Fix talents and traits, not ammo and heat generation

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
1

Two things made in the latest patch 1.0.6 caught my attention: Longbow ammo decrease and Beam Staff heat generation. These changes are directed towards reducing ranged spam, and are kinda effective in this (actually not). There is a problem, though: each character has more than one career! And while these changes address the ranged career for each character, they affect all other careers too. So in the end if similar changes will be done in the future, ranged careers might get balanced out, but the problem is that ranged combat for non-ranged careers will be completely destroyed.

And the main issue with ranged spam now is not the ammo capacity or heat per shot - the problem is talents and traits, that make ammo limitless and heat generation nonexistent. You can triple the heat generation on beam stuff, but as long as I have Critical Mass + Heat Sink + Blazing Equilibrium, I can vent all the heat in one hit (no pun intended). And I always have Exhaust as a backup, with its nonexistent cooldown, that I can recharge by killing 10 rats. Same goes for Kerillian: I will just switch from Isha’s Embrace to Vaul’s Quiver and live as if nothing happened. As for Hutsman, the change isn’t noticeable at all , thanks to the combination of Waste Not, Want Not and Taal’s Blessing.

That’s not just some kind of theory. I tried playing Pyromancer immediatly after the patch, and I felt no difference in heat generation. Yes, I had to vent a little bit more often, bur crits worked like charm as usual, and I could clear my heat with an F button almost any time I wanted. And then I tried the changes with Unchained, and god it felt horrible. It has always been hard to control heat with Unchained, often times you have no choice but to trade your HP for venting, and I find all this inconvenience to be a reasonable tradeoff for all the tankiness. But this slight change to heat generation made me trade about twice HP more than usual, which is a lot. Also I had to spend tangibly more time venting, which made avoiding hits in a fight a bit harder.
I also tested Huntsman, and as I said, I felt no difference.

So what needs to be done for starting:
Weapon Traits: Scrounger should either give 1 ammo or give ammo only once per projectile. Heat Sink should not have universal values, but individual values for eash staff, possibly even different values for charged and regular attacks.
Sienna: Blazing Equilibrium should be removed, Exhaust should either also be removed, or base cooldown of The Burning Head should be increased by 50%.
Kerillian: Vaul’s Quiver should be removed, a talent that allows regenerating up to 85% can be added instead. I am not sure if Kurnous’ Blessing needs a nerf.
Kruber: Taal’s Blessing should be removed.
Longbow ammo and heat generation changes should be reversed.

P.S. Also please fix Burning Head auto-aiming. Idc if the algorithm worsening was intentional, but if you wanna nerf The Burning Head - decrease its damage or increase its cooldown. It’s a live saving tool, and if it doesn’t work 50% of the time, it essentially becomes useless.
And thanks for the beam staff long awaited nerf.

Update #1 I am myself fine with the current state of ranged combat. Yes, it is strong, but idc if people abuse it or not. It is not gonna help bad players, and if people want to have fun - why not. But it seems that devs find ranged combat too strong and want to make it weaker. And I don’t see no reason to dissuade them from this, neither I can’t. I just wanna make sure that these nerfs won’t ruin ranged combat for melee careers.
As for me, I think that the best solution to this situation would be to limit ranged characters in party to 2. And also I think that Scrounger needs nerfing no matter what, as well as Heat Sink needs a rework.

8 Likes
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First off I noticed the reduce in crit chance by my ult not charging as fast. It wasn’t to the point that I still couldn’t use my ult as my primary heat dump but I did have to pay attention more in certain situations.

I also agree that the long bow nerf hurts the other classes more than WS due to her ammo regeneration. I think altering her traits would have been a more effective solution.

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Definitely agree with the bow ammo change being the wrong direction. They could have just halved WS passive ammo regen and been done with it.

Regarding beam staff heat, one the major balance issues with it was that it generates too little heat. Switching to melee combat is intended. Burning some health to vent is the price to pay to bypass that and the price should not be insignificant.

2 Likes
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The longbow ammo change puts it more in line with other sniper weapons, the handgun sits at a pitiful 12 (less than half of the original LB, and still almost half), with the crossbow having a slightly better 15.

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vaal’s quiver did get halved.

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I would still really like to know what Shades level 15 middle talent does, at all.

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Longbow is not a sniper weapon: Kerillian longbow can’t pierce CW armor, Kruber longbow can’t hit anything at distance. Also you said it yourself, that crossbow and handgun have too little ammo, and I totally agree with that. Do you wanna see Longbow being as useless as these two?
Again my point is that longbow ammo capacity is fine. Ammo regeneration is the problem. Because of ammo regeneration I almost don’t care about the capacity. It might be reduced by an additional 50%, and I will still use longbow as much as I want… with Huntsman and Waystalker, since such a change will completely destroy longbow for Handmaiden and Shade.

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In order to pierce armor with bow you need to charge it with rmb. Works on lb and fb. In order to be precise with lb as kruber you dont need to charge it all the way through. Its counter intuitive,but its balanced through lesser damage with full charge, iirc.

But overall i agree with you, that FS needs to change and/or balance talents, so classes like huntsman,shade, rv, bw,handmaiden would be effective in diffirent scenarios, with diffirent equipment, diffirent talents, not just with certain weapon,certain talents and difficulty and would be still effective as any other career.

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Kerillians longbow is without a doubt a sniper, high headshots damage, high accuracy.
And sure, the Handgun can “pierce” CW armor, but it’s about as useless as it gets vs them. Takes like 6 headshots, half your ammo, to take 1 down.

Kruber longbow can’t hit anything at distance.

It has pretty solid accuracy, it only lacks zoom.

Also you said it yourself, that crossbow and handgun have too little ammo, and I totally agree with that. Do you wanna see Longbow being as useless as these two?

I’d rather see them brought up in usefulness, but i cannot agree with buffing the LB while leaving weapons that sorely need it in the dust.

It might be reduced by an additional 50%, and I will still use longbow as much as I want… with Huntsman and Waystalker, since such a change will completely destroy longbow for Handmaiden and Shade.

50% would give you 15 arrows, having used the handgun with 18, it really does hamper your ability to shoot freely.
On Waystalker, mathematically that’d mean vaul’s quiver regenerates an astounding 0 arrows per tick.

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kruber’s longbow has awful accuracy. start game. switch to bow. press m2 briefly. note how inaccurate it is. seriously…wtf lol. if you want reliable headshots you have to be within 20 feet or so(assuming you aren’t moving). it’s ridiculous.

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I get the feeling some people aren’t satisfied until all forms of ammo recovery are reduced to uselessness.

1 Like
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It is ridicolous as they have nerfed longbow (so Kerillian and Kruber) but not top tier careers like BH and Pyro (in this case, just a little).
Anyway Kerillian is the only character wich can’t bodyshot… she should have a lot of arrows/regen. While BH and Huntsman should not. And also heat should be higher.

P.s I play as huntsman, BH and Pyro (but still not WS), so I am not crying about my favorite career.

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You know, actually you’re right. But not just because of your point. Your point is true, but after reading your post, I thought to myself, hey, what does being a sniper weapon mean? And realized, that the main features of a sniper weapon are high accuracy and little damage drop off. I tested things out, and it turns out that Longbow has the same distance for damage drop off as Handgun or Crossbow. As for accuracy, Kruber kinda lacks it, but Kerillian longbow is a sniper weapon for sure.

But the fun part - it doesn’t really matter. The weapon is either good or bad, usable or useless, whether it is sniper or not. And I am just afraid that Longbow, and many other weapons, can swell the ranks of weapons, that are not being used due to being, well, useless.

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Actually, I am fine with range combat is it is. But if the devs decided to enforce melee combat by nerfing ranged weaponry, they have 2 options now: either balance ranged combat around ranged careers, or balance ranged careers around ranged combat. In the first case they’ll have to ruin ranged combat for everyone, but ranged careers, in the second case they’ll have to nerf ranged careers, possibly ruin them.

And that’s an intractable dilemma, with 3 possible outcomes: 1) Non-ranged career have a decent ranged combat, while ranged careers can stick exclusively to ranged combat, completely avoiding melee (current situation) 2) Only ranged careers use ranged combat (switching to melee only when forced too), while others save ammo for specials and critical situations only (current change trend) 3) Everyone has a decent ranged combat, with ranged careers having only slight bonuses and not differing much from other careers in that regard (OP suggestions will lead to this). There are two other options, where everyone gets to shoot as much as the want, or ranged combat becomes completely destroyed, but let’s not view them, since they are very unlikely.

As for me, I think that devs need to fix melee combat first, before fixing ranged combat. People stick to ranged not because they find it super fun, it’s because ranged combat is much more reliable than melee right now. And as I said, I have no problem with it.

There is also another option for fixing ranged combat: limiting the number of ranged careers per party. Let’s say 2 ranged careers. I think this is the most healthy fix, not sure how players will treat this change though.

P.S. Scrounger should be nerfed and Heat Sink should be reworked no matter what.

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This is pure conjecture. Let me explain as a Waywatcher main.

When I got the first game, I did not know it was melee-centric. A friend recommended the game to me, then I checked it out, i.e. I saw the launch trailer, and checked out the description on the Steam page, which has bit like these:

Vermintide is a co-operative action first person shooter and melee combat adventure set in the End Times of the iconic Warhammer Fantasy world.

Huge Hero Arsenal - Each hero has its own unique weapons arsenal to draw from, allowing you to adjust their combat style to fit their gameplay preference. There are hundreds of different weapons, includĂ­ng swords, daggers, axes, hammers, bows, guns, magical staves & more

That there is a heavy and intended bias in favour of melee was not clear from this. Anyway. I got the game, liked it well enough, but was a bit disappointed that ranged combat was rather limited, because I am a fan of archery in medieval and fantasy settings.

Then eventually Vermintide 2 came along, and on the official site even they presented ther career with some of them being explicitely ranged-focused. It was clear they would not fight exclusively at a distance, but I expected them to have the situation reversed: ranged bias with some melee combat as well.

And that’s exactly what V2 delivered, until 1.0.6. A bit part of that was ammo self-sufficiency. That does not mean being able to spam arrows in every little slave rat we encounter, but it meant being able to use it on any meaningful target - maulers, berserkers, plague monks, stormvermin, chaos warriors, specials - as well as to thin out (not decimate) hordes when we can see then approach from a distance. It capture that fantasy of an elven archer very well. In other words: yes, I do main a ranged career because it is fun. I don’t care at all about green circles at the end of the match, and imo they and the stats chosen to display were a mistake to being with…

Now I have adapted to the 1.0.6 nerfs; doesn’t mean I liked them, but I can live with them. But many of the suggestions in this thread would amount to ruining ranged combat for me entirely. Removing ammo regeneration or nerfing it to nigh uselessness, nerfing the scrounger trait and heat sink traits, stuff like that.

Regarding the scrounger trait in particular: it is only the Bounty Hunter who can score guaranteed crits. I have a friend who mains Saltzpyre (he plays all 3 of his careers, but mostly Bounty Hunter) who absolutely loves play style of alternativing between free shots and going into melee.
As for the Waywatcher, we can’t get our crit chance higher than ~20% if we stack it from every source available (excluding the crit aura from other the Huntsman, which I suppose would add another 5%). Scrounger is not enough on its own to keep your ammo topped up from that.

Regarding the heat sink talent: I think all the issues around this are exclusively an issue with the beam staff. I can’t say whether its nerf in 1.0.6 was enough, because I haven’t used it at all in a long while. I play Pyromancer as an alt with the bolt staff, and the synergies between heat sink and the Pyromancer talents mean you can dance with your heat at around the 80%-90% mark very well, because Pyromancer gains crit chance and reduce heat generation the hotter they are. This is a very cool playstyle but in no way is overpowered the way it is.

In both cases, the fun part about ranged careers is the ability to switch between ranged and melee combat not because your ammo mandates it until you find an ammo pouch spawn (which other players will need as well, by the way), but because the flow of combat and the position of enemies require it, or sometimes just because I want to (I love fighting with the elven spear as well).

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Heat generation needs fixing, though.

It is unbelievably overtuned when you can just disregard the mechanic entirely.

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I think long bow change is perfectly fair. Both shade and handmaiden have very decent ammo talents, and I never have any problems with ammo when using them.

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I can agree with almost everything you say, and I see no contradictions to my words.

Let me repeat it once more: I am fine with current state of ranged combat, except for BH maybe. My point is, that if devs want to nerf ranged combat, they have to nerf careers, not weapons, else ranged weapons will be unusable for ranged careers only. That’s the drawback of implementing ranged careers.

But with the current state there is a problem, which encourages the devs to make changes to ranged combat. Right now if 4 ranged character group up, they can destroy any level without a need to go into melee at all, or almost at all. Am I concerned? Not even once. But the devs are. So the best and easiest soultion would be to limit the number of ranged careers to 2. Then everyone could be happy. But that’s just my humble opinion.

It’s not enough to make your ammo endless, but it allows you to clear waves as much as you want, increasing your effective ammo capacity by 50%-100% at the same time (depending on your playstyle).

No, it is overpowered. I guess that’s the only thing I don’t agree with. “Dancing” at high overheat takes no skill, U just hit enemies and get your heat vented. And the problem is not beam staff, the problem is exactly the combination of these talents and Heat Sink.

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Do i understand you correctly, that you’re saying Kruber’s longbow is ‘’ useless ‘’ or the elf one for that matter ?

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Nah, I am just saying it is not a fully sniper weapon. Why did you think that?