Not to mention that range was already extremely strong in V1.
I want a variety of play styles in my co-op game. If we orient every classes towards melee for no bloody reasons then it’s just wasted opportunity imo. Not to mention that it would be hard to make all classes balanced if they are more or less carbon copy of one another… since one is bound to become strictly better than the others.
Besides BW, V2 doesn’t really have a ranged class oriented/specialized towards massive aoe damage. It would be very interesting for BW to become/stay just that.
If I wanted to play a melee oriented wizard, I would play Unchained… and I already do so 95% of the time I play Sienna
So, why does Tranquillity have to have just one timer?
Why not have something like “deactivate for 2 seconds cooldown after casting a spell, 6 seconds cooldown after taking damage”?
From what little I understand from Warhammer lore, magic is dangerous. Especially to the caster and those around them, with random effects ranging up to randomly sucking a place into the realm of chaos, or groups of demons appearing.
As such, the colleges emphasize study and self control to prevent the worst - don’t go to your limit unless you have to. You trade potential for a modicum of predictability, admittedly something Sienna doesn’t shine at.
So Battle Wizard, as a subclass, should be about that measured approach, which to me just screams charged attacks and AOE.
I think it is quite the moderate suggestion for her to be nudged a bit in that direction.
She doesn’t actually lack that much.
Of course, right now she is heavily outshone by the other two subclasses, but that is really a numbers game.
I feel like she was heavily prenerfed even in beta. It’s like they made her, than decided she’s too strong, and then make her garbage. From what you read about her, she suppose to be a hord cleaver (or burner), and pyro should have been elites/specials killer. And now pyro does both while BW does nothing. BW has no overcharge reduction on her talents other than her passive, which ment to be good, but they were afraid that it would go out of control and nerfed it into the ground. So when wave comes, you can burn down 1st row, and that’s it. And since hordes are numerous, it’s not enough. You have to wait 8 seonds for tranquility, then another 8 or more for it to vent you.
To make her real hord clearer she should have more benefits from killing common infantry. Maybe let tranquility recharge 0.2 seconds faster for every enemie she hits in range? I could also see her having a 100% discount for spells while it is active, it would be cool. So that she could clear waves with ease.
After having dabbled with BW again for a while, I have come to the conclusion that she could very well fit her role as ranged CC, but her passive is too limiting and quite frankly, I don’t get why the “no spell casting” is even a condition. The effect of tranquility is still not that large that it would make venting overcharge obsolete, and the huge CC spells like fireball or conflag create rather large amounts of charge, preventing you from blasting out too much damage in a short time even if you wanted to with all that charge up reduction. My suggestion would be to either remove that condition completely, as what is preventing BW from dishing out too much CC damage over time is building up overcharge.
One way or the other, I’d still like to see her passive provide other stuff via talents, being larger AoE and longer afterburn damage. Her active is kinda okay, or it would be if it worked reliably. Packmasters being able to yoink you out of your teleport is actually rather surprising and very counter-intuitive for an “escape and engage”-style ability. The more I think about it, the more I get the feeling Unchained and BW should swap their active skills, as Unchained’s skill is alot more “crowd-controlly” and BW is more about getting in and out of melee battles. I like her teleport, but I think it should cater more to her crowd-controlling ability.
Lore-friendly suggestions to add to her teleport:
-Cascasing Fire-Cloak / Shield of Aqshy (gives DR and reactive armour after casting)
-Fulminating Flame Cage (enemies get trapped in fire-cage where BW was standing)
Both her ult and her passive are garbage. She should be tuned as an AoE specialist. We have Pyro for special removal and straight DPS, Unchained for tankiness, and Battle Wizard should be like a Pyro that excels at AoE at the cost of reduced special removal ability.
Her actually useful talents all dramatically reduce charge time, making all of the AoE staves great choices on her. The problem is that her venting passive is useless because Sienna makes infinite temp health and it’s far more effective to just vent manually when Heat Sink doesn’t proc. Her ult is just bad and should be replaced with either a self buff or something like an actual proper Conflagration of Doom.
I personally find Battle Wizard to be the best of the 3 careers if you’re good at skirmishing and improvising your tactics. You don’t just spam your staff, or go pure melee brawler, it’s a balance and mix of both.
Easy heat management with the passive, great at standard melee and ranged combat. I use regen necklace as well, and I both vent to lose overcharge in a pinch, and also rely on the passive when i have low HP, or during heavy melee combat when I can’t safely vent.
Level 25 talents are amazing, i use the one that removes overcharge on teleport.
Not to mention it’s a freaking teleport that leaves a fire trail and knocks back everything. I’ve set an entire horde on fire with that thing, made amazing escapes, saved my team by teleporting behind a patrol when we’re cornered and kiting them away, teleport to someone downed to revive them. The utility is insane and adds a lot of survivability if you use it well. I don’t need a homing projectile or point blank explosion to kill things.
People saying her ult is bad just tells me they don’t know how to use it. It’s a teleport. That alone is extremely high value even without the fire DoT.
Pyro is meant for ranged specialization, Unchained is meant for melee specialization, and Battle Wizard is a mix of both. Unless you’re playing a pre-made team, I find BW to be the best PUG choice for all-around strength.
Just for reference I’m using Beam staff with Mace.
The problem with Fire Walk is that it is too inconsistent… aka it gets stuck on too many terrain variation to make it consistent on everything but very flat ground.
Yes it can work perfectly when you know the map area that you’re in, but it doesn’t mean that FS doesn’t have to invest time to make it less buggy on uneven terrain. The number of time I ulted only to stay exactly where I was is just absurd at this point.
Thing is that in order to make it somewhat (if you actually can use it… which isn’t always the case depending on the terrain) reliable, you need to take the time to aim… which is time consuming from time to time (depending on the terrain) due to how poorly implemented the targeting system is for Fire Walk.
Not to mention that such a scenario where you have the time to aim your teleport aren’t those where you really need it. It’s when you’re under heavy pressure that you need your teleport the most… and it’s in those cases that you will end up missing your teleport and essentially teleport one inch in front of where you where…
Another thing worth mentioning is that the fire trail doesn’t seem to deal enough damage to be really considered. This is even more problematic since it makes the 10 sec fire trail (25 talent) essentially useless. As far as I know, the fire trail does 1 damage on impact and that’s it… I’d love to test it, but I simply can’t due to how poorly information is given to players in this game
I’d love if the fire trail did continuous damage and actually punished the enemy for going threw it. This would increase the utility of her ultimate as it would make it a good area controlling tool… forcing the enemy to take certain paths and the like.
About her passive, I now think that the no casting condition needs to go entirely. Reducing the cooldown is also to be considered.
I would personally remove the venting trait that it gives you and change it to either charge speed or increased aoe.
BW is not meant to be a mix of both, no matter if you can play her like that. She is explicitly designed as a ranged CC and should be able to do that. She doesn’t actually need much tweaking. She can be handy on Legend, no question, but she hardly brings anything to the table the other 2 carreers cannot do atm.
Her teleport is underwhelming and unreliable, it has nothing to do with knowing how to use it (which isn’t that hard… it’s a teleport, you use it to either engage or disengage, don’t act like it’s a hard thing to figure out)
Yes the inconsistency is an issue that I hope they fix, but I’ve managed thus far with just being aware of the ground-marker, and the time span I’d need to do it accurately.
The fire damage is unknown to me. I do know that anything with the on-fire effect is taking ticks of damage. It is probably too small right now, but even 1 damage per tick is pretty good if you light tons of enemies on fire with it. It won’t kill the individuals or wipe a horde, but the attrition damage is a considerable sum, and it does weaken everything. I agree the extended duration talent is overshadowed majorly.
That being said, I generally don’t use it for the damage, but just for the teleport.
I don’t mind the no-casting thing. To me that makes sense, because she’s supposed to alternate between casting and melee. You blow your load and get high overcharge, you go melee or vent, rinse and repeat. I melee almost all the time until a horde or special shows up anyway. Then i light the whole horde on fire, and go nuts with my mace.
I disagree, I think her passive venting is proof of her intention to be alternating between casting and not casting. I think most people don’t want to do that, and thus want that passive changed.
One of her talents gives her up to 25% power increase with 5 enemies nearby, which is perfect for horde melee. When the passive venting is active, you can also get a block cost reduction, which is also conducive to melee while not casting.
I don’t see where you’re getting the ranged CC indication tbh, her talents certainly don’t suggest that as far as I can tell.
This is why I’d like to see her enhanced as an aoe/crowd control specialist. Half her kit is on point in this regard but the other half just doesn’t resonate.
This is also why I feel she’s a generalist and isn’t meant to be a specialist. She’s got a lot of options that make her all-around strong but she’s not the best at any one thing. I mean Pyromancer is clearly the ranged specialist, so wouldn’t it make more sense for Pyro to be that role?
It’s just not that useful. The only thing BW currently does that Pyro can`t do better is use charge staffs, but the overall DPS output still goes down dramatically and you have to sacrifice the ability to one-shot rot helms, frequently delete specials w/o LoS, and decimate bosses with a conc pot (or even w/o). It’s the exact same problem Handmaiden has: gains survivability through mobility at the cost of handicapping the parts of her kit that actually have value in a team environment. Unchained suffers the same issues but to a lesser extent, as its identity is better focused. Also, the overheat reducing passives and talents on BW are worthless because Sienna generates unlimited temp health and Pyro has her own overheat mitigation traits, so venting when heat sink doesn’t proc is always super fast and effectively free anyways.
Like Handmaiden, it’s kinda just a for-fun class that has increased solo speedrun viability and doesn’t contribute to the team as much as it should. It just doesn’t have the same versatility as Pyro right now.
I see your point, the overlap between careers is detrimental when they don’t have distinct advantages over each other.
In the end, perhaps that’s why I enjoy it the most, the fun factor. I feel like I can wreck house with BW with my play style, in a way that I can’t with Pyro. I’m not the boss specialist, but I have great aim and with beam i can easily handle specials, and between beam and mace I can handle hordes and armor, so even if it’s an underwhelming career it’s exceptionally viable, perhaps with an increased skill floor due to the comparative disadvantages to Pyro. Maybe it’s just my Vermintide 1 tendency to want to go melee, and BW gives me 25% power increase in hordes & block cost reduction, which allows me to do a lot of work in close range when my overcharge is too high to cast, or we’re just swarmed.
http://warhammerfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Empire_Battle_Wizards and also how they are represented by the rules. They are stretching things to begin with to give Sienna a melee focus, since Warhammer wizards are ultimately always backline artillery with only few exceptions. Battle Wizards are wizards that fight on a battle field. Melee capibility is unneeded in the same way it is unneeded in archers or artielly crew. They have sidearms for defense, but don’t charge into battle. Warhammer sometimes has a very different understanding since definitions stems from roles on a battlefield, not in invididual combat.
I would think Unchained would just be better with that kind of playstyle? It’s what I generally play if the team has plenty of ranged careers. Having an effective hit point value of up to 420 is kind of insane.
You know, I thought so too for awhile and in some ways it is, but mainly I didn’t enjoy having to worry about exploding due to damage. Additionally BW doesn’t require high overcharge to increase melee power and reduce block cost, while Unchained requires the extra risk of exploding to get those buffs. Generally I like to get myself to very high overcharge before swapping to melee, but with Unchained that’s not the smartest way to play. You effectively have two health bars to worry about. I can definitely do my preferred playstyle with both, but in the end I enjoy the BW talents and teleporting more than being a tank.
