Guild Wars 2

I just got done getting crushed in a Conquest match when I got into a team with another thief against a team of 2 Dragonhunters. Suffice to say, it didn’t go well for us.

I was thinking about ways thief could be balanced when I was struck with the idea of thieves having the ability to see enemy traps. It would be incredibly thematically appropriate. The rogue archetype in Pen & Paper RPGs is dependent on trap detection and disarming. DH would still be able to effectively contest a point against a thief but it could prevent the dump all traps YOLO one shot from happening.

It could be added to Trapper’s Respite to make that trait more appealing.

I totally agree. When they first published Ghosts of Ascalon, Dougal Keane seems to be the idea for the Thief, however somewhere down the line that didn’t happen.

I don’t like this idea. Seems like a too strong hard counter for traps to me. And it would make the trapper rune less useful too, because if you are setting a trap to stay invisible, the thief can tell where you are by seeing the trap.

I would just decrease the damage of dragon hunter traps and call it a day. The other traps are fine in my opinion.

Honestly, the only way I can see this working is as a utility or an elite signet. Seeing traps is a powerful ability and anet would want to balance it against other options without sticking it in a trait line.

Something like

Signet of Subterfuge
Elite Signet
Passive: You can see enemy traps and stealthed enemies within 600 units
Active: For 3 seconds, remove traps you touch without triggering them, and reveal enemies you strike for 5 seconds.

Kodama.6453:

I don’t like this idea. Seems like a too strong hard counter for traps to me.

Considering the number of ways other classes have to put Revealed on a thief, thus negating one of their core mechanics and making them visible and susceptible to damage from the ENTIRE enemy team, I hardly think a trait that lets the thief alone see enemy traps is overpowered. Also this wouldn’t make a thief immune to traps since a skillful DH or ranger could still bait the thief in and drop the traps at an opportune time.

Maybe allow them to see enemy traps while in stealth? This way you can avoid them during a burst set-up or an escape?

Another idea, which might be a bit too strong, but nonetheless interesting, would be to allow thieves to walk over traps whitout triggering them while in stealth, just like the “Light Foot” trait works in Skyrim. You cannot attack while standing over the traps because you would get revealed and trigger them, but it would avoid players to set-up traps in a chokepoint to prevent people from getting in because thieves can sneak in and attack from behind.

Honestly, a major problem with GW2 traps is the cast time.

Thief traps, those with relatively minor effects, make sense on short cast timers, but the ranger and DH traps? Those are massively powerful abilities in the right hands.

In Gw1, traps were burly and beastly if you built around them, but they were balanced against their cast times. The average trap took between 2 and 4 seconds to cast, but the end effect of a good stack of traps was very similar to what you see with a trap ranger or trap DH. This meant you had to blow defensive skills to cast them in melee, or you had to use the trap as a trap and set it up in a preparatory manner.

I get that GW2’s combat system is designed around being faster paced, but when your only options are either nerf traps so that they aren’t useful as traps, or hard counter them so that only a select few characters can rock-paper-scissors them in a class system that’s supposed to have viable rock-paper-scissors builds avaliable to all classes… well that’s just silly.

If it took 6-12 seconds to set up a field of traps, you could still fortify a point, but you wouln’t be able to constantly re-fortify that point in the middle of combat and there’d be some useful counterplay due to the trap casting animations. What you’d lose is the melee-trap implementation, which I don’t see an issue with for DH and Ranger specifically because those traps are designed to be used as fortified positions with long range builds, while thief traps are more spur of the moment things for quick supplementary conditions rather than pure kill power.

That would make sense, but would require one dev who has ever played a thief template in pretty much any other game, or at least basic understanding of the mindset of the class, or appropriate use of its usually assumed skill set….. saddly I don’t think they have any of these.

Source: pretty much every post change or design (since launch).

At most they have shown that they could have made Acrobatics something a long time ago, but fumbled that by putting what made sense into Daredevil.

Seeing traps would then lead to a skill that would enable them to disable the traps. Or would seeing automatically disable within a certain distance of the trap?

Game of Bones.8975:

Seeing traps would then lead to a skill that would enable them to disable the traps. Or would seeing automatically disable within a certain distance of the trap?

F3? maybe an F4 to reuse said traps : D

Edit:
Maybe put F3 disarm traps in deadly arts (has some trap abilities in it already but doesn’t need to be here)
And maybe in Shadow arts some sort of disable wells / fields. (F4 to reuse : O )

might give us some counter plays to this new meta. Or give us an identity of what a mesmer can mimic we can pilfer/improv. (didn’t we use to have shadow magic!?)

Kodama.6453:

I don’t like this idea. Seems like a too strong hard counter for traps to me. And it would make the trapper rune less useful too, because if you are setting a trap to stay invisible, the thief can tell where you are by seeing the trap.

I would just decrease the damage of dragon hunter traps and call it a day. The other traps are fine in my opinion.

Just because you can see a trap doesn’t mean we can do anything about it.

You can’t expect the thief to kill a DH using Shortbow.

I am totally fine with thiefs being able to see traps. But a disarming mechanics would still need more discussion.

What if thieves could watch for the animations indicating that a trap has been placed, and note the location.

Wait...

Impact.2780:

What if thieves could watch for the animations indicating that a trap has been placed, and note the location.

Wait…

This.

I mean come on, being completely aware of where trap spec classes are at all times so you can see them place their traps even if they break line of sight or are across the map, is just standard L2p.

This is imo absolutely something that should be added as trait option to balance thieves agaisnt Dragonhunters/Condi Trap Rangers ect…

Traps have incredibly went out of control lately, especially since Anet added the stealth effects to rune of the trapper and traps should be also in itself a skill mechanic, that should be either somehow, or by certain classes/builds COUNTERABLE.

Skill mechanics in a game with a combat system like GW2 which have absolutely 0 counters to them are bad game design in my opinion.

When there are skill builds in a game like invisible traps, then there needs to exist also as a counter balance for classes a way to make the invisible traps visible if you play the right build that can counter trap builds.

Marks are also essentialyl like traps, but the difference here is, you can see where they are, which allows it the antagonistic player to calculate, if its worth it to take tghe damage to get by the direct way to your target.
but invisible traps always come togerth with the bitter taste of spikish surprise.
One thign that should be also considered into balancing trap builds should be the fact, that OVERLAYING TRAPS should become not possible anymore.
trap skilsl should not be able anymore to be layed exactly over another at the same place to spike enemies to death with them practically instantly, what is also part of the reason why dragonhunters are so overpowered with their massive damage dealign traps that can be layed over another at the same spot.
it wouldnt be so overpowered, if classes liek the dragon hutner could lay traps only, if the traps don’t cross the radius of other layed out trap skills from them, so that they need to place their traps with more space in between them, so that the trap spiking isn’t possible anymore, giving players actually a chance to react when they run into a trap to stop moving, before they run into the next one, instead of getting practicalyl instant downed by running into 3 or much more of them that were overlaying at the same spot inviibly.

This balance change should also include allies. traps from allies sho8uldnt be able to be layed ot at the same spot like traps from someone else. It shouldnt be possible to lay a trap, if the radius of your trap skill would cross one of an allied layed out trap.

Yes, that woudl be a significant nerf to trap builds, but one that would actualyl also encourage more skillful playing and thinking about it, where you lay traps, when you have more than one trapper in your group7squad laying out together mine fields of traps.

Thieves, to come back to them, imo should be the natural counter class to all trap builds of the game.
Thieves hsouldt not only be able to see traps via help of using either utlity skills or using specific traits. they should be also the natural counter to the skills themself by beign able to REMOVE TRAPS in a way that they don’t get hurt by them/dont activate them when running into them and make them also visible for allies, when they spotted them for their allies, so that they can see them to.
plus thieves should be able too ,when using a specific trait for that, to turn layed traps into allied effects instead of removing them, so that they damage your enemies instead of you, so flipping traps from harmful for you to harmful for your enemy.

Thieves should be the most experienced class from all when it comes to avoiding traps, because avoidign traps is their natural daily business as thieves, because people try to protect their goods with traps from thieves to prevent and protect the goods from being stolen by thieves.
The very reason, why for example certain pyramids were full with lots of deadly traps in the past to protect the treasures in them from grave robbers and where only skillful thieves amogn them were able to surpass these traps or could see them coming out of experience by knowing where to expect them for example.

Its not a l2p issue really, its more just an issue of bad thief gameplay design and bad overall game balance currently not to add to specific gameplay mechanics also counter gameplay mechanics where needed, to balance the system out in general.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I mean come on, being completely aware of where trap spec classes are at all times so you can see them place their traps even if they break line of sight or are across the map, is just standard L2p.

This doesn’t really hold up as you could use the same argument against plenty of stuff that’s already implemented in game. Why give Scrappers the ability to mass AOE reveal? They should be able to anticipate where the thief is when stealthed. L2P

And yes, it’s not difficult to see a DH lay down a trap, but in a game where your attention is being pulled in multiple directions I don’t think it’s ridiculous to suggest some sort of panacea for the class that already has to out play their opponents by a wide margin in order to have any hope of being successful.

Also I’m not saying this is something that should be done, just that I think it’s an interesting idea that would be thematically appropriate. One of many alternatives to just upping base damage and damage coefficients.

Because when the balance patch rolls around, and they “balance” thief by just cranking the numbers higher, people are going to wish they had done something as simple as just letting thieves see traps.

Orpheal.8263:

Traps have incredibly went out of control lately, especially since Anet added the stealth effects to rune of the trapper and traps should be also in itself a skill mechanic, that should be either somehow, or by certain classes/builds COUNTERABLE.

Traps do have counters. Specifically mesmer clones, necromancer minions, and ranger pets. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to fight one of these professions as a trapper ranger when every time you lay down a trap it gets set off by an expendable AI.

Trapper rangers are also very easy to lock down as they will typically have a single stun break on their bar, and only if they’ve chosen to only take two offensive traps.

Ehecatl.9172:

Orpheal.8263:

Traps have incredibly went out of control lately, especially since Anet added the stealth effects to rune of the trapper and traps should be also in itself a skill mechanic, that should be either somehow, or by certain classes/builds COUNTERABLE.

Traps do have counters. Specifically mesmer clones, necromancer minions, and ranger pets. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to fight one of these professions as a trapper ranger when every time you lay down a trap it gets set off by an expendable AI.

Trapper rangers are also very easy to lock down as they will typically have a single stun break on their bar, and only if they’ve chosen to only take two offensive traps.

The counter to traps is walking in to traps, got it.

I suppose the counter to ranged attacks is getting shot, right?

Those AIs aren’t expendable. They’re actually kinda core parts of those classes/builds. You can’t shatter a dead clone, you can’t use a dead minion, and you can’t really use a pet that’s all screwed up from traps effectively.

What would be the point? Especially vs DH traps who are so quickly casted AND the DH could pull you inside them so easily?

Being able to DISABLE traps, on the other hand…

Nihlus.9724:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I mean come on, being completely aware of where trap spec classes are at all times so you can see them place their traps even if they break line of sight or are across the map, is just standard L2p.

This doesn’t really hold up as you could use the same argument against plenty of stuff that’s already implemented in game. Why give Scrappers the ability to mass AOE reveal? They should be able to anticipate where the thief is when stealthed. L2P

And yes, it’s not difficult to see a DH lay down a trap, but in a game where your attention is being pulled in multiple directions I don’t think it’s ridiculous to suggest some sort of panacea for the class that already has to out play their opponents by a wide margin in order to have any hope of being successful.

Also I’m not saying this is something that should be done, just that I think it’s an interesting idea that would be thematically appropriate. One of many alternatives to just upping base damage and damage coefficients.

Because when the balance patch rolls around, and they “balance” thief by just cranking the numbers higher, people are going to wish they had done something as simple as just letting thieves see traps.

Apparently my sarcasm was not loud enough

Pardon me.

HUGE BLARING LIGHTS

Seeing a DH anywhere at anytime is standard l2P, You should totally be able to see everything because omniscience is a hallmark of the human race.

SIREN NOISES

But yes, you’re right.

PopeUrban.2578:

The counter to traps is walking in to traps, got it.

I suppose the counter to ranged attacks is getting shot, right?

Those AIs aren’t expendable. They’re actually kinda core parts of those classes/builds. You can’t shatter a dead clone, you can’t use a dead minion, and you can’t really use a pet that’s all screwed up from traps effectively.

The counter is to set off the trap with something that isn’t your body.

The shortest cooldown trap a ranger has is Flame Trap on a 16 second cooldown. A mesmer can output clones much, much faster. So yes, a single clone to clear three utilities worth of traps that will be out of the battle for anywhere between 16 and 36 seconds is a hard counter.

A ranger pet can be swapped out, removing all damage and conditions on it. Again, you just took out three utilities worth of damage by sacrificing what amounts to a 20 second cooldown. Rangers can also capitalize on the second biggest counter to a trap set up which is range. If you don’t come near the trapper you won’t set off the traps, and they have to blow their traps to access stealth to easily close the distance.

A minionmancer would be sacrificing utility skills to stop the ranger’s utility skills, so it isn’t as hard of a counter. But then you consider that a minionmancer’s minions are traited to absorb conditions and transfer them to their target as attacks and the trapper ranger’s main source of damage are conditions. It is again a hard counter. The ranger is being fed their own trap’s damage through the minions.

But then the ranger traps are condition based and anything that hard counters conditions will hard counter them as well. Which means condi immune elementalists and any profession that carries a ton of cleanses will be exceedingly hard to put down with a trapper ranger set up.

I’ve been playing trapper ranger for years. Long before it got any of the more recent buffs. These have always been the hardest fights as a trapper ranger for me, and continue to be so after the buffs to traps.

Trapper ranger is not without hard counters. I only hope my build doesn’t get more hard counters added because the traps of Dragonhunters are over performing.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Apparently my sarcasm was not loud enough

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law

It was the “This” that threw me.

no, it’d kinda kill the meaning of a trap, . Maby give only procession of blades daze. And the other traps a combination of movement impeding conditions such as immobilzed, crippled, weakness and slow. It’d be a kitten to avoid, but you wouldn’t completely be helpless. U’d still take a good deal of damage but you could move around hindered. It prolly force DH to not run a full trap build. a thief could still get out provided he runs withdraw and unhindered combatant, the weakness and slow would still be a kitten to deal with, but not as bad as just standing there and taking it all in. Ofcourse dragons maw as an elite should have daze as it’s an elite skill.

my tought on this.

Oh look, a trap. keeps distance but gets pulled into it and dies

You can generally see traps anyways with your third eye, which is also what Thieves use to see others in stealth, so it wouldn’t really help a whole lot imo. What annoys me about traps is not the damage though but the daze spam with invisible unpassable wall. That is what really kills you.

The problem is not even seeing traps (most of the times i even know where they are). Problem is that you have often no way around them due to pulls, knockbacks and dodging through them gets you killed because logic. Now if thieves could disarm traps like rogues in wow…….. Then again it would never happen, the gold spooned babies could never be put in danger!

Cynz.9437:

The problem is not even seeing traps (most of the times i even know where they are). Problem is that you have often no way around them due to pulls, knockbacks and dodging through them gets you killed because logic. Now if thieves could disarm traps like rogues in wow…….. Then again it would never happen, the gold spooned babies could never be put in danger!

But that would shutdown an entire class’s mechanic. That can’t be allowed unless it’s related to nerfing stealth.

Kodama.6453:

I don’t like this idea. Seems like a too strong hard counter for traps to me. And it would make the trapper rune less useful too, because if you are setting a trap to stay invisible, the thief can tell where you are by seeing the trap.

I would just decrease the damage of dragon hunter traps and call it a day. The other traps are fine in my opinion.

…so you’re saying that if a DH is using trapper runes it should be absolutely nothing like shadow refuge…

A few options to think about (just ideas from reading the thread):
1. Thief can see traps and deactivate them completely while in stealth (only self-given, or not, whichever feels balanced considering self-stealth is harder to get/requires personnal investment). That would give an obvious warning/tell to the trapper that a thief is around (cue for reveal/AoE/counterplay)as their trap just disappeared, as well as a nice niche.

2. Thief can see traps while stealthed (same as #1), and disarms traps he/she walks on while in stealth: they are disabled, but still on the floor, for 10 seconds. That would allow a counter to trappers without completely disabling their utilities like my #1. That would allow thieves not to get 1shotted while trying to use their stealth attack mechanic, while also creating a “kill or retreat before the time ticks out” high-risk, high-reward scenario.

3. Any of the 2 ideas included as a trait (Trapper’s Respite sounds WAY too fitting for #2!)
4. Any of the 2 ideas as a signet passive, as someone mentionned before me.

What if people can see perma stealth on demand.

quaniesan.8497:

What if people can see perma stealth on demand.

But what is the problem that the Thief (one class of 8 ) being able to see traps (one utility type out of 5 for 3 classes) in the whole game?

Are thieves reporting on Team Chat there is a trap at the feet of the Dragon Hunter at middle that broken?

And scrappers already have revealed on demand. 2 skills in fact.

Ehecatl.9172:

PopeUrban.2578:

The counter to traps is walking in to traps, got it.

I suppose the counter to ranged attacks is getting shot, right?

Those AIs aren’t expendable. They’re actually kinda core parts of those classes/builds. You can’t shatter a dead clone, you can’t use a dead minion, and you can’t really use a pet that’s all screwed up from traps effectively.

The counter is to set off the trap with something that isn’t your body.

The shortest cooldown trap a ranger has is Flame Trap on a 16 second cooldown. A mesmer can output clones much, much faster. So yes, a single clone to clear three utilities worth of traps that will be out of the battle for anywhere between 16 and 36 seconds is a hard counter.

A ranger pet can be swapped out, removing all damage and conditions on it. Again, you just took out three utilities worth of damage by sacrificing what amounts to a 20 second cooldown. Rangers can also capitalize on the second biggest counter to a trap set up which is range. If you don’t come near the trapper you won’t set off the traps, and they have to blow their traps to access stealth to easily close the distance.

A minionmancer would be sacrificing utility skills to stop the ranger’s utility skills, so it isn’t as hard of a counter. But then you consider that a minionmancer’s minions are traited to absorb conditions and transfer them to their target as attacks and the trapper ranger’s main source of damage are conditions. It is again a hard counter. The ranger is being fed their own trap’s damage through the minions.

But then the ranger traps are condition based and anything that hard counters conditions will hard counter them as well. Which means condi immune elementalists and any profession that carries a ton of cleanses will be exceedingly hard to put down with a trapper ranger set up.

I’ve been playing trapper ranger for years. Long before it got any of the more recent buffs. These have always been the hardest fights as a trapper ranger for me, and continue to be so after the buffs to traps.

Trapper ranger is not without hard counters. I only hope my build doesn’t get more hard counters added because the traps of Dragonhunters are over performing.

You obviously haven’t been paying attention to how Arenanet does things.

Take, for example, stealth. After the first nerf to burst damage, thief was actually balanced in regard to stealth. However, people couldn’t be bothered to learn simple counterplay, largely because the game was new and lots of people didn’t understand how stealth worked as it’s a bit different than how many other games approach it.

People that can’t be bothered to learn the counters continued to whine, and we got to where we are today. There are several options for people who can’t be bothered to properly counter stealth to just swap a trait or click a button, and bam, reveal.

Good players don’t take these abilities, but they’re there so pubbies who get stomped have something to fall back on, and because they help control overabundance of stealth based builds. A good ranger probably isn’t using sic ‘em, and a good engi probably isn’t using lock on.

Hence, the signet based approach to traps I outlined. Not only does it give thieves a clear role, but most importantly it incurs significant opportunity cost to use.

Basically, I’m fine with DH traps in terms of damage and utility. If anything ranger traps could use some range and duration upgrades to keep up, but in generally those “big trapper” builds need harder hitting and longer traps with longer trap cast times. Trap ranger took skill and careful use in GW1 due to the necessity to keep yourself from being interrupted mid-cast. In Gw2 it simply takes the ability to hit all the trap buttons because the cast times are so short. The resultant lesser impact traps are allowed to have on an enemy comes from the failed initial implementation of traps.

I advocate for longer effect duration traps, longer trap cast times to prevent their use mid-battle, and hard counters to counter those traps.

I don’t know if its been said, but I’d go for better traps. :c

As I’ve stated in my earlier post, “Seeing traps” isn’t necessarily be YES or NO. I’d even argue that it shouldn’t be: it is indeed an interesting niche capacity, be it as base thief or a trait in an elite spec or a signet or whatever else, and it’d probably even force mindless trap-spamming builds to pay more attention to their trap placement; wether or not traps should be buffed in effect and have their cast times lengthened is another (definitely interesting!) topic to achieve the same goal:
For Traps to be used strategically AS TRAPS. Not as invisible stronger Marks with a (barely noticeable) cast and arming time.

It is so easy to counter traps man shadowstep to the guard shadowstep out wait for traps to go off done…

Seems like you’re trying to sound more experienced than you are Kaishina…or be a troll, in which case I’ll take the bait:
DH traps daze, so you need a stun break to shadowstep out. In the case of the utility, it works…at a mere 4,5k hp cost from shadowstepping through Test of Faith, along with one of your only stunbreaks’ cooldown.
Also, the 1200 range of shadowstep makes for an easy True Shot while you’re Crippled and running away from said trap. Sure, SB 5 helps, unless….
Dragon’s maw. Along with the trap’s burst (+ test of faith’s activation damage of ~2k) takes a good third of your hp pool. But when you shadowstep/stunbreak/teleport out of it…
You get knocked down. Less than 1.2k range away. And there goes another third of your life from an almost unavoidable True Shot (unless terrain protects you, in the best case, which you should try to do.)

So worst case: 2/3 of your HP is gone, your only double stun break too…what for? Traps on lower CD than that very shadowstep? Even a sarcasm-ready person like you seem to be from the few posts you replied to should be able to realize the problem.
TL;DR: if you want to facecheck traps all day, do it, but don’t complain when others try to find an intelligent alternative.

True shot can be dodged traps can be dodged i’m too lazy to make videos but the only threat is jade maw if you get in jade maw you stand no chance but yea the rest is easly avoidable.

I not gonna waste my time with forum debates anyway but im just tired to see people complaining about traps when they are so easy to counter.

Yes DH is relatively easy to play yes traps are a little unbalanced but hey thief is not about going straight into enemy and spam 11112122 anymore like pre HoT now you have to be more tactical

Dont even run into 1v1 against a DH because yea they counter us but i think i have more time playing thief than you ever did and calling me troll is a bit too much. Just focus whitecaps mid support 50% gank and such