What's that you say? You want another trapper build? Well, okay then.

levdbronstein

In the spirit of both the renewed interest in trappers and my own insistence on forcing the square peg into the round hole, I've put virtual pen to virtual paper and come up with what I hope are some useful suggestions and observations about playing a trapper-style hunter.

It can be found at this convenient link: https://bit.ly/2W9pW0f.

As a bonus and to make it easier for Those Who Code, I've pulled my NW Christmas list out of the guide and reproduced it below:

1. Careful Attack: For the love of all that is holy, make it useful, both in terms of its magnitude, but also insofar as its interaction with effects that are procced by damage-dealing abilities;
2. Tier one feats: Rate of Change should either be a flat 5% bonus for a set time (say 5 sec) or, if diminishing returns are the preference, it should start at 10% and diminish by 2% per second (both refreshed by stance swapping). For Longshot, either bump the ranged buff to 100% or reduce the melee penalty by 33%;
3. Thorned roots: the proposed increase to the magnitude against control-immune targets is welcome, but the Grasping Roots damage from this is negligible. I’ll still take it, though I'd still like to see the DoT magnitude go to 75 and the control-immune magnitude to at least 250.
4. Forestbond: please, please, please either bump the cooldown reduction to 10% from 5% or have Forestbond proc for each target hit (or at least more than one target hit) by Strong and Weak Grasping Roots; and
5. DoT interactions: lastly, could we get some consistency in how ranger DoT powers (CA, PG, GW, thorned roots, Aimed Strike) interact with various effects please? This includes, but is not limited to, secondary weapon enchant powers, artifact set bonuses (Lostmauth, Orcus, etc), Tenebrous enchants, Owlbear pet, etc, etc, etc

Also, weapon enchants all appear to be bugged. Someone should get on that.

Regards,
RD

typo

Nice job and I enjoyed reading your insights. I do hope the guys at Cryptic will read your bugs and wish list carefully. I think most of us Rangers would cast our vote for more viable options to play. Just simply getting bugs fixed and making a few tweaks could be a huge difference.

Nothing really seems to top Warden Melee, but it isn't unreasonable to want Warden Range and Hunter Range/Melee to be at least competitive enough to not be a joke, haha. I recently shared a couple of alternative builds and it is fun pushing the limits, but we need some help from the devs.

Btw, I really liked your suggestion about the PVP gear for arms. I may try some your other techniques too. It is great to see more than just a cursory build and to hear some substantive perspective on powers that often do not get discussed.

Also, I happen to be a mod in the Wolfpack Discord Group and we maintain a collection of builds there in one of the channels. I'm going to add your build into that collection because I think you offer some great perspective that other former and new Trappers will likely appreciate.

levdbronstein

Thanks, man.

I agree that the warden-melee spec remains the strongest (and easiest to play) build. I recognise too that well-played wardens (or skilled players using other dps classes) will likely (but not always) outperform a trapper-hunter build.

That said, I've never had a problem being competitive. In most content I've run the build outperforms other dps classes (mostly due to the ridiculous AoE/DoT combo).

RD

gabrieldourden

This is pretty good stuff! I'll add a few comments in the weekend. Anyway a few things I see that could help:

- Coastal Flail Snail will let you keep up AP and is probably a good investment versus power
- Trapper of the Twilight bracers have good stats and encounter bonus
- Artificer's Persuasion Insignia power lowers your cooldowns when you use an artifact

levdbronstein

gabrieldourden said:

This is pretty good stuff! I'll add a few comments in the weekend. Anyway a few things I see that could help:

- Coastal Flail Snail will let you keep up AP and is probably a good investment versus power
- Trapper of the Twilight bracers have good stats and encounter bonus
- Artificer's Persuasion Insignia power lowers your cooldowns when you use an artifact

Thanks. I look forward to reading your comments. Re. the three things you mentioned:

• Snails: yeah, the extra AP will be useful, but I'd have to play with it to see how significant the boost would be; as it is, i don't have trouble keeping my AP up. I recognise, though, that some might (in which case it should definitely be used if available)
  
• The bracers: that was an accidental omission on my part. I'd slot them in as a first amongst equals alongside terrored grips and jawbreakers due to the stats. That said, I'll still take the 940 IL pvp star rovers bracers due to the near-constant 5% ATB damage bonus
  
• I had forgotten about this insignia bonus. I'll swap it in for cavalry' and drop wanderers for cavalry in group content
  

RD

levdbronstein

Should anyone be interested, I've updated this to take into account the changes in Mod 19. I'm still working through things, as not all powers appear to be working as intended.

RD

gabrieldourden

Interesting summary. My build is pretty much the same, with slight variations depending on my playstile (and budget )

levdbronstein

gabrieldourden said:

Interesting summary. My build is pretty much the same, with slight variations depending on my playstile (and budget )

Against all my instincts, I've recently swapped out crushing roots for AoS. I've found that all the added sources of SGR + the extended DoT time means that you're constantly over-riding previously applied thorned roots. The cooldowns are pretty good for standard play and a DS>CA>AS>HS range rotation followed by a HS>PG>SB let's you maximise AoS stacks and not over ride thorned roots. I stick with the single-target rotation in my guide as that is based on a seeker's/AoF class feature combo.

RD