Helm’s Deep Hunter Skills: The Huntsman

Well, folks, we’ve had some time to absorb the class changes that update 12.0 (otherwise known as the Helm’s Deep expansion) brought to us. To recap, skill traits were replaced with skill trees, and several skills were consolidated, removed or changed as a result. For the hunter, the names remained the same – Bowmaster (red), Huntsman (blue) and Trapper of Foes (yellow), but the way the hunter behaves between lines differs tremendously. In this post, I’ll go over the Huntsman line and focus on some of the combat skills that have changed or are useful when running in this line.

Here are some of my other hunter skill guides:

Helm’s Deep Hunter Skills: Trapper of Foes

Helm’s Deep Hunter Skills: The Bowmaster

The major selling point of the new Huntsman is the ability to fire on the move without penalty, even through inductions. Since you don’t have as much range or damage output as the bowmaster line, you need to rely on speed of both character and skills. If you’re playing the huntsman like a hunter was traditionally played pre-skil tree (that is, standing back and firing big, powerful shots), you’re probably going to wonder what all the fuss is about.

According to Turbine, the Huntsman is a “mid-ranged mobile harasser”. While traiting Huntsman, I’ve definitely felt mobile AND harassing, but haven’t really noticed the loss of range. Most enemies close fast enough to get within the Huntsman’s range quickly anyway, so you may only be missing out on the initial “pull shot” in solo play, and may not be able to stand as far back from the mobs in group play.  Personally, I’ve found the Huntsman line to be the most fun to play due to all of the movement and action involved, and also possibly the most survivable of the three lines thanks to a number of speed buffs/debuffs that make the hunter a viable damage kite. I certainly am not putting up the “big shot” numbers of the bowmaster line, but the speed with which I can get arrows off makes up for it. No more standing around and watching the induction bar for this hunter.

Here are a few skills (combat, mainly) that are available to the Huntsman.

General Skills

Quick Shot: Chance for additional focus point, up to 50%

Effects of quick shot are dependent on stance:

Precision – additional quick shot crit chance

Endurance – returns morale

Strength –  40% target speed reduction

Brax’s thoughts: Quick shot is pretty much the go-to shot to use when more powerful shots are on cooldown, or when managing focus, power or threat. I prefer to run in precision stance so that I don’t have to worry about focus management as much.

 

Swift bow – launches 3 arrows in rapid succession

 

Brax’s thoughts: Not much has changed with this skill, so it’s still a great high-damage shot. Reduction of induction time with hunstman traits make this a regular in the rotation.

 

Barbed Arrow – Applies a bleed to target every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. 40% target speed reduction

 

Brax’s thoughts: This is my new favorite speed debuff skill. When kiting as a huntsman, rely not only on your speed buffs/procs, but also your target speed debuffs to make sure that the bad guy can’t catch up with you!

 

Penetrating Shot – Big damage, no cooldown

 

Brax’s thoughts: Penetrating Shot has always been one of the best “bang for your buck” shots when considering damage vs power consumption. Now that there is no cooldown, rotate it in with Swift Bow, Barbed Arrow and Quick shot to consume and then re-build focus.

 

Merciful Shot – Big damage, available only if target health is under 50%. Removes up to 3 corruptions. Can be traited to apply additional damage to targets with a bleed.

 

Brax’s thoughts: I got used to not using Merciful Shot much in the past, due to the 50% health requirement and amount of power it consumes. However, it does do massive damage and the corruption removal is nice. I use it situationally now.

 

Distracting Shot: 10 second daze applied to target

 

Brax’s thoughts: Distracting shot isn’t as useful in the Huntsman line as in Trapper of Foes, due to a very long cooldown time. However, it’s always nice to have an extra daze in your pocket, and now that you can fire it off while moving, it may come in handy. 

 

Bard’s arrow: Applies 15 second fear to target

 

Brax’s thoughts: Bard’s arrow can be useful during solo play with a multi-mob pull, or in groups when you want to burn down one target while the other one runs around like an idiot. Fifteen seconds is a long time to not have to worry about a bad dude. When using Bard’s arrow, I most often use it to start a pull. If I’m using it when I’m already in-combat, I’m probably in trouble. But it could be a nice last-second “oh shoot” skill to scare a mob off and give you enough time to either heal up or run away.

 

Blindside:  Mele attack, Interrupt

 

Brax’s thoughts: Blindside is one of my favorite mele attacks since it not only interrupts inductions, it also generates a good amount of focus. Since traiting huntsman, I don’t find myself in mele range as often (since I’m kiting, now), but will occasionally run up to a healing mob and attempt an interrupt.

 

Low Cut: Mele attack, reduces target run speed, small chance to apply bleed

 

Brax’s thoughts: This is another great skill to reduce target run speed, and it’s AoE. So if those ugly orcs get too close while you’re kiting around, fire off a low-cut and watch ’em try to keep up!

 

Dazing Blow: 5 second daze, removes up to 3 corruptions from target

 

Brax’s thoughts: Honestly, I always forget that this skill removes corruption. I use it occasionally for the daze, and because the animation is one of my favorite Hunter mele’s 🙂

 

Set Trap: Single ground-target trap that roots and can be used in combat

 

Brax’s thoughts: It’s nice that this is still a skill that all hunters get, regardless of where we put our points. It provides some element of crowd control no matter which tree you decide to run in. Traps can now be used in-combat, so dust off this skill, you may need it for pulls where you want to burn down an archer while rooting a mele mob!

 

Huntsman Specific Skills

Barrage: Damage increases with each use

 

Brax’s thoughts: This is one of the new skills from the Helm’s Deep expansion. It’s got a short cooldown, but eats up focus. Use it in your rotation like Penetrating Shot. Mix it in with Swift Bow, Quick Shot and Barbed Arrow in order to keep focus managed. Try to get as many Barrage’s in as possible, since the damage keeps increasing the more you’re able to use on a single mob. The damage increase does seem to be mob specific, so successive usage isn’t required for the damage increase to take effect.

 

Split Shot: Targets multiple foes, up to 5

 

Brax’s thoughts: Split shot is the only ranged AoE skill available to the Huntsman now that Rain of Arrows has been moved into the Bowmaster tree. Hence, you are now able to trait for Split Shot to damage up to five foes. Use it in groups when the tank already has all of the aggro, not in solo play to make a pull.

 

Strength of the Earth: Returns power and morale, and can be traited to increase focus as well

 

Brax’s thoughts: This is not a combat skill, but thought it was worth mentioning since it is now granted as a part of the Huntsman tree. This skill returns morale and power, can be used in-combat, and can now also be traited to increase focus, also. Although the quantities returned are relatively small, I use it a lot to help manage power in long group boss fights like the Turtle.

 

Blood Arrow: Can be traited to restore 6% of maximum morale on critical hit

 

Brax’s thoughts: I used to never use blood arrow. Yes, it did major damage, but it also cost the hunter some morale – which is something I never seemed to have enough of! Now, Blood Arrow still does a nice amount of damage, but it also can be traited to return morale, and has a chance to unlock the skill….

 

Exsanguinate: Blood arrow has a chance to grant this skill that causes a large bleed on the target

 

Brax’s thoughts: These two in combination do a nice bit of damage without a major cost to power, plus if you’ve traited merciful shot (or heart seeker, which is a bowmaster skill) to do additional damage on a bleed target, you could really put some hurt on a mob using a Blood Arrow -> Exanguinate -> Merciful Shot combo. 

 

Scourging Blow: Applies additional damage if target has barbed arrow bleed, stops the bleeding

 

Brax’s thoughts: Scourging Blow is probably one of my least-used mele skills, mostly because I try my best not to be in mele range when traited huntsman. It seems to fall behind Low Cut, Blindside, and Dazing Blow as beneficial to my play-style. Having said that, Scourging Blow does do a nice bit of damage for a hunter mele, so if you do find yourself backed into a corner with your other skills on cooldown, it might be a good one to use.

 

Capstone – Rapid Fire: Causes skills to have no focus cost or requirement, increases physical mastery rating, can be traited to include a stacking physical mastery buff

 

Brax’s thoughts: I’ll admit it. I didn’t get this capstone at first. It’s not even really a combat skill, is it? What is this, Lore-Master gets “Sic ‘Em”, and we’re stuck with … this?  But boy, was I wrong. I love this capstone. Hit it right before you want to smash a mob with a simple, quick, focus-free rotation of Penetrating shot/Barrage for a period of six seconds. Pen Shot has no cooldown, and Barrage has a one second cooldown. so you can pretty much fire away to your heart’s content. And don’t forget about the damage bonus for continuous use of Barrage! Not to mention, the Rapid Fire cooldown is a mere 90 seconds, so it can be used often. Even if you don’t burn the mob down before he gets to you, you can continue to fire on the run without a miss penalty, because – hey, you’re a Huntsman!

 

If you’d like to see further explanation of the Huntsman specializations and see the skills in action, check out my video:

 

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