Spread Reduction also seems like something that could be tucked onto the headshot damage talent.
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That would be kind of akward. Right now you have a choice to make in Line 10. You pick up One in the Eye for headshot damage on melee and ranged weapons, or Keep it coming for ammo sustain and reload skip, or enlarged clip.
Its a choice that already favours One in the Eye, just because it also bolsters melee weapons. Putting spread reduction ontop of that, will kill that balance and make Keep it Coming a much rougher pick than it already is.
There is no reason to change either of those Talents.
4 Likes
Keep it coming is a rough pick?
Itâs a competitive pick for everything outside of Manbow.
Level 25 has problematic talent picks. Shot Crafter scales too well into Cataclysm and above.
Shot Crafter inadvertently took a lot of headshot incentive away, especially Handgun builds.
However, it improved Huntsmanâs accessibility dramatically and is the backbone of Hunter builds.
They could nerf it but that would just feel bad for Legend players.
Bumping WNWN a little and removing Shot Crafter could be a nice middle ground.
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Shot Crafter only scales too well if viewed with the idea that ranged spam should be limited, which currently doesnât seem to be Fatsharkâs intention. Especially when viewed through the lens of the recent DLC.
There is no middle ground here. Removing Shot Crafter would just a hard nerf for zero reason unless one of two things occurred simultaniously:
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They made WNWN equally busted as Shot Crafter was. In which case everyone gets infinite ammo and damage reduction. Hurray for talent diversity.
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They addressed every other careerâs infinite ammo shenanigans at the same time.
The latter seems⌠unlikely, to put it mildly. And the former is just dumb.
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Well shot crafter is good only if youâre the one getting the kills, playing with a WS on your team for example will dramaticly reduce your ammo potential as they press F to nuke half the specials on the map. I know âwS iS oVeRpOwErEDâ but its still something thats in the game and should factor into these conversations.
HS also feels a liiiitle slow on the draw compared to other ranged options, assuming you run one of the two headshot based builds handgun / longbow. I typically dont have any issues but I will say in early chaos wastes, when both LB / Handgun suffer a little at 450 power, I ran into some ammo issues in a run with other dedicated ranged careers, I felt a bit forced to tryhard for special kills, especially factoring in weapon dropoff where even headshots at certain ranges wouldnt instakill.
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I think thereâs a middle ground with some give and take.
A way to improve his choices/talent diversity without changing his power level drastically.
I wouldnât remove it for nerfs sake, I would remove it for diversity sake.
Compensating a portion of lost ammunition sustain by improving WNWN a little bit.
- Waste Not, Want Not
Ranged headshots and critical hits recover 1 ammunition.
Itâs a WNWN accessibility improvement and works a little better with Blunderbuss & Repeater Handgun without going overboard.
Thereâd be more incentive to score headshots but wont remove non headshot ammunition sustain entirely. It would also eliminate a special reliant talent.
Should be better ammunition sustain for those with a high headshot % or running a Prowl spammy build.
It would more than likely require a collection of changes rather than just 1.
I had the easiest time ammo wise with Huntsman & WS.
BH struggles hard without any ammo traits and RV ammo caches are few and far between in the early game.
I mean typically its a non-issue, but we were getting a lot of bosses, so I was shot dumping fairly frequently, BH was just gobbling up the ammo pick ups so I had to rely on headshots and special kills, but we had a WS spamming trueshot soooâŚ
Yeah, no. That doesnât math out at all. Shot Crafter is 2 shots for handgun & blunderbuss, 6 for repeater, and 3 for manbow. Thereâs no way youâd be getting enough crits over a run to make up for that.
Besides, making everyone just use Thick Hide because the other talents in the row suck isnât any more talent diversity than we have now.
I find that the solution to this issue is to strength bomb the most annoying team member.
2 Likes
Itâs why I said âIt would more than likely require a collection of changes rather than just 1.â
Iâve thought it through a lot, slapping on a small WNWN buff and deleting Shot Crafter would leave a sour taste in everybodyâs mouth without other changes.
Currently WNWN doesnât have a cap (Or itâs incredibly high) so it could end up being too cheesy without adjustments, at least with Blunderbuss.
Ah, I didnât see that bit due to the dividing line.
Youâre basically talking about a wholesale rework of the entire career at this point, which I donât believe is particularly necessary. Especially since thereâs some other careers that could use that treatment more, i.e. pyro & zealot.
For sure. FK, Zealot, Pyro⌠Even UC to some degree or you could argue for RV since his passive is trash tier in lower difficulties.
But we already have an idea for Huntsman based on FS intentions with Sure Shot.
(They were actually very transparent regarding Huntsman and goals)
âHuntsman has lacked in his identity and focus, having a very generic passive ability without much to play around with outside of scoring headshots, as well as some slight ammunition sustain. This change intends on changing up his gameplay with adding more leniency in triggering all of Huntsmans headshot centric effects, without taking away that part of the core gameplay for existing builds.â
âopen up for a subset of players that might have felt daunted by the high reliance on headshotting to trigger effects in his kit⌠while also opening up talent options for those that want a more straight forward approach to Huntsman.â
Huntsman is probably the easiest to rework too:
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Critical hits triggering his headshot effects would be more lenient/accessible and improve his Blunderbuss synergy without being gross.
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Pseudo random distribution will ensure struggling players will eventually proc them buffs.
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Passive buffed Makinâ it look easy would give players a way to influence their proc & crit rates.
Just them few things would give Huntsman a more interesting passive/core gameplay loop and make his headshot effects more lenient/accessible + some added synergy bonuses.
Itâs not cheesy or gross like Sure Shot, it doesnât hurt build variety either.
Just opens up the doors to more people and improves his overall headshot reward.
From there, just talent changes.
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Wait, no, why do you want to remove the one good talent Huntsman has?
Shot crafter is fine. That it scales with difficulty is great, it allows Huntsman to do more Huntsman things, as is required in higher difficulties. That it isnât tied to headshots is a relief.
This is good.
Iâm not picking up what youâre putting down man.
Sure, talents & passives being headshot/crit inclusive is a decent accessibility change. But how does that give players any additional influence? Itâs a totally passive buff since Huntsman has no way to force crits. Players can build for crit, but thatâs a minor effect overall and screws over a lot of breakpoints.
At the very least they would need to consolidate existing talents and make a new row dedicated to interacting with WNWN.
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I wouldnât want to remove it if no changes go through.
With all the suggested changes, Shot Crafter might be overkill ammo sustain.
It could remain but if I were to replace it, it would probably be a cooldown or some kind of prowl uptime talent.
Which would also provide some level of ammo mitigation; ammunition isnât consumed during Prowl.
Aye. Crit procs would just improve the overall uptime of said effects and give players a chance to reap reward without any headshots.
Passive Makinâ it look easy - Ranged headshots grant a guaranteed ranged critical hit.
Score a headshot and your next shot will also return ammunition and proc any level 20 effect.
A buy one, get one free kind of deal.
Similar to the 2nd iteration of Sure Shot but more balanced.
(Avoiding stack nonsense, players could just press F and run around with auto-headshots then double dip into crit & power buffs for what required virtually no effort.)
Gross. Iâm quite against adding more forced crits into the game. Especially ones that cheap and free. Thatâs some power creep we just donât need.
Also doesnât exactly solve the issue of people being intimidated by headshots, because that change would just made them even more powerful and vital for max dps.
Had that discussion days ago already.
Hey man, not my idea.
âCheap and freeâ compared to other crit sources, itâs very reasonable.
The change makes headshots twice as valuable. Resulting in fewer headshots needed to keep up their buffs. Even if they donât score headshots, theyâll still trigger WNWN and other buffs occasionally.
The DPS topic is complicated
I donât think a crit will make much difference for handgun, it already body shots most enemies.
An improvement to CW and bossing capabilities at least.
Makinâ it look easy is already a core part of manbow builds, it would improve the reliability rather than banking on the crit gods.
Not too sure about Blunderbuss.
Blunderbuss already deletes anything unarmored, it would help out against armoured enemies but I donât see many players actively going for headshots with blunderbuss.
Repeater Handgun ehh, not entirely sure either.
Thereâs some crit special breakpoints but means giving up Keep it Coming for Make 'Em Bleed or Scrounger for Hunter and additional power investment.
Which is fine imo, 2 ways to play repeater⌠Pew pew spam or damage investment.
When the player gets something without any build investment at all itâs free.
I know what Incan said. And while I respect him a lot, I also believe heâs talking out his ass here. It is 100% a massive degree of power creep.
Letâs look at the counter arguments provided: Engi, WHC, BH, and Shade.
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Leading Shots required Engineer to both spend a talent point on a competitive tier and give up all random ranged crits as well.
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WHC also only has access to guaranteed crits via talents, Riposte & Fervency, both of which deal with stiff competition in their tiers and have their own mechanical limitations on top of that.
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BH gets his passive but, being completely static, the cooldown is a much stiffer limiting factor than needing to score a headshot. The only way to alter the cooldown period is via talents, both of which compete against each other in the same tier and both of which are strong talents in their own rights.
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Shade is the main outlier here, since Cloak of Mist has no significant talent competition. But Cloak of Mist is also widely considered to be ludicrously overpowered, so the comparison is not what I would call a favorable one.
The only limiting factor on a passive, 100% crit chance Makin It Look Easy effect is the players ability to hit ranged headshots. That could be fine on the blunderbuss due to its inbuilt limitations, but there are three other weapons where it certainly is not fine.
There are myriad ways around this. Probably the easiest way is to just copy how BH works: make the current version of Makin It Look Easy the passive and then also add in some strong talents that interact with his passives.
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Some of Huntsmanâs kit has some issues from what I can tell:
- Call Out Weakness is a bland crit aura
- Make 'Em Bleed is useless with a WHC in the team, some other 20% effects lessen its value too
- Thrill of the Hunt is slightly undertuned
- Burst of Enthusiasm is bad
- Longshanks is not competitive
- Head Down and Hidden is not competitive
I think it would be best to just buff these talents or make appropriate changes. In the case of the aura, make it more unique. Then present these buffs in an easy to digest way.
I think there should be two decent talents for each ranged weapon on the level 10 and 20 talent rows. All three being decent for each ranged weapon is ideal, but letâs try to be realistic and not expect the ideal case.
As far as ideas that I think are reasonable go:
- I think simply buffing Thrill of the Huntâs effect to 25% would be enough.
- For Longshanks less ranged weapon spread/less movement speed slow down while using ranged weapons has been discussed.
- Head Down and Hidden giving a guaranteed crit for the first shot would make it consistently the best burst dps talent.
I do not know what can be done for the crit aura, Make 'Em Bleed or Burst of Enthusiasm, but I do think keeping the changes minimal/simple at this point would be the best way of depicting a holistic and cohesive Huntsman career.
6 Likes
Crit aura could be changed to fit the whole âCalling out weaknessâ thing, so hitting an enemy youâve recently wounded gives whoever hit it extra crit chance depending on what type of enemy it is?
Wound a boss, next person who hits that boss gets 10% extra crit, but if you hit a random slave rat maybe itâs just 2% extra, whatever numbers really.
burst of enthusiasm just needs to be replaced probably, itâs not a talent worth the insane amount of iteration it would need to be worthwhile. Make em bleed should probably just do what it says it does and actually make enemies bleed, could get a niche with faster firing guns or shotguns for a little extra clear that way. Might still suck, but eh, sucks on WS compared to her best builds too, but I donât see many complaints about it, swift bow defense force is always waiting for an excuse to post.
2 Likes