Bone to pick - Witch Hunters

[Thirty-O-Six]

I was going to try out a ridiculous build for the sake of trying it. A team of 10 Witch Hunters with nimble and quick hands. Figure the class should have enough benefits due to its inherant bonus to moral and spell casting that it might be do-able.

Firstly, their spawn rate needs a tick up IMO. I’m at day 50 and I’ve come across 3 of them. Secondly - as I just come to find out after a couple hours trying to grind it out - Witch Hunters....WITCH HUNTERS...are not immune to Hexe spells..?!? I dunno..I’d consider Hexe to be a near PERFECT example of an in game Witch. What gives?? To cap this all off neither are they immune to Alp.

Seems these specialists..well..just arnt so special. IMO - Devs please give them their place as a hard counter to these mobs. I’ve hardly seen any undead since DLC (AKA less Giests). Witch Hunters just took a nice bat to the face with this DLC.

[Krutsi]

You can pick up a lot of them when towns have witch burning events. And their only speciality in combat is that they have +20 resolve against paranormal resolve checks, which amounts to not very much at all most of the time.

They make fairly bad nimble characters because they tend to have relatively low starting health...and low everything for that matter. I've yet to see a witch hunter with stats I'd consider worth keeping, they seem to average way worse than any of the other medium upkeep backgrounds (farmhand, militia, wildman, brawler, etc). Sure they're technically a mixed melee/range background, but even taking that into account their stat total is still lackluster at best.

[Kernest]

No, they are not immune, it'd be dumb if they were. They get +20 resolve to those checks though, which is pretty good, and basically makes them as immune as possible (that is, a Hexe has 5% success chance) if you develop them a little and have a decent sergeant around...

I've not really noticed a significant drop in the number of undead I encounter, plenty of Geists to go around.

Originally posted by cruzz:

I've yet to see a witch hunter with stats I'd consider worth keeping, they seem to average way worse than any of the other medium upkeep backgrounds (farmhand, militia, wildman, brawler, etc). Sure they're technically a mixed melee/range background, but even taking that into account their stat total is still lackluster at best.

With a dash of luck, they make very good sergeants, probably no other mid-tier background can compare.

That said, if you're looking for a sergeant, one will do.

[Thirty-O-Six]

+20 Resolve at morale checks against fear, panic or mind control effects. So, your tell me a either A) A 60+ resolve Witchunter after bonus gets easily charmed or slept or B) It’s not fear panic or mind control.

I’ll add my three Witchunters were very very easily hexed. Repeatedly.
Slept wasn’t as bad but still happened quite a bit.

Edit: I’m not looking at a min max build, this is meant to be a fun/trial build. Thanks for the advice though.

[Estieukua]

The first time I ever used a witch-hunter, way back on the 0.6 build, he fled instantly the first time he encountered a geist ...

They often start with close to 50 resolve, and they get +20 resolve against such attacks ... but it's not at all uncommon for guys with 60-75 resolve to be charmed or put to sleep (or to drop morale or be horrified in the face of geists or ancient priests) ... even sergeants with 100+ resolve can be put to sleep by alps ...

[Kernest]

Originally posted by Thirty-O-Six:

+20 Resolve at morale checks against fear, panic or mind control effects. So, your tell me a either A) A 60+ resolve Witchunter after bonus gets easily charmed or slept or B) It’s not fear panic or mind control.

No, I'm telling you C) You got unlucky a few times and you're now focusing on those failures too much.

Originally posted by Thirty-O-Six:

I’ll add my three Witchunters were very very easily hexed. Repeatedly.
Slept wasn’t as bad but still happened quite a bit.

Well, Hex is not something that anyone can resist, so I'd be surprised if they managed to do so...

In case you meant they were charmed easily, 60+ after the bonus is factored in is quite low, that'd mean their base resolve is in the 40s. I don't put anyone out if there's a chance of fear/panic/mind control unless they have 50+ and a sergeant making up the rest, and that's my low end of the spectrum for resolve.

[anaphylactic god]

hey mister, are eunuchs emune to hexe ?

[Thirty-O-Six]

Admittedly I was mistaken by saying hex and meant charm.

In any event you are all validating my point that Witch Hunters are far and away from being superior in a battle against Witches. They lack solid melee abilities or HP and their resolve bonus is negligible at best. Who would have thought for a mid tier merc.

In any event most of the witch Hunters in my example did in fact have 50+ resolve. Add in bonus and it should be around 70. I was low balling to validate the point further.

Eunuchs..lol..shouldn’t be immune. Just because they don’t have functionality doesn’t mean they swing one way or another does it?

[Whatever100500]

To get near immune to charm you need above 100 effective resolve (how much exactly is anybody's guess, there is no resolve check in log).
You can't afford that much on anybody who is not a dedicated sergeant.

This doesn't make resolve useless, but anti-witch tactics (archers around sergeant + undead trophy holder, others get only shield+fists) is more important than having high resolve.

[SwampDragon]

"With a dash of luck, they make very good sergeants, probably no other mid-tier background can compare."

This. Make him a sergeant archer hybrid on your back row with quickhands. I just picked one up with iron lungs and a new perk giving him +10 resolve against undead. Perfect!

The backgrounds aren't superpowers, they just buff certain stats on generation. Other than the random events associated with backgrounds, one brother is no diferent from any other. A knight can turn out to be a coward and a lowly farm hand can become an orc-slaying legend. This is how it should be, in my opinion.

[Kernest]

Originally posted by Thirty-O-Six:

In any event you are all validating my point that Witch Hunters are far and away from being superior in a battle against Witches. They lack solid melee abilities or HP and their resolve bonus is negligible at best. Who would have thought for a mid tier merc.

They are superior to anyone with comparable stats, and in that situation they're far superior to anyone with base resolve in the 20s or 30s. The 20 resolve difference is not neglible, it's more or less directly a 20% difference. Instead of getting Charmed 50% of the time, they get Charmed 30% of the time.

Originally posted by Thirty-O-Six:

I was low balling to validate the point further.

So you were misrepresenting facts to make your case seem more valid? Not a good strategy.

You just got a bit unlucky a few times and you're trying to make a federal case out of it. Just go play the game, or don't.

[Thirty-O-Six]

Originally posted by Kernest:

Originally posted by Thirty-O-Six:

In any event you are all validating my point that Witch Hunters are far and away from being superior in a battle against Witches. They lack solid melee abilities or HP and their resolve bonus is negligible at best. Who would have thought for a mid tier merc.

They are superior to anyone with comparable stats, and in that situation they're far superior to anyone with base resolve in the 20s or 30s. The 20 resolve difference is not neglible, it's more or less directly a 20% difference. Instead of getting Charmed 50% of the time, they get Charmed 30% of the time.

Originally posted by Thirty-O-Six:

I was low balling to validate the point further.

So you were misrepresenting facts to make your case seem more valid? Not a good strategy.

You just got a bit unlucky a few times and you're trying to make a federal case out of it. Just go play the game, or don't.

A federal case? LOL. Drama much. It’s why the title said bone to pick.

Let me explain myself clearly. I don’t need to make much more of a case but only to say a Witch Hunter in name would imply a very strong character again Whitches. In the current state I believe and - I’m entitled to this opinion - that they are underpowered for said matchup. You make great points and I agree with some of them. I could be at fault for my tactics, yes. But, I’ve played hundreds of hours in the new DLC luck is very prevalent in this game but I don’t think my luck has much do to with the simple point I’m trying to make. The matchup just seems off for me. I’ll leave it here as we disagree on this point.

[Something completely different]

There´s always a small chance a brother gets charmed.

From my experiance 60+20 is not nearly good enough to be considered safe. No idea what resolve means 50% charm chance tbh but I am guessing it's around 60 which would 80 a 30% charm chance I think.