[WH] Getting Good

[3rdworldofficer]

Hey all,
I'm slowly getting to RR 40, right now at 35. As I'm getting there, I feel like I should be doing more in a warband or just holding my own. I know WH is a touch bit underperforming at the moment, at least in large scale fights, but I feel like I'm not reaching my full potential. I am also wondering, how much is it due to gear, abilities, and the like, versus just pure player skill? I'd like to know a rough average ratio.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, do I need better gear, or am I just bad at the game?

[SJHarrison4115]

Hey there, I'm pretty much in your shoes now, having just hit 40 last night (RR 46). So not the most experienced WH out there, but I've learned a lot and you might've seen my various forum discussions concerning the career recently.

So to begin with, I'm gonna say outright I don't think you should consider yourself "Bad at the game." I think you've just got to consider what the Career provides you in it's toolkit and make the decision to embrace that, or potentially look at another career pathway.

Gear will always play a role in any capacity, especially on a gear-hungry class like WH. However, concerning what appears to be your main 'pain-point'— Warband Gameplay, gear (whilst a contributing factor) is not the issue.

The issue is that the WH career really is not well designed for Warband play in the same essence as other mDPS careers. They're far too squishy to sustain in the AOE barrage of Blob V Blob combat.

WH's will feel impactful and find their place in small group roaming and solo play. I would highly recommend finding a guild that routinely roams with 6-12 man parties.

However, if you DO want to TRY and make WH workable in a blob, there are some things you can do. Firstly, I would recommend understanding your target prioritisation. Pretty commonly your rDPS will just about finish a target, only for them to fall back into the relative safety of the blob.

If you're well positioned and can time it right, you can sweep in and confirm that kill. This is risky as you then have to escape as well (Sigil of Sigmar + Oil are your besties here).

Otherwise you can hit the folks in the back of the blob. Typically I've found there's usually an enemy rDPS or Healer that's gone semi-afk at the rear of the blob with a false sense of security. I can often scratch them out and disappear before their team notices.

Lastly- you can try to embrace an AOE WH and pray you've got a guard whilst making judicious use of your detaunt. This means obtaining the AOE abilites and Morale Dumping with Dragon Gun.

Could look a lil' something like this → AOE WH Build

Basically your choice of Sweeping Razor and Jagged Edge is to try and leverage the 3 target maximum from Razor Sweep + SR to have as much output as possible. Combining that with Blessed Blade (from Dragon Gun) to load your Morale to engage Reversal of Fortune / Broad Sweeps.

That's all from me, I think probably @Gersy or @Zxul might have some better advice for you.

[SJHarrison4115]

@3rdworldofficer, sorry for the back-to-back reply, but can you further define your gear set-up, build and desired content? This would assist myself in others in assessing your situation and providing you with guidance.

[gersy]

hi, i can try to help

first of all, i would not consider yourself bad as long as you have the desire to learn and improve. you are only bad if you become set in your ways and are not open to improvement.

that said, this game is incredibly deep on a knowledge level and many players are generally rather low on that scale. this is not always due to a fault of their own, but rather lack of good information flow in the community (no portal website, lack of updated guides, constant spreading of misinformation and some people who just refusing to learn/accept advice).

WH is a class with a much higher skill floor and ceiling than many others. this is due to its design and lack of proper tuning comparatively to other classes. it lacks a lot of ease of accessibility compared to others which can simply go an aoe build and spam untargeted aoe with a 24 target cap and reach 80-90% effectiveness level in most forms of combat. instead it excels at single target damage, utility and CC. this design causes it to have less and less impact as the number of players in a given situation increases and makes it undesirable for warband play which is largely "blobbing" in the current meta. any open world engagement consisting of more than 12-18 players and your viability falls off a cliff.

it performs particularly well in small scale circumstances like scenarios, city siege, solo/duo/trio ganking, 6man roaming, etc. especially when using voice comms, playing with proper assist and/or a solid party composition.

as for gear vs player skill, for most classes (WH included) if you are vanquisher/60rr or pve set equivalent (sentinel, vale-walker, bloodlord, onslaught, etc.) you are at a solid enough spot where you can reliably look towards skill/personal gameplay to be the fault in many losing situations.

currently, you're well under that gear level and renown and have a bit to go before you get there. the early 40 experience is really rough and not super friendly. i'd focus on getting your redeye/sentinel/bloodlord sets finished from dungeons (gunbad, crypts, bastion stairs respectively.). these sets have no renown requirement to equip so you can boost your power and stats substantially from where you are currently sitting without even touching pvp.

for example vs your current sword the bloodlord longsword (obtained via 2 bastion stairs clears) would be roughly 10% damage increase. having that and a full sentinel set likely 20 damage increase from all the strength, crit, weapon skill, weapon damage, etc. not to mention a ton of extra wounds to help survivability. having 60rr to make a proper mastery/renown points build on top of that? you'd be likely twice as more effective combining damage and survivability increase than you are currently.

it's an old school mmo after all, so there is a lot of power progression in play between gear, extra mastery points and renown points. there's a large amount of gear power creep in the game unfortunately and WH is quite gear dependent due to design (very crit hungry due to fanatical cleansing tactic, light armor class so having more wounds from better gear to survive endless aoe spam, no self buffs that increase durability such as resistances, etc.)

my advice would be to keep chugging along. try not to get discouraged by death and keep trying to improve. learn more about your class and other classes. do some pve if you can to earn some better gear that doesn't have RR requirements (some of it is even BiS at max RR like bloodlord longsword and sentinel helm/boots/ring so it will last you forever). finding a helpful guild can also be a great boon in this game. my guide has some gear set options for all renown levels if you want to check those out to see what mixes you can look to get now or in the future. imo dungeon route is best for now (gunbad -> crypts -> bastion stairs). or you can grind crest and RR and just buy conq/vanq if you hate it cannot do dungeons. take vanq/sent tier of gear then see where your power level is at that point before assessing further.

hope this helps and wasn't too much to read. i’m always happy to offer help via advice or answering questions to feel free to message me any time. gl and hf on the field.

[3rdworldofficer]

@3rdworldofficer, sorry for the back-to-back reply, but can you further define your gear set-up, build and desired content? This would assist myself in others in assessing your situation and providing you with guidance.

Sure! I'm currently using the Ruin set, with some influence rewards as weapons. Most of them are fitted with wounds talismans, though I am aware I should be using strength talismans instead. My build is definitely not meta, it's a kinda crit/parry build, mostly specced into Confession up to Dragon Gun. I also have Confess! with the Full Confession tactic, which may be a reason why I'm not doing as good as I could be.

As for desired content, still trying to get into warband play, though since you brought up small groups, I'll check that out as well. Currently not in any guild.

[SJHarrison4115]

Hey @3rdworldofficer, thanks for getting back to me.

I really, really don't want this to come across rude, but after some deliberation, there is no other way to say this with the right potency without being a little bit rude.

After what you've described, I'm not surprised. Sorry.

Sadly, Ruin whilst filling an important Ward slot, is just really, really garbage for us. Especially when we want to level by PVP. You can struggle through with Ruin till you hit 40 and at this stage, I'm just gonna say keep sending it.

I probably would've gone from Mayhem (PVE/PQ Set for Ward) straight to spending the few crests for Annihilator. (In fact, I did.) This is due to the much covetted Melee Crit.

Regardless, at this point- you should definitey just continue with Ruin. However! Sadly, the Parry build doesn't really work out these days, not after the changes to Riposte.

Gear later on, along with Renown perks, can net you high parry (40%~ there abouts).

Really, your choice of build revolves around Dragon Gun or Burn Away Lies. Dragon Gun I found to just not give enough "Oompf"... definitely there was a boost in durability... but yeah, nah, the kill potential just wasn't there.

Going Burn Away Lies with your Pistol Whip will net you a much better experience. Sadly, Warbands really aren't for us, as both Gersy and I have described earlier.

Stick to Small man (6-12 man roam) and Scenarios for the best experience. Hit 40 and then smash out the PVE grind till Bloodlord.

Best of luck and happy hunting my friend!

[Zxul]

On the side note, a reminder that ann/merc, conq/domi, and vanq/oppr boots/ gloves are boe, so you can get those off ah without wasting crests. Pair them with belt of the same set- the cheapest part, and with some pve set for other spots- beastlord, sent, bloodlord, whatever fits, and on a lot of classes you end up with a very competitive setup.

[Paxsanarion]

hi, i can try to help

first of all, i would not consider yourself bad as long as you have the desire to learn and improve. you are only bad if you become set in your ways and are not open to improvement.

that said, this game is incredibly deep on a knowledge level and many players are generally rather low on that scale. this is not always due to a fault of their own, but rather lack of good information flow in the community (no portal website, lack of updated guides, constant spreading of misinformation and some people who just refusing to learn/accept advice).

WH is a class with a much higher skill floor and ceiling than many others. this is due to its design and lack of proper tuning comparatively to other classes. it lacks a lot of ease of accessibility compared to others which can simply go an aoe build and spam untargeted aoe with a 24 target cap and reach 80-90% effectiveness level in most forms of combat. instead it excels at single target damage, utility and CC. this design causes it to have less and less impact as the number of players in a given situation increases and makes it undesirable for warband play which is largely "blobbing" in the current meta. any open world engagement consisting of more than 12-18 players and your viability falls off a cliff.

it performs particularly well in small scale circumstances like scenarios, city siege, solo/duo/trio ganking, 6man roaming, etc. especially when using voice comms, playing with proper assist and/or a solid party composition.

as for gear vs player skill, for most classes (WH included) if you are vanquisher/60rr or pve set equivalent (sentinel, vale-walker, bloodlord, onslaught, etc.) you are at a solid enough spot where you can reliably look towards skill/personal gameplay to be the fault in many losing situations.

currently, you're well under that gear level and renown and have a bit to go before you get there. the early 40 experience is really rough and not super friendly. i'd focus on getting your redeye/sentinel/bloodlord sets finished from dungeons (gunbad, crypts, bastion stairs respectively.). these sets have no renown requirement to equip so you can boost your power and stats substantially from where you are currently sitting without even touching pvp.

for example vs your current sword the bloodlord longsword (obtained via 2 bastion stairs clears) would be roughly 10% damage increase. having that and a full sentinel set likely 20 damage increase from all the strength, crit, weapon skill, weapon damage, etc. not to mention a ton of extra wounds to help survivability. having 60rr to make a proper mastery/renown points build on top of that? you'd be likely twice as more effective combining damage and survivability increase than you are currently.

it's an old school mmo after all, so there is a lot of power progression in play between gear, extra mastery points and renown points. there's a large amount of gear power creep in the game unfortunately and WH is quite gear dependent due to design (very crit hungry due to fanatical cleansing tactic, light armor class so having more wounds from better gear to survive endless aoe spam, no self buffs that increase durability such as resistances, etc.)

my advice would be to keep chugging along. try not to get discouraged by death and keep trying to improve. learn more about your class and other classes. do some pve if you can to earn some better gear that doesn't have RR requirements (some of it is even BiS at max RR like bloodlord longsword and sentinel helm/boots/ring so it will last you forever). finding a helpful guild can also be a great boon in this game. my guide has some gear set options for all renown levels if you want to check those out to see what mixes you can look to get now or in the future. imo dungeon route is best for now (gunbad -> crypts -> bastion stairs). or you can grind crest and RR and just buy conq/vanq if you hate it cannot do dungeons. take vanq/sent tier of gear then see where your power level is at that point before assessing further.

hope this helps and wasn't too much to read. i’m always happy to offer help via advice or answering questions to feel free to message me any time. gl and hf on the field.

You are a good person Gersy.....thank you for always being so helpful Is your WH guide current? I am still hunting for the best general WB/PuG...and or solo build. Has Dragon Gun fallen out of favor since its nerf?

[gersy]

You are a good person Gersy.....thank you for always being so helpful Is your WH guide current? I am still hunting for the best general WB/PuG...and or solo build. Has Dragon Gun fallen out of favor since its nerf?

Thank you for the kind words, I do like to help. Yes, my guide is fully current and will be maintained indefinitely. It has just been published publicly recently. It has information regarding all types of builds for wb/pug or anything else. The go-to for warbands would still be Dragon Gun indeed.

[3rdworldofficer]

Hey @3rdworldofficer, thanks for getting back to me.

I really, really don't want this to come across rude, but after some deliberation, there is no other way to say this with the right potency without being a little bit rude.

After what you've described, I'm not surprised. Sorry.

Sadly, Ruin whilst filling an important Ward slot, is just really, really garbage for us. Especially when we want to level by PVP. You can struggle through with Ruin till you hit 40 and at this stage, I'm just gonna say keep sending it.

I probably would've gone from Mayhem (PVE/PQ Set for Ward) straight to spending the few crests for Annihilator. (In fact, I did.) This is due to the much covetted Melee Crit.

Regardless, at this point- you should definitey just continue with Ruin. However! Sadly, the Parry build doesn't really work out these days, not after the changes to Riposte.

Gear later on, along with Renown perks, can net you high parry (40%~ there abouts).

Really, your choice of build revolves around Dragon Gun or Burn Away Lies. Dragon Gun I found to just not give enough "Oompf"... definitely there was a boost in durability... but yeah, nah, the kill potential just wasn't there.

Going Burn Away Lies with your Pistol Whip will net you a much better experience. Sadly, Warbands really aren't for us, as both Gersy and I have described earlier.

Stick to Small man (6-12 man roam) and Scenarios for the best experience. Hit 40 and then smash out the PVE grind till Bloodlord.

Best of luck and happy hunting my friend!

Oh, I am very much aware that Ruin is not a good set. I'm planning on graduating to Annihilator as soon as I hit RR 40. As for using BAL and Pistol Whip, I'm not sure that I'm particularly good at using positional attacks, even with Feinted Positioning. I use DG simply because I may have some use in a given group with morale pump, plus I can hand out the bullet debuffs to more targets. Sorry if that sounds strange, but I will consider at least looking at BAL and Pistol Whip, and looking for 6/12 man groups and guilds.