Witch Hunter Class Sucks

[X]

This is literally the worst class for endgame.

The class has no unique quality skills.

Sorcery ward is not resistant to chaos and is disadvantageous.

We can't use a quiver of arrows, so we don't get any extra stats.

Armor and evasion are almost useless.

We need to play a mix of STR and DEX.

We are supposed to be archers, but we have the same range as every other character, yet most of our skills have very low range.

I'm tired of their attacks out of my line of sight.

If you throw a bomb, it explodes quite late and you have to be careful where you throw it on the map.

This character and class really seems to have been designed without enough gameplay or thought.

I'm sick of doing somersaults to avoid dying in one hit because of chaos damage.

I didn't have half as hard a time playing “Elden Ring”.

I have already passed level 90...

If you look at the ranking, you can understand how difficult this profession is

[Orclover]

Merc isnt bad. Its just that the other classes havent been nerfed down to the same level as merc, yet. End of the month at the latest they will probably be.

[wulfster42]

Escrito originalmente por G-sai:

im on lvl 93 and yes i agree. I should pick gemling instead.

sorc ward is literaly A NERF nod WTF. Most of the damage in this game is phys or chaos.
Culling strike are u trolling? U can just put it in a gem
+20 passives for diferent weapon? Worthless

This class need a buff srsly. Ye it has amazing clear and thats it. We cant kill bosses because they just oneshoting us. Our solo dps is pathetic.

Don't sell the 20 passives short. It's actually great in combo with the concentration nodes and zelous inq if you can snag the unique gloves that give decimating strike.

It's also not just 20, it's 24, you get another 4 from the small node (think it was 4).

And that STACKS with all the ones you get through the campaign.

Why does it matter?

You can specialize your two weapon slots in totally different things. You could have 2 weapon types for instance (xbow in 1 hand and bow in the other). You could go straight up from start to the outer rim and then go in different directions for each because you have so many weapon specific nodes.

One weapon could spec in ice and the other lightning.

One weapon could spec in elemental all together and the other in pure physical/stun.

ETC.

It's a fairly large bonus if you use it right.

It can even be used defensively in a way, with one setup pure damage, and the other setup with far more defensive/health regen/eshield etc nodes. While just plowing through everything with zelous inq, you go pure offensive but if you actually have to fight something you switch to the other setup that has better defenses etc.

One can be geared with AoE increases and damage and the other focused on single target.

Tons of ways to make use of an additional 24 weapon specific nodes.

And nothing else worth getting if you get zelous and the concentration nodes (which are amazing). Decimating strike is great, but you can eventually get that from equipment and once you do, that is the best combo zelous + weapon master + both concentration nodes.

Even if you CAN'T get decimating strike gloves, it's almost worth it to just forgo decimating since you can't have that AND zelous without resetting your tree constantly, and go with weapon master instead.

[Lyote]

Escrito originalmente por G-sai:

im on lvl 93 and yes i agree. I should pick gemling instead.

sorc ward is literaly A NERF nod WTF. Most of the damage in this game is phys or chaos.
Culling strike are u trolling? U can just put it in a gem
+20 passives for diferent weapon? Worthless

This class need a buff srsly. Ye it has amazing clear and thats it. We cant kill bosses because they just oneshoting us. Our solo dps is pathetic.

You are still putting in Elemental Resists right?

Based on the description, It absorbs FLAT damage, Not reducing damage by a percentage.
Since its also based on your Armour+Evasion, Physical should be less an issue for you since you should be pumping that to pump the Ward.
More Armour/Evasion means more Ward means less threat from elemental nonsense means less damage taken from physical.
Chaos is an everyone issue, all of the time. Just use proper Resists like everyone else.

Passive Culling Strike on every single instance of outgoing damage is just a flat 5% reduction of boss health.
Decimating Strike makes that even heavier (RNG notwithstanding)
Solo DPS is fine, as we have been discussing for a while lol.

[Jager]

I've only got my Witch Hunter to 44, so don't take this as an 'end game' critique, but I personally picked it up for the 24 extra weapon points, so I could bounce between range + melee (Van Helsing inspired). Currently, it's mostly been Flash Grenade and Boneshatter comboing stun as a core with some Poison Grenade to shred armor and regular mace attack in between, but I haven't nailed anything 'definitive' yet (I could see bow/quarterstaff working better).

I think this is probably what they had in mind with the Witch Hunter and the weapon swap points. I also suspect many people are not actually taking advantage of, finding themselves required to, or are using weapon swap in general, so it definitely comes off very weak.

A couple of issues I have encountered playing this hybrid style - outside of requiring some decent planning - is that:

1. Weapon set points can not currently path through jewel nodes (hopefully a bug) and really hinders pathing (thus needing more planning).
   
2. Complimentary weapons are not currently in the game (ie xbow/sword or bow/spear), so you need some big pathing, and this includes working in attribute nodes to weapon sets so you are not always benefiting from them, but also want to keep in mind nodes that benefit both weapons (and whether or not to sacrifice it).
   
3. We only have 2 melee weapons, and I don't personally think Mace feels great (as mentioned above), and from the little I have dabbled in, xbow is also somewhat mediocre compared to quarterstaff / the limited bow skills I have used.

You could definitely argue going all in on one weapon / skill set would be much stronger, and make the 24 extra points (44 total) less or completely unappealing, but given it is 1 of 36 potential ascendancies, perhaps this is it's niche with untapped potential, or not for specific builds / play styles. It is certainly one of the more fun characters I've played thus far.
Does that make it better then Gemling? Or does it really matter when we only have a third of the ascendancies, and less than half the total skills? Probably not, but in the grand scheme of things, it could be great. Maybe at 1.0 it is still considered 'horrible' and no one will play it, but I think, at least from the weapon points perspective, things are still very undercooked.

As a side note, I believe the Culling Strike gem only works on rares and uniques? Maybe not a huge problem deep end game, but the node is definitely superior to the gem.

[donut32]

come back in 6 years when the game is fixed.

[Lyote]

Escrito originalmente por Jager:

I've only got my Witch Hunter to 44, so don't take this as an 'end game' critique, but I personally picked it up for the 24 extra weapon points, so I could bounce between range + melee (Van Helsing inspired). Currently, it's mostly been Flash Grenade and Boneshatter comboing stun as a core with some Poison Grenade to shred armor and regular mace attack in between, but I haven't nailed anything 'definitive' yet (I could see bow/quarterstaff working better).

I think this is probably what they had in mind with the Witch Hunter and the weapon swap points. I also suspect many people are not actually taking advantage of, finding themselves required to, or are using weapon swap in general, so it definitely comes off very weak.

A couple of issues I have encountered playing this hybrid style - outside of requiring some decent planning - is that:

1. Weapon set points can not currently path through jewel nodes (hopefully a bug) and really hinders pathing (thus needing more planning).
   
2. Complimentary weapons are not currently in the game (ie xbow/sword or bow/spear), so you need some big pathing, and this includes working in attribute nodes to weapon sets so you are not always benefiting from them, but also want to keep in mind nodes that benefit both weapons (and whether or not to sacrifice it).
   
3. We only have 2 melee weapons, and I don't personally think Mace feels great (as mentioned above), and from the little I have dabbled in, xbow is also somewhat mediocre compared to quarterstaff / the limited bow skills I have used.

You could definitely argue going all in on one weapon / skill set would be much stronger, and make the 24 extra points (44 total) less or completely unappealing, but given it is 1 of 36 potential ascendancies, perhaps this is it's niche with untapped potential, or not for specific builds / play styles. It is certainly one of the more fun characters I've played thus far.
Does that make it better then Gemling? Or does it really matter when we only have a third of the ascendancies, and less than half the total skills? Probably not, but in the grand scheme of things, it could be great. Maybe at 1.0 it is still considered 'horrible' and no one will play it, but I think, at least from the weapon points perspective, things are still very undercooked.

As a side note, I believe the Culling Strike gem only works on rares and uniques? Maybe not a huge problem deep end game, but the node is definitely superior to the gem.

Weapon Swap and the associated Passive swapping being so new, I imagine there is a lot of tweaking they can do with it (Not least the potential that they can increase the amount of them to further encourage using it)

I do fully agree that we would need all the weapons and skills to really judge the value in it though.
Still, I was also considering a build similar to yours except basically zooming straight into Warrior's section of the map and going all in on Physical with the weapon swap passive switch being branches into pulling Melee Damage bonuses and swapping them into the Mercs Projectile stuff.
Ironically, Merc's Crossbow bonus cluster is VERY close to Giants Blood, Making it entirely possible to reach over to it and then down into the Reload benefits allowing you to go 2H+Shield or Dual Wield while also having a viable Crossbow on the side.

Damnit, Now i wanna do it ._.
I am cursed to forever start new alts XD

[wulfster42]

Jager and Lyote,

Seriously, try using bow/qstaff start from witchunter get all the yummy ascension boosts, but focus on bow/qstaff. You still want to hit the damage nodes in warrior area, but you can also travel ne and get the quiver bonuses. You might even be able to get the high dex and attack speed bonuses (I have not tried it).

Q-staff is just so much better than mace, and it combos so well with bow because it's primarly dex based.

I've mentioned why titan is generally better than witch hunter due to the huge boost from passive nodes, but witch hunter could still work well, and q-staff/bow (or xbow if you really want...it does have some advantages) works so freaking well.

Ice strike with so much +damage is insanely strong. Having a ranged (real ranged) backup is great. Witch hunter would have more weapon specific nodes which would be great, and also would have the concentration nodes for more damage along with zelous inquisition which would make the insane ice strike even more insane lol.

Ice strike is literally 2x as good end game as ice shot is, and that is pretty good as well.

I'm not playing right now till the crash bug gets fixed (hopefully in a few days) but, if I was gonna do another witch hunter I would probably do a q-staff/xbow (letting you use plasma + emergency along with q-staff ice strike etc).

I mostly use my bow for ice salvo, which is alot of damage, but it only goes off once usually in a boss fight, and the rest is kinda worthless with so much from qstaff.

So swapping that out for xbows plasma/emergency especially with my gloves giving me decimating strike + concentrations bonus. It would be even better than the bow/qstaff build:)

Not sure if it's worth making a new char or just resetting my tree and building my current witch hunter for xbow instead of bow (might not even need to make many changes to be honest).

But yeah, try q-staff over mace for the combo, I promise you will be happy with it.

[Machin Shin]

if you can make her work ( and i can tell you at least 3 different builds) than its your problem and play somethign else or play D4... its easier....

[Snu]

why would you ever play merc when you can just play the better ranger?

[X]

I understand that you say use a bow because the skill tree is close to the archer, but using a staff is ridiculous.

Do you tell mages to use bows too?

Let's stay on topic.

Your developer can solve the problem by adding a feature during the day.
This feature will be resetting the profession. I really quit the game and if profession reset doesn't come this week, I will delete the game. I will never come back no matter what.
People who quit the game will be hard to get back.

[wulfster42]

Escrito originalmente por X:

I understand that you say use a bow because the skill tree is close to the archer, but using a staff is ridiculous.

Do you tell mages to use bows too?

Let's stay on topic.

Your developer can solve the problem by adding a feature during the day.
This feature will be resetting the profession. I really quit the game and if profession reset doesn't come this week, I will delete the game. I will never come back no matter what.
People who quit the game will be hard to get back.

If you have a warrior, you can easily just try using a staff. Heck back in the day I had a mace in one hand and a staff in the other. It's not hard.

Because warrior has so many damage nodes, it pumps the staff skills up significantly, making them do 2-3x the damage as someone starting as a monk.

Try it. Try ice strike with a warrior start and all the melee/two handed/attac/physical damage nodes you can get.

Then tell me it's silly.

You don't need the q-staff nodes on the far right side, they mostly suck. They certainly are not as good as 30+ damage nodes and the ability to increase the small ones by 50% so they are almost as good as keystones themselves.

Again, monk gets somewhere around 60-100% damage increase near it's starting point.
Warrior gets 1000% damage increase.

There is no comparison in power.

Bow is just a personal preference, and it's not as strong as q-staff for warrior because it doesn't get bonuses from melee damage nodes. That being said it has a range advantage and a few skills that compliment a q-staff using warrior. You could just focus on Q-staff, or Q-staff and mace for instance, but again, there just isn't enough you get from mace to make it that useful.

A bow gives you ice salvo and snipe, along with a very useful ranged basic attack. Those 3 abilities work amazingly well with Q-staff attacks to give you VERY high damage with multiple elements and excellent stun abilities. Snipe can be extremely useful/strong once you have frozen an enemy and gotten it under 35% health. Ice salvo along with your initial ice strikes can quickly get an enemy down to that 35% (while preventing it from ever hitting you).

Warrior with staff is WAY stronger than monk with staff (or any other class with staff). Again it's not even close.

Warrior specced for staff is STILL stronger than most bow builds, with a bow lol.

Again ranger (Deadeye) has less than 100% increase in damage for bows total.

Warrior even without melee bonuses (which are just at the start and less than 100%) still gets at least 5-6x the base bow physical damage increase of a ranger. Merc can swing over and get alot of them, but it's too far for a ranger.

Warrior + bow > Ranger with a bow. Merc witch hunter with a bow is > Ranger with a bow.

Deadeye is the 3rd best bow using ascendency.

Warrior titan is the best ascendency for q-staff and bow users, probably xbow users as well (though merc witchunter is pretty good as well, and is in a better starting spot.

[Isseus]

Escrito originalmente por wulfster42:

Escrito originalmente por Codester:

Witch hunter is absolutely brokenly over powered.
Duno wth you're talking about. Doing HIGH end maps and literally melting bosses in less than 10 seconds zero effort. It's actually boring because of how powerful he is.

It's funny because at least according to people on here everyone in the top lists are playing sorcs and rangers.

Meanwhile titans/mercs which are extremely strong and need less to get there, are ignored. I'm happy though as it means they may not be nerfed.

Witch hunters combo as you mentioned is insane vs bosses end game, and zelous inq is freaking amazing against packs of enemies, even those off screen sometimes.

Titan is just.....yeah, there is no single node in the entire passive tree as strong as hulking form. It by far and away offers more than any other node, and often by itself, more than ENTIRE ASCEDENCY TREES. It's so strong that you can, in theory at least, make a titan better at ANY weapon/spell/minon build than other classes/ascendencies that are specialized towards it. You, in effect, get about 30 additional passive skill tree points from that one node lol.

But not many people really mention it, or realize how strong it is, and supposedly there are not many titans on the top lists etc.

Maybe it's just cause you get so strong you get bored. I certainly have no character in the upper 90's and I doubt I ever will.

But yeah, if it was me and I was balancing things?

I would (sadly) tweak Hulking form and a few of the witch hunter nodes. I would reduce how strong decimating strike is (as it's VERY strong), but perhaps buff the culling strike node to compensate it a bit (Give culling strike and increase it's effect by 50% or something instead of JUST giving culling strike).

Zelous Inq is REALLY hard to balance, it's SUper strong now, but, even if you halved the damage, since you kill multiple enemies, you still would probably clear whole screens with it. Dropping it's chance to go off......(it really does seem to go off more than 10% of the time) also still wouldn't stop how strong it is vs large packs because you kill many enemies at once so even a 5% chance would STILL probably destroy everything.

Not sure how to fix Zelous Inq, perhaps a combo of 5% chance and 50% of max health might work. That seems pretty harsh though.

Meanwhile concentration and the More damage based on concentration lost is also VERY strong. Perhaps increase base concentration to 50% of max hp, and reduce extra damage to 25% max (1% more per 2% of max hp lost). That would still be strong, but not quite as much as it is.

I'm betting they will get tweaked, just not sure how. Same with hulking form sadly. I do hope they don't make any of them worthless and over do it.

SSorcs and Deadeye Rangers are fast and flashy and people make a lot of videos of them doing flashy stuff. and those videos are what get people to cry "OMG OP NERF". Then everyone wants to play those flashy characters to do the same stuff as they did on the video. to be OMG OP. GGG sees this and the endless whining for OMG OP NERF on the forums, thinks they must be OP if so many people are playing it and nerf something.

Meanwhile Merc and Warrior are far less flashy and just get the job done.

[Caparino]

Maybe a idea.
Decimator Strike
Culling Strike
Culling Strike +25% Buffnode
Culling Strike 100% Head Unique
-----
Every Trahs mob is death by default und must be hit to regonize the death =D ?

Myris Uxor Covert Hood features the following Modifiers:

(40–60)% increased Evasion Rating
+(100–150) to Accuracy Rating
+(40–60) to maximum Mana
100% increased Culling Strike Threshold

Like someone says Witchhunter Culling Strike Works ahgainst Trash mobs. The nodes or Support Gems only vs Unique and Rare.

[GLIAS]

why do you use grenades when you can play with shards? With shards you start clearing entire screens and the damage comes without delay. I also suffered for a long time with grenades. Write me a private message

[bibudis]

Escrito originalmente por Illumina:

Explain why you can't use a quiver.
Explain who is forcing you to use a crossbow.

We like to play with crossbow style. that desnt mean tha the the class should be the most unfair in game. Otherwise all players gonna play one or two classes and the game will be boring. There is huge class balance issues that Devs should fix.