These past few days I’ve been playing with the beam staff again, for the first time in a long while, and I’ve been struck by how complex the weapon is. Needlessly so in fact. So I wanted to provide a little overview of the weapon and offer a couple of changes that I believe could improve its handling.
For anyone unfamiliar with the beam staff, unlike every other weapon in the game it has 3 discrete attacks. I shall be labeling them: beam, shotgun, and blast for the purposes of this topic.
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The beam attack is just like it sounds. A beam of fire that does continuous damage & burns for as long as the player holds the button. In V1 this attack was on RMB, but for V2 it was swapped over to LMB.
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Shotgun also functions similarly to its namesake; a short ranged, conical burst of damage with an attached burn. In V1 this attack was on LMB, while for V2 it was changed to ‘hold RMB, then press LMB.’
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Blast is a secondary function attached to the beam attack that provides a burst of damage. It’s triggered simply by pressing the mouse button the player isn’t already holding down for the beam. In V1 this means it’s triggered by pressing LMB while holding RMB and vice versa in V2.
As you can obviously see, between Vermintide 1 & Vermintide 2, the functions of the two mouse buttons on beam staff traded places. But with one curious exception: the shotgun attack. In V1 this attack is triggered by a simple button press. But in V2 this attack requires two button presses for seemingly no reason.
Which brings me to my first point: why? What is the point of requiring this extra button press? Why does this added bit of pointless dexterity exist? Unlike the beam, the player can’t really aim the shotgun attack, so why use a button set up like it has an Aim Down Sights function? It just makes the weapon clunky and prone to mis-clicks. This is very much at odds with the normally simple & elegant weapon controls found elsewhere in the game.
In addition to the additional physical complexity of having to push more buttons than is normal, beam staff also has an additional bit of technical complexity beyond what a cursory glance will reveal: the power of the beam & the blast attacks are both tied to how long the beam is held on the target. The beam damage starts out weak and after 4 ticks on the same target is up to full damage. And the blast damage is scaled upon the power of the tick the beam was doing at the moment the player pushes RMB. This damage scaling also resets when the beam hits a new target. Similar to how Barrage works.
This damage scaling effect is analogous to the charge function on Sienna’s other staves, but there is a crucial difference: there is no discrete visual or auditory cue when the player reaches the point of maximum ‘charge.’ Every other staff has a special visual cue, audio cue, or both when they reach their maximal damage. The beam staff does not. This means the player must either intuit the timing of the attack or count the subtle, ‘hit’ audio cues to know when their attack will be at its most powerful. Something that no other weapon in the game has to deal with.
So this brings me down to my two simple suggestions for improving the handling & functionality of the beam staff.
Suggestion #1: Make the shotgun attack work via clicking RMB only.
Suggestion #2: Add a special visual or auditory cue(or both), that triggers once the beam has reached its max damage.