What makes 'Huntsman' (or Bane) builds viable?

From reading I've gotten so far that most take double leadership toggles use gun attacks and.. are awesome.

I've got a crab spider; one of the first 50 Crabs on Justice (Go TopDoc's super team!) I respecced him awhile ago for what I thought would be an awesome hovercrab build. 7 attacks is too many. I hate hover. Basically I'm not happy with what my Soldier can do and I'd like to try either Bane or Huntsman. However I have no idea outside of Crab powers what the others are like 'on the field'.

So what were your primary goals when Making your Non crab soldiers (yes including banes) and what play style choices help you enjoy your soldiers?
Not asking for a build, just need some folks with lots of experience to chime in

Thanks!

For a melee bane you want all the melee mace attacks, as the ranged mace attacks all pretty much suck except for poison ray, which makes a ok filler attack at low levels and a way to take out runners. Some folks take venom grenade because it is such a great debuff but I only played my mace bane build while solo (had a huntsman as my alternate, group build) and found that it was better to stay concentrated on single, hard targets. Then you take surveillance for the resistance debuff and at higher levels pick up shatter armor from the mace mastery pool for another heavy duty attack that also debuffs resistance (20%).

From level 24 on your attack chain will be (from Stealth for the large stealth strike) Shatter -> Bash->Pulverize with poisonous ray as a filler. I took Placate for extra crits from shatter, but I am not sure it was worth it - the crit on shatter is good, but not as good as a stalkers crit. Add surveillance at 28 (which you can use without breaking strealth) and Crowd control at 32. Then you can keep mobs bouncing around with shatter + crowd control. Once you get shatter armor at 44 you will be able to do a ton of single target damage (there is no mace redraw between the bane mace powers and the patron pool mace powers).

Defensively try to get as much melee def as you can - now that the fitness pool is free its fairly easy to fit in tough + weave and well worth it as banes DO have some resistances to stack with tough (7.5% to all in the bane spider armor upgrade). I found my bane to be a good solo char who worked best when I turned on bosses and cranked up the level, as they do a lot of hard single targets.

For the huntsman the general strategy is to try to cap ranged def, push up recharge and take all the huntsman attacks: single shot, burst, heavy burst, venom grenade and frag grenade. Add in WaWG and your strategy is to web mobs in place and mow them down from range. The basic soldier gun attacks are all fairly fast activating and do good damage, get a decent amount of global recharge (or take hasten) and you will have them up most of the time as well. From the bane trees you take the bane spider armor upgrade, cloaking device (for the def and stealth), surveillance and maybe build up if you don't mind the weapon swap animation at the start of a fight (you have to draw the mace to fire off build up). I decided that double stacking assault (TT:assault + leadership pool assault) for 30% damage buff all the time with no redraw was better, but YMMV.

At higher levels another option for the huntsman is to add in more area attacks from the patron pools. On mine I dropped frag grenade (due to its small area - its a nice attack otherwise) and picked up arctic breath and bile spray from leviathan mastery. Arctic breath adds another -15% resistance debuff to venom grenades -20% (for -35% to all resistances) and bile spray is toxic damage, so it gets double the debuff from venom grenade (40% instead of 20%). Personal choice here - I think this option does a little more AE and adds more to the team but it isn't as fast and you have to be ok with your character spewing all over the place.

I made my Huntsman because I wanted a more team-friendly build for my Bane but didn't want the Crab backpack. Banes really get garbage AoE. So my Huntsman is my teamer. Nice debuffs and a non-stop AoE chain.

When I solo the character I use the Bane build. Strong single-target damage along with the -res debuffs allows me to crunch through bosses with ease and speed.

If you're looking for a second build for a Crab, I'd think a Huntsman would be a disappointment. I haven't run the numbers myself but I believe they do less AoE than a Crab, and I don't think they can compare to Banes on single-target. On the other hand they do offer a different playstyle which may be right up your alley.

My bane( Rau the Executuioner) is a monster. i took heavy burst an venom grenade from the huntsman tree an most of the bane mele along with poison ray .
i took the webs ,shater ,target aoe an highdamage ranged attack from
black scorp , his def is softcapped to mele an range . i also took the two pets but i skipped the patron pet.
he is great for all types of game play.

For banes, even if you're all giddy with mace-based smashing goodness, Venom Grenade is where it's at. It packs a -40% res debuff for toxic damage (20% for other damage types), and every mace attack has toxic DoT attached. Venom Grenade, Poisonous Ray, and Bile Spray (if you take //Mako) are all pure toxic damage, that get the full juicy buff from Venom Grenade. With VG up, Poisonous Ray does as much or more damage as Pulverize, from range. Also, VG + Surveillance + Shatter Armor/Arctic Breath + Achilles proc = insane. If you bring along your pets to capitalize on that -res goodness, your DPS can possibly beat out even a Widow build, and with way more style.

I soloed every available contact in Grandville with my Bane, but also run him on large teams; for that, his approach changes, but he can still do decent AoE. I stealth in, hit the hardest target with Surveillance, crit with Shatter or Crowd Control depending on how dense the crowd is, jump back out while launching a Venom Grenade, then hit 'em with Arctic Breath/Bile Spray and wade back in for some more Crowd Control and mop up the bosses with ST damage. The mace AoEs are junk, but the other tools work well.

DPS-wise, Placate is pretty much rubbish on Bane, because the increased crit damage it brings (even with Shatter) isn't anywhere near as impressive as an AS from a stalker. Take it if you like the control effects, or because you want burstier damage to stop a Paragon Protector from hitting MoG or something, but not because you want to boost your general DPS.

Banes have awesome burst damage but their sustained ST DPS is crap. They are also melee toons purely based on defense with no DDR whatsoever. Because of that, I ended up speccing out of my bane build. He was awesome while leveling, weak in the endgame when he was all pimped out and softcapped (compared to your usual scrapper or whatnot experience). Sure, the buffs are nice, but I can have those with a huntsman or crab too. The only thing banes have going for them are the extra ST res debuffs in Surveillance and Shatter armor (although technically you can get that one on huntsmans and crabs too), but even with those, I was not satisfied with my sustained damage output (felt sluggish as hell too).

the biggest problems are 1) low if any DDR, 2) are primarily ST oriented, 3) their ranged attacks are weaksauce, if you try to make a Bane with only the mace ranged attacks, you'll find them a little underwealming

The Crab is a rather unique critter, he's more of a team friendly Ranged AE specialist, however the crab melee is a bit weak, and until the pets or really IOed out, can have problems with hard targets

A Huntsman is rather a nice compromise between the two, and is generally good for both solo and team play, a good comparison is to a corrupter but better. Also with it being more ranged oriented than a bane, the lack of DDR is a little less of an issue. Another point in the huntsman's favor, if you have a more commando oriented concept, a huntsman fits better as a nick fury/ punisher/ rambo/etc type than would AR/ Device or AR/ Traps.

The biggest difference between a bane and a crab is in survivability. The bane is softcaped, has 1600 HP and has 30% resistance to S/L and not even 10 to rest. The crab is softcapped, has 2000 HP and has 50% resistance to S/L and 40% to everything else except psionics. Both have no DDR whatsoever, but when defense debuffs enter play a bane is mince meat while a crab still has decent survivability.

So when I look at my bane builds, I'm just meh...

Heh, just made a hybrid crab/huntsman build with 164 ST DPS vs the bane's 155, but with no Surveillance or Shatter Armor. Unlike the bane, however, this toon has massive resists, 2000 hp and 25 hp/s regen, two arachnobot disruptors and a excrementload of AoE. So much for banes.

[QUOTE=EricHough;3504445]pulverize actually beats anything in claws for DPA and shatter is nicely in the ballpark[QUOTE]

Lunge blows anything a bane has access to out of the ballpark... by a good mile. In less time it takes for a bane to use shatter a widow can fire off its two hardest hitting single target attacks (slash and lunge).

Banes aren't bad in general, but it's foolish to think they can hang with widows in the single target DPS dept.

Editted due to trying avoid another long bane vs NW debate...