[Witch Hunter] Dragon Gun

[Azarael]

This ability and Sweeping Razor represent possibly the biggest flies in the otherwise pleasing ointment of the Witch Hunter trees.

The Issue

Dragon Gun is a pure AoE ability in the Witch Hunter's Confession tree, listed as "a mastery path focused on toe to toe combat." The problem with this skill and with Sweeping Razor is that both of them are pointless. WH doesn't want to do AoE damage, it wants to do single target damage, and both of these options, if employed, reduce the class' potential for ST damage.

The only niche use of Dragon Gun is to apply whatever Bullet debuff you have active as AoE, which is a terrible way of using the class and spending 14 of your points on the Confession tree.

Suggested Solution

For this ability, I'd suggest a cooldown increasing effect - increasing the enemy's cooldowns by 1s for every Accusation spent, for either 5s or 10s. The reason I suggest this is because Order has two cooldown increasing effects:

1) Shatter Limbs (Slayer, nerfed now in small scale)
2) Furious Reprisal (Ironbreaker, disfavoured because Ironbreaker, because requires Block or Parry and because it is linked to a skill which knocks down, forcing an immunity to be given away).

For technical reasons, Shatter Limbs would be invoked for the cooldown debuff.

With the advent of melee healing (which will be a concept in some form regardless of what happens with the WP/DoK) in particular, cooldown increasing effects are more important, and the toe-to-toe tree of WH seems like the perfect place to me for the insertion of an additional cooldown debuff.

Regarding the AoE component of Dragon Gun: I don't really care. Remove the Bullet procs or remove the AoE component entirely.

[Penril]

Moving to Discussions.

[kryss]

I like the idea, AoE is useless for the WH and the confession tree is just used by some WHs for RB (though I don't think it's a great spec, even for ganking there's better). I'd cut off the AoE component, and think about a good ST dmg (like Exit Wound?) with the cooldown increase, which seems a nice way to screw up rotations. When you think about CDs, you mean every CD of every skill of the opponent?

[Penril]

When you think about CDs, you mean every CD of every skill of the opponent?

That's how CD increasers work.

[bloodi]

Just a thought about the aoe removal part.

Is the only thing WH has that does aoe damage, it surely its bad but its still all they got, to tag people in orvr , to help farming mobs in pve while grinding ruin or whatever, it may not be great but still helps the class outside pvp, its easy to disregard it as useless but a lot of people only play one char and having an aoe skill is always useful.

So it may seem a pointless thing but every class ingame has some form of basic aoe and that is not a bad thing, so i would advise against removing the aoe damage component.

[kryss]

Just a thought about the aoe removal part.

Is the only thing WH has that does aoe damage, it surely its bad but its still all they got, to tag people in orvr , to help farming mobs in pve while grinding ruin or whatever, it may not be great but still helps the class outside pvp, its easy to disregard it as useless but a lot of people only play one char and having an aoe skill is always useful.

So it may seem a pointless thing but every class ingame has some form of basic aoe and that is not a bad thing, so i would advise against removing the aoe damage component.

You mean we should keep the aoe for farming ruin (forgotten after some RRs) or gold in a pvp game? I prefer more ST dmg than useless AoEs. Keep sweeping razor if you want to hit more than a mob, and anyway it's champs that you might want real farm and dragon gun won't help a lot.

[bloodi]

You mean we should keep the aoe for farming ruin (forgotten after some RRs) or gold in a pvp game? I prefer more ST dmg than useless AoEs.

I mean that there is to the game more than doing single target pvp and dragon gun aoe helps with that, like it or not, there will be dungeons, there will be massive fights, there will be people who farm groups of mobs and lacking any form of aoe, doesnt help in those situations

Is easy to look only after yourself and ask for more tools tailored for you but as i said, having basic aoe helps, every class in the game has some form of it, removing it from wh/we wouldnt be a good move imo.

[Morf]

Bad idea, let me make a few points and explain why this is not a good move.

Firstly players do not play a Wh/We to participate in zerg/wb situations, they play it to gank which is generally solo or small groups which is why dragon gun/aoe builds are not used, if other dps classes who are more wb friendly had the choice to spec an aoe skill that also debuffed ini or gave a 50% heal debuff they would spec it.
Secondly i would suggest before making any change to dragon gun test the effectiveness of this build in wb situations http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wh; ... :;;0:0:0:0: instead of your cookie cutter solo spec, with this build you have an aoe heal debuff or ini debuff, and great def capabilities from repel blasphemy, shroud of magnus and self healing from sanctified bullets when needed.

Impact on zealots, zealots cannot cleanse wh stuff so when they are jumped by a wh from stealth they can only hot and flash heal, normal way to deal with wh's, get up from kd with like 20-50% hp use breath of tzeentch to knock them away hot and flash heal, with the change to snap shot you can no longer kite and with this change you would not be able to spam flash heal.

Removing the aoe component or bullet procs makes them completely useless in wb/zerg/aoe fights, imo if you wana make dragon gun more useable look at why players favour other classes in aoe situations and adjust accordingly.

Lastly a cd increase on a class with stealth is madness, you will have to eat the cd increase every time, you cannot avoid it like you can with other cd increase skills.

[kryss]

Bad idea, let me make a few points and explain why this is not a good move.

Firstly players do not play a Wh/We to participate in zerg/wb situations, they play it to gank which is generally solo or small groups which is why dragon gun/aoe builds are not used, if other dps classes who are more wb friendly had the choice to spec an aoe skill that also debuffed ini or gave a 50% heal debuff they would spec it.
Secondly i would suggest before making any change to dragon gun test the effectiveness of this build in wb situations http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wh; ... :;;0:0:0:0: instead of your cookie cutter solo spec, with this build you have an aoe heal debuff or ini debuff, and great def capabilities from repel blasphemy, shroud of magnus and self healing from sanctified bullets when needed.

Impact on zealots, zealots cannot cleanse wh stuff so when they are jumped by a wh from stealth they can only hot and flash heal, normal way to deal with wh's, get up from kd with like 20-50% hp use breath of tzeentch to knock them away hot and flash heal, with the change to snap shot you can no longer kite and with this change you would not be able to spam flash heal.

Removing the aoe component or bullet procs makes them completely useless in wb/zerg/aoe fights, imo if you wana make dragon gun more useable look at why players favour other classes in aoe situations and adjust accordingly.

Lastly a cd increase on a class with stealth is madness, you will have to eat the cd increase every time, you cannot avoid it like you can with other cd increase skills.

Unfortunately the build you posted is utter crap, and you won't kill anybody with it, solo, in small grps, or in WBs, nor help kill anybody at all. If you want to be useful in parties, you pop, melt somebody (preferably healer with double debuff) and move on, DA away or keep ST dpsing if you are supported.

[Morf]

Unfortunately the build you posted is utter crap, and you won't kill anybody with it, solo, in small grps, or in WBs, nor help kill anybody at all. If you want to be useful in parties, you pop, melt somebody (preferably healer with double debuff) and move on, DA away or keep ST dpsing if you are supported.

The point is in your post "if you want to be useful in parties, you pop, melt somebody and move on(preferably a healer)" you dont do this in wb/zerg/aoe spam fights because engaging alone on the enemy backline is a death sentence, so your option is to stand with your zerg and use what aoe you have (preferably range aoe to stay out of danger) and assist on closest targets with torment spam.
Confession is an aoe focused path, its by no means the fault of the tree that 99% of Wh (and We) play the class to be a solo ganker and the occasional group mdps with the exact same cookie cutter spec.

The spec i listed gives you an aoe heal debuff and self healing when needed, its is by far more useful in wb/zerg/aoe fights then torment spam spec because of 2 reasons, you bring an aoe heal debuff(nor help kill anybody right ) and st damage doesnt win in zerg fights.