Hunter Freeze Trapping Guide

From GoesToEleven

This is a guide for all hunters, and those that group with hunters, on trapping and chaintrapping. What is this, how to do it, tips and tricks, oh my!

The original version of this guide can be found here. All discussion should be held there as well.

The spell

Our main tool in trapping is, unsurprisingly, Freezing Trap. Do not confuse this with Frost Trap. If somebody asks for a Frost Trap, double check if they really mean that. Usually, they mean Freezing Trap.

Freezing Trap Rank 3 3% of base mana Instant cast 30 sec cooldown Place a frost trap that freezes the first enemy that approaches, preventing all action for up to 20 sec. Any damage caused will break the ice. Trap will exist for 1 min. Only one trap can be active at a time.

There are several things that you can distill from the description:

It's instant cast. You can move and place a trap at the same time.
It costs mana to cast. If you don't have mana, you can't place a trap.
The trap, if not triggered, lasts for one minute.
The cooldown of the cast is 30 seconds, and is shared with all your other traps.
The trap, once triggered, will last up to 20 seconds. I'll call this part the icecube.
Dealing damage will cause the icecube to break, releasing the trapped mob.
The trap will only trap one mob.
The trap will work on any mob of any type. It has no restrictions on type, so Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Elementals, Dragonkin, Giants, etc etc they're all fair game.

There are several things that you need to know that can't be gleaned from the tooltip:

Freezing Traps can be resisted by mobs. I'll get to this later.
Some specific mobs are immune to traps.
Triggering a trap (whether it resists or not) will generate proximity aggro towards you.
There is a noticeable amount of time between the mob triggering the trap and the trap actually coming into effect.
Mobs do not build aggro towards you nor your group members while trapped.
The icecube effect is a magic effect and can therefore be dispelled by enemies.
There is a major glyph that can improve your Freezing Trap: [item id=42905 q=1]Glyph of Freezing Trap[/item].
Use: When your Freezing Trap breaks, the victim's movement speed is reduced by 30% for 4 sec.
The Hunter Dungeon Set 3 Beast Lord Armor's 2 piece bonus helps lowering the cooldown on all your traps: Reduces the cooldown on your traps by 4 sec. (Note added for historical accuracy.)
The Survival talent Survival Tactics "Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability and all trap spells will be resisted by 4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 4 sec."

Your other tools

There are several other skills & talents that can help you trapping:

The skill Concussive Shot
The tier 1 Marksmanship talent Improved Concussive Shot
The skill Distracting Shot
The skill Wing Clip
The tier 2 Survival talent Improved Wing Clip
The tier 3 Survival talent Scatter Shot
The tier 9 Marksmanship talent Silencing Shot
The skill Disengage

Furthermore, you can leverage your pet into helping you:

The tier 5 Beast Mastery talent Intimidation

A single trap: melee mob

Trapping a melee mob for a single trap duration is the first step to greatness. While you read this, remember the following facts:

You need to trap the mob your marker/raid leader/tank (I'll just use "tank" from here on) designates, not just any random mob in the pull.
The trap is only a way to take the mob out of the fight -- if the trap itself doesn't work, think of something else to keep it occupied.
The rest of your party needs to know you can do this reliably.
The rest of your party, especially your tank, don't want to adjust their playing style because you need to trap, and you can't expect them to do so.

Before your tank pulls or charges, put down your trap. Put it down somewhere away from where you expect the main fight to take place. Put yourself behind it, but still in range of your target. That means you have to put it in the direction from where the mob will come. Put it in an area that is already cleared, to avoid accidentally pulling additional mobs or patrols.

I'll repeat myself for further emphasis: do no put a trap in the area you expect the mobs pulled by the tank to travel across. Depending on relative travelling speeds, a mob that's not your trap target will reach the trap first and become cubed. This will cause considerable confusion as the tank (and DPS) suddenly have to switch targets and priority.

In the above diagram, do not put the trap in the area of the green arrow ("pull corridor"), or in the grey circle ("fight area").

Make sure you have your target targeted. Once the mobs begin moving, targeting will become more difficult, so be ahead of that.

Let your tank do his pull. Sometimes this involves charging, sometimes pulling. It can involve Charge, Misdirection, Faerie Fire, Avenger's Shield, Thunderclap, Consecrate, etc. This doesn't matter to you.

Once the fight has been started, get the mob's attention. If your tank did a body pull, a simple shot could be enough. If your tank is a bit more firm, he might have built some serious aggro on the mob. You can try just out-aggroing your tank. You can also use Distracting Shot. Once you are on the top of the mob's threat list, it'll start running towards you.

Since you are standing behind your trap, the mob will have to move across the trap. He will trigger it, become an icecube, and you will never be reached.

Note that the behaviour of your party members is not affected beyond "don't DoT a mob that is about to be CC-ed", which should be common wisdom.

A single trap: caster mob

This is the second step to greatness. Caster mobs are more difficult than melee mobs as they don't automatically run towards you if you aggro them. Instead, they'll stand still and start casting stuff on you, like Shadowbolts or Fireballs. You can shoot and taunt all you want and it just won't move, meanwhile casting you to death. To work her mojo on you, a caster needs 4 things: the ability to speak, line of sight with her target (i.e. you), be in range of her target, and mana. If you take any of these away, she'll come running towards you and demand a refund.

Ability to speak: Silencing your target can only be done if you have 41 talent points in Marksmanship and gained Silencing Shot.
Breaking Line of Sight (LoS): This is the classic way to get casters to move, also known as "the LoS pull". Aggro the mob and break the Line of Sight by moving behind a wall, a corner, etc. Put your trap somewhere the mob has to travel in order to gain LoS: for example, in the corner. Note that some things that look like LoS-breakers really aren't: you can move behind bookcases all you want, usually the caster just Shadowbolts you through the books. (See note below.)
Range: most spells have a limited range. Casters will run towards you if you have aggro on them and their spell can't reach you. Make sure you put your trap somewhere between the mob's initial place and your eventual place. This approach takes more time than a LoS pull and needs a bit of space for you to move on. However, sometimes this is necessary if you can't break LoS.
Mana: You could theoretically drain a mob's mana and thus reducing it to melee status, but this usually takes too long. Save yourself the effort and don't try it.

A remark on how to detect LoS-breakers: Most of the the time you can distinguish between objects that do not break LoS and those objects that do by hovering over them with your mousecursor. The objects that do not break line of sight ("doodads" as they are called internally) will light up a bit. You can try this out on a bookcase.

Trap resists and icecube breakage

Traps can be resisted at the initital trigger, and during their lifetime as an icecube ("heartbeat resists"). It's not entirely clear what one can do to avoid this, but it seems hit rating helps. (Anecdotal evidence: once I reached the ranged hit cap with Eavangelina at level 70, I never had traps breaking because of resists.

A resist, by the way, is not the same as an immune. There are mobs that just can't be trapped, however awesome you and your hit gear is. Learn these mobs, and warn your tank if you're tasked with trapping such a mob. Ultimately, it's your job and responsibility.

Icecubes will also shatter if the mob gets damaged. The usual causes for this are:

You hit the mob with your autoshot. Don't do this and immediately stop attacking a mob if it's cubed.
Your pet hit the cube. What the heck is your pet attacking the mob for? You told it to, right? You see, pets stop attacking mobs as soon as they're cubed, unless you specifically order them to attack it. So, don't do that.
Somebody else hit the mob. If it's the tank, he probably meant it and should taunt it to gain aggro. If it's not the tank: bad news. You'll have to try to control the mob as it's still your responsibility. You can later tell the icecube breaker what you think of him, for now you have to practice damage control.
There's some AoE damage flying around. This can be the tank, this can be somebody else, whatever. You probably didn't follow this guideline: "Put it down somewhere away from where you expect the main fight to take place." Now you know why I put that guideline there.

How to deal with breakage

Even if you and your team are very good, traps will break. The third step to greatness is learning how to deal with this. Remember that "The trap is only a way to take the mob out of the fight -- if the trap itself doesn't work, think of something else to keep it occupied."

There are some things you can do to prevent the mob wreaking havoc on you and your party.

The easy solution: if your traps are not on cooldown, put down a trap and get the mob to trigger it. Oftentimes your traps will be on cooldown as they have a 30 second cooldown. You can make sure your traps are not on cooldown by pre-emptively laying traps, not just Just In Time. The trap, if not triggered, will remain active for 60 seconds.

Icecube broke, traps are on cooldown. Now what? Keep the mob occupied. Take a look at the list of Your Other Tools, above. You can stun it with Intimidation. You can daze it with Concussive Shot. You can let your pet tank it for a while. If all else fails, [i]you[/i] can tank it for a while. Remember, you are expendable while your healers are not. You can kite it, although that rapidly becomes chaintrapping territory. Say what?

Chaintrapping

Chaintrapping is the final step on the road to greatness, and the reasons hunters are considered a full CC. It means keeping one mob trapped and otherwise controlled, reliably, for any amount of time.

The following diagram shows how one can repeatedly trap the same mob. Each column denotes 10 seconds. The first trap cooldown is already expired once the mob finally is icecubed. This can be done by dropping the trap well in advance. All traps thereafter are dropped as soon as possible.

As you can see, you'll eventually run out of time. After the fourth trap has expired, the mob is breaks loose and your trap is on cooldown. It'll first kill you and then your healer.

The question therefore is how to buy time and postpone the time your traps are on cooldown and the mob is no longer trapped.

The first way is to realize that mobs do not instantly travel distances. Most just have to walk/run. You can take advantage of this by placing you next trap a significant distance from the previous one, and place yourself behind it. As soon as the previous trap breaks, the mob will move towards you. To reach you he'll have to cross your latest trap and become cubed. You can now safely move to another spot, wait until your traps are from cooldown, place a new trap, and move behind it. Between traps, you can engage in your usual DPS activities.

The above method works and can theoretically be maintained forever. It is, however, rather demanding and does not leave a wide margin of error. You'll need to avoid crossing the main fight zone, and will require a lot of cleared space to comfortably move.

Take a look at end of "The Spell" and the section "Your other tools". These items, spells and talents all improve your chaintrapping potential. They either reduce cooldowns, slow/stun/daze mobs, or improve already existing spells that do this. Just using Concussive Shot will help you buy a lot of time while the mob is struggling to reach you and your trap.

How not to do it: pitfalls

If your trap gets resisted / dispelled / icecube breaks, do not use Feign Death. The mob will immediately go for the healer and kill him. Instead, try to buy time and/or sacrifice yourself. You, as a DPSer, are expendable. Your healer isn't.
Related to this, avoid passive trapping. By this I mean not building any threat on the target by damaging it before it gets trapped. While trapped, the mob will not build aggro on any of the group's members, but as soon as it is released it will. You want a certain head start on its aggro list, otherwise it'll run straight to the healers as soon as they cast a healing spell.
Avoid turning your back to the mob you're kiting if he's in melee range. There's a large chance you'll get Dazed. Instead, strafe the mob or put more distance between you and the mob before turning your back.
Do not stand on top of immediately besides your trap. Since there's a noticeable lag between the trigger and the cube effect, it can happen the mob will trigger the trap, hit you in the face, and then becoming an icecube. Getting hit is unnecessary and can easily avoided by moving a bit further away.