Why hunter "Double Trap" were nerfed - or the day I laid my last Freezing Trap

*Uppdated with more links at the bottom.*

I have played World of Warcraft  since the day it was released, and I still play it. I quickly realised that I wasn't topping the DPS-charts, but I liked to help my party with other things instead. I liked to trap. And I especially liked the Freezing Trap.

During my 6-year career as a hunter I have trapped a lot of things:

I have trapped small mobs.

I have trapped large mobs.

I have trapped double mobs.

I have trapped tripple mobs.

I have trained fellow hunters in the art of freeze-trapping.

But now it seems Blizzard want me to forget about my beloved freezing trap. :-(

The Nerf-bat hits double freezing traps
Blizzard recently made a major stealth-nerf to the hunters ability to Crowd Control (CC) in World of Warcraft. Our primary CC-ability has always been Freezing Trap, to put a monster in a frozen state to prevent them from fighting.

From the beginning we had to arm our trap before the battle started, but with a lot of skill and some luck we could use our ability to Feign Death and then rearm our trap, so that our designated target could stay frozen the whole fight. Later on we could arm our traps while fighting, and with that we also could CC two mobs at the same time.

But now Blizzard removes that ability, without even telling why. From now on hunters can only use one Freezing trap at any given time. But then - why should we use it? The Freezing Trap is worse than most other CC-abilities. So why should any group let the hunter use CC, since most other classes have better CC, without 30 seconds cooldown and with the ability to target the mob instantly.

No more quadruple Freezing Traps...

"The Reason" Freezing Traps got nerfed
But the Freezing Trap in Cataclysm had become too good. With increased duration of Freezing Traps to 60 seconds and the introduction of another cooldown-reducing item, the traps had become to powerful.

Now there are two CD-reducing items in the game:
Vicious Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets - "Reduces the cooldown of - your Traps by 2 seconds."

and two parts of Beast Lord Armor - "Reduces the cooldown on your traps by 4 seconds."

Combined with the talent to reduce CD on a trap the hunter can place a new Freezing Trap every 18 seconds.

With the normal duration increased to 60 seconds, the talented duration (+30%) is now 80 seconds.

A crowd control ability with 18 seconds cooldown and 80 seconds duration is to good, according to Blizzard, and they do have a point.

6 mobs CC:e by one hunter - simultaneously
So with preparation before the pull, and fully geared and with the right talents, a hunter could potentially freeze up to 6 mobs simultaneously! Add Wyvern Sting and another mob is CC:ed for 30 seconds.

And even if a hunter "only" have the talents Trap Mastery (increased duration) and Resourcefulness (decreased cooldown), three mobs in Freezing Traps at the same time i rather easy.

Hunters were so damn good they could solo an heroic dungeon, and Blizzard stopped that by destroying the mechanism, instead of tweaking the timers.


I still don't understand why Blizzard chose  the solution they did? The duration of Freezing Traps in PvP was decreased to only 8 seconds. Why didn't Blizz also decreased the duration in PvE back to 30 seconds? That way hunters could still have been able to CC multiple mobs, with skill, and only if they nerfed themselves with lvl 70-gear. Isn't that a more reasonable solution?

And why the stealth-nerf?
(Everyone hates stealth...). This change to hunters Freezing-mechanics is way to big to be left out in the patch-notes, but it was! Instead it was the players who discovered the nerf - Undocumented changes: hunters

There have been some uproar at the Blizzard forums:.

Bug report (US) Double Freezing Trap breaking (first confirmation on the stealth-nerf from Blizzard)

Angry players in EU - Petitions for Double Trapping.

Angry players in US - Double Freezing Trap Needs to be Reinstated

Unfortunately, I don't think this is enough, :-/

Blizzard is not very likely revert this change, unless we hunters get together and act for a change right now!

If we don't we can all say goodbye to this hunter-icon. It will soon be forgotten...

*Uppdate*:
A Blue post - Blizzard notices the hunters upset

The hunters have started to make their voices heard after Blizz posted about DPS-balance and hunter crowd control. Community Manager Daxxarri speaks up on the US forums:

"Freezing Trap also came up quite a bit, in reference to multi-trapping. This ability was changed because we wanted hunters to be somewhat more consistent with the crowd control potential of other classes, and we didn't want any one class standing out as the absolute best at crowd control. We realize that it rewarded skill, and we like mechanics that do that. This wasn’t the right place for it though, and we think that hunters can be rewarding to skilled players in other ways."

But he just put gasoline on the fire. Alfavhunter answers:

"Hunter traps have many drawbacks compared to other classes forms of CC, these drawbacks include

• requires pathing to trap (not targeted)
• has a decent CD
• puts a separate ability on CD
• broken on any damage
• can be resisted even if hit/spell pen capped
• has an arming time
• has a very small activation radius
• cannot be macro-ed (because it isn't targeted)
• moderate difficulty to use effectively
• cannot remove dots"

And is followed by Bandet writing and mentioning the following drawbacks/problems for freezing traps:

1. Resists on traps.
2. Dots.
3. Arming radius.
4. Time of actually trapping.

WOW Petiopia is a very good hunter-forum, and they have a thread about the nerf - Massive Stealth Nerf To Hunter Traps

And the European WOW-forums have go several threads:

Hunter CC. The disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

Vurnhric also sums up all the disadvantages with the current Freezing traps and suggests a few changes. Read the thread yourselves and pray for a Blizzard response...

 
Freezing trap again. (mostly about PvP)

Lets hope Blizzard notices the hunter community now...