[Updated to Patch 6.1.0] Bounty Hunter - Mechanics, Talents, Weapons, Builds. A Comprehensive Guide.

A thorough explanation of pretty much everything related to Saltzpyre's Bounty Hunter career. Talents, mechanics, interactions with other careers, positioning, playstyle, breakpoints, builds are all detailed here.

My Youtube and Discord

Discord: Jaysea#2311 or _jaysea

Youtube

Foreword / Disclaimer

This guide is intended for players already familiar with basic mechanics of the game. Hence, my builds, and recommendations are meant for Legend and Cataclysm / above gameplay. Learning about Bounty Hunter and the career's mechanics however, is still applicable to any difficulty.

Changelog

Jaysea -
This guide is still a work in progress. I will constantly be adding stuff and making sure the guide is up to date.
Thank you for reading my guide :)

July 28, 2021
- Uploaded the guide.

July 30, 2021
- Fixed various typos and spelling errors.
- Changed the Rapier + Crossbow Meta Tryhard build for Cataclysm to have Barkskin.
- Added Royale w/ Cheese's Optimal Combo Guide.
- Added the Movetech Spreadsheet by Novality.
- Added some more resources in the Appendix.
- Added some more notes about Falchion.
- Added a section explaining why the Stormfiend belt counts as a headshot.
- Added section + video about the AoE stagger from Locked and Loaded.
- Added section "Indiscriminate Blast vs. Just Reward".

July 31, 2021
- Added another minotaur video.
- Re-did the Chaos Spawn video.

August 1, 2021
- Added a true solos section.
- Added a one-shot Chaos Warrior build for Cataclysm.
- Added some videos for fighting Lords.

August 2, 2021
- Added some notes about Brace of Pistols.
- Fixed some builds.
- Added a note about Scrounger proccing multiple times off-host with projectile weapons.
- Added notes about the rest of the ranged and melee traits.

August 4, 2021
- Added Nurgloth the Eternal section.
- Added video for "Catapult" against Ogre / Chaos Spawn / Minotaur

August 6, 2021
- Small note about Double-Shotted and Chaos Warriors.

August 8, 2021
- Added a couple sections about projectile versus hitscan weapons.

August 9, 2021
- Rewrote the Weight of Fire section to make it more clear.
- Various spelling / typo fixes.

August 11, 2021
- More detailed description to ranged weapons.

August 21, 2021
- Small notes here and there to some builds.

August 24, 2021
- Added shrapnel and open wounds section.

August 25, 2021
- Added a nat bond build.

August 26, 2021
- Added a C3DWONS Crossbow video.

August 27, 2021
- Added another Legend True Solo - Into the Nest
- Added another Cata Twitch Build.
- Moved the Parry Falchion + Volley Crossbow Just Reward build to the meta Cataclysm section because I think the build is pretty damn good.

August 28, 2021
- Added a few paragraphs about Open Wounds and Shrapnel's interactions with bombs under Combine's section.
- Added more notes to the Open Wounds talent section.
- Added more notes to the Salvaged Ammunition talent section.
- Added a rapier guide by Velsix.
- Changed the cooldown reduction section in Trinket traits / properties a bit. I don't believe it's necessarily mandatory to run cooldown reduction with double-shotted unless you're in twitch mode.

August 31, 2021
- Added a link to the source code for Locked and Loaded.
- Added some notes about the cleave and damage for the shotgun pellets on Locked and Loaded.

September 1, 2021
- Added some more notes to double-shotted.
- Added a section about friendly fire.

September 16, 2021
- Added a Frontline Bounty Hunter video to the Cata 3 DWONS section.

October 5, 2021
- Added some notes about what does and does not affect Friendly Fire damage.

October 25, 2021
-Griffinfoot alt-fires (the shotgun bash) build ranged stacks of blessed combat.

November 5, 2021
- Reworked C3DWONS Griffinfoot build.
- Added a shotgun mechanics section.
- Added a few notes to Indiscriminate Blast.

November 9, 2021
- Added some notes about attack speed and ranged weapons.
- Various typo fixes.

November 10, 2021
- Rearranged some sections so that the information flows more logically.

November 23, 2021
- Added some misc builds.

December 9, 2021
---WARRIOR PRIEST OF SIGMAR UPDATE---
- Resourceful combatant is fixed and works on melee attacks. However, it no longer works with the Rapier Pistol. Because of this, the Resourceful Combatant build has been removed. The whole point of the build was to safely build ult charge, and that is no longer possible.

December 12, 2021
- Added a note about Hunter.

December 13, 2021
- Added an Indiscriminate blast build.

December 16, 2021
- Added Havoc's Cursed Builds.
- Added a Rile the Mob Build.
- Added a Cataclysm True Solo.

December 17, 2021
- Added a note about duckfoot bash.

December 28, 2021
-Significant reorganization of the first section of the guide.

January 13, 2022
- More information on shotgun mechanics.

February 1, 2022
- Added a massive additional section to weapon combos for melee as well as armory links.

February 2, 2022
- Added a small tab for social links.

February 3, 2022
- Added armory links for ranged weapons.

September 20, 2022
- Fixed some images in the guide that had been deleted for some reason.

November 7, 2022
-Working on making the guide less wordy and easier to follow.

March 28, 2023
- Added a new Cataclysm build - 30% BCR Rapier + Crossbow.

March 30, 2023
- Tourney Balance section added with builds. Work in Progress.

April 1, 2023
- Added crossbow Legend build.

June 3rd, 2023
- Updated Tourney Balance Indiscriminate Blast description - now staggers monsters.

June 17th, 2023
- Added Tourney Balance Crossbow build.

June 22nd, 2023
- Small fact about double-shotted added.

July 9th, 2023
- Added a few more of my thoughts into My Favorite Build for Tourney Balance.

August 10th, 2023
- Updates to Tourney Balance builds and BH changes.

October 3rd, 2023
- Revised Favorite Build for Tourney Balance to include Steel Crescendo instead of Open Wounds.

October 4th, 2023
- Added additional Tourney Balance builds.

October 6th, 2023
- Removed Cursed Builds as Havoc is no longer updating them and they use a lot of outdated talents.

October 9th, 2023
- Added another video w/ Falchion on Dutch Spice.

December 12, 2023
- Guide is on hold while it is being updated from new patch. I believe the change will be that you must have Decanter instead of concoction to chain stagger / delete a boss. This will apply to all builds with Double-Shotted.

December 15th, 2023
- Adjusted descriptions and mentions of Double-Shotted to reflect the nerfs.
- Deleted several sections of the guide that are no longer relevant.
- All BH builds should use either Decanter or Proxy instead of Concoction.
- Completely deleted Twitch mode builds.
- Currently in the process of readjusting all Ranald's Gift Links.
- Deleted the old Cata3 DWONS videos as they are very outdated, and most modded realm games are using Tourney Balance now, instead of Official Balance.

December 19th, 2023
- Reuploaded images/links on Cataclysm builds and edited descriptions.
- Updated 1HAxe description to reflect the buff of half-cost pushes being added.
- Updated Infinite Ammo Build on Cataclysm with list of melee breakpoints. Not sure why they were listed as "mostly irrelevant" because they are definitely relevant.
- Deleted One-Shot Chaos Warrior build for Cataclysm because it was inconsistent and unreliable.

January 28th, 2023
- Updated Blessed Combat description. Incorrect information was put there about ranged power / melee power interaction; corrected now.

February 4th, 2023
- Added steel crescendo notes.
- Added stormfiend neck shot explanation video.

September 5th, 2024
- Re-organization of the guide. Adjustments to advice and opinions.

October 11th, 2024
- Updated parry falchion / volley xbow build for Cataclysm.

November 13th, 2024
- BUFFS TO BH: Now has access to cleave temp, and steel crescendo changed to be a different talent. Adjusting builds currently.

December 13th, 2024
- Fully updated guide to current patch.
- Legend / Cata builds given tiers (Meta/A/B/C) based on viability and ease of use.
- Removed Ranger Veteran only Frontline Bounty Hunter build.
- Removed 30% BCR rapier build as it is outclassed.

Changelog 2

December 15th, 2024
- Removed Rile the Mob build because it was really bad.
- Adjusted more builds.
- Added a tip in the intro section about Locked and Loaded being able to stagger bosses. (oops)
- Removed indiscriminate blast build because it was also bad.

Hello. I'm Jaysea, I have 3600+ hours in Vermintide 2 and usually play high level content such as Modded Cataclysm 3 Deathwish Onslaught (plus/dutch) / Cataclysm Twitch 200% mode on official realm. Bounty Hunter is my favorite career in the game, alongside Witch Hunter Captain and I have 700+ levels on Saltzpyre. I have completed Cataclysm True Solos / Legend True Solos with Bounty Hunter and Witch Hunter Captain.

I made this guide because I wanted to make something all-encompassing for Bounty Hunter that goes over pretty much everything you could think of for this career.

Hopefully you learn something from this guide. Feel free to correct me of any mistakes I make or make a comment about something interesting or useful about Bounty Hunter.

I want to give special thanks to Dame Arstor, Combine00, and Royale w/ Cheese with their help with this guide. They provided invaluable advice, knowledge, and insight into Bounty Hunter. I spent about 3 months on and off working on this guide. There is a lot of information to unpack, and I have my own opinions about the game, and you may not agree with everything I say when it comes to viability or builds, but that's okay, because Bounty Hunter has tons of build flexibility and you can make many many different builds work with him.

Perks

1. Ammo Pouches: 50% more ammo.
This is based off your total ammo rounded up, so if you have a Repeater Pistol that normally has 8 / 32 (40 total) ammo, with Bounty Hunter you will have 8 / 52 (60 total) ammo.

2. Quick Release: 15% faster reload.
15% faster reload speed. Speed potions do not affect reload speed.

Career Skill: Locked and Loaded

Victor fires a powerful shot that pierces enemies and ten weaker shots in a cone.
Source Code of Locked and Loaded[github.com]

I recommend reading this wonderful guide first if you do not understand cleave:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1816101198


The base ult, without any level 30 talent augments, has a 70 second cooldown. It has two parts:

1. A sniper bullet projectile that deals heavy damage to armor, monsters, and lords. Great for single target damage. It will pierce through very few enemies surprisingly. This is because it has cleave equivalent to a crossbow bolt, with linesman modifier (see cheese's guide for details). The sniper bullet ignores and bypasses shields.

2. 10 hitscan shotgun pellets, great for dealing with unarmored enemies, shields, and berserkers. These pellets ignore shields, including Stormvermin shields. They have very low damage against monster and armor. The shotgun pellets have 3x the cleave (8.95) compared to other shotguns (2.98) and deal about 4x/2x damage for infantry/armored enemies compared to the Griffinfoot shotguns. This means that the ultimate is far more effective at wiping out hordes than other shotguns.


Locked and Loaded is unaffected by bloom AKA aim punch, meaning that if you're getting shot at you will not lose accuracy. The crosshair will get bigger while aiming Locked and Loaded, but this is purely visual. Your ult always goes exactly where you are aiming unless you're jumping / moving around.

Attack speed / speed potions will affect the draw speed of Locked and Loaded. Draw speed meaning how long it takes for you to fire your ult after pressing F.

Both the shotgun pellets and the sniper bullet can stagger bosses. Meaning if you take the Level 30 talent indiscriminate blast, you will still be able to stagger bosses with the ult, regardless of range.

Unique Passive: Blessed Shots

Guaranteed ranged critical hit every 10 seconds.

Your ranged weapon, Locked and Loaded, the rapier's side pistol, and bombs will consume Blessed Shots. I don't recommend using bombs just for Blessed Shots, as they don't receive extra damage from critical hits.

Pros and ♥♥♥♥ + Playstyle

Bounty Hunter has high-risk, high-reward gameplay. Focus on eliminating threats to your team, rather than fighting the horde head-on. That job is better suited for tanky careers like Footknight, Ironbreaker, Warrior Priest, etc.


Pros

• Great boss killing potential.
  
• Excellent horde clear, dependent on build.
  
• Access to Rapier, the most defensive non-shield weapon in the game.
  
• Amazing special sniping and elite killing dependent, on build.
  
• Talents encourage build creativity and variety.

♥♥♥♥

• Relatively squishy. Low base HP of 100, and most builds have poor temp health regeneration options.
  
• Some builds are very unforgiving and risky.
  
• High skill floor - highly reliant on personal skill level.

It's not necessary to understand these to understand the rest of the guide, but this section does provide helpful explanations / should help clear up confusion about how certain aspects of Bounty Hunter function.

Hitscan Versus Projectile Attacks

In this guide, I will use the terms "Hitscan" and "Projectile" for ranged weapons. The difference is as follows:

Hitscan: Hitscan weapons hit enemies the instant you fire. There is no travel time.

Projectiles: Projectile weapons hit enemies when the projectile comes into contact with an enemy. There is travel time.

It should be relatively self-explanatory, but the clear distinction needs to be made in order for some explanations of mechanics to make sense.

List of Projectile Weapons for Bounty Hunter

• Crossbow
  
• Volley Crossbow
  
• Brace of Pistols
  
• Locked and Loaded Sniper Bullet

List of Hitscan Weapons for Bounty Hunter

• Rapier Pistol
  
• Repeater Pistol (Both Attacks)
  
• Locked and Loaded Shotgun Pellets
  
• Griffinfoot Shotguns

Enemies that instantly stop your cleave for ranged attacks.

For projectile weapons, the following enemies will instantly stop your cleave:

• Monsters (Bile Troll, Minotaur, etc.)
  
• Hookrat
  
• Armored enemies (Stormvermin, Chaos Warrior, etc.)
  
• Any enemy with a shield

For hitscan weapons, the following enemies will instantly stop your cleave:

• Armored enemies
  
• Any enemy with a shield
  
• The armored head of a Mauler

Locked and Loaded, both the sniper bullet and shotgun pellets, will completely ignore and bypass shields.

For more information about cleave mechanics, read this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1816101198

Shotgun Mechanics

Shotguns shred unarmoured elites and hordes. But why? This is because of how damage and cleave is calculated with shotgun pellets.

Shotguns are hitscan.
As soon as you click, damage will register instantly. Technically, for shotguns, they only fire 3 pellets per frame. So more FPS = more DPS :). This is actually somewhat noticeable with Indiscriminate Blast, which can potentially have 40 pellets. Because of the fact that shotguns don't shoot all their pellets at once, this means that if the first pellet staggers an enemy, then any subsequent pellets that hit will gain extra damage from the stagger bonus.

Shotguns treat all unarmoured / non-monster enemies as having a mass of 0.6, regardless of difficulty or enemy type.
So whether you are shooting a skavenslave on recruit, or a Mauler on Cataclysm 3, the enemy will still have a mass of 0.6. This allows you to cleave several enemies with shotgun pellets. If not for this fact, a single elite could eat up all of your shotgun pellets.
You should also know that shotguns, excluding Locked and Loaded and the Repeater Pistol have a cleave limit of 2.98. Since enemies are treated as having a mass of 0.6, this means you can cleave through and damage 5 enemies with a single shotgun pellet, since 0.6 * 5 = 3.00 which is greater than 2.98. With enhanced power, your cleave is increased to 2.98 * 1.075 (7.5% increase) = 3.2035. This is greater than 3.00, so you are allowed to cleave through one more enemy. One more enemy may not sound like much, but when you apply this bonus to every single pellet of a shotgun, then over time it adds up to a significant damage increase.

For Locked and Loaded and the Repeater Pistol, they have a cleave limit of 8.95. That means that each pellet can cleave 15 enemies without Enhanced Power, and 17 enemies with Enhanced Power.

This explains why Locked and Loaded's shotgun pellets are so efficient at clearing out hordes, because each pellet deals significantly more damage and cleaves significantly more enemies.

Shotgun pellets check to see how many pellets it takes to kill an enemy. If the enemy was killed, then any extra pellets will ignore the mass of that enemy.
Suppose you have a Griffinfoot, which has 18 pellets, and you shoot a Mauler. It takes 5 pellets to kill him. Those 5 pellets will be affected by the 0.6 mass of that mauler, and their cleave value will decrease. The other 13 pellets will ignore that Mauler's cleave entirely and move onto the next enemy. The 13 pellets will continue to ignore cleave until the 5 pellets stop killing enemies.

The implication for this is important: For shotguns, hitting breakpoints = more cleave. More cleave is more damage. When looking at breakpoints, try to look out for reducing the amount of pellets required to kill an enemy as much as possible. Killing an enemy in 1 pellet instead of 2, for example, will effectively double your cleave against that enemy.

In conclusion, shotguns benefit greatly from damage, stagger, and cleave. And what talent has all three of these?

Enhanced Power.
Enhanced Power is a fantastic pick on shotguns. People write it off as "only being 7.5%", when in reality, if you know the mechanics, then it is actually doing much more for you, especially if it helps hit breakpoints.



This does not mean that you are required to take Enhanced Power with shotguns. I simply wrote this section as proof that it is more useful than most people think it is. On some shotgun builds, I will take Assassin instead.

Refer to Royale w/ Cheese's Hero Power and Stagger guide for shotgun mechanics: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1816101198

Hidden Mechanic: AoE Stagger

Locked and Loaded will stagger enemies that are in front of you and in close proximity. The ult uses the hitbox of a shield bash, which is a sphere in front of you. The stagger power of the ult is the same as a normal weapon's push. A "normal weapon's push" means anything that isn't something like Rapier or Dual Daggers which have weaker pushing strength, or shields which have stronger pushing strength.

Strength potions will increase the stagger power of the AoE.

Melee Weapons and Traits

Consider this guide made by Royale w/ Cheese to help with your melee gameplay:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1821186836

As well as a movement tech guide by Novality. You may reference this if you want to know what combo is the fastest way to move with various melee weapons.
Movetech Spreadsheet[docs.google.com]

Rapier

Rapier is Bounty Hunter's best defensive melee option, and in my opinion, Bounty Hunter's best melee option overall. It is very mobile, having a dodge count of 6 and a dodge range bonus of 125%. It also has half cost pushes and an inner block cost modifier of 0.25, compared to most weapons which have 0.5. Be aware that the Rapier's pushes are weaker than normal pushes.

The rapier's side pistol can be used with whatever key is bound to your weapon special(V by default). The side pistol can be used while blocking, so this provides more defense and utility if you need to protect yourself. The pistol is also a hitscan attack. The rapier's attacks are very easy to get headshots with if you know where to aim, so it synergizes well with crits and headshot temp health. Additionally, it has pitiful bodyshot / non-crit damage otherwise, so make sure you are headshotting consistently.

For the side pistol specifically, it is only effective at very close range, dealing high infantry/berserker damage and very little armor damage. On Cataclysm, the pistol will stagger Stormvermin and Maulers, even without Opportunist.

Optimal Melee Combos with Rapier - I am only doing this with Rapier since I want to go more in-depth into the combos than Royale w/ Cheese does on his melee combo guide.

With high stamina, against hordes
Push attack - two light attacks.

You can consistently repeat this combo to enable a high headshot rate, since the attacks are nice diagonal swipes that line up with the heads of enemies. This is the safest, highest DPS combo for hordes that you can use. However, without extra stamina regeneration, it is not sustainable, and you will run out of stamina quickly. So, the next combo becomes a way of being sustainable.

A sustainable horde combo
Push attack - four light attacks.

This is less safe, but with 30% stamina regeneration on your trinket you are able to maintain high stamina all throughout a horde. So, generally, you want to do this combo if you are concerned about stamina usage, and use the first combo when you are not.

Maulers
With Enhanced Power or Smiter, the Rapier does more damage on a bodyshot to Maulers. The side pistol can stunlock Maulers, but if you want to kill them fast, do the combo below.

Special attack - two partially charged heavy attacks - Repeat.
By the time you get two heavy attacks off, the Mauler will have recovered from his stagger. If it is too dangerous to do this, you may simply opt for spamming the side pistol.

With Assassin, headshots deal more damage to Maulers than bodyshots. Do the combo:
Fully-charged heavy attacks.
If it is too dangerous to get fully-charged heavy attacks, you may do partially-charged heavies.

Chaos berzerkers / Plague Monks
Special attack - partially charged heavy attacks.
If you are able to kill the berserker in one hit to the head, use fully-charged heavy attacks.
On Cataclysm, you need Assassin, or Enhanced Power + Hunter to one-shot berserkers with a fully-charged heavy attack.

Stormvermin / Bestigors / Chaos Warriors
Fully-charged heavy attacks.
Armored enemies get dunked on by Rapier if you headshot or crit them. Light attacks and bodyshots deal pitiful damage.

Monsters
Fully-charged heavy attacks.
If you need to build temp health on a monster, spamming light attacks is just fine. This is particularly efficient on Bile Trolls.

Traits

Parry
The rapier is the best weapon in the entire game to use Parry with. The rapier side pistol will proc parry, as well as pushing. So if you need to kite a massive amount of elites, which happens a lot during Cata Twitch games, Parry is a lifesaver. Note that attack speed affects Parry indirectly - with more attack speed, you can block sooner which allows you to be more reactive with Parry blocks.



Swift-Slaying
Swift Slaying is always a good option for the rapier. You can proc swift slaying with the rapier side pistol, and since you have Blessed Shots giving you a guaranteed crit every 10 seconds, your swift-slaying uptime can be quite high with Bounty Hunter. Although, in practice, there's a lot of micromanagement involved, so it's not that great, but it's still the best choice for more melee DPS and temp health.

Velsix has a great guide to the Rapier that he is currently working on. It's more suited to Witch Hunter Captain, but is still applicable.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560914189

Axe and Falchion

Axe and Falchion is a decent melee option by itself, but unfortunately it doesn't do much to synergize with Bounty Hunter's options. Axe and Falchion needs some form of extra attack speed or stamina regen to be useful, like how Zealot has all his attack speed and Witch Hunter Captain has Cast Away. Bounty Hunter neither has good attack speed nor stamina regen. With the heavy attacks, you can get easy headshots and potentially get double the temp health of normal weapons since each melee can get temp on its own.

Melee Weapons and Traits 2

Falchion

The Falchion is a decent pick if you want versatility out of melee. It has half-cost pushes, enabling control on the horde. All attacks have the Linesman modifier, meaning it has decent cleave against hordes. The Falchion also has good armor damage. The attacks have good headshot angles and the third light / heavy attacks even breaks shields, which provides some nice utility. If you don't hit a headshot, bodyshots do respectable damage as well.


Parry
Parry can work with the falchion since you can instantly block during any of the light attacks. You don't have to wait for an attack's animation to finish playing in order to block.

Billhook

Billhook is a very strong melee weapon with great utility. It has a long reach which provides safety for you if you want to get temp health out of range from the horde. It also has the unique special attack which will stagger literally any enemy out of literally any attack except bosses and lords. For Chaos Warriors specifically, using the billhook's special gives a very nice animation for easy headshots if you're using double-shotted.

However on Bounty Hunter it struggles. The slow attack speed and low block speed makes it a bit difficult to get into position to do ranged stuff, and your swift slaying uptime is almost non existent. The main saving grace for the Billhook is the fact that Heavy 1 deals a bunch of damage at a safe distance, and the push attack has a decent amount of cleave, which can make it one of the best melee weapons for refreshing Blessed Shots when you have Blessed Combat.

Axe

The one-handed Axe works decently with a Griffinfoot build. You don't have to worry about crit chance since the light attacks have +10% crit on them already. The 10% crit helps a lot with farming temp health with crits and headshots, although the Axe is better suited for temp health on kill. The axe has half-cost pushes, which is useful because you will need to push a lot with this weapon or else you will get hit a lot trying to get temp health, due to the weapon's low cleave.

Greatsword

Greatsword is generally too slow to work with Bounty Hunter's loadout and does not have significant synergy with his kit.
The exception to this is a Steel Crescendo build - given the extra attack speed and melee power, it is a good option. You generate plenty of temp health with cleave, and the melee itself of course deals good unarmoured / berserker damage.

Flail

Flail is the weakest of Bounty Hunter's temp health options. The heavies cleave shielded enemies and deal okay horde damage, as well as giving you half-cost pushes. However the weapon benefits particularly from raw power bonuses, so it is best used on Zealot. If you want a fun alternative, try cleave temp and steel crescendo.

Ranged Weapons and Traits

Crossbow

Crossbow is Bounty Hunter's best option for sniping. It is very ammo efficient and has amazing breakpoints. It does take a bit of skill to use, and is reliant on headshots to do most of its damage. However, with Bounty Hunter, you can take advantage of Blessed Shots and build for crits. Depending on the setup, you can basically have infinite ammo.

The crossbow has an 10% extra crit chance when you aim down sights. This extra crit chance can help with ammo sustain if you run Scrounger. You don't need to fully aim down sights, just tap right click. It also has a high finesse, meaning that it benefits a lot from headshots and crits, which work perfectly with a Bounty Hunter.

Get into the habit of pressing your reload button right after you shoot the crossbow as it reloads faster, compared to just letting the Crossbow reload itself.

The crossbow will break shields.

Brace of Pistols

The Brace of Pistols (or BoP for short) are very easy to use under pressure and can excel at dealing with multiple threats at the same time. They are extremely mobile, having a dodge count of 100, which is basically infinite. They are affected by attack speed, so swift slaying, attack speed on your charm, speed potions, etc. will make them fire faster. The alt-fire for the Brace of Pistols gives you a very fast fire rate at the cost of accuracy.

The Brace of Pistols is nearly unaffected by aim punch, so getting shot at shouldn't mess up your aim at all.

There is an interesting tech with the Brace of Pistols which is sort of like finger-rolling. It will give you two accurate shots. This tech is extremely helpful to learn for sniping specials with BoP.

Griffinfoot Shotguns

The Griffinfoots (or Duckfoot) is Saltzpyre's best horde clear option. The reload functions identically to the Brace of Pistols, reloading 2 ammo at a time and alternate the weapon you fire from. It is also the best shield breaking ranged weapon in the entire game, providing great utility for your team. They are affected by attack speed, so swift slaying, attack speed on your charm, speed potions, etc. will make them fire faster.

The Griffinfoot has 18 pellets per blast, and is able to reach decent breakpoints even against armor.

The alt-fire for the duckfoot is a shotgun bash, identical to the blunderbuss or grudge-raker. It provides some decent stagger. You can use the alt-fire in between shots with the duckfoot to animation cancel and fire the duckfoot faster than normal. You can also use a QQ cancel which is even faster than the alt-fire animation cancel, although it is harder to pull off.

If you are surrounded, you can aim downwards at the ground and use the duckfoot bash to stagger trash enemies all around you to get out of a sticky situation or if you have no stamina. This will not stagger elites, so be careful.

The alt-fire will build ranged stacks of blessed combat.

Volley Crossbow

Volley Crossbow is a fun option for Bounty Hunter. It lets you spam ranged until the end of time, having the highest ammo capacity. The alt-fire will shoot 3 arrows at once, and they can all proc Scrounger. Landing all 3 arrows will give you 9 ammo back. It also has the best burst boss DPS out of all of Bounty Hunter's ranged weapons. The horde clear is okay, but on Cataclysm and above there are lots of shielded enemies and marauders, and volley crossbow suffers.
They are affected by attack speed, so swift slaying, attack speed on your charm, speed potions, etc. will make them fire faster.

Overall its a fun option but the long reload time can be a pain.

Repeater Pistol

The Repeater Pistol is difficult to utilize effectively in anything above Legend, and has terrible breakpoints. The alt-fire is a shotgun blast, and is the best part of the weapon. Unlike other shotguns however, it has great armor and monster damage. With Prize Bounty, you can build for a right click spam build. This can one shot Chaos Warriors on legend easily and even on Cataclysm with the right setup.

Overall, it's a mediocre weapon with low damage and poor utility. The right click won't give you ammo back for all 8 bullets with Scrounger, which really hurts the ammo sustain. Hunter is probably your best option for the Repeater Pistol.

Unlike other shotguns, the alt-fire does not break shields.

Traits

Conservative Shooter
While conservative shooter is an amazing option on Witch Hunter Captain and Zealot with weapons like the Crossbow, Bounty Hunter can sustain his own ammo with Scrounger or Salvaged Ammunition. I would not recommend using this trait on Bounty Hunter simply because it is unnecessary.

Scrounger
Scrounger is a great option for ammo sustain. With blessed combat, you can fire off a crit to gain ammo back, get a melee kill to refresh the crit, and repeat until the end of time, essentially giving you infinite ammo.

Scrounger is able to proc multiple times. These conditions must be met:
1) You must not be host.
2) You must cleave multiple enemies.
3) You must be using a projectile weapon. (Brace of Pistols, Volley Crossbow, Crossbow.)
4) The projectile cleaving must not kill the enemy.

With this, you can potentially get large amounts of ammo back in one shot. Scrounger works best with Volley Crossbow since each individual arrow doesn't do a large amount of damage, like the normal Crossbow.

Hunter
Hunter is another good option, but if you take Hunter I recommend taking the Salvaged Ammunition talent, because otherwise you will run out of ammo very quickly. Hunter is also a very good option if you want more boss DPS with Locked and Loaded. Note that Hunter is Power vs, so it increases damage and stagger, but not cleave.

Hunter will proc the damage on the hit that triggers hunter, so it is essentially a 25% crit damage bonus.

Barrage
Barrage is a straight power increase, so would give you more cleave/stagger/damage, but it is hard to make use of Barrage when you don't have any form of ammo sustain. Scrounger and Hunter are better options.

Inspirational Shot
Next...

Resourceful Sharpshooter
Inferior to other options. Infinite ammo sustain from scrounger or 25% more damage from Hunter is a better choice than a small career skill cooldown increase. Resourceful Combatant is a better option anyway.

Necklace Traits / Properties

Properties

This is the necklace I run most often:



If you don't have any form of damage reduction like Barkskin or Job Well Done, then I recommend always always always running Health. Even with damage reduction I run Health 99% of the time, because getting temp health back with Bounty Hunter is a pain, and every moment spent meleeing the horde is time spent not blowing rats up with guns and your ult, which is why we are here.

Push/Block Angle could potentially be useful with the Rapier's small block angle, but it is less useful than Stamina or Block Cost Reduction which overall provide better utility.

Damage reduction vs skaven/chaos/area are way too situational. They also do not apply to everything you think they would, and are slightly bugged in their functionality. (i.e. DR vs Area simply does not apply to blightstormer storms)

Health and Block Cost Reduction is the gold standard for most necklaces, but sometimes you can run Stamina + Health if you don't need the Block Cost Reduction. Health is not only useful in simply giving you more survivability before you go down, but it also applies to the amount of HP you receive when downed. Normally it is 300 HP, when you are downed it is 360 HP. Block Cost Reduction helps preventing you from getting guard-broken, which is a death sentence for Bounty Hunter, as you have no specific tools to help yourself to make space.

Traits

Barkskin
Barkskin is a decent option for any career. When you are downed and surrounded by enemies, having 20% extra health on your necklace and 40% damage reduction from barkskin will save you a lot of frustration from dying on an already fragile career.

Boon of Shallya
Boon of Shallya is generally only recommended if you're running Job Well Done, or extremely confident in your ability to not take hits. You're too squishy otherwise, and if you get downed then you will die very very quickly compared to if you had Barkskin. Also recommended with a pure ranged build where you want to spend less time meleeing for temp, and more time shooting your gun.

Hand of Shallya
Hand of Shallya is useful to supplement a Healshare build. It can actually work with BH since you struggle with building temp health usually. However, it's more of a niche setup that I would only recommend if you had another temp health career on your team like Merc.

Healer's Touch
All the dupe traits aren't really useful on Bounty Hunter.

Natural Bond
Some builds with Bounty Hunter have awful temp health generation.Additionally, if you would like to play a pure ranged build, you likely won't be taking a lot of hits throughout the game. Because of this, natural bond can be a decent choice on Bounty Hunter. If you take natural bond, you would almost certainly be taking Job Well Done since you don't have barkskin. Boon of shallya is probably a better option because you actually get permanent health from healing and medkits, and if you have a merc on your team boon of shallya helps more compared to Natural Bond.

Charm Traits / Properties

Properties

Since you're mainly a ranged career, focus on Power vs. whatever to get proper breakpoints. If you don't know how to calculate breakpoints, there's a handy spreadsheet by Vernonkun here:

Breakpoint Calc

Crit power is useful in niche scenarios. Mainly you'll want to use it with the crossbow since it has high crit/headshot bonus, and benefits from crit power a lot.

Attack speed is useful if you can't hit any extra breakpoints on your charm. It helps with farming temp health and faster blocking.

Traits

Proxy
After the nerfs to Double-Shotted, Proxy may be decent choice if you do not want to instantly nuke a boss, but rather deal a bunch of damage and have a teammate who also benefits a lot from Potions of Concentration. The best example of this would most likely be Grail Knight - Grail Knight can drink a Strength Potion with Proxy to increase both of your damage, and you drink the Potion of Concentration to increase both of your ult cooldown rates, and you can work together to bring down a boss.

Home Brewer
All the dupe traits aren't useful on Bounty Hunter. I guess if you wanted to try a 25% chance to get 20 seconds of a Potion of Concentration, go for it. Decanter is way better anyway, since your ult recharges faster with purples with Decanter.

Concoction
With the nerfs to Double-Shotted, you no longer have the ability to chain headshot bosses, and can only get off 3 ults instead of 6. Since your cooldown is 60/70% vs 80/90% now, bosses will recover from stagger too quickly for you to delete them.

Decanter
The new preferred option for Bounty Hunter. Decanter recharges Potions of Concentration at 15x ult recharge instead of 10x like normal, so the increased ult charge is enough to let you chain-headshot all bosses except Chaos Spawn. On Cataclysm you should bring either Open Wounds, Hunter, or Shrapnel on the boss so you can deal enough damage to delete them.

Trinket Traits / Properties

Properties

Respawn Speed / Revive Speed
Respawn speed is completely useless. Revive speed is somewhat useful, but outshined by other options.

Crit Chance
Always a decent choice if you want more swift slaying uptime or if you want to proc Scrounger more with ranged. If you take melee crits and headshots for temp, this could help as well.

Cooldown Reduction
If you're using Double-Shotted, you will usually take this. You can chain-headshot all the bosses with Decanter except the Chaos Spawn since he recovers from stagger quickly.
On Just Reward and Indiscriminate Blast, Cooldown Reduction provides a little bit of value but not much. Stamina recovery or crit chance with those Level 30 choices are better.



Stamina Recovery
Stamina recovery helps with offense and defense. Your stamina will charge faster while you try to get revives off, your block will recover faster from being broken, and you can push into hordes more often, which is especially useful with weapons that rely on push attacks in their combos like Billhook and Rapier.

Movement Speed
Could be potentially funny with a Rile the Mob build. Movement speed stacks multiplicatively meaning you get 1.05 * 1.1 = 15.5% extra movespeed instead of 15%. Otherwise I don't think it's particularly useful.

Curse Resistance
A non-negotiable choice for players doing book runs on Legend and such.

Traits

Shrapnel
I find myself taking Shrapnel in DWONS since I'm not always able to delete bosses with Double-Shotted. It helps the rest of your team as well with bursting down bosses. It also stacks with Open-Wounds, which is super useful.

Explosive Ordnance
If you don't need Shrapnel for the extra boss damage, Explosive Ordnance is a good option for deleting patrols. With concoction on your charm, you can drink any potion and throw a strength bomb. Strength bombs do a ton of damage and can deal with mass elites easily.

Grenadier
Grenadier can potentially be useful if you need to clutch out a Twitch vote of something like Chaos Warriors and you aren't getting a lot of potions. It could also be useful if you have a Ranger Veteran on your team with Scavenger so you can spam bombs.

Here, I discuss how every Bounty Hunter talent functions and interacts with each other. If there is anything noteworthy or interesting about how something works that I did not say, please feel free to comment below.

Level 5

Bounty hunter's temp health generation can suffer sometimes if you have incorrect weapon / temp health talent combos. The rapier pistol currently does not work with any temporary health talents.


Blood for Money: Melee strikes restore 0.5 temporary health. Melee critical strikes and Headshots restore 2. Critical headshots instead restore 4.
Bounty hunter does not have any options to increase crit chance outside of traits and properties, so this talent is usually avoided. It is best used on a single target weapon - Axe being the best example. It can work well with rapier as well. If you struggle to get headshots when in melee combat, use Tithetaker instead.



Tithetaker: Damaging multiple enemies in one swing with a melee weapon grants temporary health. Max 5 enemies.

This is the most consistent temp health option for bounty hunter, and is recommended most of the time. If you have a high headshot rate / single target weapon, choose Blood for Money instead.


Paymaster: Healing yourself with a First Aid Kit or a Healing Draught also heals your nearby allies for 20.0% of their maximum health. Clears any wounds.

Healshare is an option if you find that you never have space to farm any temp health. It's a niche talent, but it could find some use, especially if you want to go with a pure ranged playstyle and want to avoid going into melee combat.

Generally, Healshare is not recommended on Bounty Hunter.

Level 10

Open Wounds: Critical hits cause enemies to take 20.0% increased damage for a short duration. Does not stack with similar effects.

Several things to discuss about this talent.
1) The damage bonus is also applied to the critical hit that triggers Open Wounds. Open Wounds can be triggered by both ranged and melee crits.
2) Open Wounds lasts 15 seconds.
3) The volley crossbow, regular crossbow, cleaving multiple enemies with melee, and Locked and Loaded's sniper bullet can apply Open Wounds to multiple enemies at once. Technically, the Brace of Pistols could as well since it is a projectile, but its cleave is very low, and realistically this will never happen except with small skaven enemies, like skavenslaves, which you will kill instantly anyway.
4) The repeater pistol’s alt fire, Griffinfoot shotguns, and Locked and Loaded's shotgun pellets operate weirdly with Open Wounds. Only one pellet will receive the damage buff and apply open wounds to any enemies that it hits. This is likely the center pellet, but since spread is random, it is hard to predict. If you're hitting a single target, however, this is a great damage boost for your team against enemies like bosses or chaos warriors.
5) Stacks with shrapnel. Does not stack with talents like Make 'Em Bleed or Off Balance.
6) Does not affect friendly fire.
7) Your entire team benefits from enemies that you apply Open Wounds to.

Overall, Open Wounds is a very good talent. It can be used to help debuff big enemies like Chaos Warriors or Monsters and provide DPS for the rest of your team. You can make good use of it on any ranged Saltzpyre weapon, but it works best with the Crossbow, as it does a lot of damage on a single shot.


Steel Crescendo: When his Ranged Weapon is empty, Victor gains 15% power and 15% attack speed for 10 seconds.

Slightly inaccurate description. As soon as you fire the last shot of your magazine, gain 15% melee power and 15% melee attack speed for 10 seconds. Refreshed upon emptying your magazine again. This talent does not boost your ranged capabilities.
An excellent choice if you want to focus on melee combat for bounty hunter. Melee power is damage, stagger, and cleave. The buff will apply to the Rapier pistol.



Weight of Fire: Ranged weapon magazine size increases ranged power level by 1.0% for each ammunition available.

A pretty simple talent. Take for example a volley crossbow, which has 15 ammo in the magazine. With the volley crossbow will gain 15.0% ranged power. On the other hand, if you had a Crossbow, which has 1 ammo, you will only gain 1.0% ranged power, making Weight of Fire a poor choice for the Crossbow. The ranged power is a flat power increase, regardless of how much ammo you have left. It only considers how big the magazine size of your current ranged weapon is.

Weight of Fire's Ranged Power increase also applies to Locked and Loaded. It does not apply to the Rapier pistol.

Recommend taking this with the volley crossbow or brace of pistols, as the large magazines benefit your ranged damage the most.

Level 15

Smiter: The first enemy hit always counts as staggered.Deal 20% more damage to staggered enemies. Each hit against a staggered enemy adds another count of stagger. Bonus damage is increased to 40% against enemies afflicted by more than one stagger effect.

Smiter is inferior to Assassin. I suppose if you struggle at getting headshots then Smiter could be better than Assassin, but otherwise I never take this talent.

Smiter does not increase your damage with the Rapier pistol.


Assassin: Deal 20% more damage to staggered enemies. Each hit against a staggered enemy adds another count of stagger. Headshots and critical hits instead inflict 40% bonus damage, as do strikes against enemies afflicted by more than one stagger effect.

Assassin essentially just gives you 40% melee critical hit damage and 40% headshot damage, regardless of whether or not the enemy is staggered. This is a huge melee DPS boost and can synergize quite well with other Bounty Hunter talents that rely on melee kills, like Blessed Combat and Salvaged Ammunition. I take Assassin 90% of the time.

Assassin does not increase your damage with the Rapier pistol.


Enhanced Power: Increases total Power Level by 7.5%. This is calculated before other buffs are applied.

Increases your damage, stagger, and cleave across the board by 7.5%. Enhanced Power is generally used just to reach specific ranged breakpoints or going for a pure ranged build.

Enhanced Power will increase your damage with the Rapier pistol.

Level 20

Blessed Combat: Melee strikes make up to the next 6 ranged shots deal 15.0% more damage. Ranged hits makes up to the next 6 melee strikes deal 15.0% more damage. Melee kills reset the cooldown for Blessed Shots.

Many many things to talk about for Blessed Combat. I'll talk about how it functions first. When you hit an enemy, whether you deal damage or not, you will build a stack of Blessed Combat. You do not build stacks when hitting shielded enemies. A melee hit will give you 15.0% ranged power to the next ranged shot, and a ranged hit will give you 15.0% melee power to the next melee strike. The stacks are not consumed if you miss. You can build up to six stacks of either melee or ranged stacks. When you kill an enemy with a melee attack, you will refresh Blessed Shots.

The talent says 15.0% "damage" for melee and ranged stacks, but this is actually 15.0% ranged / melee power. Ranged power only affects damage/stagger, while melee power affects damage, stagger, and cleave.
You can have stacks of both ranged and melee power at the same time. Suppose you have 3 stacks of both melee power and ranged power. If you hit an enemy with a ranged attack, you will now have 2 stacks of ranged power and 4 stacks of melee power.

For hitscan weapons, or cleaving multiple enemies with melee, you will only consume one stack.

For projectile weapons, it is a bit inconsistent. If enemies are clumped up, you will likely only consume one stack when you hit multiple enemies. If there is a lot of distance between the enemies you hit, then you will most likely consume multiple stacks, one per enemy hit.

The rapier pistol counts as a ranged hit, and will build melee power stacks. However, it will benefit from the melee power stacks, meaning that Blessed Combat can essentially be a 15.0% damage increase to your rapier pistol.

Bombs are unaffected by Blessed Combat.

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Overall, Blessed Combat is a great option for Bounty Hunter. It is a very good boost to DPS and can help with ranged breakpoints. It promotes a hybrid melee / ranged playstyle, although you should still be using ranged most of the time. If you take blessed combat, you almost need to take Assassin since your melee power is really mediocre otherwise. The only downside is by going into melee all the time you're putting yourself at risk going into melee combat more often.


Cruel Fortune: Reduces cooldown on Blessed Shots to 6 seconds.

Straightforward talent choice, a very good option if you want to play safely without having to worry about getting crit resets with Blessed Combat. It also helps with ammo sustain if you run Scrounger.

Prize Bounty: Shots affected by Blessed Shots consume no ammunition.

Prize Bounty is a decent choice for Repeater Pistol or Crossbow. With crossbow, you can have a double shot build to help with sniping multiple elites / specials at once. With repeater pistol, you should use the free shot from Prize Bounty for the alt-fire, since no ammo is consumed. Prize Bounty will also give you the best option for ammo regeneration / sustain if you don't use Salvaged Ammunition or Scrounger.

Level 25

Rile the Mob: Ranged critical hits grant Victor and his allies 10.0% movement speed for 10 seconds.

This talent is decent if you have melee only careers on your team like Grail Knight or Slayer. It also helps if you are trying to reload and reposition. Otherwise it's not very useful, and outshined by the other two talents in this row.


Salvaged Ammunition: Killing an Elite while out of ammunition restores 20.0% of max ammunition. Melee kills reload Victor's ranged weapon.

You can kill an elite on your last shot and still get the 20% max ammunition refill, which is great for ammo sustain when using a ranged trait like Hunter. Be aware - if you are using Scrounger or Conservative Shooter and you proc the trait on the last shot while also killing an elite, you will not get the bonus from Salvaged Ammunition and instead gain the ammo from the other traits.

Melee kills will reload 1 ammo into your ranged weapon, not the entire magazine. However killing multiple enemies in one swing will indeed give 1 ammo more enemy killed. Works well with billhook or greatsword.

The rapier pistol also refills 1 ammo into your ranged weapon, but will not restore your crit.

If you use both Salvaged Ammunition and Blessed Combat together, a melee kill will refill your ammo and refresh the cooldown on Blessed Shots. You can use this to farm ammo with Scrounger easily. Get a melee kill > shoot your ranged weapon to crit > repeat.

Salvaged Ammunition is a great choice if you want to go on the offensive, and makes Bounty Hunter's gameplay loop feel very fluid, as you will spend a lot less time reloading and getting melee kills instead to refresh your ammo.

There is an interesting bug with Salvaged Ammunition explained in this video.

Job Well Done: Killing an elite or special enemy grants 1.0% damage reduction buff, stacking up to 30 times. Lasts until end of mission or death.

30% damage reduction at max stacks, stacking multiplicatively with other forms of damage reduction.
You can survive an overhead with 21 or more stacks at 120 health on Cataclysm.
Unlike other taggable enemies, Ungor archers do not count towards Job Well Done stacks.

Job Well Done allows Bounty Hunter to be quite tanky. I wouldn't recommend this talent on anything below Legend, because there's just not enough elites or specials to justify taking this. With Job Well Done, you have the option to go with Boon of Shallya to help with temp health generation since Barkskin can be sort of overkill. Choose this talent if you want to be more defensive or find yourself getting hit a lot.

Level 30

Just Reward: Ranged critical hits reduces the cooldown of Locked and Loaded by 20%. Can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Just Reward doesn't change anything damage-wise about Locked and Loaded. The cooldown can be procced with the Rapier Pistol or Locked and Loaded itself in addition to normal ranged weapons. Generally, Just Reward is a worse option than Double-Shotted if you can consistently hit headshots. It may also be a better choice for a true solo or melee-focused Bounty Hunter build.

Just Reward will proc on hitting shielded enemies, regardless of your ranged weapon.


Double-Shotted: Modifies Victor's sidearm to fire two powerful bullets in a straight line. Scoring a headshot with this attack reduces the cooldown of Locked and Loaded by 60%.

Another talent that has a lot to discuss. Double-Shotted changes Locked and Loaded to be two sniper bullets. No more shotgun pellets.


If you put 10% cooldown reduction on your trinket, it will stack up to 70% cooldown upon scoring a headshot with Double-Shotted, meaning you can get a 21 second ult cooldown. With a Potion of Concentration, Decanter on your Charm, and Double-Shotted, you can become one of the best boss killers in the game by chain-headshotting bosses.

There's a lot of skill involved in headshotting bosses. It takes a lot of practice but good aim is not as important as being familiar with the animations / attack patterns of enemies and waiting for an easy headshot opportunity. (Will talk about headshotting enemies with Double-Shotted later on in the guide.)

Double-shotted does an insane amount of friendly-fire if you hit them with a critical hit or with a strength potion. If you don't have either, the ult will only do about 3 damage to a teammate. So try to avoid blasting them, unless it's an elf. Then it's okay.

Additionally, if you shoot through a teammate with double-shotted then hit an enemy, you will most likely not receive the cooldown after landing a headshot. Hitting teammates messes up double-shotted for reasons that I do not know.

While Locked and Loaded and Double-Shotted in general are not affected by aim punch, Double-Shotted will only have one sniper bullet be perfectly accurate no matter what, while the other one will be affected by jumping/moving inaccuracy.

If you are shooting a monster and both sniper bullets land, the first sniper bullet will stagger the monster, giving the second sniper bullet full stagger 2 bonus. In short, the second sniper bullet will deal 20% more damage than the first one.


Indiscriminate Blast: Modifies Victor's pistol to fire two blasts of shield-penetrating shot in a devastating cone. Each kill with the blast increases the amount of pellets in the next blast.

Another weird talent description. Indiscriminate Blast changes Locked and Loaded to have 20 shotgun pellets, so no sniper bullet. It also has an unlisted 25% cooldown reduction.

Upon killing an enemy with the ult, you will add a stack that will apply to the next use of Locked and Loaded. This stack will give you an extra pellet, up to 20 extra pellets. When you fire the next ult, all stacks are consumed(unless you miss the ult entirely)and then the game checks to see how many enemies you kill with this ult, and adds the pellets to the next one.

Indiscriminate Blast's shotgun pellets also stagger bosses. It can be the entire ult in the face of a chaos spawn or a single pellet across the map, you will stagger the boss.

Indiscriminate Blast vs. Just Reward

Indiscriminate Blast ends up actually being less horde clear than Just Reward over time. In base Cataclysm and below, the density of enemies will hardly ever reach a point where Indiscriminate Blast is necessary. Granted, it is amusing to witness an entire horde disappear, but Just Reward can do the same thing while still having the sniper bullet to deal with armored enemies.

We can also compare the uptime of Locked and Loaded when using Just Reward versus Indiscriminate Blast.

Suppose you had 10% Cooldown Reduction on your Trinket with Indiscriminate Blast, which has an unlisted 25% Cooldown Reduction. This is 35% Cooldown Reduction, therefore giving you an ult every 45 seconds.

With Just Reward, and no Cooldown Reduction, you are able to reduce the cooldown of Locked and Loaded by 20% every 10 seconds. If you proc Just Reward every 10 seconds, your average cooldown ends up being around 30 seconds. Remember that Just Reward can be procced with Locked and Loaded itself if you get a crit, so it is not difficult to manage.

Overall, Indiscriminate Blast makes you more one-dimensional as a career. The versatility of Just Reward allows you to be able to deal with hordes and armored enemies if you want to, while having more uptime on Locked and Loaded. If you want to go the horde-clear route with Bounty Hunter, the Griffinfoot shotguns are a much, much more consistent and better choice.

The single meta use-case for Indiscriminate Blast is for killing Nurgloth the Eternal at the end of The Enchanter's Lair. His armour class is berserker, and shotguns deal high damage to berserkers. He is also defined as a Lord type enemy, which has significant damage reduction against damage ultimates like Double-Shotted, Grail Knight's Blessed Blade, or Shade's Infiltrate. Indiscriminate Blast, in only this scenario, deals more damage than double-shotted against this enemy. Since the fight against Nurgloth is extremely difficult, it is important to kill him as fast as possible.

The video below is after double-shotted nerfs. The example videos are before nerfs, but still apply good wisdom and learning, so they are worth watching.

Being able to delete bosses with Bounty Hunter's Double-Shotted talent is what makes him such a great boss killer. However, on Cataclysm and above, you need to hit your headshots, otherwise you won't be able to kill him. This takes a fair amount of skill and practice, and I'm going to break down how you should practice headshotting enemies with Double-Shotted as well as good mods to use.

Getting Started

The only way you will get consistent at headshotting bosses is in the Modded Realm with Spawn Tweaks and Creature Spawner. You can find the two mods here:

Spawn Tweaks
Creature Spawner

Before you go and try hitting bosses, you need to be able to know how to kite them. Use Royale w/ Cheese's guide to understand and learn all the different boss's attack patterns:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723437775

Consistency and Hitting Headshots

Bounty Hunter with Double-Shotted is all about consistency. It's not super important on normal difficulties, but on Cataclysm Twitch specifically your team relies upon you to get rid of bosses quickly with a potion. You don't have to have good aim to play Bounty Hunter, you just need to be familiar with the animations of enemies, recognize when a good time to shoot is, and shoot.

Make sure to tag the boss when you're going for chain-headshots! Bounty Hunter's ult produces smoke when you shoot it, and it's impossible to see through, so make sure you tag bosses to help you with headshotting.

I cannot stress this enough: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

Here's a little inspiration for you:

How I like to Practice

The "Catapult"

Other Enemies

This section assumes you're using Double-Shotted. If you aren't bringing Double-Shotted to a Lord map as Bounty Hunter, you shouldn't bring Bounty Hunter(except for Nurgloth the Eternal.) The same disclaimer from the Double-Shotted In-Depth section applies here. Chain-headshotting may be different post double-shotted nerf, but everything else still applies.

Halescourge

Skarrik Spingemangler

Bödvarr Ribspreader

Gatekeeper Naglfahr

Deathrattler and Rasknitt

Nurgloth the Eternal

Here is a collection of all the builds that I enjoy using. I will also show off some builds from other people as well. You can usually swap out the melee weapon for whatever you want on Legend and Cataclysm/Twitch, but on C3DWONS I think it's non-negotiable that you always take Rapier. If you have any questions about the build or talents that I took, feel free to ask or correct a mistake.

Any of the builds here can definitely be used on lower difficulties, although breakpoints may be different.

I will be adding more builds every so often.

Just because a build isn't shown here, doesn't mean it's not viable. You can make literally anything work on Legend, but these builds are just the ones that I enjoy playing or think are good for Legend overall. Royale w/ Cheese already has a guide on Legend with every ranged + melee so I won't bother with putting more than a couple of builds here.

(Meta) Rapier / Griffinfoot Hybrid

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

(Level 5)
Temp health on cleave is the most consistent for this setup. You have swift slaying and high attack speed from Steel Crescendo, as well as boon of shallya, and damage reduction from Job Well Done. You will be swimming in temp health.
(Level 10)
Steel Crescendo is a great boost to your melee DPS output, and helps making sure you have a crit always ready to ensure you have infinite ammo with Griffinfoot. It is also necessary for some rapier breakpoints.
(Level 15)
Assassin is a huge boost to melee DPS, and is necessary for a build focusing on refreshing crits to sustain infinite ammo.
(Level 20)
Blessed combat is your main source of ammo sustain and also buffs both melee and ranged output, as well as refreshing blessed shots, ensuring you can make use of Scrounger for infinite ammo.
(Level 25)
Job Well Done is your best option for a build without Barkskin. Salvaged ammunition is good, but you'll want a little bit of tankiness if you're going into melee combat a lot. Additionally, 8 shots from griffinfoot should be more than enough to wipe a horde on Legend difficulty.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted helps deal with Chaos Warriors and monsters, as well as any enemies outside of range of Griffinfoot.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Assassin + Steel Crescendo + 10% Power vs Chaos + Steel Crescendo
One-shot headshot trash enemies with light attacks.
One-shot headshot partially charged heavy against Marauders, berkserkers, plague monks.
One-shot headshot fully charged heavy against Stormvermin.
One-shot crit headshot fully charged heavy on Chaos Warrior.
(Ranged)
10% Power vs Infantry+Skaven+Chaos+Armoured
Minimize pellets to kill infantry.
One-shot crit bodyshot all enemies except Chaos Warrior/Wargor.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard. Crit chance on melee and trinket help your swift slaying uptime, making melee easier to use. Block cost reduction helps when going for revives, preventing getting guard broken by elites, and letting you be more aggressive by taking advantage of rapier’s exceptional blocking capability.

(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Boon of Shallya helps with getting temp health.
(Charm)
Power vs Chaos and Power vs Armoured to help reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Decanter lets you nearly nuke a boss, even without hitting any headshots with Double-Shotted.
(Trinket)
Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime. Curse Resistance is the obvious choice if you are doing book runs. You may run 10% Cooldown Reduction, but that will put your crit chance down to 5%, killing your swift slaying uptime. Shrapnel is unnecessary since bosses die very quickly on Legend. Explosive Ordnance helps more when your team gets surrounded or you need to delete a patrol. Grenadier is an option too but I don't consider myself lucky.

Notes

Another super effective build for Bounty Hunter. Blessed combat, steel crescendo, and Assassin all work together really well to boost your melee output a lot, and griffinfoot deletes hordes. Double shotted deals with anything the rest of your build cannot. Make sure to reset Blessed Shots with melee kills to sustain your infinite ammo from Scrounger crits.

(Meta) Crossbow / Rapier Ranged Focus

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Crits and headshots is the most consistent option for this setup. You will be killing any and all elite enemies with the Crossbow, and a Chaos Warrior here and there with your ult. You also have Boon of Shallya which makes farming for temp very consistent on the horde.
(Level 10)
Open Wounds helps reach your ranged breakpoints, as well as providing utility for your team for monster damage.
(Level 15)
Assassin is a huge boost to melee DPS. Enhanced Power allows you to drop a Power vs property on either your crossbow or charm, but losing Assassin is not worth it.
(Level 20)
Prize Bounty is the best option for ammo sustain with Scrounger. Your crit arrows will not consume ammo and give you ammo back when you have Prize Bounty active. Additionally, with Prize Bounty, you can shoot two arrows in quick succession before having to reload.
(Level 25)
Job Well Done is your best option for a build without Barkskin. Salvaged Ammunition is decent, but you will be spamming crossbow with this setup a lot. Thus you won't be spending much time in melee combat.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted helps deal with Chaos Warriors and monsters, as well as any far away specials if you aren't able to use your crossbow at the moment.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Assassin + 10% Power vs Skaven + 10% Power vs Chaos
One-shot all trash mobs with light attack headshot.
Partial charge heavy one-shot headshot for Marauder/Berserkers.
Full-charge one-shot headshot for Stormvermin.
Full-charge heavy with critical hit, one-shot headshot Chaos Warrior.
(Ranged)
20% Power vs Armoured + 20% Power vs Skaven
One-shot bodyshot Stormvermin/Hookrat/Ratling Gunner/Warpfire Thrower/Assassin.
Two-shot bodyshot Mauler/Berserkers/Lifeleech/Blightstormer/Globadier.
One-shot crit bodyshot all elites and specials besides Chaos Warrior.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard, but there are not many elites in hordes on Legend. 10% Power vs Chaos helps boost your DPS against chaos hordes as well as help with melee breakpoints. You may switch out 10% Power vs Chaos for 5% crit chance.
Power vs Armoured + Power vs Skaven to reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Scrounger is necessary for ammo sustain on a build spamming crossbow.
(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Boon of Shallya helps with getting temp health.
(Charm)
Power vs Skaven and Power vs Armoured again to help reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Decanter lets you delete a boss, even without hitting any headshots with Double-Shotted. Just make sure you have Open Wounds applied first, otherwise you will only do about 70% of the boss's HP.
(Trinket)
Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime and temp health generation. Curse Resistance is the obvious choice if you are doing book runs. You may run 10% Cooldown Reduction, but that will put your crit chance down to 5%, killing your swift slaying uptime. Shrapnel is unnecessary since bosses die very quickly on Legend. Explosive Ordnance helps more when your team gets surrounded or you need to delete a patrol. Grenadier is an option too but I don't consider myself lucky.

Notes

Most effective build for Bounty Hunter on Legend. One-shot bodyshot Stormvermin breakpoint with Crossbow easily lets you delete a Skaven patrol if you want. Spam the crossbow on elites and specials, use your ult when you can't use the crossbow, melee trash enemies.

(A Tier)Rapier + Repeater Pistol - One Shot Chaos Warrior

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Temp on cleave is the most consistent option for this build. You will be in melee combat often.
(Level 10)
Open Wounds helps reach your ranged breakpoints, as well as providing utility for your team for monster damage.
(Level 15)
Assassin is a huge boost to melee DPS. Enhanced Power can be an option too but this isn't a build where you spam your ranged weapon, so you get more value out of Assassin.
(Level 20)
Prize Bounty is the core talent of this build. When Blessed Shots is up, use the alt-fire of the Repeater Pistol to delete everything in front of you. Just be wary because the Repeater Pistol alt-fire does not affect shielded enemies.
(Level 25)
Job Well Done is your best option for a build without Barkskin. You also don't get much value out of Salvaged Ammunition.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted helps with dealing with very far away specials like Blightstormers that the Repeater Pistol struggles with. It is also another option to delete Chaos Warriors when you don't have Prize Bounty active. With a purple potion and decanter, use the alt-fire of the Repeater to first get Hunter and Open Wounds then press F on the boss until he dies.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard for most melee weapons. Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime as well as temp health generation, and the Rapier benefits a lot from critical hits. Block Cost Reduction provides more defense since you spend a decent amount of time using melee with this build.
(Ranged)
Repeater Pistol's alt-fire will one shot crit bodyshot all elites and specials, including a Chaos Warrior. However with a Chaos Warrior, all 8 pellets need to land. So wait for your crit with Prize Bounty, and fire away. With the left click, you can one shot crit bodyshot all specials at close to medium range.
(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Boon of Shallya helps with getting temp health.
(Charm)
20% Crit Power and 10% Power vs Chaos helps reach the ranged breakpoints. Decanter lets you delete a boss, even without hitting any headshots with Double-Shotted. However you need to proc Hunter and Open Wounds from the Repeater Pistol first.
(Trinket)
Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime and temp health generation. Curse Resistance is the obvious choice if you are doing book runs. If you don't need the crit chance, you can run 10% cooldown reduction for more uptime on Double-Shotted. Shrapnel is unnecessary since bosses die very quickly on Legend. Explosive Ordnance helps more when your team gets surrounded or you need to delete a patrol. Grenadier is an option too but I don't consider myself lucky.

Notes

This is my personal favorite build on Legend. You get to delete a Chaos Warrior every 10 seconds with the alt-fire of the Repeater and your melee power is really decent with this setup. You can take stamina recovery or cooldown reduction on your trinket instead of crit chance if you want.

(A Tier) Falchion + Brace of Pistols - John Wick Build

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Cleave is the best option with falchion. It cleaves the horde well enough, and doesn't have a high enough attack speed to benefit much from crit/headshot temp.
(Level 10)
Weight of Fire is a more consistent damage increase compared to Open Wounds on the Brace of Pistols. Remember that Weight of Fire is a 12.0% Ranged Power increase with Brace of Pistols that is always active, and affects Locked and Loaded.
(Level 15)
Assassin is a huge boost to melee DPS. Enhanced Power could let you one shot crit bodyshot Bestigors, but it's too niche of a breakpoint to go for and lose out on Assassin. Also, John Wick is an Assassin.
(Level 20)
Blessed Combat is perfect for the Brace of Pistols. Prize Bounty and Cruel Fortune don't get much value.
(Level 25)
Salvaged Ammunition is the best option for a hybrid melee / ranged build and is your only form of ammo sustain with Hunter.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted is an option to delete Chaos Warriors or far-away specials when you don't have much ammo. You can also-use Double-Shotted to kill an elite to give you some Brace of Pistols ammo. With Decanter and a purple potion, proc Hunter with the Brace of Pistols first then press F on the boss until he dies.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Hunter + 10% Power vs Armored lets you one shot SV with a headshot on Light 3 / Heavy Attacks.
(Ranged)
Hunter + 20% Power vs Armored + 10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Skaven + Weight of Fire
One-shot crit bodyshot all specials
With Blessed Combat
One-shot crit bodyshot all specials / SV / Mauler. Go for headshots on Bestigor and Wargor to one-shot.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard for most melee weapons. Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime and overall DPS. Block Cost Reduction provides more defense since you spend a decent amount of time using melee with this build.
(Ranged)
The Brace of Pistols are a very strong option for Legend. You can deal with multiple elites / special threats at the same time, and they are most importantly really fun to use. They have a dodge count of 100 so you can dodge while reloading very easily with them and still be safe. 10% Power vs Armored + 10% Power vs Skaven + Hunter to reach the breakpoints mentioned above.
(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Falchion. Barkskin helps reduce the damage taken from gas, assassins, ratling gunners, etc.
(Charm)
10% Power vs Chaos and 10% Power vs Armored to reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Decanter lets you yeet bosses out of existence with a purple potion.
(Trinket)
Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime and temp health generation. Curse Resistance is the obvious choice if you are doing book runs. If you don't need the crit chance, you can run 10% cooldown reduction for more uptime on Double-Shotted. Shrapnel is unnecessary since bosses die very quickly on Legend. Explosive Ordnance helps more when your team gets surrounded or you need to delete a patrol. Grenadier is an option too but I don't consider myself lucky.

Notes

Another very fun build. You get to easily deal with any amount of specials or elites thrown your way. With a strength potion, you can one-shot Stormvermin with BoP, so if you run across a Skaven patrol, get rid of the Shielded Stormvermin first then start blasting. Try not to blast too much or you will run out of ammo very quickly.

Other Bounty Hunter Legend Builds

Royale w/ Cheese has a good collection of legend builds with all heroes, Bounty Hunter included:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034609078

Here are a couple Cataclysm builds. These are the most effective builds for Bounty Hunter at this difficulty. If you want to be less of a tryhard, check out the off-meta builds.

(Meta) Rapier + Crossbow: Crit Power Build

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Crits and headshots work best with a ranged focus build without Steel Crescendo.
(Level 10)
Open Wounds helps provide utility for monster and chaos warrior damage, as well as helping you hit crossbow breakpoints.
(Level 15)
Enhanced Power for 7.5% stagger, cleave, damage. Necessary for crossbow breakpoints.
(Level 20)
Prize Bounty is the best option for Scrounger ammo sustain if you aren't able to reset the crit with the combination of Blessed Combat + Salvaged Ammunition.
(Level 25)
Job Well Done works best on a pure ranged build that has basically infinite ammo. Barkskin helps reduce the damage taken from gas, assassins, ratling gunners, etc. Boon of Shallya is perfectly fine as well, you can make either Trait work.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted is your answer for deleting Chaos Warriors and monsters.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Mostly irrelevant.
(Ranged)
40% Crit Power + Open Wounds + 10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Skaven + Enhanced Power
One-shot crit bodyshot all elites and specials except CW / Wargor. If you really want to one shot Wargor, you can go for Blessed Combat.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard for most melee weapons. Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime and temp health generation. Block Cost Reduction provides more defense and is useful on Cataclysm with elites in hordes.
(Ranged)
The Crossbow is the best sniping weapon for Bounty Hunter. You can deal with specials and elites easily with this build and have very good ammo sustain with Scrounger. 20% crit power and Power vs Skaven to reach the breakpoints mentioned above.
(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Boon of Shallya helps with temp health generation. Barkskin is an option but you already have Job Well Done.
(Charm)
20% Crit Power and 10% Power vs Chaos to reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Decanter is the option for Double-Shotted builds after the nerf, as it lets you regen your ult fast enough to still chain-headshot bosses.
(Trinket)
10% Cooldown Reduction is necessary to be able to chain-headshot bosses. 30% stamina recovery gives you an easier time going for revives. You can also push more often into a horde and have a safer time getting temp health. Any of the bomb traits work fine, but Shrapnel helps your team with bursting down monsters if you mess up your double-shotted chain.

Notes

One of the most effective builds on Bounty Hunter for Cataclysm. You have passive damage reduction, more temp health generation from Boon of Shallya or extra tankiness from Barkskin, special sniping and elite killing with Crossbow, good ammo sustain from Prize Bounty and Scrounger, and boss killing with Double-Shotted.

(A tier) 1H Axe + Griffinfoot: Infinite Ammo

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Temp on crits / headshots is the best option for axe. The light attacks have innate +10% crit chance, with this build they will have 25% crit chance total. Coupled with easy headshot angles and high attack speed, your temp health generation will be decent.
(Level 10)
Open Wounds is necessary for melee and ranged breakpoints, and helps apply a free 20% debuff to bosses for your whole team.
(Level 15)
Assassin is the obvious choice for a crit reset hybrid ranged / melee playstyle.
(Level 20)
Blessed combat refreshes your crit on a melee kill, providing you with a free Scrounger proc. It is also necessary for some ranged breakpoints, and overall gives decent damage buffs.
(Level 25)
Salvaged Ammunition + Blessed Combat will give you a crit and ammo on a melee kill. If you somehow manage to run out of ammo, you can still kill an elite to get 20% ammo back.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted is the best option if you want to cover Griffinfoot's weaknesses and delete bosses as well.

Breakpoints

Melee
Assassin, Open Wounds, 10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Infantry
1-shot headshot or crit bodyshot fanatic/skavenslave/clanrat with light attacks.
1-shot headshot heavy attack on Marauder.

Ranged
10% Power vs Chaos/Armored/Infantry/Skaven + Blessed Combat
Minimize pellets on infantry.
One-shot crit bodyshot all enemies except Bestigor / Chaos Warrior / Wargor.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit Chance + Block Cost Reduction is best for one-handed Axe. It is not a very defensible weapon, but it is mobile and has half-cost pushes. Push often to make up for the lack of horde clear in the melee so you can focus your damage on ranged.
(Ranged)
The Griffinfoot is the strongest horde clear option for Bounty Hunter. With this build, you have the gameplay loop of getting a melee kill to give ammo and a crit, then shoot the Griffinfoot, and repeat.
(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Axe. Barkskin helps reduce the damage taken from gas, assassins, ratling gunners, etc.
(Charm)
10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Infantry to reach the breakpoints above. Decanter is the option for Double-Shotted to allow you to deal huge damage to the boss with a purple potion.
(Trinket)
10% Cooldown Reduction to allow you to chain headshot bosses with a purple potion and Decanter. 30% stamina recovery gives you an easier time going for revives. You can also push more often into a horde and have a safer time getting temp health. Pushing is absolutely necessary with the one-handed Axe, as it has zero cleave, and you have 1/2 cost pushes. Any of the bomb traits work fine, but Shrapnel helps your team with bursting down monsters if you mess up your double-shotted chain.

Notes

A pretty fun build, and the only scenario in which I would take one-handed Axe on Bounty Hunter. Temp health will be a struggle here. If you don't want to use salvaged ammunition, you can choose Job Well Done and slap on Boon of Shallya instead of Barkskin.

(A Tier) Parry Falchion + Volley Crossbow - Just Reward

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Cleave temp works best with falchion. It is an all rounder weapon - with low melee attack speed and decent cleave crits/headshots is inferior.
(Level 10)
Weight of Fire is the best option with Volley Crossbow. Remember that Weight of Fire is a 15.0% Ranged Power increase with Volley Crossbow that is always active, and affects Locked and Loaded.
(Level 15)
Enhanced Power for 7.5% stagger, cleave, damage. Works best on a pure ranged build.
(Level 20)
Prize Bounty works surprisingly well with Volley Crossbow. It also refreshes every 10 seconds, which matches the cooldown of Just Reward.
(Level 25)
Job Well Done gives you much needed damage reduction on a build without Barkskin. You will be spending most of the game just spamming volley crossbow and ulting, so you want to spend as little time in melee as possible and getting hit once is very punishing on Bounty Hunter.
(Level 30)
Just-Reward deals with whatever the volley crossbow can't handle - usually this means Chaos Warriors and shielded enemies. On its own, it has very good horde clear. You don't get much value out of concoction with this build, so Decanter is the choice here. It is also a free stagger on bosses and respectable damage if you hit a crit headshot.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Mostly irrelevant.
(Ranged)
10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Skaven + 10% Power vs Berserkers + Weight of Fire + Enhanced Power

Single Arrow.
One-shot bodyshot all trash enemies.

Volley
One-shot bodyshot volley all trash enemies, Gor / Marauder, and all specials except Wargor.

Crit Volley
One-shot bodyshot most enemies except Bestigor / CW / Wargor.

Locked and Loaded - 10% Power vs Armored + Weight of Fire + Enhanced Power
One-shot crit bodyshot or headshot Chaos Warriors with the Sniper bullet.

Gear

(Melee)
Stamina + Block Cost Reduction and Parry lets you play very defensively, which is important with volley crossbow, as it takes a very long time to reload. Utilize half-cost pushes of falchion to proc parry often to make up for lack of mobility.
(Ranged)
Volley Crossbow with Scrounger and 15% crit chance lets you spam arrows until the universe collapses upon itself. It has the highest burst boss DPS out of any of Saltzpyre's ranged weapons. 10% Power vs Berserkers helps reach the breakpoints mentioned above.
(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Falchion. Boon of Shallya helps with temp health generation. Barkskin is an option but you already have Job Well Done.
(Charm)
10% Power vs Chaos / 10% Power vs Skaven to help reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Decanter is the best option for Just Reward, you are still able to do a decent amount of boss damage or delete several elites.
(Trinket)
5% Crit Chance helps with proccing Scrounger and ammo sustain with Volley Crossbow. It also helps with farming temp health. 30% stamina recovery gives you an easier time going for revives. You can also push more often into a horde and have a safer time getting temp health. Shrapnel helps your team burst down monsters.

Notes

Probably the best build you can get without using Double-Shotted. Just Reward ends up having more horde clear than Indiscriminate Blast because of how often your ult is up. With this build, most of your boss damage actually comes from Volley Crossbow unless you have a purple potion with Decanter. You can spam the Volley Crossbow the whole game without having to worry about ammo. Just don't go too crazy and shoot every single enemy you see. Try to save it for elites and specials. IF you need to build up ammo without Blessed Shot active, spam left click shots. Otherwise use a volley into a horde to proc scrounger multiple times. (More consistently on client.)

Other Bounty Hunter Cataclysm Builds

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1833338040

Here is a collection of builds that are either unpopular, underutilized, or wacky.
These builds are meant for base Cataclysm. I suppose you could also run them on Legend, but then they aren't really memes since they're still decent on Legend.

(B Tier) Natural Bond Build

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
Crits and headshots is the most consistent option. You have slow melee attack speed and do not go into melee often, and rapier's cleave is poor. You want to avoid melee combat anyway with this build.
(Level 10)
Open Wounds helps provide utility for your team for monster and Chaos Warrior damage. It is also necessary for ranged breakpoints.
(Level 15)
Enhanced Power provides 7.5% stagger, melee, and cleave. It is also necessary for ranged breakpoints.
(Level 20)
Prize Bounty is the best option for Scrounger ammo sustain on a pure ranged build. Cruel fortune also works just fine, but I prefer Prize Bounty for the double shot.
(Level 25)
Job Well Done is absolutely necessary when you use Natural Bond. You want to minimize the amount of time you spend in melee combat as much as possible and let Natural Bond do all the regen for you.
(Level 30)
Double-Shotted is your answer for bosses and Chaos Warriors, and far-away specials if you can't get them with the Crossbow for some reason.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Irrelevant.
(Ranged)
Open Wounds + Enhanced Power + 40% Crit Power + 10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Skaven
One-shot crit bodyshot all enemies except CW / Wargor.

Gear

(Melee)
Attack speed + Block Cost Reduction is the best option for getting temp health with Parry. Trying to get crit chance and use Swift Slaying is very difficult because you only have 10% crit chance, and since you use Prize Bounty with this build you can't take advantage of Blessed Shots for a guaranteed crit to proc swift slaying with the Rapier pistol. Parry lets you play defensively when you need to. You should be staying in ranged combat as much as possible with this setup.

(Ranged)
20% Crit Power + 10% Power vs Skaven to help reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Scrounger will let you spam crossbow the whole game.

(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Natural Bond will regen your health throughout the game, so you don't have to try to get temp health with melee if you play correctly. If you need permanent health, have a teammate heal you with a medkit.

(Charm)
20% Crit Power + 10% Power vs Chaos to help reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Concoction if you are confident in your ability to chain-headshot bosses. Otherwise bring Decanter.

(Trinket)
10% Cooldown reduction ensures that you are able to chain-headshot bosses with concoction and deal huge damage. 30% stamina recovery gives you an easier time going for revives. You can also push more often into a horde and have a safer time getting temp health. Explosive Ordnance works best, since you can pretty much delete bosses with a chain-headshot, and you don't need Shrapnel.

Notes

Natural Bond generally isn't a good option for most careers, but since Bounty Hunter has a very difficult time getting temp health, natural bond is actually not a terrible choice. Just be careful of getting hit a lot. If that happens, you're better off using Boon of Shallya.

Make sure to use your ranged as much as possible as you're near useless in melee combat.

Other Off-Meta Builds

The builds below are memes, and not meant to be taken seriously.
Havoc's Cursed Builds[docs.google.com]

Deathwish Onslaught(DWONS)is a modded difficulty which adds bigger hordes, more hordes, more special enemies, and reworked events. It is generally played alongside Cataclysm 3 which increases enemy mass and HP. Most modded games are played with the Tourney Balance mod.

Download Link

Tourney Balance is by far the most popular rebalance mod used by players in DWONS. It buffs weaker weapons and careers and nerfs overpowered ones. Bounty Hunter has received multiple changes in this mod. The builds in the other DWONS section are for builds without the use of Tourney Balance. I highly recommend reading over the changes for Bounty Hunter as well as changes to temp health talents, as they will significantly affect the decisions made for these builds.

List of Changes for Bounty Hunter in Tourney Balance

List of Changes[docs.google.com]

Bounty Hunter now has a new passive, Blessed Kill. Killing any enemy with melee will refresh the duration of Blessed Shots.

Level 5 Talent Row:
1) You may now choose between temp on cleave, crit/headshots, or kill.
2) For temp on crit/headshots, you now receive 1.5 temp health on crit and 3 on headshot.

Level 10 Talent Row:
No changes.

Level 15 Talent Row:
1) Assassin no longer has 40% extra damage on critical hits, only 40% extra damage on headshots.
2) Enhanced Power is buffed from 7.5% > 10%.

Level 20 Talent Row:
1) Blessed Combat no longer refreshes the duration of Blessed Shots on melee kill, since this is built into Bounty Hunter as a whole. You now only receive the melee and ranged stacks for the talent.

Level 25 Talent Row:
Job Well Done damage reduction from 30% > 20%.

Level 30 Talent Row:
1) Indiscriminate Blast is buffed from 25% CDR > 60%. Shotgun pellets are always 20.
2) Double-Shotted now always refunds 80% CDR as long as one sniper bullet headshots an enemy, regardless of client or host.

In addition to the talent changes, Falchion, Flail, and Greatsword have received buffs. Refer to the link to the list of changes above.

My (Old) Favorite Build (Indiscriminate Blast)

Build[www.ranalds.gift]
This build is old and contains old opinions.
Level 5 talent row is rearranged in Tourney Balance. Paymaster shown in the Ranald's Gift link is actually temp health on crits/headshots, renamed "Regrowth" in the mod.

Talents

(Level 5)
With Rapier, Regrowth provides the most amount of temp health. In DWONS+/Dutch Spice, hordes are too dense or have too many elites for temp health on cleave to be worthwhile, as you are usually only hitting a single or two targets at most at a time. This talent also synergizes well with Rapier's high attack speed and good headshot angles from its attacks. Rapier needs a high headshot rate to be useful as well. So unless you are fighting pure skaven trash without any shields, which almost never happens, Regrowth is better.

(Level 10)
Open Wounds is the best option for this setup for Bounty Hunter. Refer to the Level 5 talent section earlier in the guide for full functionality explanation. Bosses are very tanky on Cataclysm 3, so being able to apply a 20% DPS buff to your whole team is very helpful. Additionally, it will help your single target breakpoints on key targets such as specials and elites, which is where you should be focusing your damage with repeater.

(Level 15)
With the Assassin nerf and Enhanced Power buff, as well as this build mainly utilizingly shotguns, Enhanced Power is the best choice. It is not as difficult to acquire crit resets without Assassin as you may think. Push/light/light combo on skaven hordes will get you resets easily. For Chaos hordes, it is a bit more difficult, but you only need to do partially charged heavy attacks on fanatics or fully charged heavies on Marauders. You only really use melee in this build to get the crit reset, and Enhanced Power supplements your ranged damage significantly, whereas Assassin does not.

If you find yourself struggling to get resets, it's fine to sacrifice a few pellet breakpoints for comfortability and melee damage, and Assassin works well.

(Level 20)
Prize Bounty is generally the best option for Bounty Hunter in Tourney Balance. With Blessed Kill + Prize Bounty, you have infinite ammo + crits. Repeater Pistol is unusable without this talent.

(Level 25)
Job Well Done for much needed 30% damage reduction on a more aggressive playstyle. Salvaged Ammunition is unnecessary since you can sustain ammo infinitely.

(Level 30)
Double-Shotted works well if you find you need more special sniping/boss damage and already have great horde clear.
Example 1: Merc + slayer doesn't need extra help in horde clear since they are already both frontline DPS, and slayer is melee only, and they both have mediocre boss DPS, so Double-Shotted would work better for that team comp.

Indiscriminate Blast works best if your team needs help on shield/unarmoured/berserker horde DPS, and where you already have good boss damage, or somebody else on the team is already a dedicated special sniper.
Example: Battle Wizard with Bolt Staff has amazing special sniping, but lacks horde clear. Indiscriminate Blast synergizes with her well, enabling her to focus long range specials that you cannot deal with easily such as Globadiers or Blightstormers, while you deal with close range specials, especially Hookrats.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Important to know these breakpoints on infantry for optimal crit resets to maximize Repeater Pistol value.
Hunter + Enhanced Power + 10% Power vs Infantry + 10% Power vs Skaven
One-shot headshot skavenslaves with light attacks.
One-shot headshot fanatics/clan rat with partial charged heavies.
Two-shot headshot marauders with partial charged heavies, but you need to be quick or else they will recover and you will lose the stagger bonus.

Generally, for skaven hordes, push light light will get you consistent crit resets. With Chaos hordes with lots of fanatics trash, push light light also works, but if there are too many Marauders/Maulers/CW in the horde, just go for charged attacks.

(Ranged)
Hunter + Enhanced Power + 20% Crit Power + 10% Power vs Infantry + 20% Power vs Skaven
We are only concerned with crit breakpoints with the alt-fire right click here.

1 pellet for Skavenslaves/Fanatic/Clan rats.
2 pellets for Marauders/Assassins.(Marauders say 3 pellets but first pellet applies stagger bonus to 2nd pellet, allowing you to hit a 2 pellet breakpoint.)
3 pellets for Berserkers/Monks/Leech/Gas/Blights/Hookrats.
4 pellets for Maulers/Gunrats.
6 pellets for Stormvermin.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard for most melee weapons. Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime as well as temp health generation, and the Rapier benefits a lot from critical hits. Block Cost Reduction provides more defense as well, which is beneficial in DWONS when there are a massive amounts of elites being thrown at you.

(Ranged)
The Repeater Pistol shines on Bounty Hunter in Tourney Balance. This shotgun has amazing armor and monster damage, unlike other shotguns - but you must have a crit.

(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Barkskin helps reduce the damage taken from gas, assassins, ratling gunners, etc.

(Charm)
10% Power vs Infantry + 10% Power vs Skaven to reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Concoction is the best option for Bounty Hunter on C3DWONS. Refer to the section above for the Concoction vs. Decanter debate.

(Trinket)
10% Cooldown reduction ensures that you are able to chain-headshot bosses with concoction and deal huge damage if you use Double-Shotted. 30% stamina recovery gives you an easier time going for revives. You can also push more often into a horde and have a safer time getting temp health. Since bosses have a massive amount of health on C3DWONS, Shrapnel is helpful for bursting down the boss. If you don't need the extra boss damage, (usually means you have a GK / pistol RV on the team) Explosive Ordnance works perfectly to help with dealing with dense hordes or mass elites, especially with a strength potion. With Rapier's high attack speed and the bonus from Steel Crescendo, you only need 10% crit to have decent swift slaying uptime, so 5% crit on your trinket is unneeded. You also benefit a lot more from CDR, as it effectively increases your ult uptime by 33%, and stamina recovery is always necessary regardless.

Notes

Note this build in the video is slightly different than the build listed here.
From the Youtube video description:
"I love this setup. You take advantage of Job Well Done and That's Bloody Teamwork from Footknight to get 44% damage reduction at all times. Combine that with Regrowth and the Rapier, your temp health generation with BH is actually quite decent. I feel that this setup is truly what it means to be a "flex" role - help the frontline when you're needed, help the backline when you're needed, and do those dirty jobs that nobody else wants to do.

Indiscriminate Blast for mass berserkers / plague monks / maulers / shields, Repeater Pistol for mid-range specials, Chaos Warriors, Stormvermin, and whenever your ult isn't available. Focus on killing trash with the Rapier to reset your crits for the Repeater."

Dutch Spice Build

Level 5 talent row is rearranged in Tourney Balance. Paymaster shown in the Ranald's Gift link is actually temp health on crits/headshots, renamed "Regrowth" in the mod.

Build[www.ranalds.gift]

Talents

(Level 5)
With Rapier, Regrowth provides the most amount of temp health. In Dutch Spice, hordes are too dense or have too many elites for temp health on cleave to be worthwhile, as you are usually only hitting a single or two targets at most at a time. This talent also synergizes well with Rapier's high attack speed and good headshot angles from its attacks. Rapier needs a high headshot rate to be useful as well. So unless you are fighting pure skaven trash without any shields, which almost never happens, Regrowth is better.

(Level 10)
Open Wounds is the best option for this setup for Bounty Hunter. Refer to the Level 5 talent section earlier in the guide for full functionality explanation. Bosses are very tanky on Cataclysm 3, so being able to apply a 20% DPS buff to your whole team is very helpful. Additionally, it will help your single target breakpoints on key targets such as specials and elites, which is where you should be focusing your damage with repeater.

(Level 15)
Assassin is the superior option in Dutch Spice. More consistent melee crit resets = more time shooting the repeater pistol = more damage = more fun. Enhanced Power is good, but Assassin is better. The more time you spend blasting the horde and utilizing Double-Shotted, the more useful you are to the team.

If you find yourself struggling to get resets, it's fine to sacrifice a few pellet breakpoints for comfortability and melee damage, and Assassin works well.

(Level 20)
Prize Bounty is generally the best option for Bounty Hunter in Tourney Balance. With Blessed Kill + Prize Bounty, you have infinite ammo + crits. Repeater Pistol is unusable without this talent.

(Level 25)
Job Well Done for much needed 30% damage reduction on a more aggressive playstyle. Salvaged Ammunition is unnecessary since you can sustain ammo infinitely.

(Level 30)
Double-Shotted is the superior option for Dutch Spice. There are much more specials, you have way less time to kill bosses in between hordes compared to C3DWONS / DWONS+, and there are lots of new armoured enemy types on Dutch Spice that make Indiscriminate Blast not nearly as useful as Double-Shotted. The talent simply makes you less one-dimensional as a career, and as a result you are more versatile. Repeater Pistol can also simply fulfill the same role that Indiscriminate Blast can, minus deleting shielded enemies. I believe it is not worth giving up Double-Shotted's Boss DPS, elite DPS, higher ult uptime (if you don't miss), and special sniping compared to Indiscriminate Blast only being able to delete unarmoured hordes.

Breakpoints

(Melee)
Important to know these breakpoints on infantry for optimal crit resets to maximize Repeater Pistol value.
Without Hunter, Assassin + 10% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Infantry
One-shot headshot skavenslaves with light attacks.
Two-shot headshot fanatics with light attacks.
One-shot headshot fanatics with partial heavies.
With Hunter
Can now headshot clan rats with partial heavies.
One-shot headshot marauder with fully charged heavies.

Make sure you proc Hunter for optimal resets!

Generally, for skaven hordes, push light light or push > heavy will get you consistent crit resets. With Chaos hordes with lots of fanatics trash, push light light also works, but if there are too many Marauders/Maulers/CW in the horde, just go for charged attacks.

(Ranged)
Hunter + Open Wounds + 20% Crit Power + 10% Power vs Skaven + 10% Power vs Infantry + 10% Power vs Chaos
The only breakpoints that will matter are against elites and specials.
2 pellets for Assassins.
3 pellets for Monks/Berserkers/Globadier/Leech/Blightstormer
4 pellets for Ratling Gunner /Warpfire /Hookrat/Mauler
6 pellets for Stormvermin.
These breakpoints are slightly worse than the Enhanced Power build. However, you have much much better crit resets with melee. Being able to crit reset more efficiently with Assassin is better than slightly increasing damage with Enhanced Power.

Gear

(Melee)
Crit chance + Block Cost Reduction is standard for most melee weapons. Crit chance helps with swift slaying uptime as well as temp health generation, and the Rapier benefits a lot from critical hits. Block Cost Reduction provides more defense as well, which is beneficial in DWONS when there are a massive amounts of elites being thrown at you. Attack speed + BCR + Parry is another option if you have another career to help with your sustain like Sister of the Thorn or Mercenary, since you won't need to melee purely for temp health as often. I prefer this option because I want to focus more on dealing damage, and swift slaying isn't going to be procced often when you rarely melee the horde, and have only 10% crit chance.

(Ranged)
The Repeater Pistol shines on Bounty Hunter in Tourney Balance. This shotgun has amazing armor and monster damage, unlike other shotguns - but you must have a crit.

(Necklace)
20% Health and 30% Block Cost Reduction is the best option. 20% Health will let you take more hits, and 30% Block Cost Reduction on both Necklace and Melee will give you 60% Block Cost Reduction, letting you be very defensive with the Rapier. Barkskin helps reduce the damage taken from gas, assassins, ratling gunners, etc. Boon of Shallya is also a good option if you find that you struggle with temp. This will also be team comp dependent. Recommended you take this without someone like Mercenary / Unchained.

(Charm)
10% Power vs Infantry + 10% Power vs Chaos to reach the breakpoints mentioned above. Concoction is the best option for Bounty Hunter on C3DWONS. Refer to the section above for the Concoction vs. Decanter debate.

(Trinket)
10% Cooldown reduction ensures that you are able to chain-headshot bosses with concoction and deal huge damage if you use Double-Shotted. 30% stamina recovery gives you an easier time going for revives. You can also push more often into a horde and have a safer time getting temp health. Since bosses have a massive amount of health on C3DWONS, Shrapnel is helpful for bursting down the boss. If you don't need the extra boss damage, (usually means you have a GK / pistol RV on the team) Explosive Ordnance works perfectly to help with dealing with dense hordes or mass elites, especially with a strength potion. With Rapier's high attack speed and the bonus from Steel Crescendo, you only need 10% crit to have decent swift slaying uptime, so 5% crit on your trinket is unneeded. You also benefit a lot more from CDR, as it effectively increases your ult uptime by 33%, and stamina recovery is always necessary regardless.

Notes

[/i]

Additional Tourney Balance Builds

There are lots of various builds you can work with in Tourney Balance, however making a full on explanation for every single build is unnecessary as I have already explained most of the process in the rest of the guide. For simplicity's sake, these builds will only have a short description associated with them and a link to their build on Ranald's Gift.

Healshare Build[www.ranalds.gift]
In Tourney Balance, the level 5 Healshare talent is instead moved into the Hand of Shallya Necklace trait. This allows you to utilize healshare for teammates while also still having access to temp health.

Recall how to use Parry with the Rapier - use the pistol to proc Parry, push often, and abuse the parry window to maximize your defense. You have high attack speed from Steel Crescendo, 30% DR from Job Well Done, and crit/headshot THP so Barkskin is actually not optimal in this specific playstyle because you are not in melee combat as often.

Make sure your teammates pass healing to you so that when you drink a potion, everyone gets green health. This stretches out your potion economy since you can potentially refill your entire team's downs in one potion drink.

This build allows you to be a solo special sniper for your team, even up to Dutch Spice if you are good enough. Use Double-Shotted when you cannot use Crossbow to snipe specials. (i.e. being aimpunched, no shot reloaded, etc.)

Breakpoints
Melee Breakpoints are irrelevant for this setup.
1-shot headshot all specials except hookrat. Hookrat requires crit bodyshot.
1-shot headshot Stormvermin.
With GK 10% Power Quest, you can one-shot headshot hookrats.

Greatsword Frontliner[www.ranalds.gift]
The 15% attack speed bonus from Steel Crescendo makes Greatsword quite decent on Bounty Hunter. For once, we are using cleave THP instead of crit/headshot THP. Greatsword cleaves an insane amount and actually does quite well for crit resets since you are hitting so many enemies at once. It also cleaves Stormvermin with the heavy attacks. We also do not want Assassin, and use Enhanced Power instead, as Greatsword is more concerned about DPS against trash rather than single target headshot damage. You also have Hunter to make up for that loss.

Use the crossbow to chunk Chaos Warriors/Berserkers and kill Stormvermin. Think of the Crossbow as an additional tool for frontlining DPS, rather than special sniping. Although it still works great if you need to help your backline.

Consider pairing this build with RV/GK.

Falchion + Repeater/Double-Shotted[www.ranalds.gift]

Notes about this build in the description of the video.

Here are some showcases of True Solos that I've done. I'm not the best true soloist by any means, so bear with me.

Screaming Bell Legend - Rapier + BoP

Into the Nest Legend - Rapier + Griffinfoot

Cataclysm True Solo - Rapier + Griffinfoot

Extra stuff here that doesn't belong in the guide.

References / Resources.

[1] All of Royale w/ Cheese's guides on Steam
[2] Breakpoint Calculator
[3] Core's Builds[docs.google.com]
[4] Armory
[5] Movetech Spreadsheet by Novality[docs.google.com]

Other cool people and Bounty Hunter players to check out on Twitch

DominaDame[www.twitch.tv]
Dame is a very good Bounty Hunter player and she has given lots of useful insight and tips for me while I worked on the guide.

Combine03[www.twitch.tv]
Combine is a great Bounty Hunter and plays modded content often as well as Twitch. He gave some nice build advice for me.

Royale w/ Cheese[www.twitch.tv]
Cheese doesn't play Bounty Hunter much but his massive brain has helped fact check all the information in my guide.

"Vermintide 2 Legend Bounty Hunter Boss Deleter"
This video by Bongmaster69 is the reason I got interested in Bounty Hunter in the first place. A very special thank you to him for making this glorious disaster of a video.

[Jaysea]

(2) Blessed combat can work but the hybrid style isn't the goal of this setup. You'll be doing more damage at a safer distance overall by focusing on ranged, as you will always have access to the breakpoints you need instead of having to worry about melee.

[Jaysea]

@DriedRoot Thanks for the comment.
The build's breakpoints aren't really centered around crit breakpoints because you're only getting a crit volley every 10 seconds guaranteed and a 15% otherwise. It's not consistent enough to build around crit breakpoints alone so the build is mainly centered around single arrows or non-crit volleys with ranged spam. It's not really a build that engages in melee combat often except for temp health.

That being said, the breakpoints I had listed were because I had attack speed on charm. This build was made over 2 years ago, and looking at it I think chaos/skaven on charm and zerkers / crit on ranged is a better choice overall. So I have changed the build in the guide to reflect that. You should be able to oneshot crit volley zerkers which is nice, while maintaining all the non-crit breakpoints of the previous build.

[DriedRoot]

Amazing guide. I tried the "Parry Falchion + Volley Crossbow" build and it worked like a charm.

I still have few questions tho. The build utilizes 10% Power vs Infantry plus 10% Power vs Armored for breakpoints, but doesn't 10% Power vs Skaven plus 10% Power vs Chaos cover more enemy types? Am I missing something?

With 10% Power vs Skaven and 10% Power vs Chaos, I found that the crit volley is 3% power short to 1 shot Berserker and Plague Monks, 17% power short to 1 shot Bestigor. Is it worth to use Blessed Combat power boost just to reach the breakpoints? Since these enemies have different armor types, it's hard to reach both breakpoints at the same time. Any suggestions? If I stick to Prize Bounty, which breakpoints is more important?

[buddha]

thanks, it worked!

[Jaysea]

@buddha With UI Tweaks mod, you can customize your HUD. I just moved the bars off screen then moved everything else up, since there isn't an option to actually remove it.

[buddha]

how did you removed the health and ult bars in some videos? is it still possible? great guide btw, very useful

[Petrichor]

"Technically, for shotguns, they only fire 3 pellets per frame. So more FPS = more DPS :)"
Mama mia that's some tasty spaghetti. Good cooking Fatshark.

[Aurelius]

Yeah the extra 10% chaos wouldn’t hurt. Especially because chaining headshots on a chaos spawn is still proving to be incredibly inconsistent for me at the moment.
If you’ve got any other builds that are fringe I think myself and others would still like to see them. I’ve tried almost all of yours so far and each one has interesting small changes that have a great impact on gameplay. Really fun.

[Jaysea]

@Aurelian

Not a bad build. In fact, I run this a lot, it's just not as safe as other builds and I don't want to recommend a dangerous build to new players. That being said...

This is slightly more efficient:
https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/11/112122/32-8-3-4/64-3-2-6/3-2-1/4-2-1/1-7-3

It maintains all the same breakpoints, except 1SHS clan rat with blessed combat, which I don't find important because skaven hordes are extremely easy to deal with anyway. Chaos is generally the harder faction to fight.

Additionally, the 10% Power vs Chaos lets you deal extra damage to any Chaos bosses. It also allows you to 2-shot crit headshot Chaos Warriors with the Crossbow. Your build has to rely on Blessed Combat for that.

You can also run swift slaying on the rapier + 5% crit chance instead of 30% BCR if you feel comfortable with 30% BCR only from the necklace, which works well because the Rapier already has built-in BCR. See the melee section of the guide.

Glad you enjoyed the guide.

[Aurelius]

This guide is great, I never played BH much until I this. Reading this I combined two of your cata builds together to get the best of both worlds. Being able to run assassin and hit the rapier breakpoints and still 1SBS all elites except CW and wargor, and you don’t have to give up scrounger for hunter, with crossbow. Check it out:
https://www.ranalds.gift/build/kuThsAxkfsbVnjxh8BIu/view