Trapper's 2020 QoL Wishlist

ChildishBrandino

Hello, forum-dwellers and people of the Fog. I'm assuming you read the title of the thread and clicked on it for that reason. This is a thread I've been thinking about creating and have been preparing for awhile, after consulting with various others that specialize in playing the Trapper and a variety of high-skill survivor players. I'm hoping to bring to light and address the core issues with his base kit, spark a discussion and hopefully call attention to one of the Killers that has, for the most part, been firmly left in the past.

*Nothing said in this thread is meant to minimize or degrade the past work done on the Trapper, and I hope that you see that I mean well and want to play a more balanced game at the end of the day.

With that out of the way, let's get into the meat and potatoes of this.

Section I - Base Kit Clunkiness

The Trapper has always had one of the slower, more archaic powers to effectively use and set up. With no addons, he spawns in with 1 trap in his hand and a max carrying capacity of 1. While Trapper's ability to reset traps from the 3.6.0 Chapter Patch were a welcome and needed addition, I think there is more work to be done to bring Trapper's base kit closer to the base kit of the other Killers that launched with the game. It's very hard to communicate how awful Trapper's base carrying capacity can feel during gameplay, so I'll run you through a couple of events on base Trapper that demonstrate this point rather clearly.

1. Let's say you spawn right next to a trap, but not near any buildings or loops that have grass. Your two choices are to either forget about it entirely, or set an at-best suboptimal, at-worst useless trap in order to pick up the second trap ASAP. This is a really bad situation to be put in as a setup killer, where every second you spend making a decision on something like this can really bite you in the rear later if it doesn't pay off.
2. Let's say you're playing Trapper on Wrecker's Yard- shack pallet has been tossed, has a trap on the outside end of it, shack window is also trapped, and you're carrying another trap already. You're chasing a survivor, the survivor vaults over the pallet, lands on the trap, you break the pallet, then M1 them to secure the down. Let's say you don't want to force a basement play, and instead want to pick up the trap and move it somewhere else with the one currently in your hand as opposed to resetting it in a predictable fashion. In this situation, first and foremost, you need to identify where you want to expand your perimeter to- let's say there's a good, trapworthy bus setup a little under halfway across the map with the inbetween window and two untossed pallets. In order to set up traps there in this instance, you have to walk over, set one, walk back for the other, set that one down, and then hope to god the survivor you downed wasn't picked up by a teammate during any of that.

The crazy part of both these scenarios is that they almost entirely vanish with the Trapper's Common 'Trapper Sack' addon and the Trapper's Uncommon 'Trapper Bag' addon. Well, why is that?

The Common 'Trapper Sack' and Uncommon 'Trapper Bag' addons have these sets of effects:

Trapper Sack:

A crude leather sack suitable for foraging.

• Start with 1 extra Bear Trap.
• Increases Bear Trap Carrying capacity by 1.

Trapper Bag:

A cured leather waist bag. Large and sturdy to transport hunting equipment.

• Start with 1 extra Bear Trap.
• Increases Bear Trap Carrying capacity by 2.

In the first scenario, if you had either one of these addons, seeing the trap that spawned right next to you is no longer an event that you probably need to think about and react to- you don't necessarily need it to start creating your perimeter.

In the second scenario, if you had either one of these addons, you would be free to go set up by the bus with a much lower level of risk.

Due to this difference, I believe the gap between the strength of addonless Trapper and Bag addon Trapper is far too great, and some of his strength with addons needs to be merged into his base kit, much like what happened to the Wraith in the 2.2.0 Mid-Chapter Patch. Additionally, the near-requirement of bag addons on the current patch reduces the amount of clever and creative addon combinations a Trapper player can employ with success.

My proposed solution is this:

1. Increase the Trapper's base carrying capacity by 1, and increase the number of bear trap spawns by 1. To be clear, the Trapper will still start with 1 bear trap in his inventory with the capability to pick up another, and add an extra bear trap spawn to the map.
2. Remove the Common 'Trapper Sack' addon to reflect this change.
3. Adjust the Uncommon 'Trapper Bag' addon to add 1 extra carrying capacity, and start with 1 extra bear trap.
4. Adjust the Very Rare 'Stitched Bag' addon to add 1 extra carrying capacity, and start with 2 extra bear traps.

In my proposed solution, the Trapper at base still needs to search for traps to increase his perimeter at the beginning of a match, but has the ability to better curate his trap placements when he increases or modifies his perimeter. If you still wish to play a lockdown build or want access to 3 traps in your hand, you can still choose to take a Bag addon, but taking a Bag addon is no longer required for what feels like basic functionality.

Section II - What's The Deal With Bloody Coil, Anyway?

Now that I've gone over the biggest grievance that both beginner and advanced Trapper players experience, let's go over one of the biggest pain points for survivors that have to play against Trapper experience- Bloody Coil!

As Killers have been released over the past year or two, the balancing team has made it clear that Iridescent addons for each killer are meant to further enable an alternate way to play as them, or offer a modification or improvement to their power in exchange for a downside. (i.e. Deathslinger's Iridescent Coin and Oni's Renjiro's Bloody Glove.) On both counts, Trapper's Bloody Coil comes up short. Trapper's kit does not necessitate the need for a consistent injury rotation, and there is no particular downside to using it (other than not being able to use another addon). Needing to constantly be in the injured state to not waste time between disarms is an incredibly obtuse system, and I have a proposed solution that allows the Bloody Coil to function as an anti-disarm addon without being obnoxious for the Survivors on the other end of it.

My proposed solution is this:

1. Modify Bloody Coil to no longer lengthen the time required to disarm it, and no longer injure Survivors upon being disarmed; instead, the time required to disarm traps is shortened by .5-1 seconds, and the Survivor that disarms a trap screams immediately afterward and suffers from the exposed status effect for a total of 15-30 seconds.

My proposed solution removes the need to be injured to remove Bloody Coil traps, but still maintains a high level of risk for Survivors that attempt to disarm bear traps haphazardly.

Section III - Time to Dye

Alright! Here we are, in the final, shortest section. Let's take a look at the Trapper's Uncommon Logwood Dye addon and Rare Tar Bottle addon. (Credit to Otzdarva's Addon Explanation & Tier List Video for this handy-dandy infographic)

As it is, there is very little difference between the appearance of the default bear trap and the Logwood Dye bear trap, but a world of difference between the appearance of Logwood Dye bear traps and Tar Bottle bear traps. The only purpose it serves is to be combined with the Tar Bottle addon, and even at that- doubling up with dye addons is always a worse idea than Tar Bottle + a Bag addon. Objectively speaking, on current patch, there is no good reason to take Logwood Dye over anything else. I'm not asking for anything ridiculous like allowing the base Logwood Dye to become as dark as Tar Bottle and for the Tar Bottle to become as dark as Logwood Dye + Tar Bottle. What I want is something I think most people will find to be reasonable- a stronger middle-ground option.

My proposed solution is this:

1. Modify Logwood Dye to serve as more of a midpoint between current-patch Logwood Dye and current-patch Tar Bottle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alright, that's all. Please let me know what you think about my proposed changes- are they too much? Are they too little? Or have I hit the Goldilocks spot? Thanks for reading this far, and best of luck in your future games of DbD. :)

Onyx_Blue

That's a lot of text to say "make it so he can carry one more trap at base-kit" and "make Logwood Dye slightly darker". Your Bloody Coil idea is actually worse. They scream, even though the disarm noise is a visual notification anyway, and they are only vulnerable for 30 seconds, whereas currently they are vulnerable until healed.