The Best Trapper buff suggestion I've seen to date (Pally)

With this proposed rework, Trapper's new best addons would be Coffee Grounds and Trapper's Tools. With those, you'll set a trap in about 0.8 seconds and get a 10 second, 15% Haste. 3 stacks of PWYF on command.

His new gameplay loop would look like this:

1. Chase survivor to loop
2. Drop trap to make loop unplayable.
3. If they stay, they get trapped and insta-downed.
4. If they leave, use 15% Haste to catch up and try to get a hit before the survivor reaches another loop.
5. Rinse and repeat as needed until downed.

I think there was a killer who would chase a survivor to a loop, press M2 to make that loop unplayable and get Haste, then use that Haste to get a hit. And I'm pretty sure survivors hated that character so much that Behavior nuked her from orbit 9 months ago and have barely started rebuilding her. I'm fairly certain that survivors despised the way that with a single M2, they were forced to leave the loop and were constantly put into lose/lose situations with little to no skill expression.

And make no mistake, this rework is just Skull Merchant 2: The Skullening. Not only does it completely destroy Trapper's identity as a setup killer, it turns him into a more powerful version of the most hated killer that Dead by Daylight has ever seen. Instead of causing an injury with his M2 on survivors who played at a loop, he'd get a down. Instead of a small Haste buff, he'd get Bloodlust 3 for 10 seconds.

For how much everyone hates Skull Merchant, it's odd that people keep trying to turn Trapper into another Skull Merchant.

I think you're missing the point. You could play that way NOW. Right now, I could load up Trapper, give him coffee grounds and trapper tools, and drop traps in a little over one second and get 12.5% Haste for 5 seconds. What keeps me from doing that is the unavailability of traps and 5 seconds of haste just isn't QUITE enough to guarantee a hit.

As a Trapper main, I hate that all of his proposed reworks try to turn him into a chase killer. He's not a chase killer. He's a setup killer. You want a real Trapper rework that keeps his identity? Here you go:

1. Make his traps blend in better based on what map you're playing on. Right now, he's extremely map dependent. Maps like Eyrie or Ormond have his traps sticking out like sore thumbs.
2. Don't let survivors disarm traps for free. Make them rummage through tool boxes (conveniently spaced around the map) for 20 seconds to get a special Trap Disarm Tool. Then, and only then, can they disarm ONE trap. If they want to disarm another one, they have to go get another Trap Disarm Tool. It would make survivors have to think twice about if they want to disarm a trap or if they want to try to play around it. It would also not allow one survivor to just follow Trapper around disarming his traps and taking away his power, while giving Trapper some much needed passive slowdown.
3. Traps no longer randomly spawn. He can carry two traps, and place those two traps, then he goes to a locker to get more. Once he has 10 traps placed, reloading at a locker would destroy old traps to make room for the new traps that he just got. You're still having to manage your trap economy, but you're not hoofing it around the map to get your power back.
4. The trap escape time you suggested is good. Nothing more annoying than seeing a survivor get trapped, then escaping in two seconds.
5. Give him a 10% Haste buff while a survivor is trapped in a bear trap. This lasts for 2 seconds after all survivors have escaped from their trap.
6. Remove the ability of the map item to see Trap auras.

This proposed rework would make traps actually threatening again. Harder to see, harder to remove, and more deadly when stepped in. It would also fix the most annoying part of his power, which is collecting traps from around the map. Would he still be a weak killer? Yup. Setup killers often are pretty weak in modern DBD. But it would bump him out of D tier into high C tier while keeping his identity intact. If you buff the haste, then the haste becomes his power, not the traps.

How is that unfair? No other killer has their power taken away by survivor items. Wraith and Nurse no longer get burned by flashlights.

As a Trapper main, if I see a map in a lobby, I just lobby dodge. There is literally no point in playing a match where one survivor can see all of your traps and relay this info to his buddies.

You're right. I should totally load up into a match where one survivor bringing one item makes me a powerless M1 killer. That sounds like LOADS of fun.

Is it? So you're telling me that one survivor with a Rainbow map can't see every trap I've placed? That they can't relay this info to their friends, either through comms or the addon that allows ALL survivors to see the auras that the map user sees? That they can't just… follow me around and disarm every single trap I have? Because they can.

Why would I load into that match? I'm already playing one of, if not THE weakest killer in the game. Why on Earth would I willingly load into a match where my already weak power is essentially useless?

1. So what? That doesn't change the fact that it actively guts my power.
2. Again… so? Let them use that map against someone else.
3. Again… so? They can use their map to find someone's totems or something. Not my traps.
4. Oh, so they can remove all my traps, but only for about 30 seconds of map usage. That makes it so much better!

Why would I load into that match? Give me one good reason why I would look at a match that has a map, knowing that a map actively counters my power, and say, "Yep, this is a match I want to play!"

I'm not asking to nerf maps. I want them to work exactly as they do against any other killer. But making maps actively counter my power, then shaming me for not playing against maps is certainly a take.

What are you talking about? It's not ragebait. I'm not going to load into a match where my already weak power is considerably nerfed because of one item. That's not an opinion. It's a fact.

Maps counter Trapper's power.
Therefore, I don't play against maps.

I don't see why this offends you so much.

It takes about half a second of burn time to see if you can see any traps. With a twelve second burn time, you could probably find 15-20 traps or so.

Those are perks. Perks are not items. Behavior has specifically stated in the past that they don't want items countering killer powers. That's why they removed Nurse and Wraith burning. The only other killer who's power is directly countered by a survivor item is Hag… whose weakness is maps. Maps are the only survivor item that directly counters killer powers, and it happens to be two of the weakest killers in the game.

And, let me tell you, every other Trapper main dodges lobbies with maps, too. I've seen P100's do it on stream. Nobody is going to walk into a match where they know before entering that they're going to get directly countered. Why would anyone ever do that? So what ends up happening is that maps never get used for that purpose, because everyone who plays Trapper or Hag just lobby dodges the maps. This huge map "nerf" you're talking about isn't actually a huge nerf, because it never gets used to find Trapper or Hag traps anyways. Trappers and Hags just leave the lobby and go to the next one.

I do enjoy Trapper. (I'd hope so, as a Trapper main.) I think he's pretty fine as-is. He's weak, but that's okay. If Behavior wants throw some buffs his way, that's cool, too. They could somehow buff him into an S tier powerhouse, and I'm still not going to knowingly walk into a match where one item counters my power.

I don't think we can come to an agreement because I think we have two very different versions of what Trapper should be. I honestly don't care about the small number of newcomers we have as a revolving door in the game. I don't play against them, they usually don't stick around long anyway, and I think that balancing a 9 year old game around them is kind of ludicrous. I understand that you, and the guy in your video, have a very different view and that's okay. We can agree to disagree.

I'm looking at ways to make Trapper better against the survivors I actually play against while keeping his identity as a setup killer. You're looking at ways to give him small buffs while keeping him newcomer friendly. We're approaching the problem from two very different viewpoints and I don't think that we'll ever come to a consensus.

I don't understand why my locker idea makes him "overly dependent on lockers" while yours doesn't. The only difference is that you would have him pointing at two useless traps in the distance before he opens the locker. Oh, wait, you'd make him only get ONE trap, and put it on a 15 second cooldown lol. So he'd be going to lockers twice as often as with my idea… but somehow my idea makes him more locker dependent than yours. Make that make sense.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but what you or I think he should be doesn't matter, it's what BHVR thinks, and being acceasible for new killers and survivors alike is their defined purpose for Trapper, so sadly none of us get to ignore the low level game (and in general its a bad idea to do so for any killer). I had a cool idea for a basekit ability to "rig" traps to injure survivors who disarm like bloody coil with a hard skillcheck... but that's not Trappers purpose, and we can't escape that purpose.

Then that's Behavior's mistake to make.

Well, a lot of these proposed changes do make him better against stronger survivors though, and also still focus on setup...

I hard disagree, but okay, we can get into it.

The faster trap setting speed helps his setup, and gives him less vulnerability to hold W in chase, as the does the extra haste for slightly longer too. These things improve both parts of his kit, which he needs for higher levels...

Kind of. I don't think an extra 2 seconds of Haste or half a second off of setting a trap is going to magically make him able to chase down someone who holds W. It's putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. He will always be weak to pre-running and shift-w, just like every other killer without a mobility power.

The ability to walk through a trap that a survivor has to walk around, as well as go through them to hook increases his potency substantially at loops and actually makes his setup meaningful and strong, because he has access to paths that survivors don't.

If that was a big deal, then his wrap add-on would be one of his most used add-ons. But it's not. You know why? Because being able to shave a fraction of a second off of a loop isn't usually the difference between a hit or not.

These things take a lot of knowledge and skill to properly exploit, that dont really impact the standard "trap pallet or window" traps low level payers use. So we still keep Trapper accessible, but have more advanced strategies to use against stronger survivors.

The problem is that they're so minor that they won't REALLY make a difference against stronger survivors. Again… band-aid. Bullet wound.

The difference is mine (and Pally's) supplements the existing mechanic rather than replace it, since trap management is one of the few areas of skill expression Trapper has, we both want to plan for and keep the ability to grab traps out of the map.

Yours makes it so you can't get traps out of the environment and MUST return to a locker to get more. That is map reliance. Mine is more a tool of convenience, where if a trap isn't conveniently nearby, you can use a locker instead, while Pally's straight up ignores lockers compeltely and allows you to grab any trap you want almost at any time.

I'm sorry, is walking around the map like a doofus collecting traps a "skill" now? Seriously? Trapper's "skill expression" isn't collecting and managing traps. It's knowing where to put them. It's knowing how survivors run tiles, knowing what survivors can see while running those tiles, and placing a trap that will actually catch a good survivor. You keep going on and on about how managing his traps is a skill, but it's really not.

And not only that, but having to go around the map and collect your traps is why he's in D tier. That's the reason. He'd be C tier if he had more ready access to his traps. He's one of the only killers in the game that can down a healthy survivor. However, having to hoof around the map as a base M1 killer with no mobility to get access to his power is why he's as bad as he is. Getting them from lockers or just having them available at all times would mitigate or eliminate this weakness and easily boost him a tier. And going to a locker to get more traps is a hell of a lot easier than walking across the entire map.

Like… listen to yourself.

"Collecting traps from a locker would make him more map dependent and too reliant on lockers. Going to a locker isn't always convenient. Therefore, we should keep making his traps spawn randomly across the map so he can go play Easter Egg Hunting at the beginning of every match instead of setting up his web. Walking ten or twenty meters to a poorly spawned locker is too much, but walking literally across the map to pick up a trap is so much more convenient!"

Are you serious right now?

It's not a contest dude, I'm not trying to crap on your idea, but a lot of the areas of your idea brute force a particular 3-gen/area lockdown playstyle. If players want your playstyle great... but if they want any other playstyles, yours doesn't accomodate it.

That IS Trapper's playstyle. It's the only one he's good at. That's like saying you should give Wesker traps in case someone wants to use Wesker as a trap killer. Small number buffs to his haste aren't going to change that. If someone wants to play a chase killer, there's other ones. Wraith and Billy are free and unlocked when you first boot the game. But we don't need to butcher Trapper's identity to make him yet another chase killer. That's not what he is.

The point of having all the killers, add-ons and perks in DBD we do is for everyone to play to their own playstyle... Pally's version I like the most because:

It gives advanced strategies to Trapper without really affecting the low level game.

For the most part he remains simple and easy to understand for both sides.

It offers a lot of flexibility for builds and playstyles.

Deals with a lot of the goofy and dated parts of his kit, but also keeps Trapper very much feeling like Trapper.

His is a version that I feel gives the best version of Trapper for the most players, and has the benefit of actually having a chance of being implemented by BHVR because it achieves their goals.

No, it doesn't. It turns him into an anti-loop haste killer. It turns him into old Skull Merchant. That's what it does.

Like I said yesterday, this guy lives in his own world of "buffing trapper in wrong direction" at cost of being absolute ass to go agasint. But surely, make more killers the survivors will dc against. Health of the game is pointless.

Maps needs some love anyway, and all setup killers getting screwed over by a singular item is not healthy.

This was the reason why Lightburn was removed, why Adrenaline no longer works against Freddy, or why Luck doesn't help against Trapper's traps anymore. Perks/maps that counter certain killers are not healthy or particularly good, so why keep them?

For the record, maps should still track hooks and totems, as they did before.

Ok, give me examples. Most of these "counter-pick" things were removed, aside from MfT making Legion's and Deathslinger's lives a lot worse.

And, maps don't need nerfs (as in plural), they only need this one, singular nerf so killers that are already weak/hard to play aren't countered with a single item. Once that's done, we can buff them all we want.

And that exactly is not true. There are several perks to counter quite a few killers, let me give you examples:

Twins - unbreakable, exponentional, circle of healing, we gonna live forever, power struggle

Wraith - any sort of healing perks

Legion, Deathslinger, Houndmaster, Ghoul - Made for this

Knight - any exhasution perks, to prevent damaging by bots

Spirit - irown will, lucky break, bite the bullet, quick and quite

Legion - head on, shadowstep

Nurse, Blight - dead hard, dramaturgy

Hag - urban, dramaturgy

Doctor, Clown - calm spirit, hardened

Named many of them.

Ok, fine. You got me there. Some of these are genuine counter-picks. (Not all of them by any means but too many to just say you're wrong.)

Still, Maps making Trapper, Hag, Demo, Skull Merchant and Singularity much worse just by existing is not good. They are weak, yes, but being weak doesn't automatically erase the balance issue.

I'm on board with a lot of these but absolutely not on the 10% Haste for 7 seconds for placing a trap… especially with faster trap setting speed. We know from Skull Merchant that passive Haste effects in killer powers don't lead to good gameplay.

Personally I'm more partial to a locker reload system just because it would break immersion less than Trapper using the Entity Force to psychically grab them. But neither way would bother me from a balance perspective.

I do think the least they could do would be the trap escape being a set time to reduce randomness, that just seems like an obvious one to me.

I like almost everything on there, but not buffing the haste on trap setting. No need to make a lose-lose for the survivor forced to leave a newly trapped tile.

Which is why I stated "[traps being disabled] for the next 15 seconds before it regenerates into Trapper's sack"

Basically, if you disarm any trap, after 15 seconds of doing so, Trapper will have an additional Trap in his sack to place. The trap disappears from that spot entirely after destroying it, it becomes trapper safe for 15 seconds, and Trapper doesnt have to walk back to collect his traps. If you dont see his traps, you can get caught in it. If you DO see his trap and disarm it as of currently, Trapper would need to walk back and reset it if its cross map, which is a huge weakness, but if he is right there, he can just reset it, which is a HUGE strength (especially for basement trapper). Giving the option to destroy it entirely, forces people to choose between disarming it and destroying it. Destroying it is only really worth it if he is near, but carries a risk.

And no, no items or perks. Toolboxes and Saboteur used to be able to sabotage traps (permanently), but relying on any items to combat any killer power specifically is something DBD is actively phasing out from. It's why Hag traps can be wiped now, instead of needing a flashlight.

It would still need something for long distance disarms to not force trapper to go back and collect it tho, maybe default it to destroying it if there is no terror radius? I dont know, its a concept afterall. But I think it allows for more leniency when it comes to buffing the posterboy of the game

So, initially the post said about 8 seconds to destroy the trap basekit, THEN 15 seconds of it being disabled on the ground (so trapper cannot re-trap that area for 15 seconds), before it regenerates into Trapper's Trapper Sack.

So you see a trap, 8 seconds and its destroyed, another 15 seconds and trapper has a "free" trap without having to collect any.