I agree, Mercenary is an excellent front-liner and support.
CS Handgun allows him to deal with specials pretty well, which further contributes to Huntsman’s low pick-rate.
He fulfills pretty much every role aside from monster killing, there isn’t much reason to pick Huntsman over him other than play-style/flavour.
If CS/Scrounger and didn’t exist, Huntsman may seem more appealing to people.
That’s still more than enough ammo in a team of four players unless you try to handle every special yourself. I also think Quiver of Plenty becoming a compelling choice would make that row more interesting. I think if you don’t take that talent, running out of ammo should be a real threat, and ammo management should be harder.
Edit: Also welcome to the community!
My concern is where this is going with future careers. For example, RV + Merc + UC is already way too much thp for the team. If they give a WP healing abilities it will just turn the game into a joke where getting hit at all means nothing unless it does enough damage to 1 shot. Infinite team ammo with RV’s Grungni’s Cunning, unkillable tanks standing next to FK, WHC’s tag passive always being so strong that his other careers struggle to compete with him etc.
RV can enable things like WHC with BoP running with Hunter/Barrage and still not running out of ammo. You don’t see it often because most players don’t try to play melee careers like ranged careers and you can’t guarantee an RV in qp, but the game can’t be entirely balanced around qp. Plenty of people play with their Steam friends after all, and damage reduction was made all multiplicative instead of additive because of how it could be too strong when stacked.
Why not? It wouldn’t necessarily be Assassins being buffed in this way, but I would think it would be fitting for Leeches to live longer. Weapon rats are very exposed and stationary, so they shouldn’t be squishier than other specials (surely they should have more hp than Assassins do).
His advantage is 1 talent and getting to be lazy with bodyshots. WHC can also 1 shot headshot Cata CWs with meme xbow builds. BH can’t do that funnily enough. Not arguing for BH to be buffed, but for WHC to have his long range damage reigned in. Xbow is the big offender here, and I can’t see how anyone could justfiy WHC bodyshotting Packmasters without even having to sacrifice a single 5% attack speed property.
Exactly! If everyone can snipe specials, then what’s the point of taking a squishy ranged career over a higher health melee career that will do less friendly fire and have more team support? The only one is extreme ranged dps, like shotguns, or lazy bodyshot breakpoints. It’s why BH is rarely seen over WHC in premades outside of Twitch mode/Weaves for bosses and extremely resistance specials (like on Shadow Weaves).
In ideal circumstances everyone is prepared to handle specials, but within the reality of quickplay it’s not uncommon to have a melee-only career on the team, or someone equipped with a flame-thrower or just a weapon that is unsuitable for long-distance sniping. Given the overall pace of Cataclysm, being down to even just 3 players who can shoot specials can already be a bit problematic, especially if neither career is oriented towards sustaining ammo.
This is a different topic. I am personally annoyed a little by UC’s healing talent as I just don’t see thematically how it fits into the personality the career supposedly portrays. I don’t really get it how the ultimate ability of a pyromaniac who has gone all-in on their addiction is to heal the people around them instead of turning things to cinder. At least for merc and ranger the abilities are tied well with the idea behind the careers and Warhammer lore in general. I do agree that it can be a bit too much healing, but overall the triplet merc+rv+uc is generally less effective overall than let’s say merc+ib+bw, so it may be fair that it trades other advantages for healing.
This falls into what I was saying earlier. Unless the offender is completely blowing every other option out of the water and you’re at a point where you don’t see anything else being run or offering some form of advantage, I don’t really see the problem. If anything, a weapon like BoP on WHC could use a little bit of enabling in my opinion, since its only advantage over crossbow is that it can deal with multiple threats in a very quick succession. As far as ammo capacity and more importantly ammo efficiency are concerned, I don’t think it’s even close to competitive given how difficult it is to land headshots with the pistols when under pressure.
Unless I am mistaken, WHC on crossbow needs 3 properties in order to 1sbs all Skaven specials on Cata (assuming they’re tagged, which is common, but not always), and he doesn’t by himself provide a 1sbs breakpoint for Chaos specials, at least not outside a crit. I think that’s a fairly decent balance. I don’t run the extra ammo talent because I try my best to sustain it on headshots, and the weapon itself is headshot reliant to be truly effective.
Again, the whole picture is fairly broad given the multitude of careers and loadouts. Objectively all of them have their place to shine, though it’s not always an all-encompassing situation. Even if you somehow gimp the sniping abilities of melee support careers, they’d still hold overall more value in most situations given how much application their kit has over a strictly ranged specialization. It’s just a by-product of having so many careers in the game and trying to find ways to keep them all unique. It’s unlikely to imagine that they’ll all ever come across as equal, but they should be fun to play if they suit a particular desire the player has. For example, I simply don’t like Huntsman’s archetype and I wouldn’t pick him anyway even if he was Kruber’s only career that had access to ranged weapons. But in his current iteration he is more than competitive even in extreme scenarios, provided of course that he is played skillfully.
Here’s my own suggested but hopefully restrained changes:
This is a very reasonable response. However, I still disagree overall.
I think that a team like that should struggle with specials. Besides, Slayer is much better at special killing than given credit for. It’s only really GK that falls behind in that area.
I agree it’s unfitting for UC. RV+Merc+UC is effective and trivalises content. All three have tons of horde dmg while being excessively safe. Could take WHC to up dps/deal with monsters. Part of that is Merc generates ult too quickly (0.5s per hit and per dmg taken, the highest in the game. Could be 0.4s per dmg taken to differentiate Merc from FK because Merc’s kit leans more towards offense than defense). RV’s ult talent could be 10% attack speed and 2 thp per second instead.
BoP is effective on WHC. I’ve taken it to DWONSC3 and still gotten the most special kills. It’s just overshadowed by the Crossbow. It takes skill to headshot with, but doesn’t need to except on Cata+. On Cata it 2sbs at close range, giving it one of the fastest close range special kill times in the game while being the best ranged weapon at dealing with multiple specials at the same time. For distant targets it takes 1hs + 1bs, but unlike Xbow this requires a full 40% investment (otherwise 2hs).
WHC does need 3 properties+tag, meaning he can keep attack speed on Charm for melee while 1sbs Packs, weapon rats and Assassins with a 1.0s reload time, 10% crit chance on zoom, preloaded shots, high accuracy while moving even if not zoomed and gets 20 shots like the bows. With crit chance on Charm that’s a 25% chance of bodyshotting any special at any range while also already killing them on hs and 2sbs without crits. I disagree that it require headshots to be truly effective.
Can’t hurt to try.
This is how I also feel. Its actually pretty blatant how stupid ranged careers can be in legend and lower while safer options are generally always favored in cata gameplay.
When it comes to specials. I really don’t think packmaster himself is in that bad of a spot. Maybe a slight hp buff at most to reduce some of the ease of sniping him but generally he can still be threatening in the correct situations.
Weapon rats on the other hand especially warpfire should probably receive something be it decent chunk of health or some other gimmick to make them bit more threatening.
On traits I can’t be even arsed to say much more than, that the whole dam system needs a rework.
I disagreed with the sentiment mostly at first, but then I read through the replies and am 
There’s so much here to go through 
but I don’t entirely hate the changes you mentioned later in the thread, either.
A sniper weapon is supposed to be able to kill things and I don’t see why it shouldn’t 1 shs on specials without a breakpoint, since getting a headshot is a pain in the butt anywhere with a ping higher than 10. For Elites it depends, I mean a dps heavy class should be able to dome shot Stormvermin; on the other hand this thread is the first time I’ve ever read that a WHC can 1shs a CW in cata with a crossbow, but you mentioned it was a meme build in the same sentence without going into detail so I really wonder if it’s honestly indicative of a problem. Dont get me wrong, I’m not going to argue against WHC not being able to apply talents and passives to ranged, since I lobby for that exact thing to befall a certain Flagellant who’s needing a serious looking at for a good while.
I think the idea of packmasters being unkillable is just wrong on so many levels. I know my pre-made and qp groups suck responsibly practice social distancing, but the idea that hookrats can never die without the whole team unloading on it like a boss doesn’t sound like it would improve the game at all. I already get grumpy when I fail to kill one at point blank with a shotgun and the only time I ever accidentally killed one with a greatsword was as WHC, crit headshot, as host. Never been that fortunate again.
Weapon rats having more health isn’t bad, would honestly make sense for them to have the same as Stormvermin, but I’d want something in return for the added difficulty, mainly to be able to stagger them out of their attacks. I don’t mind if it requires some power investment, but if I’m walking on a flamerat as Grail Knight, or point blank as someone with a shotgun, and I have no choice but to face it while getting stabbed in the back then I want to be able to shield push them or blast them out of their attack.
The changes y’all want for conservative shooter sound like it would be regretted. An internal cooldown would put it down considerably enough. Taking Scrounger (and by extension Swift Slaying) away from crits actually makes a lot of sense. Heck, since I’m on about crits, I’m surprised Blessed Shots has survived all patches so far. Every other guaranteed crit ability for ranged has had problems and much concerned discussions. Blessed Shots could easily just not be a crit and completely change the way BH plays. I’m not complaining, because BH ain’t my main class (and when I do, I want to BoP like John Whick or use the repeater pistol and be sad), I’m just pointing out his passive’s continual survival bucks against the trend (as set by Shade, WHC, and maybe Hobo? I forget but I recall he’s been through a lot). Most ranged damage + highest ammo regeneration has always been kind of a headscratcher that’s been quietly justified by his poor melee.
At this point I don’t even know if I’m going off topic because of how much is covered by the OP. Yes, UC shouldn’t provide team heal. Not the right theme and bucks against the character. Also teamkills via UC ult is rare and hilarious. I feel bad for saying this, but it’s got a flavor of crutchiness. Basically there for comps that really, really want a FK.
I guess Engi’s ranged aura is part of the support power creep, but that requires people wanting to bring him over anything else. I know it happens, but I see just as many people in QP dropping from a group at the sight of an engi in cata. Anecdotal, I know.
As for weapons, crossbow gets mentioned a couple of times a month for being strong. Kind of surprised it didn’t get handled during the last BBB. I know it needs to be different from Handgun and Longbow, but it still seems to cover all bases extremely well. BoP got mentioned and I’m all for it not doing as much damage at long range and even being less accurate, but I think what it does now at close range is perfect, an absolute joy even with that reload thing I haven’t forgiven FS for 
@Incandescent Would you happen to know if hit registration like ranged headshots are client side or host side? I’ve had a lot of confusing experiences with this as both client and as host (the latter when seeing things die at odd times from attacks from high ping players).
I’d be fine with sniper weapons 1shs specials at long range without properties if they required the player to actually snipe or if ammo sustain was something melee careers struggled with. Currently you can just unzoomed quick shot and 2sbs at distance with most snipers. I miss the old zoom on Kruber’s Longbow for a related reason - because it caused the user to have tunnel vision.
I just find it funny that the meme build will still have higher overall dps than BH’s best builds on everything but monsters. This is the build: https://www.ranaldsgift.com/10/222133/32,1,3,6/20,3,2,7/3,2,1/4,2,2/7,2,3. The only meme part really is Templar’s Knowledge. Melee damage is still fantastic since it keeps Assassin and hits minor melee breakpoints like 1shs full charge crit tagged CW.
Instead of unkillable, I’d rather see them require a minor amount of coordination with 2 players to kill, headshots or anti special specialist builds. The main thing that needs to be removed are ranged bodyshots by non-ranged careers (WHC should not 1sbs Packs with Xbow), with the exception of shotguns and the Handgun if its reload speed buff from the BBB is lessened. Mainly I think most ranged breakpoints should require 1 more property than they do now.
Are you referring to Hunstmen or BH? Huntsmen’s sustained ranged dps is higher. BH is all about small bursts and taking out specific targets (I too would like BoP/Rep Pistol to be good on BH, but sadly gunslinger BH is relatively weak.) Conservative Shooter letting players farm hordes for ammo is weird imo. Each shot/arrow fired should be capped at 1 ammo return.
Very true, especially when the UC has Bomb Balm and ults next to a player with 1 hp (double points if it’s a Zealot with Healing Fortitude that was expecting a surge in thp).
The support power creep isn’t too bad right now, but I’m concerned about how strong the support power will be if the next careers also have strong support options.
Xbow is the real main offender. BoP gets mentioned but it’s only really insane on Legend and on Zealot, so I think outside of changes that could happen for most ranged weapons (like distant accuracy) BoP doesn’t need much done to it.
Wait, that doesn’t require parry or hunter? Just Deathknell and Templar’s Knowledge? Huh… TIL
Xbow BH. I have never witnessed a Huntsman out perform a BH and I have given up on trying to be good with him. I don’t see how Huntsmen can out damage xbow BH, with 3 second Blessed Shots cooldown, just never stop shooting, shoot every stormvermin, ult every Chaos Warrior, bring billhook to stagger a chaos warrior to guarantee the headshot. I know, anecdotal, just how it is
3 second?
I was worried I had missed a gamebreaking tech for a moment there.
For HS vs BH:
Huntsmen with Blunderbuss will out dps BH on hordes, and will beat BH on SV and Beastmen patrols with ult (just not on Norscan pats and bosses). Handgun is like Xbow but it doesn’t require crits so it can back to back bodyshot (Huntsmen has the double effective range passive for ranged weapons, letting him long range bodyshot with it). Handgun’s reload speed is very good if every 3rd shot is a headshot due to Thrill of the Hunt. Huntsmen has much better ammo sustain.
6 seconds
I’d have to see it to believe it
I’ll post a gameplay video with Huntsmen and edit this post once it’s uploaded. My upload speed is bad so it may take a day.
In the meantime, here’s a Handgun build that bodyshots everything but monsters, CWs (3sbs during ult), Maulers and berserkers (2sbs for Maulers and berserkers, 1sbs during ult): https://www.ranaldsgift.com/2/113111/34,1,3,6/12,4,5,2/3,2,1/4,3,2/7,2,3
Edit: @dannylew8299 here’s the link: https://youtu.be/j4nfGeg70oc
I changed the build slightly (used Thick Hide instead of Shot Crafter). This doesn’t prove that BH does less overall dps than Huntsmen since it’s with bots, but it does prove how easy Huntsmen can be (as I don’t really headshot much at all with the Handgun in this run, do lots of friendly fire to the bots, take a lot of damage, take really risky shots in front of hordes and I get by fine).
I dont get why you need sophisticated changes to special hp and weapon numbers.
Just cut down everyones ammo pouch by a third, remove Conservative Shooter and Scrounger and you live in an environment that will make think twice about shooting a special, or letting it come close to so you can hit it until its dead.
These changes wouldnt wreck weapons like the Repeater Handgun more than suddenly needing four or five shots for a hook rat. At that point, you might aswell toss the bullets, which probably does more damage.
Sniper careers would be more or less unaffected since they all have ammo regen in one way or form. This would ofcourse make those Talents a must pick, but hey, better than shooting paper darts. (Prize Bounty. I already feel Saltz’s righteous furry in my neck.)
Balancing the game to the point where a lone character has absolutely null chances against a given situation is not a good idea in my opinion. If that were the case, should such a situation ever arise would there even be a point in trying? One of the great things that happened to this game post-WoM is that the gameplay was adjusted in order to favor coordination and team-play as opposed to having a group of players each in their own solo world, but I don’t think it should be taken to the extreme. Going back to the specific example of the packmaster, I think that an investment of three properties and a tag on top are a reasonable requirement for the body-shot on the WHC with a crossbow. I think that Zealot cannot reach that breakpoint outside of being on 6 stacks, and I don’t think Bardin’s crossbow can match it either outside of maybe having access to the WHC tag or GK duty, so in any case never by himself. Not sure what the point of the tag would be if it made no difference. Going on, at least outside of Huntsman I think that the handgun requires some investment in properties in order to 1sbs packmasters (at least 10% Skaven, unless I am mistaken), and personally I’m actually of the mindset that the blunderbuss and grudge-raker in general could perhaps be tweaked a little. There’s a very big picture to consider here, but I’m mostly stuck in Verm1’s mindset where they were useless (outside of strength potions) against armor and the monster class (so both the packmaster and the ogre). I think that having them blast through infantry, berserkers and being able to break shield guards is more than enough. If they destroy armor and packmasters on top, maybe it’s getting a bit too much.
I don’t think we’re anywhere near such a balance problem that “wrecking” is due. I believe that the game should encourage the player towards a mindset like “I want to play this career because I want to have fun”, as opposed to “I need to play this career so that I’m able to kill/shoot stuff”. Similarly, if things get “wrecked” to the point that you’re mindset is more concerned with what you won’t be able to do with a given choice, rather than what your advantages actually are, I just don’t think it’s a good direction. I think the game should be balanced around being challenging and not punishing. I couldn’t state that I have all possible scenarios in mind when judging this, but just from my own experience on Cataclysm in general, I don’t feel that melee support careers deserve anywhere near as much of a nerf in terms of their (generally quite basic) ranged abilities as is suggested by some of the ideas here.
This is how it would be from my perspective:
That would be balancing the game so that if a player absolutely messes up they get punished. It just means not everyone can snapshot Packs and all specials with minimal investment. There are already situations where players will die without aid, like if a player gets trapped by a boss without a shield and has no help, nothing to stagger the boss and no stealth, resulting in the boss damaging the player through block until dead. Same deal with the consequences of messing up a dodge against a disabler special, so it’s not unprecedented in V2 and has been shown to be integral to the gameplay’s difficulty.
Bardin reaches the same breakpoint for bodyshotting Packs with 40% and EP with the Xbow. As RV is not a single target damage dealer like WHC is, I don’t see why RV should be capable of bodyshotting Packs either. Xbow requiring headshots to 1 shot while still having better bodyshot breakpoints than the longbows should be fair.
I agree with you on the Grudge/Blunder.
What do we mean by melee support careers? Careers like Merc and WHC are first and foremost solo melee blenders and secondly support heroes. Especially WHC, who’s one of the best solo melee dps careers in the game and relies on no one for anything (and Merc can kill anything that isn’t a boss very effectively). Even without all of his support, WHC would still be at least decent and would still slaughter his way through levels.
Lessening the amount of ammo sustain we have now wouldn’t really be punishing. We currently have more ammo than we need, to the point that using melee against a special is only something done if there’s no time to aim. Packs requiring headshots would make the game more challenging.
I’ve been mulling over this discussion a while, but the feeling that keeps hanging for me: What exactly is the problem that needs to be “solved” here? Speaking about Cata here, I just don’t see the problem you all see…
I mean, Cata isn’t exactly objectively easy, by any strech of the meaning of the word. I’m going mostly by quickplay here. You can’t easily solo it. One bad teammate makes it nearly impossible (more so than having a bot because bad players are unpredictable and pull unneeded aggro, etc.). And by far the majority of all lost rounds are because of specials for me, which reinforces my feeling that they are dangerous enough already. What you guys mustn’t forget, is that you all belong to pretty much the top 0.5% (0.1%?) of regular V2 players in the world. Now, I’m not nearly as hardcore as most of you. My highest “credentials”, I guess, are that I managed some duos with bots (shoutout @OrsonMaxwell !), a handful of solos with bots, and Cata FoW a few times. With only a few forays into modded or Cata deeds / twitch and such. And I’ve played V2 continuously since it was released. But still Cata is hard enough for my taste. Sure, with 3 others of your (or even just my) level Cata becomes “comfortable”, but on the grand scale of things that’s absolutely more exceptional than you might think, and nothing to balance a game around.
And I also don’t really see the problem with shooting you see, and I say that as somebody who mainly plays a frontliner. I don’t feel there is a significant disbalance between ranged classes and melee classes in power or usefulness overall. And - aside from personal opinion - what exactly is the problem of classes that aren’t mainly “ranged” still being able to shoot quite some as well? They still can’t outshoot a ranged career or spend the game mainly shooting anyways, and like I said I don’t really see the power disparity you see.
It just feels to me like you guys have just become too hardcore for the game. But turning Cata into a modded difficulty will hurt the game more than it benefits you. Why not just play modded instead?
On a related note: Why does increase of difficulty always have to come together with a meta shift?! What most people consider a higher difficulty, like Cata 3 or Deathwish, affects some styles of play a lot more than others. (In my opinion cheap) changes like HP increases and stagger resistance increases affects classes like FK waaaaay more than, say, Rapier WHC or DD Shade. Those “higher difficulties” hurt classes that hit slow-but-hard or utilise stagger, who need to change their playstyle for it, way more than agile fast attacking classes, who just need to do the same thing but only a bit more of it. Why can’t a difficulty increase be things like faster enemies, more dangerous combinations of enemies, enemies with new moves, and such things? At least those things will affect everybody more or less equally. Just making everything a damage / stagger sponge feels super lame to me.
When people hit a certain point in experience and skill, they can lose sight of reality when it comes to the difficulty of things. Having played this game a very long time and having a deep understanding of it, it’s not terribly challenging for me on Cataclysm. I know that it’s less of a matter of Cataclysm being “too easy” and more of “I’m too good for it”. I know it’s a challenging difficulty though and most people struggle with it. I don’t see a reason to make it harder for my own sake and so I never advocate for such. I know things like twitch or the modded realm exist for that extra dash of masochism.
My biggest problem when people want nerfs is that the game is broken in a variety of ways and always has been. Silent specials. Hyperdensity. Bugs. You name it. So when it’s suggested that specials should take multiple hits from even the best single target ranged weapons, I’m quite against that. When a pack master can walk through 20 enemies stacked in a tiny pile and I have practically zero counterplay to that because nothing can penetrate that much density with the exception of weapons like hagbane/flamethrower/bombs, I would like that enemy to die the instant it shows me the white of its eyes. Especially when that enemy is more often than not almost entirely silent.
Then you also have the philosophical elements, right? Like do you really feel heroic or special if every little mob is giving you trouble. But then you also don’t want to be a walking god where nothing is a threat. Throne_of_Rats has made a lot of good points. This game should always allow for counterplay and a chance for a lone survivor to pull through. A player shouldn’t be completely screwed because all their weapons are so horrible against armor that they may as well lie down and die.
The point I’m getting at is really consider the full picture of what you’re advocating for and how it’ll affect the entire playerbase. I see more demands for nerfs than I ever do buffs and if Fatshark followed through with a lot of it, this would be a miserable game.
That’s good to know. At that point however he went all in just for the packmaster bodyshot, so I’m of the opinion that he deserves it. I assume that setup can’t reach the 1sbs breakpoint for all specials at once, so I think it’s fair game. At one point in Verm1’s life, no ranged weapon in the game could 1sbs Packmasters and it wasn’t really a fun time for anyone, in spite of the overall pace being much slower than what we currently have to deal with. People used to run Skullcracker + Hail of Doom handguns just so they could have about 1/3 chances of oneshotting him anyway.
I like to call Merc & WHC that, as I like to see them like careers around which it’s a good idea to hold ground and smash the rat bastards. Obviously you can see the WHC as more of a lone hunter if you so desire, but that’s quite in character for him as a Warhammer career anyway. In any case, I never run the extra ammo talents on them and I rely on headshotting specials for sustain. Obviously I prepare my builds specifically for ranged breakpoints. I think that both the preparation and the skill to actually land sometimes tricky shots should both be rewarded, and at the same time I think that you can achieve a lot more in terms of ranged effectiveness and damage output if you opt for Huntsman/BH.
That’s actually a neat idea. I mean, beastmen’s behaviors have been changed before because of that(they were too obnoxious for many players). So you could have some kind of difficulty or what not to unleash more dangerous elements (like enemy behaviors). Or some of your other suggestions. It’d certainly be more interesting than just playing with stats.