1. Trapper changes
Hey, this is a new series of posts I'm starting, going through all the killers in the game one by one (perhaps one each day?) and saying what changes I'd make to them. Feel free to let me know your thoughts or what changes you would give each killer:
For trapper, I think the first change I'd make is remove the limit of how many traps he an carry. This removes all the awkward gameplay where you want to pick up a trap but have to throw down some terrible trap somewhere in order to just pick it up.
In addition, I think Coffee Grounds, Trapper Gloves, and Makeshift Wrap should all become entirely base kit. These changes would aim to make his power more threatening and usable mid chase, while also removing the fact that his one ability can literally backfire on him.
A lot of people think Trapper Sack should be entirely base kit, but I think this makes reinforcing the basement with tons of traps much too easy. Honestly, his power defending basement kind of bottlenecks how much you can buff him, but without addressing that I think these changes would be good to mostly increase his threat in chase and reduce the amount of time he wastes / distance he loses setting up traps.
Comments
I think the big two things for me would be standardizing escaping traps and making Iri Stone basekit.
The first one feels obvious for both sides, freeing yourself from a beartrap being based on random chance is just super outdated. Something like a flat 10 seconds at base when doing it by yourself would be fine, and being freed by a teammate can stay as fast as it is currently.
And Iri Stone or some other form of automatic trap rearm mechanic just feels necessary at this point. I wasn't a huge fan of it on Merchant because it made disarming her drones feel like a waste of time, but as long as Trapper has to physically retrieve his traps permanent disarming just cannot exist. It simply destroys his pressure way too effectively. So something as simple as disarming only deactivating traps for 45 seconds would do a lot for him I feel.
I think you are definitely right about making escaping traps standardized. I'm not sure exactly how long the sweet spot would be, but considering one attempt is 1.8s and survivors usually escape within 4 attempts and are guaranteed within 6 (maximum of 10.8s) I think standardizing it at somewhere like 8-10s would be good.
I've played with the idea of base kit Iri Stone, but I think the idea of just making it reset every 45s would be too powerful. Keep in mind that Iri Stone randomly resets one trap every 30s, not the same trap 30s after it is disarmed. So a trap could be disarmed and rearmed in 30s or in potentially several minutes, especially at the start of the game. I think having a trap reset after 60s may be good, with a visual and audio indicator in the last 5s of the trap opening back up. This would keep his traps active a good amount of the time without him having to constantly run across the map to rearm them, while also avoiding the issue of survivors just getting super unlucky over and over with the trap arming right beneath them with no way of knowing.
My main change I always saw of him needing is that survivors can't run straight next to the trap without getting trapped into it. Like I would allow them walk or crouch next to it to be able to disarm but the ammount of times you see survivor squeeze past a trap in full sprint is just stupid. Like the traps should cause some alarm not be something that survivor can just run past.
Agree. Trapper should be able to carry all his traps and coffee ground basekit would give him decent antiloop. Simple and effective changes.
Funnily enough, I had a similar idea for a post series like this.
I don't exactly agree with basekit Wrap, but I've always been partial to the idea of traps resetting themselves automatically and maybe basekit Sack in some way. The setting speed is fine as is, the main issues are the small trap inventory and that they can be indefinitely disabled unless you go out of your way to rearm them.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly don't think Trapper needs much more than some QoL. His snowball potential is incredible in the right hands, he could just benefit from a little touching up on his biggest problems like Wraith and he'd be fine in my eyes.
iri stone basekit.