Return of Reckoning

Intro - About the Author
Hello witch hunters. First of allow me to introduce myself. 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. Right now I am leveling my WH (Tormore) again but this time I do not progress that fast as I also play WP (Steelgrizzly) and Engi (Glenturret). Plus, I have too many other commitments as I am approaching 38th level in real life.


Intro - Why I Do This
I read 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 playstyle that would be easy to read and understand. By no means I ever aimed to be "the best WH on server" but I have always been a big fan of theorycrafting and documented synergies and hidden secrets at all times.

Part 1.1 - Assassin Playstyle
I played WH as a fool until I met another WH who changed my approach entirely. So if Nezka from Badlands ever reads this - thanks a lot mate. You made this work happen.

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. From that moment you begin to get yourself into trouble, remember that your DPS will be zero if you die. And never run like Rickon Stark, move more like a snake, attempt to cut line of sight.

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?

Part 1.2 - Stay Undetected
Good thing about WaR/RoR is that you are able to hide yourself even when Incognito is off.

First of, 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 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.

Part 1.4 - Reliance on 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. Remember that.

Next, you are not top priority for them. Priorities are beloved themselves, tanks, other healers, and only then 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 most squishy of all melees and you are the most hated of all them. 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 for 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 gear with health regeneration and you can get health regeneration by spending renown points. If you buy all regeneration perks with renown you get 72 health regenerated every 4 seconds. Weapons with regeneration give you similar amount and another regeneration bonus comes with armor. In the end you can get like 220 health regenerated every 4 seconds. 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.

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 [Edit: there are only 2 procs, thanks] times with Trial By Pain. Both finishers can be good sources of healing. DoT finishers proc bullets only once on initial hit. I suggest you keep BoP and confession ones on your most active hotbar and switch them depending on the situation. But try to have proper bullets selected before the fight - switching bullets requires global cooldown. Incognito does allow switching bullets. [EDIT: it does allow now, thanks]

In the end of the day the more methods of health replenishing you utilize the better you feel on the battlefield.

Part 1.6 - Key Binds
Since I slightly touched key binds in the above paragraph I continue this topic. This is probably awkward to mention key binds before discussing builds and gear but believe me - key binds are crucial.

Those of you who mastered skill of moving you character 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 did work out - I found a way to bind skills effectively while moving with my mouse. To do that 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 you 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,a,s,d,x, space for most wanted abilities,
`,4,r,f,z 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. I cannot recall any guide that covers these with needed attention.

Now we move to discussion about main source of profit from WH - damage. I will skip basic formulas and look a bit deeper.

Part 2.1 - Revisiting Damage Formula
During 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 at times makes your damage effectively irrelevant unless you can ignore target's armor and we have Torment that does the job. You can look at the formula parts as A, B, and C are stable predictable 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 2.2 - 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 damage
- armor of other melees like offensive 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. By saying "Offensive" I mean offensive set of armor like Sovereign Offensive Set.
As tank classes are popular we end up fighting many enemies with very high damage resistance which in turn makes armor ignore attribute very important.

Part 2.3 - Impact of Mitigation on Build
Normally our attacks ignore 20-30% of armor, that is what we have from our attributes. With this in mind Seal of Destruction and Seeker's Triumph become a bit unneeded - they set certain attacks armor ignore value at 50%, they do not add 50% to original values. What really does help 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 25%-30% of extra output if you max out Judgement tree. This is good of course but this is not something that makes the rain - buy yourself a pair of better weapons and you do the same to your damage output or even more because good weapons add to all attacks not just Judgement tree ones. 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.
Therefore abandon the misperception that Judgement is a must. Yes, it does make Torment stronger but not much-much-much stronger. Instead, look at three witch hunter trees as a source of new abilities that would improve your quality of life as a witch hunter.

Done with damage. Moving to abilities discussion. I am not going to copy/paste descriptions but focus on own experiences.

Part 3.1 - Abilities from Trees
Again I start from the end. I want to talk about abilities from trees first and general abilities will be reviewed after.

Like I said previously each point adds about 3-3.5% to tooltip values of accusation generators. For attacks from stealth and bullets it is higher - more like 5%. This is empiric observation, I do not know exact formula. And since such increment is not too material I would not think that spending 13 or 9 points makes much difference unless you take specific traits and abilities from these trees. Therefore I want to repeat once again - do not simply max out for a sake of maxing out. Decide what skills you want to get and go for them. Let's take a closer look on what's in the store:

4th level morale - I would say NO to all of them. They are used very seldom, require long time to accumulate morale points, have long cooldowns. There is only 1 morale that can turn the tables in a big fight, Confession morale, but it has a lower level substitute that comes for free but 25% weaker. Inquisition morale is just too expensive for points spent on it - you can keep 75% healing debuff on your target constantly without any morale. Judgement morale offers DoT that can be cleansed and AoE snare is not important - snares are widely used by many classes, there is no shortage of them.

Finishers - all three are good, hands down. Confession one is good for big fights and makes self-healing easier - every hit of Bullets of Purity heals you, the more the better. Inquisition finisher is excellent for dueling melees. It degrades their strength (read dps), weapon skill (read dps and parry) and toughness (read improves your dps). Judgement finisher is good against mobile enemies although a bit overrated as takes long time and can be cleansed. All three have sexy damage figures.

Combo-generators - again, all three are good - antimelee, antiheal, and stun. I would be glad to have them all.

But there is one thing to remember - every time you cc your prey (disarm, stun, knock down etc) she receives anti-cc buff which effectively means that too much of cc becomes an overkill. If you fight a melee then disarming her is nearly the same as stunning her except for freedom of movement. If you fight a caster then silencing her is pretty much the same as stunning her with the exception she can still move. No big deal, we can snare with Snap Shot.

So I would certainly go for Punish The False but I would not suggest going for both Repel Blasphemy and Pistol Whip. By taking PTF and one of RB/PW you will have good chances fighting ultimately every class.

Buffing abilities from trees - there are good and bad ones. Disrupt buff is very useful and can be paired with vindication trait. Together with Silence The Heretic it gives whole 10 seconds of immunity when fighting a caster. Next, armor ignore buff is also good when unloading damage, especially against stronger armor. However do not overrate it. I played with numbers and came to further conclusion - in simple words SoD degrades prey's armor one degree lower, 50% debuff turns tank's defenses into offensive heavy armor for 7 seconds, offensive heavy armor becomes light armor, and light armor becomes... Well who cares, SoD is not intended for light armor. This is very simplistic explanation, of course, but I show that your prey will not become made of glass during these 7 seconds. See for yourself if you need SoD. I would go for it to use with something strong hitting like 5 accusation BaL. And lastly, - damaging buff is not what WH is looking for - WH should not take damage as such.

Trait for crits is excellent. Other traits are either situational or just bad. I personally like Bullets of Purity and Razor Strike traits in Confession tree because I always lean towards more defensive type of WH and WH who takes part in big fights not duels.

Part 3.2 - Other Abilities
I do not want to be a copy/paster of obvious things about accusation generators so I spare you of discussions about Razor Strike, Fervor, and Torment. I will make very brief remarks - (1) use Razor Strike only if traited and in big fights, and (2) forget about Fervor - apart from being slow its DoT component is a debuff, thus it can be dispelled.
Speaking of basic finishers there is important thing to mention - some WHs dislike Trial by Pain and this misperception was quite popular during WAR times. Well... It hits stronger than Absolution, and in fact if you let it run through its full duration it will cause damage similar to Burn Heretic! with the difference that TbP does it faster then BH. Which is of course a good thing. Plus, TbP triggers bullets more than once (up to 2 times). Plus, BH is a debuff that can be removed which puts it in a disadvantage comparing with TbP. On the other side TbP requires you to stop running (you can still turn or Declare Anathema) whereas BH does not. I like to open from stealth, use BH immediately to put initial pressure on my prey and then I start building 5 accusations and unload damage with TbP or Absolution.
Another three abilities I have not mentioned yet. They are Snap Shot, Declare Anathema and Sever Blessing. Snap Shot is a very important ability because it is our range snare. I keep it key bound next to Torment. Declare Anathema is our escape ability. Especially, if some blasted Marauder (and not only Marauder) makes a pull. Learn to recognize the moment you are been pulled, it is not difficult, and hit DA before they begin tear you apart. Using Sever Blessing can remove a very important buff from enemies and make them significantly weaker. Use SB whenever it is usable.

Part 3.3 - Traits and Morales.
I want to leave it to you fellow WHs to define what would be the best for you. There are too few slots and too many great things to choose from so you can pick the best ones that fit your playstyle.

Part 4.1 - Stats
There are two primary attributes every WH wants - strength and wounds. One makes you hit harder, the other keeps you alive. Other than these two there are others that you should always consider. But first of all you need to choose if you want to be defensive or offensive WH. Do not be a little bit of both - you can't be half pregnant. I personally always lean towards defensive type of play. It is more forgiving, you can afford making one or two mistakes extra and avoid graveyard.

You can pick attributes with renown but you need to do it wisely. The problem with renown points is that some additional attributes come at higher cost once you go for second, third, or fourth level of them, say melee crit or parry. So before spending points I suggest you to work out the cost of each level and decide which way you want to go. Open renown calculator, pick abilities that you are interested in and calculate how much of them you are going to get on first purchase, second purchase etc. I suggest not to go for abilities where costs grow. Personally I always choose health regen and take first levels of parry, dodge, disrupt. I leave this analysis to you as there are million of combinations. All I want to say is consider rising costs.

And lastly, when going defensive pick attributes that help to avoid damage (like parry) and avoid attributes that diminish damage (like toughness). The point here is that diminishing stats won't be a great help because you are still going to take a lot of damage if hit. Better go for those that help you to avoid being hit as such.

Last Words
Alright. I think I offered some help. I will end this work here. For now.

Finally! A WH guide that is comprehensive! Great job mate!

I like your style man. Although I play only WE it's good stuff to read.

One mistake: You can change bullet's /kisses during stealth (one of recent changes)

Great guide! Thanks for posting.

One thing I want to mention: it seems in RoR - although you see on the screen the message that you cant change bullets in Incognito - you actually can.

Thanks mate wh was missing a complete guide thanks.

Wish I had this before 40

Thanks for comments on bullets. You are right.

Dont rely anyone else but yourself.Play it and try to understand why you died or what would happen if you haven followed another tactic.WH can be only understood by playing more and more.Know your strenghts and the enemies.

NOW GO AND BURN SOME HERETICS.

And for renown go crit all the way and add strenght and parry.You want to kiill something asap.Wounds wont save you.

OK, here come Additions and Corrections.

Firstly, thank you for your words of gratitude. I was a bit worried as English is not my mother tongue and writing something massive using a foreign medium is always a bit of a challenge. Now on to the changes and additions.

Part 5.1 - Changes to main guide
I would like to add a couple of changes to main part. First of them is about bullets. We discussed it above, they can be switched in stealth. Second change is about Trial by Pain. I was wrong saying that you had to stay still while using it. You can use it on the run, important is to continue running. Or do not start running immediately after the activation. Starting/ending movement during channeling is meant to be "loss of concentration" apart from other obvious things like being stunned, knocked down or killed.

And since I touched bullets and finishers I will to add a few words about them.

Part 5.2 - More on bullets
As I progress leveling my WH (Tormore) I continue recording effects of leveling on abilities. As mentioned previously, each mastery point adds about 5% to bullets tooltip damage value. This proves to be true with every new level, although % values vary slightly but I never intended to work out formula precisely.

Quick facts - investing 9 mastery points will add 50% to tooltip damage, spending 13 points makes them 75% stronger. These are very respectable numbers because bullet damage is not physical and it really hurts hardened tanks in case their Spirit resistance is not high enough. So hit them often with bullets. Sometimes I see combat log saying that bullets add as much as 70% to initial damage of 5 accusations finisher. And they can heal too, so in critical situations spam finishers to stay alive. Flowing Accusations trait becomes very important when your bullets can heal.

So main message here - bullets are not an slight addition to damage. Bullets are the damage. At time (when heal procs) bullets are the cure. Bullets are the game changer in my opinion.

Part 5.3 - More on finishers
And that's why I fell in love with Trial by Pain. It procs bullets up to 2 times and its raw damage is much stronger than Absolution's. Even when comparing trained Abso versus untrained TbP. Also, damage of Burn Heretic! is comparable with TbP before you start spending mastery points on either but BH! triggers bullets only once. As a result, untrained TbP vs trained BH! may still produce same total damage figures thanks to multiple bullet procs. Being loud (bad during keep sneak in runs) and channeled over time are the only two weaknesses I can think of. But I think I am becoming too demanding. In some cases TbP can be a loss to DPS too - better put initial pressure with BH! and then unload TbP, especially good on running enemies.

Part 5.4 - More on Sever Blessing
There are 5 classes of Destruction that can apply blessings - BO, BG, DoK, Mara, and Zealot. Stay alert when fighting any of them. However many (if not all) of blessings can affect other allies. Some as direct casts, others as AoE casts. Therefore, stay alert in every fight. Many of blessings have no cooldown at all. Many of them are powerful defensive spells.

Once again - SB is very important and extremely useful. Do not overlook it.

Part 5.5 - More on Stats
Now when we can respec renown for free (do not know if that's intentional or not) we can try different combinations of stats without taking financial damage.

By looking at numbers it is easy to understand that buying raw stats with renown is not wise - how can one think that buying 4 Wounds for 1 renown point is better than buying 3% parry for the same price? In my opinion buying raw stats is a "no go".

Next set of no-go's is coming with (unfortunately) Actives. Many of them are too expensive to justify the costs. It is your decision but I can't convince myself to commit 30 points to get upgraded Resolution Defenses for instance. It has questionable use as you get 30 sec anti-CC buff for free after any CC imposed on you. I'd rather spend 30 points on Futile Strikes to reduce chance to be crit by 15%. Even Cleansing Wind is a question mark as it can be replaced with Shroud of Magnus that has much shorter cooldown and Deft Defender which is a permanent thing.

My take would be: 3 levels of Reflexes, Deft Defender, Futile Strikes. These cost 50 points and improve basic defenses - parry, dodge, disrupt by 12% each and anticrit% by 15%. Not a bad deal, you will resist approx 1 out of 3 attacks be they melee, ranged or magic and crits on you will become history except for cases when enemy ability is a 100% crit or alike. Another half of your renown you will invest according to your preferences - melee crit, life regen or buy further defenses or Cleansing Wind. But apart from that I do not recommend anything.

I have to disagree with you on a couple of your points there:

- Trial By Pain is definitely one of the worst abilities WH has. Keep in mind it only procs bullet damage twice. I'm not convinced that a fully confession specced TbP would be worth it over any other finisher because of the drawbacks you outline: any kind of CC interrupts it, including indefensible interrupts (Taunt for example), the fact that you cannot autoattack or use other abilities while channeling it thus losing damage and the inherently low damage for the channel duration. Should definitely not be on your action bars.

- That being said, I haven't had any issues with channeling TbP. Running around or not, short of jumping, hitting ESC, running out of AP (unlikely, the whole channel costs 36 AP with 1 acc point) or getting it interrupted by an enemy the channel always finishes. It even continues casting if I turn my back on the enemy! I don't think the warnings about interrupting with movement are warranted. Or maybe I misunderstood you.

- In T4 bullets themselves pale in damage in comparison to your finishers. You are incapable of debuffing spirit resistance so your bullet damage will have a steep drop-off when you find Destro are running 600+ spirit res, usually more with a Chosen around. I agree they are great in lower tiers but finishers become much more valuable once you start stacking some STR since bullet damage is static. Yes bullets help with your spike damage but they are not the damage.

- Renown speccing is very subjective (outside of stat weighs). Most people will agree that getting raw stats in renown is not the best value, but I disagree with Resolute Defense and Cleansing Wind not being worth it. They provide utility that cannot be measured with raw stats, utility that cannot be found elsewhere and are therefore very useful. Granted they lose some value if you regularly play in a well-composed group, as other careers can cover some of that utility and the sheer fact that group combat is vastly different in pace and general strategy gives cause to argue against RD and CW being useful. But speccing Deft Defender and running something like 25% disrupt is not the same as having an on-demand cleanse (+ heal), in addition Shroud of Magnus doesn't cleanse effects already on you so they're not exactly interchangable. But I would agree that CW has the least value for WH's/WE's of all the careers. RD however, is indispensable and will be needed and used if you plan on doing any kind of solo play. In fact, RD has insane value on a career that is already almost completely self-reliant and will allow you to be the de-facto 1v1 counter to any other career.

- But yeah, I agree that %parry and %dodge+disrupt (the latter especially) are very valuable if you choose to go that route. Keep in mind though that spending all that renown on defensive stats will give you just that, defensive power, you forego some available offensive power when you do that. But I don't get your math, 12% dodge+disrupt+parry only equals 33% avoidance (1 in 3 attacks) if you are facing the exactly proportionate mix of damage types and even then they'd need to have the same damage values (they never do) to be of equal value. Because of how mandatory tanks are there's more melee damage floating about but at the same time parrying tank damage isn't nearly as impactful as disrupting Sorc/Magus spells, however with the amount of melee trains running around and the impending melee DoK changes, parry is (will be) very valuable but costs more. Either way it's not nearly as clear-cut as you make it out to be, just stacking avoidance without forethought won't give you good results.

- Also with 15% less chance to be crit mostly negates your default chance to be crit, which is usually around 12-14%, so anyone running around with 10% crit (pretty normal for a DPS) will still be critting you over 8% of the time and that's neglecting all the crit buffs, crit chance increase debuffs and Sorcs.

(Oh and I just assumed that when talking about renown specs we're talking about the current state of the game, where most people are under RR60 so 60 renown points is a luxury and won't get you very far past your outlined initial 50 renown point investment.)