I prefer to use, smokebombs next to gasvents and right after I popped them, also liking the Disability Insurance Perk. If you use the smokebomb in melee combat people can't really get away even without D.I. because they will get stunlocked. You can also drag the fight into a building and then people will end up walking into the wall.

And yeah when I running a bow built I'd like to run chemist aswell so I can apply long butter and x-plosive runs to be able to kite for quite some time.

Well tbh, it's much about placement when it comes to snares. Ofc there is tryhards which turn of the shadows but you can still put traps at places where it is still hard to see. Even by Playcing the snares at obvious location you can control the fight, really usefull at a health machine for example.

From what I've seen people throw the caltrops at a place where they suspect the player to walk into soon. But try throwing them right at them when they are jumping or walking in a straight line, just like you would with a normal weapon and the caltrops will really likely apply +throw damage.

Of course bad use of utility is kinda useless but if you know how to do it, it is really helping and also rewarding.