Other ‘Tips and Info’ threads for other Characters are linked at the bottom.
- Waystalker
- Handmaiden
- Shade
- Sister of The Thorn
- Links to other threads
Feel free to ask or answer any questions, and I’ll add it to the main post, so it’s easier to find. I will add, remove or reword sections on request.
Introduction:
These are discussion threads, where the aim is to share and test different mechanical interactions or gameplay strategies that aren’t made clear by game descriptions or by general gameplay experience. For that reason I will not be focusing on breakpoints too heavily.
Links to other guides:
These are links to builds and in-depth information on every Career and Weapon. My guides are more to share information and mechanic interactions that aren’t obvious or take some testing:
For in-depth guides with specific stat builds and breakpoints, check out Sleezyrats and Royal w/ Cheese’s guides on Steam guides:
Steam Community :: Guide :: Tweaking Your Build (Supplement to the Build Guides)
Movement Speed techniques with all Characters/Careers/Weapons:
Steam Community :: Guide :: In-depth Movement Guide
1. Waystalker:
1. Waystalker:
Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 80s (56 Seconds with 30% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.35s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.3
Tips:
- Potential 30% CDR (before Spirit Arrows), which is worthwhile due to ammo sustain or Blood Shot-Career Skill interaction (possibly bugged)
- Potential 45% Attack Speed with Drakira’s Alacrity, which also applies to melee Attack Speed
- Drakira’s Alacrity is Longbow’s highest Boss damage
- Attack Speed affects Bow draw speed
- Try to stay out of Melee as much as possible, and get used to shooting while in Melee range
- Blood Shot grants more Trueshot Volley arrows, doubling their effects (bug)
- Stamina/CDR becomes best on Waystalker due to the 20% CDR from the Talent, this allows you maintain ammo for spam shooting throughout the map
- Amaranthe’s heal is affected by Boon of Shallya, and is better than Regen
- Ultimate aim is not altered by suppression. This applies to Piercing Shot
- Hagbane with Ricochet explodes on bounces, so there’s a potential for more than 4 explosion with Blood Shot active
- Moonbow and Hagbane Shortbow do not work with Serrated Shots. Even with a direct hit
- Killing multiple Elites/Specials with Kurnous’ Reward gives you ammo back for each one
General opinion:
Waystalker is one of my most played Careers. The best advice I can give is to stay out of melee and go for as many headshots as you can. I generally use the 1H Sword and Longbow, either running Serrated Shots or Drakira’s Alacrity, and try to stay out of melee for as long as possible.
In terms of Talents, the level 10 Row has lots of variation, and heavily determines your playstyle.
Row 20, while Passive, offers a lot of choice.
On Row 25, Fervent Huntress is useful, but very situational. It’s outdone by Asrai Focus killing power. Stacking Drakira’s Alacrity and Fervent Huntress, then using Movement Speed increasing attacks is pretty fun though. I just wish it was less situational.
Ricochet is useful for Hagbane. Every time an arrow ricochets, the explosion Staggers and damages, so if you shoot it at the feet of the enemy you want to hit, it explodes once on the floor and then once on them (4x with Bloodshot). Whether it’s worthwhile over Blood Shot with Asrai Focus is a different story. It doesn’t really work with any other Ranged Weapons due to how detailed the maps angles are, and if you’re outside, it becomes useless.
Asrai Focus is the best Talent on the level 25 Row, which is kind of sad since it’s a Passive. It effectively gives you more ammo from Kurnous’ Reward, or more damage with Loaded Bow + Bloodshot, which you should be running with Moonbow and Javelin. It’s the lowest effort, highest reward choice.
I feel like Asrai Focus should be completely removed, so that Row can have 3 unique Talents that are on a level playing field.
Waystalker’s melee options are all viable, with Glaive getting you slightly stuck in the mud in higher density. A Drakira’s Alacrity with Fervent Huntress build could help with that, using Moonbow to maintain buffs.
All of her Bows are viable, with Swiftbow being the most underappreciated. Swiftbow takes a lot of effort to make it work, but ends up dealing a lot more sustained damage than her other Bows, even if it doesn’t feel that way while using it.
Synergy:
Waystalker works with anything, but prefers to be with Melee Careers who can make space for her.
Waystalker has good synergy with WPoS and GK, due to Waystalker’s Passive AoE Health Regen, GK’s Quest AoE Health Regen, and WPoS’s From Fury, Fortitude.
Questions:
Is the Blood Shot Ult interaction confirmed to be a bug or intentional?
Ranged Traits interaction with Blood Shot?
Blood Shot interacts with all Traits, except Conservative Shooter.
Longbow 2-tap breakpoints:
https://www.ranalds.gift/build/SLL1KocbTPpnkwMOLwU7/view
2. Handmaiden:
2. Handmaiden:
Health: 150 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 169 or 194 (With Heart of Oak and WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 20s (18s with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.25s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.5
Tips:
- Potential 90% Block Cost (110% with Foot Knight’s Block Cost Passive)
- Potential 55% Dodge Distance with Dance of Blades and Dual Daggers
- Potential 45% Crit Chance (before inherent Crit Chance on Melee Weapons)
- Potential 45% Attack Speed (75% with Asrai Alacrity)
- Potential 130% Stamina Regeneration - Push more
- Has an unlisted 1 Stamina Passive (half of a Stamina Shield)
- Holding Block, and holding revive, and then pressing Ult will let you revive people while moving
- If you start bandaging and then press your Career Skill, you can bandage during it
- Holding Right Click after using your Ultimate will stop you moving
- If you’re on VOIP with your group, have them call out when they’re low Stamina, if they’re in a tight situation. You can then Ult to them and help them out
- With Power From Pain Ultimate, 10% Cooldown Reduction on Trinket will cause your Ult Cooldown to end right before your Crit Chance stacks fall off, allowing you to maintain stacks, and have Ult more often
- Asrai Alacrity missed attacks do not consume stacks, however ranged attacks do consume stacks, but gain no benefit to their damage or Attack Speed
- Push-Attack with Sword and Dagger use up one stack of Asrai Alacrity
- Dance of Blades grants 10% Power for 2 seconds, not just for one attack as the Talent description states
- Attacks can still track you during your Career Skill, unless you use Gift of Ladrielle (Stealth)
- Temporary Health On-Kill is never worth it
General opinion:
Handmaiden has a lot of useful defensive stats that allow you to play very aggressively and deal a lot of sustained damage throughout the map. As you can push so often, you can keep enemies in a constant state of CC and vulnerability. You then have the mobility to deal with Bosses and Elites. Playing close to your group and making them able to spam Push too, will cause most Hordes to die while they’re lying on the floor.
Maintaining Crit Chance stacks with Power From Pain, and Hunter with the Moonbow, is the highest DPS you can reach as Handmaiden. The playstyle is very fun and rewarding, and allows you to play aggressively, outkilling enemies rather than surviving them.
On Cata and Cata+, Focused Spirit and Bladedancer become weak, due to their value-to-risk. Focused Spirit is removed by the tiniest bit of AoE damage and even friendly fire. Bladedancer just puts you at unnesessary risk compared to how much damage it does. Even with Power Stacking and Hunter, Bladedancer doesn’t have the range to make it worthwhile.
Gift of Ladrielle can be good for safety, landing ranged kills and soloing objectives.
Every Melee Weapon works on Handmaiden, if you build properly for it. You can even make up for Glaive and Elven Axe’s high stat requirements.
While Swiftslaying is always better, other Traits do become more viable due to the amount of Attack Speed available to Handmaiden.
Her Ranged choices all work except Swift Bow. Hagbane does struggle to maintain ammo though, however you can play the Barrage&STR pot build to nuke Bosses if you want some variation.
Ranged Handmaiden builds are a meme and are heavily reliant on linearised Hordes and a high headshot%.
Synergy:
Handmaiden synergises well with low Stamina Careers and is good at making space or pocket CCing for Ranged Careers. Weapons that use a lot of Push-Attacks always benefit from having Handmaiden in the group.
As she doesn’t have a huge amount of bursty Boss damage, it’s preferable to have a Boss killer in the group.
Slayer with Dual Axes and Huntsman benefit when you’re using Shield and Spear.
Questions:
Oak Stance vs Asrai Alacrity?
Asrai Alacrity is a no-brainer for almost every good Handmaiden build, but it still has it’s downsides. Having to Push Bosses and Elites that you can’t Stagger, and landing Pushes while kiting high density. This is where Oak Stance can win out. It won’t do as much damage in the long run, but it’s higher damage while kiting is undeniable. 5% doesn’t seem like a lot of Crit Chance, but when added on to Power From Pain, and when you include Hunter/Swiftslaying procs, it’s a completely viable choice.
3. Shade:
3. Shade:
Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 60s ()
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.5s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.2s
Tips:
- Potential % Cooldown Reduction
- Potential 30% Movement Speed
- Potential 20% Crit Chance
- Potential x?% Damage Reduction (with Barkskin active)
- Potential 150% Backstab damage
- Unlisted 5% Passive Crit Chance
- Dual Wield Weapons benefit more from her Career Skill’s damage increases than her 1H and 2H Weapons, as DW Weapons hit twice with their Heavy Attack
- Dual Wield Weapons Heavy Attacks grant two stacks Exquisite Huntress stacks
- You can hit two enemies with one Career Skill usage with Dual Wield Weapons
- Stealth isn’t just for big damage. If your team is wiping, use it to reposition or push ahead to ress people. Even if you need to use a Concentration Potion it can be worthwhile
- Thrown Javelins Cleave grant Exquisite Huntress stacks
- Volley Crossbow grants Exquisite Huntress stacks
- Career Skill deals more damage on Monster headshots
- Cloak of Pain & Shimmer Strike will allow you to shoot twice from stealth, but ranged is not a guaranteed Crit
General opinion:
Exquisite Huntress playstyle:
EH is the highest DPS possible, as the majority of her Melee Weapons have a consistent headshot Cleave angle. It’s possible, but difficult to set up huge headshots on Bosses, and this is usually way more likely on Cata+ and Twitch gammemodes, due to the higher chance of you having 10 stacks and a Boss being alive at the same time.
Javelin and Volley Crossbow can be used to gain stacks, while other Ranged Weapons can be used to maintain them.
Cruelty playstyle:
Usually played if you want some variation from the headshot build or if you have a WHC (Crit Support build). It deals more Boss damage than EQ outside of headshots.
It works best with Dual Daggers to maximise single target damage and Boss damage.
Exploit Weakness playstyle:
Exploit Weakness deals less damage than the other two Talent choices, with Weapons that can Bleed, and can actually deal a significant amount of Boss damage with the Javelin’s melee on Bosses. There isn’t many enemies tanky enough or unarmoured enough for it to take off. She also doesn’t have access to Power, which would increase DoT damage.
Another reason it’s not so good is the lack of Bleed/Poison ability on Weapons, or how late it comes in combos, and low ammo on Hagbane (which kills the targets anyway). By the time you’ve got the Bleed up, the enemy is usually dead anyway:
- SnD: Push-Attack & Light 4
- DD: Lights (it increases DD general damage a bit, but if you use EH you outdamage it)
- Javelin: Light 5
Hagbane does more damage with headshots and Exquisite Huntress.
Cruelty playstyle:
In terms of Melee Weapon choices, Dual Wield Weapons benefit the most from her Stats and Talents, especially due to the fact that Heavy Attacks during her Career Skill hit twice.
Weapons:
While they can work, Greatsword and Glaive don’t really feel like they have a huge amount of synergy with her Talent and Passive choices. Movement Speed builds can make them feel a little better, but Glaive’s main problem is a low Stamina count on top of a low Dodge Range, and Shade excels in avoidance rather than stationary fighting. The Stats you need to make the Weapon work, in difficult sitations (Shielders + Monks), AND deal good damage, isn’t helped by some Movement Speed.
Her ranged options are similar to Handmaiden, where everything works except Hagbane without Bloodfletcher and Swift Bow without Exquisite Huntress.
Swift Bow (Conservative Shooter) and Exquisite Huntress, are great for close range headshots on Elites. As Assassin doesn’t benefit ranged damage Enhanced Power is a good choice, depending on whether you’re trying to headshot close range Elites or Specials.
Volley Crossbow can work as a Horde clear with Conservative Shooter, on linear Hordes, and grants Exquisite Huntress, and also help clear Specials. It has the same damage profile as Saltzpyre’s Volley Crossbow, but doesn’t gain the same bonuses (BH: Power + Crit% WHC: Tagging Zealot: Power), unless you only go for headshots. If you already have someone using a sniper in your party, Javelin is the better option.
Career Skill Talent choices:
Shimmer Strike:
Initial damage has bonus damage from Infiltrate, but second hit is only a Crit, and does not gain Infiltrate bonus damage. This Talent is good for high Elite difficulty modifiers, if you want to maximize backstab kills.
Hungry Wind:
Quite weak compared to the alternatives, except for the Movement Speed. This would need more uptime to be useful for any build. Could be useful for escaping certain situations, but the other Talents having double Stealth makes it feel like less of a choice.
Cloak of Pain:
Both initial damage and damage during the second Stealth benefit from Infiltrate bonus damage. Boss killing Elite killing.
Synergy:
Shade can almost play solo throughout the map, but benefits a lot from having tankier Careers that can create space and take the aggro away from her. She has really good synergy with Ironbreaker due to his Career skill.
Three other melees who group up is the most optimal setup for backstabbing.
If you float around a tanky Career it’s difficult to take any damage as Shade.
Questions:
Is there any specific Boss resistances that effect the Boss deleting Dagger build?
Yes, all Lord/Boss reduce Infiltrate damage. For some reason, Badvar/Gatekeeper phase 1/Minatour reduce it more than other Bosses.
4. Sister of The Thorn:
4. Sister of The Thorn:
Health: 150 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 169 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 40s (36s with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.3s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.4s
Tips:
- Jumping through Thornwake, her Career Skill ‘Walls’ doesn’t slow you down when passing through
- Don’t heal her! Unless she’s been downed, there’s no reason to heal SoTT, as she gets Temporary Health from other people. Let other people use the left over heals
- If she’s low HP and in a bad spot, heal yourself and spam whatever your THP generation is
- Let her hold the Bosses aggro, so you can feed her THP while she kites
- Use the Wall to linearize Hordes, so people can spam damage at the choke point you’ve created
- Hold F and left click to turn the wall
- Walls deal a small amount of damage and staggers where it’s placed
- Wall stops/reroutes Blightstormer Storms, blocks Gunners and Gas rats, makes Packmasters/Gutter Runners reroute
- Tanglegrasp Thicket can be used to pull enemies off ledges if placed correctly
- Tanglegrasp Thicket should be used to Stagger high density
- Do not spam walls directly on top of teammates unless they’re in trouble and need to duck out. Put them slightly away
- Walls are inconsistent with Blocking attacks, especially moving or sprint-attacks. Do not rely on them too heavily for that
- Atharti’s Delight Bleed ticks 6 times, and stacks up to 5 times - damage is increased by Power
- Atharti’s Delight can no longer be applied with Ranged Attacks, once Blackvenom Blades is applied to the enemy
- Lingering Blackvenom can be applied via Ranged Crits
- Light Attacks, with no armour piercing, still apply Blackvenom to armoured enemies
- Blackvenom Blade’s DoT ticks 12 times and the damage increases with it’s own effect. Recursive Toxin doubles it
- Heavy Attacks with Dual Wield apply both stacks of Recursive Toxin, and can apply one stack of Atharti’s Delight (once on initial Heavy Attack and twice for subsequent Heavy Attacks)
- Melee Attack every Elite/Boss you can to apply your poison(s), even if you have low armour piercing, you can enable your team to do more damage
- Repel Stagger Breakpoints: in Questions section
- Get used to your push → Light combo, to maintain high Stamina for Repel Pushes
- On higher difficulties Radiant Inheritance becomes more optimal than Bonded Spirit, due to taking more damage in general
General Opinion:
Repel playstyle:
For general gameplay, pull enemies with your Ranged Weapon, so your team can kill them. Pick the squishiest teammate, and stay close to them, using Repel to clear enemies away from them. While doing this try to get into melee as much as possible, to create space for Ranged Careers.
Daggers, SnD, 1H Sword, and 1H Axe work best with Repel due to them having half-cost Pushes. This means you generate the Stamina to full again faster. It’s questionable as to whether Repel is ever worthwhile on Weapons without half-cost Pushes, due to having less Dodge Distance, less Dodge Count and having to block more attacks, which leaves you with less uptime of capped Stamina.
Atharti’s Delight (Bleed) playstyle:
With an Atharti’s Delight/Recursive Poison build, my playstyle is to not focus on one enemy ever. I try to spread the Bleed and 24% damage increase onto as many enemies as possible to benefit my team. If you pocket a high DPS Career with this playstyle they usually delete everything.
If you’re using Deepwood Staff with Barrage try to shoot Elites or Specials in Hordes once to get 4/5 stacks, and then fight in melee as much as possible. The Power from this also gives more Bleed damage.
Briar’s Malice & Lingering Blackvenom playstyle:
I mainly play this as a ranged playstyle, using the Deepwood Staff to pull roamers for my team, focusing on Specials, and spreading Poison on Hordes with the Deepwood Staff. Usually using weapons with inherent Crit Chance to spread Poison on and around Elite Density.
If you play the ranged playstyle Regen on Necklace with the Eternal Blossom Talent can give you more utility. Regen allows you to always heal, as you’ll never reach health cap, and Eternal Blossom will let you use all of the leftover heals to AoE heal. It also allows you to heal teammates if they’ve been downed and you’re surrounded (I did this in the match before writing this). Build works on Cata+ (Twitch).
With Deepwood Staff, use your Briar’s Malice Crits to Poison the entire Horde, by dragging your shots across the Horde, as every projectile Crits.
Briar’s Malice will allow you to get Hunter and Swiftslaying up quickly, which can be useful for slower Weapons like Glaive. It’s less damage than the Bleed build, but allows you to support your team more by making more enemies take more damage.
You can basically replace having anyone with a build that kills Hordes, by making the Hordes take more damage in general.
When combined with CDR on Trinket and Lingering Blackvenom, it’s good with Blackvenom Thicket. Deepwood Staff with Resourceful Sharpshooter reduces your Career Skill Cooldown to around 30-35 seconds, giving you more Crits and therefore spreading more poison. Learning when to spam your Career Skill for Briar’s Malice stacks is useful.
Melee builds are also viable, with 2H Sword being quite good, due to it’s inherent 25% & 10% Crit on Push-Attacks and Lights respectively. Opportunist, 60% BCR and 2 Stam is how I run this, due to the amount of Crit you have already. Very safe melee build.
Weak Talents:
In terms weak Talents, the majority of them are viable and useful, except for Incandescence. The only use I can see for it is knocking Bosses off ledges.
Ironbark Thicket could be useful in an incredibly specific game mode or scenario, but in reality it only offers the positional effects of the Wall with no other bonuses. It’s also fairly short considering it’s usefulness.
General Deepwood Staff build info:
Left click:
4 shots of low damage.
Use Armour/Skaven and Barrage for Special killing. Killing Gunners/Flamers is most difficult, so stacking that and then going for headshots has worked best for me.
Shooting Elites during fighting should give you 4 stacks, and then back to melee to do more damage.
Using Briar’s Malice and Lingering Blackvenom, and then dragging it across enemy density puts 12% damage increase on lots of enemies at once. Using Hunter also increases the DoT damage, so your teammates can kill enemy density faster. With this build, Chaos/Infantry or something similar can be good, due to stacking DoT damage.
Can also be used with Resourceful Sharpshooter for more Career Skill usage.
Heat Sink for spam lifting with Briar’s Malice.
Inspirational Shot in higher difficulties actually isn’t too bad, depending on teammates setup.
Thermal equalizer obvs just for lower usage. Not really worth it unless you have 4 stats in Skaven/Armoured.
Right click:
Lifts Specials in the air easily, stopping them and making it easier to kill them.
Lifts Shield enemies in the air, making it easier/safer to deal with them, etc.
Synergy:
Extremely high synergy with THP Heal increase Zealot (Boon of Shallya). Actually generates a crazy amount of THP. Especially with Greatsword. You can run Faith’s Flurry (Power stacks from Ult) as him, and just get Ultimate CDR from taking damage instead, because you heal so much.
High synergy with Sienna in general, but especially with the Coruscation Staff, as you can funnel enemies and also block off corridors with SoTT’s Wall, after spamming Coruscation’s Flame Geysers, causing enemies to stand still at the wall, while being cooked.
Good synergy with anyone using an Overcharge Ranged Weapon, due to health being used as ammo.
Good synergy with Shotgun users, as you can funnel enemies with the Wall.
Questions:
Repel Stagger Breakpoints?
With Opportunist and Enhanced Power:
- 2x Chaos stops Bestigor/Mauler overheads
- 1x Skaven stops Stormvermin overheads
Chaos/Chaos/Armoured or Chaos/Chaos/Skaven (for ranged breakpoints) is recommended.
https://www.ranalds.gift/build/YNoNwNAYxTIcdYRxQzrx/view
What are the breakpoints with Deepwood Staff, and different Talent combinations?
I mostly run Skaven/Armoured and go for headshots on Gunners/Flamers. There isn’t really a breakpoint, but the damage difference is noticeable. It also gives you damage against GRs and PMs.
Does Push/Block angle have an effect on Repel?
Yes.
Are there any other benefits to using the Wall Ultimates?
The wall effectively forces enemies out of their positional slots, in a situation where they cannot move off the wall, after their falling animation, they can die. This can be tested by floating an enemy with Deepwood, putting the wall up as they’re about to break out of the CC, and watching them die to the Wall.
This would only ever be useful on corridoors and an enemy population density modifier.
Do other damage increasing effects stack with hers? WHC Tag, Shrapnel, Huntsman Make 'Em Bleed, BH Open Wounds.
It stacks with everything.
Bleed DoT damage data by @ArrynChaos :
Some Data I Have Collected on Atharti's Bleed Talent (With Spreadsheet)
5. Links to other discussion threads:
5. Links to other discussion threads:
Bardin:
Saltzpyre:
Kerillian:
Kruber:
Sienna:
