So... Hunters!

[obryn]

I'm running a Paragon-tier Dark Sun game, and had a new player join in recently. I love the Essentials classes for bringing in someone new at high levels, and the Hunter was pretty appealing.

Now, I've heard a lot of complaints about how theoretically awful the Hunter is. And ... well, frankly, he's ruining my enemies every single encounter. :)

Let's start with his high accuracy and sub-striker damage. (All the crossbow goodies; an elf; Seeker Multi + Primal Eye + Weapon Focus.)

Let's move on to him blinding/dazing/immobilizing my crap and sliding it all over the place 4 times per encounter, which is just about as good as doing it at-will. (Blind, in particular, might as well be Stun much of the time.) If that fails, slow (save ends) as an at-will turns into pretty hard control against melee enemies if the party uses smart tactics. Which they do. Oh, and he can hit pretty darn near anywhere on the field, with an effective range of like 50 or 60 squares, which is bigger than my table.

Also - Hunter's Grasping Trap? Really, really good for an Encounter Minor action.

Granted, the Wizard who used to be in the game was remarkably effective, too. He shut down many an encounter with Visions of Avarice. But I'm just not finding the Hunter to be a sub-par contribution to the party at all...

-O

[tcrudisi]

All of this and you probably nerfed Rapid Shot, too! (That's a joke people - I'm not going to debate that power. :smalltongue: )

Seriously though, Hunters are fine. The problem with them comes in a high-op game. If you have a player who optimizes a Hunter as much as possible versus someone who optimizes the Wizard, there will be no contest: the Wizard will do far more control (or damage) than the Hunter.

In the typical game, there's not a huge difference. The Hunter can function just fine.

[Kurald Galain]

Now, I've heard a lot of complaints about how theoretically awful the Hunter is. And ... well, frankly, he's ruining my enemies every single encounter. :)
Well, if you consider slowing to be hard control at paragon tier, then your encounter design probably needs some work.


Seriously though, Hunters are fine. The problem with them comes in a high-op game.
Well, the problem is that the hunter claims to be a controller, but generally lacks area effects. So where a wizard, invoker, or psion is dazing three enemies at the same time, the hunter is controlling only one of them.
So in practice, the hunter is simply a striker. Not that there's anything wrong with that: it's basically a weaker version of the 4.0 Ranger. Then again, since the 4.0 Ranger is the best striker in the game, being worse than that isn't saying much. The only downside is that the hunter can't nova since it lacks daily powers.

It's a pretty good class overall; it's just not a real controller.

[obryn]

Well, if you consider slowing to be hard control at paragon tier, then your encounter design probably needs some work.


{{scrubbed}}
Against melee-primary or melee-only combatants - of which there are quite a few, particularly brutes and soldiers - slowing is as good as immobilizing if done from sufficient range, and immobilizing is as good as stunning. This is especially true if the party uses terrain and their own mobility to their advantage.

{{scrubbed}}

-O

[Silma]

I think Kurald Galain is probably right on this one. Slowed is one of the weakest debuffs in paragon. It can still be very effective if applied skillfully, but it simply cannot compare to daze, restrain, blind, etc. I agree that what he said might have sounded a little "passive-agressive" as you put it, but he does have a point.

The Hunter is a fine class in a low/average optimization party, but in high op it cannot stand side by side with other classes. There are many monsters that have great ranged powers in which case, slow or immobilize will just not do it, and the hunter can debuff 1 enemy at a time. Sure, Rapid shot is great, and he has a lot of useful debuffs that can be used at-will. But he cannot compare to the wizard that will dominate 2-3 enemies with 1 spell.

Also a word of advice if I may. Do not be tempted to make your encounters harder and harder. If your players seem to be having fun, then they're just fine.
You can simply try to have a bigger diversity in the encounter, with let's say for instance 2-4 minions, 1 brute, 2 soldiers, 1 controller and 1-2 artilleries. This way, they will have to use their powers in a much more creative way if they are to inflict the same harm on your monsters as they are now.

[Ashdate]

For fun, I had my PCs temporarily roam around in the bodies of another group of slain adventurers, searching for their nemesis (who had taken control of their bodies and was using them for his own purposes). I thought it would be fun to mix up the roles and classes by having them play something quite different than their main character. The Goliath Warden became a Gnome Rogue, the Half-elf Psion became a Dwarf Beserker, the Dwarf Cleric became a Dragonborn Paladin, etc.

The big problem I had was that I decided to cart the mental stats over, but change their physical stats to whatever I wanted. With a Warden (str/con), Sorceress (strength secondary), Strength based Cleric, and Strength based Ranger, I didn't have a lot of mental stats to work with. The Hunter solved a lot of problems I had with trying to find a controller that didn't rely on a solid existing mental stat.

The Ranger-turned-Hunter had a lot of fun using the World Serpent's Grasp feat I gave him with Clever/Disruptive Shot to pretty solidly lock down a single target, made even deadlier with a Thunderburst Crossbow to occasionally slow/immobilize a group of enemies, making them a great target for Rapid Shot the next round (to then knock them all prone).

That said, he was happy to get back to his Ranger. It was a nice change of pace he said, but he couldn't see himself playing one for an entire campaign.

[obryn]

I think Kurald Galain is probably right on this one. Slowed is one of the weakest debuffs in paragon. It can still be very effective if applied skillfully, but it simply cannot compare to daze, restrain, blind, etc. I agree that what he said might have sounded a little "passive-agressive" as you put it, but he does have a point.
...That point being that I'm not making encounters and using/making monsters which specifically shut the hunter down? I could obviously do so; it's not tough. It's not like he's making the encounters trivial by any means - just that he's an effective character who carries his weight.

Yes, slow is far worse than blind/restrain/immobilize, absolutely. It's almost always worse than daze, except in cases where a charge is still potentially open - at which point, you need to decide between the extra Daze goodies or cheating the monster out of its attack for the round. Again, at sufficient range, slow is as good as immobilize against melee-centric monsters.


The Hunter is a fine class in a low/average optimization party, but in high op it cannot stand side by side with other classes. There are many monsters that have great ranged powers in which case, slow or immobilize will just not do it, and the hunter can debuff 1 enemy at a time. Sure, Rapid shot is great, and he has a lot of useful debuffs that can be used at-will. But he cannot compare to the wizard that will dominate 2-3 enemies with 1 spell.
Against ranged foes, blinding is extremely effective. Obviously slow does nothing against them - neither does daze, more often than not (unless they have scary out-of-turn stuff or you really need that CA).

And no - he's much lower group control than a Wizard, with generally higher single-target damage and often higher accuracy.


Also a word of advice if I may. Do not be tempted to make your encounters harder and harder. If your players seem to be having fun, then they're just fine.
You can simply try to have a bigger diversity in the encounter, with let's say for instance 2-4 minions, 1 brute, 2 soldiers, 1 controller and 1-2 artilleries. This way, they will have to use their powers in a much more creative way if they are to inflict the same harm on your monsters as they are now.
...I'm not really having any problems here? That's one of the reasons the Hunter continues to be effective in most encounters. As I mentioned, it's pretty trivial to make encounters where he'd be completely shut down. That's not really my goal.

-O

[Yakk]

Level 14 Ranger (Hunter)
20 base dex, bumped to 24 (or +7).
Weapon focus (+2)
Primal Eye (+7)
Steady Shooter (+3)
Superior Crossbow (+3 to hit, 1d10 damage)
Magic Crossbow (+3)
Crossbow Expertise (ignore cover, +2 to hit)
Grazing Shot (7 damage on a miss)

To-hit: +22 to hit (level+8) which is good accuracy.
Damage: 1d10+22 =~ 27.5 per hit, 7 on a miss, and ~42.5 on a crit (probably have better than a vanilla +3 xbow).

Against an even level soldier (30 AC), we have a 60% hit, 5% crit, 35% miss rate. 16.5+2.125+2.45=21.075 DPR, or 1.24 normalized, or 15.5% of an even-level opponents HP pool per round. A 6-round striker.

That isn't bad for a low op group -- a "baseline" striker is a 4-round striker.

[obryn]

Against an even level soldier (30 AC), we have a 60% hit, 5% crit, 35% miss rate. 16.5+2.125+2.45=21.075 DPR, or 1.24 normalized, or 15.5% of an even-level opponents HP pool per round. A 6-round striker.

That is bad for a low op group -- a "baseline" striker is a 4-round striker.
Stances can aid this... somewhat. A +1 or +2 to-hit and damage won't save it. But overall, yes, absent any control effects, the Hunter is just a sub-standard striker.

-O

[Yakk]

Isn't bad. Bah. I missed an n't. Sorry!

6 round striker isn't bad for a low-op group, at 2/3 of a low-op strikers damage output you'll be putting out noticable pain.

And your CB1 attack is 50% hit, 5% crit, 45% miss for 19.025 DPR on each target, normalized to 1.12, or 14% of an even-level opponents HP (7 round striker on a 3x3 area).

Stances as noted will add +2-3 damage or so (or sometimes +2 accuracy!), which adds +1 to 3 DPR to the above numbers.

In a low-op group, your damage output will be noticeable.