[WH] Guide Version 2

[abezverkhiy]

Hey fellow WHs and others too

Several years ago I wrote a guide on WHs and today I am revisiting it. Copying relevant bits and pieces from there and making plenty of additions. Link to my old guide:
viewtopic.php?t=19492

Intro - About the Author
I am an old time player who was one of those who witnessed the very first day of WAR when verification server did not allow players to log in even after 8 hours of queuing. Those who were there on Day 1 remember that. I played WH all the way to the last day of WAR. I played stealth characters at all times in other projects like WoW, Rift, SWTOR, GW2. My toons are in my signature, WH is my main. Some of you could play with me in WH-only parties I was running a while back or played with me in wbs or against me in lakes.

Intro - Why I Do This
There are different topics on WHs but there is no work that attempts to consolidate knowledge about WHs. Ideally, I would like to produce a comprehensive guide to WH's that would be easy to read and understand. By no means I ever wanted to be "the best WH on server" but I have always been a big fan of theorycrafting and looked for synergies and hidden secrets.

Part 1.1 - Assassin Playstyle
This game introduced its own playstyle and coming from WoW I had difficulties adopting it. The problem was not in different spells, the problem was in a different gravity if you will - for example this game heavily pushes you to use terrain and to be careful with your timing. This was not the case in WoW when I played it last (it was up to Cataclysm edition) where a rogue did not have to bother about time limits on her stealth and did not look for hideouts all the time.
The playstyle is mostly 'hit and run' as you know. Attack from stealth, from bushes, from around the corner, do your job fast and vanish. Many of us do a common mistake - we overextend. Don't. Every moment after you leave Incognito your level of abruptness diminishes and you need to learn to retreat the moment you lose upper hand. Your DPS will be zero if you die.
However, if you are fighting a big fight and there is good healing support then you become more of a DPS machine and you can abandon a portion of subtlety. But keep in mind that you are lightly armored and you are hated a lot. Keep you detaunt on cooldown all the time during big fights. This is a very simple rule but it often remains overlooked.
Think twice if you want to attack when you are outnumbered. OK, you charge and you kill one, they kill you, they rezz their comrade, there is no one to rezz you. So, what's the point in attacking? I play to kill and if I am not sure I do not engage. Stealth is meant not only to approach your prey undetected but it is also to PICK YOUR FIGHTS. For mindless charging I have slayer and ironbreaker toons, as WH I choose my enemies.
Speaking of choosing your enemies - I am not super skilled like MDPV or Cakey and I cannot fight every class equally well. And I am sure that 95% of all WH/WEs are in the same boat with me. That's why ask yourself this question as early as possible - who do I want to kill the most - melees, healers or casters and begin building your playstyle around it. You will fight every class of course but there must be a favorite meal. We will get to this subject later.

Part 1.2 - Stay Undetected
Good thing about WaR/RoR is that you are able to hide yourself even when Incognito is off.
First, you do not have a huge red name tag on yourself visible to enemies. They do have this monster tag in GW2 or WoW which makes hiding in terrain impossible. Luckily, we can do it in Warhammer. This is something every WH should master. Makes life much easier. WAR/ROR terrain offers lots of hideouts. They are virtually everywhere - inside houses, broken walls, behind statues, rocks, trees, bushes. Do not stay mounted when you are not moving. Do not go on top of anything. You are not a model on podium.
A good WH can stay alive inside enemy keep during whole siege and cause harm to enemies. Learn insides of every keep to know a few spots you can use as hideouts while waiting for Incognito to cool down and unaware prey to arrive.
Lastly, Incognito is not instant cast. You can't restealth easily in battle. You CAN but NOT ALWAYS.

Part 1.3 - Exit Plan
Another simple difficult thing. Think of your plan B before you start implementing plan A. In other words - think of retreating before you attack. If there is no way to retreat, then do not engage. Otherwise you spend next beautiful moments running from your camp with resurrection debuff on you. A huge help in your exit plan is our 2nd restealth - Sanctified Oil. I always have it in every build. Also, it is not just your escape tool, it is your charging ability too.

Part 1.4 – Playing with Healers
I play healer too and let me tell you - healers want to heal everyone, they are paid for that. Unfortunately, healers cannot heal idiots. So for starters make sure that your healer sees your health bar - you must be in a group with him.
Second, do not run off too far, every heal has a range and unlike you healers prefer to stay with the crowd. The most powerful heals tend to have short ranges or longer casts. Remember that.
Next, you are not top priority for them. Priorities are beloved themselves, tanks, other healers, sturdy dps and only then lightly armored dps. So stop cursing healers for not healing you on time, they are not idle most of the time.
Lastly, always remember - you are the squishiest of all melees and you are the most hated of all them for your strong damage. If you get focused no healer would be able to save you.
Got problems with that? Become an ironbreaker.

Part 1.5 - Self-Heal
This may sound hilarious but you can do it reasonably well.
You can drop two health pots simultaneously - crafted potions and potions purchased with tokens do not share single cooldown. This way you can restore more than half of your health bar. Always spend all unneeded tokens on health pots.
You can obtain weapons with health regeneration (although these weapons are not best in slot) and you can get health regeneration by spending renown points. If you buy all regeneration perks with renown you get 140 health regenerated every 4 seconds. Weapons with regeneration give you another 40, a relic from Hunter’s Vale set gives another 48, there are regenerating rings dropping from KV mini-boss (…of Fleshrender) each giving and 40 of regen. With this amount of regeneration, you can go Incognito to replenish your health. And if you drink a HoT potion you will replenish it entirely during duration of Incognito. Also, regeneration helps to counter DoTs on you. However, I would not get too anxious about it – renown points are too precious to spend them on regen and other stats of Fleshrender rings are not too sexy.
You can get heals from traited Bullets of Purity. These bullets hit multiple enemies with Dragon Gun or they hit single enemy up to 2 times with Trial By Pain. Both finishers can be good sources of healing. DoT finishers proc bullets only once on initial hit. You can switch bullets while in Incognito.
In the end of the day the more methods of health replenishing you utilize the better you feel on the battlefield.
Lastly, get some absorb potions. Absorb potions are your temporary hitpoints.

Part 1.6 - Key Binds
This is probably awkward to mention key binds before discussing builds and gear but believe me - key binds are crucial. Assign a wrong key to a good ability – and you will be forgetting about it most of the time. Keybinding is like a rating of your abilities.
Those of you who mastered skill of moving with keyboard you are well ahead of those who (like me) move with mouse. I spent loads of time trying to learn moving with WASD but it did not work out.
What does work out - place your palm on the keyboard and move your fingers slightly to determine easily reachable keys. Depending on size and shape of your keyboard and how long/short your fingers are you will see your best key binds. You do not have to follow me but I personally use
1,2,3,q,w,e,r,a,s,d,x, space for most wanted abilities,
`,4,t,f,z,c,v for less used ones
f1 to f4 and 5 to = for the rest of them

I think that is it with the Part 1 where I cover general but important stuff. No matter what build you are going to have these things will always be important. Now we are moving to the part about abilities and synergies.

[abezverkhiy]

Part 2.1 – Abilities from Mastery Trees
I want to talk about abilities from mastery trees first, then about general abilities, and synergies will be discussed after.
Each point invested into a tree adds about 3-3.5% to tooltip damage values of your accusation generators. This is an approximation, I do not wish to overload ourselves with unneeded formulas and calculations. For attacks from stealth and bullets this number is higher - more like 5% point spent. You will be thinking at times – shall I take this ability from a secondary tree or shall I spend extra point to max out my primary tree? I always take extra ability. The damage increment is just not big enough to trade it for a skill.
A few words about masteries. The idea about Confession tree is that the tree is about defense or more balanced playstyle if you will, fighting melees and casters, self-heal, and pseudo-AoE. The idea about Inquisition tree is antiheal and fighting champions during stage 3 cities. The idea about Judgement is very concentrated single-target damage coming from positional attacks. This is where I want you to recall Part 1.1 – who do you want to hunt most and what would be your style?
Looking at trees from top to bottom - morals are used very seldom, require long time to accumulate morale points, have long cooldowns. Most people do not take them. Confession morale has a lower level substitute that comes for free but 25% weaker – Reversal of Fortune. Inquisition morale is good to kill city champions but that’s about it, I do not see other use for it - you can keep 75% healing debuff on your target constantly without any morale. Judgement morale is periodic AoE damage and AoE snare – good but what is so special? Slayers and ironbreakers do the same job without any morals, there is no shortage of them so let them do the job.
Finishers - all three finishers from the trees are good, hands down. Dragon Gun is your ranged stun, good for big fights and makes self-healing easier - every hit of Bullets of Purity heals you, the more the better. The damage per head is not super-duper though. Exit Wound is excellent for dueling melees and champions. It degrades their strength (read dps), weapon skill (read dps and parry) and toughness (read improves your dps). However, do not take it if you play solo – way better damage could be achieved with BAL, EW is good when not just you but other allies hit the same target. Again, think of city champions. Judgement finisher is our best single-target damaging skill but it can be cleansed.
Combo-generators (9 points abilities) - again, all three are good - antimelee, antiheal, and stun. I wish I could have them all which is not achievable. So, again, recall what I said about choosing your role.
Buffing abilities from trees (5 points level) – super, super good abilities with one huge drawback – they share one cooldown so you cannot use one after another. Shroud of Magnus together with Silence the Heretic gives whole 10 seconds of immunity when fighting a caster. Next, Seal of Destruction is good when unloading damage, especially against stronger armor. Roughly, it adds 75% to your damage. Yes, this is very simplistic explanation but this is what I see when I attack heavy armor. For lighter armor this % will be lower because they have less armor. In return damage will be compensated by the fact that they have less toughness and numbers will be sexy regardless. And lastly, - Sanctified Oil, our 2nd stealth and charge skill.
Mastery trees offer tactics too and they can be good and bad. What’s in store:
1. Confession tactics are all excellent I would gladly have them all but there is 1 thing – there are other good tactics too. And again I need to remind you – what is your role? Your tactics must supplement your role. More about Confession tactics will be in Synergies section.
2. Inquisition tactics. Hmmm… no good emotions. They are good but not good enough. Confess tactic is good but Confess is an anti melee ability and the only thing the tactic does – it gives a crit every 10 sec and only if we fight melee. Mind you, disarm will work just once and target will get anti-cc buff for next 30 seconds. So, here the tactic goes down the drain. Should it remove parry prerequisite this would be a different situation, that would make Confess useful in every fight and you would use Confess vs sorc, squigs etc – vs classes whose attacks cannot be parried because they don’t fight in melee. Next goes a combo-generating tactic – it does help to make your finishers faster/stronger but do you have a spare slot for this tactic? I do not. I would have it should there be 10 slots but we only have 4. Protection from Heresy is probably the one worth taking. But going for this tactic means you are going for EW and EW is a very special skill as I described above.
3. Judgement tactics – I currently have Atonement but this tactic requires additional tactics to be taken. More in Synergies section. Crit damage tactic is good when your crit is good. I say take it during later stages when your skills crit at least 15%. At least. Last tactic does not make me want to use it. It is for longer fights, it procs one out of four times, has positional requirement – no, no, no. Too much for my brain. I would not take it even if we had 10 slots for tactics.
OK, next will be our basic skills.

Part 2.2 – Basic Skills
Confession:
Razor Strike – unless you are deeply spec’d in Confession do not use it – Torment would be better. Only when RS has 13 points then it can compete with untalented Torment.
Seeker’sBlade – this is one of my favorites. It is NON-DEFENDABLE meaning you can hit tanks in the face with it and they can’t block it.
Trial by Pain – excellent source of concentrated damage. Makes 6 hits in 3 seconds which means you can use it versus melees without worries they parry/block it. They can do that but not to all 6 shots. Also, this ability is good versus targets who attempt to escape as it just kills them. However, being a channeling skill it can be interrupted. Procs bullets 2 times – on first and last hits.
Bullets – unless supported with the self-healing tactic I would not use it.
Opener – an anti-heavy armor opener.
Inquisition:
Fervor – rubbish in 99% situations that is what I thought of it before. Now having done some testing I changed my mind. 3 stacks of Fervor hit as BAL per tick and we all love BAL. You need to refresh it every 6-8 seconds and this 'BAL' will last forever. Definitely a good thing. Bad thing is that you need 3 cooldowns to apply it. This means loss of time and loss of abruptness. Therefore, use it during long fights only vs tanks or kiters.
Confess! – weird skill. On one hand it disarms which is good. But disarm gives target same anti-cc buff as knockdown which makes Confess! Sort of useless. And it does not generate a combo point. Meh.
Burn Heretic! – if you have BAL – remove BH from your skill bars. BAL is twice stronger. Or even like this - if you are not Inquisition spec’d – remove it. Numbers will be too low to waste precious accusations.
Bullets – best bullets of them all if traited. If not then only use them in fight vs opponents with healing abilities. Not necessarily vs healers only -Blackguards have 1 healing ability too where these bullets can help. Just open career builder for a class and hover mouse over abilities. If ability type is Healing - the bullets will help. Potions and melee healing won't be affected though. To keep debuff constantly you will need to reapply it every 5 seconds which is a bit annoying. Probably this is why we have a combo generating tactic in Inquisition tree.
Opener – an anti WE and anti RDPS opener.
Judgement:
Torment – your bread and butter skill. It accounts for 25%-30% of your total damage.
Silence the Heretic – similar to Confess it gives the same anti-cc buff as knockdown which is not nice.
Absolution – only use upgraded version with 25% crit. Otherwise replace it with TbP.
Bullets – I cannot think of a situation when you desperately need to steal mere 20 AP from your target. Sorry.
Opener – a good anti caster opener.
So as you can see a good half of these abilities can be safely forgotten and removed from your skill bars.
Core abilities:
Flee, pick locks – no comments.
Snap shot – ranged slow.
Feinted positioning – here I want to make an important comment. DO NOT use it when fighting melee classes. You may be tempted to Pistol Whip or BAL them in the face but melees have good parry/block and they can waste your precious cooldowns. Parry/block is not working from behind so positional requirement of PW/BAL is not a curse, it is a blessing.
Detaunt – detaunt, detaunt, detaunt always. This is why I do not like AoE skills of WH.
Incognito – 2 sec cast, you can take damage in stealth, you can change bullets in stealth. Energy degenerates in stealth and AP per second items will NEVER stop it completely. What does help is an ally with AP regenerating skill/tactic. They can keep you stealthed permanently. Remember this about stealth – if you do not wish to be detected do not turn your back on your enemies. Do not want to be seen – do not move and face enemies and they will not see you.
Sigil of Sigmar – a very useful skill when fighting rdps. But remember they have more than one slow so do not rely on this skill in every situation. In fact RDPS are probably our worst enemy.
Sever Blessing – a very useful skill. Blessings can be very strong so use SB always.
Purgatory – our new skill, thanks to our dev team for that. Fun to use on a dead target in keep sieges for instance when enemy healers can reach the target but can’t rezz it.
Declare Anathema – our escape tool. Also, very useful during one-to-one encounters as it can be a game changer. Say, a WE opens on you, stuns you and the moment you are up from the stun you use DA, stagger enemy and can use these 6 seconds break to drop a potion and/or cast stealth. Now you can fight them on your conditions. Beware of being rooted though and think of what’s behind you - leaping from a high cliff or into lava is probably the last thing you want to do.
OK, moving to synergies part.

Part 2.3 – Synergies
The link here takes you to a screenshot with synergies identified with same colors:
https://ibb.co/phhKF8w
Red – this is most ‘populated’ synergy as you can see. You do not need to combine all abilities together but the core item here is Flowing Accusations that allows to spam finishers. Absolution with 25% crit makes very respectable damage numbers. Top crit I had was more than 2k and currently overall crit chance of my Absolutions is around 45%. Flowing Accusations also work nicely with healing bullets although let’s not get too excited about them – MDPV shows miracles with self-heal in his videos but if you play in a party with healers the value of this tactic goes down.
Black – BAL, Flanking, SoD. Time SoD right – when it is on and BAL makes its last tick the numbers will astonish you. The biggest tick I had was 2k+.
Blue – use FP with Torment when fighting non-melees, esp kiters. They are super mobile and you won’t have much chance to be behind them so this is the time you need to use your positional skills without ‘must be behind’ hassle.
Pink – well… this is as clear as day.
Green – ok, not everyone knows how to use this tactic right. 3 sec of extra armor penetration is too short so we need to maximize it. In other words – you need to squeeze you most damaging abilities into this short 3 sec time window. Definitely we are not talking about auto-attacks, we are talking about finishers. But tactic activates only after the first tick of a finisher so single tick finishers like Abso or EW won’t benefit. DoTs will but only 1 tick will get extra damage which is meh. We are talking TbP – it lasts 3 seconds, consists of 6 ticks 5 of which will benefit from extra armor penetration. And what it does, it upgrades damage of TbP by roughly 75%. This is my empirical observation; formula will produce different results every time but +75% is an easy way to understand the end effect of Blessed Blade.
Yellow – SB damage is upgraded by roughly 75% and this non-defendable attack can be used twice as often. Unfortunately, at higher levels when you have access to all skills and tactics you will always have better tactics to take but if you choose to be a melee killer then consider this tactic, tanks will cry.
Teal – another non-brainer synergy. Anti-heal, aggregate effect is -75% to healing of your target.

[abezverkhiy]

Part 3 – Gear and Stats
You hear this often – WHs are dependent on gear. Yes, unfortunately we are. Let me illustrate it with my own example – addon DB2 accounts for my kill/killed by data for each class as well as overall kill/death count. When I finally got my fortress weapon and invaders and hunter’s vale gear my overall kill/death count stayed at minus 130. Since then it improved to from -130 to 0 very, very quickly. And soon it will be plus 130 and higher, higher, higher. Nothing changed – I do not have a pocket healer, my playstyle is the same, same enemies, same pugs but now I kill waaaay more often. Before I could not even dream of a thing like a kill-streak. Now it is business as usual. This is sad truth – gear gives WHs ‘skill’. For my IB for instance gear is not a factor, I wear conq set because of its set bonus and I feel perfect. For WHs anything below invaders set is crap.
Speaking of stats - there are two primary attributes every WH wants - strength and wounds. One makes you hit harder, the other keeps you alive. You should work out your best ratio of STR/WOU yourself. Previously I always leaned towards defensive type of play but with time the game evolved and defensive WHs can’t deliver good results as before so I became glassier.
Next you need high avoidance stats – parry, dodge, disrupt. Thing is that damage reduction is not working well for WHs. I always buy avoidance and crit chance with renown and DO NOT buy futile strikes. They should not hit me. If they do hit me then I am doing something wrong.
Currently I have 8k+ health, 900 strength, 450 WS, 23% crit, around 40% parry and 20-25% dodge/disrupt and I feel comfortable most of the time. My current gear is half invaders and half hunter’s vale sets, fortress weapon, 3 pieces of beastlord’s. Still far from BiS but like I said before – at this gear level you can enjoy playing WH. And banner, get a guild banner to rezz fallen comrades – often you will work behind the enemy lines and banner will be very handy. Convince your guild officer to promote you to be able to use it.
And you can see my current build on the synergies screenshot above.

[abezverkhiy]

Part 4 – Addons
There are many different addons but I want to point at 5 as very important for WHs – Targetring, Buffhead, Aura, Enemy, Deathblow2.
Targetring – a clear way to see your health in battle, probably 90% of all players use it. It is good for WHs because we develop ‘tunnel vision’ – margin of error is so small that all the attention is on the target in the middle of the screen and no time to monitor a health bar in the top left corner or so.
Buffhead – most important help from this addon is display of anti-cc buffs on enemies. There are many other ways to use this brilliant addon but you MUST always see anti-cc buffs and timers on your enemies! This is a primary idea!
Aura – probably less known and underrated addon. Have a look at the screenshot – this is how I customized it. As you can see you can get big screen messages when certain effect is on you (Word of Pain in this case or enemy detaunt). There are abilities which I want to use as often as possible and respective icons pop when they are usable (SB and Confess) or when they are on cooldown (and showing timers of course). I also have message when I have 5 combos or when my health is low. All in all I have more than 20 different auras advising me about different situations in a way I want them to. Highly suggest this addon, it is my favorite.
https://ibb.co/YT8Mbv3
Enemy – I never used this one heavily but I like it for its damage statistics tool. It gives you an idea which ability is really good and thus helps to achieve optimal build. Do not forget to config damage meter options properly and EXCLUDE damage done to/received from the mobs.
Lastly DB2 – it gives you good idea who is your real headache on the battlefield. My worst to best enemies are:
1. SHs (my worst nightmare)
2. Magi and Sorcs
3. Choppas and Maras
4. WEs
5. Tanks
6. Healers (zealots are easiest)
Now we move to discussion about main source of profit from WH - damage. I will skip basic formulas and look a bit deeper.

[abezverkhiy]

Part 5.1 - Revisiting Damage Formula
During original WAR times there was a brilliant theorycrafter Bruglir who managed to work out all important formulas. Link:
viewtopic.php?t=879
So full format of an ability formula is:
((<tooltip> + <dps contribution>)+(<stat coefficient>*(<offensive stat>+<power stat>)/5))*(1+<damage bonus>)*(1-<damage reduction>)-(<stat coefficient>*(<toughness>+fortitude>)/5) = <damage>
The above formula looks like monster and I make it look simpler
(A + B + C)*D - E = Damage,
where A comes from ability tooltip, B from weapon tooltip, C from stats (see character window tooltips), D is adjustment by your damage bonuses and target's damage reductions, and E comes from stats of your prey.
As you see there are several key sources that contribute to final figure. And in my opinion the most crucial is D because certain classes have huge damage resistance that makes your damage irrelevant unless you ignore their armor and we have Torment that does the job. You can look at the formula parts as A, B, and C are constant values, E is a bit volatile depending on target's armor level, but D is very volatile because of target's damage reduction which is ranging between 0% to 75%. Let's see more on damage mitigation figures in next section.

Part 5.2 - Revisiting Damage Mitigation Concept
The same post by Bruglir mentions damage mitigation formula. If you play with numbers, you will see that:
- tanks and defensively armored melees (ex WEs) mitigate 65-75% of raw damage
- armor of other melees like choppas, DOKs, and defensive witch elves mitigates approx 50% of damage
- lightly armored characters have damage mitigation of 25-30%
These value are very subjective, very individual. Take them not more than benchmarks, indicative values.
As Destro tank classes are popular we end up fighting many enemies with very high damage resistance which makes armor ignore attribute very important.

Part 5.3 - Impact of Mitigation on Build
Normally our attacks ignore +/-30% of armor, that is what we have from our attributes. With this in mind Seal of Destruction and Seeker's Triumph remove almost all armor as they add 50% to original values. But best way to overcome armor is attacking your prey from behind with Torment.
This may take you to a conclusion that you must be heavily Judgement specialized. Not necessarily. If you take a look at damage formula, effect of specialization is reflected in component A and each point spent adds about +/-3.5% to tooltip value. Thus, having maximized Judgement you maximize A by +/-50% at most. This, however, does not mean you are going to increase damage of Torment by 50% because other 4 formula components remain unaffected. Realistically speaking you are not going to achieve anything better than 10%-15% of extra output if you max out Judgement tree. This is good of course but this is not something that makes the rain, far more important is to ensure that your Torment hits enemies from behind more often but this is not something you can do by spending points in Judgement tree.

Part 5.4 – Bursting damage of TbP vs BAL
I want to end this guide with comparison of 2 most damaging abilities – Trial by Pain and Burn Away Lies.
They can produce comparable numbers when TbP is upgraded with Blessed Blade. BAL you just ‘buy’ through mastery tree.
So, the cost is our 1st point of comparison - 12 points for ‘upgraded’ TbP, and BAL costs 14 points. You can have both.
Next, is application – TbP requires 3 secs of doing no other damage but channeling the ability. You can run but cannot jump. BAL is instant cast and you can continue damaging with other abilities while it ticks.
TbP can be interrupted, BAL can be cleansed.
TbP can be cast from medium distance, BAL must be used from behind in close distance.
TbP procs two bullets, BAL just one.
TbP can be blocked/parried, BAL mostly no (only if you stupid enough to use it with FP vs melee)
So as you can see both abilities have pros and cons. It is up to you which one is better, just make sure to have at least one in your disposal.

Part 5.5 – Spirit damage.
Bullets, Fervor and openers deal Spirit damage, other abilities deal vanilla physical damage. Unfortunately, we cannot have Spirit damage build contrary to WEs who have Corporeal damage build supported with 2 more Corporeal damage abilities, one of which is a very strong finisher.

Done with the damage and done with the guide. Hope it helps you my fellow WHs.
Happy hunting.

[Greywolfamakir]

Hello.

I'm Greywolff, RR84 WH and i have to say that this guide is really good. Thank you very much JohanRuth for your time and effort.

I would like to add just a few tips for the WHs our there. This tips are based on my own experience playing Solo WH for more than 3 years.

• How to kill Ranged SH

What you need:
Build
CD ready: Sigil of Sigmar (Anti root/slow).
CD ready: Sanctified Oil (Vanish from Judgement Path)

Easy way:

Picture version:


Text version:
1 - Pre-Open (Incognito): Move close to the SH and get behind him.
2 - Pre-Open (Incognito): Pop Sigil of Sigmar while Stealth is up, It doesn't break Stealth.
3 - Open (3 accusations): Use Burn Armor and Pistol Whip, you will knockdown the SH therefore he can't move for 3 seconds.
4 - Seeker's Blade (4 accusations): Use Seeker's Blade, you will have 4 accusations after the success hit.
5 - Torment (5 accusations): Use Torment, you will have 5 accusations after the success hit.
6 - BAL (0/2 accusarions): Use Burn Away Lies with 5 accusarions (WARNING: If you have high ping, you will not be able to drop BAL while SH is knocked down, therefore it is better to use BAL with 4 accusations, remove the previous Torment and use BAL instead). You will have 0 or 2 accusations (Flowing Accusations has 50% chance to bring back 2 accusations after any finisher).
7 - SH will jump away (Sticki Squigz): You are immune to Slow/Root (Step 2).
8 - Sanctified Oil (2/4 accusations): Use Sanctified Oil to reach SH again. If the SH was casting Not so Fast while fliying or right after landing, it will get interrupted since Sanctified Oil will make SH lose his target.
9 - Absolution (0/2): Use Absolution either with 2 or 4 accusations.
10 - Torment (1/3).
11 - Toment (2/4).
12a - If SH has more than 25% HP --> Absolution (0/2).
12b - If SH has less than 25% HP --> Trial by Pain. (0/2).
13a - 0 Accusations --> Troment (1) --> Absolution (0/2) [repeat step 13]
13b - 2 Accusations --> Absolution (0/2) [repeat step 13]
14 - SH should be dead.

It is clear that i can't show EVERY possible situation, i mean, SH can use potions, maybe he disarms you with his pet...etc. This is the most common scenario i have experienced.

• How to make BaL non-cleanable.

With this Build in mind, these are the debuffs applied by Witch Hunters:

• Snap Shot (Ailment)

• Seeker's Blade (Ailment)

• Blessed Bullets of Purity/Confesion (Both Ailments)

• Burn Armor (Ailment)

• Sudden Accusation (Ailment)

• Burn, Heretic! (Ailment)

• Fervor (Ailment)

• Punish the False (Ailment)

• Fanatical Zeal (Ailment)

• Burn Away Lies (Ailment)

They are all "Ailments". Shamans and DoKs (Disciple of Khaine) are able to cleanse Ailments, so they can cleanse our loved Burn Away Lies, and this is not good at all. Fortunately for us, we can make our BaL non-cleanable if we face just one Shaman or one DoK.

Cleanse removes the oldest debuff, and it has 5 seconds CD, so since Burn Away Lies (BaL) last for 10 seconds, we need to apply 3 debuffs before BaL in order to make it non-cleanable.

• 1 - Opener: Burn Armor or Sudden Accusation or Fanatical Zeal

• 2 - Fervor

• 3 - Seeker's Blade

• 4 - Burn Away Lies

• How to win a duel against WEs.

Work in Progress

• Gearing up with: Sovereign, Sentinel, Triumphant and Warlord.

Work in Progress

[Paxsanarion]

I do not play a stealth class currently but I can certainly appreciate your knowledge and willingness to share your experience. Very well written… Thank you!

[Fenris78]

My Cookie-cutter Dragon Gun build (rr83 atm) :

Renown
Masteries

For warband vs warband play, switch Atonement with Sanctified Bullets : you will survive far more longer, going back full life on each Dragon Gun usage.

Stuff :
- Invader 5 pieces (Jewel, Hat, Gloves, Blet, Boots)
- Sov main 3 pcs (Shoulder, Cloak, Body)
- 3 Genesis (Fragment + Remnant + Aspect)
- OR Sentinel ring (6% parry strikethrough) instead of the Genesis Aspect.
- Bloodlord Rapier
- Wit (Sentinel gun)
- Talismans : Full Strength

Build notes :
- With this build, you got Parry Strikethrought : 10% (base) - 13% (with Sentinel Talisman) - 16% (with Triumphant hat)
Why ? Because a hit that got parried will deal zero damage.
Any parried Absolution is about 800 to 1800 less damage you deal each second.
Any parried Repel Blasphemy is 30s of barely any defense, saving M1.
Any parried KD can allow your target to flee away.

With at least 10% parry strikethrough, you cut off from 25 to 50% of you opponents resistances to your attacks, wich is huge.
You dont have to worry about positioning too much (of course, hitting from behind always helps).
You got maximum dps against everyone facetanking you.
You can engage tanks and mdps knowing you will probably kill them before they kill you.
You maximize the odds for your defensive and critical tools (Dragon Gun, Repel Blasphemy, Abolution) to land.
Always try to have 10% parry Strikethrough, at minima. Maximum you can achieve is 18% (with both Triumphant Hat and switching one talisman for the 2% special Bastion Stairs one - Unique one though), effectively negating all renown into parry.

(Note that with Sovereign +2 masteries, you also get to spec both Dragon Gun AND Pistol Whip, if you reaaaally feel the need for 2 kd skills - I personnaly don't :p.)

Gameplay :
1. Build one accusation with Torment (or Fervor), or open with burn armor
2. Absolution
3. While Flowing Accusations procs, spam Absolution. Charge 1 accusation again if needed to relaunch the engine.
4. After 5-10s of combat, kd with Dragon gun.
5. Right before your target goes up, use either Repel Blasphemy (if against a melee class), or keep spamming Absolution.
6. Use Dragon Gun on cd, M1 when needed (against mdps like WE and choppas)

The goal is to always have high damage output, and be able to chain absolution multiple times, wich will crit at least 50% ot the time against most opponents for about 1k-1k5 + 400 spirit every second ; if you manage to get that, your pressure will be enough to kill in less than 10s, at worst scare a though opponent and making them make mistakes and/or flee.
Flowing accusations will maximize your dps AND ensure you a 100% uptime on your armor pen. tactic, effectively making you ignore 75% armor on all your attacks. Whereas Seal of Destruction will only do that 7s over 60, and putting the 2 other relics into cd as well).
You also get a good "semi-ranged" dps wich can still continue to attack from 30ft away, very useful against kiting foes. You can also use the 2s vanish to launch Burn Armor and recharge your accusations, when not able to reach your target.
Also, the Dragon Gun provides you a nice ranged kd every 10s, wich can be used to catch kiters, or neutralize one more enemy ; with some skill you can kd one target, stagger another, before hitting your main target, potentially allowing you to go 1 vs 3 (see video from Gagucmka to see what I mean).

Bullets :
Generally use AP drain bullets against everyone, saving DoK and Shaman where you want Heal Debuff (Use Dragon Gun with heal debuff when 2-3 healers are stacked to debuff them all).
I got to the conclusion AP drain is very strong if you manage to chain your accusations, since draining 20 AP per second is cancelling the natural AP regen (and making it the strongest AP drain of the game).
A healer that cannot cast healing skills is effectively 100% heal debuffed.
Against zealot its very effective, against shaman its limited by their AP drain skill (that wont make it up for your drain, however), and even less effective against healing DoKs (they use their career ressources, you wil only annoy them when they run out and want to convert AP into SE).
Plus, you wont' have to bother about running out of AP, and effectively counter most AP drains on you, while keeping max DPS running (8 points in right tree is about 400 spirit damage on AP bullet, very close to the 430 on the Init one).
Finally, any finisher with 2 accusations will cost 21 AP, thus making them 1 AP cost on hit as often Flowing Accusations is proccing.

Use Init debuff while running Sanctified Bullets, against warbands, or when you want to maximize your critical hits (-80 init is 5-10% more crit on target, not to be neglected).

Advices :
- Always have Shroud of Magnus ready when casters are around. Prefer it to Sanctified Oil, since it can allow you to Incognito under magic fire.
- Fervor got a slightly lesser initial hit than Torment, but the spirit component is good (effectively increasing your dps by hitting against ~40% mitigation max), and it serves well as an accusation builder, since you can stack it 3x. This way you will always have a DoT running, and ticks can crit very high (up to 1k) when stacked trice. I routinely got kills on low health escaping targets with that simple DoT.
Also, and it's important as well, its our only Ailment outside of openers/finishers, wich mean you can open with Fervor to apply Seeker's Blade debuff (you cant do that with Torment).
- Use Torment against tanks only (under Feinted Positioning), but as Flowing accusation can get you many finishers spam, you wont' be able to Spam Torment anyway.
- Avoid using Trial by Pain since you want to get Absolution x3 in the same timeframe, while TbP will cancel your AA for 3 seconds, can be interrupted, and have to be fully applied to benefit from the 2nd bullet proc. Absolution x3 will not happens all the time, but you get better dps with 2 absolution and one torment/fervor in the same 3s, while being not interruptible and keeping your AA in bonus.
- Beware of bumps by casters, where your disrupt will be checked against : prevent it with Shroud of Magnus preventively (when caster is mid-life generally).
- Always preserve your antiroot/antisnare to cast at the right time ; otherwise you loose your target most of the time.
- Be careful about Magus landmines ; you cannot avoid them (yes, even with Shroud of Magnus :/)
- Never forget to detaunt nearby targets right after a Dragon Gun.
- Declare Anathema (auto-bump) ignores collisions ; use it to gain positional safety, when funneling for instance.

[abezverkhiy]

Wow, wow, wow! Thank you for your contribution guys.

I think I was wrong about Fervor in my guide, currently testing it and it looks sort of alright but I was to run it a few more days before making any conclusions.

If you put me on your friend list I will be happy to make WH-only party with you (subject not being summoned by my guild).

[Phantasm]

Thanks for great guides. Everyone can take something from it. Ill tweak my Mara cause I tend to lose most of fights against WHs, although Im only rr 68.