He said he wanted something like his old character, but better. When I pointed out he thought his old character was too scattered and asked him what, specifically, he wanted to focus on, his response was: "First is skills that are planned so they don't grow useless in the future, like search, disable device, UMD, and the like."
I think he wants to be a skillful guy in general and is reaching for trapfinding because it's hard to replace completely (he's already seen magic do that to every other skill we've ever depended on) and because he knows we'll probably need it. If he can do corpse and sneak, great, but I think corpse is the higher priority, slightly.
Regarding combat, he's spent a lot of time feeling useless (even when he's helping us a lot with Enlarge Person, Fly, Benign Transposition) because all of his damage output comes from sneak attack d6s and he almost never gets to roll them.
Seems to me he wants job security on the skills side, and the opportunity to throw big flashy damage numbers around. Glass cannon rather than big stupid fighter because he's seen how fast the DM goes through my 110+ hp, he knows better than to try to be attacked, even if he can survive it.
