Revision as of 02:40, 9 July 2020

Hunters are one of the most complicated classes to play, while at the same time they can be very easy to understand. The general idea is shooting your enemies from afar, but if you don't do this often, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. This impact can be felt across many of the Hunter's skills. On the contrary, knowing how to play a Hunter sets you up for powerful amounts of damage, while also being a glass cannon.

In PvP, the idea is no different from PvE. Players will always try to get close to you to minimize the damage taken from you, just as how monsters will always get close to you for some powerful skills. But taking up key positions, and finding the right amount of distance and movement speed to get away from your enemies each time will help you in the long run. This guide will help you strike a balance in that.

The Mathematical World of Range

The first thing you want to do is to get a sense of the range, theoretically. From the page Meter, one meter is 50 pixels in-game. Four meters (200 pixels) is the typical distance to cast spells, but it is also the range that Hunters can target an enemy at.

The passive skill, Sniping increases this range slightly (by 9%) each time you put a skill point into it.

• Level 1 (requires level 8) is about 4.36 meters (218 pixels)
• Level 2 (requires level 16) is about 4.72 meters (236 pixels)
• Level 3 (requires level 24) is about 5.08 meters (254 pixels)
• Level 4 (requires level 32) is about 5.44 meters (272 pixels)
• Level 5 (requires level 40) is about 5.8 meters (290 pixels)

How much does it apply practically? Not much. In the horizontal picture, the A position marks the 4 meter range of a Hunter without Sniping, while the B position marks the 5.8 meter range of a Hunter with Sniping (maxed at level 5). The position that the player is at is the range under 1.2 meters. When you go a bit beyond the range that you are capable of firing at, the auto-move kicks in and moves you a bit toward the enemy.

Meanwhile, when we observe the vertical picture, the positions from A to B mark the maximum vertical range of a Hunter with Sniping (this is about the same distance as three-four jumps). Being able to reach your targets that far is one of the Hunter's greatest strengths.

Effective at Long Range, Poor at Close Range

You might be wondering, if Hunters have their own attack, does that make them a physical class or a ranged class? Although there's no such thing as ranged defense, Hunters are treated as physical class that can operate at range, which means that physical defense applies here in the calculation. That being said, carrying both a bow and gloves adds more weight, thus Hunters take longer to perform one melee swing over a Warrior.

More specifically, the average time it takes to do a melee swing is 1 second barehanded, 1.25 seconds as long as a main hand glove or bow is equipped (but not both), and 1.66 seconds if both a main hand glove and bow is equipped. To verify this, take the average of both your minimum and maximum attack (min+max / 2), then divide it by one of these numbers above. You should get a number close to, or equivalent to your average dps.

Most of the Hunter's skills have a penalty based on distance, and in one special case, platforming. This is the half-damage rule, where a close-range shot (less than 1.2 metres between the player and the targeted enemy) deals half of it's damage. Hunters can alternate between ranged auto-attack shots and melee swings depending on their range (less than 1.2 meters results in a melee swing, more than 1.2 meters results in a ranged shot).

Piercing Shot has a slightly different version of the half-damage rule. It deals half of it's damage against all targets if your closest (first) target is less than 1.2 metres away from you. However, you must be on a straight platform, or else the skill fails to activate. The only ranged skill that ignores the half-damage rule is Arrow Shower, as it is used against multiple targets.

The Enemy of Hunters: Stacking