Author Topic: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝  (Read 29628 times)

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Offline WNG

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↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« on: 22 July 2018, 04:14:24 »
↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝

Introduction

Hello, people. This is a small guide discussing Hunting's skills, giving insights on wich skills are worth investement and wich ones are less important. It's purely based on my opinions and shouldn't be considered like the one and only truth. You are free to share your disagreements below.

Back in my early TQ days, I wasn't a fan of bows and hunting stuff, so I had little interest in this mastery. I was more into melee stuff. That was until I bought AE a few months ago, and decided to try something different for once : Hunting mastery. And I fell in love with it. It remains my favorite mastery at that day, and has a lot of awesome stuff that I think needs to be shared with anyone who wants to use this mastery.

Well, let's get right into it.

The Mastery

Hunting revolves around piercing and bleeding damage, preferably with bows and spears, making it one of the most offensive masteries. It offers a wide variety of skills and passives that allow for impressive damage both on single-targets and large troops of ennemies. With its high damage potential and its handful of buffs, a hunter can be very independant, but also a remarkable team player. When all that is considered at once, Hunting becomes a mastery that can be either principal or complementary, making it able to succeedly combo with any other mastery.

Hunting's skills

Tier 1

Ensnare

It's a decent skill. On one hand, it offers a defensive ability debuff. Quite nice, but since you can't make critical hits with your bow, this is only useful if you switch for a spear/shield. Also, the strongest ennemies (such as heroes, bosses, etc.) are immuned to the net alltogether. You may also use it to keep regular mobs away from you, but it isn't really worth spending a ton of points, if any.

Take Down

More often used as a mobility skill rather than a damage dealer, though it can hurt a lot when upgraded. It needs a big investement to become really good, though, and you have many other skills that you will want to boost before this one. You may boost it later on.

Wood Lore

This is an amazing passive, and there really isn't any point to not pick it up. Bows have a low attack speed in early levels, and this passive allows you to fix that. Also, you get an appreciable bonus of flat defensive ability. On the top of that, it only requires 6 points to max out! Really, just max this already.

Tier 2

Marksmanship

I assume you will be using bows at some point if you are using Hunting mastery. This thing will make your bow AAs much more deadlier with the piercing bonus it gives. Using Marksmanship will also unlock more powerful upgrades for your bow attacks. This is definetly a skill you will want to max, too.

Art of the Hunt

This aura will boost your piercing and bleeding damage. It also affects any pets or party members nearby. No debate needed, this is a must.

Herbal Remedy

This thing will provide a huge boost in poison resistance for your character, so you have less to worry about it when choosing your gear. The flat regeneration bonus is a little cherry on the top, as in it shouldn't be the reason why you're picking this skill in the first place.

Tier 3

Barbed Netting

If you are using Ensnare, this may be an upgrade you would want to try. Though the bleeding damage isn't that extreme, it will be increased with your skills, gear, etc.

Call of the Hunt

This buff will make yourself much better at fighting for a brief duration. You will want to upgrade it to enlarge its duration and effectiveness. A common strat is to use gear with -x% recharge to use it more frequently, to the point you have its bonuses permanently. Tracker's Hood is a nice item for that. If you lack -x% recharge gear, you should only use it versus large ennemy groups, heroes you have trouble with and boss fights.

Eviscerate

Putting skills on that depends on your needs. If you are using Take Down for mobility, you can put at most one point on it. The bleeding damage, when maxed out, is very good, but again, it needs a decent amount of points to make it shine.

Monster Lure

This skill can distract ennemies for a while, so you can avoid being hit. I guess it could have some uses, but there are other skills out there that you will want to boost first.

Tier 4

Study Prey

Perfection incarnate. Applies a buff in an area around the targeted monster, greatly reducing their resistances. Even though it has a great power, the skill's duration is equal to its cooldown. Wich means you can cast it as soon as the effect wears off. There's no good hunter without Study Prey.

Puncture Shot Arrows

So far, Hunting hasn't offered much options for clearing mass armies of ennemies. This will allow you to turn your strong single-target attacks into strong multiple-targets attacks. It will boost your waveclearing abilities by a lot.

Gouge

With an high dexterity and your currently maxed out auras, you will be dealing a lot of bleeding damage. This allows you to deal even more bleeding with your AAs. Ineffective versus undeads (duh) but still a nice upgrade that costs only 6 points.

Find Cover

Makes your hunter less vunerable to all projectile attacks. You will want to put points into it. Remember though, the cap is set at 80%. If your gear's bonuses make your projectile-avoidance chance go over 80%, consider removing points on this skill (or else they will be sitting there doing nothing) and move them on other skills.

Tier 5

Exploit Weakness

This will further boost your damage while Call of the Hunt is active. This should be high in your priorities.

Trail Blazing

Provides a nice boost in movement speed and entrapment immunity. Leveling this up only provides more movement speed. The movement speed cap being very low (only 166%), odds are your gear will provide sufficient movement speed so that you don't need to max this to reach the limit. Even then, having 150%+ is more than enough.

Detonate

It is not worth to invest any points on this skill, in my opinion. It deals a bunch of fire damage, wich might be interesting if you play with Earth along with Hunting, but in other cases, you will probably have nothing to boost its damage. Even then, with the help of all your buffs, your own damage should be sufficient enough to take care of your opponents; if you are using the lure in the first place, it's to distract ennemies, correct? In most cases, you shouldn't bother with this skill at all.

Tier 6

Flush Out

Makes Study Prey even deadlier, reducing elemental and bleeding resistances, wich makes basically any other skill hit much more harder on the targets. Very useful.

Scatter Shot Arrows

This will enhance even more your waveclearing abilities, allowing you to hit mass of ennemies at once with heavy bleeding damage. People could argue saying that it has been rendered useless because it was heavily nerfed by the AE, but I think it still remains awesome and is worth the investement.

Volley

Insanely strong passive, making your bow fire three arrows and your spear hit thrice. Only needs 6 points. This should be maxed as soon as possible.

Conclusion

I hope this make you want to build a Hunting toon and shoot every living thing down (was the intended goal.)

Either way, I hope you enjoyed reading through that post. Enjoy the rest of your day ^.^

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Offline Mook

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #1 on: 22 July 2018, 06:26:21 »
Thank you, I did enjoy reading this. I have a bow hunter in normal "waiting" on Undead Typhon, until I finish my affair with my stonespeaker.
I did take ensnare (rmb) , being a good newbie defence in sparta, and I've never stopped using it. I've maxed it, and half heartedly put points in barbed too. Anything that immobilizes  clusters of machae and malinoe for 5secs must be good, if you're a sniper like me.
I've only put 1+ skill in scattershot, because of its bad press. On your recommendation, I'll try it out more.
I think I only put 1+ skill in the first tier marksman too, again because of what other people say. Do you notice a difference?
I maxed herbal, one of those effects you notice when it lapses.
I'm half way through maxing the Nature mastery, solely (well the energy points aren't bad either  :P ) to get refresh to power up CoH, which I've maxed for bosses.
Some people say Monster Lure is very useful at higher levels?

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Offline CrocMagnum

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #2 on: 22 July 2018, 11:32:31 »
Good read. :) I would flesh out some descriptions:

Ensnare

Since update 1.32 ensnare now increases (moderately) in radius with level. So it could work with mobs,

Edit: Curiously the increase in radius doesn't show up on the Anniversary Edition calc for some reason ???,

Monster Lure

(taken straight from my Avenger thread^^) On higher difficulties that scarecrow is extremely resilient (+ Resists+HP). He will take an awful lot of hits and will save your hide many many many times.

Then you have the fact the its Provoke Radius increases the more points you put into the skill. At Level 6/6 it becomes a 10 meter radius (instead of the original 5 meter). Monsters provoked will come from very far, they will gather around the Lure to beat it up, which in turn allows you to kill them easily from afar: arrows, volcanic orb and Eruption are your best options for this.

EDIT: So you've cast Monster Lure and Enemies are gathering around it. BUT before you start pumping arrows/spells like mad, don't forget to cast Study Prey first to lower their resistances, of course.

The Monster Lure doesn't move but it works extremely well. Now as far as placing of the Lure goes, you'll get the hang of it, sometimes you'll notice that facing a a certain direction (left, right, whatever...^^)  will have and effect on the Lure location on the battlefield.

Detonate

I would put a single point in its synergy Detonate. Because in the Anniversary Edition Detonate too has been reworked:

# It deals Fire AND Physical Damage now,
# denotes now also deals "1 sec of Stun" regardless of level, so 1 point is enough just to benefit from the Stun,
« Last Edit: 22 July 2018, 11:47:46 by CrocMagnum »

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Offline mammoth_hunter

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #3 on: 22 July 2018, 12:32:20 »
1 point in monster lure is an almost must-have investment if you have space on your skill bar and don't have other similar "pets" - core dweller, menhir wall or briar ward. You use it when in trouble or on bosses you absolutely can't face due to bad gear or just build limitations (example: manticore). Monsters need 2 seconds to stick to a target and not switch back to you if you attack them. So this is what you do:

- Drop monster lure, make the boss find it and start toying with it
- Wait 2 seconds, do not attack or cast debuffs
- Attack

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Offline WNG

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #4 on: 22 July 2018, 13:26:21 »
I never was a real lure lover. Often it happened that I throw the lure and kill the ennemies before the lure has any effect. So it felt like I was constantly wasting my mana.

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Offline Hector

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #5 on: 23 July 2018, 00:12:46 »
I just love these kind of visual guides.. enjoyed reading it, thanks..

Ensnare is underrated (especially in its current form) but I've always used it with my Hunting chars..

Are you really sure Take Down becomes an actual damaging skill even after maxing it though?  :) 

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Offline WNG

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #6 on: 23 July 2018, 02:00:48 »
I just love these kind of visual guides.. enjoyed reading it, thanks..

Ensnare is underrated (especially in its current form) but I've always used it with my Hunting chars..

Are you really sure Take Down becomes an actual damaging skill even after maxing it though?  :)

Yes. Though when I have low offensive ability, it seems that Take Down always misses. But when it does hit, it hits well enough. It's cheap, doesn't cost much energy. Not the skill you will be maxing first, though.

As for Ensnare, maybe it's just me, but I never really feel threatened enough to find it worthwhile.

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Offline mammoth_hunter

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #7 on: 23 July 2018, 17:23:41 »
I never was a real lure lover. Often it happened that I throw the lure and kill the ennemies before the lure has any effect. So it felt like I was constantly wasting my mana.
Right, it is slow, you do not use it against common mobs, you use it against threats.

Ensnare is not the best CC skill by far even after it was changed, but can be used when there are no better alternatives.

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Offline WNG

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #8 on: 23 July 2018, 17:39:16 »
I never was a real lure lover. Often it happened that I throw the lure and kill the ennemies before the lure has any effect. So it felt like I was constantly wasting my mana.
Right, it is slow, you do not use it against common mobs, you use it against threats.

Ensnare is not the best CC skill by far even after it was changed, but can be used when there are no better alternatives.

Well, there's a point where there is just no threat remaining, so you definetly won't keep that forever. I guess it should try it more in early stages.

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Offline Hector

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #9 on: 23 July 2018, 17:47:49 »
Quote
Ensnare is not the best CC skill by far even after it was changed, but can be used when there are no better alternatives.

Its not about being the best.. its about trying different things.. getting out of that monotonous circle in which only the strongest skills are used in every build again and again.. I don't know about you but I'm really tired of depending on the heavy guns such as Distort Reality, Squall, Envenom Weapon and the alike..

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Offline WNG

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #10 on: 23 July 2018, 21:55:45 »
Quote
Ensnare is not the best CC skill by far even after it was changed, but can be used when there are no better alternatives.

Its not about being the best.. its about trying different things.. getting out of that monotonous circle in which only the strongest skills are used in every build again and again.. I don't know about you but I'm really tired of depending on the heavy guns such as Distort Reality, Squall, Envenom Weapon and the alike..

True. Though it's more problematic on the item side.

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Offline mammoth_hunter

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #11 on: 24 July 2018, 00:46:54 »
I haven't played this game for years, I don't care if its meta or not, just if it is fun. Coincidentially, things that do not work aren't, but I can imagine making ensare any better would be difficult without at least changing the visual.

getting out of that monotonous circle
To break out of a monotonous cycle you should maybe try something else, and I don't mean another skill. Don't bore yourself with monotonous things

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Offline nargil66

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #12 on: 24 July 2018, 21:58:19 »
I have to disagree about the usefulness of Ensnare. Haven't seen any high-lvl build that uses it as a main or important skill... If you can't build around a skill, in my list that skill is lacking something. The radius increase in AE is almost neglectable imo.
I'll be happy to see someone prove me wrong. It's a fun skill and it deserves to have more utility...

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Offline WNG

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #13 on: 24 July 2018, 23:27:19 »
It has some utility... in PvP >.>

The skill doesn't really fit a PvE environment.

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Offline Vio

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Re: ↜ Hunting Mastery by WNG ↝
« Reply #14 on: 24 July 2018, 23:30:59 »
Try it on a Dex char and prove yourself wrong. :)
When maxed the radius can easily catch a whole group of enemies, which also multiplies the bleeding from Barbed Netting.

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