What's the point of the trapper?

[MrEntity]

The hunter is better in every way.
The trapper has 3 abilities - elite ambush, elite disarm, and counter attack.
Elite ambush: almost useless. Ambush is itself almost useless for the same reason that elite ambush is pretty much useless - you have to use the character who is good at it to initiate battle. This almost always means wasting turns sitting around near an enemy so that your ambusher can have a go. Ambush should really be available for anyone involved in the fight, but it isn't, so I almost never have a chance to use it.
Counter attack: I don't understand this skill. You can (sometimes) prevent ambush. What happens when you're ambushed? 90% of the time I take a bit of damage, then run away. So this skill essentially saves me 1 or 2 minor damage-takes.
Elite disarm: Actually useful! If, and pretty much only if, you're playing Hildebrant's Cellar. In any other game mode traps are fairly uncommon. Like, they come up, but not nearly regularly enough to warrant downgrading a hunter to deal with them. Spend a couple focus and you're nearly always fine. So you save, at best, 1 focus per trap and they almost never happen.

The hunter has better stats in every regard except talent. The hunter also has skills that assist with movement (pretty useless, but comes up a lot), and killing things (handy!). The sneaking ability is occasionally useful, but not really. Also, a hunter is inherently good at ambushing without the elite ability simply due to stats.

I don't understand the trapper. It is MAYBE a reasonable choice in the cellar, but my experience is that it is better just to take a hunter and occasionally spend a bit of extra focus. Unless you reaaaallly want that extra talent because the rest of your party doesn't have any.

Can anyone describe how they make use of the trapper, and why they do so?

[LostArc]

The Trapper is great for giving yourself a handicap and increasing difficulty. The Hunter has always been the strongest of all classes anyways.

[bloodfire]

I think the trapper's pretty decent... I've beat the game on master with him with ease. Like you said he has higher talent which is one way I build him. He can be a talent based rapier pirate with high speed/evasion.

[Feyda]

You can make similar arguments about the hunter from the other perspective...
Called shot doesnt allow you to use a spear and shield so you lose tank options,
Sneak is usually pointless since you probably want to kill any monsters in your way for gold/xp/items.
Bonus Movement not terribly useful and not reliable.

I like playing the trapper with shield and spear and I am CONSTANTLY using the elite ambush. I put my party order as Trapper, Tank, Support, all you gotta do is position your 2 other guys where they will be in range to join the fight and initiate on the trapper. Or if trapper is solo, ambushing typically lets you get 2 attacks in right out of the starting gate, which at least early, means the battle is usually over before the enemy moves.

[MrEntity]

Originally posted by Feyda:

You can make similar arguments about the hunter from the other perspective...
Called shot doesnt allow you to use a spear and shield so you lose tank options,
Sneak is usually pointless since you probably want to kill any monsters in your way for gold/xp/items.
Bonus Movement not terribly useful and not reliable.

I like playing the trapper with shield and spear and I am CONSTANTLY using the elite ambush. I put my party order as Trapper, Tank, Support, all you gotta do is position your 2 other guys where they will be in range to join the fight and initiate on the trapper. Or if trapper is solo, ambushing typically lets you get 2 attacks in right out of the starting gate, which at least early, means the battle is usually over before the enemy moves.

Right, the abilities aren't great, but the stats are ALL better (except talent, which I would take a talent character for most of the time). If you want to use a spear and shield you're still going to have a better character if you put them on a hunter. You won't get called shot, but that's just an added benefit if you want to use bows.

Elite ambush is decent. BUT the hunter can do almost as good a job just by dint of having high stats. If I want to be sure of an ambush I'm generally going to be only spending 1 focus either way. And I still think the main issue there is having to wait around until the ambusher gets to initiate combat. I would rather take a hit than lose the turn a lot of the time. I also almost never attack things solo because it tends to be pretty dangerous, and a lot of things move faster than the fastest characters anyway.