Thanks for the post. I'm starting to see where my weak points are. I usually end up in pugs which are really bad and none of the strategies will ever happen, but I still manage to have fun.
I've been playing NW for about a month now and I have a HR in 4/4 grim with the rest all brutal. I'm still missing some key components, but I feel pretty confident in my build and skill. I have to admit that I'm guilty of chasing kills, but I'm a kill *****... I will definitely take your advice into consideration, but pugs are so disorganized that usually all I can do is try to cap and kill as much as possible.
So since you play TR what is the best way not to get 1 shotted by them aside from the obvious... better gear.
Do your best to get a "minimum" of 25k health. 28K+ is ideal, but you can deal with 25k. Get your Damage resistance to atleast 25% then stack the HAMSTER out of deflect. Damage resistance can be crapped on, but there is a hard cap for how low you can go into the negative in PvP, Deflect is constant. Piercing damage from Shadow Opportunity(Sab TR Tier), Shadow of Demise Proc(executioner TR tier) and Shocking Execution are are the only abilities that ignore deflect.
As an HR in PvP you should have around 28k health, 25% DR and 40-50% deflect. After that its all play-style. Using Fox Shift will get rid of the one shots by bad TR's who don't first use CoS to break your Fox Shift. The good TR's will CoS you and deplete your Fox Shift then come in with encounters.
Like with any class and every encounter in this game, they have an animation, and a particular sound. If you dodge the minute you hear the sound, if your connection isn't HAMSTER you will dodge the encounter/daily.
Pay attention to where you are fighting, and to the messages the game displays when someone dies. Understand that if you are fighting on your enemies home point, if you kill someone it is highly likely they will be coming back to try and retake there node. Being aware of this and your battleground using LoS is going to help you greatly. Most people like to fight with blinders on. As a TR I am always on the enemies node and I pay attention to the spawn point even while I am fighting someone else. In Hotenow matches I constantly kill people right at the stairs to their node because they ride up on their mount. Like I said on the OP, getting hit on a mount is generally game over if you are fighting someone with some skill.
Hope this helps man, keep up the good work on getting that PvP gear
So since you play TR what is the best way not to get 1 shotted by them aside from the obvious... better gear.
- Look at the scoreboard when the game starts and count how many TRs there are. (seriously)
- Keep Fox's Cunning up even when not in combat if you know a TR is alive and don't know where he is (the buff lasts ~12 seconds which is pretty long).
- Lantern artifact isn't horrible if you don't have an actual good one (like me).
- Use Forest Ghost often, especially if they trip the node alarm or you know they're near you. If you tag them with the free hit then they lose the element of surprise (usually a big factor in getting 1-shot).
- Position yourself near a teammate and unpredictably walk / dodge through his character model back and forth (this forces the TR's auto aim to hit him and not you half the time). This may lead to your teammate getting killed.
I don't think gear helps besides the basic 900-1000 tenacity to counter a little bit of perfect vorpal. Deflect at it's core is RNG heart-of-the-cards and more HP is meaningless if they only need 1 more encounter to finish you off. I only have 24k hp and 900 tenacity and don't get one-shotted very often unless they're using the SoD exploit.
When they use that exploit there isn't much you can do if they know to proc your fox's cunning and wait until your forest ghost is over before landing the big hit. You'll simply die if they catch you off-guard. That said, there aren't many skilled players that use the SoD exploit so the fundamentals above still help.
All good advice. I will emphasize a couple of the key points made by the gentlemen above that help all classes:
Stand on the node and watch the color
You can tell a TR has come onto a node even if you can't see him because the node color will change
Use quality gaming headphones
Gents above said it well. I use HyperCloud and love 'em.
Don't stand still... dodge proactively
Move around in an unpredictable pattern. Dodge in an unpredictable pattern, and dodge BEFORE you get tagged. I dodge my fair share of LBs. Sometimes I get tagged by them too, but honestly that's where gear and deflect come into play.
Just because they are in stealth doesn't mean they can't be hit
If you have encounters that don't require you to lock onto a target, it is sometimes a good idea to hit them where you think they are, before they hit you. I don't do this often, but I do do it occassionaly, especially if I know the TR is running around with low health.
If you run SOD while also running a weapon enchant that has a dot, you will get 100 percent damage for SOD as opposed to the 50 percent as it should be.
i.e. PFire or Bthorn
Aeneas/Einherjar/No Skill
(Iron Lotus)
Dragon Born Rouge GS 17.6k in Profound
Not to be confused with Rogue, I truly am the red makeup women put on their cheeks.
If you run SOD while also running a weapon enchant that has a dot, you will get 100 percent damage for SOD as opposed to the 50 percent as it should be.
i wish everyone from pc went and rolled an HR on xb1 and pvp'd with it. #trust the guy that did
I played with the best HRs of the game in my guild. Exka and Revrac. Both had 40k + hp, high regen, and deflection. It is a just a friendly advise of someone who plays the game since mod 1. If you guys still want to do your own thing, no problem. I rather fight "'dps rangers anytime over a hp HR.
It is a just a friendly advise of someone who plays the game since mod 1. If you guys still want to do your own thing, no problem. I rather fight "'dps rangers anytime over a hp HR.
but on the pc "since mod 1" you had a bunch of campaigns and boons and gear that is not currently available on the xbox 1 version. you can't even get those numbers on the xbox 1 without all possible gear maxed to orange and/or a ton of primary stats sacrificed into CON. The only person I've met with close to 40k hp that isn't a GWF or GF is a famous trickster rogue primarily specced for it in Iron Lotus. Even with extremely good gear he's at around 39.8khp. IDK about the two legendary pc HR's but I'd like to see them get those numbers on the XB1 right now without paying a lot of money and sacrificing the majority of their DPS.
If I had the same tiers of gear specced into more crit & power & deflect I truly believe I would do that much better than them in any given match. I wish I had a time machine and a few thousand dollars to prove it, because I would, and I'd do it live on stream. I'm sure most people that actually do main an HR on the current XB1 version think along the same lines.
but on the pc "since mod 1" you had a bunch of campaigns and boons and gear that is not currently available on the xbox 1 version. you can't even get those numbers on the xbox 1 without all possible gear maxed to orange and/or a ton of primary stats sacrificed into CON. The only person I've met with close to 40k hp that isn't a GWF or GF is a famous trickster rogue primarily specced for it in Iron Lotus. Even with extremely good gear he's at around 39.8khp. IDK about the two legendary pc HR's but I'd like to see them get those numbers on the XB1 right now without paying a lot of money and sacrificing the majority of their DPS.
If I had the same tiers of gear specced into more crit & power & deflect I truly believe I would do that much better than them in any given match. I wish I had a time machine and a few thousand dollars to prove it, because I would, and I'd do it live on stream. I'm sure most people that actually do main an HR on the current XB1 version think along the same lines.
I'm at 37k hps on my CW and my con belt isn't legendary yet. My primary stats are still not that bad either. Sure I am taking a DPS loss, but the survivability allows me to keep pressing damage where as a glass cannon would already be dead. I am pretty sure this methodology of spec'ing more HPs and defensive stats could be applied to all classes.
but on the pc "since mod 1" you had a bunch of campaigns and boons and gear that is not currently available on the xbox 1 version. you can't even get those numbers on the xbox 1 without all possible gear maxed to orange and/or a ton of primary stats sacrificed into CON. The only person I've met with close to 40k hp that isn't a GWF or GF is a famous trickster rogue primarily specced for it in Iron Lotus. Even with extremely good gear he's at around 39.8khp. IDK about the two legendary pc HR's but I'd like to see them get those numbers on the XB1 right now without paying a lot of money and sacrificing the majority of their DPS.
If I had the same tiers of gear specced into more crit & power & deflect I truly believe I would do that much better than them in any given match. I wish I had a time machine and a few thousand dollars to prove it, because I would, and I'd do it live on stream. I'm sure most people that actually do main an HR on the current XB1 version think along the same lines.
brother. you are wrong and right at the same time. You are right the gear/boons, but when HRs were released the only boons available were the sharandar. We only had the sharandar campaign, and the boons of this campaign is not even as good as the dragons one. I actually have more stats now than when HR was released on PC. they buffed the stats of the artefacts, before the artifacts would not give 450 regen, but 300 only.
second, they did not even have the pvp gear out yet too because it came out on the pvp campaign.
You should try it out before you judge. You should try it once, and then if it is bad you can always switch back to what you been used to. I mean, I might be wrong, but the guy who advised you might also be wrong.
as Critical mentioned about hp on his cw, even on PC pvp cws were that range of above 37k hp. Ah, not to forget we didnt even have con belt back then. If you try to compare now with when HR were released, it is actually easier to get HP now than when HR were released on PC
the thing is there's no easy way to "try" having 40k hp. the investment you need to pull it off is huge. but hey, lets give the benefit the doubt and say i try having 40k hp.
Let me tell you guys a story (this is based on real pvp experience as a Hunter Ranger):
***
Match starts. I run and cap home. I then start to push over to mid where the majority of both teams are fighting. On my way over there a friendly rogue who was going to back-cap decides to hit me with lashing blade for 14k. Before my brain can realize what happened another rogue with the classic "Alysin Chains" build nails me with skullcracker, dazing me for 6 seconds. As I slowly walk around in a circle while dazed (thanks to the TR artifact weapon perk) I take around 5-6k damage from these two guys standing there throwing knives at me. Frustrated by the daze mechanic of neverwinter, I sit there spamming disruptive shot even though I'm still dazed, hearing the beep beep beep of it failing to work echo inside my head. Finally it works on the skullcracker guy and he's dazed for a moment. I have a few brief seconds to go through my rotation on him while the "lashing blade" guy prepares to hit me with another SoD burst from stealth and the skullcracker guy spams his own BS while dazed so that the second disruptive shot wears off he can keep me chain-cc'd. As I panic and pray for crits to quickly finish off the skullcracker rogue, "lashing blade" guy bursts me for 20k and procs my soul-forged. I am at like 5% hp now and struggling to finish off rogue #1 so I can maybe, just maybe, daze rogue #2 and have a chance at getting some miracle crit damage to take him out. ***
**Alternate Ending**
As I panic and pray for crits to quickly finish off the skullcracker rogue, "lashing blade" guy somehow chokes and misses the entire burst. Unfortunately, however, skullcracker guy's first at-will crits and initiates the balanced mechanic "concussive strikes" which leads into a never-ending daze as I slowly die to knives being thrown at me from two different directions. I then get teabagged by the lashing blade guy who proceeds to light fireworks over my body.
****
Okay, the reason I wrote all that is because I'm trying to explain why more HP is useless for a Hunter Ranger. Whether I had 25k hp, or 40k hp, the story would have been pretty much the same. That's because people often over-kill burst me for a ton of damage or just lock me into near infinite chain CCs when I end up going down. Me going down then procs my soul-forged, which is usually my first real chance to react to what just happened. Now whether I had 25k or 40k hp it's irrelevant because soul-forged will res me with the same tiny amount either way. My only hope of winning from this standpoint is dodging the enemies scrambling to finish me off and using something like Forest Ghost or Fox Shift to give myself an unpredictable position and a chance at bursting them all down.
What could help me more than hp? Well, more deflect could have made me lucky enough to survive the "lashing blade" guy's 2nd burst and delayed the soul-forged proc even more than having 15k more hp. But that's just a luck-based thing, so it doesn't count. If I had more damage maybe I could have killed the skullcracker guy fast enough to be able to forest ghost and get away. Damage or Deflect could have saved me a lot more than more HP. You can't have all 3-- one must be sacrificed for another when playing HR.
This is me talking about HR.
Now a CW with 37k hp...well he has a little thing called Chaotic Growth that could make the high hp actually significant in any given fight, especially when trying to control mid! If only HR's had chaos magic...then maybe it could work. But they don't.
A TR with almost 40k hp? He can dodge-roll into stealth and laugh as regen heals him nearly to full before an enemy is able to re-cap the point he was contesting the past 5 minutes. He has many ways to stealth despite whatever is going on with tools like Impossible to Catch and Shadow Strike. But HR...we can only stealth for 4 seconds every 30 seconds. Unlike TR we can actually be CC'd and heavily damaged when attempting to use this daily stealth since unfortunately it's not instant.
A DC with 40k hp? Well there's moves like Astral Shield which are based around a DC's max hp, so that makes sense to stack it! They actually strengthen their own powers by stacking more hp! Oh but wait, HR's powers and feats (for trapper) are almost entirely based on weapon damage . hp doesn't help any of them even one bit!
I hope this super-long post better explains why more hp isn't just universally better for HR even though it can be for virtually every other class (in my opinion).
It's honestly personal preference, depends on if you want to play a more 'lone wolf' play style.
As an HR you have access to self heals and stealth, if we were talking about a combat HR I would agree more HP Def and Regen 100%, but trapper is best IMO roaming in between nodes, fighting with other teammates on and around nodes, chasing off runners, burst dps, or surprising out of stealth for burst damage + root and run. I see how your GWF benefits from all that, however.
My initial HR was very high con and around 31K HP. I respecced into WIS and DEX hard and I hit way harder, and still have around 27K HP, and I do ok. I'd still rather have a **** ton of deflection %
I certainly understand where your coming from Brit. But Gannicus is correct. Since Mod 1 and theorycrafting began in NW, this particular subject was always a highly talked about topic.
In a nutshell, I had literally your same arguments but in a different context. I ran so many different builds and gear set ups on my HR, GWF and TR. I had an extremely high deflect high burst build on my TR and I did do very well. It was extremely affective against standard players, but when I got into premade matches with players of same skill, or better...it started to drop off considerably. Blacksheep and Keltzor were most definitely the best TR's on PC for a very, very long time. I did "decent" against them, but 8-10 times they would crush me because I had lower health. It wasn't that their damage was higher, it was they were able to survive longer because of the health.
Having high burst is great, but against skilled and well built players that burst is significantly reduced. Being able to last even 5 more seconds because of health, is more often than not the defining factor in winning against a player.
You don't have to run rank 10's and Legendary equipment to achieve 30k+ health. High con with the right gear and Radiants in defensive slots is all you need. I ran ancient priest rings(defensive slots), and stacked Radiants in them on my HR. I had around 33k health, 28% DR/ 40%+ deflect, 27% ArP..cant remember what my crit was but I never was disappointed in my damage.
Here is a video of when I started changing things up with my HR. You'll notice the stats are not what I posted but this was the beginning of when I started going more towards health, deflect and regen. We also only had the GG PvP set, and there was no such thing as Tenacity during this video. I also changed up my encounters and started using Fox and Disruptive later on and did even better. I had my normal set of gear with high health/deflect, and I had regen gear that I would put on if I was node contesting.
https://youtu.be/zbKk8ja5arI - This video is an hour long(forgot I was recording), but its all PvP - Sound kinda sucks too. But you can see my gear, both sets that I was using. High Regen/health and my standard DPS set up with still high health. If I was getting my butt kicked or node contesting I would put on my Regen gear.
HR's are twice as good now as what they were in these videos. Most of the regen gear is blue's that sell for cheap, I highly encourage you atleast try it out man. I would be shocked if you didn't like the change. Having the profound gear now, and using the jewelry and enchants I had then, would be insanely hard to kill.
I agree with Gannicus. I'm glad most HR's don't go for the builds we used to use on PC.
Blue Pegasus (HR) rings are great for that - something like 478 regen each with defensive slots. I ran those for a while, definitely helps with survivability.
But I also run the blue pegasus rings that give a metric snuff ton of crit also. Those two rings are great, cheap blues to help with two stats that HRs may, depending on gear, be slacking on.
Comments
Do your best to get a "minimum" of 25k health. 28K+ is ideal, but you can deal with 25k. Get your Damage resistance to atleast 25% then stack the HAMSTER out of deflect. Damage resistance can be crapped on, but there is a hard cap for how low you can go into the negative in PvP, Deflect is constant. Piercing damage from Shadow Opportunity(Sab TR Tier), Shadow of Demise Proc(executioner TR tier) and Shocking Execution are are the only abilities that ignore deflect.
As an HR in PvP you should have around 28k health, 25% DR and 40-50% deflect. After that its all play-style. Using Fox Shift will get rid of the one shots by bad TR's who don't first use CoS to break your Fox Shift. The good TR's will CoS you and deplete your Fox Shift then come in with encounters.
Like with any class and every encounter in this game, they have an animation, and a particular sound. If you dodge the minute you hear the sound, if your connection isn't HAMSTER you will dodge the encounter/daily.
Pay attention to where you are fighting, and to the messages the game displays when someone dies. Understand that if you are fighting on your enemies home point, if you kill someone it is highly likely they will be coming back to try and retake there node. Being aware of this and your battleground using LoS is going to help you greatly. Most people like to fight with blinders on. As a TR I am always on the enemies node and I pay attention to the spawn point even while I am fighting someone else. In Hotenow matches I constantly kill people right at the stairs to their node because they ride up on their mount. Like I said on the OP, getting hit on a mount is generally game over if you are fighting someone with some skill.
Hope this helps man, keep up the good work on getting that PvP gear
Cheers!
- Look at the scoreboard when the game starts and count how many TRs there are. (seriously)
- Keep Fox's Cunning up even when not in combat if you know a TR is alive and don't know where he is (the buff lasts ~12 seconds which is pretty long).
- Lantern artifact isn't horrible if you don't have an actual good one (like me).
- Use Forest Ghost often, especially if they trip the node alarm or you know they're near you. If you tag them with the free hit then they lose the element of surprise (usually a big factor in getting 1-shot).
- Position yourself near a teammate and unpredictably walk / dodge through his character model back and forth (this forces the TR's auto aim to hit him and not you half the time). This may lead to your teammate getting killed.
I don't think gear helps besides the basic 900-1000 tenacity to counter a little bit of perfect vorpal. Deflect at it's core is RNG heart-of-the-cards and more HP is meaningless if they only need 1 more encounter to finish you off. I only have 24k hp and 900 tenacity and don't get one-shotted very often unless they're using the SoD exploit.
When they use that exploit there isn't much you can do if they know to proc your fox's cunning and wait until your forest ghost is over before landing the big hit. You'll simply die if they catch you off-guard. That said, there aren't many skilled players that use the SoD exploit so the fundamentals above still help.
twitch.tv/xx_alucard
You can tell a TR has come onto a node even if you can't see him because the node color will change
Gents above said it well. I use HyperCloud and love 'em.
Move around in an unpredictable pattern. Dodge in an unpredictable pattern, and dodge BEFORE you get tagged. I dodge my fair share of LBs. Sometimes I get tagged by them too, but honestly that's where gear and deflect come into play.
If you have encounters that don't require you to lock onto a target, it is sometimes a good idea to hit them where you think they are, before they hit you. I don't do this often, but I do do it occassionaly, especially if I know the TR is running around with low health.
-ASYLUM-
If you run SOD while also running a weapon enchant that has a dot, you will get 100 percent damage for SOD as opposed to the 50 percent as it should be.
i.e. PFire or Bthorn
(Iron Lotus)
Dragon Born Rouge GS 17.6k in Profound
Not to be confused with Rogue, I truly am the red makeup women put on their cheeks.
Got it, thanks.
-ASYLUM-
And yes I run around also but it doesn't always work for me.
-ASYLUM-
DENIAL
i wish everyone from pc went and rolled an HR on xb1 and pvp'd with it. #trust the guy that did
twitch.tv/xx_alucard
I played with the best HRs of the game in my guild. Exka and Revrac. Both had 40k + hp, high regen, and deflection. It is a just a friendly advise of someone who plays the game since mod 1. If you guys still want to do your own thing, no problem. I rather fight "'dps rangers anytime over a hp HR.
DENIAL
but on the pc "since mod 1" you had a bunch of campaigns and boons and gear that is not currently available on the xbox 1 version. you can't even get those numbers on the xbox 1 without all possible gear maxed to orange and/or a ton of primary stats sacrificed into CON. The only person I've met with close to 40k hp that isn't a GWF or GF is a famous trickster rogue primarily specced for it in Iron Lotus. Even with extremely good gear he's at around 39.8khp. IDK about the two legendary pc HR's but I'd like to see them get those numbers on the XB1 right now without paying a lot of money and sacrificing the majority of their DPS.
If I had the same tiers of gear specced into more crit & power & deflect I truly believe I would do that much better than them in any given match. I wish I had a time machine and a few thousand dollars to prove it, because I would, and I'd do it live on stream. I'm sure most people that actually do main an HR on the current XB1 version think along the same lines.
twitch.tv/xx_alucard
I'm at 37k hps on my CW and my con belt isn't legendary yet. My primary stats are still not that bad either. Sure I am taking a DPS loss, but the survivability allows me to keep pressing damage where as a glass cannon would already be dead. I am pretty sure this methodology of spec'ing more HPs and defensive stats could be applied to all classes.
Relentless -LVL 60 GWF-
<DENIAL>
Relentless -LVL 60 GWF-
<DENIAL>
brother. you are wrong and right at the same time. You are right the gear/boons, but when HRs were released the only boons available were the sharandar. We only had the sharandar campaign, and the boons of this campaign is not even as good as the dragons one. I actually have more stats now than when HR was released on PC. they buffed the stats of the artefacts, before the artifacts would not give 450 regen, but 300 only.
second, they did not even have the pvp gear out yet too because it came out on the pvp campaign.
You should try it out before you judge. You should try it once, and then if it is bad you can always switch back to what you been used to. I mean, I might be wrong, but the guy who advised you might also be wrong.
as Critical mentioned about hp on his cw, even on PC pvp cws were that range of above 37k hp. Ah, not to forget we didnt even have con belt back then. If you try to compare now with when HR were released, it is actually easier to get HP now than when HR were released on PC
DENIAL
Let me tell you guys a story (this is based on real pvp experience as a Hunter Ranger):
***
Match starts. I run and cap home. I then start to push over to mid where the majority of both teams are fighting. On my way over there a friendly rogue who was going to back-cap decides to hit me with lashing blade for 14k. Before my brain can realize what happened another rogue with the classic "Alysin Chains" build nails me with skullcracker, dazing me for 6 seconds. As I slowly walk around in a circle while dazed (thanks to the TR artifact weapon perk) I take around 5-6k damage from these two guys standing there throwing knives at me. Frustrated by the daze mechanic of neverwinter, I sit there spamming disruptive shot even though I'm still dazed, hearing the beep beep beep of it failing to work echo inside my head. Finally it works on the skullcracker guy and he's dazed for a moment. I have a few brief seconds to go through my rotation on him while the "lashing blade" guy prepares to hit me with another SoD burst from stealth and the skullcracker guy spams his own BS while dazed so that the second disruptive shot wears off he can keep me chain-cc'd. As I panic and pray for crits to quickly finish off the skullcracker rogue, "lashing blade" guy bursts me for 20k and procs my soul-forged. I am at like 5% hp now and struggling to finish off rogue #1 so I can maybe, just maybe, daze rogue #2 and have a chance at getting some miracle crit damage to take him out. ***
**Alternate Ending**
As I panic and pray for crits to quickly finish off the skullcracker rogue, "lashing blade" guy somehow chokes and misses the entire burst. Unfortunately, however, skullcracker guy's first at-will crits and initiates the balanced mechanic "concussive strikes" which leads into a never-ending daze as I slowly die to knives being thrown at me from two different directions. I then get teabagged by the lashing blade guy who proceeds to light fireworks over my body.
****
Okay, the reason I wrote all that is because I'm trying to explain why more HP is useless for a Hunter Ranger. Whether I had 25k hp, or 40k hp, the story would have been pretty much the same. That's because people often over-kill burst me for a ton of damage or just lock me into near infinite chain CCs when I end up going down. Me going down then procs my soul-forged, which is usually my first real chance to react to what just happened. Now whether I had 25k or 40k hp it's irrelevant because soul-forged will res me with the same tiny amount either way. My only hope of winning from this standpoint is dodging the enemies scrambling to finish me off and using something like Forest Ghost or Fox Shift to give myself an unpredictable position and a chance at bursting them all down.
What could help me more than hp? Well, more deflect could have made me lucky enough to survive the "lashing blade" guy's 2nd burst and delayed the soul-forged proc even more than having 15k more hp. But that's just a luck-based thing, so it doesn't count. If I had more damage maybe I could have killed the skullcracker guy fast enough to be able to forest ghost and get away. Damage or Deflect could have saved me a lot more than more HP. You can't have all 3-- one must be sacrificed for another when playing HR.
This is me talking about HR.
Now a CW with 37k hp...well he has a little thing called Chaotic Growth that could make the high hp actually significant in any given fight, especially when trying to control mid! If only HR's had chaos magic...then maybe it could work. But they don't.
A TR with almost 40k hp? He can dodge-roll into stealth and laugh as regen heals him nearly to full before an enemy is able to re-cap the point he was contesting the past 5 minutes. He has many ways to stealth despite whatever is going on with tools like Impossible to Catch and Shadow Strike. But HR...we can only stealth for 4 seconds every 30 seconds. Unlike TR we can actually be CC'd and heavily damaged when attempting to use this daily stealth since unfortunately it's not instant.
A DC with 40k hp? Well there's moves like Astral Shield which are based around a DC's max hp, so that makes sense to stack it! They actually strengthen their own powers by stacking more hp! Oh but wait, HR's powers and feats (for trapper) are almost entirely based on weapon damage
I hope this super-long post better explains why more hp isn't just universally better for HR even though it can be for virtually every other class (in my opinion).
twitch.tv/xx_alucard
As an HR you have access to self heals and stealth, if we were talking about a combat HR I would agree more HP Def and Regen 100%, but trapper is best IMO roaming in between nodes, fighting with other teammates on and around nodes, chasing off runners, burst dps, or surprising out of stealth for burst damage + root and run. I see how your GWF benefits from all that, however.
My initial HR was very high con and around 31K HP. I respecced into WIS and DEX hard and I hit way harder, and still have around 27K HP, and I do ok. I'd still rather have a **** ton of deflection %
In a nutshell, I had literally your same arguments but in a different context. I ran so many different builds and gear set ups on my HR, GWF and TR. I had an extremely high deflect high burst build on my TR and I did do very well. It was extremely affective against standard players, but when I got into premade matches with players of same skill, or better...it started to drop off considerably. Blacksheep and Keltzor were most definitely the best TR's on PC for a very, very long time. I did "decent" against them, but 8-10 times they would crush me because I had lower health. It wasn't that their damage was higher, it was they were able to survive longer because of the health.
Having high burst is great, but against skilled and well built players that burst is significantly reduced. Being able to last even 5 more seconds because of health, is more often than not the defining factor in winning against a player.
You don't have to run rank 10's and Legendary equipment to achieve 30k+ health. High con with the right gear and Radiants in defensive slots is all you need. I ran ancient priest rings(defensive slots), and stacked Radiants in them on my HR. I had around 33k health, 28% DR/ 40%+ deflect, 27% ArP..cant remember what my crit was but I never was disappointed in my damage.
Here is a video of when I started changing things up with my HR. You'll notice the stats are not what I posted but this was the beginning of when I started going more towards health, deflect and regen. We also only had the GG PvP set, and there was no such thing as Tenacity during this video. I also changed up my encounters and started using Fox and Disruptive later on and did even better. I had my normal set of gear with high health/deflect, and I had regen gear that I would put on if I was node contesting.
https://youtu.be/NDy5vko4D9A - Beginning of my change to high health/regen
https://youtu.be/zbKk8ja5arI - This video is an hour long(forgot I was recording), but its all PvP - Sound kinda sucks too. But you can see my gear, both sets that I was using. High Regen/health and my standard DPS set up with still high health. If I was getting my butt kicked or node contesting I would put on my Regen gear.
HR's are twice as good now as what they were in these videos. Most of the regen gear is blue's that sell for cheap, I highly encourage you atleast try it out man. I would be shocked if you didn't like the change. Having the profound gear now, and using the jewelry and enchants I had then, would be insanely hard to kill.
I agree with Gannicus. I'm glad most HR's don't go for the builds we used to use on PC.
But I also run the blue pegasus rings that give a metric snuff ton of crit also. Those two rings are great, cheap blues to help with two stats that HRs may, depending on gear, be slacking on.