Headhunter seems like an absolutely worthless perk?

[GlyphGryph]

It only triggers when you hit the body.
The cthh bonus is a measly 10%.
It’s reset the moment you actually get a headshot back to 0%.
There’s no guarantee it will actually help you before being reset (I don’t know the base headshot odds, but the better your odds the weaker the perk because the more likely it is to be wasted)

Can someone justify this being any good at all?

Like, if it was 100%, I feel like it would be competitive (guarantees you hit the head every other shot) and even then it doesn’t seem like it would dominate, but at 10% that seems like… nothing.

[Kuroi_Kaze]

Your base headshot chance is 25%. I had a brother with Brute (+15% damage to head), flail in his hands and that perk, a lot of hits to humans and orcks without helmets or in cloth headwear were just oneshots. And remember, noble houses units ofen doedn’t wear helmets but have shields, and flail is good agains shields. So, this perk is more of a situational, if you have weapon with good bonus to hit head (like unique spears with +11%) and want to boost it even more – here you go.

[GlyphGryph]

Of course, the better your brother is at already hitting the head… the worse this perk is as a result!

[GlyphGryph]

See:
If your innate headshot is 0%, the ability has a 10% chance to trigger per attack. That’s a 10% chance to trigger on the first, second, third and fourth attack. (and a 34.4% chance of triggering overall)

If your innate headshot is 25%, the ability has a 10% chance to trigger per attack until you get a headshot. That’s about a 25% chance to trigger over four attacks.

If you add a flail and juggle skill to increase it to 40%, the odds decrease of the ability providing a bonus even further. Any stacks you acquire of this ability have a 20% chance to trigger over 4 attacks.

And this isn’t even counting the fact that you’ll be receiving the opportunity to do so less often!

[LasseFin]

Well, if you hit body twice in a row, it gives you an additional 10% to 20%, then 30% if you body hit again.

[LasseFin]

So it really should be 1-0.75*0.65*0.55*0.45 for trigger chance in 4 consecutive attacks
Which means no, it would be better actually the higher your base headshot chance is

[Kuroi_Kaze]

GlyphGryph, you don’t understand how it works at all.
Your base Headshot chance is 25%. Headhunter adds 10%. 25 + 10 and so on.
1st hit to body – 25% chance to hit head.
2nd hit to body – 35% cnance to hit head.
3rd hit to body – 45% chance to hit head.
4th hit to body – 55% chance to hit head.
5th hit to body – 65% chance to hit head.
6th hit to body – 75% chance to hit head.
7th hit to body – 85% chance to hit head.
8th hit to body – 95% chance to hit head.
9th hit to body – he should be already dead anyway.

[LasseFin]

I guess Glyph’s right in saying that the relative benefit of the perk decreases as the base headshot chance increases. It’s sort of like diminishing returns.

[Wargasm]

It’s always seemed worthless to me. The toughest enemies have a lot of head and body armour to protect their hit points, and the head armour gets hit less often and remains intact for longer, so that this “bonus” will probably make it take longer to kill them off …

How many times have you painstakingly reduced an orc warrior, bandit leader, fallen hero etc. to zero body armour and minimal hit points, and then hit them again and clenched your fists victoriously, only for the “finishing blow” to strike the massive slab of metal on their head and actually fail to do any damage to hit points?

A lot of the early attacking perks are useful only against weaker enemies (e.g. Head Hunter, Crippling Strikes, Executioner). What’s really needed is a perk to increase the chances of hitting whichever part of the body is most vulnerable on the current target.

[Kuroi_Kaze]

Yep, head hunter isn’t good choice against heavy armored knights, orc warriors, warlords and encient guards. As I said, it’s a situational thing, but actually, in the latest patch you can meet orc warriors without helmets and they are really easy to take out with flail.
The Headhunter is as bad as Fast Adaptation is, if you think in that direction, the better your hit chance gets, the less you denefit from it, don’t you?
But this are some early game perks to work with low skilled brothers and weak enemies. Sure, I doubt it’s a good idea to take this perk for your hedge knight, you have better options. Also, it works well with archers, because enemy archers rarely have helmets, so kill two or three of them in one turn becomes a bit easier.

[GlyphGryph]

LasseFin wrote:

I guess Glyph’s right in saying that the relative benefit of the perk decreases as the base headshot chance increases. It’s sort of like diminishing returns.

Yeah I’m specifically speaking of relative worth here. The higher your base chance, the higher the bonus from the body shots are “waster” by a shot that would have already hit the head, and the lower chance of you picking up a stack to begin with.

It may become more valuable, because those last few points offer the all important factor of reliability, but the chance of any individual stack mattering is reduced.

I worked out a bunch of numbers and my math might be wrong, but it looks like if you’ve got a head shot focused build it gives you an average of 3% damage to take the perk? Of course, if you’re building an offense focused build, like with ranged characters, I suppose even 3% might find a place in your perk tree at higher levels.

Would be nice if it was a bit better though – a flat 10% bonus would be much better than we have now.

[Kuroi_Kaze]

Yep, it would be better, but that’s the way math in BB works, it’s simplified. Just look at Fast Adaptation and so on. =)

[Wanderer]

Depending on how you look at it, if you’re already at 80% head-hit rate, that means going up to 90% cuts the chances of getting a body hit in half, whereas going from 10 to 20% is not really a noticeable difference.

With how current enemies are, however, I don’t take headhunter on my heavy armor characters, because their either A. focused on defense or B. two-handers that are spending all of their perks on more noticeable offense effects, like Berserk for getting two Splits on the greatsword character, Killing Spree, and Recover because getting consistent double-splits in one turn racks up fatigue pretty quickly.

Edit: If it was 10% additional head hit chance on miss or body hit, it would make the perk a lot more valuable; as it is, due to enemies with high evasion chances (Necro-Savants, shield Legionnaires), Fast Adaptation is the go-to general offense perk in the low levels.

[LasseFin]

GlyphGryph wrote:

LasseFin wrote:

I guess Glyph’s right in saying that the relative benefit of the perk decreases as the base headshot chance increases. It’s sort of like diminishing returns.

Yeah I’m specifically speaking of relative worth here. The higher your base chance, the higher the bonus from the body shots are “waster” by a shot that would have already hit the head, and the lower chance of you picking up a stack to begin with.

It may become more valuable, because those last few points offer the all important factor of reliability, but the chance of any individual stack mattering is reduced.

I worked out a bunch of numbers and my math might be wrong, but it looks like if you’ve got a head shot focused build it gives you an average of 3% damage to take the perk? Of course, if you’re building an offense focused build, like with ranged characters, I suppose even 3% might find a place in your perk tree at higher levels.

Would be nice if it was a bit better though – a flat 10% bonus would be much better than we have now.

Yeah, a flat 10% is slightly better than what it is right now.

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