Battle Wizards Passive: Suggestions and Discussions for a rework

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
41

I’ve been using the Mace before and my experiences were terrible. I feel it’s too slow and swings in an awkward, short-range fashion to make up for either anti-armor or hordes - but I am willing to let someone change my mind on this. I hadn’t thought of the Power Increase talent for the BW, and I wish to know if you or anyone else can tell me just how viable this talent is.

If I were to run around with a good 600 HP, playing either Champion or Legend - what breakpoints are worth bringing up if I get 5%, 10%, 15%… (etc) extra Power? Are there any Charm/Weapon Trait combos with Power vs. X that helps Mace particularly on high-value targets?

42

The key thing about the mace that makes it work for me is that the charged attack chain only does the overhead attack the first time. Every charged attack chained after that will be a horizontal swipe. For full horde fighting you can use the block attack to start with a horizontal swipe, then chain directly into horizontal heavy attacks.

Between that, and the overhead light and charged attack, you can deal with armor as well.

I went for attack speed property, and power vs armor isn’t a bad choice for rot helms. Either that or power vs chaos since they are the denser enemies, skaven aren’t a problem generally. Off the top of my head I believe I’m running the trait that increases push strength against attacking enemies, which helps enormously in hordes and vs heavy attacking enemies.

It’s pretty subjective, the mace takes practice to get the rhythm down and dodging is a large part of the combat. Dragging your mouse in the direction of the swing seems to help hit enemies in a wider arc as well.

I’ve been only running champion with it so far and it’s been very effective for me. I haven’t tried to run any numbers regarding breakpoints for specific enemy types or anything, I just go with what feels right in practice.

43

To be honest, with a bit of learning curve the overheat is not that large an issue with the unchained. I guess the BW passive screams “go in melee”, but all her talents are purely defensive, in the meantime the unchained will get a boost on her damage and can vent heat by blocking (which makes her very rewarding against bosses, not as directly effective as the pyro, but a good tanking member for the team)

I’m yet to try BW with the 25 talent, but the ranged boost and charge speed boost have felt underwhelming after playing unchained in champion. If the objective is to manage heat , by level 25 and with the right traits, the pyro is as good as this as the BW, and gets the immense ult perks. (think about it, this ult makes you able to skip reliable long range damage on your staff)

So far we have the pure artillery damage Sienna and the tankish mixed style Sienna with unchained. That leaves BW in an awkward spot at best. Her Ult isn’t supposed to be used offensively (it would be suicide in high difficult to just dive in for a bit of damage) and other dashing characters have resilient or melee advantage she doesn’t have (the unchained would work with the TP, ironically)

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44

I leveled up my Sienna using Unchained, and then swapped to BW only fairly recently. I don’t consider the overcharge management to be particularly difficult, just a chore and too risky when I typically go into melee range with very high overcharge. I don’t want to have to worry about casting too much before going melee. One unlucky AOE and you splode. I think if the ult cleared her “about to explode” status it would be a little different.

BW has passive abilities that gives ranged power, passive venting, and ranged charge speed on high overcharge.

I typically run my BW like this for talents:

Stamina +1 (more block+attacks, my favorite with mace)
Power stacking (note that this is not melee power only)
Reduced block cost (defense and more block+attacks indirectly)
Health on kill
Firewalk removes overcharge

So here you have ranged and melee power, defense, and utility boosted with an overcharge clear. The teleport has mobility, aoe knock back, and damage over time. Not a devastating killer, but very useful for lots of things. Mobility, escapes, kiting, reviving during hordes, saving people who are cornered, you can get really creative with how you use it. The skill cap is high.

I would say Unchained has more defensive talents regarding Stamina, overcharge, blocking, and health, with the power boost only applying to melee and only when you’re very high on overcharge.

The ult is no doubt much more damaging, but I prefer the mobility of tp as a personal choice.

I still maintain that BW is a mix of offense and defense with utility, a more versatile hero, while Pyro is ranged dps and Unchained is tanky. I don’t find BW awkward, just not as focused on one role.

I definitely feel like the proximity power stacking & teleport would be great for Unchained, there’s definitely some strange overlap of roles there.

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45

I decided to give BattleMage a try.

And actually Sienna since I hadn’t played it for a while. And I only have it to 18th level at present, but seriously. After giving both Pyro and BW a try,

I found in the complete opposite. Best survivability was actually BW, not Pyro. And I can see why Pyros hate the Conflag. In their hands it feels like garbage… The only thing I found of any use was the Burning Head.

In BW’s hands with the fast charge talent selected you Conflag the crap out of everything. Without a doubt its the Staff for the BW.

Also… the ult I found functionally easier to use. Seems people have the wrong idea about this one, Its not just to get you out of trouble, its to charge a pack of enemies, much like Kruber FK, It does the same things.

I could conflag the crap out of a Horde until the overcharge got high, then Burst into the horde and melee the crap out of them with dagger.

Pyro… that one was death after death. The conflag took way too long to charge, so as you’d be charging it up some mob would beat the hell out of you from behind. Meanwhile with BW… you’d quick conflag a full charge or two, weapon swap instantly in seconds, block and attack much more versatile.

BW was so much smoother to play than Pyro, and I found myself downed a great deal more with Pyro, its only real advantage was Burning Head which only randomly targeted things.

I found BW to be much more powerful and versatile.

46

Nobody claims that she isn’t playable ot powerful. She is just underwhelming when compared to Pyro and Unchained, since both her active and passive are very situational, not very reliable and overall, she doesn’t fill the role she’s been assigned. She isn’t far of from being on roughly the same scale as her other carreers, though.

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47

I found it the complete opposite… I found Pyro completely underwhelming in comparison to BW.

BW I was able to rack up 500+ kill games in Champion at 18th, Pyro… not even close… just a lot of deaths and low kill numbers.

48

Burning head one shots rot helms on legend and kills multiple specials w/o LoS. It is objectively superior to almost every ult in the game. You should be getting over 1k kills per match on Pyro (except on Brachsenbrucke because it’s so short, so expect like 700-800 there).

49

Not in my eyes.

In fact even when I play WHC I’ve never seen any Pyro do that. And I consider the Maps I played Pyro on heavily favoring Pyro, like Athel Yenlui. BW I ended up on Empire in Flames all the time, but did once end up in Festering. Mind you though I’ve only got Sienna to 18th so limited myself to Champion level games.

EDIT: not the one shoting CWs, mind you, that I have seen out of Pyros.

50

Only when the object of discussion is damage/kills in the role of main DPS. Survivability, utility, reliability, defense? Objectively worse than many. I’ve seen burning heads hit a single slave rat and disappear with multiple specials nearby. I see burning head constantly not one-shot rothelms because they miss the head or something. Obviously that’s bugged behavior, but it seems like we’re judging the teleport based on it’s janky nature so there’s something to be said about the burning head in that regard.

51

Idc much about the jankiness of it personally, just the fact its benefit is negated by proper tactics/positioning and that it has no real DPS value. Max DPS is just the best in every MMO or game like this. With few exceptions, it’s almost always best to accept being glassier if it means you’re cannon-ier. It just takes more skill. Why tank things that you could have already killed? As long as the bare minimum amount of tankiness/cc is met by a group, everything else should involve killability. Teleport just doesn’t have that. Burning Head is non-LoS special removal, heavy removal, Boss shredding+CC, and a lot of temp health when fired into a horde. It’s spammable.

If they want to make BW more enticing, they need to give her a more DPS oriented ult.

BW and Pyro are very similar only BW is teched out to make better use of chargeable staffs than Pyro. They should build upon that and give her a proper, ranged AOE DPS ult. What I would like to see is a proper Conflagration of Doom. Make it like a much improved incendiary effect that she can cast at will from a distance. This would add too the Battle Wizard lore element too because it would help her control the battlefield by funneling enemies into desired paths.

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52

Kinda pointless to discuss Champion difficulty, though. I don’t like it either, but the status quo is how a carreer performs on Legend. Remember when everyone was talking about how OP Waystalker Keri was with her passive regen before Legend was available? And now the consensus is that her regen is kinda worthless on Legend when it heals up to only half HP.

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53

You know what they could do and what would be awesome? Make her ult tied to the staff she has equipped. Conflag Staff-> Conflag of doom. Fireball Staff->Cinder Blast/Fire Ball Barrage, Bolt Staff-> Bolt of Aqshy, Flamestorm Staff->Magma storm.

Or give her a utility ability, like Hearts of Fire, similar to Merc and WHC.

2 Likes
54

I agree and would love this. Only reason I don’t suggest it is because of how much extra animation/effects it could take but I guess they could just increase the stats on the attacks. I definitely think that would be the best though from both a lore and a class perspective. Basically let her do what real Warhammer wizards are capable of doing for a few seconds at a time.