Heroes of Hammerwatch: Simple Class Builds for Newbies

On your first game, try Ranger first (it’s the easiest). Rotate through classes once you beat each boss.

Build Priority:

On the Prowl 1
Grasping Roots 1/Bow Shot 2
Marked Prey 1
Twinned Arrows to max when you can
Powershot 1
On the Prowl/Bow Shot to max
Marked Prey to Max
Grasping Roots to max
Decide if you want to upgrade Flurry of Arrows for its damage, or if you’d rather have more uses of On the Prowl with your mana capacity.

Skills:

Bow Shot – Piercing arrows is important, as well as reduced movement speed while firing. You also fire slower while moving.
Flurry of Arrows – Helps you clear rooms if you run into the middle. I like this better left not ranked up so that it can be used cheaply and more often with On the Prowl.
Grasping Roots – the ranger’s panic button. The armor reduction makes this a useful offensive tool as well.
Powershot – Untested.
On the Prowl (passive) – +25% movement speed and increased evasion whenever you use any skill. Valuable.
Marked Prey (passive) – crits for your primary attack and 2.5 second marks for your party members (or potentially from flurry).
Twinned Arrows (passive) – big damage spike that homes in on more enemies

Build Priority:

Shield 1
Lay on Hands 1
Stunning Blows 1
Whirlwind 1
Shield/Lay on Hands/Sword to max
Stunning Blows to max
Whirlwind to max
Flames of Devotion to max

Skills:

Sword – Primary attack, higher ranks mean more damage and bigger arc. Not important.
Charge – More ranks mean more range, but I’ve never needed more range and the rest doesn’t matter.
Lay on Hands – Mana for heals, and it even heals party members as icing on the cake. Very important.
Whirlwind – Primary damage dealing ability, but I feel like I’ve never needed it.
Shield (passive) – The arc is very important, you will get surrounded a lot.
Stunning Blows (passive) – It’s only ever 2.5 seconds, and you won’t notice it, but disabling an enemy from attacking you is always welcome.
Flames of Devotion (passive) – Untested. More (very) temporary damage which you’ll notice most with packs of enemies.

Build Priority:

Frost Shard 2
Frost Nova 1
Optionally Biting Chill 1
Optionally Orb of Winter 1
Frost Shard to max
Frost Nova/Biting Chill to max
Orb of Winter to max
Comet/Ice Barrier to max

Skills:

Frost Shard – S tier. More ricochets makes your primary very strong. You will never regret ranking this up as high as you can.
Comet – Garbage. If you’re really lucky it will go where you want it to.
Frost Nova – A tier. This will be your primary skill. Low mana cost, good damage, the frost balls seem to target enemies, though I can’t tell if this is just regular coincidence.
Orb of Winter – B tier. This is a nice room-clearing ability. Its big weakness is it eats almost all your mana, severely limiting its use. You’ll usually want to use Frost Nova multiple times instead for the same effect.
Biting Chill (passive) – Free slows and freezes is nice but not super noticeable at low levels.
Ice Barrier (passive) – Sounds so worthless that I haven’t tested it. You’re usually firing at range, the barrier doesn’t last long, and it doesn’t even block a full single hit – only a percentage of it, even at the highest level.

Build Priority:

Extended Domain should be maxxed as long as you can handle,
Soul Cleaver 1
Summon Gargoyle 1
Eye of the Storm 1 when you can
Stormlash 1 when you can
Stormlash 2 when you can
Soul Dagger to max
Summon Gargoyle/Soul Cleaver to max
Lightning Bolt/Eye of the Storm to max

Skills:

Soul Dagger – You can make do with 1 rank of this for a while since it’s a fast firing attack and you don’t get any extra hp/mana regen from it with higher ranks.
Lightning Bolt – It’s fine but I feel like gargoyle does more overall damage. Unlike gargoyle, you don’t have to put yourself in harm’s way for this.
Summon Gargoyle – Gargoyles synergise with other gargoyles and eye of the storm, meaning mass sustained damage.
Eye of the Storm – Untested. Note that one of these is about the same cost as 2 gargoyles.
Extended Domain (passive) – By far the most important unlock the warlock has. More range means more damage on all your unlocks (including Soul Dagger), for the price of one unlock per rank.
Soul Cleaver (passive) – Also important, but 1 rank is enough for a while.
Stormlash (passive) – More damage. I can’t tell if this has a bounce limit.

TBA

Plays similarly to the Ranger.

Build Priority:

Repeater Crossbow 2
Fanatic Zeal 1
Branding Ward 1
any of the above abilities to max, or up until you can unlock Searing Torch 1
A Murder of Crows to max
Witch’s Pyre to max.

Skills:

Repeater Crossbow – Primary attack. Piercing is very nice, even with the damage reduction.
Flaming Hounds – It’s OK, but doesn’t do much more than just firing your primary attack.
Branding Ward – Nicely supplements your primary attack, but you do have to move to a choke point to drop this.
Witch Pyre – Same as branded ward except more mana expensive for not much more damage.
Fanatic Zeal (passive) – Kind of hard to notice, but theoretically more crit chance like this is a significant damage boost against high hit point targets like bosses.
A Murder of Crows (passive) – Free damage that never does anything unless you get hit. Hard to tell how much damage this actually does and it doesn’t say how long it lasts, but neither are significant at low levels. The 10 second cooldown makes it worse.
Searing Torch – nice bonus long range burst damage with fire (about 1/3 of the screen).

Plays like the Paladin but more damage/movement focused and uses evasion for defense instead of a shield.

Build Priority:

Sidestep 1
Slice and Dice 1
Twin Daggers 2
Grappling Hook 1
Smoke Bomb 1
Sidestep/Twin Daggers to max
Slice and Dice to max
Grappling Hook/Smoke Bomb to max
Vicious Cuts to max

Skills:

Twin Daggers – You’ll want to attack a lot all the time and you won’t want to lose movement speed while doing so, making upgrades on your fast primary attack important.
Throwing Knives – Piercing is nice, but the problem is you’re throwing your knives out in an arc. Most of the time you just won’t need this.
Grappling Hook – Better for utility than anything else. Potentially good for escapes if you can get used to the range so that you don’t accidentally misfire and expect to be pulled but instead nothing happens.
Smoke Bomb – Great panic button and the evasion increases with every rank are very nice.
Sidestep (passive) – Evasion is the thief’s bread and butter. This would be nice even if it didn’t also include a secondary guaranteed evasion effect.
Slice and Dice (passive) – Works similarly to combo, drastically increasing ongoing damage. The 2.5 second expiration never increases, meaning slightly diminishing returns unless you’re great at sticking to targets.
Vicious Cuts (passive) – Works best on targets at full health.

Like Thief but with less evasion and lots of melee button mashing.

Build Priority:

Planned Attack 1
Trident 2
Pit Fighters 1
Spinning Gladius 1
Riposte 1
Pit Fighters/Planned Attack/Trident to max
Riposte to max
Strength in Numbers to max
Spinning Gladius to max
Crippling Net to max.

Skills:

Trident – The only class where you have to button mash and listen to a shovel hitting pavement repeatedly.
Crippling Net – Not worth it at low levels.
Spinning Gladius – Decent ranged attack but can be a little tricky to aim it where you want it to stop. Not completely unintuitive though, and has nice damage bonuses per rank.
Pit Fighters – Create room-clearing extra players.
Planned Attack (passive) – Guaranteed critical hits, very nice.
Riposte (passive) – Its redeeming feature is that if it blocks an attack, you get a stack of Trident back which means more damage, but it’s within a 0.2 second window. The blocking percentage refreshes as fast as you can attack, which is all the time with Gladiator, meaning near permanent damage reduction while you’re in combat.
Strength In Numbers (passive) – Just a buff for your strongest skills.

Will provide a full guide for this later.

I think you’ll generally want to max out Smite (your primary attack) first before anything else.

For build priority, pick Divine Protection (the passive) ONLY if you are able to max it due to how permanently mana costly it is.