Waystalker Talents Need Revisiting

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I’ve seen far fewer waystalkers played in my games since the patch, probably because the class no longer has a crit talent and you more or less have to build her as an ultimate-based build. Being a ranger class, I think the talents that make her be ranger could do with revisiting. In particular, she has a talent where melee kills grant her a free extra projectile on her next ranged attack. This buff only lasts 10. She can’t really combo this talent with the shortbow at all since having an extra shortbow projectile is insignificant damage, and the hagbane already staggers everything (non-boss) in the game on the first hit, so the free attack would also largely go to waste. In order to run an actual ranger build on Kerillian’s ranger class with this talent, you would need to run longbow. While this is historically fun to do, you have to barrel snuff elites in a horde with a longbow to make use of the “kill an enemy, get a free extra projectile” ability, toggling back and forth to keep your ranged attacks up. This is extremely counterintuitive as a melee range longbow is… precarious to say the least.

Suggestion: change the “Blood Shot” talent on Kerillian’s Waystalker class so that killing some number of enemies with melee adds a charge of Blood Shot with an infinite duration, up to some number of maximum charges (where blood shot would have the same effect of adding an extra projectile). This lets the Kerillian be an effective ranger build and retains the core functionality of the talent.

Additionally, if you’re trying to min/max as an archer on Waystalker, taking “Ricochet” is obvious since it’s the only talent at level 25 that directly affects your bow’s effectiveness. The talent, however, doesn’t really do anything. As nearest I can tell, the shots have no tracking to them and just reflect off a surface like a laser. This makes it so you can’t use it for hordes outright since you might as well just shoot the actual enemies, you can’t hit enemies around corners effectively since you don’t have any penetrative vision, and if you do happen to miss, on most maps the arrow will fly off somewhere into the skybox, but even if it does bounce off a surface it won’t track to anything and isn’t likely to hit the low-density roaming enemies. I think there should be some weak tracking to the arrows that reflect, change the skill to be that “arrows that hit a surface have an X% chance to ricochet into a nearby enemy,” or something else. The skill in general needs some TLC since it effectively does nothing. That said, ricochet does work better with hagbane than the other bows.

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I’m sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. There’s no other way I can put it. I’m busy right now, but when I get home in a bit I’ll try and explain a few things about the talents and how they work.

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I haven’t really noticed any problems with Waystalker since the launch of 2.0, with the exception of her talents being more-or-less non-optional, with some distinct variety if need be. In short:

  • Tier 2: Blood Shot is non-optional for Hagbane and Longbow, while Serrated Shots only really works with Swiftbow (which uses Blood Shot in a good way as well). Drakira’s Alacrity is trash when compared to what BS and SS gives.

  • Tier 3: I really wish Waystalker had the Smiter talent instead of Mainstay, but the Assassin makes up for it, I guess (despite Enhanced Power being superior like 90% of the time).

  • Tier 4: With lack of Vaal’s Quiver there’s some variety here at last. Each talent is great in it’s own way, with Rejuvenating Locus being probably the most useful, since it no longer has a penalty on healing your teammates (don’t use it if you have a Zealot in your team, though).

  • Tier 5: Left and mid talents are trash - there’s no competition here, obviously. Asrai Focus all the way.

  • Tier 6: Piercing Shot might be a meme, but it’s alright-ish if you have a good aim. Kurnous’ Reward wins by a mile, since it offers the much needed ammo recovery for any bow, really.

It can’t be stressed enough how much Blood Shot gives to the Waystalker right now and how well it synergises with her playstyle of (usually) being an agile melee combatant that supports her team with variety of tricks up her sleeve - her bows. If anything, I’d rather nerf/change the tier Blood Shot belongs to.

Waystalker’s a really flexible career right now, and despite Hagbane being a clear winner on most bow fronts, there’s still a lot of work that can be done to adjust the talents currently, since Tier 2 is kind of boring, Tier 5 having a clear winner on all ends, and Tier 6 being lackluster outside of Kurnous’ Reward.

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I’m not totally disagree; for example that Bloodshot stack well only with Longobow, it’s true. I would like to see other talents that affecting Hagbane and Shortbow in a better way. I agree also about Ricochet: it could add some tracking.

Indeed the entire ranged meta needs some love: especially in Cataclysm, enemies spawn on you and you are forced to fight in melee with a squishy career; moreover some crowd control careers, like WHC and Zealot, also are very good to killing Special…

BUT currently Waystalker is the strongest ranged career (if we don’t want consider BW + Conf as pure ranged career). We all know what Hagbane can do: a great crowd control + a good Specials killing (it’s true, it needs an average of 3 arrows, but it can stunlock every Special).
Instead few players know how much strong is Longbow + Bloodshot. With 10% infantry, 10% armour, 10% chaos and 10% skaven, Longbow can BODYSHOT every Special + SV. It reaches better breakpoints than Huntsman Longbow… wich is slower and less accurate than Kerillian Longbow.
Bloodshot is meant to kill quickly a dangerous Special… when that Special is more dangerous: during an horde. And during an horde, you have always the talent active.

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There was hardly ever a lot of WS though to be fair. Most people played shade, and this still seems to be the case. WS already has pretty high crit with the right load out. 5% on weapon and trinket with the base 5% and weapons like the S&D having a bonus 15% crit or something. Then you have weapons like the dual swords which has something silly like 70% crit chance on the last combo move. Dual daggers as well are crit machines.

Each talent on that line was made with one of the ranged weapons in mind, and of course, bleed should be your go to on the Swiftbow.

This is wrong on so many levels. The free shot with hagbane is absolutely amazing and opens up tons of breakpoints. This allows the Hagbane to 1 shot SV and nearly all other mobs as well. Don’t forget the devastating effect it has on hordes. You can combine the double shot with a jump shot, fire your shot as your falling and the 2 arrows will hit spread out with some practice. Allowing you to DoT 2 batches of the same horde.

Horde during a boss is also very useful, as just having a few mobs nearby to proc double shot can save you ammo and still put out tons of DPS on the boss.

And ofc, if the double shot does not connect with the body of an enemy, it doesn’t disable the buff. Meaning you can aim for the ground around hordes and spam 2 arrows every shot.

Double shot can be further buffed alongside ricochet with a lot of practice. Using ricochet, you can bounce the shot off the ground, causing the first 2 arrow DoTs to trigger, they then will penetrate additional targets and trigger the DoT on each one they hit as well. This is extremely gimmicky and I wouldn’t recommend it though with out a lot of time investment and practice.

The longbow is probably the best special eliminator in the game. You 1 shot kill nearly every mob in the game with a headshot. With bloodshot, you can now even body shot SV and other mobs. This is extremely useful in the thick of a horde. Kill a slave rat, dodge back fire off a quick shot into a SV and then back into melee.

But, the 3rd talent of this line shines with the longbow. Getting you that attack speed buff on headshots, I’d personally want the headshot talent to proc on melee as well. But last time I asked, the Devs said it wasn’t something they wanted to do.

That would be overpowered. You could basically store up shots and then unleash a hagbane storm on a boss. Or a Longbow headshot burst into a bosses face. It would be far too powerful. It works just fine the way it is in my opinion.

No, it’s extremely gimmicky as I have said before. To be fair, the movement speed is probably more useful. The idea behind it is pretty cool though. Basically, when you bounce an arrow, that arrow now has unlimited penetration, meaning it can continue through an entire horde dealing damage to all of them. But, with the angle of shots being so hard to get right, it’s pretty much useless. Every-time I’ve used this with longbow or swiftbow. I nearly always end up over penetrating a target and hitting a team mate. Or in the case of the longbow headshot, I fire through their head, if there’s flat wall behind them, the arrow bounces back and headshot my own character :joy:

The best choice on this line is obviously the 20% cooldown, as this is directly tied to your ammo sustainability.

None the less, I’d rather ricochet was changed to give the unlimited penetration without the need to bounce it.

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Not sure why there “seems” to be a lack of WS, I certainly don’t notice this. WS is my most reliable Kerrillian class, so much so that I avoid using WS to challenge or practice HM and Shade. If a group keeps failing a map, I swap over to WS and seemingly make all the difference, whatever we were lacking I provided.

Glaive for horde clear and I’m especially good at elite/special sniping mid horde clash with long bow. The only thing I lack was clutch saves that I could make with HM and Shade. My Shade is surprisingly more tanky now due to her DR talent, so I’m no longer made out of paper. HM is super clutch and tanky or I can build her like WS and just Glaive hack an entire horde.

So I don’t feel there needs to be any change to her, but I definitely miss infinite arrows. She has semi infinite arrows now, but I have to compete with Elite/Special kills with my ult, and 50% of the time, BH/Huntsman kills them before I can and I just wasted my ult and no ammo gain.

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WS just isn’t the same. I get that there’s a handful of OP builds, mostly centered on Hagbane, but she used to be such a versatile character that could do a lot of things. I used to play her as a sniper, as a ranged Handmaiden (lots of sta regen, now gone), as a midline dps (spear+arcane bodkins, use Bardin for cover and stab over his head). Lifebloom Arrows opened up a lot of build options that are not longer there, by compensating for her squishiness. The most popular builds (eg S+D crit machine) were boring to me, but now they are basically the only viable option.

I really don’t play her anymore. It’s a shame that she lost so much.

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I asked about this so much :frowning: It’s one thing I’d love to have back… I suggested moving the ammo on ULT to the talent line with cooldown, ricochet and speed talent, obviously removing the speed talent. And putting lifebloom back on the ULT line. Of course, Cooldown talent would need to go back up to 30% to compete with ammo on ULT and Ricochet would need some reworks to compete as well.

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Removing the speed over ricochet?

I used to use lifebloom a lot because it was nice but I’d rather change other stuff than remove speed. Waystalker has a single source, talent-wise, to generate any ammo. It’s on the active’s talent tier. She has a few lack-luster or weird talent options that should be rethought. Like Isha’s Embrace(50% more healing from passive regen) but you still only heal up to 50% life.

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Like I said, if they reworked it to just give the unlimited penetration without needing to bounce it, it would be decent.

I think this talent should let it go to 100% at a normal rate. Basically the selfish reason… Otherwise you have a team heal or ULT regen.

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Unlimited penetration would make it overpowered, particularly with hagbane. I’ve thought about various ways to approach ricochet but there isn’t any really good way. If you make the last bounce aim at an enemy, most shots will probably go into the sky anyways and never gain use for maps that aren’t enclosed. If they have any kind of penetration then hagbane starts to gain more power for all the wrong reasons. If you make it not work with hagbane then you give hagbane another talent it doesn’t work with.

If you’ve ever played Heroes of the Storm, Hanzo gains a graphic when he aims to let the player know how the arrow is going to bounce. That would help with this but I don’t know how much work it is to do that in this.

It’d be nice to have another ammo talent so Kurnous’ Reward on her active isn’t the only talent option to return ammo. Also make Loaded Bow more interesting. Adding a single arrow seems a bit lackluster.

I’d dig the ult regen one more if it didn’t take away the passive hp regen. Getting 5% active recharge every 10 seconds for sacrificing hp regen is iffy. The healing aura isn’t the most phenomenal thing, but it’s still nice. I’ve had it be pretty useful.

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Isha’s Embrace should heal up to 100% HP in addition to the 50% more HP regen. This would be the selfish option, but still very useful, since you’ll almost never need healing, (meaning healing can be given to the rest of the party) especially when stacked with Natural bond.

The party heal aura could use a small buff as well, maybe it could change the 3 HP per 10 seconds to 3% HP per 10s, this would help with healing tanky careers up fast, thus multiplying this talents usefulness plenty.

Lastly, just delete the ult regen talent and replace it with a talent that grants the entire party 5% ammo, whenever the WS kills a special or elite. Think of it like a WS version of scrounger and yes i realize this doesn’t interact with the passive, but it’d still be more useful then the ult regen talent.

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Gotta agree with this. If ricochet can be buffed it should be that bounced arrows have some sort of aimbot… but that’s mostly because I’m the ass that wants to shoot at the ceiling with a swift bow during a horde to annoy my team :stuck_out_tongue:

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