Time to start buffing again, when the nerfes were to hard.
I hope they understand that. They can’t just nerfe everything to the ground to call it difficult. The challenge needs to be somewhat entertaining. There should also be enough viable playstyles to be chosen. Not only melee all day.
Start by reverting the change to the elf’s hp regen ability; gutting that has made her a bad pick for any group above veteran level. Why the F have an elf anymore when you can have crowd control /w a fire mage, massive damage from a slayer, etc…this is why elves are getting vote-kicked when they join higher difficulty matches.
Howdy,
So we probably should have been more communicative about our reasoning behind recent balancing adjustments that have gone into the game. Moving forward we will work towards better motivations regarding the changes we make to the balance of the game.
Onto the topic at hand;
We want to ensure Vermintide 2 is the best game it possibly could be. But for this to be the case we must reach a solid baseline. We found the game to be in a pretty good state during our betas, with some prominant outliers. What we’ve been focusing on pruning are those spikes in performance that some character/trait/property combinations exhibited.
The changes to balance in patch 1.0.1 were slated for inclusion in the 1.0 release but failed to meet the cutoff point to make the final build. Let’s look at those for a minute.
-Resourceful Sharpshooter: Reduced cooldown reduction from 5% to 2%.
-Resourceful Combatant: Reduced cooldown reduction from 5% to 2%.
These two turned out to be rather problematic attributed to the fact that they were extremely polarizing towards certain career / weapon loadouts. After a certain point in the progression these traits wholly make other options redundant down to how strong they were for certain classes, example being Pyromancer who relies heavily on the critical strike mechanic, therefore they were reduced to try and make other options available more competitive.
I still find them abit too hit or miss and I feel like there is a chance they will be reworked in the future to be more reliable and noticeable for Career Skill focused builds without completely overshadowing everything else in certain cases.
-Hand of Shallya: Reduced healing from healing ally with First Aid Kit from 80% to 35% of missing health.
Same thing applied to this necklace trait where it became apparent that it gave too much bang for the buck where it was the catch-all trait for any given situation. Effectively double dipping on all First Aid Kits in a map was deemed too much, hence the change.
-Barrage: Fixed bug causing it to stack up to 10 times instead of intended 5.
This right here is pretty much what it says on the tin. We had a bug that made it stack for twice the intended amount. Will keep close track of this and see if it ends up needing some more TLC after the change, but it feels like it’s in a decent place right now.
As a closing statement I just want to make it clear that we intend to keep Vermintide 2 a living game. It will recieve the same kinds of treatment as the original Vermintide and more thereafter. We will keep close attention to the forums and our own data and make changes to the game going forward.
There will be nerfs if something pulls way ahead.
There will be buffs if something can’t keep up.
Thanks for taking your time feedbacking and discussing these things, it really helps us improve as a company aswell as making the game more awesome.
Best regards,
Brytarn
This only barely explains 1.0.1 patch, not the full release changes which managed to nerf careers that were not really picked often in the first place even worse.
Though i guess i understand the search for baseline to work from, but wasn’t beta state pretty good to begin with? Why rebuild so much and in such a rush?
but why encourage the waystalker to take damage in order to benefit from 2 of her level 15 talent options? One of which is a party support skill? Shouldn’t she be encouraged to not be blocking everything with her face? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… i think the waystalker changes were not handled very well. I think she would have been much better off if the potency and frequency of her passive were toned down instead, and making her ammo regen and group regen only function if she was at 100% hp instead of requiring damage to reward good skill and teamwork, and maybe even replacing her enhanced regen with something else to fit along those lines… either way, the changes to her passive and how it interacts with 2/3 of her level 15 talents, as well as one of her level 10 talents… it makes it so she has to float between 26%-49% hp to really benefit, which is not viable in champion and above once grimoires are picked up due to the amount of damage you take from a hit, and in lower difficulties just serves to reinforce bad playstyle and mechanics (not bothering to block or dodge because you need to be hurt.) I think this needs to be looked at again and addressed…
The whole tier of lev 15 talents doesnt make sense now.
Waystalkers level 15 talents were working as intended prior to launch but due to a critical error discovered in the code the changes were taken out.
The intended case is that the effect should trigger independently for each ally up to 50% health when using the healing aura talent.
The ammo regeneration should also function without you having to be below 50% health.
The plan is to push these out when we patch the game in the coming week.
Thanks for communicating!
Queuing != beating.
Cat is way easier than Legend. The frequency of hordes combined with the density of high armour and hp enemies makes is vastly harder. If you don’t cut down huge amounts of SV+CK rapidly while killing the nonstop specials you’ll never clear it.
I’ve been running legend since release on a regular.
Sure they do a bit more damage in cat. But walking with right click pressed down doesn’t make it more challenging. Not to mention melting ogre in 5 seconds.
" therefore they were reduced to try and make other options available more competitive."
And therein lies the approach problem. Make the other options less crappy instead of making the only good option now a mediocre one.
Maybe you don’t see the influence of the small choices that add up and define a playstale. You pick a playstyle by picking a specialization to begin with. There are 15 secializations, which is already more than most (mmo)rpgs offer.
Why have talents choices then? So you can put it in adverts for the game?
No, but because they are still choices, just not big ones. The stats on your gear aren’t that big either. Just because you can stack 100% crit in other games, does not mean it is a good idea for Vermintide.
Choices that have no influence need not exist in the first place.
Yes, individually, they don’t have to make a big difference, but they should be meaningful.
Crit chance is meaningful for you can base a lot on crit. It’s also bland and uninspired, but so far no one has said that all choices have to be creative. But when choices become meaningless, they cease being actual choices.
If there’s three things to pick from, and my first thought is “I’ll decide after next match”, then I fail to see why I have these choices.
There’s a few good ones - barring it’s current non-intended state, the waystalkers level 15 choices are actually well done. Heal faster, heal your team, or recover ammunition? Those are choices that can affect a playstyle, reinforce the particular niche enabled by the subclass the specific player wants to indulge.
I don’t think recent nerfs were unjustified, but that doesn’t preclude me from hoping for actual choices.
So you say that crit is not meaningless, but 5% crit from a talent are?
Not every choice has to be big, but in addition they from a playstyle. Every talenttree has at least one tier with major talents comparable to lvl15 Waystalker talents and combined with the smaller choices are enough of a reason to think about all of them. There are smaller, uninspired statboosts in other games that depend a lot more on talents/traits, too. Meaningful used in that context often means powerful.The right choice of meaningful talents can add up quickly to form a passive playstyle, where those choices matter more than the playeractions.
So I’m not saying that. At all.
I’m completely fine with +5% crit chance on the talent tree. Depending on weapon and equipment rolls, that might as well be a relative +100%.
Even with a low value, this actually has a perceptible effect, as well, unlike the betas +5% dodge distance.
But then there’s talents like the bountyhunters passive cd 8s -> 7s. Yeah, I was really impatient just this second.
Or unchained, with 3 level 15 choices being faster cooldown, cheaper cooldown, less overheat. Really an academic choice what I want, here.
I’m actually ok with the level 5 and level 10 talents being rather forgettable. Yes, I could do without them, they are weak and often boring and feel utterly unrewarding when first unlocked.
But, in combination with equipment that grants the same buff, they might still have a point.
Crit chance is ok because you can also get crit chance on the weapons and a trinket, and then there’s multiple traits that trigger on crits.
I don’t think that’s the case for all the choices.
As I’m sure you’ve seen, a lot of people are pointing out that the passive working at 50% or less makes it fairly pointless in champion+ and especially so if you have grims. What about reducing the amount healed at 50%+ rather than removing it completely? It would still give an effect and would have at least some use in all matches.
So you’re saying they should buff EVERYTHING, instead of just nerfing something clearly OP?
No, thanks. This game is intended to be challenging. Also people tend to forget that this is a co-op game, yet everyone is striving for high damage instead of utility and support. Maybe public matches would be a better place, if people would stop only thinking of themselves.
As for the 5% cooldown on crit nerfed to 2% I got to admit it was totally overpowered and the 2% feel strong now, but just as right.
It really didn’t make sense to begin with and the change only highlighted the issue: Before the change it was not healing the team when elf was full hp, nor was it granting her ammo. This meant intentionally taking a hit from a slave rat every now and then if you were full health was the optimal line of play. So IMO saying the change “broke” the level 15 talents is wrong since they were broken to begin with.
That’s a good point, but still I don’t even main the elf and hate the change. It was WAY over-the-top and heavy-handed. Whatever happened to adjusting things in increments? I’d bet they didn’t even consider what the change would do once carrying 2 grims either…they broke that class’ passive and it needs to be fixed.
Sure you can still rock great numbers in a group full of knuckleheads, but that’s besides the point and is true for every character in the game. That’s a side-point that proves nothing; taken at face value: her passive now sucks. Hard.