There’s been a lot of criticism regarding beastmen, and while a lot of steps have been taken to bring them down to the level of skaven & chaos, there’s still a lot of work to be done. I feel like a lot of the complaints have been very “broad”, without looking at the specifics of what make the beastmen so much harder than the other factions. This is very understandable, it’s hard to pin-point exactly what went wrong in the heat of battle, and most people don’t record their sessions to look back at either.
This is an attempt to really specify the things that are problematic with Beastmen, and with some of my very subjective suggestions on what can be done to alleviate the issues. The thread will be a work in progress and I will update it with more scenarios/videos as I go.
1. Poor visibility/contrast, especially for Gors
With the speed at which they deal heavy damage, Gors need to be much easier to read visually. As it stands, a horde primarily composed of Gors will look like an undiscernible dark blob. This is especially bad as they have a multitude of attacks that don’t involve swinging their weapon, which makes it even harder to see their attacks coming in time.
2. Gor Kicks
This attack gets a big “no thanks” from me. The attack is not the most damaging in their arsenal, but the unreadability and speed of it makes it incredibly disruptive and annoying to fight, especially in dense hordes where you’re looking for openings to attack.
Compare this to the Chaos Warriors kick:
There’s a couple of things that makes this one a lot fairer, even though they’re almost equally fast:
- Because of the way he lifts his weapon up before the kick comes out, you can prepare yourself for it.
- Chaos warriors are taller, meaning their legs are more noticable in your field of view
- They’re elite enemies and fewer in numbers, meaning you’re less likely to eat these in rapid succession from multiple CWs
- Chaos Warriors have more contrast to them compared to Gors, meaning it’s easier to see what they’re doing visually. They’re also pingable, which makes their actions very readable.
Gors have a diverse move-set as is, and I wouldn’t shed a tear if this attack was removed entirely from them.
3. Gor Headbutts
I’m still a little torn on these. There’s a chance they could feel fair if Gor visibility was bumped up as mentioned earlier, but as it stands they’re very hard to distinguish in hordes, and I’ve often confused their “pulling back pre-headbutt” animation as a stagger animation. This might be less of an issue after extended playtime against them, but at present is annoying to deal with.
4. Gors skip part of their climbing animations
This is a pretty big oversight and makes them absolutely deadly to fight near ledges. Compare it to how marauders look when climbing:
And slave rats:
This last gif with the slave rats amusingly highlight a completely different issue with the slot system, forcing one of the slaves into a running attack as he’s switching slots, even though I’m not making any attempt at movement.
5. Ghost swings, or other hitbox issues
I’ve had most of these occur with the ungors. Their model sometimes doesn’t wanna interact with weapons at all. Their stabbing animations also makes them duck very low, meaning that if you’re aiming at head-level into hordes for damage you’re often times going to be swinging above their heads and get poked as a result.
6. Banners
I like what the banners bring to Vermintide overall, forcing a team to make a choice between pushing for banners or falling back out of their range (or just grinding it out if you’re feeling suicidal). There’s a discussion to be had regarding the amount of buffs they provide, or the amount of them you sometimes get in cramped spaces. Feel free to discuss this below, I might get back to this in a later edit as well, but for now I wanna talk more about the Wargors (Banner carriers) themselves.
They’ve got hyper-armoured bodies similar to a Chaos Warrior, but with an exposed head. This means that they’re very hard to take down at range, and requires some pin-point headshots or a well-placed career skill (Pyro, WS or BH).
What I don’t agree with is the amount of health they have for how armoured they are, especially on Cataclysm.
This is a Handgun on Mercenary, with +40% dmg vs. Chaos/Armor. It does not one-shot a Wargor on a headshot. It one-shots every other special in the head with substantially less power vs.
This is a Longbow on Waystalker, with +40% dmg vs. Chaos/Armor. It’s also not even close to one-shotting them on headshots, and if you go for anything less than +20% dmg vs Chaos/Armor, it takes three(!) charged headshots to kill it. This set-up also one-shots every other special in the head on cataclysm, same as the previous example.
For how disruptive the banners are, you’d think killing them before they’re placed would be incentivized, but it’s not. As is stands, Wargors need to either have their super armour removed if you want them this tanky, meaning you can at least do more damage on bodyshots and keep them staggered, or you reduce their health / headshot resistance to that of other specials.
7. Beastmen health
There are some people who feel that beastmen are way too tanky, so here’s a picture detailing current health values on all difficulties:
Gors are apparently a lot squishier than the chaos equivalent of a marauder, and ungors are quite squishy as well. Bestigors are a little beefier than your stormvermin equivalent, but not by a huge margin.
My thinking is that they’re percieved as tanky because of the density they spawn in during hordes, and/or their stagger resistance. I don’t have any numbers for average beastmen spawned in hordes compared to other races, nor the numbers for their stagger-resistance. If someone else has this resource, feel free to share it below, otherwise I’ll come back to this when I have more info.
8. Beastmen damage
As far as I’ve heard, Gors are the biggest offender here, with attacks doing up to 75 damage / hit on cataclysm. I haven’t had time to test which specific attacks do the most/least damage, so I’ll have to come back to this. But with the overall speed of a lot of their attacks, and with the other issues plaguing them, it feels like it might be a bit on the high side. Marauders have attacks dealing upwards of 63 damage, for comparison. Ungors seem to be hovering around 30 dmg / hit, which isn’t the end of the world if their other issues are fixed.
That about does it for a first draft. As said, I’ll come back to this with more issues when I find them and flesh out some of the already written segments.
Feel free to add more stuff in the comments, but try to keep it as constructive as possible, I don’t want this thread to derail into some anti-WoM hatefest.
