Witch Hunter Woes, and a simple solution

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Hello heretics, Saltzpyer here, your friendly neighborhood stick-in-the-butt special slayer. Most of you know me from my roles such as bounty hunter, where I’m constantly using and abusing an insane amount of firepower that gets people wondering “where does he keep all those guns and bullets??” mischievous eyebrow raise or as a zealot, who is on death’s door so often the grim reaper has called the cops on me for loitering ba dum kishh

… you might also know me from another class… but most of you are polite enough not to mention it around my mother. The Witch Hunter Captain. By rights the most badass class in the game, instead usually met with disappointment and disdain when joining a merry band of verminslayers. The reason being, of course, that there’s very little that makes me stand out, besides the fact that if I point at things they seem to take more damage. Sure there’s weapons like the falchoin or the volleybow which by themselves are reliable ratkillers and can pull through in a pinch, but with most other weapons including the rapier/pistol combo, the classic witch hunter weapon set, the damage output is so low that hitting them feels like i’m scolding the skaven for being naughty.

So I point. and let a treelady, rockmunchkin, and drunken mercenary get the big kill stats while I mutter contendly “well at least I didn’t die much.” and as i wait to be kicked from groups I lament, because the key to my ascension to a worthy class, not O.P. but actually reliable, could lie in a single change to the talent tree.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

For the level 15 talents, remove the requirement that they only trigger upon killing specials.

A 10% Attack Speed buff, the party gaining 1 temporary health when you kill any enemy, or a 10% crit chance boost, are all viable solutions to make the Witch Hunter an excellent class, but a four-second window after killing specials means these solutions are enjoyed for the briefest of moments before going back to feeling like a hassle to the team.
The attack speed buff would a simple solution to make all melee weapons deadlier in the hands of saltzpyre, especially his trademark rapier/pistol combo, which I’ve noticed with the bounty hunter goes from useless to useful depending on whether I can increase the attack speed above 10%. (You could then change that BH talent from 5% attack speed to 5% attack power to diversify the classes).
The 1 group health per kill by Saltz would make me much more useful to the group and would parse that temporary health out more evenly over the course of the match, since specials can randomly spawn in clusters or very sparsely for long stretches, often leaving you with the most temporary health when you need it least.
The Crit boost would also solve the WHC’s melee and ranged shortcomings, as well as encourage his innate talent involving man-sized enemies and headshots, whose activation is a rare occurrence in current circumstances even with stats buffs from gear.

The best part is you would hardly have to change anything. Just removing a condition is all it would take to make the Witch Hunter feel like a real asset to his teammates as opposed to wondering why I didn’t just pick bounty hunter or zealot again.

I hope this has been enjoyable to read, but I’d like to add on a personal note witch hunters are my favorite part of warhammer lore, and it’s dismaying that in the best warhammer game to date it’s the most dreaded and ridiculed class in the game. The suggestion I posted was not meant to make it O.P., but instead to make it feel more like the professional monster slayer it ought to be. To any Fatshark devs that took the time to read this down to here, I really do appreciate it, you, and this wonderful game.

6 Likes

Attack speed is not a solution. Rapier and Falc are already very fast weapons. They need to balance the rest of his weapon arsenal. Also they should replace his passive (IK on headshot) with something different, give him more health or some sort of protection and give him new ulti that would suit the character.

1 Like

I think you’re not giving the WHC enough credit here ,he is awesome af . First off , the rapier is an insane weapon , fully charged pokes can kill SV on legend and it has the ability to meat grind hordes like crazy especially with swift slaying . Secondly , he has an infinite block passive that ensures your pushes will always have uptime if you were to have blocked a few hits in between your meat grinding and also means if your positioning is correct , you can efficiently keep a horde at bay by simply blocking . He’s crazy squishy but tons of fun to play and experiment with .

3 Likes

Rapier has very low light attack dmg, therefore you have to grind that meat pretty long. CD reduction might be better choice for this weapon as WHC ulti is a life saver but with very long CD and yet again the no stam cost block is only for frontal L I G H T attacks so you better tell those rats to attack you lightly.

Who needs block when you can easily decapitate entire hordes :wink: I agree with you. When longbow kruber gets 10k damage, I’m quite satisfied with 6-7k and most melee kills.
His ult can be a livesaver in a pinch as well.

1 Like

I did mention the falchoin is good in a pinch, but the damage numbers on the rapier and all other weapons are too low especially when compared to the crit boosts on the bh and power boost for zealot.

The main problem im getting at is theres no significant consistent damage boost besides for headshots (which is less effective depending in what weapon you use) for a character who is dps through and through. Saltz is too squishy for anything else, but if you wanted to make him tanky you’d have to increase the amount of temp health he gets, not just 2 per special which is infrequent to say the least.

Your solution involves rebalancing the weapons, which would affect all the classes, and replacing his passive and his special with something else (no idea what tho?) which is a lot of reprogramming and doesnt directly address the fundamental problem of low damage output.

My solution only modifies existing components to be more effective; the 10% attack speed boost will make sure he is a melee contender with any weapon regardless of balance (and give the WHC an appropriate “weapons expert” vibe), and the crit boost would increase the damage output and also the IK headshot passive could actually be useful.

And i absolutely agree the cooldown on his special is ridiculously long for how underpowered it is. Thats a consistent theme on other threads too tho so i think/hope the devs are aware of this and will fix it.

1 Like

I hear you and all those are positive, but most of the pros you mentioned have little to do with dealing damage, which for a dps character should strike us as strange. The fact of the matter stands that bh and zealot get way higher damage stats than arent balanced out by whc’s support skills, especially if he’s as squishy as you admit he is.

was fun to read but i must stated the following things:

there are no Shortcomings only that stupid idea of FS, that CW only take 1 Dmg on Headshots with a bloody Crossbow and every other Ranged Weapon except Kruber Bow and Musket.

Nah you crit so often im save to say every 3-4 Hit is a Crit.

His Talents are Fine besides one but i rather set the Focus on his Ult which isn’t near fitting the Character, i would love to see something like this:

WHC performs very well but is moderately gear dependent, given his tagging bonus he can get lower breakpoints than other classes and easily be very effective with crossbow at ranged, not to mention falchion provides good mobility and allows you to block cancel through hordes with ease or cut through armor in a pinch. I do agree is talents are relatively boring and some of his stuff including active could maybe be changed to make him a more engaging hero.

To see the shortcomings you have to compare him to the other dps classes, if you swap out victor and keep the same gear the numbers for whc look pitiful compared to the other classes and again, his other support abilities seem to hardly balance that at all in real time.

Also if vic’s Crit rate is 1 in 4 then I’m blowing smoke but I don’t think it’s nearly that high, at least on a target dummy the numbers rarely spike for me and there’s nothing like bh which garauntees one every 8 seconds, which even then isn’t 1 in 4.

And I think the ult is ok it just has a ridiculously long cooldown. I’d be down to consider changing it but a straightforward offensive shot of anything is gonna look like an underwhelming version of the bh ult shot, even tho I like the idea of berzerking specials into killing their own units.

Also you don’t think the level 15 talents only triggered by killing specials isn’t too infrequent? I feel like that makes that whole talent bracket pretty much inconsequential if you’re only killing an average of 10-20 per match, and when you compare two temp health per special kill to two temp health per crit for bh it looks like the devs made whc an underwhelming class on purpose.

3 Likes

I feel like the current falchoin is a permanent gap in my argument because it is the best weapon for Victor and certainly pulls through in a pinch, but that’s also (imo) because the falchoin seems to have the same or similar reach as the rapier, making it better at clearing hordes than it ought to be especially since it has the highest damage output and similar speed to the rapier. Crossbows are also good and should stay that way, they feel balanced with slow reloads and low ammo capacity.

Aside from that weapon combo, however, everything else is more of a struggle than it needs to be with the whc, which as you mentioned is very reliant on his gear. I’m especially concerned with the rapier, which makes sense to have low damage output per swing but then it has to be fast to be considered versatile against hordes, the current threshold for this seeming to be 10% faster than normal (based on my personal experience, but this is my main character). Permanently upping the crit rate is another solution, so if you swipe across 4-5 rats you’l usually at least crit 1, which would help immensly in thinning hordes.

Other weapons with similar problems of damage output for the whc would also be solved by upping speed or crit rate, and if the falchoin did feel overpowered you could just shorten its reach to a reasonably shorter distance and increase its realism, which is a plus anyways in my book. Ranged weapons would only benefit from the crit rate increase, but I think that would only make them feel a little more forgiving for not getting a headshot every single time.

well I play Kruber so im used to having even less viable weapon combinations than Saltzpire, forgive me if im not sympathetic :stuck_out_tongue:

if only witch hunter inflict 20% dmg in the form of a stacking bleed from all melee attacks L_L …

With crit gear its probably every 4th hit and guess what the 3 hits before crit will kill every mansized mob in the game anyway and ofc you cant always hit the head so count in some body hits that might steal your crit or you crit headshot a mob that would die even to normal headshot and that gives us around 10% mansized mobs insta killed by crit headshot .

True but Kruber is a beast he could go in with a rake and a rock and give the rat men hell, Saltz is so delicate and squishy he faints when he gets his nail broken by a heretic lol

I’d like to see WHC more focused on special killing. That’s what he was born and trained for.
Instead of doing more damage to tagged enemies he might just get a damage buff the less enemies he hits per swing. (Yes, melee only)
Don’t get upset by the numbers, I am very bad in balancing these out but just for the idea:
WHC damage is increased by 50% but one third of his overall damage is spread evenly across all enemies hit.

So instead doing 100% damage to all hit enemies he does 150% to one, 125% to two, 116% to three.
Bonus: Instead of insta-kill on crit headshot Victor’s crits are not affected by the penalty and do 150% to all hit enemies.

Btw: Who thought it was a great idea for an ult to knockback enemies and give a damage buff for a short time? I do always lose some time by getting back in melee range and differentiate dead rats on the floor from knocked down rats. Also their heads are further away.
It’s like kicking a ball away and then running for it.

I’d like to see affected enemies only staggered (and maybe debuffed as if they would have been tagged. Even untaggable ones)

This is one of the reasons I get so annoyed with the ult. Things you want to kill get flung outside of your kill range. It’s nice in a tight spot, but if you’re in a position where you’re surrounded as WHC it’s usually gg anyway so just stagger things and let me batter my way out.

Even when I’m playing as WHC I get annoyed by the constant pinging of the tag, so I’d like that mechanic changed. Autotag all tagable enemies without using the sound would be a nice thing with a ten second cooldown between autotags.

Finally, does anyone think the hitbox for the axe is a bit… narrow? I don’t know how to describe it really but there’s definitely times where I’ve swung for a clanrat, the axe has literally shaved the little fellas scalp it appeared to swing so close, yet the rat goes on to bodge me with his sword. I guess they’ve made the hitbox small so you can’t just plough through a horde (like a… er… falcion?) so it needs careful aiming but it leads to sometimes cheap shots and a feeling of “ghost swings”. The axe is great at killing specials and I think it suits Salty to be chopping things to bits.

1 Like

There ment to be Anti Patrol/big Groups Skills an triggered if anybody in the Group near you kills one, they fit well the Witcher Hunters Character.

I rather say our main Problem is the lack of Individuality for every Character Career, there copy pastet and slightly changed.

I would say its a big Problem in the first Place that you need 2 Hits for a Clan Skaven with a Battleaxe, if you use Abjure Temptation you can reduce that down to 1 Hit but until you grab a Grim your of no real use for Wave clearing or killing any little Group, all other WH Weapon can be useful right at the Start.

Oh and your only hit 1 Target above anything else then a Slave Rat or Zombie. The Thing is if you had normal cleave on the Axe it would be just a better Falchion.