Huntsman needs buff

Hi everyone; sorry for “tearful title” (and for bad english, I’m foreign)… but I have formed this opinion after 100 hours, after playing and winning at champion with a coordinated team (using discord).

Let me explain.

Huntsman + blunderbuss: this is a good combination; good agaisnt crowd and melee special, but it has two big weak points for a dps/special killer pg:
-forced to close range… and this is ok, we are talking about shotgun;
-but this is unforgivable: ridicolous damage against bosses. I know beta’s problems, but it is impossible that a blunderbess’ hit (remember: short range, slow rate of fire) + career skill does less damage than a simple melee attack; it should do, at least, same damage of bh’s machine pistol (only in close range, obv). A dps pg has to inflict damage vs bosses.
Also, Markus’ headshot talents are useless with the blunderbuss.

Huntsman + bow: just a weaker waystalker… Kerillian has more bow variety, more dps, hp regen, career skill against special and crowd. Markus can recover ammo, but also Kerillian. Markus’ bow charged attack isn’t accurate.

Huntsman + rep gun: a banal weapon. No penetration make rep unsatisfactory against crowd. Also vs bosses is an inconsisten weapon: firing 9 rapid bullets make you vulnerable. And, the damage, is still unsatisfactory.

Huntsman + hadngun: simply garbage. No accuracy. Low damage. No penetration. Low rate of fire. Slow zooming time.

Skill: duration 10s > 5s (now useless also to revive); no autocrit in melee; damage x5 > x1,5; capped damage to bosses… IMHO, they should buff career skill or huntsman’s ranged weapons. And add more talents variety, not only bonus after ranged headshot.

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Kruber’s longbow fulfills a different purpose than Kerillian’s, it has better penetration and power on body shots, and with the talent to reduce spread, is plenty accurate enough to one-shot stormvermin, specials and to punch holes through hordes. I’m not saying I disagree with you in all, he could do with some improvement, but the bow is much more than “just a weaker waystalker”.

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You are right; but, in game, I don’t feel these differences… Keri melts stormvermin; and armored enemies like CW are still too resistant. IMHO.

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Yeah no. Lets get over this in detail shall we? Also playing on champion is meaningless, Legend is where stuff gets real and where Huntsman shines the brightest.

Firstly, based on your “Markus’ bow charged attack isn’t accurate.” statement, it seems obvious that you do not understand how to use the longbow. You are supposed to shoot before the zoom kicks in, at which point the bow is actually pretty damn accurate. Its kind of unintuitive but its also the reason why many people have a sour opinion about him, they simply do not use the weapon correctly.

A Huntsman wielding a Longbow is the best special killer in the game. He can oneshot every special except chaos sorcerers with a bodyshot, at any range, which is huge when contrasted to Kerillian who needs to get headshots. BH meanwhile murders everything at close range, but when at long range he is completely outclassed.

In boss DPS all of these 3 careers are very similar. You deal some serious hurt to bosses when using your active or hitting headshots. Easily on par with Waystalker.

Huntsman also brings to the table something no other career does. He can take out up to 5 Legend armored chaos warriors in a single use of his active, as long as you hit headshots (you oneshot them). No other career can even remotely compete with that fact, and considering that Chaos Patrols are the primary source of wipes for many teams, one player being able to nullify them is incredible.

And lastly his active can be used for some nice clutches as it drops aggro thanks to the invisibility. A basic use is stealthing in the middle of a horde to get an important shot at a dangerous special. Works fantastically against blightstormers for example.

So nah. Huntsman is by no means “underpowered”. He’s in an excellent spot and one of the best Legend careers at the moment, especially if we do not count broken stuff like Beam staff Pyro, or Volley Crossbow BH to the mix.

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There seems to be this notion going around about how useless his ult is. compared to when it was 1 cycling bosses sure it is, but I think his ult is awesome, chunking down bosses and plowing through armor like nothing as was said.

I wouldn’t mind removing or reworking the zoom part of longbow. I’m pretty sure how accurate his shots are before it starts zooming is a bug or unintentional at the least. I would also like to see some minor reload buff to the handgun cause compared to the longbow there is no reason to use it on huntsman even with the talents.

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Huntsman Kruber is one of those characters who requires player skill with pinpoint accuracy to get the most out of the character. However I’ve noticed some oddness in that his arrows don’t seem to go as far as I think they should? I don’t know if that was merely lag from the host but for the life of me I couldn’t get the arc of the arrow figured out.

I feel like huntsman is in a good spot right now. If anything i’d give his active maybe 2 extra seconds of duration and that it. My only problem with him is the fact that longbow is his only good ranged weapon but that comes down to other weapons being underwhelming and not the career itself.

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Only thing the huntsman needs is that the visual effects, both color and fov, be completely removed.
They are only a nuisance.

Maybe giving him a bonus to use the repeater would be nice, since he doesn’t stack bonuses so well anymore.

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The biggest issue with Huntsman is that he lacks versatility.

Everyone likes to trot out how amazing he is at killing that chaos patrol or how quickly he chunked that boss spawn. However these are not common scenarios or even guaranteed encounters on a map even on Legendary. They happen. Huntsman is great in them.

The only way that Huntsman is really effective at this time is with a Longbow. However the Longbow has numerous issues with it. It takes approximately 1.5-2.0 seconds to full draw to reach full damage (draw till pre zoom). It also doesn’t pierce enough to shoot through hordes to specials cause it lacks pierce. There’s also the issue of the full zoom becoming more inaccurate (despite the fact this mode actually makes you stationary) as it gains a cone of fire when fully zoomed in.

Ultimately what it boils down to is there just isn’t utility on the Longbow to work through the average scenarios you encounter. Blunderbuss worked previously because it had horde clear, had decent range, had pierce, and did well in the other scenarios (very similar to volley Xbow on Saltz). Longbow just doesn’t have that and Huntsman Kruber just becomes an okay choice. He can work on Legendary, but realistically there’s just better comps without him.

3 Likes

It also takes ages to switch back to melee after firing the Huntsman Longbow, which leaves you vulnerable and is another mark against it.

You dont need the 2 seconds draw to oneshot every special (except chaos sorcerers) on Legend, so I fail to see the issue here. Just firing as fast as possible kills everything.

And we dont need more Beam staffs or Volley Crossbows in the game. A weapon that plows through every situation is just, well, boring? Huntsman still has a Halberd which is an excellent horde weapon, and considering that he’s my legend true duo comfort pick, I’d say that he’s more than flexible enough. Hard for me to think of a situation where he sucked.

I mean, does your issue boil down to that Longbow doesnt offer ridiculous horde clear like Beam or Volley? Its a good thing my man, a ranged weapon shouldnt excel at every situation. Its very comparable to Waystalker’s Longbow when fired into a horde which isnt a terrific horde clearer either.

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Huntsman need more versatility, not straight damage\accuracy buff. Well, maybe handgun need a damage buff and repeater gun need more piercing, but not longbow. Huntsman with longbow pretty good right now, imho.

Yes, I know how to use bow, and I know differences from Keri like more bodyshot damage and penetration… but I don’t feel this in game. Keri still melts special; and you have said that Markus can shot CW… but how? Headshot? Headshot + active? Because to force players to headshotting in that istant between max damage and max zoom is wrong mechanic. Also CW’s head is very small, and “markus style” aims to make bodyshot.
And also: chaos patrol will be fixed, players must avoid them.

BH’s machine pistol shots also at medium-long range, just in a few maps there could be some enemies out range.

Anyway the real problem is: handgun (garbage), rep gun (garbage) and blunderbuss (good, but why so low capped damage? It is useless against bosses). Markus isn’t an elf, it should be able to use also other ranged weapons.

Edit: special killed in one non-charged hit how? Headshot? Active? With power vs bonus?
And also: time switch between primary and ranged is so sloooow.

The other weapons could need some looking into, but Huntsman + Blunderbus = BlunderOP. Even with Krubers headshot class ability being broken you can still pretty much not run out of ammo (with +2 bullets per crit). If they fix the headshot talent and class ability he should be sweet-a-roonie. Blunderbus is the BANE of specials and most elites. You can easily kill things from long range 9 times out of 10 with one shot.

I have played him alot on legend recently and found him to be way better than Waystalker. Legend run endstats of Into The Nest with 2 bosses.
Played around 40 hours of Waystalker on legend, 30 of Bounty hunter and 10 of Huntsman and out of the 3 I’d say Bountyhunter is the best, followed by huntsman and then waystalker.
You just dont need to take your time and aim with his bow and still deal more damage than WS and you can oneshot chaos warriors with his active or 2 shot them without, meanwhile kerillian takes more than 8 headshots against them with the Longbow.

Battlewizard and ranger veterans can use some love.

I have not seen them in ages.

Yes, but against bosses? A dps pg useless with bosses? Blunderbuss must be able to inflitc more damege to bosses… this so low capped damage is ridicolous.

Being able to 1 shot leech and storm with the Handgun is the only buff I want for him.

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agree, handgun should definitely oneshot leeches and storms, beamstaff needs 2 hits but the reload animation of the handgun is so slow, that a sienna killed a leech, a horde and a chaos warrior with F in that time. Dont see why a handgun which purpose is high dmg and high accuracy for 1 shot is not working in its desirable usage.

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So basically you want to one shot bosses like in the BETA days? K…