Guild Wars 2

How would others feel if Traps were changed into Wells?

Traps are currently the worst set of skills in game, disliked by many even before the Dragon Hunter was announced. After testing the Traps in the recent Beta weekend the majority of players agree that Traps are not only terrible but work against ranged Longbow play.

Our Elite Specialization weapon should work with our Elite Specialization skills. A ranged weapon requires a ranged set of skills.

I attempted to convert the Dragon Hunter Traps into Wells below:

• Purification – Create a Well of light healing yourself initially, enemies are damaged and blinded. When it expires, the light returns to you for a second heal.

• Fragments of Faith – Create a Well that deals damage and pulses aegis to allies, as long as they don’t already have aegis. When it expires, unleashes multiple fragments into the area. Each fragment grants aegis.

• Test of Faith – Create a Well that initially pushes enemies out of it crippling them, any enemies that reenter the well is punished severely. When it expires, it leaves behind a Ring of Warding.

• Procession of Blades – Create a Well that summons magical blades, whirling around damaging enemies. Combo Finisher: Whirl. When it expires, the blades fire in all directions piercing and burning.

• Dragon’s Maw – Create a Well that pulls enemies in damaging and slowing them. When it expires, creates a barrier which holds them.

The only trap i struggle to convert is Light’s Judgement because of how Reveal works.

Thoughts?

The only advantage of wells over our current traps is that wells can be cast by ground targeting. Give Guardian traps ground targeting and they will be superior to wells in every way.

Traps are wells, only they can’t be seen until you are in them and don’t start expending working duration until there is a target present. In exchange for that you have to lead your opponent, you have to anticipate a full second into the future to put the trap where it’ll be needed after it’s 1 second arming cycle. That requires skill, but in general that skill is rewarded.

Lets not completely redesign something that basically only needs a single bit flipped, enabling ground targeting like all other traps.

But then they wouldn’t be traps any more. We have wells, they are called consecrations. Wells don’t have all the same uses as traps I would hate to see them changed.

Also Nike. Other traps don’t have ground targeting after specializations patch.

Silhouette.5631:

Also Nike. Other traps don’t have ground targeting after specializations patch.

Fair enough. They were moving the other direction last I looked .

I’ll continue to look forward to Rune of the Trapper tricks over having wells.

Traps work decently on ranger & thief because they

1: Apply multiple conditions

2: Give access to crowd control.
& in the case of the ranger
3: Healing spring cures conditions & heals every ally around it

Guardians traps pretty much do a crap version of control (dragons maw only effects 1 enemy) and their condition application is limited to a small amount of bleeding and burning.

And by going with traps you lose

1: Condition cleanse
2: Teleports
3: Stun breaks
4: Invulnerability
5: Blocks
6: stability
etc…

So short of redesigning them quite a bit I cant see how they will ever be a viable choice vs shout or meditation builds even with rune of the trapper as a possibility.

Ragnar. I honestly believe the solution to that would be buffing the traps, not scrapping them entirely. Which buffing them was in the notes for changes for the next BWE wasnt it?

Silhouette.5631:

Ragnar. I honestly believe the solution to that would be buffing the traps, not scrapping them entirely. Which buffing them was in the notes for changes for the next BWE wasnt it?

That depends “how” you buff them.

Simply buffing damage numbers (while nice for PvE) wont be enough as their damage is so easily avoided.

Adding more effects onto them both offensively & defensively is the only way they will become worth looking at.

This would be decent, at least. Traps are just horrendous skills in this game.

Honestly? Traps fit the dragonhunter playstyle more than wells. Punish people from long rage encouraging them to engage you. And making sure that they always engage you on your terms.

Its not meant to be a full ranged class. But more a ranged/ambush style class. Where you actually have to think about what your enemy is likely to do. Pro-active instead of re-active (re-active is what most of our current playstyles are)

The slow cast time on the longbow 2-4-5. The design of the longbow 3 as well. Each of hte weapon skills seem to take into account prediction as opposed to reaction. Heavy impacts on all of them. However they rely more on foresight than twitch reactions.

The traps fall into that theme as well. Knowing what your fighting and having a general idea of how you need to act BEFORE the fight starts. Is it a thief coming? Odds are dragonmaw to interupt its initial burst and test of faith to lock it near you are going to be your friends.

Ranger? Dragonmaw can stop its pet from nailing you with a cc while you use your longbow skills to counteract its ranged pressure.

Necro? Procession of blades and the reveal/vuln trap (im sorry I can’t remember the name) will help with chewing through its heavy base defenses.

The traps in my opinion <—key word there. Are actually well designed. Though some feel under tuned (Looking at you procession of blades). And during my time using it I quickly found that certain traps were VERY good at dealing with specific threats. Limiting there capacity to either hurt or resist me. Which I feel is the idea behind traps in general.

Just replace hunter fortification (kittenty trait) with a trait that makes them ranged and give the caster a 1,5k aoe heal and they are good to go. Both ranged and sustain, fixed.

I’m not ready to dismiss traps at all. In fact, I think traps might be more powerful than wells. Why? Well, let me explain.

Traps in WvW and partly in sPVP are used as ambush spots. You’re walking around, then suddenly the world is coming to an end due to the sudden explosion of conditions and control effects that hit you. Rangers have been doing this for awhile, but now thieves are also adopting this playstyle. But, there was a good defense against this in condition cleansing.

Dragonhunter traps aren’t condi traps like ranger and thief traps. They are direct damage traps. Sure, the burns from virtues will still hit, and the trait adds bleeds, but that is on top of their relatively high direct damage. This makes an entire utility of traps become a very large burst of damage that can’t be cleansed away.

While the traps alone might be a bit sub-par (although their damage has just been booted), it won’t be uncommon to be hit by Dragon’s Maw, Procession of Blades, Light of Judgement, Fragments of Faith, and an additional burst skill from the Guard all at the same time. We’re talking about 22 × 6 bleeds, 20 vulnerability, 4 justice procs, revealed and slow status, a trapping barrier, and then an additional combo from the guard itself (for the sake of argument, lets say symbol of energy + hunter’s ward). I don’t have the exact numbers of the damage on each trap, but I imagine that this is quite a lot.

Second, traps can be pre-cast. Its a trick that I use in Silverwastes on my ranger, but it also works in sPVP and WvW. Traps linger in place for a long time, and if placed with enough forethought they can be used twice in a row.

So no, I’m not convinced traps are bad yet. If anything, the activation time for guard traps might be too long, but traps themselves not so much.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m not ready to dismiss traps at all. In fact, I think traps might be more powerful than wells. Why? Well, let me explain.

Traps in WvW and partly in sPVP are used as ambush spots. You’re walking around, then suddenly the world is coming to an end due to the sudden explosion of conditions and control effects that hit you. Rangers have been doing this for awhile, but now thieves are also adopting this playstyle. But, there was a good defense against this in condition cleansing.

Dragonhunter traps aren’t condi traps like ranger and thief traps. They are direct damage traps. Sure, the burns from virtues will still hit, and the trait adds bleeds, but that is on top of their relatively high direct damage. This makes an entire utility of traps become a very large burst of damage that can’t be cleansed away.

While the traps alone might be a bit sub-par (although their damage has just been booted), it won’t be uncommon to be hit by Dragon’s Maw, Procession of Blades, Light of Judgement, Fragments of Faith, and an additional burst skill from the Guard all at the same time. We’re talking about 22 × 6 bleeds, 20 vulnerability, 4 justice procs, revealed and slow status, a trapping barrier, and then an additional combo from the guard itself (for the sake of argument, lets say symbol of energy + hunter’s ward). I don’t have the exact numbers of the damage on each trap, but I imagine that this is quite a lot.

Second, traps can be pre-cast. Its a trick that I use in Silverwastes on my ranger, but it also works in sPVP and WvW. Traps linger in place for a long time, and if placed with enough forethought they can be used twice in a row.

So no, I’m not convinced traps are bad yet. If anything, the activation time for guard traps might be too long, but traps themselves not so much.

The thing is condi traps work on ranger & thief because once the conditions are on you the only way to remove them is via cleanses.
They also do things like cripple, knock down etc… to keep you there for multiple pulses.

Guardian traps dont & their damage is pitiful.

The other classes that use traps also don’t rely as heavily on utility skills for survival & condition cleanse.

This means that by taking traps your sacrificing
self healing,
mobility,
stun breaks
stability
etc…

All for a source of damage that is easily avoided.

And that scenario you mentioned will never be usable anywhere that thinking opponents are because you would be dumping your entire toolkit (which has quite the CD) in one spot and the second someone with stability or teleports comes around they can trigger it then escape it.
Which is turn leaves you useless for a good 40 seconds.

You would be much better off just using meditations or shouts

Really the only good traps were fragments of faith and lights judgment (before its damage got neutered) because of the utility they offered & interaction with traits fragments had.

Everything else traps could do is done better by weapon skills or other utilities.

Procession of blades – Had no utility or trait interaction, Whirling wrath can do just as much damage on less then 1/2 the cool down
Smite condition can do as much damage instantly, it can also heal you, grant fury & cleanse a condition

Purification – signet of resolve can heal for just as much & cure conditions every 10 seconds. Shelter can heal reliably and block attacks.

Test of faith – nice in theory but if the enemy doesn’t touch it after triggering it it doesn’t actually do anything (add something to make them want to leave the area and it might be worth taking, say pulsing fire field)

Dragons Maw – would be nice if it effected more then one target. The fact it can be easily gotten out of with stability or a teleport also hurts its usefulness allot (would prefer an AOE stun to be honest as dragons maw doesn’t actually prevent any action.)

So to sum it up other classes are only any good with traps because

1: They apply allot of conditions.

2: They are on short cool downs.

3: They provide crowd control on pretty much all of them to help keep enemies in them.
&
4: Some of them provide some utility & not just damage making them flexible.

#1: These traps do apply a lot of conditions. Burning, Bleeding, Blind, Cripple, Vulnerability, Revealed, and Slow.

#2: Ranger traps are on short cooldowns. Sometimes. Thief traps are not. Then again, the cooldowns for the traps can be adjusted, and being wells will not make things any better (see necromancer wells). Being wells just gets rid of doublecast.

#3: Dragonhunter Traps already provide crowd control. Fragments of Faith causes cripple, and is instant damage. Procession of blades is also nigh instant. Test of Faith causes cripple and a soft punish-if-you-walk-out effect, and Dragon’s Maw is an outright pull and barrier for 6 seconds. There’s only one trap that isn’t an instant damage attack, and that is Light’s Judgement. All other traps don’t need to hold you at all, in spite of being capable of doing so.

#4: These do provide utility. One is a blind + heal, another is a spammable aegis + cripple, another is a reveal, and dragon’s maw is basically a 6 second immobilize that comes with 4 seconds of slow. If you use the trapper runes they also all provide stealth and superspeed. Arguably the only bad trap is Test of Faith, since its strange effect means it can be counterplayed really easily.

And now for non-specific points.

#5: Guardians aren’t sacrificing utility to take traps. At all. Firstly, you don’t need to take the healing trap to have massive trap DPS, since the healing trap doesn’t do that much damage. This means that you can still have blocks and automatic condi cleanse. Second, virtues exist for a reason. If you take the virtue line, you get condition cleanse, stun break, and stability. Dragonhunters themselves come with a leap and a mobile personal shield that can absorb countless ranged attack, and also can take traits that give stability and protection.

#6: The “Source of Damage” is not easily avoided. You can’t see them until they’re already hitting you, traps are unblockable. Purification, Fragments of Faith, and Dragon’s Maw are instant. Procession of Blades is extremely fast. The only ones you can “avoid” are test of faith, for its obvious barrier nature, and Light’s Judgement, which takes awhile to fully activate. Thankfully the other traps provide control, and if not those traps there’s hunters ward, ring of warding, wrath of justice, chains of light, zaealots embrace, and binding blade + pull to yank them in again.

#7: Traited the traps have a 36 recharge (purification 24, dragon’s maw 48), and when pre cast their recharge ticks down. With smart placement, the traps can activate their effects twice within their own recharge. So no, you aren’t “useless for 40 seconds” because of traps.

#8: Traps are not exclusive with weapon skills. You can use both procession of blades and whirling wrath at the same time.

#9: Stability and teleports does not mean traps are useless. It just means that an opponent now no longer has stability and teleports when dealing with the rest of your skills. Also, half the trap effects can’t be avoided. Likewise, this is a problem that also exists with wells.

#10: You’re being too rigid. My idea of a trap focused WvW ambush class is a highly focused one, much like the trap focused builds of rangers. It doesn’t have to be exclusively traps. For example, if Light of Judgement is too slow for your tastes, you can swap it out with another skill to fill whatever hole enemies seem to punch through.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Guardians aren’t sacrificing utility to take traps.

You are literally sacrificing valuable utility skills from your utility skill slots to take traps. This couldn’t be more false.

Black Box.9312:

You are literally sacrificing valuable utility skills from your utility skill slots to take traps. This couldn’t be more false.

Then stick with what you know & are comfortable with because they aren’t going to give you that and more. Elite-specs are not an upgrade… Dragonhunter is an under-tuned alternative that’s still being hammered out.

Something people really don’t get: If the Devs feel Guardians are “in a good place” there is ZERO chance that the new alternative is going to be better. And realistically it SHOULDN’T BE EVEN AS GOOD as a Guard meta-build. They’re aiming for “just about as good, though definitely a little less” because frankly what we do with Dragonhunter in the first 2-3 months is gonna be nothing like what evolves over the course of a half-a-year of hard evolution. Same as the current cluster of tricks that make up the Meditation-Meta builds took time to refine.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#1: These traps do apply a lot of conditions. Burning, Bleeding, Blind, Cripple, Vulnerability, Revealed, and Slow.

#2: Ranger traps are on short cooldowns. Sometimes. Thief traps are not. Then again, the cooldowns for the traps can be adjusted, and being wells will not make things any better (see necromancer wells). Being wells just gets rid of doublecast.

#3: Dragonhunter Traps already provide crowd control. Fragments of Faith causes cripple, and is instant damage. Procession of blades is also nigh instant. Test of Faith causes cripple and a soft punish-if-you-walk-out effect, and Dragon’s Maw is an outright pull and barrier for 6 seconds. There’s only one trap that isn’t an instant damage attack, and that is Light’s Judgement. All other traps don’t need to hold you at all, in spite of being capable of doing so.

#4: These do provide utility. One is a blind + heal, another is a spammable aegis + cripple, another is a reveal, and dragon’s maw is basically a 6 second immobilize that comes with 4 seconds of slow. If you use the trapper runes they also all provide stealth and superspeed. Arguably the only bad trap is Test of Faith, since its strange effect means it can be counterplayed really easily.

And now for non-specific points.

#5: Guardians aren’t sacrificing utility to take traps. At all. Firstly, you don’t need to take the healing trap to have massive trap DPS, since the healing trap doesn’t do that much damage. This means that you can still have blocks and automatic condi cleanse. Second, virtues exist for a reason. If you take the virtue line, you get condition cleanse, stun break, and stability. Dragonhunters themselves come with a leap and a mobile personal shield that can absorb countless ranged attack, and also can take traits that give stability and protection.

#6: The “Source of Damage” is not easily avoided. You can’t see them until they’re already hitting you, traps are unblockable. Purification, Fragments of Faith, and Dragon’s Maw are instant. Procession of Blades is extremely fast. The only ones you can “avoid” are test of faith, for its obvious barrier nature, and Light’s Judgement, which takes awhile to fully activate. Thankfully the other traps provide control, and if not those traps there’s hunters ward, ring of warding, wrath of justice, chains of light, zaealots embrace, and binding blade + pull to yank them in again.

#7: Traited the traps have a 36 recharge (purification 24, dragon’s maw 48), and when pre cast their recharge ticks down. With smart placement, the traps can activate their effects twice within their own recharge. So no, you aren’t “useless for 40 seconds” because of traps.

#8: Traps are not exclusive with weapon skills. You can use both procession of blades and whirling wrath at the same time.

#9: Stability and teleports does not mean traps are useless. It just means that an opponent now no longer has stability and teleports when dealing with the rest of your skills. Also, half the trap effects can’t be avoided. Likewise, this is a problem that also exists with wells.

#10: You’re being too rigid. My idea of a trap focused WvW ambush class is a highly focused one, much like the trap focused builds of rangers. It doesn’t have to be exclusively traps. For example, if Light of Judgement is too slow for your tastes, you can swap it out with another skill to fill whatever hole enemies seem to punch through.

Somebody give this man a medal

Nike.2631:

Black Box.9312:

You are literally sacrificing valuable utility skills from your utility skill slots to take traps. This couldn’t be more false.

Then stick with what you know & are comfortable with because they aren’t going to give you that and more. Elite-specs are not an upgrade… Dragonhunter is an under-tuned alternative that’s still being hammered out.

Something people really don’t get: If the Devs feel Guardians are “in a good place” there is ZERO chance that the new alternative is going to be better. And realistically it SHOULDN’T BE EVEN AS GOOD as a Guard meta-build. They’re aiming for “just about as good, though definitely a little less” because frankly what we do with Dragonhunter in the first 2-3 months is gonna be nothing like what evolves over the course of a half-a-year of hard evolution. Same as the current cluster of tricks that make up the Meditation-Meta builds took time to refine.

I’m not expecting something better. I’m just expecting something that isn’t objectively worse.

Traps are great for the pve’rs.

Nuff said