I think it’s no secret that BH has the absolute worst tHP generation out of any career. Looking at the list, I can’t spot a single career that is worse. More than that, his tHP generation isn’t just “the weakest”, in my opinion it’s absolutely awful. I think the best option for him is rapier + tHP on headshot/crit, and it really doesn’t work well. Speaking from experience, once you take damage, it’s almost impossible to recuperate it on your own without outside assistance like Mercenary. This really forces you to avoid taking any sort of damage at all.
I’m gonna say that I don’t absolutely hate it. I think it’s a nice change of pace, and really forces you to become better at avoiding damage. The problem I think is that BH is the only one that goes this extreme.
tHP on headshot/crit is universally weak on every career, essentially completely outclassed by tHP on cleave. Another question is - should BH have tHP on kill? It’s a mismatch on ranged careers in general, since you will always use your ranged tools to deal the most damage and kill the most elites. While BH is decently suited to kill Stormvermin in melee (with the right build), they just don’t give that much health. Maulers are decent, but BH lacks high anti-infantry damage. Chaos Warriors are killed easily with billhook, but they can be rare to see sometimes, and very often you won’t get the kill despite dealing the most damage.
Does anyone think it would be good to replace one of his tHP talents with cleave? Would it be good design to give him better tHP generation? If there were other careers that has similar problems, this would be a tougher question, but no other career struggles with this quite like BH does.
As much as i do think his melee feels gimped as a result of his weak THP generation, i worry that giving him a decent one will just result in a very or possibly, even more overpowered class in the end.
Powercreep is already a problem and griffonfoot + double shotted is pretty visible on him, volleybow might be quite underrated for cata too.
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So i´ll take the safe route and state that if double shotted eats a nerf then he can get better melee.
I 100% agree rapier with crit/headshot is his best option, though I think it’s kinda ok at least with Boon. His lack of extra crit chance hurts it pretty bad though when you’re not hitting heads. I mostly resent the lack of other options, I love rapier but get enough of it with WHC, would really like to be able to run something like falchion without losing most of my temp health.
I definitely agree on kill has no place on any ranged career. Swap it out for cleave on HS too while we’re at it, that is of course assuming no wider temp health rebalance is on the horizon, otherwise it’s all kinda up in the air anyway.
@Frostysir I would happily cop a Double Shotted nerf for cleave THP. As @Sleezy pointed out, it’s not even that impactful outside of twitch. It only reliably gets its full cooldown on bosses and its effect outside of bosses is eh at best for the cooldown. Heavily overrated talent IMO.
I also disagree the volley bow has any real niche on Cata, but getting into details there is probably best saved for a different thread.
Overall I think it’s a necessary change to give him alright melee choices. THP in general is a bit overtuned but I can’t imagine BH with cleave THP being any real contributor to this with all the team thp ults flying around and the whole stagger thp shield bash mechanic in place.
What?! She has cleave and stagger, and most of her weapons work at least passably if not well with both. How on earth does she have worse THP than BH?
Stagger is bad outside of flame sword because she most of times outright kills than stagger enemies (and then you dont get thp from that) Cleave works well on sword, but who the hell uses sword. Flail stagger is kinda bs you dont get nothing from h1 and most of time like i said you outright kill trash with it, cleave works better. You have literally nothing to work outside of spamming with coal poker.
I agree her kill power can make stagger bad depending on difficulty but I can’t say I’ve had much issue generating temp health with cleave on flaming flail, 1h sword, dagger or mace. I feel like you’re exaggerating the anti synergy with a thp talent as universal as cleave available.
Yeah the THP generation is horrible
I usually go with on kill (not the headshot/crit one) and a machete and then try to snipe the elites out of hordes (with mixed success)
the talent for damage reduction on special/elite kills really helps me to
those up to 30% damage reduction really help to negate part of the thp generation trouble and as bounty hunter you are kind of predisposed to snipe those anyway
Stagger doesn’t suck though. Stagger is good with dagger/flame sword. It’s also good with mace if you’re spamming push attack chain. It’s almost like different talents work with different weapons. Mind boggling, I know.
More like absolutely broken lol. Literally impossible to run out of health as fire sword Unchained in higher difficulties. One swipe and you get like 20 tHP back.
Suppose it depends on how you measure impact, i think easily killing chaos warriors, bosses and a number of specials is a pretty solid deal for any single ability´s versatility. It particularly shines in the chaos wastes too.
The THP system is just kinda stupid to begin with, but if we must have it then the level 5 and 15 talents should be more generic to the point were the same 3 talents are available on every class. Right now, they just restrict weapon choice and build diversity. I’d love to run 1h axe on RV with smiter and thp on kill or UC with the dagger and the same talents, but it’s no possible because of the restrictive class design.
At the very minimum, healshare should be completely removed from the game. I never see it used. Giving every class access to 3 of the existing ‘useful’ THP talents, would enable a bit more build variety. Similarly, I think removing Enhanced Power from all the non-ranged classes would also help in this regard. At least on FK, UC, and RV, you shouldn’t get access to both the largely overlapping Bulwark and Mainstay but no Smiter. It’s just really, really dumb design.
I agree with your general premise other than I don’t think mainstay should exist. Bulwark needs a slight buff. And enhanced power could probably use a slight buff. Making it 10% instead of 2.5% power. This would make it a good option for cleaving/horde clearing or for ranged characters. Mainstay is absolute trash. Oh, and assassin needs a nerf.
The better thp talents truly need to be brought down a bit. Not much, though.
But… what’s the problem with Mainstay? Or Enhanced Power?
I’ve certainly used the latter on a melee class, and I see no problem in doing so. And I see no issue with talents on different classes having different synergies with different weapons. Class identity and all.
As to the actual OP:
Yeh, that’s rather weak. Could do with a different level 5.
His thp generation should definitely be looked at. It’s so absurdly low, you basically don’t have any at all.
Which is best between on hs/crit or kill is kind of mode dependent from my experience. The more health enemies get, the worse BH becomes, since he just stops being able to get any melee kills reliably.
So in CW I personally prefer hs/crit, because your melee damage output is so trash, so you might as well get some temp health by wailing on enemies. In normal games, you can always try to steal last hits on maulers/zerkers with the rapier gun (or whatever weapon you so choose) to get those blobs once in a while.
On an unrelated note, I kind of feel that ranged weapons should mimic the thp talents, but at a severely reduced rate. I just find the concept of avoiding to use your careers preferred method of killing, because you/your team needs temp health to be beyond ridiculous.
It’s the main reason just having a murder melee wall(with special killing tools on the side) on high difficulties > all else.
