Why Witch Hunter Sucks - How can we fix it? (PoE2 discussion)

[@berserkerpride]

Why oh why would they design the sorcery ward to not block chaos damage? Chaos damage seems like sorcery to me. The devs seem to have a hardon for chaos damage in general. In that its almost impossible to stack decent resistances against it.

[@cavebestiam4578]

@@berserkerpride also chaos is made as this very binary type of damage when you look at nodes like Chaos Inoculation, you either dont spec into it and it still shreds you if you manage to build enough res for it, or you take CI and completely ignore anything green or purple on your screen lmao which i frankly find quite funny.

[@cavebestiam4578]

Honestly to me Chaos damage feels very weird in a sense, on one side it's there to be super scary and make you shit your pants at the thought of getting shredded by anything that has a smudge of purple or green colour on it, on the other if you are playing on the caster side and stack energy shield, picking up Chaos Inoculation completely trivializes what was supposed to be a jumpscare at every left turn, you're saying that suddenly i can treat purple and green stuff on the ground and that is flying at me as pure visual effects and nothing more lmao? I think theres something to be revised about chaos, either make it abit easier to deal with by reducing its damage and making it "the one type of damage that always VISIBLY hurts you, but just enough to give you time to react" or provide more ways to protect against it, but not necessairly using resistances, maybe temporary shields against chaos damage that needs to recharge separately, that way you dont get oneshot the first time but now you gotta be careful until it comes back up.

[@InnerExile_92]

@@cavebestiam4578 It does not shred you with sufficient resists. lmao

[@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

Haven't watched yet, but being the farthest class of all from all the energy shield nodes probably isn't helping.

[@totalkhaos189]

Zealous Inquisition was the main reason why I chose WH, it's just incredibly satisfying to get those chain reactions against massive packs.

[@何正尹]

@@totalkhaos189 but it is less consistent than poe occultist or glad pop

[@sovereignreclaimer]

Honestly the numbers should be way higher. 20% chance for all enemies and 40% for undead and demons at least. Gladiator bleed pops on every single enemy, same with Occultist. Granted, they explode for 100% of max life, so it is stronger but really should proc more often for what it is.

[@richardmenz3257]

@@sovereignreclaimer Even if it proc at lets say 25% / 50 % but only do 50 % life it feell so much better.

[@sovereignreclaimer]

@@richardmenz3257 I agree, just tweak the numbers to make more often procs with lesser damage (but the damage should definitely not drop below 50% to set it apart from glad bleed pops or something

[@Shinshinvariety]

Two things: make sure to like and subscribe Play any class and don’t meta whore, the game isn’t hard enough to warrant it. Just have fun.

[@noimnotnice]

To your point about weapon set passives: they are already incredible for single target and clearing skills that use the same type of weapon. And that is their primary purpose. We aren't supposed to have two vastly different weapon sets apart from niche cases. Crossbows have amazing tree support for both clearing (AoE, Speed, on-kill effects) and single target (lucky lightning damage, penetration, shock magnitude). However, nobody even needs 24 weapon set passives, the ascendancy seems without use.

[@heymate8627]

To add to the Sorcery Ward rant, any changes to your evasion/armor reset the recharge countdown to its full duration. This essentially adds 3 more seconds of recharge time if you use Wind Dancer (more evasion per stack, gain a stack every second, 3 to 4 stacks max). With the unupgraded Sorcery Ward, it might also never recharge if you dodge every 5 seconds with "x% increased Evasion Rating if you've Dodge Rolled Recently"

[@excidium666]

This I find annoying enough to want to spec out of it. It should just recalculate the remaining shield when your evasion changes instead of going on cooldown

[@GMurph2336]

The merc tree itself needs a lot of work.

[@ScotRotum]

Agreed. It was hard picking nodes for monk because I wanted everything. It was hard picking nodes for merc because I wanted nothing. It's all +DMG -attack speed to lower my dps, or one handed/melee nodes, and a bit of useless bleed. Whereas my lightning monk gets extra power charge capacity and lightning pen, and I can feel the power spike.

[@CCSplinters]

@@GMurph2336 probably because the tree is for duelist 2, a melee class archetype mixed with merc which is a ranged. The tree would be confusing on the Str/Dex side as to what they really want in there.

[@ryandugan9176]

It’s completely fine, just missing 1/2 the weapon types to make use of. Most of the less popular ascendencies will pop off once swords daggers axes spears and flails are added. Just the nature of early access.

[@innerg_92]

No it's plenty fine, only thing that needs rework is the barrier thing. besides that it's been way strong. Most people just aren't playing it well yet.

[@innerg_92]

@@CCSplinters Merc is not just ranged stop thinking in such a pigeonholed way, you can very easily make a powerful af melee witchhunter...

[@wtfronsson]

Talking about not easy to understand... If you put an Iron Rune on your weapon, that gives you a "local" bonus that multiplies all of your damage, pretty much. But then you do some chaos trials and an elemental damage soul core drops. It goes in the same slot, is obviously a more premium item, even a higher number, but this one only gives additive damage. Because it's not "local". You can only gimp yourself with this "premium loot". The soul cores would be so cool in general. But it seems pretty much every time you use something else than an iron rune, there is no carrot only stick for you.

[@Crypt0Band1t]

love the vetriol tone, dark comedy gold 🤣

[@apcrol]

I think you also forgot to mention that witchunter time to time stops shooting till you release and click again with additional delay. Also attack speed seems dependend to framerate so in a heavy breach it slows down

[@daanstrik4293]

My plan going into the mercenary was to make a physical projectile crit build (specifically the shotgun skill we get in act-1 + siege cascade) What I ended up doing instead was Galvanic shards + stormburst rounds. Because there’s no crit nodes (specifically to increase crit chance, because 80% increased damage 5% of the time is not very good on its own), barely any physical nodes, barely any actual crossbow nodes (Practically none that aren’t for grenades). What we *do* have is lucky lightning damage and some ailments. Its no wonder every mercenary build ends up the same because they’re the only nodes on the passive tree that seem worthwhile. That being said: I have high hopes. Because even if this build didn’t end up how I planned, its still very fun to play. The skills themselves are satisfying, and I love the flavour of a higher chance to explode demons & undead

[@MrRafagigapr]

critical chance overall is still very experimental , they tried to do start low with the crit chance of 5% for all weapons and only quarterstaves get 10% i would not suggest going into critical chance , at this point getting mana passives and a+7 projectile skills crossbow is a better choice than criticals

[@sovereignreclaimer]

Also there's way too many lightning nodes compared to other elements imo. They're all really strong for what they give while other elements are suffering right now. That's why 70% of meta elemental builds are lightning with a small amount of cold atm with Invoker

[@jagerbudansew4291]

For a while I was attempting to use sorcery ward to keep myself alive in t16 maps and bossing, even at 4k or 5k ward it wasnt super good (ive seen 7k) and decimating strike and concentration were better for survivability (kill or be killed) after I specced out of the zealous inquisition execute, which i would rate highly until your build is worth many divine orbs in gear at which point its not needed anymore. Sorcery ward needs to block chaos damage or have a lesser penalty, some buffs for campaign like you said are also very likely needed to make it any use at all. No mercy synergizes with decimating strike VERY good but it requires all 4 of your ascendancies to combine the two which is obviously rough to lose inquisition as its the most fun and impactful part of the character, ESPECIALLY if your build is good at breach (there is also a lot of undead types). I really like how you mentioned iron reflexes because thats something i noticed literally day 1 of poe2 and was very confused about but whatever, it just means only flat evasion is worthwhile for iron reflexes but thats still just not that great, I do still use it on my non ward witchhunter who sits at 3k life and 60% armor in red maps which does not feel as tanky as id like. I pathed into the warrior area like you mentioned with needing travel as merc. While I agree on some points I disagree with others I think thats indicative of our different experiences with witchunter, Im really happy you are out here making these videos because unlike a poe1 player like me you have a refreshing perspective. I have a crit grenadier with a pure support character who makes me super op but it is solo viable if I dont get hit for 3k hp thru my 60% armor.

[@bearrington2024]

I think Sorcery Ward should be like the Inquisitor crit scaling in poe1. Just give sorecery ward based off of your armor/evasion, whichever is lower; then have it scale really well. It also should just be against "magic" (fire/cold/lightning/chaos but not bleed/poison) damage. It would also be cool if there was some anti-curse things (go crazy and be like "-% curse effectieness on you, curses on you are reversed)

[@IrishStoutt]

We are like the unwanted adopted child of the family. I will just wait for the patch notes and gonna lvl up an another char.

[@michaelchristie1942]

Crossbows have a low base damage as well considering its a 2handed weapon, that cant be duel wielded.

[@Brutik5]

Honestly, I would expect if I have iron reflexes. That item get's 100 armor and 100 evasion, with +12% node boosted to 112 + 112 armor\evasion and just adds together to 224 armour and not 212 armour or something like that, which is the way I undertand it works now. If it's really that bad, wouldn't build be better without it for now?

[@SpaceTrump]

It's even worse on phys bleed builds, there just is no scaling.

[@zyjen1338]

@@SpaceTrump bleed in general sucks

[@SpaceTrump]

@zyjen1338 100%

[@simonm1233]

@@zyjen1338 unless you go blood mage. Then you get 2 sources of magnitude and an ignite on top of it.

[@Silverhand9]

OK now I see why I'm suffering from poe2 witchhunter . u are very correct

[@becausecontextmatters5260]

One issue i have with many ascendencies right now is the 4 points for 1 ability thing. There are some followups that work, like the Chayula monk with damage per unreserved darkness, however the other point that just reduces darkness reservation duration shouldn't exist, that should be part of the first ability.

[@becomeagoat3950]

Holy crap, I thought I was the only Witch hunter using Rapid Fire speccd into decimating strike! My passive tree looks pretty similar to yours. I tried leaning into Fire to synergize with Heat buildup, but found going Attack Speed, Crit and Accuracy felt better and resulted in a little higher DPS on paper. Very cool man, thanks for sharing!

[@rlcmza6705]

My witchhunter is so survivable now but im holding my tongue because I have insane gear. I have 140 percent armor and evasion on every piece and capped resistance on everything including chaos with my charm. I got hand of wisdom yesterday and a crossbow with 400 damage so everything dies before it can hit me. Before I capped resistance I died constantly because sorcery ward even at 4.5 k gets nuked sometimes.

[@Shinshinvariety]

That’s a lot of armor and evasion

[@seanelgie]

I’m over here just running around with fart boots and nothing can attack me fast enough before they suffocate.

[@Ascent9]

I think the biggest issue is that defenses within POE2 need a major over hall. The only class that I feel that has respectable defenses is Infernalist. Every other class can randomly die to something you can't see. Stormweaver is overpowered due to spark killing everything off screen but if you take away that ability (which they should) it will be incredibly lackluster. Chaos damage is way overtuned and there are far too many sources of chaos damage within the game, chaos inoculation shouldn't be the solve all problems that it currently is because at endgame it makes you immune to almost half of all damage. Getting one-shot by something random is very poor gameplay and is not fun.

[@BBTxiGoTaFat1]

I know it would cost a lot of evasion ans armor but with cloak of flames 40% of phys could go to the ward Also it says up to 30% of armor and evasion. Is it ward = (0.3*(totalarmor/2) + (0.3*(totalevasion/2)) Or the smaller of them?

[@lolersthe4th880]

I've fixed my defenses for Witch Hunter by completely ignoring what my tree and ascendancy wants me to do - Cloak of flame with infernoclasp belt for 80% max fire res (and honestly I can easily get 84+ max res if I really invested into things) and going into monk for eva/es scaling with ghost shrouds. I've had like 9 deaths at lvl 88 atm doing t15's+ (with 2 being afk loading into campaign zones). On one hand, it's kinda fun solving the issue in an interesting way, but on the other hand, why is everything merc related so bad lol? I unironically feel I would've been better off throwing all my current gear on a ranger or monk and doing more dmg while having even better defenses. Obviously gemling exists and is strong, but getting that build running is way outside my budget considering I don't really get a ton of time to grind. I hope in the upcoming patch even if merc doesn't get buffed directly, we at least get armor working properly and the armor break mechanics honestly straight up removed? Even on my titan, I'd lose basically all my defense randomly just cause and it always felt super bad.

[@ryuhayabusa3540]

build please

[@ДмитрийБоткин-ц8х]

Sorcery Ward is weird IMHO. I've died so many times by oneshot hit from bosses and rare mobs and this ward was untouched. No sense in refusing from 50% of armor and ES. So my choice in ascendancy is two central branches.

[@richardmenz3257]

Weapon master may become op in the future. On my totem build for warrior I can switch between 200% totem damage + more placed and breaking 300% armour. I played with tree doing it from witch hunter side it could be sick with duel wield mace build even, but I have no other weapon I wanna switch to.

[@yoooyoyooo]

I'm not sure what rapid shot needs on the ranger part of the tree, but I'm doing armour eva with big armour chest 2300 and I went over to warrior part of the tree where I get lots of good armour nodes and big stun threshold.

[@hyounie1457]

I dont think they'll buff him as much as they'll nerf stormweaver and deadeye, i feel like in general grenades arent flushed out- Once they put in more supports for grenades he might be way better. Attribute stacking gemling's a monster tho

[@FatstaxMTG]

Witch hunter was my first character it never felt underpowered but seeing everyone say it sucks made me try out a monk and now I’m sad lol

[@keonminlee3792]

I ended up give up sorcery ward , evasion and armor. My current build is max energy shield with 0 cd blink with tempoliais. Decent speed on mapping and bosses.

[@Shinshinvariety]

with the nerf to off-map elemental damage killing you, I think you can play witch hunter very safe and just dodge the kill hits now. It's really tedious and annoying, but you basically just have to respecc witch hunter depending on which boss you fight. Very annoying gameplay.

[@theStamax]

Awesome Video Shinshin. I haven't tried Witch Hunter yet (playing crossbows on another class) so I like how you went over the potential flaws with the ascendancy. Just to be clear. I agree with the general sentiment of your video and you clearly put a lot of thought into this. However, there are quite a few points I'd add to / disagree with: -The Cullling Strike node definitely needs a buff. Personally I'd double the cull threshold for rare and unique monsters on top of granting culling strike. It's almost worthless right now. -Concentration might need to have a much longer time before it falls off (due to phases on some, rare, bosses) or never fall off in general. It has anti synergy with decimating strike as it is right now. -The penalty on sorcery ward is too high, but if it was removed entirely it would very likely be too powerful. Might need to be tweaked in a different way if it were to be removed in its entirety. -With regards to Iron Reflexes. This is due to how conversion was changed in poe 2, where all increases and modifiers happen after conversions (same for elemental conversions and the like). -Splitting defences isn't weak. Never was in poe 1 and isn't either in poe 2. In fact even in poe 2 the most durable builds right now split their defences between energy shield and evasion or energy shield and block. The problem is how weak armor is right now and how many effects mitigate its usefulness (breaking armor, weaker formula with lower values than poe 1, etc.). -I think what you are referring to is specifically to values reduced by sorcery ward at which point both armor and evasion get too unreliable. However that is more of a sorcery ward problem (+ the problems with armor in general). -As much as this currently sucks, nothing's stopping witch hunters from going pure evasion. Yeah the early nodes aren't great, but if you got xbow, bow or quarterstaff chances are you travel right anyways so just grab some of the better evasion nodes there. Only somewhat tricky with a Mace Witchhunter but even that's possible (though I wouldn't recommend it for multiple reasons). -With regards to Stun. This is a big problem for any build without good evasion/block/extremely high stun threshold right now unfortunately and not specific to the Witchhunter. I do hope they do something about this. Hybrid Life/Mana, Life/Es builds or even pure es builds suffer from the same problem. -Travelling isn't nearly as bad as you describe it, especially on the outer ring. The reason is simply because Jewel Sockets are so insanely powerful (and for attack builds they absolutely are). Depending on your build, they're always worth at least 3 points and often 4-5 with better jewels. And that's before we consider the attributes you get along the way, which are also useful to reduce requirement pressure on gear. Heck the Crossbow Invoker I play travels all the way to the middle of the Merc area (to grab aoe and the crossbow wheel). I thought about cutting the section, but frankly, it didn't really do much, because Jewels just became so damn powerful (in fact I couldn't reach similar dmg by cutting the travel).

[@bloodfart8613]

I was going to make a similar comment, but I think you nailed it. I agree with Shinshin's sentiment, but I definitely don't agree with the suggestions. The only thing I'll add is that all of the Witchhunter's ascendancy nodes feel pretty bad if you only have two points to invest. Culling strike without Decimating feels awful to use two points on, and Sorcery Ward/Concentration both feel completely pointless without the second node. Especially when Zealous Inquisition feels like the thematic heart of the ascendancy, it makes those leftover two points feel useless. I get culling strike as my fourth ascendancy? Yippee! This might get fixed with more weapon types and Weapon Master, but it still feels like a problem.

[@theStamax]

@@bloodfart8613 That is a great point and you're absolutely right. I just never formulated it in my head. Whichever way you twist it, you end up with the last node feeling bad. Was one of the reasons that put me off playing WH. You get explosions (nice), the decimating strike or concentration break (cool) and then what ... either you get weapon skill points (who cares), culling strike (what a joke) or concenctration without the damage boost (feels bad).

[@Shinshinvariety]

The thing is, evasion makes energy shield stronger. Blocks makes energy shield stronger. Block makes life stronger but not armor. Evasion makes life stronger but not armor. Armor and evasion hang out and don’t help each other.

[@bloodfart8613]

@@Shinshinvariety But armour and evasion both make life stronger. It's the entire concept of layered defenses. The problem is that armour and life are much weaker than ES, Evasion, and Block, currently. Evasion doesn't need to be synergistic with armour, but when layered together, both would contribute to a tankier character. They just look pitiful when you compare them to the currently overtuned stuff, like ES.

[@theStamax]

@@Shinshinvariety That's not true. Some of the tankiest poe 1 builds are armor/evasion builds. Very popular in hardcore. Evasion generally has better mitigation than armor, but the big flaw is that even with extremely high evasion, you will get hit occasionally at which point it provides no mitigation. Physical damage is also often the most dangerous type there. As such armour fixes one of, if not straight up THE, biggest weaknesses of evasion. It protects you from the hits you don't evade and that would otherwise kill you. There is a ton of synergy between the 2. Even aside from the one shot protection armor layered on evasion provides, they are multiplicative with each other. 60% evasion on top of 60% phys reduction means you only take an average of 16% damage. The bigger problem for WH specifically is the reduction from Ward (frankly it's probably just not worth it). Ar/ev in general also suffer from the currently prevalent armor problems, where the formula falls off more than poe 1 (with way lower values on top) and with how common armor break is (both as a map mod and on monsters). Once armor gets a bit of a buff and the Witchhunter node is changed (or you stop using it), you'll see. It'll be tankier than a pure evasion build. PS: I do grant that a lot of the big hits that kill you (on death effects and the likes) aren't physical damage in poe 2. So yes it won't help there, but that's a general problem with armor and not evasion/armor hybrid.

[@alexbrown9079]

so glad you are talking about stun threshold. I'm so tired of seeing my mercs head bob around every time i get hit

[@TGRoko]

Why do I never see people taking the 30% more damage node? It's essentially stun buildup (with exactly one scaling node on the tree) but it still seems like it would be more damage than pops, which is like 10% more damage to mobs in an area and not bosses. I easily 0 out those same mobs with my first attack and immediately get 30% MORE damage. Can someone explain why it's not that good? I am a noob, so I'm open to being corrected.

[@ryandugan9176]

Concentration is for bossing, corpse explosion is for clear. Both are very good. Clear is the focal point of endgame content at the moment.

[@Bravadorado]

The node makes it so Concentration is a stat on every enemy, and you lower it by dealing hit damage 1 to 1. Conentration is 40% of an enemy's max life, meaning you have to deal 40% of the enemy's HP through hits to reduce their concentration to 0%. The 30% more damage on the follow up node is only 30% more when the concentration is at 0%, meaning it will be somewhere between 1% and 29% for the first 40% of the enemy's life. Also note that Decimating Strike (5%-30% on first hit) does not count as a hit itself, meaning it has anti-synergy with Concentration in that if you roll well on Decimating Strike and take 30% off the top of a bosses HP, you will not get the full 30% more from concentration until the boss is at 30% HP remaining. It also has anti-synergy with Culling Strike, which will remove the final 5% of the bosses HP for you, meaning you do not get the damage boost on that either. That's all the small stuff, and now the big one: Concentration is removed by 10% every 1 second beyond 5 seconds that you haven't hit the enemy. Meaning after 15 seconds of not hitting the enemy, their concentration will be fully reset. Bosses in this game love to become immune and phase transition, meaning all that hard work you put into lowering the bosses concentration and thus increasing your damage will get reset on phase 2 of the boss fight. All that adds up to concentration being not very good.

[@masonhales]

Weapon Master is going to insane once all of the weapons are actually in the game. You'll be able to pull off some crazy weapon-swap builds

[@fafnirymd]

I don't really get what concentration is, is it a debuff? increase the cooldown of enemies? is it really noticable???

[@sovereignreclaimer]

It lowers the rate that enemies and even bosses cast their skills/mechanics/aoe/slams but it really is not noticeable whatsoever. Freeze and Chill/Temp Chains at base honestly do the job way better.

[@moriarty3490]

Well lately you realise you need to convert your defence for better defence like cloack of flame, next you realise that the only way to scale damage for XBOW is with HOWAA. And finally you realise that all passives nodes suck and it is way better if you just stop the pain and play ranger or monk, or the better class sorceress.

[@chrono2959]

Is your armor socketed

[@richardmenz3257]

Base sorcery ward on max life and of course not lower life. Prob make it 100% of life and once your get last 2 points it 150% of max life + regen faster. Decimating strike should just be a flat 20%

[@KrigHammar]

Actually i think the concentration tree is really awesome. I lot of times bosses with broken concentration dont use big hits or nasty abilities only autoattacks what is way more easy to avoid or dodge. And if you use plasmabast with scattershot as a first attack against them, sometimes you just take their hp down to 50 percent. And my build is really far from optimized and t15 bosses are easy peasy (except big monkey and the filth queen)

[@yoooyoyooo]

@@KrigHammar I find concentration invaluable on my grenade wh. Without it it's hard to stop and deploy large clusters of grenades. This way once I dodge s big hit I can blow the whole load even without any attack speed.

[@radiofreedom7840]

Iron Reflexes does not work with percentage increases in evasion due to conversion rules in PoE2. Flat evasion would work.

[@leatherDarkhorse]

at this point, best for a wh is to reroll, me at 89 level, the surivalbility for witch hunter compare to my monk with low tier armor, basically is day & night.

[@Shinshinvariety]

Going back to my warrior from my witch hunter made me realize "holy shit" because there is NO WAY if warrior is THAT MUCH tankier than witch hunter that he's even real.

[@nanaminanananami4908]

Actually armour and evasion have Defiance Banner, no one would use it though, it is super bad.

[@ryandugan9176]

Banners as a whole are just undertuned right now. If they go back to the Poe 1 system of letting them be active on you at all times merc will be insane, and if not, I hope they buff the radius and duration at very least.

[@Sigmagnat650]

I feel you and I hope GGG can lift up some of the unloved classes/ascendancies. Case in point, and this is not to minimize what's going on with Witchhunter- Acolyte of Chayula has like 5 hits in Standard league and 11 in hardcore while 2 of the ascendancy lines come with considerable drawbacks. If you go for the Flames of Chayula line you have to play Pac-Man with flames to get any real benefit while the DPS flame does not reset stack counter whenever you pick up another one so the max DPS you could theoretically gain is a pipe dream at best. If you go for the option that grants Darkness, you lose all spirit (goodbye auras) and that +% as extra chaos damage per 20 (available) darkness is questionable as Darkness acts as ES 2.0 wherein damage goes to Darkness, then ES, then HP. In other words, if you're getting hit at all then you're DPS goes down considerably. Back to Witchunter... The concentration breaking line basically seems like the Culling/Decimating strike line with extra steps (but with a little more reliable DPS gain). If I'm reading it right, imagine every monster has a secondary HP bar equal to 40% of their full life- extra damage scales as that secondary bar empties. Given that break concentration on hit is equal to 100% damage dealt, you're dealing 30% more dps against a target at 60% HP or lower (assuming i've read this right and you've been hitting them within 5 seconds). I see this being useful in boss fights with an added benefit of the big scary abilities on cooldowns coming out less frequently. The hangup I have with it is that compared to the Decimating strike line, is that that line is more useful in more situations (wave clear and bosses). Do note on Decimating strike that it removes 5-30% of life *before* the damage of the hit that proc'd it applies- imagine spamming crit chance and damage on the tree and unloading a Plasma Bolt on a boss. You could very well wind up with a boss that's pretty close to 35% HP for the extra 70% damage gain from the other nodes in that line. P.S. Keep in mind that Zealous Inquisition should be devastating on Breach maps as breach critters fall under the "chance is doubled" portion. P.S.S. Another thing that would help all classes would be Charm Slots being implicit on belts- have 3 charms to cover Stun, Freeze, and Slow would make WH a lot more survivable.

[@Flakzor123]

Regarding ailments most classes are in the same boat though strengthstackers have naturally higher thresholds. Sadly the protection against ailments seems partially gated behind suffixes on gear that show up in place of an actually desired mod (burn/freeze/shock duration) which must be combined from 2 or more items and/or the relevant passivetree notables OR in rare cases can be met by a single "against the darkness" with 7% reduced duration per small passive in radius (here too the actually desired roll would be 1% life instead). Personally I havent ascended my merc alt yet due to indecision about the choice as I'm keen on trying out weird stuff with gemling but from the looks of it sorcery ward seems like a trap to me. I wonder if stacking evasion to the moon and going for acrobatics would possibly be better or at least comparable while saving those ascendancy points. Hmm... looking closer at sorcery ward I would have loved that on my titan to be honest. The lost one zealots with their lightning storms really ripped into him before I went hybrid armor/es via the shield though I wouldn't want to give up the defenses for it :D

[@Sigmagnat650]

@Flakzor123 honestly, one of the best auras if you have a decent evasion threshold is ghost dancer with the blind meta gem- that saves your bacon so much it's unreal.

[@ryandugan9176]

Chayula is crazy strong, darkness is incredibly good for sanctum (reserving darkness does not count as taking damage). Chayula is free damage the ascendency, and will only get stronger and more popular as people learn how it plays and the popular stuff gets adjusted. A 7% chance to deal 100% bonus damage is incredible and scales so many different ways. Chayula currently plays best with bow, mace, or wand, and performs fine with staff. I personally run it as a detonate dead necromancer and will likely be using it to apply poison because both chaos and phys hit apply to the poison magnitude. Even as is, just the potential to detonate a skeletal brute for 20% of hp as base damage x 2 before crit scaling is massive, and leads to randomly one shotting bosses, and tough rares.

[@ryandugan9176]

If chayula monk does not get nerfed when swords and daggers are released, I expect it to become one of the most popular ascendencies in the game, being the closest analogue to es leech trickster from Poe 1.

[@dotaicarus7447]

Please add on top: -sorc ward is BUGGED which makes us unable to improve the quality of it -shock burst rounds, aka the only good wh single target skill, is also BUGGED since day 1 and the quality gain (7 additional rounds) is just not there -crossbow reload is BUGGED if you try to dodge roll during reload animation which prevent you from shooting and have to reload again -any kind of slow not only reduces your atk speed but also your reload massively and the common armor complain, useless turret skills complain etc etc....

[@Michael-lf6xs]

You’re early tree has almost no significant nodes and you don’t get anything big until level 50. Either tree needs fixing or this isn’t an efficient build

[@apacheFX664]

100% agree with all of this. I do have a effective end game WH Armour break build

[@Emilgod]

i would love if witchhunter actually got some grenade and/or crossbow synergy aswell

[@ryandugan9176]

Aside from the 6 ascendency options it already has that synergize with crossbow? Come on.

[@Emilgod]

​@@ryandugan9176 generic power that works for everyhing isnt synergy , you think +10% increased attack damage is SYNERGY with crossbows too?

[@Kinta02]

@@ryandugan9176 very high iq reply

[@ryandugan9176]

@Emilgod Yes very good that also would by definition be synergy. Generic synergy is still synergy. The big bonus here is that weapon swapping you get to keep and apply that synergy to other skill trees, for example running a bombard crossbow with the grenade skills to benefit from those ascendencies and the grenade nodes, and having a second crossbow specialized for your one button bolt based crossbow attack of choice, as a very rudimentary example.

[@PinoyZo1]

4k energy shield? I had about 7.6k on it and I felt like crap. Made a gemling legionnaire and stopped playing witchhunter all together lol

[@Matt-gf4gd]

Witch Hunter I think has potential. Issues are that currently armor sucks and witch Hunter's defensive ascendancy node is also a big defensive nerf. Bad armor + need to armor/evasion and hard to use any energy shield = not great. Also crossbows are kind of buggy and expensive for good ones. For straight clear with the damage ascendancy nodes though, you can get good clear speed. Limiting factor then is just crappy survivability.

[@oneshot1266]

Im playing Chronikz build Shockburst + explosive shot wh, best build ive ever played, you literally nuke mob groups and also vs single target god like dmg

[@stanislavbortsov2807]

please show how you deal with rituals at restricted areas without being stunned at t15/16 maps? i am dying almost every try. this clipping crossbow and reload speed is unplayable. Are you playing with HOWA?

[@mattyryon]

Yeah I can't think of any build that benefits from using Witch Hunter over another ascendancy.

[@Wraith0100]

But have you played bloodmage?

[@ryughvilgefortz7538]

i hope they succeed in fixing all the current problems, i hope this game turns out what johnathan hoped it for

[@apcrol]

it was such an easy mode playing witch after witchhunter :D 10к shield, better bossing dps, cheaper gear, easy tree setup

[@xxGizmodioxx]

Not invalidating any complaints in your video but wouldn't you be way tankier if you didn't choose Iron reflexes? you'd still have the same amount of Sorcery ward and your armour is still probably high enough to do what it already does since the formula for it is pretty bad atm and you would have some evasion :)

[@ryandugan9176]

He would yes. He could also run blind + scavenged plating + wind dancer, and potentially even rage to further boost that survivability.

[@ryandugan9176]

Because of the fact that sorcery ward snapshots defenses when it refreshes, and stun grenades can break armor screenwide, crossbow has the best time actually utilizing scavenged plating in its current state.

[@harditsingh8291]

I have been enjoying your stream lately. Its uncanny how similar our styles and thought process is. its like watching myself play. Keep up the good work. I am doing rapid shot too but i am doing crit. I chose Evasion ES and i have taken evasion nodes from the ranger tree as they are far superior. Merc in general seems feels like is paying a very high price for the high attack speed it gets. Its a clunk fest at the moment.

[@Shinshinvariety]

Crit is good if you can get a Crit weapon. I kinda hate this system.

[@harditsingh8291]

@@Shinshinvariety actual determent is that u need both crit and attack speed. More specified mods on weapon makes it rarer and crafting is not up to the task of providing that weapon. Despite tht I have managed to get crit chance up to 34% with 377% bonus and an attack speed of 25 bolts per sec. I also agree that the crossbow nodes are crap. But crit and damage is possible without those nodes. Having said that it should it be desirable given that its the main thing for merc. but I have completely avoided it. So far what i have realized it is that nodes easily available to merc are only good in early game. In late game u have to travel and give up the easy nodes for nodes far away as they are just superior and the travel is worth it. The upside is that since no one is playing witch hunter the OP jewels are very cheap. i got 5 jewels that give 6 passive points worth of stats EACH for just 70 exalts. 15% crit chance, 15% proj damage, 4% attack speed with cross bow ( this is imp coz its cheaper than plain attack speed) and the 4 th stat can be 20% evasion or 5-10% attack damage or anything u want. To be honest i feel powerful and tanky but the mobs in ritual and breach are just too aggressive and the jank or clunk that merc has, fails in that spot. And there is no way to completely mitigate things like shooting getting interrupted and charge time of rapid shot.

[@dioivan77755]

looking at the top 1000 ladderboard in PoE never tells the full story. I don't think it is really useful statistic since most of the POE players reach up to level 96, especially if they are playing SC and don't care about defences... Once PoE Ninja or similar site comes out with full API data, things will be clear, like this, it is just a guessing game.

[@ryandugan9176]

The influx of new players and all the missing skill gems and weapons don’t help either. Acolyte of chayula is likely to end up being the most popular ascendency of all the ones we’ve seen so far.

[@mikeb1596]

Every time he says jank take a shot

[@Shinshinvariety]

Suicide isn’t the way

[@Rustyyy89]

witch hunter is great, it's the crossbow skills that I find to be bad

[@dannorcph]

I more or less agree with everything you said. Well said. There are so many anti synergies with Sorcery Ward. I tried making a Bleed Flash Grenade and it just seems impossible. To the point, that I think I need to reroll. The first problem is the Blind from Flash Grenade, that you also get, lowering my Evasion rating and then my ward. On top of my Accuracy too. The second problem is trying to get the bleeds to actually get Aggravated. - Going crit takes way to many points, to even be possible. So I cant Aggravate that way. And it's only 20%, on Critical, which is also a procentage. On top a hitting, which is also a procentage. - Then yoou can Aggravate on Hits, but only with a 10% chance. And as you are hitting very slow, that is almost none excisting. - Then you can Aggravate on Jagged Ground. Which is melee. - Then there are some Evasion/ES boots, which helps, but wrong base for Sorcery Ward and with low rolls and no life.

[@ryandugan9176]

So all you need to do is make yourself immune to blind, which is doable with the skill tree and with gem slots on the skill tree both.

[@ryandugan9176]

That being said, you have much better options for bleed in crossbow, and your flash grenades should instead be used for stun and armor stripping and exploding, because they are the second strongest stun ability in the game. Look at your pure phys and mostly phys abilities again, there’s some pretty juicy places to get your bleed. Explosive shot is my personal favorite, but armor piercing rounds also get a crazy high phys scaling vs armor broken enemies.

[@noimnotnice]

Do NOT build armor or hybrid with sorcery ward. Armor is anti-synergistic, evasion on the other hand is synergistic with ward. Spec fully into evasion and treat ward like a different and situationally better acrobatics keystone. This also plays into you complaining about stun. Crossbows are a ranged weapon, enabling a speedy and dodgy playstyle where one does not get hit a lot. I play a crossbow Deadeye glass cannon with full evasion and getting stunned means misplaying.

[@Elrinth]

First of all, YES Witch Hunter is literaly worst class in the game right now. I am also playing a Witch Hunter... But only 87. You should sneak in a bit to warrior nodes and grab the armour nodes. Just curious, why aren't you using Herald of Ash? ;) I see you took iron reflexes so the wind spirit skill to dodge won't help you. Also that crossbow you are using isn't great :) I've had a better since level 80. I'm playing with Explosive shot, trying to instantly kill everything on screen with one shot.

[@mustafacemaksu4706]

Hold on, hash plays poe2? Were you playing poe1 too?

[@CEOofTunneling]

I just play galvanic CI Invoker😅

[@Rykarie]

So dumb how sorcery ward has downside yet deadeye tailwind doesn't and is way better

[@localfarmer6975]

All True! Titan can just do 50% better with everything the same Also Pathfinder just do 200% better with everything the same 🤣

[@zalaquin]

No double dipping in Poe2

[@zalaquin]

Play bloodmage next it’s really fun

[@zalaquin]

lol I’m playing bloodmage mace build

[@4ncinator]

OMG THAT IS HORRIBLE FROM START TO FINISH

[@YM-ex8hh]

Hello ma bois Nothing suck harder than warrior

[@someoneelse1952]

@@YM-ex8hh warcry warbringer warrior is pretty good I think. I'm level 80 and have no problem clearing and bossing

[@retfavrepally9311]

I'd agree the culling and decimating portion of the tree is self nerfing in a way. But sorcery ward has felt great at endgame, saves me from map one shots, i just swap to acrobatics for bossing. Concentration mechanic is banger though.

[@sovereignreclaimer]

Lmao did you delete my comment?

[@slouch186]

the cool thing about witch hunter is that, since it has basically no ascendency identity at all, they could completely change it into anything they want

[@Oezeo]

100% agree with all of this. Before release i knew i was rolling Merc first. Then the preview video hit and Witch Hunter stood out to me. It was my first character, I have it at 77 but it seems so janky. I went gas grenade for maps. Ended up following the crowd and rerolled as LA deadeye and have it at 88 now. Hopefully they buff WH.

[@ryandugan9176]

I think you made some deacent points, but also your build is probably part of the issue. Catalysis and sorcery ward combine to be one of the cheapest ways to scale into endgame content. Mercenary gets access to some of the best evasion nodes in the game, and some very good armor nodes. While we don’t have easy access to a dual stat scaling aura, combining wind dancer and scavenged plating is a very effective way to scale sorcery ward. Mercenary also has the best ranged stun and by proxy the easiest time scaling scavenged plating of any starting position. Overall, the class is very solid, it’s just not going to be popular at the high end until we get access to more weapon types. I expect sword and crossbow to be an insanely strong combination, just as mace and crossbow are now if you want to build that way. This ascendency offers a smooth transition into mapping with great clear and an option for unnecessarily high scaling for bossing.

[@burningpipe2627]

Witch hunter is actually underrated. Spell shield alone for 2 points allows you to run majority of "as extra ele damage" and "-max res" mods, walk through various sanctum and ultimatum traps/mods, tank most monster on death effects, and deal with the most common form of damage, aka elemental. While the explode points allow you to consistently clear high investment breaches far easier. Witchhunter is pretty low priority for a buff

[@ryandugan9176]

It’s on the strong end of balanced for sure.

[@JSballroom]

If you've watched his stream you would know that is not true. Many on death affects have a physical element that can and will one shot.

[@Shinshinvariety]

Yeah there’s a very good reason this doesn’t work the way people think it does

[@burningpipe2627]

@@Shinshinvariety I mean, I speak from experience. Im not claiming its a entire stop gap against on death, but it does not change it is one of the most fundamentally effective defensive measures against one of the most common damage types in the game for two points. Moreover people dont seem to realize in the present state of energy shield, stacking ES/EV hybrid is effective and you can easily counter the usual low EHP state of life merc by simple going hybrid and take advantage of feast since they are next to monks defensive nodes. Take advantage of jewels, and reaching at least 5k ES without feast is possible. Also I dont think its worth a 4 point investment. I also ran the decimating strike gloves

[@innerg_92]

Lmao Decimating strike is not at all rng or random. The bigger the first hit, the better the removal. Not jank at ALL. Works great on titan's grip 2h maces Witchhunter I've made. Also, splitting defences is NOT weak at all, it's the best possible way to scale defences. You have no idea what you are even talking about lol. You are meant to stack evasion to reduce the amount of hits you take, and armor helps reduce the amount being taken when you DO get hit. They work flawlessly together actually. I can't believe all the misinformation in this video man...

[@JSballroom]

Has someone tested decimated strike? This is the first I've heard of it not being completely rng.

[@Shinshinvariety]

He’s wrong my tiny rapid fire shots have hit the 30% removal