Guild Wars 2

There is always so much talk about the spirit zoo being all about bad AI and being passive and so on and so forth.

So does the public see a trap ranger as one of those lusted after ‘active’ types of play?
Or does the ranger just totally lack active play..

I personally can not see traps as active at all in any way.

Traps are unmovable once laid down.
Also traps can not be actively set off allow the player to make a fire/ice/poison field when ever wanted/needed.

A trap by its very nature is fire and forget. Once laid down there is nothing that can be done to it. Except of course laying down a new trap which will remove the old one. Good initial trap placement does take some forethought but with the way maps are set up there are usually just 2 possible entry (choke) points to most circles.

Even when actively tossing down traps on people they have very little in the way of utility. A single second of immobilize or some chill are far from game changing or even of any use. It is all just condition spam and not much else.
Something useful with be knockback/daze/stun/reflect.
As it stands you just toss them as soon as they are off cool down.

How can traps be considered active play when everything is just spammed when off cool down? And even if not used as soon as off cool down, what tactical use would there be to not using them asap?

Traps are very active, since you dont put them down and wait for anybody to trigger them. You use them as ground AOE and try to throw them underneath your enemy so they deal their damage when YOU decide it.
Unfortunately, you can forgett about trapper since you dont have any stunbreak / condi removal

Aeri.5738:

Traps are very active, since you dont put them down and wait for anybody to trigger them. You use them as ground AOE and try to throw them underneath your enemy so they deal their damage when YOU decide it.
Unfortunately, you can forgett about trapper since you dont have any stunbreak / condi removal

Not entirerly true, the condi meta is faltering now that anti condi builds are arising, and as such not having condi removal (other than healing spring or EB) is totally ok now, not to mention rangers as a whole have kittenty condi removal, and spirit rangers (our “meta” build) has the same hinderances as the trapper build, it’s still in a good spot.

@OP to answer your question, it’s absolutely an active build.

The idea behind active play is doing something to cause some effect.

Passive procs on spirits, empathic bond, engi automated response, guardian purity, are examples of inactive play: things that happen by themselves with no input from the player necessary.

Whether trap builds require thoughtful/skilled play is a different question

Trapper is very active play since you have to guide and lure your enemy into your traps and to use them as short range AoEs by throwing them directly underneath the enemy.

If active play is doing something to cause some effect then spirits are active.
They are no different than signets as there is an always on effect and an activated ability part.
Each spirit has an activated ability that is very strong.
Sun spirits fast casting blind is awesome for stomping.

I would even say that a spirits proc is not totally passive as it goes off every 10 seconds.
There is very little reason to use both torch 4 and spirits burn at the same time as there is just so much cleanse in this game…
The effect is not very random (nor always on like bark skin at low health) so its timing can be leveraged.

As for traps..when would you want to hold off not spamming them.
The only situation I see them being held back is when someone is about to be downed. Saving it for once the guy goes down and then tossing everything you have on the body to stop the magic fingers rez.

Beyond that the cool downs are low and besides the condition damage…uh do you find that one second immobilize useful enough to with hold tossing down the trap? :0

Once in the long past I ran a trap build. Never found it very active (and lol to skilled play) as tossing something down when it is off cool down is worse than having a spirits proc go off every 10 seconds.

I find traps the same as a warriors For Great Justice. Spam spam spam.

So can someone list some reasons why they would not auto spam a trap when off cool down? As I just do not see what good it does to hold off laying one down.

Traps may be not super active. But considering your argumejts, most of AoEs should be treated as such. Meteor Shower is fire/forget, same like Barrage, Combustive Shot, Engineer Bomb Kit, Mesmer Chaos Field… I believe that traps are kind of fun tho, because enemy cannot see them placed until they activate it. There are a lot of uses for ones I use : Spike and Flame (Chill trap is meh in my opinion, I switch it for SoR so I have okay condi removal). Where Flame is straight damage from burning on veery low cooldown, Spike Trap may be used for e.g. on stairs, paths to simply slow down people from capping your points, traps are also very good vs. thieves
Wish new ones would not replace old ones tho That would be amazing :p

The only time I passively play traps is at the beginning of a game where I protect mid or if I’m running from someone. 9 times out of 10 I use them to keep spiking conditions on my opponent, and I don’t use the aoe placement trait (slightly longer place time). Generally I daze or chain imobilise my opponent, and while they are stuck unload traps on them before another daze. I only use fire trap and occasionally poison trap however. I never use 3 and rarely two, I just can’t give up lightening reflexes and protect me.

I play traps and find it very active, largely because trap builds cant (or is very difficult and uncommon) build in regen like most other meta builds (Spirits, BM, etc). Without that healing which most other ranger builds get you are left having to pay a lot more attention to positioning, knowing when and how to engage, etc, because you simply cant afford to be wasting HP like you can when you’re healing 200-500 a second passively. Its just a very movement based build, even for rangers who are always naturally very dependant on positioning in any build.

And to be fair, the fact that traps can either be used defensively on yourself, or thrown at a target, or even thrown to the side to deliberately put them out the way so you can lure and opponent into them once they are off CD again (meaning you can hit someone with 4-6 traps back to back) means you do get more play with them than you do with other utilities, whch usually only have 1 purpose.

I’m playing trapper in WvW bus, and I never just fire them because they are off CD.
I change traps according to people with whom I play, but basically : place fire on burst spot, ice, just a bit farther than burst spot, spike in the middle of the ennemy zerg, so that it’s cutted in half, muddy terrain, same as spike, poison on ennemy regroup, since they are likely to try and heal at that point,

So, to place my traps, I have to think about what my lead is likely to ask and when, so that the traps are being laid down when they are the most useful, to pay attention to enemy movements, once again, so that my immobilizes are the most useful…

Spamming traps without thinking, in WvW, at least, is the most useless thing to do… Player only tags lots of foes, without being really useful for the bus.

In duels or structured PvP, also, it is about placing the traps all right to create a burst, as Cufufalating pointed out, by placing them before you need them…

Also, the chain of them being placed can help with damages… if an ennemy is just passing on my fire trap, he’ll only get one tick of it… if I immobilise the ennemy one sec in it, the ennemy will get two tick of it…
I’ll keep the poison trap for when I see the ennemy is about to heal himself, to reduce it’s healing…
The only trap I use mindlessly if I have it equipped in duel/small scale is ice… because making the foe’s comp slower is always useful… Though I try lately to make a jump finisher in it, pretty funny, the ice armor :s

I also try to place myself on the other side of the activated trap (fire and ice) to take advantage of projectile combos…

I think any build can be active or not. Though I do find signet is the most boring build out there, I understand that those who play it see it as active… Same goes for beastmaster… absolutely not active if you just step back on healing mode and let your pet have fun, but really active if you are playing with it…