Huntsman has always been one of the most debated classes, many users (and this is also evident in the various polls, here and on Reddit) were certain that he needed “some help”. For some he’s directly weak, while others simply wanted a rework for some bad synergy between talents and weapons
Of course I have always been at the forefront of this battle. I don’t want, nor can, start a new discussion about balancing again here and now… but, if you’re interested in my opinion, there are many old threads that are still current
And you, Fatshark, agreed with this… because, in the last BBB, you had completely reworked it. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, it needed more tweaking… but at least it was a starting point
In fact that was your promise: “We need more time, you’ll see soon a better version, with the next balancing patch”
The sad reality is: Huntsman was never touched again
And now, as if that were not enough, adding insult to injury, with the very nonsense nerf to temp health on stagger, Huntsman has been nerfed
As written, I’m not here to start discussions… I’m writing this to speak directly to you, Fatshark, I keep saying that we deserve more clarity and respect in these aspects
Not true, Huntsman got significant balance changes after the BBB, as did all characters.
Also not really true. This wasn’t a nerf to Huntsman, this was a change to temp health talents across the board. Did temp health on stagger get nerfed? Yes, but come on, it was way OP compared to others before. You could whip up an entire health bar of temp health in 2-3 attacks.
This was a re-balancing of all the temp health talents and as a result Huntsman now has other viable options, instead of only one OP one.
Years ago. In the last BBB they reworked him, but he needed more works, so Fatshark reverted the changes with the promise of a second rework (they needed more time)
I don’t think so. Now, we’re talking about years ago anyway, I can’t remember for sure if there were any minor changes… but, for sure, the rework seen in the BBB has been completely lost altogether
Yep, to write to Fatshark … I can still briefly answer this way, but I don’t have anymore the time I spent years ago to deeply talk about Huntsman’s balance
We might not all agree on the need for a stagger THP nerf, but I think most would agree that Huntsman, and to a slightly lesser extent Ranger Veteran, fall behind other 100 HP ranged careers when it comes to damage output.
Ranger Veteran does bring more utility to the team, but he is still too fragile to reliably fulfill a support role unless played by a highly skilled user. Meanwhile, careers like Waystalker and Bounty Hunter can achieve equal or greater results with less effort. They are more versatile with most weapon options and tend to outperform in elite and special killing as well as monster damage.
Huntsman can deal respectable monster damage with a strength potion and precise headshots, and Ranger Veteran can produce solid close-range output with his pistols. However, neither career offers the same level of flexibility or consistent performance as their peers. Ranger Veteran’s utility does not fully compensate for his lower damage, and his Damage Reduction talent is inconsistent. Huntsman performs well as a long-range sniper, but he depends heavily on headshot accuracy or efficient use of the Blunderbuss, which is less forgiving and generally less effective than the Grudgeraker or the overtuned Griffinfoot pistols.
In general, Huntsman and Ranger Veteran are less forgiving than other ranged options. While the ability to run a shield and generate large amounts of THP once improved their survivability, recent changes have made other THP talents more viable across the board. Even with those changes, these two careers still lack the support tools, adaptability, and raw DPS that other options bring. Skilled players can make them work, but speaking from experience, even without much time on Waystalker and with regular play on Bounty Hunter, I consistently find it easier to contribute more damage and clear threats faster with those careers.
Personally, I enjoy the slower, more methodical playstyle of Longbow Huntsman or a support-oriented Ranger Veteran who can drop items, share ammo, or provide the ale buff. But I am fully aware that I am not going to be as effective that way.
Suggestions:
Increase both careers’ base health to 125, similar to the Engineer.
Rework Ranger Veteran’s melee power boost when out of ammo. Reduce the power bonus from 25 percent to 10 percent, and have it last for 5 seconds after the current ranged weapon’s ammo is fully spent.
Improve Huntsman’s ultimate by making him fully invisible for the duration. Change the current stealth-preserving talent to increase the duration instead. Add a 25% greater ranged power boost during the ult. An alternative version could outline specials and elites, providing a team-wide bonus against them similar to a mechanic in Darktide.
Change Ranger Veteran’s Damage Reduction talent to grant 10 percent damage reduction per stack, up to three stacks, gained by killing specials and lost when taking a hit.
Replace Huntsman’s THP on headshot talent. Give both Huntsman and Ranger Veteran a passive ability to gain THP on ranged headshots. In place of the old talent, give Huntsman something more impactful, such as a chance for elites and specials to drop health items, bombs, potions, or ammo.
Increase the radius of Huntsman’s team critical chance aura to make it more practical and impactful.
I’ve been running Bretonnian Longsword on huntsman after the changes and been having a blast with cleave thp now being available on him. It’s safe and decent dps if you’re landing your headshots. Otherwise Tuskgor Spear, 1h mace, mace & sword and all the shield variants still generate plenty of thp.
It’s actually been fun hopping into pubs and being able to play pretty much any weapon I want on huntsman and not feel like my thp will be an issue, even been running some greatsword for the memes and having a blast. Also if you’re feeling risky you can run executioner sword and get very juicy headshot damage out of it with huntsman’s headshot bonus
I’ve been using things like Halberd, Bretsword, and non-stagger for a long time. It’s nice now that they’re actually viable with new THP talents.
The thing is, like I said before, I prefer both Huntsman and Ranger Vet to the other 100hp careers lately, but they’re not as effective for overall damage, and the utility they bring doesn’t make up for the 100hp they got.
I play them for a challenge, usually not using shielded or safe stagger weapons, but I could grab Ironbreaker with Drakefire and easily rival the damage, or even Warrior Priest just by using Greathammer to destroy hordes with elites. This while also being much safer, and now most players ignore FK and Ironbreaker, and even on Cata I’m in lobbies mostly consisting of Slayer, GK, WP, any Elf Careers, Bounty Hunter, Zealot and any Sienna’s Career, all focusing hard on just racking up the DPS and kill count.
My issue with Ironbreaker and to a lesser extent FK and the like is that they easily get redundant on a team. If you got Warrior Priest, Battlewiz or Necro you probably do not need much more frontline for base cata. Even GK + Slayer/UC or such are quite solid while also being more engaging in gameplay.
And mayhaps somewhat similarly, semi-supportive careers like ranger veteran also suffer from being overly niche or redundant. What good is Ale or extra ammo if team is blazing through anyhow? His most consistent build is probably bomb build but… it´s very simple in terms of gameplay.
…
As for comparing RV&HM to WS&BH, i find it hard to judge right up and down without specifying builds. For longbows and equivalent? Waystalker might actually be the worst on average while Bounty is the most prone to falling over and dying, for general play using their impact builds? Griffonfoot Bounty or Hagstalker are deadly.
Really it bears stating, these rather big differences in what their builds are good for makes it hard to judge , i could state that Waystalker is kinda weak and that´d partly true for moonbow x)
100hp careers like Bounty Hunter, Waystalker, Pyromancer, Battle Wizard, Necromancer, and Shade all bring stronger damage capabilities, and in many cases, equal or better survivability. Even some 125 HP careers like Engineer and Witch Hunter Captain tend to outperform RV and Huntsman in both versatility and DPS.
Ironbreaker can still put out excellent DPS with close-range Drakefire pistol alt-fire spam or the flamethrower. I’ve practiced extensively with both RV and IB, and I often get similar damage numbers using Grudgeraker on RV as I do with Drakefire on IB. The main difference is that RV is not nearly so tanky and easy to keep alive.
While Ranger Veteran does have more team utility than Huntsman, that utility is situational at best. In many runs, teammates won’t even pick up the ammo drops because there’s nobody using weapons that consume ammo. And like you mentioned, if the team is already steamrolling through content, RV’s support role becomes redundant.
On Cataclysm, both RV and Huntsman used to be generally relegated to using shield weapons for their melee slot, which makes them more about survival than contributing consistent melee DPS. They end up playing more like ranged snipers with stagger support than true hybrid or backline support damage dealers.
In contrast, Waystalker with Longbow offers fast firing, breakpoint-hitting headshots on most enemies. Bounty Hunter, with Crossbow, can similarly reach key breakpoints, often without even needing to headshot due to blessed shots.
Now, Huntsman and Ranger Vet serve their roles well in a team with a good front line and they compliment the crowd clearing of most of Sienna’s careers/builds, but they get relegated to sub-par frontliners when next to a decent Waystalker or Bounty Hunter, and using their invisibility or taking space to focus on ranged comes at the expense of pushing Waystalker or Bounty Hunter into the front. I’ve noticed even just having a Waystalker and Bounty Hunter in the same lobby can be redundant, but because it’s so easy in general to hit ranged breakpoints, even Cata games often turn into a ranged DPS competition.
If I had my way, all ranged weapons would be slower on the reload, and it’d be harder to sustain ammo, but, given the way things work, and with the introduction of more and more teams that don’t need to even pickup ammo, it does put Huntsman and Ranger Vet at a disadvantage in many situations, and Foot Knight is just a 3rd wheel if the team is capable of pushing through with DPS careers.
Highly build dependent, no? You seem to touch on that with the mention of the fire-using Ironbreaker, take those away from him and does he still do so much? Are there not tradeoffs for using em? Sure a team can cover that but it is part of the structure, for good or ill.
Now you are comparing what one pair does in melee to what another does in while shooting, this isnt quite a fair comparision. If both sides are melee i´d say the shielded and better cleaving weapons that Kruber&Bardin usually use are better when team is fighting together.
Then on the note of breakpoints, Bounty as noted quite…ignores them, but Huntsman while being the slowest is also the hardest hitting when fully in business. Elf fires a bit quicker than the Dwarf but lacks his utiltiy and survival tools, no invis, no potions/bombs or ale.
A longbow isnt gona clear an armored wave, a strength/speed potion, bomb or even just a fully drunken Dwarf? Better at it…unless elf is infact not using longbow and is using Hagbane, then it is a different deal.
To me this is a build question once more, sure having both a griffonfoot and a hagbane overlaps a lot, having one sniper and one doing the other is covering all the bases meanwhile.
Aside from various careers, the mere concept of ammo is - at best - a minor consideration now as either the team aren’t running ammo or are so self sufficient it make the possibility of running out of ammo remote so that’s a swathe of talents across careers fairly pointless and makes RV ammo drops needless, and getting the ale drop for the buffs is pointless as more often than not people don’t even try to get drunk.
Another thing that’s made some careers too good at all round stuff is the THP generation. BH is actually - I think - a much better balanced ranged career as he has weaker generation of THP so it’s actually a better risk/reward than say, HS with Spear and shield to get chonky THP in a horde.
Back to OP, I happen to think HS has his slot in a team, even with BH and WS. The new stagger mechanic has changes his melee choices a little but he’s still excellent at dealing with shielded enemies - especially with handgun and HS is higher skill than say press-F WS killing gangs of plague monks. And if you recall the changes made they moved away from the high skill = high reward build he currently rocks. Auto aiming headshots if I remember… and everyone bucked against it.
Almost… careful what you wish for…
At this point in the games life-cycle I think changes need to be done with a scalpel rather than a battle axe. Shave a little here, change a bit there. Sweeping changes to any class or mechanic need to be very carefully considered.
Comparing a sniper to a crowd clearer at range is apples to oranges.
In general with less effort crowd clearing to crowd clearing, sniper to sniper, the BH and Waystalker give you more bang for your buck.
Kruber’s Longbow is powerful and better than the elf’s, but it doesn’t much outside of Cata and modded difficulties matter since Waystalker and Bounty Hunter can more easily hit the breakpoints than both Huntsman Bow and Ranger Vet. The handgun has lower headshot damage than the X-bow and Waystalkers bow
Getting the most out of Huntsman and Ranger takes a lot more effort. I can much more easily take up almost any other career at 100hp, and make a build that takes any role they perform and do it better.
Agreed. I’m thinking a tweaks to talents and weapons. No overhauls.
I think a little durability on Huntsman and Ranger with 25 more HP as they did for Engineer and a better Damage Reduction talent for Ranger, as well as maybe replacing some of the crappy talents (though every career has some less than useful talents).
Griffonfoot bounty and hagstalker i would indeed consider a notch above RV and HM, they just arent comparable in terms of versatility or consistent output. But in terms of sniping? Those waters are much less clear.
For one, Longbow to longbow breakpoints, what breakpoints are you valuing so on the elf that Kruber cant reach easily? And i mean, what about outside cata? Above? Elf longbow isnt really good there either, below? Cant Huntsman onetap legend stormvermin with bodyshots which the elf cant?
This is the core of the issuse i think, Huntsman has such a high celing for what he can do, especially when dealing with monsters and heavy targets like Chaos warriors that it takes a lot of effort to fully use it all. Longbow stalker? She has pretty set limits on what she can and cant do by comparision, floor is low but so is the ceiling.
huntstman has one of the highest damage output in the game. if you run bow and do your headshots right, specials just die on sight, elites melt from 1shs except mauler and he can frontline decently, have invis, dr, ammo sustain, can run hunter, have acsess to great melee weapons and on top, he deletes bosses.
Obviously, Kruber’s Longbow is stronger overall (as I mentioned), but the speed and breakpoint thresholds of the Elf’s Longbow, and similarly, the Bounty Hunter’s Crossbow, allow both to perform very well when it comes to sniping. If you play side-by-side with those careers fully geared for sniping, or switch between them, you’ll notice that Waystalker and Bounty Hunter can consistently hit relevant breakpoints easily and much faster. I’d say the margin for sniping builds is not as great, but Kruber has fewer Ranged options, and to get the most out of him, you have to go for headshots to get ammo back, or take ammo for special kills at the expense of Damage Reduction. Waystalker gets free ammo from ult, I find it easier to get consistent headshots quickly the way the bow zooms and reloads quicker, you get bloodshot after any melee kill; Bounty Hunter can get a blessed shot after any melee kill, and his crit shots can get reach easy breakpoints for chest shots.
The Elf Longbow has very high headshot damage, fires quickly, and can one-shot headshot almost everything except Maulers and Chaos Warriors. I don’t play Elf often, but when I do, usually on Waystalker, I can snipe effectively with Longbow. With Hagbane or even Swiftbow, it’s easy to top damage thanks to ammo return and ability spam potential.
Waystalker is also probably the most accessible DPS career for new players, while still rewarding skill. Piercing Shot is straightforward to use and refunds ammo on headshot, making it great for spamming against monsters. Trueshot Volley provides free headshots far more often than Huntsman’s Career Skill, which has a longer cooldown and demands more precision to use effectively.
I really think it is the intent that Waystalker is the main ranged career, and it seems that Huntsman is supposed to be more single target damage; Ranger Vet, more support. In effect though, Huntsman can get some mean damage, but the slower Longbow and the limited ranged options make him less versatile; and so even if you’re going Longbow to Longbow, I don’t think he is, or should be equal or better. He is meant to fulfill a slightly different role as slower more powerful damage to single target. For that role to be useful, I think elites and some specials need to be more tanky, and/or he needs to be more durable.
I’d argue Huntsman isn’t near the top in terms of DPS. I’ve invested a lot of time into the game, especially with Bardin, Kruber, and Saltzpyre. I can make most weapon combinations work well enough to top damage in Cataclysm Quick Play lobbies, but that alone doesn’t say much about a career’s overall performance or how accessible they are for the average player.
Ranged careers in general shred elites and specials once you’ve got practice with any ranged weapon; even Throwing Axes, which most avoid. They also all have strong melee options. From a design standpoint, every career has at least a few excellent, viable builds.
But when comparing overall performance, I’d place Huntsman and Ranger Veteran closer to the bottom, but not by a huge margin, but in terms of how much time and effort it takes to make them effective, they tend to lag behind most other 100HP careers in raw DPS output.
Huntsman used to have outstanding boss damage, but that was quite a while ago. These days, he requires headshots and a strength potion to reach high boss damage numbers. Engineer, Pyromancer, Battle Wizard, Waystalker, and Bounty Hunter all have comparable or better boss damage with less effort and more consistency across their kits.
C3DWONS is practically a different game compared to regular Vermintide 2. In that context, Longbow Huntsman (often paired with a shield for frontline flexibility) is the go-to build for main purpose ranged sniping. His role is almost entirely defined by his ability to hit breakpoints and delete key threats with headshots. That makes him great in C3, but it’s also a very specific environment that rewards high mechanical consistency.
That’s the crux of the issue. In regular Cataclysm and below, Huntsman is good, but so is everyone else. The difference is that Huntsman has a high skill floor, fewer great ranged options, and his bow is simply slower. Unlike Bounty Hunter or Waystalker, who are easier to pickup, and they’re a fair bit faster with more talents that give you damage without requiring headshots.
For example:
Huntsman ult requires precision: no auto-aim like Waystalker or guaranteed crit like BH’s Blessed Shots.
Longbow’s full charge damage is often overkill: most enemies besides Chaos Warriors don’t need that much to go down, and non-headshots feel lackluster.
Sniping with him is slower and riskier: Waystalker has faster, more forgiving ranged options; BH has more versatility and front-loaded damage with blessed shots.
Of course he’s viable, all of careers and weapons are. Huntsman can handle bosses and elites, but so can the other 100HP careers in the regular game, and with less demand on precision and consistency.
So while he’s not underperforming, particularly in the hands of a skilled player, comparing him to more forgiving or flexible careers does reveal that he’s less friendly to average or newer players, and that’s my point.
I somehow feel like you gloss over some of Waystalkers problem here and glorify the career a bit. Certainly the ammo refund on Kurnous reward is extremely potent on cata, but conversly, without it she doesnt have ammo sustain at all. And ability spam? Sure you can build for that but then you got no regen, combined with loaded or piercing and you got no regen and no ammo refund.
Piercing shot is easy to use? On monsters? One knockback, flinch or weird move you didnt expect or just a wonky hitbox and now the ability is on cooldown and you did no damage. Plus the downside of not being able to use anything but moonbow and Javelins stably on her with it.
Moonbow Waystalker is honestly just kinda bad and Javelins are…ok, i think they´re OK on her but beyond just for style there´s no reason to use them on her. Enable piercing for monster damage? Not viable with many teamcomps and worse than hagbane typically.
Certainly, and in return, if the huntsman can aim well he can outright maim a monster with it while the elf cant kill a single chaos warrior without investing pretty much everything into power vs armor&chaos. Any Chaos heavy map is rough for her. Huntsman is a bit slower than Waystalker, and he doesnt have her ability to rapidly kill a few stormvermin/monks near instantly. But he hits so much harder for it, he´s incomparably stronger in this field particularly.
Well, isnt it fine to have careers that got higher floors and higher ceilings? It´d be much nicer if he had better synergies with stuff beyond longbow but overall the idea holds i think.
… I can still briefly answer this way, but I don’t have anymore the time I spent years ago to deeply talk about Huntsman’s balance