Balance feedback from a top 0.3% player

[CataTwitchOnly]

So i got the “all missions damnation” penance done today. The frame on the character is the one you get from doing that. There is actually no steam achievement for this - only for heresy (good!)
And only 0.8% of players have the heresy achievement so i just assume its probably 0.3% or less players with this penance (shout out to literally everyone on steam forum playing heresy+).

[Album] Your ad here

I played most of it solo but the last few missions i got some frenchies to play with who are pretty damn good.

Anyway heres what i think about balance, some suggested nerfs some caveats:

Power Sword:
Its super broken. This is the best weapon in the game by a mile. Ive been vocal about how broken weapons are that ignore hitmass and do full damage to everything in VT… nothing new here. This thing can hit a ton of stuff (including multiple elites!!!) at the same time for full damage. It has crazy stagger, low recovery, minimal animation commitment, the charge is super fast, great damage against all armor. Its super op!
Suggested Nerf: high damage + no damage dropoff + huge cleave + high stagger idk take your pick - all of these need to be toned down. The cleave and damage more than everything else.

Surge Staff:
I would argue psyker is by far the easiest class to play efficiently and solo at damnation because of this staff. The CC is crazy, it costs almost nothing, it CCs everything including bulwarks thru their shield at minimal charge and has not animation commitment - you can cast and instantly go into melee - it hits ranged shooter behind cover, has solid damage against them at full charge, its crazy good. Even the normal shots still stagger. It only struggles with large numbers of trash because then the lightning wont always hit only elites.
Give this thing to your non gamer girlfriend and she will carry.

^This weapon alone is able to trivialize damnation to a silly degree. its basically a cheat code that lets you ignore the game mechanics similair to power swords charged state.

Suggested nerf: Keep the ability to hit ranged behind cover but increase the animation commitment and charge time to stunlock elites/specials. Will still be crazy good even after that.

Suggested buff: Headshot damage on all staffs normal attack. Its hard enough to hit to begin with due to travel - theres no reason it has to be so much worse than bullets aside from it causing stagger against elites. (can remove that as well while we’re at it)

Those are really the only 2 weapons that are massively overtuned imo.

A lot of the guns are undertuned - with massively varying time to kill and sometimes even multiple headshots on ranged trash on slow firing weapons - too many to address them all.

Classes:

Psyker:
Easiest class. Would be my pick to solo Damnation if i had only 1 chance to do it.
Generate warp - reduce warp - gain toughness - ??? - profit.
Unconditional toughness generation, extremely safe damage, great cc, Force sword no dodge limit - again super safe.
Psyker is also hands down the best class against Bulwarks which can be a huge pain to deal with if you dont have good tools for them (e.g. zealot).

Suggested nerf: see surge staff

Veteran:
Best class overall. With pro gamer aim - much much better than everything else. Best class skill, best kit, - infinite grenades that can knockdown large elites, really infinite grenades are a huge deal, grenades are really really strong in this game

Suggested nerf: see power sword + needs a clear weakness in addition to that - currently has none - best class for absolutely everything in the game rn with pro gamer aim. Shooting things behind cover from distance is always way safer than all other playstyles.

Zealot:
Struggles A LOT with ranged knockback - particularly noticeable on maps with no routes to flank and/or no direct line to charge at enemies to get into melee with ranged elites/specials (E.g. tertium - the stairs and general area at the start (no direct routes) and the corridor right before the event (lost to literally 1 reaper because no nades and nothing else you can do - just get pushed away eternally).
Struggles A LOT with ranged damage without the 75% DR crit build - honestly not playable without due to ranged.
Overtuned DR in melee is not needed but desperately needed for ranged - has no tools to regenerate toughness when playing peekaboo aside from ult (unlike psyker/vet) and really should never try to play peekaboo as a result - even if he could he would just be a worse version of vet.

Also currently has an exploit/bug with full damage against armor on ranged weapon after ult.

Suggested nerf:
remove/reduce the DR he has with crit build against melee but leave it as is against ranged so you dont instantly win once you get on top of enemies but still have to play well
Fix the bug/exploit of ranged damage ignoring armor after ulting.

Ogryn:
Actual suffering. Slow, bad mitigation, bad dodges on most melee weapons, health is useless, no ranged tool that covers all bases, awful shield that does no damage, has super slow heavies and poor cleave on lights. Cant even approach ranged with shield - just gets all his stamina drained in a second.

Has some niche situations where he is amazing (carrying stuff, rezz through damage) but everything in his kit always comes with huge downsides in addition to having a single nice upside.

Overall not bad bad but just very dependent on others to cover his weaknesses. Worst class imo as a result - coming from someone who plays solo most of the time and really has to put in work to get Wins.

PS: The biggest problem the game still has is that ultimately long range vs long range firefights are absolutely not fun to play. In all successfull horde shooters its fundamentally important that enemies come to you. Otherwise they would be like this and just be a boring wall staring contest.

Nevermind the fact that ranged trash is way better at taking cover, peeking, has god aim and the aim wobble from being shot at seemingly only affects the player but not the enemies.

Im way more scared of 3 ranged trash mobs in 3 far away corners of a room behind cover than i am of 5 crushers and 10 berserkers and a horde all at the same time.

1 Ranged trash mob can 100 to 0 you in a second, they are the true endboss of the game.

[Exterium]

You might bring good feedback or not, but classifying yourself as a “top 0.3%” makes your whole post laughable.

[azamba89]

1 Ranged trash mob can 100 to 0 you in a second, they are the true endboss of the game.

This is so true! Don’t agree with everything in your post, but this right here is the biggest issue for me in the game. They really, really, need to fix ranged mobs. Atop everything else, they not only need to be nerfed/fixed, but they are so BORING and a DRAG to go through.

[Benny89]

Disagree with nerfing Zealot in anyway till first Veteran is not brough down, range enemies are not nerfed to the ground and beyond, spawn numbers of range enemies in brought down, range stun and movement cancel is removed and enemies will stop aimbot your toe if you are “behind cover” (cover system doesn’t even work in this game) and Zealot has rework of most of his talents. Without damage reduction he has no place on Damnation as melee berserker he should be. Especially considering he has only 2 weapons viable for that build. Right now the only thing that makes Zealot be played on Damnation is crit build and DR is needed for both melee and range for him considering how aggresive he should be and that weapons he needs for crit build offer no CC/cleave so that DR in melee is 100% needed too. I play Zealot on Damnation as my main and I hate being pigeon holed like that but what can you do. Knowing Fatshark they would just trash nerf this and not do anything else to Zealot. Their balancing is always horrible in Tide games.

Disagree on Psyker Surge stuff. It’s good addition to team, but it’s not that strong on it’s own. And on Damnation Psyker gets absolute chewed up in melee since he is made of wet paper. Him having strong CC is his only saving grace.

And don’t be elitist please with your 0.3%… I also play only on Cata/Damnation and it’s cringe to read something like that. It’s not e-d contest.

[nemy123]

I got the frame the second or third day after release. Does that make me 0.1% kek.

Jokes aside, I agree with a lot of the points you bring up except for Psyker. His kit is just badly set up with a lot of useless feats. Yes he is the safest class to play but also has the slowest killing time an can get swamped easily if you have no kiting space or someone to block. It’s be fine if we had blessings or curio perks that decrease BB charge time or damage.

[AsukasHeadphones]

@Benny89

And don’t be elitist please with your 0.3%… I also play only on Cata/Damnation and it’s cringe to read something like that. It’s not e-d contest.

Yeah I also cringed when I read title, lmao. I’m also a dedicated Cata player and title made me embarrassed.

[Exterium]

I simply can’t take seriously any feedback where only nerfs are suggested.

[Benny89]

That too

[Astronomer]

@CataTwitchOnly

@CataTwitchOnly

Give this thing to your non gamer girlfriend and she will carry.

@CataTwitchOnly

Im way more scared of 3 ranged trash mobs in 3 far away corners of a room behind cover than i am of 5 crushers and 10 berserkers and a horde all at the same time.

[Darth_Angeal]

I´m not saying OP is right by any means. Imo it sounds like he´s not able to deal well with ranged enemies or have the balls to force them into melee mode… but imo there are more nerfs than buffs needed.

I see a lot of players running around with meta-builds, which clearly carry the player through heresy / damnation instead of personal skill. The most are not even able to dodge a hound / mutant, whatever. Sheeet happens… but not 3 times in a row.
I also have to smile reading through one or another topic and poeple are like "only this or that build works on heresy / damnation… like wtf? xD

Both things are proof enough that the most players can´t without “stats”. It has been the same in Vermintide. A lot of players are super proud of their cata runs, call themselves “top 0.3% players”, but did nothing but relying on the strongest weapons. Not to mention that this is a teamgame anyway…

So far yes, we definately need nerfs to keep the 2 highest difficulties challenging. If the only challenge is to hold LMB on your flamethrower or to use your special before spamming LMB through a horde, then something is wrong with the balancing.

Again, not symphatizing with OP by any means… he already has a strange view a top 0,3% player would never have. But we need nerfs as fast as possible. We´ve different difficulties for a reason and neither weapons nor classes should outclass everything above malice just by stats. If those nerfs are not a thing, we need 2-3 difficulties on top.

[LoveTruffle]

Hilarious on so many levels.

[Benny89]

@Darth_Angeal

But we need nerfs as fast as possible

No, we don’t. The only asap nerf needed is power sword. Way more weapons and talents first need buffs. And range trash enemies on Damnation need to be brought down to reasonable level so game doesn’t change into bad “cover” (like there is any) slugginsh shooter with Ogryn chained to his Slab Shield.

[Sledgehammer]

This reminds me of someone who thinks who he knows everything by giving endless suggestions but when it is time to shine he screws everything and blames everyone else then gives lame excuses why he doesn’t even practice his own suggestions

[omar_uav]

again with nerf the power sword.

but yet not to look at any other melee option sharpshooter it got right now.
try using shovel or assault chainsaw sword at Heresy High Intensity, no need for damnation.

[Ulfh]

Fat troll spotted !

[Ulfh]

And do not mention that it is the class weapon, so yeah it should be a bit op, + depending of your sword bonuses it wil do the job or not at all.

Fatshark should really instant lock this sort of topic.

[GiardiaGuardian]

Aside from the questionable claim of “top 0.3% player” (you could probably have just said you solo Damnation a bunch and people wouldn’t laugh so hard), I probably agree with most of these points in principle. However, I agree with everyone else saying that dogwater classes and weapons should be buffed before powerful builds and weapons are nerfed. It seems like you are playing mostly with those most powerful builds and weapons and that is limiting the scope of your feedback a lot. Still, thanks for posting your view.

[HeIlsing]

I see it so often that people claim Powersword is broken or OP. Its not for anyone who played V2.
V2 had a punch of good weapons and Dark Tide has 1 or maybe 2 at max while the rest of the weapons are just garbage. I mean, the MK V Axe even has a bar “Cleave Targets” which you can have at 80% and still dont cleave any targets at all.
The problem is definetly with the majority of the weapons being trash and not the Powersword being too strong.

[Exterium]

I see where you are coming from, but I don’t agree with the way you want to approach it.

Right now most ranged weapons are trash, and many melee weapons are trash too, some weapons feel excellent (power sword for example does feel good, besides how OP it is, because it is OP), tactical axes feel good too, just to say another weapon that’s not often called OP.

If we nerf the weapons people are running because they are too strong (and they probably are for the current difficulties), everyone is left with uncomfortable weapons.

So, my approach would be to bring what’s really OP, like power sword SLIGHTLY down, not nerfing both the cleave and the damage because then you just have another average sword with extra steps, and bringing everything else up to that level. THEN or at the same time, bring the difficulties up, so we can play with weapons that have a great feeling while having a challenge, instead of relying on terrible items to make easier difficulties challenging.

Don’t know if you played VT2 but weapons from VT and DT are like night and day, in VT most weapons have a really amazing feeling to them, some are situational, but you can bring almost anything and perform if you know how to use it.

Not in DT, in DT most weapons feel subpar with a very small pool of weapons being great, not even OP, we had far more OP weapons in VT2 than what we have here.

[Sarumane]

The memes are strong with this one XD