Well after Coach Gun Kruber got nerfed, I tried to play Kruber as actual ranged and it worked out, well… not.
I’m not sure how to handle him since he seems so nerfed to the ground in terms of ranged combat that just supporting my team with the crit aura and going full melee with the halberd is what I mostly did.
Not to mention that basically all the important talents wont work in any way due to bugs even their intentional function is kind of strange considering the weapon Kruber uses.
Is he designed to be a sniper? With what? The ridioculus bad aiming bow that has the spread of a shotgun and needs a second to even zoom in for aiming? The rifle which is supplied by a stunning ammount of 17 shots max and reloads longer than most enemies are alive? Or the repeater which seems actually ok but still only has 40 rounds in the pouch?
All these weapons are also absolutely useless in no sniper combat (repeater is as I said ok but five reloads are nothing playing a range based hero), since even the worst melee weapons (aka everything that wont penetrate armour) will still outclass ranged in every manner.
After I heard that the cheesy coach gun build is going to be killed, I was excited to play a ranged career that isn’t designed as elven bowshooter, needles to say I was deeply dissapointed and turned back to Merc Kruber who only has six shots less for the rifle but the same ranged performance (shooting specials from afar and thats it) while also providing a nice chunk of support for the whole team.
I guess what people kind of ignore is that the super op “oh good I’m not first in dmg anymore NERF THAT”-Huntsman was only so popular because the coach gun is, or better, was actually the only working ranged weaopon available for him.
Still I wish that I just couldn’t grasp the concept of this career (something tells me that there is none) and someone will enlighten me how to actually play Huntsman without using a coach gun or playing the worse melee version of the Mercenary.
Huntsman really only works with the longbow now. I’m only at lvl 16 with him so I can’t say how well huntsman works in champion, but the longbow with the 25% faster reload skill, which seems to affect how quickly the arrow charges, works ridiculously well. I can 1 shot headshot anything apart from minibosses, and the arrow charges about as quickly as it does for Waystalker. You’re pretty much forced to use the longbow though.
I can Pop my active after taking a strength pot, line up headshots, and melt close to 1/2 of Halescourge bosses hp in seconds. Huntsman is nowhere near as powerful as it was. Waystalker is probably better overall right now, but it isn’t as strong against bosses.
At the time of writing this, I’m only power level 505. So I don’t know if I’m a qualified expert. However, I think they could “Fix” Huntsmen by:
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Fixing the bugs that many of the talents have… I’m looking at you “Hunter’s Respite”.
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Making his career skill work with melee combat like it did in beta.
I think of each characters subclass as just that… a subclass to a “larger character profile”. He’s not going to out shoot a Waystalker no matter what because that’s the range subclass of a range character. He should at least be able to stand up and fight better than her… because Kruber is at his heart a melee character.
It might be worth saying that I played Kruber exclusively during the whole life of V1. His sweet spot was always taking out heavy armored and dangerous enemies. He’s still pro at that in my book. I did a deed last night and finished it with 35 special kills.