Guild Wars 2

I love this game. I love my 80 ranger. I love traps on my ranger (I wish I could use all 4 of them!). I hate traiting for traps.

As far as I’m concerned traps need both Trapper’s Expertise and Trap Potency. Both are just incredibly awesome. Trapper’s Expertise is mostly making them bigger but the GTAoE is nice too. Trap Potency it’s the double condition duration that matters, not so much the CD reduction but that’s nice. I have no problem getting these traits or them being traits. My problem is the trait line they are in.

Traps benefit poorly from critical hits. Frost Trap doesn’t even do damage so it can’t crit. Spike Trap does 3 stacks of bleeding that last 10 seconds when traited. It also immobilizes for ~2 seconds (I think the Trapper’s Expertise is required for the immobilize but it doesn’t say anything anywhere, it just does) and cripples for 4 seconds.

Flame Trap benefits hugely from condition damage and duration. Even on a full power/precision/crit% build the up to 6 seconds of burning does more damage than the actual damage part of the trap. Viper’s Nest is a bit better with the power/crit build since poison doesn’t do tons of damage but the damage pulses do (Flame Trap does more because of burning). I don’t know about you but if I’m bringing Viper’s nest I want the poison to prevent healing so condition duration is what I care about.

It doesn’t matter which trap it is condition damage and condition duration are what you want. But to make them useable you need 30 trait points in Precision and Crit%.

Why?

Wilderness Survival and Marksmanship are condition damage and condition duration, respectively. Either line the trait traps would just feel like they make the most sense. As it is you’d need 90 trait points to really “Trait for traps.”

Sorry, but this is just a little thing that really irritates me about my ranger. I love my traps but every build I do where I put 30 in skirmishing just to get 2 traits for traps I end up at the same question:

“Do I go full condition to really use my traps and waste the 30% critical damage; or do I go power to use the precision and critical damage but not really make full use of the traps I traited for?”

Arenanet probably just wanted a weak trait tree for traps

Well it’s true there isn’t much else of use in Skirmishing for major traits but the 30% crit damage is really a big deal for some builds. Unfortunately not a trap build.

It just feels wrong having the trap traits in that line. There’s no synergy really and it ends up feeling confused.

Yeap, it makes absolutely no sense that the trap traits are in the Skirmishing tree.