The Mad Trapper is one of the new outlaws to grace Secret Ponchos. Armed with a long-ranged hunting rifle and a multitude of bear traps, he's built for setting up chokepoints and blasting people from far out of their range. Sometimes from out of their vision! With such power, he sacrifices a sigificant amount of health - having less than Kid Red even. His speed is also fairly slow, and he has trouble with enemies close enough to retaliate. Minding your positioning and learning the movements of your enemies is key to the Trapper's gameplay.

The Hunting Rifle


The Trapper's boomstick is gifted with slightly above-average range normally. But you won't be using this firing mode much except as a sort of last-ditch panic attack. It does rather low damage and has fairly slow travel time for a bullet weapon. To make up for this, it inflicts Wound on whoever you peg with it for a little less than a second, slowing them down so you can make your escape or line up another shot.

The true power of the rifle comes from his tertiary fire. Similar to the Deserter, it steadily increases his range to almost three times its original length! UNlike the Deserter, the Trapper is completely free to move about with this extended range. This gives him the second highest weapon attack in the game (beaten by Killer's knife throw) and the absolute highest range of any primary weapon. To amplify this focus on high-range combat, the Trapper deals increased damage the further he is from the target. Combined with the Wounding effect, you can very quickly take chunks out of an unprepared player's lifebar with them being completely helpless to fight back.

Last but not least is the secondary fire. The Trapper takes a moment to load his gun with a slug before firing a very thin, stunning shot. It works in very much the same way as Phantom Poncho's secondary fire, even with him being able to use the recoil to make quick escapes when his stamina is running low. The difference is that firing upon a Trapped player will cause the shot to crit, dealing massively increased damage. Keep in mind that while the shot does have slightly longer range than his base shot, it still puts the extremely fragile woodsman in harm's way in 3v3s. Make sure you have the proper backup from your team, and especially make sure they don't shoot your targets before you can!



Bear Traps


What's a Trapper without his traps? A sitting duck, that's what. The Trapper's namesakes are his lifeline and his main way of keeping people on their toes. The traps themselves have a fairly good toss range and take half a second to arm themselves. After arming, any person (even you) who steps on them gets stunned for an absolutely MASSIVE 5 seconds. Of course, any damage they take will cause them to break free, but they're still out of action until then.

A very basic objective with the traps is to simply deter enemies from going a certain way. Usually, this way is towards you and your squishy fur coat. A visible trap is a danger sign that most people adhere to, allowing you to blast away while they're busy searching for a route around.

A visible trap is also an unsprung trap, and we can't have that. As such, the secondary fire while holding your beartrap will cause the Trapper to automatically bury the trap closest to him, making it invisible to enemies and displaying a helpful icon for you and your allies. The burying process takes about 2 seconds and the Trapper is completely vulnerable during it, so make sure you have a free moment before hiding your snares.

The Trapper is allowed 3 traps to be active at a time. A few helpful icons beneath your weapon display show the current status of each of your traps; blue is unused, black is thrown, black with an eye over it is hidden, and yellow with a ! is a sprung trap. A trap will break after being sprung or after a period of time (about 45 seconds). If you're the impatient type or simply want to move your base, you can shoot your traps to destroy them yourself. Don't worry about running out, the Trapper has a big coat.

Oh yes, and the Trapper can roll over his traps. Make sure you time your dodge well though, or you'll end up landing on your trap by accident.

Tactics

The Trapper's job is simple; set up a few traps, pull out your gun, and shoot people while they complain about how OP you are or something. Getting this to work IS NOT simple and requires learning how players react to certain trap placement and getting pegged from outside of their sight range. A very obvious thing is setting up traps in narrow passages, forcing people to either take another route or charge headlong into your snares. Camping like this is actually fairly difficult on most maps, as they don't have areas where you can throw down 3 traps and be completely safe. Even then, multiple foes can work together and attack from multiple sides to force your escape. It's advised to avoid this method of fighting unless you can work your team around it, such as having a Deserter help cover you.


A usually more beneficial option is setting up traps to force your opponent to play around you while you assist your allies with your long range Wounds. Having a hidden trap behind you will also give you a safe exit should someone realize there's a third player in the game. This allows you to give your shorter-ranged friends some covering fire in the case of a mistake, or simply help them take down a priority target. Just make sure you keep up with your traps, or you'll easily be caught with your hat down.


Gunmanship

The basic thing to remember with the Rifle is to ALWAYS keep it loaded. To the point where you should be reloading after every shot on instinct. The rifle's slow firing rate allows you to do this so you can keep up your barrage of painfully annoying buckshot without worrying about taking cover or counting shots.

Something tricky is that your shots will always stop at your opponent's feet, no matter how much you've charged up your rifle's range. This essentially means that someone walking away from you is completely safe from your shots! To make up for this - as well as the gun's slow projectile - offset your aim slightly to the left or right of your target so that it would otherwise miss. If the player is moving directly away from you, the outward spread will clip them. You'll also have to lead your shots a bit on a strafing opponent. Get that first shot, and then keep racking up the Wound time to make sure they can't escape.

Perks?

The Mad Trapper is built around keeping people at a distance while tearing them apart, and should be built to match that. While my stat allocation is shown above, the last 4 points could easily be put into Speed instead. You could even sacrifice some Damage to pump your stamina regen or speed even higher, should you feel you can rely on your teammates. The thing to avoid is putting points into Fire Rate and Health. The Trapper needs to line up his shots, and as mentioned previously you should already be reloading after you fire all the time. Firing faster might help keep a Wounded target slow, but you'll find yourself running out of ammo a lot more. Health on the other hand, just doesn't benefit the Trapper. As the perk bonuses are percentage based, you won't be getting as much health out of a few points as you would in a different stat. The Trapper's health is simply too low.

Works Well With

Outlaws with a long range option work well with the camping Trapper. Setting up a small base with a Deserter or Killer as cover can make it near impossible for enemies to get in. The aforementioned outlaws even come with powerful Stun options, allowing you to follow up on them with your own shots so their already pinned target can be even worse off.


Outlaws with a powerful area denial weapon can keep enemies away from you. Gordo's molotovs and minigun can slow the opposition's advance, while Kid Red's dynamite can halt it entirely! These threats along with your laid traps and your constant potshots can destroy the morale and strategy of the enemy team. Make sure to not get left in the dust should one of them go on the offense, or you'll easily get overwhelmed.


Has Trouble With

High mobility and burst outlaws will absolutely tear you to shreds should you get separated from your team. They can easily bob and weave around your slow shot output and exploit holes in your trap setup. Escape from these outlaws is near impossible, and getting Wounded is most certainly a death sentence.

The melee-focused Matador and Warmonger can get into your range and then never leave. Their weapons always leave lasting Wounds to keep you slowed, and their quick foot speed and combos can stop any sort of retreat. They can especially get in the way when you're trying to capitalize on someone stepping on one of your traps. To make matters worse, your gun does considerably less damage in their optimal range! Fighting these outlaws alone is absolutely not advised.