Trapping and npc AI

My main toon is a ranger. With my ranger I mainly run a trapping build. Most times when I am in battle and a foe or 2 will get loose and chase a spell caster around, as funny as it is watching the caster try to run from them I desperately want that hench or hero to run the foe through my traps. Sadly this rarely happens so I have to flag them on my trap to lure the foe there. Well tonight I was thinking it would be awesome if the npc, friend or foe, would take the placement of traps into mind and lure the foe that's chasing him/her into the trap if the trap was within a certain range of them.

It might be kinda nice, but I doubt its going to happen. Trapping in PvE is mostly limited to farming, as its a pretty poor and unreliable damage source compared with other capabilities that rangers have. In short, leave the traps at home and run something with more utility that's easier to make effective.

I think there is more to it ... does ai make effort to stay in wells or wards at all? Traps are basically same ... areas with temporary effects which provide bonus for staying inside, so mobs not kiting inside trap area is more of symptom of mobs not taking any of these temporary effects into account.

Trapping, in my opinion, is the rangers most under appreciated tool in PvE. It is not just for dealing damage, but for applying wide spread conditions, and kd. I use it mainly for crowd control. Say some foes break off and start chasing your monk, Place down a spike trap to cripple them then follow up with a dust trap to blind them then hit them with a trip wire. or you are prepping a pull lay a couple traps down to cripple them or kd them while damaging them the whole time. There are many uses for trapping that most players ignore because they think of a ranger as a ranged class only. As far as damage goes. A trapper can deal more overall damage than any bow build. Another thing I noticed, For those rangers out there who run Discord Try running a Front Line Trapper Build with them It makes things go a bit faster.

That's a good point I do notice npcs will lay down a ward or well and then not use it. I have also noticed that the same goes for any DoT AoE skill If you were to lay down a Fire Storm the npcs should run into it if they are being chased only to attempt to pressure the foe from breaking off. If they were to add this AI function I could see npcs, foe and friend alike, being harder to kill.

Basically you want NPCs to run into your traps but your covering thsi up by saying perhaps heroes can pull them? Lol... Also if you think trapping is worth a slot on your skillbar in PvE then...Lol again.

No what I am saying is that I run a Pure Trap build, and that when I lay a trap down to assist my hero when it is being chased that the hero should think "Oh hey! A trap maybe it will slow this creep chasing me down so I can do my Job." And run towards the trap if it isn't too far away.

1) Everyone can play fun build in PvE, so stfu.

2) Yes, duh, he wants to lure mobs into traps. Smart player can stay withing ward/well range. Smart player can run into firendly meteor shower to get rid of melee chasers, smart player can run into trap.

AI should at least try to take same advantage of wards, wells, traps and AOE.

That does not include heroes, but also hard mode mobs. Imagine mob swarmed by minions running into trap/aoe/ward/well. it would be 'GG' .

Thank you. At least someone here has the right mindset

If you want to play traps, no one is going to stop you. But seriously, their usefulness in PvE is pretty meh. Their best use it to trap an area a whole lot before aggro and then try to pull the mobs onto the traps. You don't need heroes to do that for you. Once in combat, using traps is a bad idea generally, as they are easily interrupted (meaning all that needs to happen is for you to be hit while casting and it will be interrupted) and all have 2 second cast times. With decent timing you can do this effectively in nm to some extent, but in HM its not likely to happen that you'll get many traps off, and certainly not where you'd want them. If you really want heroes/hench to run over your traps, you have hero/hench flags, make use of them. This does not need to be programmed into their AI, when you have control over it.

Obviously you never tried trapping or you would know that there are skills designed to take away the easily interrupted and make you cast them faster. and this suggestion won't only affect traps, but wards, wells, and aoe spells. As for loading a narea with traps, if you were to properly play a trapper build you would only do this on rare occasion. To play a Front Line Trapper you are in the middle of the combat placing traps, throwing around conditions as well as damage.

You really should be careful about saying something's obvious, especially when you're totally wrong. There is one an only one skill to make traps not easily interrupted, and its an elite. That means you're wasting an elite spot just to be able to use your other skills without getting interrupted (and for a small increase in attribute as I recall... been a while since I looked at that skill). There are a few things that speed up trap casting, but they're generally stances, meaning you sacrifice blocking stances to be able to speed up your trapping.

As far as the AI with other area type effects, H/H are programmed to scatter from AoE, but its somewhat bugged, according to Joe anyway. I've never really had much problem getting them to stay in Wards, and of course flags can ansd should be used for both of these as well. As for front line trappers.... lol. Maybe in PvP... like 3 years ago. Maybe in Prophecies 4 years ago. Conditions in PvE don't really do much generally speaking. Daze is good, weakness can be... blind is nice against melee. Deep wound is great anywhere. Everything else is pretty meh. That makes like 3 traps worth using, and they all have very lengthy recharge times.

So again, no one is telling you not to use traps. But they're really not a good option, except for some farming builds.