WHC is the only subpar class left

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything personal against you. I’m just trying to figure out why is tagging such a big of an issue for you. It becomes a second nature after some time. I’m now automatically pressing T whichever character I play with whenever I see a taggable enemy. It’s basically a twitch of an index finger, around 0.1 second.
I do understand that you find it boring to some extent when playing WHC. So, what other mechanic would make it more interesting? To be honest, one of the reasons why I love playing WHC is because apart from killing I can go ahead and contribute even more to my team by actively tagging enemies and giving other players a dmg boost. By doing that little extra active task it makes playing with WHC more interesting for me.

I’d skip this kind of a mechanic. It would dumb down the gameplay and you couldn’t tag a specific enemy amidst group of enemies.

2 Likes

The increased damage against taggable units sounds nice on paper, however the result is just so spammy.

Here’s a couple of points (my opinion) that result in WHC being an unappealing career

  • Efficiency demand you tag everything you engage, sometimes even repeatedly
  • Tagging can send several messages to your team mates should you not be on voice comms, that you’re in trouble for example, it distracts and catches peoples attention thanks to voice line, visual and sound effect. And it isn’t always obvious for what purpose you tag. I think it is an inherent mistake to tie a class passive/mechanic to tagging which has such a purpose and presence
  • It as a passive has a misleading description, as it does stack with certain effects and does not inform of just how long the duration of increased damage is ( related to duration, a result is repeatedly tagging enemies for whatever reason during an engagement, be it additional enemies getting in the way or specials needing priority etc.)
  • Tagging an enemy puts you on a cooldown, so tagging an elite results in you not being able to highlight a special during potentially crucial seconds that maybe you from a different angle observe and your ally does not, resulting in them getting grabbed (sure, it isn’t a long cooldown but sometimes those few seconds of advancing on a unaware player occupied with whatever it might be, is all a special needs for the element of surprise)

In addition, there is personal problems I have

  • It robs you off immersion, having the blue outline present aaaaall the time. If you as the WHC player doesn’t tag everything, odds are someone know they too will benefit from tagging and will take it up to tag often, if not all the time themselves. I know I certainly do given the considerable damage increase it provides, why wouldn’t you?
  • Why isn’t it the Witch Hunter who gains additional damage? It makes very little sense to me that the career that is supposed to be the hunter of all things wicked, can simply allow others to do the work for him. From what I know of WH fantasy, this makes little sense to me.
  • His appearance and voice lines are top tier, and it is disappointing to see a striker turn into a more supportive role

I would enjoy WHC much more of his presence actually added benefits to himself and others without the need to actively tag enemies throughout a run, if he absolutely must a supportive leaning career. And no, it isn’t difficult, but it certainly is boring and robs me of immersion and I constantly remind myself, “tag for more damage”
As Huntsman or Mercenary, I can focus on the capability of my weapons over tagging.

It is very difficult for me to see WHC in a good place right now, even when I have great games I can pick up another career and do just as good and easily better, he lacks a punch mercenary for example offers aplenty without the need to highlight enemies.

2 Likes

The softer outlining V1 had looks a lot nicer than the hard solid pixel wide outline V2 has.

1 Like

Regardless of the class you pick, people need to tag more. The sound alerts teammates of possible heavy damage incoming and makes them stand out in a crowd.

I like having the whc as a high skill requirement character. Lowering his ult cooldown seems like a reasonable buff. It is pretty usefull when using ult recharge on a crit build using rapier.

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If you think that the WHC is a subpar class, then you’re clearly not playing WHC right.

How much I hate this eilitarian behavoiur.
Nearly every other career you can mix’n’match the weapons and talents and still have easy times.
Then there are threads where people talk about WHC and his…let’s call them issues.
And then there are are always people saying “I can play him well, just pick exactly this build and these weapons and you can do it too.”
Yeah, there’s a way, maybe two or three ways to play WHC effectively but even that underlines how much subar he is as you have to mention specific builds or weapons.

I main WHC…mostly out of stubborness. Since VT1. After reaching 30+ and learning VT2 on saltzpyre I decided to give the other careers a try. And the game became unbelievable easy. I just thought how it is even possible to die as Mercenary, or even get under 70% life as Ironbreaker. Why should I ever melee as Waystalker or Pyromancer?

I leveled all the careers, one after another to 30 and then returned back to WHC. They game itself immediately became “harder” again but WHC didn’t feel unique anymore. Animosity is the same as Mercenary’s Morale Boost but instead of temp health you get a higher crit chance for x seconds. But with an incredible CD.
Designwise Morale Boost has a clear role: It is a supportive life saver.
Animosity is some kind of half life saver. The damage buff is inconsistent due to the low duration, the really low range and you lose some of you damage potential due to the fact you stagger and knock back the enemies and have to close the gap first sometimes luring you into a bad position so you better stand back and wait wasting your precious crit buff.
Witch Hunt is a non-fun minigame and tag-race. Someone just mentioned to create a makro to auto-tag on attack. Yeah…that is a walkaround and shows that this mechanic is broken.

I really like to play WHC and I keep playing him but he also needs so many tweaks it might even be better to rebuild this class from scratch.
Witch Hunt can be turned into an anti-version of Paced Strikes. If hitting less than 3 (taggable) enemies you gain more power. Maybe scaling:
3+ enemies hit -> no bonus
2 enemies hit -> 10% bonus
1 enemy hit -> 20% bonus
And his level 15 Talents either can spread the effect to nearby allies, add attack speed to the buff or critchance

6 Likes

I dont like doing arguement agaisnt someone but i have to write
Your suggestion makes whc even weaker
Whc can kill storm vermin and specials except pack master with tag bonus + grim 15 power boost by using xbow
Your suggestion will ruin his one of useful build

As i play victor to lv 222 and also my main for victor is whc, basically you can have inf ammo as bh with special one shot abillity

Tag mechanic with power property bonus is the thing that makes player understanding how to play vt2 well so it is good design

Whc’s lv 5 and lv 10 talent is not bad
His lv 15 talent, lv 25 talent and ult itself are problems
Also if fatshark do more buff on him except lv 15 and 25 talents, i like to see hp 20 buff and buff bop for both ammo and monster damage

Here’s my personal ideas:

I know that if everything here was changed he would probably be OP but two things: these are just suggestions to fatshark about what could be reworked/tweaked and two; I would not mind all these changes being made at once for a week or two while we cry OP then fatshark gets feedback about what should be dialed back and over a month or two he finds a nice balance. (unlikely as fatshark seems hesitant to make many changes at once)

In theory WHC could be a utility king who might have low damage numbers but everyone feels better having one with the party. But currently he feels like an ineffective mix of melee and utility. I know if you do everything under the sun to maximize him and are confident in melee then he can be effective but with that much effort you could dominate the front line with zealot or range down everything before it gets to the party with bounty hunter. I would suggest, to diversify Saltpyre’s careers make WHC focus on utility and make him a touch more efficient (or safer you could say) in melee.

Specific ideas:

  • Give him the crit aura of huntsman (Take away from huntsman and tweak him as well) make it a reasonably large radius so if he is in the backline the front line also gets the bonus and visa versa.
  • Which Hunt (20% dmg vs tagged enemies): The main issue with this passive is it’s hard to get consistent value without having an experienced squad who knows to constantly tag what you’re currently hitting. First increase how long tags last (tag should not disappear during a fight, so maybe also tags are renewed if enemy is hit) but also here’s two ideas for WHC specifically:
    • Option 1: Make you able to tag multiple enemies (maybe have a limit). You can un-tag by retagging, but you can’t un-tag allies tags and they cannot un-tag at all, including your ‘extra’ tags. I like this b/c you rely less on your teammates tagging, while it also adds an extra layer of utility.
    • Option 2: simpler option is to increase damage to tagged enemies passive to 35-50% (keep 20% for bosses). So when you actually get value out of it the value is increased (Simple but exploitable solution. In general I don’t think changing raw numbers will suffice with WHC).
  • Eternal guard (No frontal light block cost): Instead keep one stamina (half a shield) during your light attacks, but blocking interrupts your current attack. Idea is to give him hit trading potential not in raw tankiness. Another way to do this is to have the one stam eat only one hit, but maybe lights have zero block cost still (that might be to good). But this can work b/c all of salts weapons use lights for hordes and this is intended to allow him to hit trade with hordes. For balance Parry should only work when actually blocking (holding RMB). I know this itself could be op and highly controversial but im thinking about how to increase survivability without giving raw tankiness.
  • Killing shot (crit headshots kill man-sized enemies): The main problem with this is it can’t proc on chaos warriors which is what you need it most for. I’d say add a condition for it to proc on CW but only if the attack is by default an armor piercing attack and it crits. Therefore this applies to:
    • Falchion: light 3 + charged attacks
    • Rapier: charged only
    • Axe: literally every attack (I think this is fair b/c it’s slow and getting head shots with the lights on CW is tough)
    • 2h-sword: push stab and charged attacks
    • Flail: Light 3+4 (this is tough b/c all its attack do some armor damage now but I feel like only the 3rd and 4th lights are really armor piercing )
    • Lastly I think this should also be applied to ranged weapons in some way but that might be hard to balance. It would be nice for him to be a bounty hunter lite for limited time when needed. (Ult then spam CW heads hoping for instakills.)
  • Change lvl 15 talent to be all about team sustain but 3 different ways to do it
    • 3 temp hp per taggable enemy killed for party (I think 2 was not enough to warrant using the talent)
    • 1 perm . hp when tagged enemy is killed for party
    • 1 temp hp when you crit (2 on ranged) for party (I know this isn’t related to tagged enemies but I feel like changing the talent to team sustain is more interesting than playing off your main passive. But this could be replaced with the ‘greedy’ option of 5%crit and attack speed on taggable death, taking from the existing talents)
  • Lastly and possibly most important make his ult cooldown shorter (like half or more so aprox. 1-1.5min cooldown) but lower its stagger so it doesn’t stop CW or bosses. Three new lvl 25 talents for it (no 30% cooldown one) and the crit buff duration should be like 10sec ish (I feel the 6 sec is too short for the party b/c it always seems like by the time you get into position to use the crit buff half the duration has gone by and you only get maybe 5 hits with it). As for crit increase have it increase the crit Aura by like 15% to 20% and not just give a temporary passive to anyone in the radius at the time of use, meaning you have to stay close to get the crit buff). Talent ideas:
    • Increase stagger to interrupt CW and bosses (up to what it is currently I think)
    • Double Crit value so like 35-50% extra crit instead of 20-25%
    • Add 10%-15% attk speed to aura during ult duration (in addition to crit buff)
      • Or keep the 50% increased radius talent

The design of these changes is to add interesting and unique mechanics to WHC that increases his skill ceiling. Basically if you never pay attention to maximize your passive skills then why are they there, and if you do pay attention is the benefit worth the sacrifice in other areas (aka is getting value too costly).

1 Like

WHC is a case of: You can, but why would you want to? You want to dominate melee? Play Zealot. Want to do proper elite killing? Play BH.
Just compare his active ability to IB. Now THAT is an ability that warrants a cooldown this long: Taunt allows the team to focus on offense, you can hold indefinitely while it lasts due to infinite block stamina AND you become almost invulnerable. WHC tosses enemies around and gets everyone some higher crit chance (not even guaranteed DPS. I have had it happen multiple times where not a single crit procced) for a ridicilously low amount of time. His passive headshotkilling on crit headshot might as well not exen exist, since it is so easy to hit headshot breakpoints with him, anyhow. If you are headhunting, pick the extra headshot damage and stab away. WHC doesn’t even get a passive crit chance increase or even the choice to.
His level 15 talents are also only so good on paper. While taggable enemies exist more than enough, you have almost no control over when it procs and when it does, it is very much situational if you can exploit it or not. The bonus is too small and doesn’t last long enough for it to be relevant. Yes, I have had situations where I could chain them together by killing elites, but I might as well have just been Zealot, used my active and benefit from the fact that I get pretty much guaranteed 20% power boost anytime when holding two grims, while having better crits, better mobility and alot better survivability.
I have played rounds with WHC where I was topping the scoreboard, so don’t hand me that “hurrdurr you need to know how to play him” card. I know how to play him, but anytime I do, I think to myself “I could play Zealot now and have an ability that I could use alot more often, one that is arguably stronger, and not be a squishy 100 health hero that requires alot of effort to stay alive.”
The WHC could be a very good carreer, hitting break points is very easy with him - but so it is with Zealot and BH.
WHC simply lacks profile. His active ability is very weak, witch hunt is a good ability but implementation is tedious and pretty much the only thing he got going for himself is the unmentioned headshot damage bonus.
I don’t think it would require much effort to bring him up to speed. My suggestion would be to make him 125 health and give him a passive 5% crit chance bonus. Give him a passive 20% damage bonus against tagable enemies and make witch hunt apply this bonus to his teammates.
Make his level 15 talents twice as effective when a tagged enemy dies (as in: taggable enemy dies, you get 8 seconds of 20% faster attacks instead of 4 seconds 10%, in this fashion. Increase the temp health from the level 15 talent to 5).
Decrease the cooldown of his ability and give it more viability. Increase the crit chance gain further and let it increase attack speed or crit power or something along the lines of a strong offensive buff.

6 Likes

I find it absurd that WHC has the same health pool as Shade, Bounty Hunter, etc.

These are ranged based monsters with small health pools, so why does a mostly front line character like WHC have the same health as them? Giving him at least Mercenary level health is more than fair.

His active ability also needs to be significantly improved, or to have its CD reduced.

I’d like to see some of his talents improved, but the other two issues are more important.

5 Likes

I agree that the witch hunt should provide a greater power bonus, 20% is a lot for a constant, passive buff, but for a 5 second, actively used skill aimed at a single enemy, it really isn´t much. For many enemies, it will make no difference in terms of how many times/where/how you need to hit them, or very little, making barely worth it, and oftentimes literally pointless. But the bonus shouldn´t get any more than 20% for bosses of course, that would be too op.

I would also like to discuss the fact that even when I have the highest total damage as WHC, I usually have far lower kill count than many others, like Kruber, Shade, or Slayer. This is mostly when playing with bots or not very skilled friends, since outperforming these as WHC even in terms of raw dmg is almost impossible if they are played by comparably skilled players.

Also I propose this solution to the witch hunt ability - in addittion to the 20% dmg bonus, it could give a crit chance bonus for 3 seconds every time a tagged enemy is hit. Maybe it could double the player´s crit chance, or just give around 15% regardless of how much they have by default. This could both increase WHC´s capacity as a support class, and make him more formidable in particular, because of his killing shot passive.

Sorry if I seem too involved or whiny on this thread, it´s just that no matter what character or class I play, I vastly outperform WHC in general. WHC is a joke compared to pyromancer, unchained, slayer, ironbreaker, shade, mercenary, foot knight, as well as WH´s two other careers, and the other classes are generally still better than WHC in many regards and overall.

After comfirming that the CW are not man-sized enemies, I would also like to propose that in order to make WHC less crap, they might be re-sorted to the man-sized enemies list, meaning Saltzpyre with a rapier (but also other weapons) could be actually one of the best classes against them, rather than one of the mediocre-meh classes. Of course this is just a relatively minor thing, other buffs would be needed.

Yeah, I am not letting this thread die, fite me.

You do know that a WHC with Raiper can 3 shot a CW right?

I honestly think all he needs to bring him in line with other classes,

  1. Up his HP to Merc & HM levels, 125 base HP.

  2. Reduce his ULT to somewhere around 40 - 60 seconds. Considering the Shade has a 60 sec ULT, which is one of the strongest in the game. There is no reason the WHC should have 180 second ULT, which only lasts for 6 seconds.

  3. “Wild Fervour” and “Marked for Death” lvl 15 Talents should have their time increased to 10 seconds. “Justices Bounty” should have HP given increased to 5. Currently, the 2 temp HP is useless, don’t you decay 1 temp HP every few seconds anyway.

4 Likes

well while im far from calling the WHC subpar, i would like to suggest a change to tagging enemys all along,

a Tag should refresh the moment a taggable enemy dies. or atleast the enemy that got tagged by the WHC

example : whc tags SV , kills SV at the moment this SV is dead,
i want to be able to tag another enemy

i know the delay is only a small one, but it annoys the crap out of me

any buff to his HP or other minor changes would be welcome ofc

1 Like

The whole tag mechanism has to go or change significantly especially since the social wheel made it a little bit slow/clunky to use.

There are people out there which bound tagging via macro to their primary attack.
This could be a thing in general for Witch Hunt:
Instead of a regular Tag (blue borders) your targeted enemy (taking damage, only one per attack) gets a special mark (above his head? Glow effect? Whatever).
Give a talent line got that like:
A: The Mark spreads to two other taggable enemies nearby (max 3 metres away from the primary target)
B: Attacking a marked enemy increases Attack Speed by x
C: Attacking a marked enemy increases stamina regeneration

I could also imagine some kind of combo-point building. This is now a spontaneous idea, so don’t await too much:
Every time WHC only hits a taggable enemy his Witch Hunt Counter goes up. First stack 5%, second stack 10%, third stack 15%. (Weaker as it happens automatically) The stacks vanish after a few seconds or when hitting a non-taggable enemy.
Now I have different ideas:

  1. Witch Hunt is an aura and allies in 5m range gain the same buff. Range might be increased by a talent.
  2. Everyone can trigger Witch Hunt Combo Points but allies only up to two stacks. Maybe a third stack via talent.
  3. Animosity immediately fills up all Witch Hunt stacks additionally and they wont be lost by hitting non-taggable enemies for the duration (but no dmg buff on non-taggables)

Anyway, aside from the possibilities for a change I think WHC needs more than just some number balances.

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Not really got any suggestions but the best explanation I can give for how WHC plays just now is that, he is frustrating, missing something and you have to be at the top of your game to produce only mediocre results.

The ping thing is clunky and requires one too many key binds IMO

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You can adjust this in the settings. Make the social wheel have a longer press down to pop up. Or move it to another key altogether.

3 Likes

i think this is all we need right now for WHC in terms of balancing.
I still think that he is not extremly interresting to play. The thing i enjoy most on WHC is his ability to instantly slay man sized enemys with crit headshots. Problem with that is that you have nearly no control about wether you make a crit or not. That means i mostly go for charged ap attacks against the head of armored enemys like i do with all the other careers too (depending on the weapon). A unique passive ability that gives you some controll over the crit chance of the whc would solve that. I was thinking about something like increased crit chance on your next attack for everey blocked attack (like 8% for every block). Would perfectly synergice with his no stanima loss on blocked attacks from the front. Problem is that would make him a bit to strong if he also uses swift slaying on his weapon in my opinion. So if we would get this as a possible weapon traid instead of a passive ability it would be perfect in my opinion. I would defenitely try this trait on WHC and maybe also on some other weapons like shields. A usefull traid would give them a nice little buff.
This trait alone would add a nice unique playstyle especially for WHC. In some situations it might be a good choice to block some attacks → get higher crit chance → gives you the possibility to quickly one hit kill headshot an annoing elite in a horde.

edit: Just thougt again about my suggestion and found a problem. This trait could lead to some silly tactics. For example boss is coming in and the huntsman leaves two rats alive so he can get a high crit chance by blocking their attacks and then uses this high crit on his ranged weapon.
So maybe the high crit rate does not transfer to the ranged weapon.
Or you only get a higher crit chance against the enemy whos strike you did block. But this sounds hard to implement.
Don’t know. Maybe the suggestion is just bad.