Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the help on newbie ranger questions. I’m having a lot of fun trying out the profession.

I was recording some video to try to see the mistakes I’m making, and happened to capture this fight at a camp. At about the 45-second point, I use the spike trap on the elementalist

If you quickly start and pause the video, you can see the “trapper” and “super speed” icons appear as the trap is in the air. Then when the trap hits, I lose my stealth.

When testing this outside of WvW, the spike trap would hit and then give me stealth. My guess is that the delay on granting the stealth doesn’t take into account the flight time of the trap, and all my tests outside WvW were done at basically 0 distance. If this is correct, spike trap will never grant stealth when thrown at max range – but the runes seem to be encouraging a build that uses the traits.

So it seems like a there should be an easy fix in the code here to not have the stealth and speed trigger until the trap hits the ground (plus a tiny delay). That would make spike trap work pretty nicely.

Or am I mis-understanding how this works? Thx!

You actually get it pretty right.

The flight speed is not set with the runes.
The runes take effect according to “Using” – which equals casting the ability. Unfortunately – the traits that make the traps AoE targeted give them range AND a flight time. This prolongs the “arming time” of the trap to an extend that surpasses the activation of the Rune Benefit – resulting in broken stealth.

I’m not sure to what extend does ArenaNet want the interaction of the Runes – but I believe that the mechanics stated work just as intended.

It seems like a stupid bug.
Trap landed - you got stealth+speed
Trap hits someone - you loose stealth because trap’s (space here) hit counted as your own hit.

Ive been using trapper runes in wvw exclusively since they came out.

I find stealth and speed are not granted while in the air, only once the trap lands. For this reason I didnt use trappers expertise for some time because of the delay while throwing, the point blank activated the stealth significantly faster, enough to notice easily. I didnt really focus on the icons however, just the character stealth graphic and the actual speed increase.

So your experience doesnt equal mine, but I’d really prefer if the stealth did activate immediately regardless of traits…

I believe the reason youre not stealthing is as you say, the trap triggering removes your stealth. Try using a frost trap which does no damage for comparison. I have read also that spike trap can activate before you are granted stealth (so you stay stealthed) but this doesnt work in wvw in my experience. Slight wvw lag may be the culprit.