[WH] Witch Hunter General's Compendium (WH Guide)

[gersy]

Thank you so much for this! Having a hard time finding up to date info on classes since a lot has changed as it seems, which brings me to my question:
I come from WoW and am looking for a solo/roaming class for my alt that is able to 1vX.
Now I was under the impression that WH is exactly that, squishy burst damage that can go 1vX in open rvr. It seems this is no longer the case, with people recommending me IB as tank for best 1vX which shows me it’s better to ask since tanks didn’t came to mind for that. Can you give any input please? As long as it seems to take to get the BiS gear I wouldn’t want to re roll half way
Appreciate any info I can get regarding the solo roaming side, thanks again!

Tbh it really depends on your opponents more than yourself for 1vX with any class, including WH. At a certain level of skill you won't be able to outplay multiple competent and geared players as a WH. If they are lower gear, lower level or very low skill you can do 1v2 or 1v3, but against anyone who is decent skilled, bis geared and/or built their character for soloing you will mostly be locked to 1v1 and if a second geared person joins you're probably screwed and have to abandon the fight or trade 1:1. If you're looking for a class like rogue in WoW where you have the ability to totally destroy someone in a stunlock or use a bunch of cooldowns to control your environment and cross-CC 3 people while killing one of them in 3 gcds then sadly WH will be a disappointment. The way this game is designed makes it very hard to do the huge solo playmaking 1vX/carry stuff that a Sub rogue can do in WoW. I'm a multiglad rogue in wow and I picked up WH because I thought I may have a similar experience, I was very wrong ^^. Sadly it isn't how the game works here.

WH suffered a lot of nerfs around the time of the ability rework that hurt its soloing ability including nerf to stealth duration (100 seconds down to 60), armor pen tactic cut in half (50% to 25%) and healing bullet tactic (150% down to 100%). This hurt the capability to do 1vX by a decent margin. Again, it is still possible to 1vX but much harder than before. A lot of it comes down to learning names, checking gear on killboard, picking the right targets and realizing which ones are a waste of time to fight based on different variables.

As far as IB, well it's pretty flavor of the month solo roamer atm. It's very durable which makes 1vX a bit easier since you don't die instantly if 2-3 people jump on you and CC you. It also wins 1v1s against a lot of classes/builds due to its ability to sustain and outlast them in fights. I cannot speak for it much outside of that as I don't play solo roam tanks.

Best bet now for this type of gameplay now is typically to play a BAL build and just try to giga burst down squishy classes before you get third partied or to do duo/trio roaming with other WHs or an AM or something. Imo WH is still a fine solo class and what I say is not to keep you away from playing it but more to temper your expectations so that you are not let down when you realize it isn't as powerful as WoW rogue was depending on what expansion we're talking about. Hope it helps.

[Basuza]

Ok perfect summary thank you again friend!

[Qwater21]

First of all - thank you Gersy for the guide! I found it really helpfull on all stages ( especially gearing - got lucky on bag drops and running Vanq(all from bags)\sent mix with BL sword approaching 60rr )
What i found is that you alomost never use IF tactic in your builds while i see that 20-40% of my dmg comes from autoattacks with BAL build - im running BF IF Flanking FC tacitc setup for BAL build - just wanted to hear your opinion - is FA really outperforms IF dps ?
I can see that vs high parry enemy FA probably can do better.. but for now higher auto speed does better for me overall.

[gersy]

First of all - thank you Gersy for the guide! I found it really helpfull on all stages ( especially gearing - got lucky on bag drops and running Vanq(all from bags)\sent mix with BL sword approaching 60rr )
What i found is that you alomost never use IF tactic in your builds while i see that 20-40% of my dmg comes from autoattacks with BAL build - im running BF IF Flanking FC tacitc setup for BAL build - just wanted to hear your opinion - is FA really outperforms IF dps ?
I can see that vs high parry enemy FA probably can do better.. but for now higher auto speed does better for me overall.

Hi, thanks for your kind words - I'm glad you found the guide helpful.

FA vs IF is situational mostly, depending on build and content. WH has really good tactics, so it can sometimes be hard to fit every one that you want in to a build.

For abso spam builds, FA is necessary since it is the driving factor to be able to spam abso.

For other builds it really depends on how much uptime you are going to keep on your target. IF is really good if you can maintain high melee uptime on your target to keep triggering your autoattacks. While FA can be better for builds or situations where you cannot maintain high uptime to constantly trigger autoattacks or use an accusation generator, such as situations where you need to kite or bob and weave which are fairly commonplace when playing WH. There is also the argument of RNG vs no RNG but that is more of a matter of personal preference - I'm fairly neutral on it.

Additionally you can drop BF for IF or FA in certain builds if you have a strength buff from another source in your party, such as kotbs aura, WP sigmars fist or SM stat steal. This mostly only applies to later gear levels when you have around 850+ strength unbuffed without BF (e.g. 5sov/4tri has around 880 strength unbuffed so these other class' buffs will put you at 950-1000).

Both are good tactics and are mostly interchangeable. Therefore it's up to the situation and build to dictate which is going to be better. Good question btw - I'll likely write something in the guide in the future about tactic choices like this, since not everything is set in stone based on the builders and there can be flexibility with your choices.

[Qwater21]

Good answer and nice idea, I agree and see your point.
Yeah i wish we had 5 slots lol ( like get base dmg or crit tactic bugged - is that still a thing for WE?)
Since now i have a while to experiment untill futher gear uprades and my gear is set in stone ( untill Triumph -I was wondering to try and push for BL\Sent\vanq str bonuses combined to get rid of BF maybe, but losing crit and even toughness debuff from vanq set bonus seems unpromising - no crit in the opener or on 1-2 attacks makes IF way less potent. Will try evertything since my playstyle is still forming, also have yet to work my way into DG for solo runs -should be way easier to land stuns as im playing from Vietnam and have quite a bit of server lag.
If you cool with that i will share my tactic experiments ideas with kill stats in a while in this thread.

[gersy]

Good answer and nice idea, I agree and see your point.
Yeah i wish we had 5 slots lol ( like get base dmg or crit tactic bugged - is that still a thing for WE?)
Since now i have a while to experiment untill futher gear uprades and my gear is set in stone ( untill Triumph -I was wondering to try and push for BL\Sent\vanq str bonuses combined to get rid of BF maybe, but losing crit and even toughness debuff from vanq set bonus seems unpromising - no crit in the opener or on 1-2 attacks makes IF way less potent. Will try evertything since my playstyle is still forming, also have yet to work my way into DG for solo runs -should be way easier to land stuns as im playing from Vietnam and have quite a bit of server lag.
If you cool with that i will share my tactic experiments ideas with kill stats in a while in this thread.

I would keep running the 5vanq/2sent mix until 4tri - the WS proc and crit set bonuses are really strong and not worth dropping in exchange for some strength since we are really thriving on high crit ratings because of FC tactic. Feel free to share your experiments.

[gersy]

Guide has received a few overhauls and many updates since the time of last post (12/27/2024).

Many new builds, explanations and strategy sections have been added for early, mid and endgame. Changelog for updates can be found at the bottom of the document.

As always, thanks to all who have helped with this project since I began working on it nearly 2 years ago.