Yellow Line Trap Damage Needs Fixing

**Mithlanros** · May 14 2015, 08:27 PM

Hey Guys I posted this over in Suggestions but not getting much traction there.

When the trait line were first introduced i really enjoyed the yellow line for the hunter. Recently though the damage output is so far behind the other trees that it is pointless to take it. May I suggest trap damage be tied to physical mastery? With the limited testing I have done the only thing I can see adjusting trap damage is the DOT legacy. I know there is a new trap damage legacy also but it really does help much at all since the base damage of traps is so far behind to begin with.

Also please give yellow a chance to bleed on low cut (this legacy was removed). The bleed damage was very significant for yellow line hunters. As things stand right now the elimination of the low cut bleed is a bigger dps loss than the addition of the trap damage legacy.

**TKH** · May 14 2015, 08:59 PM

I agree that the trap damage should have some love. Currently, only a few traits and legacies directly modify the trap damage. Physical Mastery and bow/melee DSP has nothing to do to scale the damage.

The new trap damage only increases the damage by 15.6% at tier 35. I think it only affect the direct damage of Trap instead of DoT too.

I never use the Low Cut Bleed legacy, but it sound fits in a heavy-DoT line like Trapper as a trait.

**Dirodil13** · May 15 2015, 09:47 PM

You have my vote as well. Have been running in ToF line for some time because it's fun. Even with new legacy trap damage is....ok at best. I have seen no increase in DoT from the legacy either. Will miss low cut legacy that I had maxed. Need to do some serious thinking before/if I redo weapons to the new system. I'd hate to have to switch from a line I enjoy playing but may need to. At level cap cc is not always effective as mobs sometimes run right through traps and decoy can get destroyed before it has a chance to stun and debuff. i try and maximize damage and defense by changes stances often. Strength when mob is cc'd then if needed endurance when things get tight. I don't mind not winning a dps race but when the cc fails, need to pull plan b out of your back pocket lol

Happy hunting

**Annaliel** · May 16 2015, 05:10 AM

No, no, no, just no.
Yellow line isn't a dps line so if you do much less dps than red line, it's your problem, no one told you to pick it.
And if you played pvp you'd know how stupid it would be to buff that line even more.

**Vulcwen** · May 16 2015, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by Annaliel

No, no, no, just no.
Yellow line isn't a dps line so if you do much less dps than red line, it's your problem, no one told you to pick it.
And if you played pvp you'd know how stupid it would be to buff that line even more.

If they make it scale with mastery, it'd make sense that the base damage goes down to compensate.

But, has any of you tested if it scales with tactical mastery instead of physical?

**spelunker** · May 16 2015, 02:49 PM

Get rid of root break on damage buffs/grace periods, make tripwire a stun instead of a Knockdown, move trap slows down to 20% from 30%, eliminate strength: quickshot's slow when specced yellow and you can buff trap damage or tie it to mastery, or w/e to move damage up. The line is already verging on OP in the one area where its good for something other than novelty (small scale pvp)

**Mithlanros** · May 16 2015, 03:05 PM

The damage is level based. When I tested it by removing jewelry my tactical mastery would have gone down also. Seems like those not in favor are looking at this from a pvp perspective and I can respect that. However, having a suite of skills not effected by stats is unique to the game and defeats the purpose of gear progression. Yellow is an outstanding leveling tree for that reason...gear doesnt matter.

I would be in favor of adjusting the CC aspects for PVP since that seems to be the problem with the traps. I disagree with the notion "Yellow Line isn't for dps" Hunters are a pure DPS class and all trees should be viable. Yellow would be viable if the traps were based off Mastery like every other skill in the game. Base damage can be tweaked to keep it in line with other trees. If you are going to try and convince be that Red Line quick shots are supposed to deal more damage than capstone skills with 45 second cooldowns I have to disagree.

**Tureaglin** · May 19 2015, 02:22 AM

I completely agree. Right now, at level 100, yellow is not a viable line. Not for grouping or soloing. It can be useful against a large group of mobs at once, but still... A yellow hunter's dps isn't even close to half a red hunter's dps. This really should be fixed.

**TKH** · May 19 2015, 07:39 AM

Pre-HD, Trapper was a CC line, and it did the job nicely when time called for a CCer. Such content were often raid, where there were enough people did the DPS for you while you kept mezzing the dangerous mobs.

Post-HD, Trapper was a a hybrid of CC/DoT/debuff line. However, there are too many things cumbersome when using the line.
-Trap Damage: Nothing affect Trap Direct Damage, aside from a trait and a legacy. While DoT is another thing, I think that Trap Direct Damage should be affect by at least by the DPS rating of bow or melee weapon. I think melee weapon should have Trap Damage Rating, instead of normal DPS Rating.
-The DoT: DoT should deal bigger total damage during a long fight than direct damage. However, aside from Barbed Arrow and Lingering Wound being viable all times, The One Trap and Snakebite Trap have their cooldown too long to use frequently. And comparing to other classes using DoT like Guardian (can cause bleed all times, cash-out bleed and spread the bleed), the DoT stacking is not very impressive in term of DPS.
-The debuff: aside from BPE reduction from Penetration Shot, healing-on-hit from Snakebite Trap and Incoming Damage from Tripple Trap are not very viable. If you want it to be viable, you have to tank mobs to accelerate the cooldown, which is not something a Hunter wants to do in grouping content. Grounded target also makes it hard to use, as you cannot debuff the mob you want when facing a group mob. There should be a toggle to change traps from grounded target to direct target.
-The CC: Distracting Shot misses its former glory with 30s daze (with capstone) and 15s cooldown (with legacy). Cry of the Predator disappears because the developers want so, so Hunter loses another good fear skill, though beast-only but instant cast.

So, Post-HD Trapper loses its CC specialist and get turned into underwhelm hybrid.

**Enedraith** · May 25 2015, 07:12 AM

How true it is that in endgame pve/fellowship content the yellow line is underwhelming I don't know, but I find it in lower levels (On my xp disabling level 7-40 Landroval hunter) to be very overwhelming. During those levels I've been finetuning it all the time so far, and I've been able to do a lot more on my hunter compared to my Vilya hunter.

While at my lower levels I had some troubles with it (main uses being very limited to basic crowd control, and trap damage hitting mobs regardless of their level, allowing me to heal up on some toughies (I look at you, Baugarch)....or being able to crowd control the crawlers in the GB instance. I found it began to shine at level 30, where a combination of quickshot healing, piercing trap, lingering wound and triple trap were able to get me past the Grimbark instance without the need of a healer or a tank. (Piercing trap is an incredibly powerfull healer for the early levels if you stack some bleeds)

At level 40 (My current level) it is rather rediculous. With heightened senses and stance swapping once in a while, when I thought of it, I find mid level hunters to be able to dish out some incredible dps in certain situations, while having amazing crowd control because of the amount of traps it allows me to place.

For example: The Tomb of Elendil. With the before mentioned methods of healing, evading and crowd controlling I was able to solo past the brigand boss (with three waves of 8 adds each) without even having to use a morale potion. The turtle was a bit harder due to his massive damage, but he dropped quick enough, due to the turtles continuously resetting my traps, traps which due to their mechanism always hitted the boss for full damage, ignoring his shell.
A similiar mechanism was used to solo past halls of night.

I also like to use it in these instances in the cases where we have a PUG with a less experienced guardian or minstrel. The dummy ignores agro gathered by healing, and the use of traps/insta place tripwire really lowers the burden of the tank while giving the minstrel sometime to catch up. I found it to be a life saver during unexperienced PUG runs.

I do however switch to a red/blue hybrid line during normal grouping/ soloing.

My point being: It might or might not be underwhelming at level cap, I don't know, but at low to mid levels it is definitely amazing in the right situations.

**Tureaglin** · May 25 2015, 09:43 AM

Originally Posted by Enedraith

How true it is that in endgame pve/fellowship content the yellow line is underwhelming I don't know, but I find it in lower levels (On my xp disabling level 7-40 Landroval hunter) to be very overwhelming. During those levels I've been finetuning it all the time so far, and I've been able to do a lot more on my hunter compared to my Vilya hunter.

While at my lower levels I had some troubles with it (main uses being very limited to basic crowd control, and trap damage hitting mobs regardless of their level, allowing me to heal up on some toughies (I look at you, Baugarch)....or being able to crowd control the crawlers in the GB instance. I found it began to shine at level 30, where a combination of quickshot healing, piercing trap, lingering wound and triple trap were able to get me past the Grimbark instance without the need of a healer or a tank. (Piercing trap is an incredibly powerfull healer for the early levels if you stack some bleeds)

At level 40 (My current level) it is rather rediculous. With heightened senses and stance swapping once in a while, when I thought of it, I find mid level hunters to be able to dish out some incredible dps in certain situations, while having amazing crowd control because of the amount of traps it allows me to place.

For example: The Tomb of Elendil. With the before mentioned methods of healing, evading and crowd controlling I was able to solo past the brigand boss (with three waves of 8 adds each) without even having to use a morale potion. The turtle was a bit harder due to his massive damage, but he dropped quick enough, due to the turtles continuously resetting my traps, traps which due to their mechanism always hitted the boss for full damage, ignoring his shell.
A similiar mechanism was used to solo past halls of night.

I also like to use it in these instances in the cases where we have a PUG with a less experienced guardian or minstrel. The dummy ignores agro gathered by healing, and the use of traps/insta place tripwire really lowers the burden of the tank while giving the minstrel sometime to catch up. I found it to be a life saver during unexperienced PUG runs.

I do however switch to a red/blue hybrid line during normal grouping/ soloing.

My point being: It might or might not be underwhelming at level cap, I don't know, but at low to mid levels it is definitely amazing in the right situations.

It is definitely true that, starting at level 30, yellow line really is very powerful. I used yellow line all the way from level 40-95, and really liked it, but when you start gearing up, the DPS difference really glares at you, because trap damage barely scales (at level 100 a trap from triple trap only does +-2000 damage) IMO, it is still the best when trying to solo harder stuff (like wbs on foot), but nowhere near as awesome as it was when levelling. I'd say that at level cap the damage is comparable to that of a warsteed. Also, the dummy usually gets killed quite quickly at 100.

**Enedraith** · May 25 2015, 01:14 PM

^-^ Just wanted to add my two cents. From what I understand it's the problem that also comes with quickshot healing. The only thing that affects it is level, which for qs healing is scaled badly as well? Once again, only level 40, I wouldn't know!

**Macroscian** · May 25 2015, 02:17 PM

When the trait tree YELLOW line was pitched to the gamers, we were promised a crafted component to boost traps. I'd love to see that happen but I can see the difficulty in implementing that.

Alternatively - even better! - yellow tree damage self buff 30-60 minute duration affecting yellow tree only: lingering wound, the traps, rain of thorns, explosive arrow, decoy.
The skill should replace Improved Distracting Shot entirely. Popping such a skill 5-6 layers deep into Yellow makes it tree specific.

No - not only traps. Lingering wound in particular is pathetic after the midlevels and so is decoy damage. While I have seen people use explosive arrow, it's a skill currently barely good enough damage to deed field mobs level 70. Auto-attack deals about triple damage.

It would make yellow into great utility.

**TKH** · May 25 2015, 05:08 PM

Another problem for Hunter as a single-target debuffer is that all of the Trap needs to be placed at where the target stands. While it sounds not difficulty, try to throw it in a ball of mob that surround the tanker. Unless the mobs stand separated to each other far enough, you often get your trap on wrong target. Plus, all of placement in the heat of battle makes Trapper pretty clumsy to play.

I think that Trapper line should have a toggle upon traiting Advanced Placement, that converts all Traps from Grounded Target type to apply directly on the target. For AoE Trap like Triple Trap, it just simply becomes an AoE skill with max three targets.

**YamydeAragon** · May 25 2015, 07:02 PM

Yellow line is the hunter AOE damage line & all damages on all other classes are affected by physical or tactical mastery. The traps should get modify by some mastery as well.

**Leixy** · May 25 2015, 08:15 PM

The best solution I've seen is for turbine to add a trapper damage rating to the main-hand LI.

Trapper damage needs to be tied to a dps rating somewhere, mastery, and also a legendary weapon. It should be doing 50% more damage minimum than it currently does.

It was fine during Helms Deep, but now that mobs and our morale is 50% higher than it was at 95, the trapper bleeds are severely under-powered compared to lvl 100 needs.

**YesMaam** · May 26 2015, 12:48 AM

Trap damage needs a boost. Snare should have a bleed. The trap should not be consumed in my opinion by one person hit, this is the biggest problem! It should be like blight where it lasts for a bit and you walk over it and it stacks.

Anyone know if there are any more sets for trap damage now aside from the new one? This is kind of fun but as everyone stated pointless trait line. If they ever give it love I would play it for fun.

**Patriotp3a** · May 26 2015, 02:31 AM

Originally Posted by YesMaam

Trap damage needs a boost. Snare should have a bleed. The trap should not be consumed in my opinion by one person hit, this is the biggest problem! It should be like blight where it lasts for a bit and you walk over it and it stacks.

Anyone know if there are any more sets for trap damage now aside from the new one? This is kind of fun but as everyone stated pointless trait line. If they ever give it love I would play it for fun.

the single use of traps is my only problem with trapper line. Multi target traps would actually make trapper even more useful in group pvp as well as pve. They should attach better debuffs on skills though; trapper is completely useless compared to LM/Burg debuffs. That would give hunters another role to fill instead of just dps (wardens can tank and rks can heal yet they hold the highest single target and sustained aoes).

**SerowLOTRO** · Jun 21 2015, 10:59 PM

I would like:

1. Trap damage to scale with Physical Mastery.
2. Damage-dealing traps to remain on the floor for the entire duration. The damage for enemies that run over it repeatedly shouldn't stack, but the duration should refresh.

**TKH** · Jun 21 2015, 11:26 PM

Originally Posted by SerowLOTRO

I would like:

1. Trap damage to scale with Physical Mastery.
2. Damage-dealing traps to remain on the floor for the entire duration. The damage for enemies that run over it repeatedly shouldn't stack, but the duration should refresh.

Sound like Caltdrop hotspot.

**Cordh** · Jun 22 2015, 01:53 AM