I think that was the original idea about disabler-type enemies back in L4D and it did work that way in Vermintide as well., but I don’t think you can say the same about Darktide. On higher difficulties even “soft” disablers such as Chaos Spawn and Mutant will often lead to death if caught due to Crushers/Flamers etc. still being able to hit you and often doing so - whether it’s because they were going for someone else and you were in the AoE or just because the the minimum threat rule bugged out.
Trapper is the most threatening one since it’s usually instant death, thanks to its pull mechanic. If you were trapped from behind an elite mob - especially Bulwarks/Crushers - is usually instant death if your team doesn’t have immediate hard CC to immediately deploy. And even if they do, Trappers will at times pull you from ~15-20m and then even hard CC won’t save you since you’ll be simply out of range.
The problem is obfuscated by the prevalence of hard CC currently in the game, between the abhorrent Voice of Command, Shredder Grenade spam, Smite and the like. But those things are just a band-aid fix that cannot be relied on as they won’t always come into play. On top of that, such design encourages reliance on crutches as opposed to skill expression through positioning and dodge dancing.
In order to determine whether enemy is fair or not one should consider a scenario where only the core tools are available as those are the only ones you can rely on in all situations (or almost always) - so melee, ranged, dodges, slides etc. but without Blitzes (except for Psyker, rock and knives), Abilities or even teammates since clutching, even if understandably more difficult, should also be a conideration.
Trapper fails this test miserably. Scenarios where you’re getting trapped from behind a Monstrosity, a wall of Bulwarks or just forced to choose between dodging one of two Trappers are absolutely not fair. On top of that the only reliable sound cue is the one that goes off when net is being fired (as its steps and cackling are often glitched or just inaudible in all the chaos), and unlike a Pox Hound you need to dodge it - meaning if you just got yourself into a situation where you cannot dodge in the direction that is required because you didn’t anticipate trapper coming and then hear the net, you were not given a fair warning for what is an instant death attack.
Notice the difference between Trapper and the Pox Hound here, as Pox Hound can be avoided in such a situation since pushes can save you - and that’s on top of many more restrictions placed on the Pox Hound which make it an entirely fair disabler.
True, but there should be a way to get out of the net without having to walk up to your teammate. Mashing spacebar wouldn’t make it trivial since if it took long enough (like getting frozen in DRG for example) you’d be dead by the time you’re finished anyway so it would only work if the cosat is clear. But admittedly I don’t like that solution and would simply prefer for the net to dissolve automatically shortly after Trapper is dead, so that it’s still a hard disabler (meaning you can’t free yourself on your own) but teammates can save you in a physically unreachable spot (jumped from a drop, far away but without LoS and such).
Side note about Pox Hound
I think Pox Hound should do more damage, like Gutter Runner from Vermintide. But that’s a separate topic.
EDIT: didn’t see your edits until I was done typing so included a bit more now.
with a subtle and delicate… enormous stone cudgel blow!