Ok so I went back and used WF today with a two different crit builds One was a crit, crit, fast reload fast reload, pierce build, and the other was crit fast reload, fast reload, attack speed build. I ended up finding out that crit, fast reload, and attack damage are his best abilities to use. After doing that, trying various buiilds, putting WF in multiple scenerios, and using different characters in said scenerios here is what I came up with…
…yep, it’s the same thing, and here’s why.
It’s true that attack damage, crit damage, and reload speed are very nice for WF, but with all three it only gives him enough damage to start competing with the other characters in the game. I tested this on miko’s a few times and while I killed faster, it was minimal compared to using thorn, OM, or a melee character in teh same scenerio. I had to go on a limb, and my accuracy had to be spot on otherwise I was screwed, and being that WF is squishy I couldn’t take many hits before I was forced to retreat. And boy does his retreat sucks. I tried flak cannon knockback ability vs stick bomb slow ability and true the sticky bomb is slow. But good look trying to stick a rath who is bobbing and weaving trying to dodge your bullets. But even with the effort of finally sticking them, the slow effect doesn’t kick in until after the bomb detonates, which is about 3 seconds. So you have to buy yourself time for three seconds before the slow goes off, and in a last resort effort (which you will get in quite often with WF cause of his defense) that is just horrible.
Flak cannon with this build fails in comparison to all the other abilities that I used with the characters. It still didn’t do enough damage. It still feels better to just shoot from the him. In close quarters the flak cannon can bounce off walls and do damage to enemies, but it happened to little to often and it was still minimal damage.
I used WF in all three PvP modes and out of all the games there was one game I used him to his full success, and it felt nice to actually do damage. But that was ONLY because the team was horrible, and if it was any other team I would’ve decimated with thorn, rath, shayne, etc.
I wanted to do more testing and put a melee (rath) anod another mid range/long range charater (thorn) in the same scenerio. With both the other characters I overall did better, and by great amounts. I then did a play test of characters I hardly use, Shayne, and Kelvin. Even with Kelvin I was a greater asset to the team and with Shayne my throwing daggers did enough damage to push enemies back without reloading or waisting skills.
tl:dr No matter what build you use WF will always lack compared to the other characters in any given situation. When played at his best he will still fall under every other character in the game,.