I’m late but I’m throwing some ideas up anyway. BH suffers from most of their talents being optimal with the Crossbow, limited control choices and no back foot options. If a talent is not mentioned, then I didn’t think it required any alterations.
Condensed List of Suggestions
Ult generation on taking damage reduced to 0.25 (from 0.3), increased to 0.3 (from 0.25) on dealing damage.
[Quick Release] ‒ Renamed to ‘Blessed Strikes’. Scoring 3 melee headshots reloads your magazine or 2 shots whichever is lowest. Includes headshots from secondary targets in cleave.
New passive ‘Bounty’ ‒ Tagging an enemy and dealing the most damage to it by the time it dies restores 3% of your ammunition.
Paymaster ‒ Changed to thp on cleave.
Steel Crescendo ‒ Now triggers when emptying half of your magazine or firing 3 shots, whichever is highest. Power and attack speed buff duration decreased to 10 seconds.
Weight of Fire ‒ Now increases ranged power by 1/3 of your ranged weapon’s max ammo capacity (e.g. Repeater has 60 shots=static 20% buff). Power increase affects ranged cleave.
[Blessed Combat] ‒ Blessed Strikes now resets Blessed Shot’s cooldown and increases ranged power by 15% for 10s. Landing a Blessed Shot increases melee power by 15% for 10s.
Prize Bounty ‒ Now causes Blessed Shots to make two ranged shots consume no ammunition.
Rile the Mob ‒ Renamed back to Hunter’s Pursuit. Ranged critical hits increase movement speed by 20% and dodge distance by 10%.
Salvaged Ammunition ‒ Now restores 5% ammo if you did the most damage out of all of your allies to an elite by the time it dies.
Locked and Loaded ‒ Shotgun effect of base ult spread increased. Narrower spread for friendly fire detection added to the pellets (similar to the Drakefun). Pellet dmg increased by 5%.
Just Reward ‒ Only triggers its effect on Blessed Shots crits. Cooldown icon added. No longer triggers when ultimate is off cooldown/already recharged (this prevents it from being wasted).
Double-shotted ‒ Now increases the cleave of the sniper bullets by 100%. Penetrates mansized armoured elites. Scoring a headshot reduces cooldown by 60% (capped at 60%).
Indiscriminate Blast ‒ Spread increased further, sends Victor backwards a distance equal to a 1.10 dodge when fired, flat 50% CDR added. Pellet count increase from kills removed.
Explanations/detailed
Passives/Level 5 Talent Changes
BH’s ultimate generation is currently 0.25 on hitting enemies and 0.3 on taking damage. This seems backwards for a squishy ranged career, so I propose these values be swapped with each other.
[Quick Release] “Scoring 3 melee headshots reloads your magazine or 2 shots whichever is lowest. If a strike is a critical hit it increases the headshot count by 1.”.
Live overlaps with Salvaged Ammo. Reload effect taken from SA. 1 Xbow bolt=3 headshots. Saltz’ other ranged weapons get 2 shots from 3 headshots. BH is not a melee killer, while all of Saltz’ weapons are effective at headshotting. Includes headshots from secondary targets in cleave.
New passive ‘Bounty’ “Tagging an enemy and dealing the most damage to it by the time it dies restores 3% of your ammunition.”
This would be a minor passive that would help BH’s ammo sustain compare to the sustain of the other ranged careers and lessen BH’s reliance on Scrounger and Salvaged Ammunition.
Paymaster
Changed to temporary health on cleave from healshare. I would apply such a change to all careers (the healshare talent being replaced by a career appropriate thp talent).
Level 10 Talents
Steel Crescendo “Emptying half of your magazine or firing 3 shots, whichever is highest, increases power and attack speed by 15% for 10 seconds.”
No reliance on running out of ammo. Crossbow would require 3 shots. Other range weapons would require emptying 1/2 of clip (4 for Repeater, 6 for Bop, 7 for Volley).
Weight of Fire “Increases ranged power by 1/3 of your maximum ammunition capacity.”
Now usable with Crossbow but it has less synergy than Saltz’ other ranged weapons do. Adjusted to also increase ranged cleave, allowing the Volley Crossbow to cleave Marauders.
Level 20 Talents
[Blessed Combat] “Blessed Strikes now resets Blessed Shot’s cooldown and increases ranged power by 15% for 10 seconds. Landing a Blessed Shot increases melee power by 15% for 10 seconds.”
Streamlined. Melee side is headshot dependent, ranged side is Blessed Shots dependent.
Prize Bounty “Blessed Shots now causes 2 ranged shots to consume no ammunition.”
Increases ammo sustain, allowing it to be paired effectively with Hunter instead of Scrounger.
Level 25 Talents
Rile the Mob “Ranged critical hits increase movement speed by 20% and dodge range by 10%.” Renamed back to Hunter’s Pursuit.
The live talent serves no purpose. This gives BH a solid mobility option ideal for clutching.
Salvaged Ammunition “Dealing the most damage to an elite by the time it dies restores 5% of max ammunition.”
Less reliant on dealing the killing blow to elites. Doesn’t require BH to run out of ammo. Reload on melee kill moved from here to passive. Comparable to Huntsmen’s Shot Crafter.
Level 30 Talents
Base ult shotgun spread increased. Narrower spread for friendly fire added (like Drakegun) to make up for increased risk. Pellet damage increased by 5% for Marauder bodyshot 1 shot crit 1 pellet breakpoint with 20% crit power, 10% Chaos, Open Wounds and Blessed Combat without Hunter.
Just Reward “Blessed Shots reduce the cooldown of Locked and Loaded by 20%. Can only trigger once every 10 seconds.”
Now only triggers on Blessed Shots crits. Cooldown icon added. Can no longer trigger when Locked and Loaded is off cooldown/already recharged (this prevents it from being wasted).
Double-shotted “Modifies Victor’s sidearm to fire two powerful bullets in a straight line with 100% increased cleave that penetrate mansized elites. Scoring a headshot reduces the cooldown by 60%.”
Live is a one-trick boss killer. Increased cleave diversifies uses. Retains high skill ceiling and usefulness vs bosses (still 60% CDR against a boss+more damage). CDR capped at 1 headshot.
Indiscriminate Blast “Modifies Victor’s pistol to fire two blasts of shield-penetrating pellets in a wider cone that send Victor backwards. Reduces the cooldown of Locked and Loaded by 50%.”
Now sends Victor back a distance equivalent of a 1.10 dodge when fired. Mobility aspect and wide spread makes this talent competitive as a control/safety option for BH.
I don’t like how they’re wordy either. Too many counters, too many numbers. Main thing was to make the on kill talents better with non-1h axe and A&F weapons. My idea in the main post makes it too strong against bosses. How about: “Killing an enemy with a melee strike resets the cooldown for Blessed Shots and increases range power by 15% for 5 seconds.”
I also think my rework favours melee BH too much. Blessed Strikes is a melee oriented passive, and Buckshot is not as rewarding for a heavy range BH playstyle that wants a control option because it forces them to stay in melee to get ult regen.
I’ve actually been typing out what I’d want to see tweaked in the second BBB but your post covers most of it. I’ll add a few thoughts and ideas of my own.
I think this has the same problem as necessary memes. You just don’t ever want to be out of ammo and it’s usually an avoidable situation mostly so I still don’t think it’d make the talent any more desirable.
I was thinking either just increase the duration further to make it more forgiving, or rework it to give a % of its effect proportional to how low on ammo you are. E.g. at 10% max ammo you get 90% of its effect. Encourages you to keep your ammo pool low without actually running out, which I would personally find a less obnoxious and more enjoyable micro than what we currently have. Numbers could possibly even be increased slightly but not sure about that.
It’s good if a little convoluted. I’d personally just keep it mostly as is, but include special kills to make it more forgiving and not weirdly discourage you from using your last shot on a high priority special. As I’ve said before even with the inclusion of special kills, it’d still just be basically a much much worse Kurnous’, so I can’t imagine how that could be objectionable to anyone.
Eh. In your average scenario using it on non boss enemies you’d realistically just be getting 25% CDR since the first shot will always kill the target. Lining up multiple ranged headshots is not very realistic in most scenarios so your change feels a bit too much like a flat nerf to me. I get the idea you’re going for with the extra cleave, turning it into almost a railgun, which is cool, potentially killing a large number of lined up elites, but it won’t matter much when in a lot of scenarios Just Rewards will give you higher CDR with much less skill requirement while still doing most of what you need it to do just fine.
I’d just go with a simple 60% CDR on headshot with 1 proc max. Ensures that if you’re good with headshots you’re getting it as or more often than Just Rewards as seems fitting for a much higher skill floor talent, with its current extra utility/damage against CWs and bosses. 60% should be low enough that with conc a boss can recover and potentially move between shots, so no stunlock cheese (obviously your suggestion also fixes this, I just think it goes too far).
Anything I didn’t respond to I agree with without much else to say.
A conditional melee talent like Steel Crescendo I think would work better if ammo capacity was reduced, otherwise you have 30 - 40 ammo you have to burn through, which takes way too long to do.
The talent should just be damage equals to your current total ammo pool. I am completely baffled it wasn’t made like that to begin with.
Just needs a cooldown icon and inability to proc when your special is off cooldown.
It will make his other ranged weapons instantly obsolete. Right now, his other ranged weapons carry some leverage over the crossbow, because they can utilize crit reset more easily. Unless of course you roll the on kill reload talent, which carries the opportunity cost of losing 30% DR which is big.
??? Because you have functionally given every weapon unlimited ammo and no reload, because of the prized bounty combination. This results in high single damage shots being king, which the crossbow has plenty of. This also allows crossbow to run hunter, which skews it even further, because right now the RP is the only one that can run hunter reliably.
Secondly, the shotgun blast is so horrifically bad, that even with this, it would arguably be worse, since you are trading away 15% ranged damage which is important for breakpoints.
What? Any ranged weapon can run Hunter with Prized Bounty, most players run Hunter on Repeater Pistol because Scrounger is horrifically bad returning only 3 ammo on a crit that costs 8 ammo.
Since the linesman change to Repeater Pistol, the shotgun blast is actually amazing, the negative thing I have to say about it is it doesn’t break shields, which can be changed if FS is willing to do so.
I get you’re worried Crossbow will continue to overshadow everything, but there will always be a “meta”. So long as everything is viable and fun, players will have choice.
Just because they can, doesn’t mean it’s optimal. And yes, I am very well aware that hunter works well on the RP, that’s why I literally just said it.
It’s not “amazing”, since enemies rarely conga lines in this game, the spread is really low and as mentioned it doesn’t break shields. What FS can do, is not an argument to it’s viability right now.
The crossbow doesn’t overshadow everything right now, but this will make it completely overshadow every ranged option in the game.
Lastly, saying “dude, there will always be a meta”, doesn’t justify something being better than literally everything else in the game by a massive margin. Should we have kept the unlimited bomb Sienna for example? I mean, there’s always a meta right? Doesn’t matter that is trivialized the entire game. Spare me my dude.
BW was blatantly OP and still is kinda cheesy. Don’t get caught up on this, it’s merely a suggestion, I’d rather not derail the thread.
Besides, Bounty Hunter needs more thought than just slapping on something “OP”.
I think Fatshark is taking Bounty Hunter in a hybrid direction, I’m all for it but the talents kinda feel counter intuitive or feel wonky; encouraging players to dip in and out of zero ammo.
I’ve been thinking lately, doubt it’ll happen in this game’s life which is fine, but with the way Blessed Shots seems to cause balance issues by being a guaranteed crit that it probably would have been better if it were just a damage bonus not tied to criticals.
I’d be fine with it.
An increase to damage, cleave and AP for one shot.
I think Prize Bounty could then be built in and guaranteed crit made into a talent.
New idea for Quick Release that doesn’t force a melee BH:
“Reloading 2 shots increases ranged power by 10%.”
This would mean reload on melee kill would return to Salvaged Ammunition:
“While at 10% or less ammunition, dealing the most damage to an elite or special by the time it dies restores 20% of max ammunition. Melee kills reload Victor’s ranged weapon.”
Salvaged Ammunition already received a change to compensate for the removal of reload on kill, so perhaps moving reload on kill to the altered Rile the Mob (Hunter’s Pursuit) would work?
“Range critical hits increase movement speed by 20% and dodge range by 10%. Melee kills reload Victor’s ranged weapon.”
New idea for Indiscriminate Blast. It’s kind of random but perhaps this would work?
“Modifies Victor’s pistol to fire two blasts of shield-penetrating pellets in a wider cone that send Victor backwards. Locked and Loaded’s cooldown is reduced by 50% and can be activated a second time within 5 seconds, but doing so will increase the cooldown by 50%.”
As far as I know, Weight of Fire gives a buff to ranged damage that is equal to your range weapon’s maximum magazine size, regardless of the amount of ammunition you have stored or loaded. Is this not the case?
Good idea. Added to main post.
It’s good that Fatshark tried to capitalise on BH’s potential as a range/melee hyrbrid, but I wouldn’t want the playstyle forced on BH. It’s similar to making Riposte a passive for WHC (though not as bad). We would also need another talent and Cruel Fortune to be buffed/reworked.