Guild Wars 2

Traps. The skillset that no one uses when playing thief. The skillset that only PvE mobs get caught. The skillset that shouts “HEY MAN I’M HERE CAN YOU PLEASE SIT ON ME SO I CAN BE EFFECTIVE”. The skillset that is so useless it only exists to occupy a utility slot.

In my opinion

-Traps should be thrown where you stand or should have 200 range. They are barely existing on people’s skillsets and nobody uses them.

-Traps are more likely to be used by Rangers. Because you know, Rangers, they are the ones who live in the wilds.

-They are SO OBVIOUS when getting set that when you’re setting a trap everbody knows that there is a trap.

I think there really needs to be a rework or the thing I said “thrown to places”.

Please ANet, they need some love too.

Another issue is that traps like needle trap are a long rectangle, so even in pvp where you have a point, it’s hard to get someone to step on it. Rangers and guardians get much more utility out of theirs in my opinion, but when you do land needle trap, it’s pretty awesome. I was about to die against a necro in pvp yesterday and right before, he hit my needle trap and I ended up winning the fight as a result.

Sontaran.5904:

Another issue is that traps like needle trap are a long rectangle, so even in pvp where you have a point, it’s hard to get someone to step on it. Rangers and guardians get much more utility out of theirs in my opinion, but when you do land needle trap, it’s pretty awesome. I was about to die against a necro in pvp yesterday and right before, he hit my needle trap and I ended up winning the fight as a result.

As you mentioned, he probably forgot there was a trap so he stepped on it. There is no way that a mentally stable person would step on an obvious trap like these.

Damage buffs or condi buffs will not increase their effect too. Their cast time should either get removed, or they should have 1/6 or 1/8 cast time.

Yeah it was because it dropped when casting my heal, so he probably didn’t notice, and we were fighting on a point.

They also need some bug fixes cough cough shadow trap cough

The traited needle trap is significantly easier to use due to the fact you can mask setting the trap by weapon swapping to cancel the heal animation and lay the trap instantly. My favourite way to use that is with steal; With confusion on steal, poison traits and geomancy sigil it’s a spike in and of itself and if you time it right the geomancy sigil will proc panic strike, meaning the enemy gets hit with the trap as soon as the arm time finishes. Even if it misses the odds are the enemy isn’t aware the trap is there.

Other than that, the traps are mostly useful if you’ve plenty of space and you set them for pursuers to run into – for this reason they’re much more useful in WvW where the spaces are big and the enemies are stupid. That said, since the poison trait buffs it’s better to run impairing daggers and agility signet over traps imo.

To make regular traps more viable in combat they either need the arm time removing or, preferably, the trap area made a circle not a line. Either of these changes would make traps way more usable again.