Sure, but Huntsman isn’t the only one who can do that. BH with griffonfoot wipes hordes even harder, crossbow deals wipes every elite/special, WS has hagbane/longbow/piercing shot, beam staff necro and many many more ranged careers that wipe the enemy type they are good at wiping.
Huntsman isn’t even that bad since whatever he picks, he’ll lack DPS against something else, i.e. no wiping all elites, hordes and monsters on a single build. Then you have OE with Trollhammer and Linked Compression Chamber + Perilous Overclock, who wipes everything with ridiculous thp gain and safety on shield and for some reason +25 base hp.
Yes, and WS doesn’t struggle for ammo either. BH has easy ammo too, so does RV, Sienna has overcharge, BW ridiculous thp on stagger, and Necro has skeletons for venting, etc.
And I’d say all of them make small or no sacrifices for infinite ammo. Like BH skips Hunter, and WS Loaded Bow, but Huntsman skips 40% DR. I’d say Shot Crafter is stronger than most other ammo regens, but not to a point where it’d be unbalanced in comparison to other careers.
I guess, but wouldn’t that just be a sort of meaningless nerf, like instead of having ∞ ammo, Huntsman will have ∞-1 ammo?
As in, I don’t see myself skipping Shot Crafter because of such small nerf, especially that in the listed game modes I personally find that I don’t have too much time to do melee since there are always elites/specials to shoot, so I wouldn’t rely on melee ammo regen when I have perfectly viable ranged option to do so.
I guess such a tool for ammo sustain could be good for new players, changing up the meta for them.
I’d say it’s a matter of using your ult when you have an angle - standing behind a teammate who’s dodge dancing a monster, if a patrol is coming straight at you than it’s just shooting at easy targets, and I’d say ability to 1-shot headshot a CW with a crit or 2-shot without is pretty significant damage, with concoction it’s just 1-shot headshot no crit.
And even when ult isn’t up, 1 crit headshot + 1 non-crit headshot and CW is dead, which has a very high likelihood of occurring if your first shot is already boosted with 35% crit.
Besides, it’s not like Huntsman uniquely needs good positioning to do well vs CWs or monsters when it comes down to ranged careers (ignoring the fact that some are pretty bad vs CWs regardless of the build),
As an extra, both Blunderbuss and Repeater don’t really require any special positioning like Longbow.
- CWs outside of Twitch are very rare; this includes deeds and twins, so performance against those is of questionable importance.
- Repeater Handgun is admittedly useless against CWs, but with a STR pot/concotion, you can still kill 2 CWs per 1 drum.
- Blunderbuss straight up kills CWs in 3-4 shots on ult, with concoction it 1-shots them.
- About concoction - Blend In + CDR trinket returns you a single ult in 5s, giving you 12s of ult, of which 5s are STR and Speed pot boosted - very strong and accessible (since any pot).
Invisibility is not necessary at all, regardless of difficulty, it simply makes things easier at the cost of worse ult uptime.
True for Handgun, I agree that it has pretty poor synergy with Hunstman outside of being simply easy to use.
However, with Repeater, you are supposed to just spam while aiming at more or less chest height, and you’ll score headshots, no need to aim or be precise, just unload, and you’ll score one. You give up nothing.
A sure critical. If you wait 10s/6s/get a melee kill
A sure double arrow. If you get a melee kill.
Huntsman gets a consistent and powerful buff without having to go in melee or waiting, but only if he headshots.
And yes, this buff may not be useful if an enemy would die without it (headshot/low hp), but the same goes for BH’s crits or WS’ bloodshot.
So Huntsman’s buff isn’t guaranteed like the other two, but it has the highest uptime without needing to do melee. And the higher the difficulty, the more relevant this becomes.
Besides what I wrote a few paragraphs above,
WS’ piercing shot requires very good angles and positioning too, as well as perfect aim, while the standard version does nothing vs CWs or Monsters.
BH’s ult either gets to deal decent damage vs monster once or kill a single elite or needs a pot and at that point he needs to headshot and position well.
During his ult, Huntsman can kill more than BH and requires less perfection than WS.
All of them need good angles and positioning to be effective vs monsters or CWs, with the exception of Hagbane WS vs monsters, but she has a few other drawbacks.
Outside of Ult or Pots, both are pretty much limp vs CWs and only decent vs monsters, while LB Huntsman can still 2-3 shot CWs and has much better monster DPS, at the cost of being worse against other elites and specials since he has lower fire rate than Elf’s LB or X-bow.