Huntsman is in a weird place rn

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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So HS used to be my go to career, repositioning constantly, and having to be aware of terrain, but with a high skill high reward mechanic involving his shots was a lot of fun. Currently I think without the proper team and set up (i.e very specific builds using hunter / prowl / pot/ shrapnel ect) for boss burst damage, he really falls by the wayside for a number of reasons.

The biggest issue is that Prowl CD is wayyyyy too long for what it provides, the damage increase is negligible for most of his ranged weapon options (by comparison) and also generally requires more skill to make into any sort of significant damage. (His boss damage against a troll may be passible because of easy hitbox, but spawns and their tiny butthole heads and quick movements, make him drop to generally lower tier boss damage, for example)

This makes prowl turn into a defensive career most of the time due to huntsman’s comparably bad melee, spear and shield gave him a nice safe option, but with the lack of other careers melee killing prowess he somewhat suffers in that regard, especially when WS / BH / Sienna / RV / Engi can all sort of run around blasting stuff, while HS is generally forced to stand still and make precise shots or melee most of the time.

Another big issue with HS, is that a lot of his good talents are stacked on similar rows, Making it Look Easy / Burst of Enthusiams. Or Make Em Bleed / One in the Eye. This allows him to be pretty competitive on chaos wastes when you are capable of stacking these talents, and lets him actually do some reasonable damage outside of a 5-6 part set up but for adventure mode it feels pretty awful.

Longbow - The go to weapon, which feels a bit lackluster now against bigger threats (multiple headshots + prowl req to kill 1 CW on Cata)
Handgun - Slow reload / limited ammo supply, forces you into Thrill of the Hunt, which takes away from 2 of your best talent options
Repeater Handgun - Decent damage, works for some builds, ok damage overall but bad synergy with headshot talents due to weapon spread
Blunderbuss - Literal Meme cannon for Meme Builds, Bluntsman is dead dont @Me

TL;DR, I put about 200 Kruber levels into just HS, and dont really enjoy him that much anymore, he is fun after you scale up a bit in Chaos Wastes but early game is awful, multiple headshots to kill a single special with Longbow, almost 0 stagger, ect, makes for a very unfun early game, while potentially giving him a strong end game, and as for Adventure Mode, he just feels dated by comparison, High Skill, Mediocre Reward, effort =/= reward ect.

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Yo @Sleezy I wonder what you think of that hot take :rofl:

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I personally don’t enjoy Huntsmen, but I can see Huntsmen’s strength. I find Huntsmen to be slow, which causes vulnerability to damage while using range when Prowl is on cd. Compare to Waystalker and BH, who are faster and can deal with pressure more effectively. Huntsmen could deal 2x ranged damage and would still deal with pressure poorly. Too ult reliant imo.

I think making Huntsmen flexible outside of Prowl would be best long-term. The damage increase is good, allowing Blunder to kill armour and the Repeater to 2 shot most enemies (this is important for kills per no. of shots) while increasing reload speed etc. BH, WHC with DK, Waystalker with Piercing and Shade with Huntress face the same headshot struggles.

Imo this means that these choices matter. The bad talents in Huntsmen’s talent tree need to be improved, like Longshanks and Burst of Enthusiasm.

Multiple shots for CWs is true, but 2 light arrows works (Hunter + 30% + EP). If crit fishing, light arrows with Hunter + 20% + 40% Crit Power + EP + Prowl can 1 shot crit headshot. It’s okay.

Its ammo is only as limited as your build’s sustain is (and Huntsmen can have a lot). It may force Thrill of the Hunt, but Burst of Enthusiasm is terrible and the Handgun doesn’t need crits.

Its dps is high for what is on a build like: Ranald’s Gift. With Hunter up vs infantry, it 1sbs Marauders w/o crits. Use the ult on last shot tech for nearly double clip size + throw in the odd headshot for Thrill. When you’re firing this much Hunter is up often. It can even be used in true solos fairly safely, works well in teams with Blend In. Decent melee stagger strength.

It’s pretty high horde dps for how easy it is. I don’t think Huntsmen needs to be better with it.

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I agree with a lot of this.

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The TL;DR is that HS requires more effort for the same reward as other careers and is tied heavily to an active that a lot of others seem to outshine. Unless you are playing in a premade, but I dont know if balance should be dictated by people giving you the aleooop.

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Indeed a hot take. I would say it’s some sort of modded realm bias, but bluntsman also just shreds Cata maps, too.

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Iam not that sure that Bluntsman is that great anymore after the Autoshotguns on BH got birthed.

That kind of killing power is quite something, and it doesnt need Prowl to melt mixed waves. Just Blessed Combat, which is there for you every day of the week at any time. As added bonus BH can still melt monsters, chaos pats, and kill far away specials with his Double Shotted. Something Huntsman completly lacks if he brings the Blunder.

The only negative part about brining a BH, is that the WHC slot vanished.

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I mean he didn’t just stop being effective because Saltz got a shotgun. Besides, Prowl covers the anti armour weakness better than locked and loaded does, unless you’re client and getting close to 100% headshot rate with Double Shotted.

I honestly don’t buy HS has lost any kind of niche here. I’m reminded of Core’s DWONS recentish tier list where HS is in B tier while BH is in his own category (“SAD”) along with Engi. I don’t see Griffonfoot shifting that relative power that drastically.

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WS fills the same roll while being braindead among other careers doing the same, his effort for reward is trash

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I mean, what do you want out of Huntsman? @Revy
Some tweaks could be made for non-headshot accessibility/synergy but overall he feels pretty damn good to me.

WS does feel braindead right now, Bloodshot now affects Trueshot Volley and it’s silly…
It’s quite literally press F to win, WS ult isn’t a good balance baseline right now. :eyes:

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Agreed, Huntman is very underpowered.

I used to play HS with bow a lot before, very rewarding dmg vs bad melee.

Since then Hunters prowl has been nerfed into the ground, you hardly notice the dmg difference.

And the bow is ridiculously weak. He should be able to one shot a Mauler with a bow headshot and +10 or 20% vs Chaos. And maybe 1 shot (max 2) CW with Hunters prowl activated…

As it is not it takes 2-3 shots to kill a Mauler and like 5-6 to kill a CW :smiley:

Buff needed indeed.

When I play him now its with repeater and endless ammo, its kind of good, but that build is not about accuracy at all unfortunately. Very different from the bow builds.

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I will never forgive FS for what they did to my boy Huntsman.
God it hurts to play.

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Biggest offender for me is that Huntsman only has 4 ranged weapons to pick from and they’re all either slow or inaccurate and I really don’t like that.

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A lot of people’s problems could be “fixed” with a handful of small tweaks.

ToTH reload could be bumped
Inaccuracy could be tweaked via weapons or maybe even a Targeteer/Skirmisher talent
(Reduce spread and spread no longer increases when moving; would be pretty good for Repeater)

Repeater/Blunder headshot synergy could be solved by crits also proccing headshot talents.
Passive Makin’ it look easy is more headshot reward and headshot/crit talent procs.
Melee crits no longer consuming Makin’ it look easy would be a huge QoL change and open up crit melee builds for Huntsman.

Could just be something else entirely, Huntsman is bland, he doesn’t really have anything flashy, that could also put people off. :man_shrugging:

Chaos Wastes introduced a lot of flashy things, they could probably grab something from there and tone it down. e.g ranged headshots/crits ricocheting to 1 additional target.
The only thing I ask of FS is don’t remove WNWN.

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Huntsman, although not a weak career, suffers from several problems… in the end I have already talked a lot about him, just try to make a small summary:

  1. high risk, common reward. He’s a career that requires a greater skill than other long-distance careers… but does not offer particular or greater rewards. Scoring headshots, what do you get? Ammo (but also his rivals have infinite ammo), +25% crit chance (but also his rivals have skills like Blessed Shot o Bloodshot), +50% headshot damage (but also rivals have enough headshot damage to already one-kill every special and every elite, CW apart);

  2. he’s slow… and this game doesn’t like slow stuff. You have to position yourself well, take aim, aim well if you want to exploit the talents… and this is fun as long as the flow of the game allows it.
    But when things really go wrong, and you need a specials killer who does his job quickly and under enormous pressure (think: you are surrounded by elites and a packmaster arrives)… an immediate and instant career will always be better. Always. And I don’t know if I’m talking about powercreep or bad balance, but other ranged careers really give you the feeling that you can hop around and insta-kill everything smoothly;

  3. Hunter’s Prowl is the only thing that could save him from his “slowness”… but it’s really awkwardly balanced. The CD is infinite. The added damage is very little (ok, it’s fun to damage SVs with light arrows… but this aside, the break points added are very few and the damage to the bosses is non-existent). The duration is short. It “offers” unexplained and embarrassing penalties such as slower movement speed.

  4. bad internal synergies: starting from the huge amount of talents based on headshots (which limits the already small arsenal) to the strange management of attack and reload speed (to say: Thrill and Prowl do not speed up the bow)

  5. the arsenal is meh. First of all, it’s restricted (but yes, Fatshark, instead of widening it I would say add another shield)… moreover some weapons are good but synergize badly with the career (like Rep Gun)… other ones suit his style but force you to play perfectly only to achieve decent results that other weapons can give you effortlessly (like Human Bow: slower in all than Elf Bow and crossbows, like delay to shoot, rof and zoom management, while offering practically the same break points. Ok Fatshark, don’t you want to increase the damage to avoid power creep? At least give it a little more penetration. At least only in the full charged arrows. It’s ridiculous to take half an hour to load the arrow and tighten the bowstring, aim well, and then see how two random enemies ruin everything)

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Just to clarify, would this mean melee weapons would no longer benefit from the talent? Or would it mean that a Huntsmen that gets a ranged headshot with this talent selected would have +25% crit chance in melee until they use the buff up with a ranged crit, with the buff not being used by melee crits?

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I think he means the first option. +25% crit only works on ranged attacks. Melee does not benefit from that bonus but does not consume it either.

I would like it.

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Either way is fine.
But if it affected melee but didn’t get consumed then that would open up melee crit builds similar to pyro.

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I agree with a lot of this, I think in terms of raw power he is fine, and you can play him well enough to snag all the little green circles, but you can do that with Engi as well and we all can agree engi is in a bad spot, its more about HS by comparison, and the drawbacks that make him less appealing as compared to other ranged careers.

I play HS a lot even now, and I do well and I also dont hold a lot of stock in tier lists, but if you look up V2 tier lists a lot of people have him in F tier with Engi and Pyro, probably because of his high skill cap.

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On Cata + HS just feels like a weak melee career with good ranged options more than a ranged career specifically, sure you dunk elites sometimes with LB or Handgun, but half the time why even bother.

I think the biggest issues are as Soul23 pointed out, bad synergy and lack of ranged arsenal variety that suits the talents.

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