Guild Wars 2

Hi
The tittle pretty much says it all, are traps, on a Thief, useless?I’ve never seen a Thief using them in PvE or WvW, which are the areas that I focus more, I don’t care much for sPvP, even thought recently I’ve been doing it a bit more to get the laurel, since I don’t want to do the daily.

Anyway, if they are not useless in PvE or WvW, what weapon sets do yu recomend to play with traps? Are traps better to play defencive, or I can play an offencive style with them too?

Pve? Only one of use to you then is Ambush trap primarily though Needle trap may snare you a champion if you want that.

In pve you can waste an utility slot for ambush trap since it’s extra dps(pray you get the melee thief though) or needle trap for immobilize (still relativly useless).

In wvw i guess you could try running a troll build with tripwire+needle trap+S/P+Basilisk/devourer venom+panic strike (30 points in deadly arts) to lock your target in place for a while and use infiltrator strike to start the lock rotation and black powder to suck up the damage while the target is immobilized.

Remember the 1st and 2nd rule of mmo traps:
“traps have to be used directly on top of your target”
“Do not use traps as you would use a trap in real life, it won’t work”

Overall thief traps are what the name suggest, traps (terrible joke – check).

theres one part in COF path 2 i think with the shaman where you need to immobilize alot so i use them there. other than that i on a rare occaison use ambush

I use the Ambush trap on my 2nd PvE Thief. Using it basically gives you 50% of an Elite skill, which is really powerful. Against stationary foes, you can run up and immediately spin your facing 90 degrees. When you drop a trap like that, the trap’s trigger line will go through the stationary mob in front of you and it will immediately summon the NPC pet.

Between a late triggered Ambush trap, a new Ambush trap, and the Thieves Guild elite, it’s possible to run around with a zerg of x4 NPC pets. The extra dps is really nice, they can help tank trash mobs that you’re not attacking, and you’ll be hiding in Black Powder (AoE Blind) fields that are being created from your P/P pets.

Wiser with Age.3714:

I use the Ambush trap on my 2nd PvE Thief. Using it basically gives you 50% of an Elite skill, which is really powerful. Against stationary foes, you can run up and immediately spin your facing 90 degrees. When you drop a trap like that, the trap’s trigger line will go through the stationary mob in front of you and it will immediately summon the NPC pet.

Between a late triggered Ambush trap, a new Ambush trap, and the Thieves Guild elite, it’s possible to run around with a zerg of x4 NPC pets. The extra dps is really nice, they can help tank trash mobs that you’re not attacking, and you’ll be hiding in Black Powder (AoE Blind) fields that are being created from your P/P pets.

bestway is to run thru them AS you are casting it i find.

There are some uses for the traps in PvE where can see your enemies, know their moves, and know when you need the ambush or tripwire. Otherwise caltrops just seems much more useful to control enemies. There isn’t a trap build or any use for trap traits.

mPascoal.4258:

Hi
Anyway, if they are not useless in PvE or WvW, what weapon sets do yu recomend to play with traps? Are traps better to play defencive, or I can play an offencive style with them too?

With the many S/D builds, you can virtually take any Utility skill you want.

Ambush can be used as both offensive and defensive. Offensively for added DPS and defensively if you want to drop aggro and heal — or simply use it as live bait as you run away. I’ve stopped using this skill as soon as I reached Level 20.

Needle Trap is definitely useless for the most part. I only use this for fun trolling.

Shadow Trap is good only because of it’s long range and tracking capability. The problem is, who or what are your going to use it on that demands for its range and tracking ability. That’s right, none. If I am that far away already, I usually don’t really care anymore. So this trap has no offensive nor defensive value, but it’s fun to use for trolling.

Trip Wire has no offensive value since we can’t even take advantage of our target being knockdowned. If this is GW1, then yes, it has many uses. But defensively, you can use this to slow down pursuers — but then again, we’re better off using a Shortbow. So this one also has a fun trolling value.

So for the fun part, having 3+ Thieves in your group laying down traps will guarantee turning even a bunker Guardian into a rabbit. With 3 Thieves, your group can have Needle Trap approx. every 10s, if you timed it correctly. Knocking someone down and having 3 Thieves jump on them is fun for us, not for them. As a fail safe, Shadow Trap can be placed behind a bottle neck just in case someone in stealth had passed thru.

I won’t go as far as calling them 100% useless since some of them has a use in less conventional way.

Traps for the thief are in even worse shape than they are for rangers. The problem is that the class as a whole simply can’t live without things like shadow refuge, shadowstep, blinding powder, etc. Even the movement signet I would consider mandatory since I’m lazy and don’t like getting perma swiftness other ways.

So even if the traps were overpowered, I’m not sure they’d ever be good enough to outshine the other skills. At least for the ranger, their bunker build does no damage, has insane regen, and has near maxed condition damage so getting flame trap for them isn’t a hard choice.

So without massive improvements to either the class (so we don’t need certain skills) or traps (so they can actually compete with those other skills) they’re useless in WvW. As for PvE, Ambush as others have said is fun. Rest are garbage.