Is it a misconception among the players that trapper thieves
just aren't worth the effort?

What's the imm take on them?

I'm curious as I love the concept of a trapper thief, but by the looks of it I would have to invest a lot of annoying prep gathering, to make a trap that has a high probability of blowing up in my own face.

So is there anything in the works or is this particular thief path just that far down the priority list?

But, a few key deterrents:

1: They aren't very practical/good until rank 42. They get much better toward hero as the trap timer lowers and lowers.

2: They take a ton of patience and planning

3: They are too chaotic rp-wise to use tactfully because you can't disarm your traps. Ambushes on the eastern road very hard for Fortie to pull off, and likely other cabals too if you care about who you hit.

4: They don't do their cool maledictions until you get the skill % in the 90's , and when you have to wait 4/5 hrs between each trap initially, it can be very hard to improve your skill.

5: Unless it's been changed, knock-out trap is a liability to use, because not only is the chance of hitting like 33% or worse, when it's triggered the sleep prot timer is set and now you can't jack them either (or hope they walk into another ko trap and maybe trigger that one)

The way to go is an evil chaotic uncaballed who can just spread mayhem. I'd think an outlander would work, except bartering for ingredients is a big hindrance. That said, I hope no one tries another trapper because...

1: When you walk into a trap, you are gonna get hit -- there are very very few ways to avoid getting hit or maledicted.

2: Trap blindness is 4 hrs, an uncurable physical maledict

3: Trap ko is 4 hrs, and if you are poisoned, impaled and hampered, you can be in bad shape fast.

Just takes some creativity, chaotic rp, and patience.

Mine stayed at 6 hours the character's whole life. I deleted at 38 or 39.

My logs are gone, but at hero you have a 0 hrs timer. That's pretty good. I think around 40 the timer started lowering with every other rank or so.

I mean, you could easily waylay, backstab, then watch them flee into a flurry of MASSACRES, along with all the maledictions.

I struggled with this thief path for quite a while. I'm pretty good at PK, strategy, and figuring out how to maximize the effectiveness of a given build. However, there was nothing redeeming about trapper thieves. EVEN when the traps actually go off you will be underwhelmed by what they do.

Feel free to play one and see. Just don't bitch about it after because I you have been warned.

Having played the first trapper and quite a lot since then, every single time I regret it. It's that bad.

On a related note, the edges available for a trapper are quite bad in comparison to other thief path options.

I thought my gnome Umble was the first trapper. At least, first to hero with the full trapper skillset.

Since when I had mine, the trap skill didn't work - not at all.

Remove trap ingredients. Remove the part where they blow up in your face. Increase the damage on the damaging traps (not sleep duration, back when it was like 17 hours of sleep that was ####).

Would that make them worth playing?

asf

Just make one skill. "Set Trap" and as you in crease in level it does all the neat things that the other traps can do.

Keep the ingredients.

I did not play a trapper but I stumbled into the traps pretty a lot. They just fail. Given the fact, that binder/poisoner cant knock out or harm himself, requires no or equal amount of preps and gives good PK skills I'd prefer any other paths to trapper

>I did not play a trapper but I stumbled into the traps pretty
>a lot. They just fail. Given the fact, that binder/poisoner
>cant knock out or harm himself, requires no or equal amount of
>preps and gives good PK skills I'd prefer any other paths to
>trapper

I always found it kinda funny that a lot of poisoners can get away with shopkeeper and guild sold items and still be fairly effective and yet from my experience trappers can't even survive with those - not to mention they're the worst of all the thief paths to actually get the trap ingredients that are good unless you want to tag someone along for your gathering. At least poisoners can fear poison and knife a mob, etc.

But until we actually get an Immortal response, this is kinda all pointless to chat about.

...Szordrin(sp?), Romanul's trapper thief, utterly smoked Lariya when she had defiance.

So, at one time, they were pretty buff.

I think the only reason they were pretty buff was because practically no one played a trapper thief. I'm pretty sure they were the least played subclass. Not to mention the trap code had a bunch of bugs in it and what not.

I admit when I played Maethron and messing around with traps it was fun for a while but then people started complaining about various trap effects and durations of effects. Like 20+ hours of sleep, 40+ stackable hours acid blindness, boneshatter giving more penalties than warrior boneshatter, etc. So they got toned down.

Then there was the revamp with the thief points becoming visible and reshuffling of skills. I totally laughed when I saw that staff made all the really good trapper thief skills into GENERAL thief skills. Except for combat steal which I think is pickpocket now.