Let’s discuss Hunter builds

[helldweller]

First off, I’ll apologize in advance for the wall of text that is to come. Secondly, I’m making the following assumptions:

1) The player character’s level is high enough that all passive skills providing damage/crit/elemental buffs are maxed and maxing out multiple masteries is possible.
2) All of the relevant engravings have been fully unlocked/upgraded.
3) All relevant gear has been obtained (legendaries) and upgraded enough that engravings are at their highest tier (IIRC this happens at level 61).

With that in mind, any statements to follow are based on player and gear at level 70, with difficulty set to hard.

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I’ve spent most of my time in-game playing with a Hunter-focused build that has just enough assassin damage to get by (just enough to one-shot any elite with Crit-Assassinate when I need to). I always run either poison or fire, switching my build around to support one or the other as the mood strikes me. Both have their pros and cons and this discussion isn’t about which is better; I enjoy both.

What this discussion IS about… CRIT builds. Or more specifically, whether or not what you lose in raw weapon+elemental damage are worth it.

Using the Artemis set, and the right combination of weapons, I have a +226% hunter damage bonus, +183% poison or +223% fire damage bonus and +50% damage bonus to hunter skills. Not mention a healthy headshot bonus that I forgot to write down before starting this post (~240%). Crit chance is at the base 15% with this build.

With this pure damage/elemental Hunter build, my Hunter damage stat is ~27K and in practice, a nation leader with their full compliment of elites will fall with one Rain of Destruction shot, day or night when running fire. Poison will leave the leader with a small amount of health during the day (dead at night). A merc will fall with a single Devastaing or Pedator shot.

Adjusting this build for maximum CRIT%, still using the Artemis set — because what Hunter would want to give up the 50% skill dmg bonus — results in the following:

Adding:

+22% base CRIT chance (total of 37%)
+52% CRIT chance at full heath (total of 67%)
+6% Hunter dmg (total of 232%, due to gear/engraving change)

Losing:

-86% elemental dmg (total of 97%/137% fire/poison)
All arrows pierce shields (replaced by +10% CRIT full health)
-39% Assassin dmg (I realize we’re talking about hunter builds but this isn’t insignificant)

In practice, this CRIT build simply isn’t as effective, in my experience, as a pure damage+elemental build so I ask this…

Has anyone crafted a CRIT build for Hunter-focused gameplay that is more effective than a pure damage/elemental build and if so, please share?

[kro32]

I've tried and its not possible.

I was looking at the new assassin gear pack and really wanted to do a crit build but the absolute highest I could get my base crit was 29%.

Now you can get it higher than that using other gear but then you don't get the perks of that new set which is pretty insane for a crit build.

Now if you add elemental damage into your crit build it will certainly raise your numbers but if you are relying on that elemental damage for performance you'd be better off dropping the crit altogether and focusing on an elemental build using something like the Agamemnon set.

Point being is that crit in any build is not nearly as good as something else you could do until they provide higher engravings for crit chance.

29% chance is not near enough to make a build around.

Frankly, for a hunter build, you are not going to outperform the Odyssey set for pure damage output.


The fact that you never lose adrenaline with that build as a hunter is really unbeatable.

[Sar]

I was under the impression that headshots always crit, so all you need as a hunter is crit dmg?

As someone who's only ever played warrior, with some dabbling in assassin now and then, I'd love to hear more about hunter builds though. Really interested in seeing what a maxed out hunter build looks like.

[kro32]

Originally posted by Sar:

I was under the impression that headshots always crit, so all you need as a hunter is crit dmg?

As someone who's only ever played warrior, with some dabbling in assassin now and then, I'd love to hear more about hunter builds though. Really interested in seeing what a maxed out hunter build looks like.

Did you read the patch notes for tomorrow?

They removed the automatic crit for head shots which seriously gimps hunters now.

[kro32]

Originally posted by Sar:

I was under the impression that headshots always crit, so all you need as a hunter is crit dmg?

As someone who's only ever played warrior, with some dabbling in assassin now and then, I'd love to hear more about hunter builds though. Really interested in seeing what a maxed out hunter build looks like.

Not really that complicated.

Odyssey set gives you a 50% bar of adrenaline for using a hunter ability.

Weapon and bow are basically irrelevant except for tacking on an engraving.

Put all your points into predator shot and ghost arrow and damage.

Sit outside a fort or wherever and just kill everything in a single hit.

With the hunter perk that fills a bar of adrenaline automatically if its partially full means that you will basically always have a full adrenaline bar and can launch your specials non-stop.

Can wipe out a fort in like 3 minutes and no one ever even sees you.

I do have a pet though in case some critter sneaks up behind me.

[Sar]

Originally posted by kro32:

Did you read the patch notes for tomorrow?

They removed the automatic crit for head shots which seriously gimps hunters now.

Nope, I had not :)

So just stack hunter and fire damage then, I guess. What about 'cursed' engravings?