Hello everyone,
i’ve played V2 for 120 hours since now, and i really enjoy this game and the FS hard work on fixing and balancing.
In theese days i enjoy to play the Shade, i love her playstyle and the concept behind this class but, when i try to join a quickplay both Champion or Legend, people sometimes ask me to change class and, more often, they just kick me.
This is so frustrating, i love the idea to be a stealth assassin that can infiltrate enemy lines for kill priority targets like the big boy Chaos Warrior or other specials enemies.
I think her F needs a buff, and this is my 2 cent to improve this class:
Career skill
Infiltrate:
-Kerillian becomes undetectable and can pass throught enemies. Last for 10 sec or until she attacks.
While stealthed gain +10% movement speed ( don’t stack with similar bonus from talents or equip)
First attack will be a critical hit
After the first attack, Kerillian can’t be detected by enemies for 3 sec.
Skill cooldown has to be similar to Trueshot Volley
Explanation:
i’m not a game designer and maybe this “buff” could be to much, but i think Shade needs the ability to infiltrate to kill a designated target and then the option to run away with safe.
Sorry for my bad english and thank you for reading
I have 202h in game. I play (only) as Shade or Handmainden that depend on group composition.
But I never was kicked or asked to change.
Reviving someone in a middle of chaos is superb. Reviving two downed mates is more that I could ask, but what if they are close enough (and if you are on left 25 lvl talent, don’t remember name that one that give you + 5 sec on timer) you can revive all three of them… It is one of most powerful “F” in the game IMO.
I do prefer Spear and I’m all about speed + crit + stamina regen.
Tho if you do want kill bosses. I strongly recommend glaive + crit + crit dmg. <- Attack from (while “in” F) behind and you can get 25% of boss health with one hit, if you deliver head shot.
Tho you can ez get head shot from behind if you charge your attack and “hit air” (need timing) and the second follow up charged attack is (its hit angle) from up to down it is very ez hit head with this one.
Sorry for my English, but I hope you will get what i meant.
Something along the lines of this is needed I think. I might not be the worlds best Shade player but when I play her with for example SnD or DnD the active feels lacklustre, and using glaive and “airing” the first swing so the second overhand chop is the one that breaks the stealth is the only way I found the damage useful at higher difficulties.
Or perhaps that the enemy you hit is downed? Would be useful to put bosses on their butt for a second so you have one extra second of free swabbing at their back.
What do you run as your ranged weapon? I’m trying to get hagbane to work with Shade (i.e. ranged hagbane for cc and DnD or SnD for high single target damage), but can’t really seem to pull it off on Legend.
I run with longbow. The thing is you need to charged attack head shot and then quick follow normal attack. The second shot in most of the case also should be head shot and you should be able to kill special.
I don’t like hagbane as I have problems with killing special with it.
Mercenary does a much better job of reviving people while also staggering the horde, stunning the boss, and giving everyone health. Also Bardin on ranger/ironbreaker can do it just as well while keeping great ranged options.
I’ve never kicked someone for playing shade but let’s be honest, true shot is too good to give up.
Im not saying that shade is the best in anything.
I like to play also as handmaiden.
Honestly I would quit the game if i would be “force” to play as waystalker.
Beside handmaiden stam regeneration with kruber > true shoot.
The stealth attack already is a crit, MS buff would be pointless (since level 10 talent MS is the best one already).
I do agree that it needs either a much lower base CD and then have the cdr talent replaced with “can melee attack while stealth” to deal with legend chaos patrols or have mistress of sacrifice make all/360 attacks count as backstabs while lowering the assassins blade bonus and the F get the handmaiden stealth treatment of “enemies flat out ignore you” during the invis and for a while post attack while (again to deal with chaos+vermin patrols and make melee vs bosses not painful.
The ult isn’t even Shades biggest problem.
The whole backstab mechanic is just useless and doesn’t come into play 95% of the time in Legend.
I know where they want to go with the class fantasy but the backstab mechanic should be replaced with something else or something else needs to be added.
Infiltrate from the front is already overkill on anything but a boss and even there if you use a single weapon you will hit the damage cap from the front so getting a backstab bonus on it is useless there too.
The only time you really get use out of backstab for a short time is when someone else has aggro from a Chaos Warrior or boss, though when you use an Infiltrate attack the one with the aggro is you, so not much backstab uptime on that boss fight.
But then again Pyro, Huntsman or BH can kill that CW before the Shade even reaches it and also do way more boss dps.
Add a poor sustainability for ranged ammo and Shade isn’t even consistent in taking care of ranged specials.
Shade needs to be way better at its job, or at least be equally good at it than the compareable ranged careers to make it a favourable choice.
Not a viable choice, because when you know what you are doing every career is viable. It’s just that some are subpar and make things harder than with other careers present.
Now with the patch dual weapons got worse. Dual weapons have the benefit of 2 individual hits with an infiltrate attack, adding up these two hits lets you break the damage cap of the hit of a single weapon.
But they are terrible against armor and mediocre at best vs hordes now and Legend still is 80% armored enemies. So you have to opt out of a potential higher boss dps for more useable weapons, further reducing the overall effectiveness in the niche Shade is supposed to excel at.
Exactly why i suggest making the Mistress of Sacrifice talent make all melee strikes count as backstabs/increase angle to 360, but cut the Assassins Blade bonus down to 10~25% damage bonus, giving her a “work WITH team in melee” option (or as said, lower CD on F, but replace cdr talent with "melee doesnt reveal letting her do work once every minute~minute and half for 10 seconds).
And technically Shade is decent at “crossbow bolt the boss in the back from stealth”, but that really only counts/comes into play if the boss is in a relatively open arena/doesnt jump around constantly and the team doesnt have FK with conc pot or bombs (which is actually a decent amount of time in QP), its just BH does it better without having to position and better ammo economy/ability to use his ranged weapon during the rest of the level with a lot less care about only spending ammo when a ammo pickup is around.
Just making it into a basically 10 to 25 percent damage buff doesn’t solve the problem. It would also make any other talent in that tier worthless. Damage itself is not a problem for most careers at 600PL.
What makes a difference is how you apply that damage and how well and save you can handle specials, hordes or armored enemies.
Hordes aren’t supposed to be Shades field, but she doesn’t really excel at special, armored, or boss killing and neither does it saver than other careers.
I am not a gamedesigner so I can’t give a magical solution, and I am pretty sure Fatshark can handle this just fine if they want to.
I just feel like Shade lacks a certain gimmick or advantage that lets her stick out and/or perform equally good to the other special/elite killers.
“Just making it into a basically 10 to 25 percent damage buff*” THAT LETS YOU INSAKILL ON CRIT WITHOUT SPLITTING FROM THE TEAM does solve a lot of the issues. And no 75% damage on 30 stealth backbolts is as stated a solid boss melter.
I really think Shade needs a major revamp more than any other subclass. Her supposed niche just does not work in Vermintide. The pre-release videos made it seem like stealth was integral to her moment-to-moment gameplay, rather than just being an extremely lackluster several minute cooldown. As-is, I think the Ranger Veteran (a ranged subclass) is a more effective stealth melee character.
If insta kills would be amazing WHC would be the go to for Legend, but the enemies were insta kill would be of value can already be insta killed by a Longbow headshot for example. It wouldn’t make any big difference
And stealth backbolts is not a particular better boss melter than other careers. Yes it does good damage but first you have to be pretty picky with your xbow uses to even have a good amount of ammo at the boss and secondly your stealth doesn’t apply any damage buff to ranged so it only prevents you from immediately pulling aggro, you just get the aggro when stealth ends. Now add a boss that is running around because it gets kited and or the boss ai for some reason just feels like it again and you just lost your main damage buff. The damage it does is not better than a BH unloading its xbow or Huntsman or a Pyro without the need for backshots, the real boss melting is still a Huntsman landing all headshots on the boss during Prowl, and that is as likely to happen as getting all backstab shots with Shade only that Huntsman destroys a boss when he does it and Shade just chunks a bit.