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We played a couple hours of Dungeon Defenders last night, with new characters starting at character level 1 and getting up to around character level 7. We played on normal difficulty with 1 of each class: Apprentice, Squire, Monk, and Huntress.

All throughout, it seemed like our Huntress was being severely outclassed: she had fewer kills, less damage, and far less effective static defenses than all the other characters. The fact that her traps go away quickly and she can only really ping single targets from afar seemed to really hamper her ability to put out damage. The rest of us were blowing the snot out of goblins left and right.

Were we doing something wrong? Is the Huntress just worse than the other characters, or do we not know how to play her properly? How can we make her effective, thus ensuring all players have an orc-slaying good time?

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    To further elaborate: How can we have FUN as the Huntress? I was the bored Huntress last night. My traps seemed to do far less than everyone else's defenses, and my guns/bows just took forever to plink down orcs, taking more than one reload each. Having others repair my traps doesn't exactly improve my fun factor, although it does sound effective.
    – lilserf
    Oct 20, 2011 at 20:25
  • @lilserf There's pretty much 3 ways you can go with each character, DPS/Trap/Hybrid of the two, with pros/cons to each method. You pretty much have to figure out what is most fun for you and run with it. :) If you're not into the Traps so much, go for a full DPS build. If you're still early in the game, you should be able to adjust your points fairly easily to do so.
    – FAE
    Oct 20, 2011 at 21:39
  • Yeah, the tone of the answers sound like I might personally be better off mostly neglecting traps and focusing on DPS. I'll give it a "shot"! <grin>
    – lilserf
    Oct 20, 2011 at 21:59
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    @lilserf Groaaaan.
    – Mag Roader
    Oct 21, 2011 at 0:06
  • I actually level a Trap based Huntress and I outlevel whomever I play with consistently.. I get the Knight/Lord bonuses every wave that help out significantly because of my massive AOE damage as opposed to conditional or elemental based AOE damage of the others.
    – James
    Nov 7, 2011 at 20:09

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I was playing in a 3-man group last night: Squire, Huntress, and Monk. We set up the same defenses on all 3 entrance points to the map. Squire walls with Huntress proximity/inferno traps in front, and whatever auras the Monk felt like using (not important to this example).

When the waves came, each of us defended one section. The Squire and Huntress spent most of their time repairing defenses (especially the Huntress's traps, which replenishes the quantity), and the Monk spent all his time fighting the enemies. The end result was that the Monk had the most kills, but let all his defenses die and leaked enemies through to the crystal.

The Huntress and Squire, by comparison, had no trouble holding off all the enemies, and the Squire even held off the Ogre. The Monk was not a team player, and leaked because he didn't repair the Huntress traps. The Squire kept the Huntress traps replenished and didn't even break a sweat.

tl;dr: The key to playing Huntress effectively is to have your teammates repair your traps. I'm pretty sure that's the crux of it.

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    Agreed. One additional note I will point out is upgrading your trap count, when you level up. It is incredibly useful to give you a little more time during a wave before the traps expire. This means more people can repair/replenish your traps, maintaining their damage output for longer. Setting up gas traps on top of inferno traps is also a great way to deal sustained damage, as gas traps keep them in the inferno for a longer duration. The key as a huntress is, while others may be blocking/slowing enemies, you should be aggressively taking them down. (That's how I was effective, at least.)
    – Tux
    Oct 20, 2011 at 19:57
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    Repair, repair, repair, indeed. Don't forget you can use Invisibility to repair your traps without getting interrupted by attacking enemies! You'll still have to watch out for AoE groundpounds though and the like that aren't targeted, but it helps a lot and has a low Mana cost.
    – FAE
    Oct 20, 2011 at 21:40
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The huntress is actually the strongest character in the game. My squire does 100k DPS; my huntress does 150k ranged+piercing DPS (including piercing-shot), and my friends do even more.

Here's how you create a strong huntress:

  • Upgrade attack, movement speed, and piercing-shot as much as possible (70). Put the rest into casting rate and HP.
  • Find a Van Wolfenstein with high (30+) max upgrades. You can earn one by beating the new halloween level on hard, or buying one from someone on the forums, the wiki-shops, or IRC.
  • Upgrade it all the way. Put all points into attack, except when it lets you upgrade attack-rate or projectile-amount.
  • Keep your eyes out for pristine armors with high max upgrades, putting points into attack and piercing-shot. Remember that wearing a full set of pristine (or any other type) of armor gives you bonuses.

Build strong towers with a squire and ensnare/strength-drain auras with a monk, but have everyone switch back to their huntresses before the round start, and beating The Summit on insane becomes a breeze.

Actually, there is a better weapon for the huntress than the Van Wolfenstein, but finding one with good base-stats and high max-level is extremely difficult. I forget the name, but it's the one you get for beating the second boss.

Ostensibly, its DPS is lower than the Van Wolfenstein, but it has a huge HUGE splash radius, meaning if you are lucky enough to get a good one, you will do much more damage overall than other huntresses.

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    The weapon from the second boss is actually not unique. I've seen them for sale at the tavern after some missions. Its called a cyber drill and yes, it does some awesome AOE damage. I've also seen one with a spread(!!!!) which I seriously want to get my hands on. Oh, and yes the huntress has the highest DPS in the game, even after the wolfenstein nerf.
    – l I
    Oct 31, 2011 at 19:09
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    also, the warping crystal challenge on insane gives you a crystal tracker, which is also an equivalent AOE weapon.
    – l I
    Nov 3, 2011 at 12:58
  • I swap back and forth between the AOE blaster and the 5 shot Wolf that I have depending on what I am doing.. both very handy weapons to have around.
    – James
    Nov 7, 2011 at 20:07
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I went with the entirely different route from Strix. I found a nice and fast shooting gun with decent damage and went for a straight up DPS build. I mostly relied on gas traps to choke enemies as I plinked them down.

I may respec once I hit level 25 to take advantage of the engineer pet and its nice boost to trap duration as well as its repair traps ability.

During coop, I also found that the gas trap is very nice to place in front of high damage towers as it protects them very well. I did not like inferno traps as much since they are low durability (though I didn't invest any points into trap duration so that may affect it).

It is also import as I quickly found out that many monsters can have fire resistance, which made me a little less useful against those, but on most coop maps that I've played although I had the lowest tower kills, my hero kills were often the highest among the group.

Finally, don't forget to upgrade your weapon. Its definitely worth it for the first few levels as it greatly increases your dps for relatively low mana cost.

Since you now have tons of mana to spend due to not relying on towers as much, you can use it on repairs and upgrades of your ally's towers.

Oh, and one last thing.

I hear that the portal gun (huntress only) is so powerful that its almost game breaking, by making enemies walk in a loop in front of turrets until they die. Here's hoping that'll be the case once I finally reach level 30 :)

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  • It's good that such a wide variety of playstyles can be effective. I hate it when a game devolves to each character having one single "best" archetype. Let's hope that doesn't happen here.
    – Invader Skoodge
    Oct 20, 2011 at 20:00
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    It's worth noting that the gas trap is ineffective against creeps with poison immunity, and that darkness traps (as of a recent patch) remove immunities from creeps that are hit by them.
    – Adam Glauser
    Feb 9, 2012 at 19:04
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My Huntress is level 21, and I don't have any issues about being outclassed compared to Monks and Wizards (I do feel the Squire is better, however).

Once you put a decent number of points into trap durability, they can last an entire wave without repair, or with very little repairing. Between my items and skill points I've got decent durability, range, and reset times. Proximity traps do great when combined with a wall (or a gas trap in a pinch). Once they get an upgrade or two, they can kill most mobs in one hit, or come very close. They also don't get destroyed by Ogres and Kobolds =)

As for the Huntress herself, she seems to be very dependent on having a good weapon. Get something with decent physical damage and a good rate of fire. Ammo count isn't important - smaller counts mean often but quick reloads. It can be nice to have a lot of ammo, but if you let it get to empty then reload, its going to take a long time. I've got one which deals 75 physical dmg per shot, with 4 shots per second (base stats). Its not quite on par with Squires, but I'm a lot more mobile and its good for rapidly killing stuff that gets through the defenses.

TL;DR: Put points in trap durability so you aren't stuck always repairing your traps. Use walls or gas traps to clump mobs together so proximity mines do more damage. Get a good bow - They can be harder to find than say, a sword for a squire, but once you get one you'll feel a lot more powerful.

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I went full DPS. I have a rapid-fire bow (53 base damage per shot, 7 shots per second, 77 arrows/clip fully upgraded) and at Lv17 I can take down an Orc on Hard in about a second, which is about the same DPS as a Lv1 Fireball tower from my full-defense Lv26 Apprentice.

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Beat the last boss of the game, get the flamethrower, upgrade it, then go invis and stand in packs of mobs and roast them for massive damage.

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  • this is actually not a bad answer. The flame thrower is indeed pretty powerful, its fast attacking and AOE. Elemental damage also specs up faster when you upgrade. The only down side is the limited range and need to reload quite often, but it is a pretty powerful weapon for a mid level huntress.
    – l I
    Oct 24, 2011 at 20:07
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I haven't found anything besides bosses that doesn't melt in 1 shot of her basic proximity trap, and... I'm up to 14 charges without upgrading?

ymmv

lvl 18 doing alchemical laboratory repeatedly on all my heroes.

  • +45 to tower health
  • +6 to tower damage
  • +17 tower radius
  • +10 tower speed

Nothing seems immune, and I put a gas trap in front of it to clump them up really well. (some poison immune go through the gas, but the proximity mine has enough time to re-arm. Have never even tried invisibility, but reading some of the other ideas, it sounds quite nice.

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Trap health and reset speed. That's the biggest thing, in my opinion. I also like using a three trap combo of proxy, inferno, and gas. If I put that on a choke-point solo I can pretty much forget about it entirely. The Proxy hits for massive damage (also put points in that), while the gas holds them off while it recharges and the inferno damages them while they're in the gas.

When playing solo on hard and medium I almost never have to fire a shot. Only problems are Elf warriors and Wyverns since they can bypass the traps.

Using this build be sure to use ALL of your upgrades on improving your traps. The only personal points you might want to take is casting speed to improve how quickly you can repair traps, since even 30+ det proxies can need repair on the big waves.

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Actually the huntress is the best in higher levels,

Starting out she really sucks, but when she gets higher levels and gets Blasticus

(Challenge: Assault on Insane) She is an indestructible bomb waiting to explode.

When I first got my Huntress I wanted to junk it, but I played until lvl 20 and realized that she was a late-bloomer.

People say the huntress sucks... think about that when you go on PVP!

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  • Why has this been downvoted?
    – user28379
    Nov 6, 2012 at 22:09

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