Black Widow v2

The ultimate guide to Bounty Hunter.

An overview of the Bounty Hunter class

The Bounty Hunter class in Van Helsing: Final Cut is your ranged weapon specialist. Skilled with guns, pistols and crossbows, this monster hunter can make his enemies tremble. He attacks with a variety of precise single-target shots, barrels loaded with explosives, he can trap his enemies in a poison cloud or bind them with hooks.

But it is the dangerous times when his true skills shine - using his occult powers, he can escape an immediate danger by fading into the ghost world for a short time, summon ghostly companions to assist him or imbue his shots with powerul magic. And when he focuses his inner self, he can even stop the time itself!



- "I've got a huge gun!"

In this guide, I will explain some of Van Helsing's extraordinary abilities and focus primarily on the Black Widow build.

Bounty Hunter basics

As you probably know, the majority of Bounty Hunter is focused around ranged attacks. To complement this arsenal, the Bounty Hunter has learned how to be quick-witted while dealing damage from afar, thus gaining these permanent bonuses:



The Bounty Hunter divides his abilities into these categories:

Enhanced Vitality: This ability represents your skill to avoid harm in general. It Increases your Health (+ 10 per point) and your Dodge statistic ( + 2 per point).
Advanced Gunnery: This ability determines your skill with ranged weapons. It increases your Damage (+ 0.5% per point) and your maximum Rage (+ 0.1 per point).
Spiritual Awareness: This ability determines how attuned are you to the world around you. It increases your maximum Mana (+ 2 per point) and your Critical Damage (+ 1% per point).

By properly spending your ability points, you will be able to deal high amounts of damage, keep a decent mana pool and have a good health bar.

The statistics of the Bounty Hunter are as follows:

Damage: Excellent. Bounty Hunter's arsenal of skills allows him to quickly dispatch hordes of enemies as well as single targets. Many of your skills upgrade your maximum Critical Chance and maximum Critical Damage limit, while other skills expose your target's weaknesses, making them more vulnerable to your attacks.
Crowd Control: Excellent. Bounty Hunter uses explosions to knock down his enemies, Ice shots to freeze them to the bone, Poison and Mechanic aides to slow them down and Grapple hook to stun them in place. When danger comes, he can become invulnerable for a short time or simply stop the time and think about his next action.
Defense: Mediocre. Bounty Hunter requires light armor to be able to move swiftly alongside his enemies and dodge their attacks. Skills or Auras offering ways to improve his Defense are very limited, therefore Defense will reduce only a small amount of incoming damage.
Resistances: Poor. Bounty Hunter specializes in dealing damage, thus abandoning his sustainability. He has zero skills available to bolster his resistances, the only way to gain some resistances is by using protection gear and the help of his ghostly companion.
Avoidance: Good. It's very hard to block monster attacks with your guns, therefore our Bounty Hunter has learned how to avoid blows altogether. He has zero chance to Deflect attacks, however he compensates this greatly with his ability to Dodge any incoming attacks or spells, and he is trained in several skills to improve his dodging.

The gameplay of the Bounty Hunter involves movement. You cannot stand in one spot because you would die (though this is probably true for most classes except Protector). But thanks to your bonuses, you can move pretty fast if you need to. Mastering the ability to shoot and run will earn you the results both in early game and in late game.

The Black Widow

Now that you know the basics, I will explain the build.

The Black Widow is a viable strategy of play that provides a solid ground to stand on while gearing up as well as the endgame viability. It isn't just a shiny name, it corresponds to the main ability of this build, and that is Poison Blast.

Why did you choose Poison Blast over other abilities?

1) It has the biggest AoE of your endgame skills. With additional bonuses, it has the reach of 4.5 meters. Skills like Scatterblast or Exploding Scattershot technically have bigger AoE, but I prefer area skills over arc skills, so this might be partially personal preference.

2) It's poison damage. And poison damage gets a +10% bonus Perk named Black Widow. But mainly the fact that Poison is the only element which synergizes with your Katarina's skill Bane Aura.

3) It's damage over time skill. Each shot leaves behind a circle of poison which damages your enemies every second for percentage of the damage your main attack has dealt. So if your damage hits 1000 damage, you also deal 80 damage per second to all monsters in the cloud.

4) Both the initial blast and the ticks per second can Crit. The more experienced might already know that this means your Invigorating Hit becomes godlike.

5) It adds a Vulnerability effect to anything you hit. Sadly this was nerfed during the beta, but 5% extra damage is still a nice addition given the fact that it doesn't cost us anything.

6) Your screen gets filled with numbers, love it.

Now you mentioned bunch of other skills, what do they do?

Katarina's Bane Aura, obviously, brings bane to the ranks of your enemies, by slowing their reaction speeds as well as making them susceptible to Poison. Since Bounty Hunter is not meant to be tanking hits from monsters, Katarina has to do this for him, and she can do it pretty well. And what better combination than to tank your enemies while Slowing and Debilitating them all at once!



The Seekermatons are another wonder of Weird Science. These small flying devices are partially fading into the Ink, which makes them invulnerable to any damage. Their primary function is to expose a target's weak points, where you can strike with your precise shots, dealing higher damage and also deliver more Critical Hits than usual. In addition to that, their targeting lasers have a slowing effect on their targets.

Seekermatons also have this wonderful one point Mastery, which empowers your green clouds of death:



And finally, Invigorating Hit is the aura of choice for the Black Widow. This skill restores % of your max HP and later also % of max Mana for every Critical Hit you deal. With Bounty Hunter focusing on criticals, you are basically guaranteed unlimited mana and health at level 51 and higher. Which in turn enables your gear to focus on different stats.



Back to the damage over time effects, they can be Critical Hits. Remember that 80 damage tick? Make that a 400 damage crit now. With little luck, you will be dealing 40% of your main damage per second, which is damn good and this is still without any of the extra bonuses.

Levelling up

Since Poison Blast is a level 40 skill, you have a long way before you reach that, and even longer way before you can sustain yourself with Invigorating Hit. I will now give you tips about my gameplay, but feel free to use whatever strategy fits your playstyle!

Markovna

The first skillpoint you get should go into an AoE skill, because you will be dealing with masses of monsters throughout the game. Poison Shot is a 3 meter AoE, but I prefer using Explosive Shot, because
- it deals more damage
- the damage is Physical, which synergizes with Recklessness aura
- costs less mana

My build goes as follows:
1 point Explosive Shot -> 1 point Seekermatons + Seekermaton Pack powerup -> 1 point Recklessness -> max Shoot. Shoot mastery gives you 10 mana per shot which will cover your mana issues, and 10% attack speed, which makes the skill good for killing bosses and champions.

I spread my ability points between red stat (HP) and blue stat (MP), which in turn also increases my Dodge and Critical damage %. The percentages from Advanced Gunnery won't make much difference anyway.

As for items, look for rings and weapons with flat bonuses to Elemental/Poison damage, and some equipment with + HP per hit. Armor should be mandatory, but keep upgrading your weapon damage and rings whenever you can. Grab any story hidden content, Excalibur, Werewolf Trophy, etc. and combine the epics in the Arcane Forge to get epics useful for your class.

Katarina goes either full HP or full Ethereality (which boosts her resistances and chances to proc effects), and I tend to put just 1 skillpoint into all of her skills.

Secret Lair

When you hit level 20, you can either stay with Explosive Shot or switch to Glacier Blast. Both work just fine.
Glacier has bigger AoE and slow at the cost of more mana and lower damage (since it doesn't benefit from Recklessness). Keep using Shoot as your bosskiller, put one point into Ghostly Mirage to get some Katarina copies and Ethereal Embodiment as your "oh sh!t" skill. Your secondary aura will probably be Dodge. It could be swapped for Hunter's Rejuvenation if you don't have the HP per hit. Frenzied Rush is also a choice if you don't use any powerups.

Once Katarina reaches the Damage bonus aura for you, max it, then max Attack speed aura for Van Helsing.

Goodbye Tier 1, Welcome Tier 3

Once you reach level 40, the game starts for you. Spec into Poison Blast and max it with all passives, NO powerups. When it's done, max Invigorating Hit with both passives. That should take you until level 60.

Your Katarina wants a maxed Bane Aura which boosts your poison damage while slowing down enemies. Then you give her 1 point into instantkill and max Death Knell, because you both get +32% damage bonus when she accidentally kills something.

The next skills you want to max are: Battle Stance aura, Ghostly Mirage, Haste, Sphere of Timelessness, then Glacier Blast which will be your support skill. When you are done, spend the rest of your points into another aura of your choice (I usually take another Clear Shot for damage or Spell Binding aura to improve your freeze) and 7 points into Missile Vault + the increased backflip range.

Endgame

Final Build

My current build is as follows (going clockwise):

Icicle Shot 5 - prereq., no passive
Glacier Blast MAX - left click skill, both passives, powerup for Freezing enemies set to 3.
Poison Shot MAX - synergy, no passives
Hex Shot MAX - synergy, no passives
Poison Blast MAX - right click skill, both passives, no powerups
Grapple Hook MAX - button 5 skill, both passives, no powerups (used to pull enemies and stun them)
Relentless Force 5 - prereq., no passive
Missile Vault 7 - button 3 skill, movement skill, max Thrust Missile passive, no other passives, no powerups (can be used to stun with powerup tho, has low cooldown). The reason for Missile Vault is that when you have Battle Stance active (you didn't move for 3 seconds), then you use Missile Vault without moving, the game keeps your Battle Stance bonus! Since this skill is on a very low cooldown, you can move around using Missile Vault while keeping the +40% damage bonus from your aura.
Haste MAX - button 2 skill, movement skill, damage booster, both passives, invulnerability powerup
Ethereal Embodiment MAX - button 4 skill, your "oh sh!t" skill + damage synergy for Sphere, no powerups, no passives
Sphere of Timelessness MAX - button 1 skill, another "oh sh!t" skill while also being a BIG damage booster. Max all passives (or if you are low on points, ignore the Balm of Eternity - healing), get Helpless Foes powerup, because it gives you +180% crit damage above the game limits, simply imba.
Seekermatons MAX - another damage booster, get both passives, get Seekermaton Pack or Enhanced Illuminators powerup. You fire it once when you get first rage build up, then you can forget the skill - ideal for putting it on F2 hotkey to switch to, then switch back to Poison Blast and never switch again.
Ghostly Mirage MAX - Your wall of ghosts that tanks well. Get Persistent Mirage and Extra Mirage and set it to 2/0/1 powerup combo. That way you will have 58s duration Ghosts while you get a chance to summon an extra Katarina every time you press the button. They are very tanky on Inhuman Rampage difficulties.

Katarina:

Spectral Boon MAX - attack speed for Van Helsing
Empowering Presence MAX - damage for Van Helsing
Death Knell MAX - damage for both Kat and Van Helsing
Bane Aura MAX - slow for nearby enemies and poison vulnerability for your main skill
Get all the prerequisites and put the rest of your extra points into Touch of Death (chance that Katarina instantly kills her target).

Perks:

Black Widow - +10% Poison Damage
Gunslinger Artist - +5% damage, +5% Dodge
Gunslinger II - +3% Attack Speed
Gunslinger - +5% Attack Speed
The Flash - + 10% Speed, +5 % Attack Speed
Manifest Fury - +25% Damage while at MAX rage
Berserker - + 10% Damage while at MAX rage

The rest is your choice. I recommend getting Scholarly Ghost, Katarina respawn time if you play on lower difficulties and probably some + Critical Hit at MAX rage perks if your critical hit is not high enough.

Endgame stats: if you have been putting points into health and mana, it's time to swap some into Advanced Gunnery. Put your points accordingly to your gear so that you won't die instantly. The endgame goal is to balance your gear with enough HP/MP so that you can dump all your points into Gunnery for more damage.

Endgame Items (an example):

Get full Baskerville Set: Rifle, Hat, Gloves, Chest, Cloak.
- Enchant the Hat with Critical Hit % and replace one of the enchants with % Bonus All Damage. Socket Cooldown Reduction essence.
- Enchant/Replace + Defense and +% Defense bonuses on Cloak and Chest, socket +% Defense essences.
- Enchant either more + Defense or Critical Damage % on Gloves, add sockets for +55 Advanced Gunnery OR + % Item Defense accordingly.
- Enchant Advanced Gunnery on the Rifle (since for some reason Critical Hit % cannot be enchanted on it right now - probably a bug), socket +6% Critical Hit essence.

Get Godlike Amulet, Belt and Boots.
- Enchant them with whatever is available.
- Socket Boots with + % Item Defense.
- Socket Amulet and Belt with Spiritual Awareness if you need more % Critical Damage or Enhanced Vitality for more HP/Dodge.

Get 3 pieces of Manticore Set: 2x Ring, 1x Trophy
- Enchant the Rings with +9% Bonus All Damage and +10% Poison Damage, socket with whatever you need.
- Enchant the Trophy with Critical Hit % and +% Bonus All Damage / + % Poison Damage, socket whatever you need.

Katarina's Items:
- Get her 2x Ancestral set Ring which can give up to 15% chance to kill on hit, massively increasing her chances to proc Death Knell.
- Then give her either Ancestral full set + godlike amulet, or full Terror set.
- Socket Ethereality to increase her chances to proc effects while also boosting her resistances.

With this setup, you should be very close to 100% Critical Hit and over 800% Critical Damage bonus when your buffs are active. A small teaser from my work-in-progress hunter:


PS: Here's a small update of how the damage looks with endgame gear. I took down the points in Glacier Blast, leaving only 1 and the powerup, and I put my points into the Precision Shot for removing the high HP bosses on Inhuman Ordeal 5. It was well worth it:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=650466717

I still recommend playing at Inhuman Rampage 1-3, because while you can handle IR5, it's annoying to kill big monsters and there's no real benefit from it, which is quite annoying.

Arena

A little run I did today.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=831400397

If you are trying to reach high round in the arena, I recommend switching one of the auras into Telekinesis Aura, which is required to survive the ranged damage you take there.

[KinKin25]

@Psojed Think I finally caught up to your build. Took awhile to get all the right items. Check it out

Phone picture of my monitor with game on screen, you can see outline of monitor screen. And I haven't used any glory points in Dodge and only 5 in defense. My elemental resist is on the lower side tho I do have 10% off element plus 19% off element damage on belt for 29% total. Unmodified game too (don't have that max stat mod or anything, cfg files all original)

https://i.imgur.com/UoL70TU.jpg

[Psojed]

I have a Protector guide too, so you could try that. That one has some gameplay vids too.

[KinKin25]

@Psojed. Thanks for the guide regardless. I understand what you said and also knew that the guide was a bit outdated, too bad you can't seem to edit this. Anyhow, I just picked this game up about a month ago but adding hours into it fast, fun game, like these kinda games (Diablo, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, etc). Do you recommend any other fun build guides beside this one? Appreciate the responses. I'd like to make my fourth toon soon, if you got any other fun builds to try with this or any other characters, please tell. Thanks.

[Psojed]

I actually still had one legacy item in stash. With essence socketed in that is no longer obtainable: https://i.imgur.com/nAI3ecQ.png
Highest amount you can get today is +138% Item Defense :)

[Psojed]

4) I never recorded any Bounty Hunter gameplay.

Here's current stats and gear and Katarina stats and gear. https://imgur.com/a/black-widow-gear-stats-skills-SXOr4mU
It's probably not optimized, Katarina's godlikes aren't maxed out, and I don't even remember what I tried to spec her into, but it seems it was Kinesis :)

[Psojed]

3) Advanced Gunnery +55 essence in armor - yes, it doesn't exist. Probably another nerf/bugfix.

[Psojed]

2) Dying before I can use my skills - I don't recommend doing Inhuman Ordeal until you have level 100 and some Set items. I remember the Set items (green) and Godlikes (purple) being WAY better than most Unique items, and those only become available at level 100, so you will get oneshot at Inhuman Ordeal difficulties :)

[Psojed]

Answering your questions:
1) Katarina as Decoy / Wall - I didn't recommend to build Katarina to be your Decoy / Wall. The guide only says she can "tank hits". I'm pretty sure that refers to her HP, as she can have over 200 000 HP (at IO5 difficulty), compared to the player's ~10-20k HP.

I don't think you can have her as a decoy / wall, because she cannot hold aggro like a real tank should. She will intercept incoming monsters, and the monsters will stop and fight her, but they will ignore her once you damage them, probably because your damage is way higher than Katarina's.

I don't think I ever tried out the wisps, but I assume they will have the same aggro problem as Katarina :)

[Psojed]

The guide is from 2015. The high dodge amounts are one of the bugs that were fixed over the years.

[KinKin25]

I think that picture needs to be updated or something.
You mention socketing stuff to get 55 Advance Gunnery but the max you can put in is 31 for a 50 max essence slot. You have some defense and dodge, along with other combinations that seem to confuse people and them coming in here wondering how the heck. Like 18 THOUSAND def and 28 THOUSAND dodge, along with having 679 MF meaning you got some trophies, gear and whatnot that's for MFing too and still being able to hit those numbers? I even tried it with glory points. Unless there's a skill like with Phlogistoneer where you can repeat stack skills which is not mentioned anywhere in this guide. I got a couple of items with 500 dodge and stacked all of my armor with max armor (cloak, boots, glove, chest, everything with all armor) and I have 4430. I got 32 unspent glory points but even they just boost up to 6.7 k when I put all my points into def. And your enhanced vitality 1/3rd of mines and yet several times more dodge 28k vs 2140?