Why are traps so unpopular?

[Gwyrddu]

Going off the statistics, traps is the least common set for level 50 characters for both defenders and corruptors. Yet it's the only support set besides trick arrow that doesn't have those stupid ally only powers that I usually skip unless I have nothing else to take.  Anyway I'm just wonder whether there is an actual problem with the set or does nobody do solo missions? It's even weirder that for masterminds which actually always has a target for ally powers traps ranks about average.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Gwyrddu

[Apparition]

It’s because teams move far too quickly these days for Traps to be useful, and if you are playing a support character odds are that you are going to team at least some of the time.

 

Also, FWIW, Dark Miasma is another support set that doesn’t require allies for any power.

[Psylenz0511]

15 minutes ago, Apparition said:

It’s because teams move far too quickly these days for Traps to be useful, and if you are playing a support character odds are that you are going to team at least some of the time.

 

Also, FWIW, Dark Miasma is another support set that doesn’t require allies for any power.

 

With enough recharge, you can cast an acid mortar every spawn as quickly as you can cast darkest night, howling twilight, or twilight grasp. You can cast seeker drones BEFORE each spawn, and have poison trap available for longer boss fights. Will you need caltrops every fight? Probably not. Traps has a single target immobilize that is resisted less than holds to help slow/immobilize annoying running bosses.

 

Time, electric affinity have Heals over Time, or Absorbs you can cast before fights to help mitigate damage before the fights, along with the shields and bubbles other sets have that you may be more familiar with in forcefields, sonic, thermal, cold, pain(?), and empathy fortitude.

 

Technically, you have the pet in defender electric affinity; you do not have to have team mates to solo with. Poison was changed so you don't have to have an ally for venomous gases. To me it sounds you would be happy with Traps or Poison. Force Field Generator and acid mortar with a good  prep of seeker drones are good enough for my trapper to start every fight. Good luck!! Remember, Traps has the most consistent supply of -regen in boss fights over the duration of the fight with the poison trap, although for a short burst EM Pulse, EM Pulse Arrow and Howling Twilight have greater burst -regen. Traps is a boss killer!

[Bionic_Flea]

Traps is under-rated.  As a solo character, it excels.  You can set up your trap pit of doom and then draw critters there to laugh maniacally.  It also has a bad rap of "too slow for today's game", but I disagree with that.  With a good build and enough recharge you can get there before the tank to plant poison trap and acid mortar.  The bombs, however, are a bit dated with a long animation and too easy to interrupt.  The bombs are bonus damage, which is nice but not needed on a team.

 

Traps is also great against AVs and GMs with -1000 regen from poison trap and the -20 resist from Acid Mortar that can be doubled with Achilles Heel.

 

Traps now also benefits greatly from Fold Space.  Bring them to your Pit of Doom!

[KC4800]

I have a /Traps Corruptor with Fold Space. Hasn't seen teamage his entire existence. Sometimes the RNG gets the better of you, just be prepared to see cheap deaths. Do everything right, RNG still gets you. How? Even 95% misses 5% of the time. Caltrops is your friend.

[Tantricsecrets]

I just recently made a traps/rad and it's procd out. I took everything but trip and time bombs. The damage is pretty high with all the procs and debuffs and aoes.

 

No issues with speed setting up at low levels but at high lvls if the difficulty isn't high enough then I can't set up fast enough. I usually am only putting poison trap, caltraps, and mortar down. Seekers come out after each mob so I don't have to set it up during combat. During av fights I can setup 3 mortars and poison traps is around 20 seconds recharge. 

 

My main issue is ffg is too slow or gets stuck so I don't depend on it to much for def and went with scorpion shield. 

 

Overall traps is a great set just activation times need to be adjusted imo for most powers. 

 

[Doomguide2005]

What others have said.  It's underrated and most teams move way too fast to allow Traps to do Traps.

 

That said an team of Trappers is insanely potent (like most teams composed of multiple defenders 😄).  Just a matter of keeping some sort of rotation going so every mob gets a piece of love 😜

[Carnifax]

I've been on a bit of a Traps buzz recently. I started with a Thugs / Traps which is quite effective and has most of Traps toys along with Fold Space and heading for Burnout too. On teams the Thugs helps because they are constantly laying damage down while you're messing around with Traps. 

 

After that I wanted more. Rolled a Traps / Rad Def and a Controller equivilent (Ice/Traps/Earth/TP/Sorcery) on Beta and tried out both at 50. Traps/Rad was fine but the Ice / Traps was really enjoyable. Felt like Ice gave me enough control to toe bomb with Trip mine a bit more successfully than the Thugs/Traps or the Traps/Rad. Genuinely feels like one of the better combos for Ice Control. 

 

Of course on suped up 8 man teams you might feel like you're not adding a huge amount or dropping things just to debuff / explode the last 2 things in a spawn, but I've always said that 3/8s of any strong 8 man team is unneeded anyway. I've felt the same with pretty much any support, at least until you reach the AV. Then its your time to shine. 

 

On a smaller 4/5 man team it's excellent. As it is solo, but the pace is a little different (or can be). Fold Space is a game changer for Traps, even on teams the Tank is going to love you if you're fighting things like Praetorians, who are less inclined to scrum in. 

[TrishaTwilight]

My mind/traps controller has made a living off of mass hypnosis/trip mine and I love it. But it is also one of my favorite sets. That feeling of 'too slow for the team' can happen though if you're worried about seeing your traps just laying there as you run away to the next group. It's okay though, you'll be ready with new tools for the next group. I always skip the regen booster and time bomb. But the rest, worth it!

[arcane]

19 hours ago, Apparition said:

It’s because teams move far too quickly these days for Traps to be useful, and if you are playing a support character odds are that you are going to team at least some of the time.

 

Also, FWIW, Dark Miasma is another support set that doesn’t require allies for any power.

Well, Traps can still be useful if you are just toe bombing Poison Trap, Acid Mortar, and Caltrops the whole time. I think you mean teams move too fast for Traps to be “fully utilized”. 
 

Also, even when I’m soloing, I find FFG so annoying to stay inside of. I’m a very mobile combatant, whether because of kiting or because of setting up cones or whatever. Trying to stay in the high defense zone is very restrictive. I find this very annoying on my Traps/AR but not so bad on my Grav/Traps. 

[Bopper]

It's hard to say why, exactly. I would think cast time has something to do with it. Most of the powers are about 3s each. Then there is the playstyle of needing to place the trap at your location which requires more time to set up strategically. Some will love that playstyle while for others it would be a non-starter.

[Heraclea]

An archery/traps corruptor is one of my favorite BAF characters.  Useful on the escapes, useful on the AVs, and doesn't pull enough aggro to worry.

[Carnifax]

Yep, the casts are terrible.

 

Even Acid Mortar, although it appears instantly and starts shooting you stay crouched down fiddling with it for another 2 seconds.

 

Annoying when you're just too close, it starts shooting before ive cast Fold Space and one stupid enemy comes running into The Death Patch setting everything off.

[CaptainLupis]

Animation times are the biggest issue. It's fine solo or in small teams, but on large teams it just feels like you are wasting your time putting things down when there is a good chance the spawn will already be gone by the time you are finished. That's not a unique to traps issue, but it definitely does suffer from it.

[Onlyasandwich]

I quite enjoy Traps/ myself, but I think one element at play, especially on Defenders, is theme.

 

Other sets feel more "pure" in their operation, as the power is coming from you conceptually, although creative minds could interpret this however they like.

 

Traps is quite powerful, but none of the powers really make me feel like a superhero. That's actually totally fine for the character I made (Traps/BR), but I can see where it would not be a go-to concept for a broad variety of backgrounds. 

 

 

 

 

[MoonSheep]

i team with a traps/sonic def that is huge at debuffing - makes speed runs incredibe, e.g. LRSF/MLTF/ITF etc.

 

great character when played right on high end teams

 

 

edit: just realised my friend is a trick arrow/sonic, please continue the hate for traps

Edited June 25, 2021 by MoonSheep

[Arbegla]

Traps is very 'fire and forget' with very few powers that you want to hold onto. It can be a very busy set with high recharge, but it can also be a very slow set, as the base recharge numbers are pretty high.

 

Having said that, Acid Mortar, and Poison trap don't have any interrupts, and are great toe bombing powers. Both provide massive debuffs, and the Poison trap even has pretty nice Control aspects to it. The vomit animation is worth it just in itself really.

[roleki]

I’m sure we all have at least one of these  kinds of stories, and this is one of mine. 
 

I hooked a newly-outfitted 50 Fire/Traps controller to a 4/8 PI Radio team. On my way to the door, Team Chat made it clear that things weren’t going well.  Hop in, and there are red arrows all over the map, and a couple on their way to joining them. 
 

As soon as I got in, they asked if I had a rez, and I didn’t.  Heals?  I have a +Regen patch.  There was grumbling but I was running through the sewer towards the two live bodies so I didn’t read through that.

 

Get to the spot on the map just as one of them does, so now there’s just me and a Sentinel.  I dropped an AoE stun and AoE Immob, then ported into the mob to start laying traps, followed by Bonfire.  That wiped out everything but the Death Mages, but the Sentinel and I finished them off.  
 

I noticed the team was dwindling in numbers as people quit, and soon it was down to two, and I had the star.  The Sentinel and I finished a 4/8 map ourselves; on the last mob he died almost instantly, so I finished it off myself.  He sends an incredulous tell to the effect that I could have solo’d the map (probably not) but he was really impressed and then says, wait, you’re a CONTROLLER?  Where’s your pets?  
 

In all the excitement, I never thought to re-deploy my Imps after they died early into the door.

 

Moral of the story is, Traps is awesome, but almost nobody notices because they’re too busy mistaking “support” for healz and buffs.

 

 

[Psylenz0511]

3 hours ago, roleki said:

I’m sure we all have at least one of these  kinds of stories, and this is one of mine. 
 

I hooked a newly-outfitted 50 Fire/Traps controller to a 4/8 PI Radio team. On my way to the door, Team Chat made it clear that things weren’t going well.  Hop in, and there are red arrows all over the map, and a couple on their way to joining them. 
 

As soon as I got in, they asked if I had a rez, and I didn’t.  Heals?  I have a +Regen patch.  There was grumbling but I was running through the sewer towards the two live bodies so I didn’t read through that.

 

Get to the spot on the map just as one of them does, so now there’s just me and a Sentinel.  I dropped an AoE stun and AoE Immob, then ported into the mob to start laying traps, followed by Bonfire.  That wiped out everything but the Death Mages, but the Sentinel and I finished them off.  
 

I noticed the team was dwindling in numbers as people quit, and soon it was down to two, and I had the star.  The Sentinel and I finished a 4/8 map ourselves; on the last mob he died almost instantly, so I finished it off myself.  He sends an incredulous tell to the effect that I could have solo’d the map (probably not) but he was really impressed and then says, wait, you’re a CONTROLLER?  Where’s your pets?  
 

In all the excitement, I never thought to re-deploy my Imps after they died early into the door.

 

Moral of the story is, Traps is awesome, but almost nobody notices because they’re too busy mistaking “support” for healz and buffs.

 

 

 

This is a great tale, but I have to ask, you do run Forcefield Generator, too, right?

[roleki]

1 hour ago, Psylenz0511 said:

 

This is a great tale, but I have to ask, you do run Forcefield Generator, too, right?

 

 

On this one I am running everything but Drones and Time Bomb; my /Traps usually take Drones but this build was too tight to fit them.

[SwitchFade]

Looooong animations

 

Looooong recharge

 

Clunky synergy of powers

 

Some useless powers

 

"Follow" drone, slowing you down

 

Fixed summons that don't follow

 

Some very underpowered powers

 

Clickie intensive

 

It's a great concept, with just too many drawbacks combined. Many sets have one or two, traps has too many. Needs a tweak.

[JayboH]

Traps is great on a mastermind.

 

Triage needs to be reworked.  It should be almost like Lifegiving Spores with a pretty short cooldown, maybe 15 seconds, not this 3 and a half minute garbage.  It's a regen AOE up to 300%, not a heal, so it can't wake someone from sleep unlike Lifegiving.  Keep it dropped at your feet unlike Lifegiving, only one can be out at a time.

 

Time Bomb can be completely reworked and the cottage rule be damned if you ask me.  Make it an Omega Maneuver clone or maybe even take the damage component out completely and just have it dish a taunt+debuff or maybe a knockdown patch of some kind, or perhaps a pet.

 

The rest of it is great.