When did the beastmen join the pact-sworn? Is it just me or do they feel completely out of place on a lot of Helmgart missions. Like they make sense in certain maps in certain areas (Against the Grain - the fields), (Athel Yenlui - K pretty much anywhere its a forest…)
I understand for balance reasons why Beastmen are intermixed with Chaos / Skaven specials (Beastmen don’t have enough specials and lack a incapacitate, and their direct damage is inconsistent Archers) But Beastmen being added to missions they don’t belong is just really out of place (on top of annoying since beastmen hordes are far stronger than skaven / chaos)
Sure maybe I am bad vs Beastmen and could use some practice going thru Dark Omens some more until I am better against them. But regardless of my bias I don’t think Beastmen being injected into Helmgart missions has ever been explained or makes any sense. I find myself enjoying Lord Levels much more in that they are more predictable and thematically on point (example: Into the Nest - Nothing but Skaven) Perhaps make more maps following the Dark omens story-line? a Beastmen lord mission would be pretty cool, perhaps it could include some context we are lacking? I know map’s take quite a long time for Fatshark and the ones we have are already pretty impressive, but just my 2-warptokens (yes-yes I’m a rat-lover bring on versus mode!) I feel the Lord missions are quite frankly amazing, and part of that is they are thematically on point. I love them bravo Fatshark I only wish we had a few more Lord missions (a Lord mission for beastmen, and a Lord mission for The Curse of Drachenfels perhaps?)
Perhaps its asking for too much but would rather have Beastmen have their own missions (not just 1) that are specific to their storyline as opposed to being injected into the Pact-Sworn story where they feel completely out of place. (As well as annoying because they still need more nerfs) I’m all for killing beastmen in end-times but the way they have been added just doesn’t seem to…fit
(TLDR)
Beastmen are Pact-Sworn? Context Plz! If no then plz remove where they don’t fit in the story
OP is bad vs beastmen , and thinks they still need some adjustments (nerfs) although Im fairly certain a lot of people have that sentiment
More Lord fights! They are awesome! Kudos Fatshark
The Beastmen feedback was already given in countless posts since WoM.
The Lord feedback was already given in countless posts since atleast the frustrating final of “the Blightreaper” (my last hope is that we’ll see a Vampirelord with the 3rd Drachenfels map, but I don’t count on it)
A lot of people share your opinion, but do not think it will change anything.
FatShark never gave a damn about content related feedback and I bet they will never change already released content, atleast that was the story so far for the last 2 years.
… im more scared of the release than hyped to be honest.
Yes, Into the Nest is such an amazing map with a really fun lord fight which tends to end in 5 seconds due to him being made of paper. I miss the days of him actually going through his different phases and not dying as soon as he jumps down.
Yea i really feel they should increase both Skarrik Spinemanglr, and Bödvarr Ribspreader HP some. Both can get their head caved in just a few seconds. Which is a shame because the Lord fights in Vermintide 2 are amazingly fun and well designed. Wish fatshark focused on their strengths at how well they did them and made a few more Lord fight missions
Burblespue Halescourge - seems in a correct place, even if you have a BH smash ult into him a few times in rapid succession he will still get a few teleports off and do a few attacks actions. For any team that doesn’t have near instant lord slaying it should be several teleports and phases
Skarrik Spinemanglr - Dies way way too easily, quickly, Literally had him die instantly on Legend when I was with a Shade, me (bounty hunter) ult his head and shade did Ult and he was dead basically as soon as he landed. Needs significantly more HP, hes a heavily armored fighter, why is Burblespew tankier than him? yet can teleport and do ranged attacks, spells, etc. He should be tanky enough to survive the initial spam of ultimates and at least do a phase of both his weapons (sword / halberd)
Bödvarr Ribspreader - Much like Skarrik but has slightly more health, but it doesn’t matter due to how much he is stagger locked. Bombs, Shade, Kruber, BH blasting his head off, as soon as he jumps down he will be on his knees and probably dead or only have a sliver of life by the time he gets back to his feet from the initial ult drops. Even on team comps with low boss damage I have seldom seen him survive past like 1 wave of adds, maybe do 1 or 2 charges and throw his axe once or twice (This is on Legend) . And if you have a BH with a concentration pot hes going to get executed with a few sigmar bullets to the brain before he can ever stand up.
Rasknitt and Deathrattler - They seem to have had their health increased recently. Rasknitt especially which is kinda odd (you would think Deathrattler to be the tanky one!) But seeing as he is the “Final Boss” I suppose its somewhat appropriate. With his health increase I have yet to see him “cheese killed” super fast lately, will pretty much always get off several teleports, several waves of adds, just like the fight feels like it should play out possible tweak just imo, make Deathrattler have more HP to increase the length of the first phase of the fight. Rasknitt slight reduction in HP to allow phase 2 to still play out, but perhaps not quite so many teleports / waves, Seems kinda odd that Rasknitt is so tanky atm
Seriously getting sick of it to the point I will just start queing for Into the nest / Skittergate, almost every single horde is beastmen… game is suppose to be about Skaven and Chaos…game is called (VERMIN)TIDE.
If you want to make the argument that Beastmen work for Chaos then lets go by simple numbers… Skaven have more population than anyone “Life is cheap / Always more besides” Thus they should be the highest probability hordes to encounter. Your talking about a faction that throws a few hundred slaves at an enemy just to get them tired, and any damage or kills they inflict on the enemy are considered a “bonus”. If you want to consider the balance of tuning the different hordes its quite simple
Skaven hordes- should last longer. Skaven tarpit their enemies with slaves / clanrats this gives more time for their special units to get some work in (assassins, weapons teams, etc) in vermintides case this would be be specials spawning (Players that know how to deal with hordes will hardly ever take damage from skavenslaves / clanrats, unless they are out of position or tunnel vision a special / monster and get smacked. But the point to a Skaven horde is to buy time for more specials to spawn and get some work in. The feeling the players get when its skaven should be that they have to fight off a very large yet not very effective horde and are being pinned down by shear numbers (all the while players know specials are respawning)
Chaos - They feel ok imo from a balance point. Not really a fan of chaos myself but from a gameplay side I don’t see anything wrong with them or reason to buff / nerf
Beastmen - need further nerfs to their mass, or whatever internal stat reduces their stagger or just completely ignore being staggered from melee hits and swing anyway. Reduce their occurance of spawning on Helmgart missions which are suppose to primarly be about the Pact-sworn (Skaven / chaos) Id rather fight a patrol of Stormvermin at this point than beastmen that seem to just not care about being hit and swing back anyway
If they are not going to remove them from missions they don’t belong then at least drastically reduce how often they occur when compared to Skaven / Chaos, but of course keeping them the same for Dark omen and any future maps that want to expand upon the beastmen. They also still need to be toned down quite a lot. See a lot of players that take 0 dmg vs skaven / chaos hordes, and monsters, yet as soon as beastmen show up ppl start getting hit (myself included)… something is not right. People don’t play flawlessly for everything else and then just happen to fubar their play when beastmen show up, clearly beastmen have an advantage that skaven / chaos do not
Totally agree with every point about the lords. As far as beastmen, they were occurring so frequently for me that I just disabled the dlc. Problem solved for the mean time. I just get so annoyed when I have to take down 30 or more archers between or during every horde of beastmen. Then the hordes spawn so close and fan out and flank, so even crowd control weapons tend to only hit a few because most of them are outside the weapons swing arc.
Shadows over Bogenhafen: Could’ve had mini bosses of different Norscan units scattered around The Pit and Blightreaper. Not full on boss / lord but more of showing how the Chaos Norscan hordes have leaders who are all vying for control of the Blightreaper. Chaos Warrior, Berserker, Mauler, Shield Marauder. Both the Window Defense and Library Search would have a guaranteed spawn sometime during the event with these enemies having more health, movement/attack speed and some more damage + come with a few elites as a guard.
Dark Omen: Could’ve had the beastman in the trailer show up a few times during the level as a raid/ambush boss that you have to fight off before a final confrontation at the end event (have to kill all banners + beastlord). Should be a few skins of this guy so it shows him taking wounds and such.
Current Lords are alright design wise but I feel like they need to have a diminishing damage reduction buff that lowers over time during the fight. This way you can’t instantly kill a lord with certain heroes. Perhaps show an aura of some sort to signify this.
Beastmen: Janky design and lack of enemy types. Having to borrow skaven/norscan specials on their “exclusive” map only emphasizes this failure.
This is interesting and similar to the idea behind niche obstacles in Deep Rock. Sand worms and cracks in the terrain spitting fire only occur in their respective biomes so they provide a unique challenge without needing to be especially complex or something you see too often.
If beastmen were relegated to dlc maps dedicated to them then the primary adventure remains untainted and this lets the beastie boys be as powerful and weird as they want. Mutators and twitch mode could add them back in if people happen to want them, or some other method to incorporate them. In fact, they could be super cool if they were allowed to play to their initial strengths because even if they are harder to fight, balance doesn’t matter because the dlc maps then become a sort of unique challenge mode in their own right.
I literally just did a run on Fort Brachsenbrucke where it was LITERALLY all Beastmen from start to finish (except the end event). Yup, that’s a first for me, literally all Beastmen from start to finish.
I really disagree with the idea of increasing lord HP. It won’t do much to stop bosskilling classes just nuking them, and makes the fights awful in pubs where no-one is running BH or shade or whatever. Skittergate is a great example of how boosting hp doesn’t make a more fun fight.
I think making it so that BH can’t delete bosses before they even properly start a fight is a better call.
Something like capping the amount of dmg a Lord can take from a single attack or in a short amount of time? Needs a bit more thought, but yes, Lord fights should be more challenging, considering how easy they are in comparison to other events or to the rest of the map that they’re in.
Yeah, or just reducing the amount of damage doubleshotted does to bosses would work fine too. Making the cd reduction a bit less insane would be an option as well.
I don’t mind making them a bit less of a pushover, but buffing HP when the problem stems from a few classes just sounds like it’s going to cause a whole bunch more issues and effectively force you to run those if you don’t want to deal with a long boring fight.
The main issue imo is with Skarrik Spinemanglr, and Bödvarr Ribspreader. I would not want to make these fights significantly harder for pug’s especially ones that are not running a BH or shade. As doing so would just emphasize the need for those 2 classes on those missions. However I still think their overall HP is too low, play thru Halescourge and notice that even Burblespue lasts significantly longer than these 2, partly due to the fact he can teleport, which resets players dumping damage into him, as well as having a projectile attack that most players in front of him need to dodge, meaning by and large he does a better job at reducing the windows players are pouring damage on him… much like Rasknitt with his auto get out of a face pounding for free teleports (no matter what you do he will be allowed to teleport away after so much damage / time)
Another huge issue with what is really making short work of Skarrik and Bödvarr is the length of their initial damage window. Skarrik literally jumps down with a super hero landing and slowly rises to his feet just begging for a BH to place his blessed pistol halfway down his throat and pulling the trigger. I don’t think BH or shade ult’s should be nerfed, Monster and Lord slaying is their purpose, but Lord’s should be significantly beefier / harder than your run of the mill Monster that you encounter during the mission.
Both Skarrik and Bodvarr do a poor job and defending themselves at the start of the fight. Skarrik is fairly mobile in sword stance and once he starts moving and jumping only the best of players are going to be landing a headshot’s, His Halberd stance is pretty meh he goes and plays with his big heavy halberd in a corner while players clear adds, with enourmas damage windows for ranged damage while hes charging up to swing for the fences (which all players should have ammo as their is always a ammo box before Lords)
Bodvarr does a much better job at defending himself and damage windows. He charges around quickly, making players re-aim and dodge, he does a ground pound to temporarily shoo off any armor piercing melee pouding him (as well as punish players for not DODGING). Throws his axe which is his more vulnerable attack. And has some rather quick swings with his axe occasionally. Once he starts fighting he seems alright. But same with Skarrik he suffers that (please kill me) problem at the start, although he doesn’t do a almost comically long super-hero landing like Skarrik its still very easy for people to unload all and if not all a huge portion of his life bar to him right after his feet touch the ground. Ive even seen him go down without a BH / Shade in group with just a bunch of grenades straight to the dome and a FK Kruber that placed him firmly on his rear end meanwhile the whole party just beat him like a armored pinata.
Not saying every boss fight should be a Rasknitt long slog nor would I want them to be as Rasknitt is the “Finale boss” (Some might say he could use a reduction in health). But every Lord should be able to survive long enough even vs. BH / Shade to force the party to observe at least a few attacks / mechanics maybe even a entire phase or 2.
And as for the main gripe (Beastmen) I’m not to the point that I would disable the DLC. Its just comically silly how often Beastmen occur sometimes populating nearly entire maps and every single horde being beastmen. Their balance problems only further compounds the frustration of their EXTREME over-saturation. Mission’s should feel appropriately populated based on what mission it is…If I see beastmen in Into the nest I swear ill just uninstall. But It is perfectly fine for them to appear in OUTDOOR missions except war camp & Halescourge- which should almost be primarly chaos troops, with some Skaven support
Beastmen are in such a weird place. They feel like they are just tacked on for little to no reason, both in regards to plot as well as in regard to gameplay. Which is jsut a shame. I dont understand why they had to put weaves and beastmen in the same DLC…
Personally I think there are only two options and neither will be taken up by FS any time soon (if ever):
Design Beastmen to be special encounters to give them a unique flair and position within the game. In that case the current roster is fine, however I would still tone down numbers a lot in favor of giving them more beefy stats, but thats just my personal taste. However I would love it if they interacted with the other factions, so you create situations where you find a group of beastmen mowing down clanrats or slaves… etc.
Give them their own campaign and cut them from maps/places they don’t fit in (and do so for the other factions as well). This however would mean filling out the roster with more specials a second boss maybe and coming to terms with them overall balance wise. In this case it might make more sense to make them feel more like the other two factions in order to keep the core gameplay loop more consistent.
However in the current situation they just feel so awkward and I think that is a huge missed opportunity…
The HP of Lords is not the issue. The problem is the huge discrepancy in Lord damage between classes. I like having some classes be better than others at stuff like Lord-slaying, but currently the discrepancy between classes like Bounty Hunter & Shade vs. every other class is so huge you’ll never be able to balance for that with HP tweaks. Either the Lord is tuned for having one of these classes in your group and he’s a horrible slog if you didn’t bring them, or the Lord is tuned for normal groups but becomes a joke if you brought specific classes.
Neither of those situations seems attrative to me. The best solution would be to nerf the damage specific Ults (like Shade’s and Bounty Hunter’s) do to Lords (and maybe a little bit vs. Monsters, but not against other stuff like Chaos Warriors). There would still be classes better at killing big targets than others, but the balance would not be as out of whack as it is currently.
I definitely agree with your point of view. I’m not sure if a simpel up in numbers is the solution for all this. Like TmanDW said:
It’s a problem with several classes aswell, that can maybe get fixed with a damage cap for Lords, or some work on the specfic character classes.
As you already mentioned there is a “design problem” with lord fights aswell, since Burbledingsbumswhatever works better than Skarrik and Bödvarr just because the fight is designed in a different way (spells, quick position changes, invulnerability in idle animations, etc.)
If you compare Skarrik with Krench from V1 it’s almost a step back imho, even if it’s a pretty similar boss.
You could do so much with things like Krenchs warpstone weapon to make fights more interesting and engaging aswell as giving Lords some spells to work with… that’s what makes Burblepoop so much better than the other 2: his AoE abilities.
Accordingly Surroundings could be utilized, like Bödvarrs “Arena”, i mean it should be something special, but actually it’s pretty much the same as Skarriks pit is.
There are spiky logs and metal parts on the edge of it that do not even deal any dmg, they just look fancy… It would add another thread for the player and makes range combat a little harder if u get like a bleeding dot and aiming penalty for getting to close to the wall or smth. Or maybe add chaos hounds to the fight, that was a thing to in ancient romaninan gladiatorfights right, fighting beasts?
Same goes for the Gatekeeper btw… I mean no wonder it’s not on the list, most ppl forgot he even exists…
im more scared of the release than hyped to be honest.