Crimson added this to their brute post, and I largely think that its been ignored by everyone in the discussion. I can’t speak to @SolidFury 's intention, if that it was just a one off counter point to stop the “erm xeno main???” people, but regardless. Besides, having a whole thread for it is much neater
I’m going to start my argument here by saying this isn’t as huge of an issue as BRUTE. BRUTE is infinitely more available than trapper. There will be only 0-2 boilers in any match from lowpop to highpop. Its quite rare for boiler stacking as well. Commtechs on the other hand, isn’t role limited like SG or specs (needs verification, but ive spent enough hours on this awful game to be pretty sure). Obviously, lowpop often has no commtechs, an issue I’m pretty sure is due to no one wanting to be the first commtech who gets assigned to fob. I mean, if you don’t care about community perception of your char, you’re not rule bounded to follow CIC directives.. However usually by mid-high pop there’s a good 5 commtechs at any given time, which at the moment have a good 20ish shots available to them. Realistically at this moment, you’ll see a trapper every 5 rounds or so, and whoever they are, their quality would be, debatable. Regular boiler is much more common than trapper. However, I’m not going to let my argument hang on the fact that no one plays trapper.
So lets start with its abilities and stats
- Shoot Trap. Launches a series of 6ish traps in a adjacent line where you click. Each one locks and stuns a marine in place for 1.75 second. 20 second cooldown
- acid mine. places a 3x3 marker which after 1.5 seconds (guessing, not on wiki), does 45 burn or 75 damage to barricades. Each person hit reduces the cooldown on traps by 4 seconds. 6 second cooldown.
- acid shotgun. like scattershot but much tighter spread. Not on wiki but I’m guessing like a 4 tile range with 10 pellets. At pointblank it does 90 damage total, if currently trapped they take an extra 75% damage, from experience enough to just outright hardcrit someone. 15 second cooldown
- long vision
- empower. you can empower your abilities from getting enough stacks of acid shotgun, max 10. Pointblanking or hitting any pellets at a locked marine immediately fills it. When at 10 stacks it empowers trap ability.
- empowered trap. 3 second stun. Empowers acid mines on use, regardless of anything. otherwise same as regular traps
- empowered acid mines. applies acid onto marines caught, does 30 burn if not trapped otherwise 50 damage if caught. Does 115 damage to barricades.
- acid tail strike. Same as regular boiler
And it’s statistics that have changed compared to regular boiler are:
- 60 less health to 590
- 20 less armour to 0
- 0.25 less speed to 0.75
So, what makes it so awful. Well for one, primarily it entirely shuts down any form of building defenses, with little counters. A trapper boiler gets a whole 6 tiles (guesstimating) of extra view range in which it can sit comfortably outside the range of any gun without a scope, and just plink cades to break them. For any given line of cades, it can destroy 3 at a time, every 6 seconds. You cannot repair these cades while they’re targeting them as they will just target you as well. Their acid explosions are not caught on cades unless regular boiler boils, so they can position their acid over the cades to hit you. Since you take about 8 seconds to apply a fix to a cade with a welder, they are also damaging the 2 other cades next to it. This means you need 3 other commtechs just to ensure they’re all being repaired OR a nailgun which will waste your metal. ALL OF THIS while sitting out of range of most guns. There is no question about it, this makes holding any fortification a question of if you can push them away, or how long.
Additionally, they have unprecedented survivablity. They are effectively impossible to kill. While they are slower and they have no armour and share boilers increased fire damage, the fact that they have super 360 vision means they can see any flank, at long range, all while being able to move at their normal rate and without having to direction lock or change direction. If you try to flank them they will see it coming. If you try to rush them, they can run away while also knowing how well your chasing them from behind. They are faster than you on weeds, and they have 0 reason to be off weeds. If there’s a threat like a scoped rifle user, they can see it coming and where from. Only the bigger scopes and the snipers rifle can out range them, but its still a non effect as they can always hug their defenses. All their abilities have no windup, you can just open the door, hit it, and close immediately before anyone can react. In my playtime as a trapper, the only times I’ve died is when all else is lost, I’ve been stupid for acid shotgun (you don’t even need acid shotgun to dish out good damage), or I’ve tunnel visioned with cas or OB (Me issue honestly).
Compared with regular boiler who has a hefty windup, a loud sound when they windup, and their sight is direction locked and also has a windup.
Furthermore, you have 0 idea where the trapper is. Because they outrange most marines as previously mentioned and are not direction locked with their vision, they can simply safely move around to new angles to attack. This is especially a problem on certain maps with fobs or holds with large areas you can safely move around. For instance both NV fobs. The beach fob has 3 directions in which you can attack fob from, at range. the airfield has 3 directions as well. The LV beachhead often has two angles to attack from, if your willing to walk around to each of them via caves.This in combination with the fact that unlike boiler you don’t know that a acid trapper is coming or where its shooting from. Its acid marks are directly placed on the tile, and has no sound from either the shooter or the landing point. Compared with boiler which has loud sounds for its windup and its launching, as well as the physical projectile to gauge where its coming from. The acid trapper is like old boiler which just had a huge 10 something square marker that applied acid without any projectile. With an acid trapper you have no clue without binos where the projectile has come from.
Again, from my own experience there will only be a handful at highpop marines with scope, sniper notably. Your greatest weaknesses (outside of you being stupid) is tunnel vision, CAS, or snipers (snipers, use incend ammo, boilers are weak to fire damage, combined with their 0 armour). And even then, it relies on being caught out by it.
So what do I suggest to change it? Well for one, make acid proof cades stronger. Perhaps make them weaker to brute damage to force them to be cleared by frontline casts, but make them 100% immune to all non acid gloop applying acid.
Secondly replace their all vision with a windup directional vision. This will give them significant tunnel vision, and mean that they have to actually be aware of their surroundings. They will also have to take a little bit to set themselves up rather than just be able to open shoot close with doors.
I think trapper is a really fun caste. It has interesting mechanics and is fun to play with. Especially its empowering abilities mechanics. But its fucking awful to play commtech with a trapper in play.