Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about my experience with playing Deadeye and also using the trap skills to defend a place. And it’s got me thinking about two things.

1. Has anyone else tried using the traps on deadeye?

In my opinion, unlike the core thief and daredevil, the Deadeye just seems like he can use all of them -really- effectively thanks to his play style. My favorite trap on Deadeye so far… is between Needle Trap, Tripwire, and Shadow Trap.

Shadow Trap has a 10,000 shadow step range as long as you maintain line of sight, and make sure the rule is validated that as long as you can walk there, you can teleport there. Oh and it cloaks you for five seconds. Six seconds if you have Shadow Arts. An ADDITIONAL 4 seconds with Sniper’s Cover. I gotta admit, it was so fun to watch a Spell blade rush after me through a path so far away. Trigger my trap. And suddenly dance around in a confused motion when I disappeared and placed a mark on him. Eight seconds later… one shot.

Needle trap because it immobilizes people, gives you a precious moment to immediately change targets and blow them up.

Tripwire is hilarious because to my knowledge only a thief can really break out of it. As long as you’re paying attention to it, and you have your mark on someone, you get a free kill that they can not defend against.

2. Will more people start using traps with deadeye?

Shadowtrap is useless because it gets stuck on almost every single pebble on the way. To have it be a usefull skill, it needs to be much more reliable: change the shadowstep mechanic to the portal one. You have to place the trap beforehand, so you cannot reach unintended places with it in the first place. Currently it just happens far too often that i use the trap and either want to port back to it or to whoever triggered it, only to find myself moving a centimeter because of pathing, even on flat areas.

The other two do have their uses though, but i dont think they will see more use just because of the Deadeye. Other utilities are far too valuable and with the amount of random cleanses and stunbreaks being thrown around, you more or less hinder yourself.

I really want Shadow Trap to work, but it have been beyond broken since launch. It is sad that they haven’t touched it since then

I used traps ectensively prior to DE in one build and will continue to do so.

Shadow trap works. You just have to be very deliberate as to how and where you use it. Given I tend to WvW defending my home BL I know a large number of safe places to put it wherein I will get that long port.

That said I do not tend to use it for the long port. I currently use in a p/d condition build and generally it for in battle shorter ports wherein I get hat stealth, the add of vuln and 20 might and stack from stealth before porting away with shadowstrike.

Making it work with DE and a long ranged weapon is not IMO going to work out too well if using in the Rifle spec. If I were to use it in WvW it would be on a spec like s/d or d/d and it would be placed while in battle for short ranged ports on trigger. The difficulty here of course is the Cast time on the first part of the skill.

There are times you can get an “ideal situation”. As example you are engaged at range with a ranged set and have this trap prepositioned somewhere between you and the enemy. He closes and triggers, you use the port after a weapon swap and appear behind him for an attack from stealth.

I HAVE had this happen but it very very rare and it would not be worth traiting for the few times it works like this.

If I would hazard a guess at all the times I have used this, I would say the majority of the time it as misdirection to escape a group pursuing you. I drop it and run as they chase and after a few seconds port back behind them and go in the opposite direction and yeah sometimes that fails due to pebbles.

forget about traps, in beta they were trash, a few years into the game they got buffed to less trash but never left that category… trash.

Volrath.1473:

forget about traps, in beta they were trash, a few years into the game they got buffed to less trash but never left that category… trash.

Are you using them like traps? Or are you just dropping them in combat.

Needle trap alone, if playing a condition build just as example, provides one of the best condi bombs a thief has.

getting 5 stacks might and applying 5 confusion , 6 poison , three bleed , 5 vuln and weakness and immob on a single steal is about as big a bomb as we got.

If in the DA line , even for power , needle is better then panic strike as the immob works at any time nost just when an enemy down under 50 percent health. It certainly a bit harder to land with the cooldown but it is unblockable and once you get the hang of it becomes easier.

Shadowtrap can also be very good as you can get added sealth fury and 20 stacks of might.

Ambush and tripwire are not as good.

Traps are best used as a secondary mechanic imo. A full trap thief would be ineffective.

Think about DH. A pure trap DH will not be as strong as a mix of traps and ranged DPS with support skills.

Same with thief traps. Using one in an unexpected way will add something to a build which is dangerous even without the traps. Because they aren’t persistent you need to distract your enemy so they forget where you left your trap. Then lure them into it.

saerni.2584:

Traps are best used as a secondary mechanic imo. A full trap thief would be ineffective.

Think about DH. A pure trap DH will not be as strong as a mix of traps and ranged DPS with support skills.

Same with thief traps. Using one in an unexpected way will add something to a build which is dangerous even without the traps. Because they aren’t persistent you need to distract your enemy so they forget where you left your trap. Then lure them into it.

Luring a person into a trap CAN be a way you play but not generally how I do it. I preload the needle and apply it on my steal. Even with the one second delay this trips 9 times out of ten on an enemy.

For luring people into traps that are prepostioned I can only speak to WvW. It is workable in high traffic areas near places you know people will go. Ie at one end of a bridge or near a sentry . It also works very well when a group pursues. Drop as they pursue. I use one build with needle and shadowtrap traited and do fine with it on p/d.

They can also do wonders against Ranger pets , necro minions and mesmer clones and here is an opportunity I can see for a DE rifle presetting one.

I agree with what you’re saying babaz. I’d only add that luring can be more effective where people cleanse initially and then are chasing after you only to end up loading themselves up again because the trap caught them off guard.

saerni.2584:

I agree with what you’re saying babaz. I’d only add that luring can be more effective where people cleanse initially and then are chasing after you only to end up loading themselves up again because the trap caught them off guard.

I agree as well. People often forget that most traps will go on cool down when they are set, not when they have been triggered. The thief’s Traps used to last for an hour, now it’s only five minutes. But the traps themselves only have about a 24-25 second cool down.

A preset trap can force them to blow condi, and people will often not expect the trap to be replaced immediately after.

For some reason, people also assume that a trap would never be placed in the open and will gladly run into the center of a room. or camp. Or people won’t assume that the ledge they can jump up to from a ramp (to try and avoid the one at the top of the ram) may have a trap.