The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Hunter Skills - Passive Skills

This post has general tips and tricks for The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing played on the PC at Heroic Difficulty. For a list of all our Van Helsing posts, click here.

Hunter Skills - Passive Skills

We aimed to play the game without using potions, and we did not also farm for gold to maximize Essences on every inventory item. Because skill levels in actively used Sword and Gun skills generally increased Mana requirements a lot, we focussed more on Passives and Auras.

Parry Expertise A bonus of 10% - 45% to the Parry bonus of the currently equipped sword.

• Parry applies only while using swords and against melee. It is a chance to completely avoid damage from an attack, and is separate from Dodge (which does the same).
• For maximum defense with low emphasis on collecting Resistances, this skill should be maximized if you intend to slug it out in melee. If you are kiting (especially if you have strong HP Regeneration) or mostly using Guns, this isn't as important.
• Evasion Increases Defense by 10%.
• +10% to the Defense score translates to just a couple of percentage points of actual Defense increase. Hover your mouse over the Defense attribute to see what the percentage is.
• Parry Mastery Parry of the equipped weapon is increased by another 5%.

Fury Every time you slay an enemy, you enter into a state called Fury. In this state, each enemy you kill will give a 1% - 8% bonus to your Weapon Damage for 3 seconds. This effect stacks a maximum of 3 times. Any more kills will only make it last longer. Going 3 seconds without killing anything will snap you out of your Fury.

• It generally takes more than 3 seconds to kill anything in the mid to late game, so this skill is really only good for really weak enemies you don't need help with. Also, if you end up having to strategically retreat, you'll more than likely lose the bonus.
• Fervor Fury lasts 1 more second.

Body Building Increases max Hit Points by 10% - 32%.

• All builds can benefit from this, but defer it for the late game when you have nothing better to spend skill points on.
• Physical Conditioning Doubles your HP Regeneration while your HP is under 25%.

Rage Increases your max Rage value by 5 - 22.

• When Van Helsing levels up, his Rage capacity automatically increases anyway. Still, it's a cheap passive that is a good choice for increasing Occult Hunter skill levels quickly toward the first tier that gets you a movement bonus.
• Channeled Rage All power-ups cost 1 less Rage point. A 1-point discount is actually very little compared to your ability to accumulate Rage from killing throngs of weak creatures; as well as the actual Rage cost of power-ups.
• Unleashed Rage Each kill generates 1 more Rage point.

Elemental Damage A bonus of 5% - 28% to all Elemental Damage you cause.

• Strangely, the effect of this is TINY, even for gun skills that apparently change all damage to elemental (e.g., Icicle Shot).
• If you are delaying switching over from Physical Damage to Elemental Damage types, then you could skip over this and maximize Full Resistance first.
• You will likely want to have at least 1 level in order to access the Full Resistance passive skill.
• Elemental Expertise All skills using elemental damage cost 10% less Mana.

Full Resistance Provides a +15 - +49 bonus, and a 10% - 26% bonus, to all Resistances.

• Resistance to Slow Slowing and immobilization effects last 20% less time on your character.