I’m curious to see how the forum regulars rank Vermintide 2 Careers. The thought came to me when I’ve come across conversations regarding the downsides/upsides of every single career. For me, it’s fairly easy to place each of them, especially near the top, but I don’t find almost any consensus at all among users here; which might be a good sign in terms of how diverse and useful different careers are depending on the time you’ve invested in them.
Here’s the community breakdown for the Tier List with WP included:
Here’s the link for making your own:
I’m trying to stratify them as much as possible to show where they stand relative to each other, here’s mine:
I want to see and discuss, how do you rank them? If we all differ significantly, I’d take that as some evidence that the game is balanced better for Cataclysm than we might think.
I like it. I don’t think GK or WP should be close on this; nor are they lacking “Skill Expression”.
Also, man is Engineer a liability to the team on Cataclysm, but he certainly does have some utility and requires skill. I’ve seen a solo with him on Cataclysm.
BH is below-par for skill investment to GK if you ask me. He’s my second most-played career, and I always get more kills with him; the difference is I think my team appreciates me as GK more with the frontlining and passive perks more than me as BH sniping bosses, elites, and specials.
I feel like that post is just going to derail the thread.
Also @Ensrick there’s so many things we can rate them on. Are you speaking about which have generally high value, or OP game breaking builds?
Also I think the game is balanced to be above Cata, with a decent team. Career Skills are all really strong, so they have to spam Specials. With a half decent premade you can walk through the map so quickly that you barely get any Hordes.
The Career Skills need to be busted to counter Disablers walking through the back of Elite density too, so it’s not easy to fix.
So this is just in general on Cata QP, mainly based around damage.
If we was to go optimal builds it would look way more different. Also Engi is probably the worst designed Career, and can’t keep up on Cata. High damage is possible, but it’s certainly frustrating to do it. The Flamethrower solo bunker build is pretty fun on Cata+ though, if you didn’t have to crank as much.
Pyro has top damage potential every game, but is just difficult to survive on. Unchained may even be S with Coruscation.
BH with Shotguns would be S. Possibly S+. I’ve done 80K in Vanguard Tzeentch and the next player down is like 50k damage. It’s insane.
Bleed Dual Swords SoTT would be A.
Bluntsman A+ or S.
A good Longbow player takes Huntsman to A, easily.
Hagstalker S.
Waystalker, I never know whether to acknowledge the Bloodshot Career Skill broken interaction or if they’ll ever fix it.
Masterwork RV S. A is based on Hunter Crossbow or Shotgun.
More enemies or modifiers WPoS goes to S, due to Righteous Fury uptime.
Zealot with SoTT in the group becomes S+.
The sad part about it is that Zealot, GK and BW are three of the easiest Careers to play and you get a stupid amount of value from them.
he is the only one hard to place because he is the most team dependent, if the team builds around him he gets much more useful but with that he also gets much easier to play, and because many teams do actually recognize this potential i couldn’t give him max “skill expression”, but i felt as an absolute average that placement is fair.
skill expression is the demand of the player.
its not about usefulness, dmg potential, viability nor favor
grailknight gets lowest skill expression points because he has the lowest amount of tools to express his skill with.
his weapons are quite vanilla, so no unique skill requirement there
he lacks range, wich his a huge minus in skill expression, the player doesn’t have to focus on things outside his immediate range nor does he have to aim for it. (-responsibility in team)
his ult again not that skill expressive, look at thing press F thing dead, only real consideration of skill is maybe the second part on the double ult that can be awkward but i don’t pass it as an expression of skill.
his team utility (passives), his (unique!!) utility comes from passives the player has 0 influence on so again 0 responsibility and therefore no skill required. they even stay on when the grailknight is dead so even less requirement of the player
he gets a plus for the lack of means to protect himself from specials wich is not unique to him nor are careers with ranged capabilities exempt from this (during reload or out of ammo for example).
the warrior priest is almost the same in that regard
except 2 things:
his ult requires much more awareness of your teammates positions and the dangers they’re in to be effective (+ in skill expression)
but at the same time he is much more tanky than grailknight so he has more room for errors and his arsenal tend to be better at Controlling.
so yes i think the placement next to grailknight is absolutely warranted
so for the bounty hunter:
again melee weapons are quite vanilla unless you wanna count his high finesse modifiers. i don’t think that qualifies as its more a reward rather than a requirement
same for his ranged aresnal he doesnt get much points towards “skill expression” because his crit synergies dont require headshots as much as other careers with similar ranged weapons however it is required of the player protect the team from specials (not a plus i consider this the average)
survivability: this is the biggest point towards skill expression for him, he has 0 tools to help him to survive hairy situations, middle of the road dodge and stagger values on his weapons, no invisibility, no dash and no way of cleaning up his surrounding or creating space
utility or should i say lack there of, pretty much has no utility except killing stuff, i probably gave him too much points in utility, while justifying it with the fact that he can be good at killing literally anything the AI director possibly throws at you without having to compromise like most other careers have to (dont look at bright wizard that goes without saying).
lastly his ult provides the team with a bosskiller if he consistently lands headshots.
and i consider headshoting to be a skill expression.
that being said builds obviously differ.
when creating the graph i mostly considered the 3-4 most popular build on each career because if you consider everything the placement would be skewed dramatically and not representative of what people actually encounter in their games
There’s demand and then there’s excelling. I think the skill ceiling for GK is a bit higher. It doesn’t seem to take a huge amount of mastery with BH to be efficient, especially with shotgun pistols. The BretLongsword and Bret+Shield both are decent, but they’re both far more than decent if you know how to use them right. There are a lot more potential combos in those two weapons than most any melee weapons in the entire game.
even if you’d consider his melee weapons to be the hardest melee weapons to master in the game, his skill ceiling would still be among the lowest in my book for the plethora of reasons i listed, and i dont even consider them to be that hard in neither the survivability they offer nor the dmg potential they provide.
to be frank that statement makes you sound dishonest or atleast biased
also while i agree, to be viable on BH you dont have to be the best player in the world
but as per definition skill-ceiling describes the absolute maximum potential.
and in that his ult is only eclipsed by piercing shot waystalker who theoretically could head-shot everything in the game due to its 100% refund.
but the dmg profile sadly is so bad the payoff doesnt justify taking it for almost all players
leaving BH ult as the only truely viable ult that tests an extra skill (aiming for heads)
let me rephrase it:
skill expression is the demand of the player->
“how many things a player has to be aware of”;“or consider his decisions based off of”
while simultaneously remain consistent in a variety of skills.
You want me to read your points? Ok fine, but I don’t like. It looks like another tedious opinion-based conversation where there’s room for so much nuance it feels like a waste of time. We both have our own experiences playing the game, and nobody really seems to rank careers the same in terms of anything you put on your compass.
You keep talking about “points”. That makes me imagine some decision matrix where you score everything, but it really seems like everything your “scoring” them on doesn’t actually use any real values, and it’s fairly arbitrary. It could be all sorts of different things depending on what you feel is relevant. That’s fine, this whole thread is open to opinions, but you can’t expect me to take your opinion any more seriously than my own experiences just cause I’m uninterested in discussing this with you.
BTW, there are other things on your compass that stand out more to me, but I’ve less interest in discussing any of them. I’m more curious to see how other people’s tier lists compare (or compasses). If we discuss all this here, it’ll fill the thread up
There are very few weapons that are less vanilla than his standard loadout; I wouldn’t blame anyone if they stopped reading right here. The Bretonian longsword alone has at least 5 different movesets I can think off of the top of my head, and the Bret+Shield has 6, all of which take some effort to learn and use effective, although both weapons are have a decently high skill floor so that players who just spam light for horde, and heavy for elites will do ok.
Lacking ranged weapons isn’t a minus to skill expression as you defined it. The lack of ranged weapons. Ranged weapons are often a crutch for players who can’t handle melee. It’s easier to hit key breakpoints with ranged weapons, and clicking on heads isn’t hard for anyone who’s played FPS. I might be biased against “mouse-aiming skill” since I have about 5000 hours in CSGO, where that sort of thing is pretty standard stuff.
IMO melee is more difficult to master; it’s the most crucial element to the game. Having two melee slots, and using both effectively, and overcoming the lack of ranged skill is more difficult to do than simply pointing and clicking on elites and specials while someone else deals with dodging, blocking, and taking care of the horde so that the “ranged-skill-player” can take easy pop shots at stuff.
Waystalker (non-piercing shot ult), Battle Wizard, Pyromancer, Handmaiden, WHC, there’s plenty of careers where there skill is to “press F” and benefit. With GK ult, especially with the double strike, you have to play careful, just as you would delivering any heavy strike, because it’s easy to get hit or interrupted during it if you don’t dodge and stagger trash enemies before you use it. It’s not 0 skill anymore than most Ults.
A lot of team utility is passive benefits that don’t require skill-investment. Having to complete an objective to complete is fun, and most of the quests offer decently significant bonuses equivalent to a weapon property bonus. Just as with many careers that offer passive benefits to the team, skillful application of his standard kit is still as important as it is with any other career that offers passive benefits.
There’s plenty in both arsenals that require skill, and I think they’re about on par for skill investment. Having to be aware of your party isn’t something unique to warrior priests. You have to be aware of them whether or not your ult requires it to be effective as a team member.
I wouldn’t say either GK nor WP are quite so low in requiring skill, but GK gets more bang for your buck in melee, but WP is a better tank and I think his passive benefits to the team are more important. The reason I put GK at the top is that for the skill investment, you get a lot more melee power (30% bonus from one talent). I think WP could use a bit more melee power.
Now, don’t get me wrong. GK certainly isn’t the epitome of a class that requires the utmost skill to play effectively, but to use the GK to full potential certainly puts him above 50% in that category. That’s just my opinion though as a bias GK main.
I think Mercenary, FK, and Huntsman all require more skill and effort to master than GK, but that’s mainly due to them all having some of the most nuanced and difficult to master roles, and I think the payoff for mastering them is much smaller than it is for GK.
His Rapier+Pistol is pretty cool and although it’s not difficult to master, effectively using the weapon-special allows you to shoot elites in the face while blocking.
I agree, and I’d add most of his ranged weapons offer fairly consistent easy headshots. Even javelins require some effort to aim properly since they move slower and have an arc (except that it’s easier to hit deadly breakpoints with them so they can often one/two-shot elites fast; kinda like a crossbow).
Comparing this to GK, I’d say BH requires a bit more skill expression, particularly when you use the headshot talent, which I always do, but it’s pretty easy to refund your cooldown killing the roaming chaos warriors. But then again, BH’s ult takes more skill investment than most career’s ults do, with the exception of piercing-shot-Waystalker, Huntsman, and maybe even Ranger Vet.
His melee weapons don’t include any shields, but he gets 30% damage reduction after killling 30 specials/elites which are not in short supply on Cataclysm. That said, he is more squishy and has trouble generating THP nearly as quickly as GK, but most any ranged career is dealing with the same problems. For surviving, he requires a bit more effort. I think the rapier helps out tremendously though. Being able to block and still attack has got me out of some nasty situations. It also is fast at attacking and push-attacking for staggering groups of trash enemies. It’ll clear space in a pinch. Likewise, careful use of the Billhook is extremely useful on him. Put +2 Stamina on it and ‘+30% block cost reduction’ (same on the necklace). It’ll work wonders for clearing space. I still feel like even with the shields, Ranger Vet and Huntsman are both more difficult to survive when alone in melee.
Rile the Mob is a weird bit of team utility, but I never use it since Job Well Done exists. He is a ranged killing machine with a nice anti-boss ult that can be anti-crowd as well.
Really because Griffon-foot pistols exist and he gets a lot of free crits, and many of his ranged weapons are easier to kill stuff with than others. I think he’s just shy of Waystalker in terms of efficacy, and he’s below par for skill-investment compared to both GK and WP to me. He’s an easy-to-use sniper or a crowd-clearing shotgun machine that can easily get 30% damage reduction. Although he ain’t staggering crowds so easily, his melee weapons can clear out regular trash enemies fast, much like Waystalker. Blessed Combat also helps with that. That’s how he clears space if you don’t use Shotgun pistols. I usually use Crossbow or Dual Pistols with him. The crossbow can often one-shot black rats on Cataclysm. He has easy-to-reach breakpoints for a lot of easy ranged kills considering how fast he can reload and attack. I think his crossbow nearly matches the power of Manbow but with free crits every 6 seconds and easy ammo-back, this career is among the easier to just play for kills with. That’s why I spent so much time with him. Once you learn how to survive, nobody can snatch a kill faster than BH.
I responded at the risk of derailing the thread, perhaps it’s best if you start another one to talk about this topic. I’d rather not DM about it since it’s not likely any definitive answer exists on what careers require more skill.
These lists are so horrible i do barely even know where to start…BW in low B tier? Or below unchained? Yikes. I think we´ll get more sane opinions on the forums here in general. Those other peeps cant be trusted
But as for my own…well, assuming everyone runs the strongest builds, bugged or not, available then here´s my impression of their ability to impact or just hard carry on base cata :
Bloodshot makes WS silly. Also double javelins in the back tilt me.
Player skill and build can elevate a few from A to S tier. Unchained, BH, HS, and RV are the ones I think stand out when it’s obvious someone is bloody good with these classes.
If it was decided on specific builds then it’d look a lot different.
I’m noticing a lot of careers in A tier. I see Battle Wizard consistently at the top and Engineer at the bottom.
Kinda confirms we already knew BW fire stacking is OP and OE needs some defense. Other than a few broken builds or broken weapons such as Bloodshot Waystalker, and the Duckfoot Shotgun BH, the game is somewhat balanced.
For Cataclysm alone, I’ve not seen SotT performing well. I’ve got one mean DOT stacking build, but looking back I think putting her in F tier is a bit harsh.
Honestly, there it feels like there are no F tier careers in this game, I was trying to spread them out evenly. The fact that there are no awful careers is great.
If I don’t try to stratify my results consistently across each tier, here’s what I’m thinking now:
Honestly, when people see a good Huntsman, I think it will change their minds. You have to remember he can use Shields (Stagger THP), has stealth and can have a stacking DMGR.
With a Shield, you run ammo back from Special kills, and without, you run DMGR.
Both Repeater Handgun (one of, if not the best Special killing Ranged weapon in the game?) and Longbow can do a lot of damage, once you get used to spamming in melee range. If you’re feeling super sweaty, Handgun works too. Shield+Shotgun one of the best builds in the game.
The best way I can describe doing damage as Huntsman is sustained throughout the map, and then chunking Bosses with headshot Crits.
Especially since the 1H Mace changes, he can actually kill Hordes quite well:
I would switch to BCR/Stam if I was doing Cata+, but for normal Cata, it’s fine to spam Push-Attacks.
Aiming the Lonbow Projectile is the only really bad thing about him, imo. That’s only because the projectile goes upwards in a weird way.
This is how I feel about the majority of feedback about him too. Since the game came out people have been saying low damage, but if you spam through the entire match, he does an insane amount.
I use Halberd and Handgun with Huntsman on Legend for a challenge, and he’s amazing on Legend. I’ve never personally played with anyone who does a good Cata Huntsman besides the infamous Bluntsman with a Spear+Shield.
The best case scenario I think besides the Bluntsman, you use Spear+Shield with the Longbow. He has great boss damage, especially with Strength potion, but overall, he’s really feels too squishy for his damage output compared to other ranged careers. You can take “Tough Hide” to maintain 40% damage reduction, which helps immensely. His crit aura is really nice for stacking with other career crit bonuses like WHC and Pyromancer.
The thing is, if you have almost any other ranged career on the team, they can usually kill more enemies at range faster. Huntsman starts to feel like a redundancy. Really, when I play with him on Cataclysm, I feel like I must be the Bluntsman to be useful.
Hunt Bowman has a high skill ceiling. His damage output can even outpace BH or WS BUT… you have to be skilled enough to pull off headshots at range… AND… have the brass balls to pull off headshots on an SV moving to overhead you. It’s actually the playstyle a lot of elf players would like (using bow to take out almost every major threat moving to Melee when forced) and I know a lot of people hate the zoom mechanic on HS but the manbow is an awesome killing machine. Definitely capable of one-shot headshotting several CW at Legend and even using it to stagger CW out of an overhead has it’s value.
BUT, as WS is OP with Bloodshot and her idiotic Press F kill tons-of-stuff ult it feels like she does more.
I’m a big fan of HS (and not just because Handgun Machine gun way back when). I think he’s one of the classes that shows a really good player, even though he’s squishy.
I suppose people put him lower because he has no gimmicks like BH, WS or BW to delete things with lesser effort.
It’s one of my favourite things about VT2. I hate WS, but loads love her and that’s cool. I love HS and people hate him, that’s cool too.
I paid no real attention to ordering after S tier, tough I guess I could mention that some careers have potential to be tier higher in better players hand aka huntsman, WHC, etc. but I considered this mostly in terms of how much effort you put in to gain power.
He is not if done right, though doing him right takes more effort and build planing than others for…just working well. But really, needing more effort to work does still mean he works.
I can top damage output with him if there´s no battlewiz around nuking the hordes.
