Because the vast majority of people don’t have full reds? It took me getting Kruber to 30+157 before even getting a red longbow and thats opening every single box on 1 hero, roughly 450 hours and close to 60 reds prior to an LB, I also still don’t have a handgun or halberd so im using a 1h sword for the stats and mobility.
Also if you are running scrounger, make em bleed, and im coming for you your ammunition supplies are slightly less sustainable than other careers due to longbow’s base crit, unless you are dinging the headshots for the crit bonus (which is fine) but its more involved than other classes.
I agree with the proper properties and Talents Huntsman can do everything you stated, but given a BH or WS that is also equivalently geared they should theoretically (if the player is of equal skill) still be out performing you.
Everything once perfectly itemizes has significant power creep that seems to trivialize Legend content, but this thread is talking about Huntsman’s comparison to other careers, regardless of personal opinions on if huntsman is fine as he is, he is weaker than other ranged careers so as previously stated the real debate should revolve around if we want to “buff” huntsman or “nerf” other ranged classes.
I can if people aren’t playing as well, for example my friend is 30+200 on the elf, and plays various careers, we typically “fight” for green circles in so far that I sometimes steal them but generally its because he made mistakes, in a game we both find to be easy because we are playing well and take under a 100 damage between the two of us im almost always going to lose out in damage / kills, for example he has been playing a bit of waystalker since he previously favored shade and handmaiden and got bored, using his hagbane im going to lose every fight for ranged kills (due to hagbane’s horde clear), specials typically (due to WS active), and boss damage due to Hagbane dot’s increased monster damage. I usually snag elites because hagbane is less effective against armor so killing storms is my specialty, however given the fact that Huntsman has no talents that grant power bonuses (15% if xyz) hitting both chaos / skaven / armored breakpoints is impossible since its over 22% for chaos, and its 27% skaven / armored for body shotting SVs with longbow, making him less effective against say maulers if you opt for skaven > chaos.
I’m having some trouble figuring out if huntsman is too strong or weak based on this feedback thread; can someone help put the following types of evidence into an order of importance?
Screenshot or video of game play or scorecards used to prove or disprove a universal statement.
Screenshots of multiple scorecards to prove or disprove an observed or stated trend.
Statistical numbers within a vacuum of two or more equipment or skills (no accounting for context, DPS against dummies).
Anecdotal recollections.
All of these are being thrown around at each other and people are making value judgments based both on and towards them so I have no idea which side to blindly parrot yet.
Honestly I’m not sure how they expect us to give good feedback when we can’t see the two most important data sets:
Scorecard aggregates across all classes.
Player representation between all classes.
The first will help us figure out if a particular class is tuned too high or low- then we can expand that class to the weapons and skills’ raw stats to see what might be out of alignment.
The second helps us figure out if a particular class is too easy or difficult to play effectively depending on the average performance of all players for that particular class. A smaller curve means the skill floor and ceiling may be too limited. Exceptional players excelling with “non-meta” can create anomalies to be considered as well.
If we combine both data sets then we can actually use that circumstantial evidence up at the top to support those arguments in a meaningful way.
I completely agree that he is more difficult to use than the other classes. The bow has a lot of unintuitive mechanics, he requires very specific builds to hit breakpoints (it isn’t that high of a requirement though–just 23% skaven/armor to oneshot SV and like 6% chaos to two shot a mauler), and he’s more skill dependent since he has to hit headshots to sustain ammo and boost his crit. But I don’t feel like he is strictly worse than the other ranged classes though.
Sure, hagbane WS has a lot of easy and consistent boss damage, but in taking hagbane she forfeits basically any effectiveness vs specials and elites. Pyro is great vs hordes, pretty good vs elites, and kinda meh vs bosses compared to the other ranged classes. Crossbow BH is unparalleled vs specials and elites and good vs hordes, but the crossbow does pretty bad boss dps. He can fix that by taking volley bow and still be good vs hordes, but he sacrifices range and versatility vs specials and elites because he needs to be close enough for at least 2 of the bolts to hit. Meanwhile, HS imo is kind of a jack of all trades, just good at hordes, elites, and bosses, while not being outstanding or bad at any of the above.
Overall, I’d be fine if he got a little buff, but I feel lile it woyld be very easy for them to make him too strong as a result.
Pyro is very, very versatible in how you build her and which staff you bring. She can absolutely decimate bosses (when given room, like the other ranged careers also need) with the right staff. The CDR builds that have her ult up every 10 seconds does pretty good boss DPS as well, and of course really good stagger.
This is somewhat true (tho hadbane can certainly deal with elites and special reather well imo), but her longbow is also decent for boss damage on headshots and crit, and she can basically use any potion (unlike most classes) to make her DPS output insane with longbow.
While not the best boss DPS, again, with his guaranteed crits and the extra crit chance on zoomed xbow he can do pretty good boss DPS, while still remaining the unbeaten special/elite killer, with good hordeclear.
I really think HS needs something extra to make him stand out against the other classes, because he’s merely OK at everything and not really good at anything anymore. If they don’t simply revert him to 1.07 which would be the easiest fix, they should probably just rework his ultimate entirely. As is, it doesn’t give enough damage to be worth having.
Tough to come up with a non-ranger/shade style ultimate.
Maybe pressing F loads his next arrow with poison and puts a huge DoT on that can one-shot CW after x seconds and can burn down bosses at least as quickly as a pot’d hagbane?
There have been many suggestions, such as guaranteed headshots during ult (to reinforce that he is supposed to be DPS), and that also work nicely with all his headshot passives and talents.
Right now, he has an incredibly clunky bow, and an incredibly clunky and annoying ult (you lose the first seconds to auto-crouch, world goes dark, your FoV narrows, sounds dissappear, you move slower), and all of this clunkiness was probably put in to make up for high damage. He no longer has that high damage.
So yeah either revert him to 1.07 when absolutely no one voiced any concerns about being OP, or go the long route and just completely rework his ultimate.
I have little faith though, as FS have left entire careers in the dust since before release, and have left even more weapons, talents, properties and traits completely unviable and utterly useless for legend - some of them useless even on recruit.
With that track record in mind, it’s especially galling the kind of gutting they did to HS, when all evidence says they will never fix something they break, or take 6 months to get around to it.
I think alot could be accomplished if his active would be a little less… crippling you. You become slower, your view gets distorted, you get funky lighting effects. My overall suggestion would be to make his ultra-damage time seperate from his invisibility time, as in: you get 5 seconds invisibility to reposition, and no matter when you break stealth, you get guaranteed 5 seconds of ultra-time. I’d also be heavily for not only removing the slowdown, but also giving kruber like 15% more movement speed so he can actually use the active to reposition.
I would have avoided L4D2 like the plague if they were constantly shifting weapons/enemies around in terms of power and viability. The fact each class has at least one legend-worthy weapon is enough for now to keep me playing at least.
Totally agree, balance is the end destination we should be moving towards with “good enough” usually being where the balancing turns cruise control on. The problem is that they may decide to take the wrong turn on that road and drive a particular car (huntsman for example) off an unmapped cliff at 200 kph.
