one or two boons they could be useful in a variety of situations, such as trying to decap a node or placing in front of a charging zerg so they lose their might and stability.
For now they’re just there to ignore for the most part. Hopefully they’ll be able to do something nice with them in the future, or they’ll implement other changes that will synergize well with traps and thus make them indirectly useful.