Waystalker longbow vs Huntsman vs bounty hunter crossbow

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Hello!

So i´ve been mulling over a thought of mine regarding the real “sniping” weapons that everyone has at least one of, the most used ones being the ones above i think.

However it struck me that Kerillians longbow, and the waystalker career ,seem to lack any real outstanding features when it comes to ranged usage.

Her longbow has some pretty good damage, its accurate and it doesnt really reload too slowly, but compard to the rest?

Saltpyre´s crossbow is similar to kerillians longbow damage and accuracy wise, but it has a added bonus of 10% critical chance when aiming down its sights.
Bounty hunter also makes it reload pretty dang quickly if comparing ranged careers.

Huntsman Krubers longbow? Well its easily the quirkiest of the three with a small heap of weird mechanics on it, but in essence it reloads slower but hits harder, huntsman also has a few bonuses to reward headshots, even a crit aura for his team.

Well the most notable feature being the high power shots though, in legend kruber can opt into having his basic aimed shot kill a stormvermin in one hit, while Kerillian has to pump everything into anti skaven&armor to kill them in 2 from what i know.

If using critbuild it takes 3 …unlucky? Bodyshots to do it though.

Comparing those to Kerillians longbow&career makes it look…a bit lame? It has no real outstanding features, her talents and passive´s also dont really offer anything unique to her ranged business.

Well aside from the optional headshot vs crit damage talents, but the bonus crit damage is kinda invaluable for melee so i find myself not understanding why anyone wouldnt take it as the common build should be crit.

Well VS skaven is good too i suppose but critbuild helps melee more i think, and melee is frequent enough to appreciate it

Now outright buffing it would probably end up making it too powerful, i mean its already good right? Just a bit bland, furthermore it would overlap with the Huntsman´s longnow too much.

So i wanted to ask, what does everyone else think about applying Kerillians niche, her mobility, onto her longbow?

The way i´d do it is to simply have her aim remain more steady as she walks while firing, similar to the shortbow, but keep her slow movespeed, maybe even reduce her reload a little if she shoots while walking.

Kinda like Legolas from Lord of the rings :slightly_smiling_face:

It is possible to be fairly accurate while doing that even now but i figured it´d be a neat little niche for her to have on her longbow, and most importantly, i think it would feel pretty nice.

I mean bounty hunter has his reload speed and crits, huntsman has his headshots and high power shots.

So waystalker could have a little boost in mobility? I think it would be nice c,

It even fits thematically! Clearly the who even knows how old Elf would have practiced all aspects of longbow usage to prove why she is better than some lumbering human oaf with a crude bow mockup.

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TL:dr
yeah crossbow need buff :slight_smile:

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Elven longbow require headshots to kill elites meanwhile other sniping ranged are not. Offer small ammo pool with low bolt effencincy. Surely her lowbow lacks a lot of things yet people however still bellive its in a good place.

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Why would you do this? :sob::sob::sob:

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I mean, everyone who uses a sniping weapon (except Sienna) will aim to headshot and have easy access to the trait that refunds ammo when you do, so low ammo is hardly an issue in that sense.

But given how vital aiming is for Kerillian and her longbow compared to the other two it would be nice if it was a little easier while on the move, otherwise she just ends up being a worse version of huntsman kruber.

Both stand still, shoots slowly but one does a heap more damage for it.

Saltzpyre still has his crits and reload speed to keep him going, heck the crossbow even has that 10% bonus critchance while aiming.

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Because Kerrilian dont need better ranged weapons, she already have best melee weapons

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Best melee how exactly?

Kerillian´s best weapons are Glaive, Spear, Dual daggers as well as the sword&dagger.

But comparing those to others?

Kruber´s executioner sword is basically the equivalent of glaive, and halberd is the offensively superior version of the spear while inferior defensively, his mace&sword seem about equal to SnD as well.

Saltzpyre? Axe and falchion are the best weapons in the game bar none at all, his rapier is also very damn powerful and i´ve been seeing people using his flail to great effect recently as well.

Sienna? …To be honest her only really good melee weapon is indeed the crowbill, so its kinda necessary for it to be OP but it is still better than any other 1hander in the game.

Bardin? Dual hammers seem really powerful, and on slayer the dual axes are absolutely nutty in good hands, kerillian cant match him at all.

Slayer can even use some weapons to almost instantly 2 shot a chaos warrior so there is that too.

Best melee weapons how again?

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Exec sword is way worse than glaive, its slower have lower dps and have slowing effect when attacking.
Glaive is more like halberd but still its easier to use
mace and sword is way way worse than s&d, have abysmall cleave is slower don’t have that much of dps and dont have anything specific, s&d have 10% crit and occasional bleed, half cost for push and very fast good armor piercing heavies.
and ofc all her weapons dont suffer shits like slowing walking speed attack shitty dodge range and count.

Dual hammers have only better stagger but s&d wins in every other category in that way.
A&F is broken yep
Crowbill is one of kind because there is no armor piercing fast weapon like that, its hard to compare to anything, but yeah its her best weapon (outside of broken push attack)

Bardin can one shot chaos warrior with pickaxe,but outside of that pickaxe suffer all of bad sides of 2hd nonkerrilian weapons.

And best how? Best stats, nearly no downsides overall very ease to use and master, no slowmo with attacking, great dodges and stamina some weapons have even better stamina block costs

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Exe isnt really slower than glaive, there is little difference in terms of light attacks and as far as heavy attacks go? Glaive needs to land a two part combo for damage while exe has a windup before the slash.

Basically the same as i see it.

Mace and sword have abysmal cleave? Which dual weapon doesnt? The virtue is attackspeed and mobility generally, and if looking at…the usually unreliable wiki then the mace&sword have the high damage trait while SnD have the fast attack trait instead.

Heck as far as i know even SnD doesnt hit more than 2-3 slaverats at once, if you want good cleave you ought to look for most of Krubers 2handers or kerillians glaive.

Mace&sword also staggers better than SnD, the later also loses direct damage on the dagger swings to compensate for the bleed.

As for dual hammers, the advantage of sky high stagger is that you dont need to dodge as much, and you can reliably stun stuff like stormvermin until they die, but admittedly the damage is on the lower end.

Dual axes are nuts though, and i´ve seen slayers kill Chaos warriors almost instantly using them and now that you´ve reminded me, instantly with pickaxe.

Where do you get the best stats idea from?

No downsides? She does less damage per swing than most, or her version of the weapon has a messed up attack pattern that makes it clunky&unreliable to use. (1hand axe&2hand sword)

She also as a rule of thumb lack armor penetration, and the reach on her 2handed sword seems lower than some other 2handers, i swear ive nearly stood ontop some enemies with it and it still just misses.

No slowmo? The only slowmo i´ve experienced is on some of the really heavy 2handers that kruber and bardin got …although i have admittedly not actually played saltzpyre´s 2hand sword.

But generally slowmo means higher cleave and damage per hit, or that it has armor pen, something most of kerillians weapons either dont have at all or have a really low one.

Glaive for instance does like…was it 8 damage per light attack? 1hand axe does 12 or something although i cant quite remember.

Spear is entirely headshot based when it comes to dealing with anything tougher than a clanrat, and while fairly easy to do it also only hits 1 target.

And Elf weapons do have some downsides.

As for the blockpush cost reduction, multiple weapons actually have this although its not clear to me how many or which, but i know that Rapier has it, as does daggers and i think 2 of sienna´s weapons but i cant remember the rest.

Honestly the only thing about the elf that is outstanding is her mobility, she is amazingly mobile which keeps her alive by avoiding damage.

But she doesnt deal the most by any means in a real DPS race where all participants are equal, heck even when using hagbane bow we still have fireball Sienna pulling ahead on everything except bosses i think.

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Mind if I go back to the bows?

I’m surprised to hear you want to have the Longbow for Waystalker buffed; I think it’s sitting pretty as one of the best ranged weapons in the game. I think we need to take the bow into consideration with the Waystalker’s talents, as we did for the other weapon kits and their break-points.

The Longbow has infinite ammunition by way of the Waystalkers two different ammunition generation abilities. Not to say she can’t run dry every so often, but I think it lends her some serious stopping power at a distance because she can fire and forget without much punishment. I’d call that a pretty serious advantage :smiley:

Honestly, though, I don’t think it needs changing. I think that providing the Bounty Hunter/Huntsman some advantage in ranged weaponry is fine if you consider how strong their actives are by comparison to the skull-seeking arrows of the Waystalker. I’ve never felt at a disadvantage with the Longbow: it has a high ammunition pool, hits hard enough for me to one-shot pretty much everything, spares me ammunition when I don’t land the Conservative Shooter headshot, and reloads extremely quickly. I’ve never felt like I’m lacking something; have you?

I’d ask you to attempt to ignore their statistics and use it for a few games: does it feel weak? I’d love to hear more on it, but I can’t honestly say that it is lacking in some way or another.

I think any amount of thematic reasoning can only come from training with a longbow… reflect that Wood-Elven bow-prowess by being the expert marksman we know you are :wink:

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You know exec sword have same cleave that have sword in s&d and glaive have higher cleave than that.
ms have indead higher stagger but its quite a slow weapon and higher base damage comparing to 10% crit on every attack is not something thats give equal.
Nothing outside of 2h hammer can reliably stun stormvermin, he is nearly unstaggerable in his attack animations.
Dual axes are exclusive and well its actually crowbill equivalent hmm

kerrilian axe have indeed strange pattern, but 2h sword have nearly best pattern of all 2h swordish weapon (if it was vertical instead angled light it would be best, especially heavy point attack that you can hold forever and it dont slow you ekhu ekhu exec heavy )
Less damage but way faster with means it can attack in way shittier situations because dont need that much of time.
2h reach its uhh outside of spear and halberd they have nearly same as 1h weapons you can test it on dummies and thats kinda dissapointed that 2h weapons have same reach (maybe few pixels and i mean few pixels more)
Block push have sword and dagger dual dagger rapier and sienna dagger nothing more, and sd + spear have modifed block cost/range

Why do you compare it to ranged weapons, ofc ranged gonna have higher damage

You know what, dont read wiki there is good mod in steam called armory and its gonna give you a lot of insight.

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Keri’s Longbow has more mobility while shooting compared to Kruber’s, and I believe better potential damage than Crossbow (from headshots). In fact, don’t think Crossbow does much of anything to Chaos Warriors, but you can 4-shot them with some builds of Waystalker.

Keri’s Longbow is kind of a balanced, middle-of-the-pack weapon choice that you can’t go wrong with, if you can hit headshots. :slight_smile:

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I wouldn’t say middle of the pack if you are hitting your headshots. If you are nailing everything in the head the weapon is incredible and can clean out most enemies before they’re even aggressive. I think it becomes middle of the pack only when you are body-shotting your foes.

Then again, I suppose this is mostly IMO, but I’m rather fond of the Longbow. The only improvement would be to bring my dearest Trueflight Longbow back! (KIDDING! PLEASE, GOD, DON’T BRING THIS WEAPON BACK)

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Hm i´d disagree a fair bit with your statements, i think i wrote out the reasons for it in my post too.

And didnt i consider the bow in question+kit well enough? Waystalker has no real damage boosting talents for ranged except the crit power bonus or the headshot damage booster. The only one that should be used is the crit power one.

Meanwhile huntsman kruber has his headshot bonuses and higher base power, and bounty saltzpyre has his consistent crits+reload speed+crossbow bonus crit while aiming down.

Kerillian meanwhile has nothing that stands out, even her ability is crit reliant as it only kills 1 stormvermin otherwise, its painfully weak in consistency compared to bounty hunter or huntsman.

And i did write that it has good damage and is accurate, it just lacks any specialty compared to the others, like crossbow aim crit bonus or huntsman longbow high power, usually being inferior to them which is what feels bad.

And all sniping weapons have infinte ammo since the main idea is to headshot which anyone can do pretty easily by the time they reach legend.

So given that they all have infinte ammo, high accuracy and a baseline good damage as the foundation, but only bounty hunter and huntsman kruber have specialties, i thus advocated for a minor buff^^

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Middle of the pack when bodyshotting??

Longbow damage on bodyshot is pretty dang terrible, 3 shots to kill a stormvermin,.,you can kill one using the swiftbow in the same time.

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They dont actually have very different mobility due to the need to stand still while aiming on both to ensure hitting anything, and with huntsman hitting harder he pulls ahead.

Crossbow on saltzpyre is amazing vs chaos warrios because it for one hits equally hard as longbow but it also has the crit chance bonus+certain crit passive, kills em in 2-3 shots.

Thats basically why i feel her longbow is a bit bland, it lacks any specialties compared to the other two even though it is still good, just bland.

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You don’t need to stay still to hit headshots, that’s where its power comes from, as @Torantolis says. And headshot bonus is the talent that should always be picked, because it affects melee as well, and allows the reaching of many breakpoints. Crit power is honestly not very useful.

It comes down to being a rather straight-forward skill-based weapon; the more times you can score headshots, especially while using its mobility, the better you’ll do with it. Honestly, it’s kinda the default ranged option for Keri in my books, on all classes. Hagbane is too ammo-reliant to be useful on anyone but Waystalker (IMO), Swiftbow is really fun but really weak against armor, and the crossbow is only on Shade, and is too ammo-hungry.

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There is actually a lot that just hardstuns stormvermin when they arent using heavy attacks.

And there is no real equivalent to dual axes, since its a dual weapon, except the Axe&falchion which is in a league of its own.

If kerillian´´s handed sword has the best light attack pattern of all the 2handed swords then they all suck, terribly hard, it frequently misses enemies on the side, only hits 2 and the stab does actually slow you down while you are holding it.

All it does is not prevent dodging unlike being say in the middle of glaive combo, i´ve tried making it work for ages and it´s just not good.

Wait where did i compare a melee to a ranged weapon?

But thanks for the mod recommendation, will download.

“Edit”

Oh and while executioners does have the same base cleave as SnD according to the mod it´s probably so to keep Merc kruber balanced.

Between his attackspeed bonus, his cleave bonus and other stuff he´d end up too powerful with it otherwise.

And i realized his heavy attack actually has a really damn high cleave, if one activates his attackspeed+swift slaying and starts heavy attacking it´s some nutty damage coming out very quickly there…

Well that or just mash away with light attacks, his attackspeed is actually insane for a heavy weapon between his passive+swift slaying…

So yeah, you have to account for the careers using the weapons as well as the weapons themselves.

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I have to disagree with pretty much everything said about the 3 bows. Hunty LB is easily the fastest of the bunch, and Xbow the slowest. WS LB does a lot of things well and has no real weaknesses, but is perfect at nothing.

WS LB - Probably the best baseline, because it’s straightforward and simple. Draw arrow, shoot it. Longer draw = more damage. Headshots hurt more. Piercing is really high, making it an ideal anti-horde weapon as well. Possibly too high, since it makes the Swiftbow useless, but I’m actually really happy with the LB balance so I’d rather put some attention on buffing the Swifty. PS - I’d really like to Swiftbow to become the snap shot king, rather then increase it’s DPS or something, let it make unzoomed charged shots very fast, it’s currently only a tiny bit ahead of the LB on this.

Hunty LB - Hardest to use, but most powerful. It reaches max power as soon as the draw starts, making max power snap shots (after the charge begins, but before the zoom) or finger rolling very very fast. The DPS this bow can put out is crazy high. WS LB in contrast has to hold a draw much longer to reach full power and is much weaker at snap shots. Hunty LB downside is that you slow to a crawl while drawing it, and reaching full zoom takes longer, so it’s actually weakest of the 3 at long range snipes.

Xbow - A bit weak seeming, but if you take advantage of it’s strengths actually quite good. It has no damage ramp up, meaning hipfire shots do full damage. This makes it an ideal medium range elite killer. The downside is it’s reload, which limits it’s hipfire spam rate. It’s long range sniping is roughly equivalent to WS LB, and it’s anti-horde ability is strangely less then the other two bows. You’d think it would be the other way around, since real Xbows are known for their targets piercing power at close range.

IMO the only thing that needs changed on ANY of these 3 is the Xbow, and the change is very slight. The SV bodyshot breakpoint is to my mind overpowered, but only on Saltzpyre, who gets many advantages that Bardin doesn’t. IMO I’d drop Xbow base damage by 10%, and give RV a 10% range damage passive boost, meaning that only RV Bardin could reach this breakpoint. That keeps the gameplay in the game but takes it away from the character that it’s OP on. This also helps buff RV a bit, since he is a bit weak compared to other 100hp careers.

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Oh… how did I miss this juicy thread… yes, waystalker needs buffs. :wink: moar damage pl0x. :joy:

I’ll reply later today. Gonna get some sleep lol

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