Return of Reckoning

Hello guys,

This is my 3rd edition of WH guide. Previous versions:
Year 2017 viewtopic.php?t=19492
Year 2021 viewtopic.php?t=46354

Intro – about me
I play WH since the day 1 in 2008. This is my favorite class in all RPGs. I am not the best WH and never aimed to be the one but I know this class very well so I want to share my knowledge. If you have you own little hints and tricks – share them here. I would appreciate a civilized discussion and appreciate if you also disclose the names of your WH’s/WE’s when making your comments.

Part 1.1 - Assassin Playstyle
Coming from WoW originally I had difficulties adopting WH playstyle. The problem was in a different gravity - ROR pushes you to use terrain and to be careful with your timing. This was not the case in WoW when a rogue did not have to bother about time limit on stealth and did not look for hideouts to wait for cooldown to wear off.
The playstyle is 'hit and run'. Ambush, do your job fast and vanish. Many of us do a common mistake – overextend. Don't. Every moment after you leave Incognito your level of abruptness diminishes. You need to learn to retreat the moment you lose the upper hand. Your DPS is zero when you are dead.
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? 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 - 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.

Part 1.2 - Stay Undetected
Good thing about RoR is that you are able to hide even when Incognito is on a cooldown.
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 very hard. Luckily, we can do it in Warhammer. ROR terrain offers lots of hideouts. They are virtually everywhere - inside houses, broken walls, behind statues, rocks, trees, bushes. Just spend time roaming every zone when there is no RVR a look for places to ambush from – you will be surprised how many options are available.
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. Look around - if there is no way to retreat, then do not engage. Too many enemies – wait a sec, re-evaluate. 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. Unfortunately, it lost a charging property but there are other ways to speed up.

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 better be in the same party.
Second, do not run off too far - more powerful heals tend to have shorter ranges or longer casts.
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
What we can:
We can drop two health pots simultaneously - crafted potions and RVR potion do not share same cooldown.
Also, absorb potions. Look at them as they are your temporary hit points.
We can get heals from traited bullets. Bullets hit up to 2 times with Trial By Pain. AOE finishers trigger bullets only once. BaL procs bullets only once on initial hit. You can switch bullets while in Incognito.
We can obtain regen items 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, pocket item gives 80, there are regenerating rings dropping from KV mini-boss (…of Fleshrender) each giving and 40 of regen. The famous blue chest Grim…whatever gives you 180, Warlord chest gives 80, LV chest gives 60. So, you can get up to 500 of passive regen , and maybe I missed something else. This is roughly 6% of health regenerated every 4 seconds. What’s the trade off? It is huge in my opinion – blue chest/rings have very average stats, weapons are not too hot either and spending 45 renown points on regen is a stupid luxury.
But if you decide so, you can go Incognito to replenish your health. And if you drink a HoT potion you will help even more. Also, HoT regeneration helps to counter DoTs on you.
What we cannot:
There is plenty of talk about regen Witch Elves but not WHs. Here is why – bullets do not heal as good as kisses. Kisses proc from every melee attack, bullets only from executions. Yes, kisses do not have 100% proc rate of bullets. But how often do you execute? Only in Abso spam build bullet regen does make sense. In other builds – no.
Another reason why WE’s can afford spending resources on regen stats and we cannot is that they have a single target non-physical damage build – Witchbrew build. They do not need strength stat for it, they can divert resources to toughness, wounds and regen. If WH does if it loses ability to burst – our non-physical damage build has AOE finisher Burn Heretic! which has low burst potential. Also, witch elves have Frenzied Mayhem tactic that can add up to 25% to finishers and we do not have it. Hence, we need burst from physical damage abilities (BaL, TbP) and therefore we need to keep our strength high or our DPS will be like a wet noodle.

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, and `,4,f,z,c,v for less used ones.
Use Autohotkey script to disable Win button and Alt+Tab combination, very helpful.

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.

Part 2.1 – Mastery Trees

Confession – this one used to be very good but DPS patch made it slightly weaker. What we have:

Seeker’s Triumph – a very good one. Your undefendable attack can be used twice more often and ignore half of the armor. A very solid tactic in an anti-melee build.
Seal of Destruction – now it is a bit awkward ability – it ignores only 25% of armor (down from 50% pre DPS patch) and gives a charging property that was taken away from another ability.
Sanctified bullets – discussed in Self-Heal section.
Repel Blasphemy – a good anti melee defensive ability for a non-parry build with a long cooldown, so you will not be using it more than once in battle most of the times. Good WE’s always watch for this buff icon and disengage once they see it. Good news is that not all witch elves are good.
Blessed Blade – mixed emotions. Why? If we consider our spirit damage ability, they simply do not benefit from it. If we consider Torment from behind – same. And what’s left? What abilities do benefit from it? It’s Trial by Pain – every bullet fired after the first one gets 25% armor ignore and it also refreshes the time window. But apart from that – you can’t do much in this short time window. One or two attacks and that is it. Only if you spam Abso/TbP this tactic will be good for you.
Dragon Gun – our ranged stun and morale pump. Excellent stuff but if you go that far, you forfeit lots of other things.
Basic Confession tree abilities:
Opener is armor debuff.
Accusation generator is mini AOE and it has 15ft range(!), handy with kiters.
Bullets are nonsense.
Seeker’s Blade is a strong anti-tank ability. UNDEFENDABLE.
Finisher is a channeled ability without cooldown (used to be in the past).
So, in a nutshell Confession tree is good for a gunslinger build. If you choose to play it, I have good and bad news for you:
Good news – you do not need to keep 5ft range, you can damage at medium range.
Bad news – you need to invest in weapon skill and armor ignore as all abilities are physical damage abilities.

Inquisition – this tree is a whole new kettle of fish after the DPS patch! If Confession was nerfed a bit this tree got a terrific boost.
Blessed Ammunition – excellent tactic however the cooldown of the underlying ability is 10 sec so you would benefit from it only every 10 sec. They seriously should have added cooldown reduction same as with Seeker’s Triumph.
Shroud of Magnus – this ability is in the right tree now. The tree is about building up damage slowly and it is natural to expect to see some tools to let you have the time to build up your damage.
Prolonged Confession – do not know why we need it in the Inquisition tree. The tactic is not bad but I would rather see it in a gunslinger build that relies on finishers. This build relies on DOTs and survival.
Punish the False – our beloved anti-heal ability. Anti-heal abilities make sense again after DPS patch. Before it WH’s could not break through the healing. Now it is possible again. It is not a walk in the park but it is doable. In my opinion healers and WH’s are perfectly balanced at this time.
Protection from Heresy – tbh I loved the old version of it that gave us shield. WTH is regen about? I do not need it before the fight and it only ticks once during short stealth from Sanctified Oil. And 20% speed buff – can’t chase mounted foes and only good to chase running targets. But there are other means for that. Long story short – a bunch of nonsense packed under one umbrella.
Exit Wound – our strongest single-hitting finisher and good buff to your and allies damage against this poor Destro boy or gal. Lasts 15 sec now, thank you devs!
Opener – is a movement-based DoT, delivers very strong numbers versus mobile targets.
Accusation generator is same old spirit damage DoT.
Bullets are anti-heal ones. Bear in mind they lasts 5 sec only, so re-apply them often.
Incendiary Shot is a whole new ability introduced in DPS patch. A strong hitting spirit damage DoT.
Finisher has been reworked and now it is an AoE spirit DoT. Output per target is not as good as BaL but has range 25ft from 5ft which makes it very easy to use against moving targets.
Conclusion – this tree is about spirit damage which means that you do not need weapon skill / armor ignore stat at all! Moreover, as you will find out all you spirit damage abilities do not scale well with strength meaning that you can invest in other stats and your damage wouldn’t suffer much. You can build a survivalist with high parry and wounds, perhaps toughness (although parry and wounds would be better). I have been playing this tree since DPS patch and I am loving it. Bad news is that the tree has zero burst potential and whenever I play in a party with other WH’s they steal most of the kills. My killboard has a meager number of kills, my teammates score 80-90% of them all! But in the end of the day I do not die that often. DPS of a dead WH is zero.

Last but not least tree is Judgement. This tree has always been very strong and here lies the stuff that makes WH’s true assassins.
Vitriolic Judgement – this is your morale pump. If you happen to have a free tactic slot – try it. When it procs, you can Serve Nerve almost immediately which is a powerful thing. But it lacks utility. I would really love it if it shortened cooldowns so we could use morales more frequently.
Sanctified Oil took damage after DPS patch, it lost speed buff despite it is 1 second longer now. Protection from Heresy can help here a little but it would not justify such investment. We need to adjust ourselves; the old Sanctified Oil is gone.
Unyielding Conviction – if anyone spends a tactic slot on it please let me know.
Pistol Whip is the same good old stun ability.
Atonement – new version of the tactic makes BaL even stronger, good stuff.
Burn Away Lies – this is witch hunter’s witchbrew, our strongest single target DoT finisher that often spells “The End” to our targets.
Opener is an anticaster ability.
Accusation generator is same old Torment.
Bullets are good Ini steal. In my build I rely heavily on Ini so it is my favorite bullets.
Silence the Heretic is the same silencing ability.
Finisher is a plain single target single damage ability with good burst potential. Have a spare accusation and do not know what to do with it? Use Absolution!
So, this tree is all about burst but it comes at cost – positioning. This is the tree that benefits from crit % the most. In fact, not every build requires it. Yes, you read this blasphemy right. Truth to be told my crit has been zero over last 6-8 months. But we will discuss this anomaly further.

Part 2.2 – Basic Skills
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 or skills will not affect it. Minus 5 AP every second, maximus stealth run is 1 minute long. IMPORTANT – if you do not wish to be detected do not turn your back on your enemies. It works similar to parry/block – once you turn your back on enemies – you are busted.
Confess! – a newcomer from Inquisition tree (after the DPS patch). It disarms (read disables) for 1 extra second compared to stun. Does not generate a combo point.
Sever Blessing – a VERY useful skill. Blessings can be very strong, so always use SB.
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.
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.
Detaunt – detaunt, detaunt, detaunt always. Another important note – be careful with AoE skills after using it.
Sigil of Sigmar – a very useful skill when fighting rdps.
Snap shot – ranged slow. Affected by Feinted Positioning now.
Last basic skill I want to say a few words about is Flee. Last few months I invest into Improved Flee and can’t begin to tell you how good this investment is – pop it and have 15 seconds speed buff. And energy replenishes fast – originally, I was dropping an energy pot but now I stopped doing that – natural energy regeneration does the job. It can and should be used in battles against mobile/kiting enemies.
OK, moving to synergies part.

Part 2.3 – Synergies
No wall of words here just this screenshot: https://ibb.co/qLG9GzJT

Part 3 – Gear and Stats
You hear this often – WH’s 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 130And once I got there everything changed. Eventually I stopped using this addon because kills to death ratio changed in my favor and stopped making sense. Nothing changed – I do not have a pocket healer, my playstyle is the same, same enemies, same allies 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 WH’s ‘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 WH’s anything below sentinel/invader set is crap.
Speaking of stats – street legends says 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. However, my experience tells me that weapon skill and initiative are also important for particular builds. Weapon skill is for Confession builds where most abilities are physical and where strength sometimes works worse than weapon skill. Initiative is important for defensive parry builds. If WE’s use toughness, WH’s use initiative when they go defensive.
Regardless of whether you play parry build always go for highest parry possible. Why? There are 7 classes – 3 tanks, 3 mdps and melee DOK and you can counter them all with one stat. There is only 1 physical rdps so you probably understand that dodge is not important. Disrupt is not important either but for another reason. To have high disrupt you need high wisdom but this is not an option, is it? Casters have high Intelligence stat that apart from giving them magic power also gives them disrupt strikethrough. Plus they have this strikethrough from items and set bonuses. In other words – 5% disrupt or 20% disrupt will be taken to the ground so why bother? Just ensure you have Shroud of Magnus, this is the most you can do in this regard.
Buy futile strikes only if your chance to be crit is less than -12%. They should not hit you often. If they do hit you then you are doing something wrong.
Currently I have 10k+ health, 730 strength, whatever WS, 0% crit, 70% parry and whatever % dodge/disrupt and I feel comfortable most of the time. Why am I so strict about 0% crit? Because I fight WE’s often and they all have this bloody Sacrifices Rewarded tactic – a shield on crit. No crit – no shield. There are other classes that have no such tactic but WH’s are similar to WE’s – we do not fight blobs and so we often come across each other. I am pretty sure that most WE’s from my timezone know me and I know them. But I do not know every DoK or Sorc because they play in WB’s. WE’s and WH’s are heroes of small scale PvP.
As I mentioned my build is defensive parry so my gear is either
(a) 7 Victorious and 2 Justicar (Sov off). Reasons – Justicar ring gives 4 morale, this is important in difficult fights. 7 Victorious give me 2 procs, one of them is good but the other is insanely powerful buff. Each buff effect in 260 stat bonus but 2nd bonus is much stronger and is on more often.
(b) 5 Twisted Darkpromise, 2 Victorious, 2 Justicar (or Warlord) – this gives the highest amount of parry, closer to 80 but no procs.
(c) 3 Twisted Darkpromise, 4 Victorious, 2 Justicar (or Warlord) – high parry (not the highest) and one proc from Victorious.
(d) 5 Inquisitor and 4 Victorious – good parry, one proc from Victorious, decent crit coupled with crit from Atonement. In this build I crit with BaL and Abso everyone but WE;s and for WE’s I have my standard set of tools.
I am not saying what helmet, what gloves – this is your homework.
I have most of the sets by now but if you are just getting there and want to play DEFENSIVE then focus on 5 Twisted Darkpromise, 2 Sentinels (incl ring), 2 Justicar (or Warlord). This is fastest to obtain – if you are lucky, it will be just one full LV run.
Now what to wear if you want to play OFFENSIVE. You always want to have a bonus from 4 Triumphants and then max out either strength or weapon skill. Strength is better versus light armor, weapon skill is better versus heavy armor. Think carefully which way you want to go but remember this – you cannot be a little bit pregnant. Full weapon skill or full strength is always better than a little bit of everything. Jack of all trades master of none is not your choice. Good gear and good build will create a very powerful mix.

Part 4 – Addons
There are many different addons but I want to point at one very important for WHs – Aura. See what it can do: https://ibb.co/S4FgtMTd
The beauty of Aura is that it can give you all kind of warnings. 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 or on your target (guarded target in this case). 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 my health is low, I am slowed or detaunted. Highly suggest this addon, it is my favorite.
Alright dear WH’s and WE’s and all other readers I stop here. Happy hunting!