Witch Elf and Witch Hunter itemization

[Danielle]

Most popular builds on Witch Hunter and Witch Elf revolve around spamming Torment/Agonizing Wound that ignore armour when used from behind. This means that unlike any other melee dps class Weapon Skill is a very low value stat on both of these classes. Certainly there may be some original builds with Dragon Gun or even Inquisition builds that try to use Fervor. However, while these are fun builds an AoE Witch Hunter will still most likely utilize Torment when using single target skills. Furthermore these are far from the optimal builds on these two classes and they are the least utilized builds as well. This makes Weapon Skill the 4th worst stat behind only ballistic skill, intelligence and willpower on a Witch Hunter/Witch Elf.

Now, there would be nothing wrong with some items catering towards builds that require weapon skill, however what we have now is:

Beastlord: Loads of weapon skill on evertyhing + weapon skill bonus
Conqueror: Loads of weapon skill on every item except belt
Dominator: Defensive set (some strength, mostly toughness and initiative), no crit on anything

This basically means there is no offensive set for a Witch Hunter/Witch Elf who hopes to use Torment/Agonizing Wound as their spammable and their only choice is to use a defensive set with no crit which is also anathema to these builds. My suggestion would be to

a) Not put weapon skill on all pieces in sets in general.

OR

b) Create 1 offensive set without weapon skill, maybe Beastlord can be the set with Weapon Skill and Conqueror can be the set without weapon skill or the other way round.

From a game theory perspective, an AoE Witch Hunter won't be mad he is lacking weapon skill and has initiative instead. Initiative or toughness will still be useful even in builds that would use weapon skill. However, all Torment/AW WEs/WHs will be mad they have weapon skill on basically anything, because it will be very ineffective for them.

In general I would suggest that the item design philosophy switch from Weapon Skill as a priority stat on Witch Hunter/Witch Elf and switch towards Strength, Wounds and Initiative being the primary stats.

Thank you for reading.