Stairs! Why did it have to be Stairs!

I love the idea behind Trap Launcher. It's a huge improvement over the old Outland trap dancing where you had to edge up to the pack and drop a trap at your feet where you expected the Blue Square to then path over and take a required chill pill. Ideally, you got fancy with it. Fancy trapping was moving off to the side someplace nice and out of the way, waiting for the pull, and tossing distracting shot on your target to peel it out of the pack while the rest barreled on over to old Sherman, Abrams or Bradley.

As an aside, I nickname my warrior tanks Sherman, paladins Abrams and Death Knights Bradley. Why? No real reason, it's just me. Back to the semblance of a point.

Enter Arthas and the Scourge, and trapping becomes a lost art. There's simply no need with Thunderstomping tenacity pets and arrows that rain down from the sky shredding packs of mobs. Fun at first, but ultimately the only highlight was the Recount charts to see how high your DPS could get (until you grouped with an unholy Death Knight).

With Deathwing's emergence and the return to an actual reliance upon tactics in an instance, trapping has seen a renaissance! To avoid the stigma of Huntardism however, we must perform our trapping effectively. With an unobstructed line of sight and coordination with your party, the hunter can keep stuff on ice all night long. Boom! Done. With obstructions, things get tricky. <insert mumbled Dwarven curses here>

Here are two of my least favorite places so far:

1. Shadowfang Keep
2. Bastion of Twilight

Shadowfang Keep

Fighting in narrow stairwells as you proceed up into the towers is one of the more frustrating aspects of this dungeon for me. Not only do I have range issues so I can actually use my gun as a ranged weapon instead of whacking dudes with a stick, but SPIRAL staircases make it a real hoot to try and have visual range to trap bad guys. Anyways, stairs suck for actually trying to fight stuff.

The OMFG part for me in here is the steps right before Commander Springvale. Even though you can place the targeting circle on the top of the stairs, the trap just won't launch. You have to get up close and personal for this pull, and you have to be careful because they see you PDQ despite Camouflage.  I don't even use launcher here; it's an old school drop at the boots and disengage off back to my group.

Bastion of Twilight

Saw this place for the first time last night and ran through a few times farming epics from the trash drops. Was slightly chuffed that a gun (Crossfire Carbine) dropped, but it had strength and expertise. Damn tanking ranged weapons! They tease me!

So we get a 10m group rolling, and we've got plenty of CC, including two hunters, a shammy and a mage. If we get desperate, we also have a shadow priest for Mind Control. Marks go out, and first few kills are fine. Now we're at the floating beach ball of doom room (flashbacks to Blood Princes) and the overlapping patrols. All except the big ones can be CC'd. However, again, you can stand at the base of the stairs and get a green targeting circle to show on the top of the stairs... but when you try to actually launch that trap? Nada.

Once again, it's time to get up on top of the steps and then either launch or just lay it down by your boots.

What's my point?

I'm just whining that I'd prefer the game mechanic to revert the trap launcher targeting circle to the red out of range indicator if the trap placement is also out of sight so that I can easily see where I need to be. The game already knows it's gonna fail.  Just clue me in visually?

So new rule for Pea: when facing steps, I will need my little Dwarven feet placed at the top of those steps. Not one step down, either. All the way up top. Gotta have my traps!