SV should return its trap Master roots

One of the identities of SV that I’ve liked most is that it was the “trap” spec.

People can go back and forth about whether or not it started a “ranged” or “melee” spec but one of the things thats been the most consistent is that it has better traps and better passives with its traps.

Regardless on what core direction it takes in the future one thing that should return into SV’s niche is being a trap master. But i would like to see them take it a step further for SV.

Its not enough having stronger or more frequent traps it should be able to trap easier, to an extent.

New Ability:
Trap Seeker:
While active, your Traps are launched directly to your targets Location within 40 yards. Lasts until cancelled.

Steel Trap: Now baseline, Shares cool down with Explosive Trap.
Explosive Trap: Now baseline (does not replace Wildfire bomb)

In steel traps Place
Expert Trapper
All of your traps are improved in the following ways:

Explosive Trap: Increases Explosive Trap’s damage to all enemies by 75%.
Steel Trap: Your Steel Trap also deals an immediate Bleed damage when triggered.

This way if people want to they can talent into stronger offensive traps or they can go into Blood seeker or Murder of Crows.

And of course SV hunters should also have this passive baseline:

Improved Traps:
Reduces the cooldown of Freezing Trap by 15% and the cooldown of Tar Trap by 50%.
Freezing Trap
When Freezing Trap’s incapacitate effect ends, the victim and all nearby enemies’ movement speed is reduced by 50% for 4 sec.
Tar Trap
Enemies moving through the tar have a chance to be rooted in place for 4 sec.

11 Likes

I approve of all of these. And I agree, regardless what core direction SV takes in the future, it should be trap master.

Under Expert Trapper I would add for Freezing Trap the old Waylay ability:

Freezing Trap will not break due to damage for the first 4 sec.

3 Likes

Yeah, I wouldn’t be against going back to having a bunch of cool traps to use and these are good set of plans for how to go about it.

Does it bother anyone else that Survival Hunters often have less Survivability because they are melee? Honestly, in my experience, BM has the best “Survivability” of all Hunter specs, and I just think that’s weird. Also, why would anyone throw a Wildfire Bomb point blank at their enemy? It’s just bad tactics… Also, it ruins the pelts! This is what we get when we take spells out of Genn Greymane’s book… Non-sense…

Sorry, that’s not on topic but it bothers me!

They could easily fix that by adding a delay to the explosion. That way you throw a bomb that attaches to someone and it detonates on them.

I had the same idea!
Also won’t it be better if it could also benefit the party or raid?
Example:
Expert Trapper: Whenever a trap is triggered, your party / raid gain 5% haste for x seconds, can only trigger once every 30 seconds.

This should make it more viable to bring SV hunters to Raid / Dungeons

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Btw sorry just realized i posted on a different character, this is my main currently

We don’t need new traps, just bring back the old ones - Caltrops (bleed dot) and make Explosive Trap (fire dot) baseline.

I remember SV was a bit popular during WoTLK. But I never seen one laid a single trap on Raids or 5-man dungeons except me, I dominated the AoE DPS especially on killing the ICC25’s Lich King with Trap as part of my AoE rotation. I enjoyed Range Survival back then… it’s the go-to specs when MM DPS fails as MM was inferior on Multi Target and Switching Target DPS. It was just sad I see no Survival laying traps on dungeons. That is maybe one reason Blizz took Survival Range away.

I’ve read that one point against traps is the inability to make them fit into raid encounters. How traps are much different than totems is beyond me, other than traps focus on enemies and totems can be party wide buffs.

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Its strength lies more now in PVP. There are far more better classes with better burst, DOTs, etc., it is a true hybrid spec with a lot of mobility and utility that just does not get utilized in choregraphed, scripted, static PVE encounters.

You remember incorrectly, because Black Arrow didn’t exist yet, so throwing a trap was the way you procced Lock and Load to get your free Explosive Shots.

Traps have to activate by being stepped on by an enemy. Since Hunters have limited if any tools to reposition enemies in combat, they are reliant on other players to move the enemy to the trap at the right time.

That said, I currently use traps on 3 of the first 6 raid encounters in Castle Nathria - Freezing Trap on Huntsman, Tar Trap on Darkvein and Sun King.

Now if they gave us back Distracting Shot…

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Black Arrow was introduced on 3.1 and 3.1 was WoTLK. Black Arrow Single Target DPS is inferior to MM’s especially when you are full on Armor Pen. But the AoE DoT was powerful… bring in Explosive Trap on Top of Volley, it goes equally or above DK’s AoE who were the flavor of the month back then.

Finnaly someone with a brain says it. Traps are the entire reason to play hunter for me.

Look at the old days where there was a 25% chance to just straight up root a guy when he walked in any trap! That’s fun as heck just kiting people with traps

Black Arrow did not exist at the start of WotLK no, though they added it in a later patch(I believe it was 3.1).

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Explosive Trap really didn’t do that much damage back then. The overwhelming amount of a Hunter’s AoE damage came from Volley, an ability MM buffed by quite a bit.

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It was combination of stuff… there was a multi dot… serpent sting I presume… spread all over the targets, explosive trap and then volley. AoE DPS was as massive as the dual disease AoE of Unholy DK. It’s way higher than MM’s sting and volley. Or I wont switch specs on AoE fights like on Lich King.

I think the sting has multiplier. Stings multiplying explosive trap damage was very significant than skipping it. And MM has no bonus damage on traps. Survival did. And traps last way longer with Survival.

Yes, Serpent Sting gave +3% damage, but multidotting with Serpent Sting on AoE was almost definitely not worth it. Serpent Spread didn’t exist in WotLK so it would be a LOT of time spent manually tab-targetting and casting Serpent Sting; time that could instead be spent on channelling Volley. Meanwhile, MM got a talent that increased the damage of Volley by 12% passively. I can’t know exactly which spec was better at AoE but it’s hard to see Survival overcoming a +12% damage boost to the primary source of AoE, and MM was already ahead throughout ICC for single target due to armour penetration so even if Survival was ahead I doubt it was enough to warrant switching for a fight involving AoE.

No… not serpent sting on each target. Multi shot spreads the stings.

Not in WotLK it didn’t. That got added in Cataclysm.