Concerning Team THP Talents

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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This will be pretty similar to a thread from the BBB which is currently not available. But in order to focus the discussion, I will concentrate just on the team THP talents and give my personal opinion.

Currently, the THP active skill talents are simple but effective and can only be used every x seconds. Also, in some cases the player has to sacrifice other boni to get the THP effect. However, the talents while being effective are uninspired and boring and allow for overly sloppy gameplay, especially if multiple THP talents are at work. Faceblocking and Hit trading are not a skills.
Largest problem though is how the THP talents differ from nearly all other active skill talents. Most active skills are trump cards, they can turn the tide of the battle, help to overcome helpless situations and save your life in crucial moments. This is their intend and their design, to give you power for a very short amount of time. However, THP talents (and to a lesser extent cool down reduction talents) differ fundamentally from this approach. Because their effect stays even after your active skill has been used.
As example: 25 % Damage Reduction for 10 seconds is exactly that, less damage when getting hit in these 10 seconds. If you get hit after 11 seconds? Tough luck. Same can be said about damage talents. They give you a boost for some seconds. Every enemy appearing afterwards has nothing to fear though (other than a murderous pack of “heroes”). Same can be said about boost talents. A few seconds and your crit bonus has vanished. Not so THP talents. Even after 20, 30, 40 seconds (if occasionally hitting an enemy) the effect of THP talents still lingers. In some cases their effects lingers until the active skill (or a similar active skill) is used anew. That makes stacking THP by active skill talents extremely easy and stronger than comparable talents.

With this pre-text out of the how, let’s list the existing team THP talents and my personal suggestion as how or if I would change them:

Ranger Veteran - Exhilarating Vapour

From the three team based THP talents the least problematic because Ranger Veteran has a long cooldown and no talent to reduce it and the active skill does not provide instant THP. Instead it is a gradual increase applied over the whole duration which means that the team needs to stay in the affected area which is a trade-off. Does suggest though that inhaling dwarven smoke makes your life somehow better.

My suggestion:

Leave it as it is. The trade-off for the THP seems fair to me.

Unchained - Bomb Balm

From a gameplay perspective absolutely boring on a career like Unchained. Also, slightly strange how an explosion “heals” the team. Also, has a horribly strong synergy with Abandon. In my opinion, it does fit within the narrative of Unchained’s identity but the talent is boring, boring, boring and has all the problems mentioned in the pre-text. With Abandon the skill can be used in a scarily high frequence .

My suggestion:

Remove Bomb Balm from the game and replace it with another level 30 talent called Spreading the Flame. For the duration of the next 10 seconds Sienna’s Fire DoT damage will be doubled. In addition, all her melee attacks and all melee attacks of team mates affected by the explosion deal Fire DoT. Numbers are up for discussion and change.

Mercenary - Morale Boost

Well, this will be the most “problematic” and controversial. Mercenary has the THP effect tied to the active skill basis function, has a shorter cooldown than Ranger Veteran and Unchained and has a talent to further reduce it. Having a Mercenary with you means you are swimming in THP. While you could say that is his thing, the THP effect still has all problems mentioned before. That the effect lingers even after the active skill time is up.

My suggestion:

Rework the whole active skill thing for Mercenary starting with the base effect to something more fitting and more interesting.

  • Base function - Coordinated Defense: Reduces damage taken by affected allies by 25 % for 10 seconds and staggers nearby enemies
  • Talent Choice 1 - Last Stand: Coordinated Defense also revives knocked down allies, revived team mates can not be killed for the duration of the active skill
  • Talent Choice 2 - Coordinated Assault: Coordinated Defense increases Attack Speed for affected allies. Increase in Attack Speed is dependent on distance to Mercenary (standing in Kruber + 20 % decreasing by 4 % per meter distance)
  • Talent Choice 3 - Steadfast: Increases Stamina Regeneration, Stagger Power and Block cost reduction for affected allies for the duration of the active skill

With this the three team THP talents would be reduced to just one. This would solify Ranger Veteran’s position as support career while giving Unchained and Mercenary more interesting options. All numbers and talents are open for discussion and change. Especially Mercenary, as it would be a major change, still has other options and shuffling of the different potential effects.

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Exhilarating Vapours is fine.

Bomb Balm isolated is fine but problematic in combination with Abandon.
My personal opinion, I’m not a big fan of UC having a team wide healing talent.

Morale Boost is fine, team wide Damage Reduction, block cost, stagger power or stamina regeneration might step on Footknights toes even more.

The only problematic part of Morale boost is the cooldown but I think it’s reasonable, sure Ranger Veteran’s is longer but he also gains access to stealth and ranged AP/power.
Lowering Mercs 0.5 cooldown per hit could be fair.

Support roles are a bit ehh… RV is a capable and competitive career that so happens to have supportive capabilities like a lot of other careers.
(Love playing support in other games but not a big fan of careers revolving, orbiting a supportive identity/role in V2. I am a fan of supportive options though, Exhilarating Vapours is a good example.)

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The idea of changing Bomb Balm to what is essentially Flaming Sword of Rhuin (Aqshy | Warhammer Wiki | Fandom) sounds great tbh.
A better fit for the person that has been consumed by fire instead of somehow being a team healer.

I am all for changing On Yer Feet, Mates! to last for the entire 10 second duration, as in “ult is used, 10 second duration is active, any teammate downed during those 10 seconds gets revived instantly.”

Makes it more competitive and proactive rather than reactive. The current version causes players to sit on their ult for most the time.

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With Ready for Action it becomes 72 seconds, assuming you don’t hit anything inbetween and you don’t get hit. That is far to fast (same for the Bomb Balm and Abandon combination) and - in my opinion - nowhere near reasonable. Mercenary’s active skill - especially with Ready for Action - is nothing more than a glorified passive as the best course of action is to press it the moment it is ready. Because THP stacks. It goes against the very idea of nearly all active skills.

Well, I am trying to push the idea since the last BBB. Haven’t been successful so far :sweat_smile: I would consider it as a “spillover” of her flame. You could say the same for the THP effect but … meh … it is still boring. At least there is a bit more disdain for Bomb Balm as several people already mentioned that they don’t think that the healing fits her. So maybe Fatshark is more willing to experiment there and to replace Bomb Balm.

Also an interesting approach. The reactive nature of On Yer Feet, Mates has been criticised before as it leads to strange decisions :stuck_out_tongue: I would take anything to get rid of team THP talents.

At least let us change Bomb Balm for something interesting >.<

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I think I understand where you’re coming from, but very few people consider it a problem.
Just to make sure, do you think team wide THP generation is a problem or purely in the form of THP based active skills?

Grail Knights health regen can recover 18 green health over 90 seconds, 36 green health with Virtue of Purity. A Zealot with Heroic Intervention can recover a lot of THP for himself and some for allies (Despite how clunky and memey it is)

If I had to suggest a replacement for Morale Boost and Exhilarating Vapours

Morale Boost could increase healing received for a short duration
Exhilarating Vapours could slowly convert temporary health to green health.

Side Note: I’d like to see more “On Yer Feet, Mates!” action, I could see it being more popular if Mercenary had a talent like “It’s Hero Time”. Could be too strong but currently the 90 second cooldown leads to strange decisions or simply being far too conservative with Morale Boost.

Payday 2 Aced Inspire is probably the closest drawn similarity to “On Yer Feet, Mates!”

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People not “considering” it a problem, doesn’t mean it is no problem. Swift Slaying/Attack Speed and Crit in this game are a nightmare for balancing and a giant problem. Yet, most people wouldnt consider it a problem terribly afraid to lose their crutch.

Hm. Hmmmm. Good question actually. I think it is two components. The one component is the instant effect of having 25+ THP. For this reason I consider regeneration and RV’s talent less of a problem. The second is indeed of it being tied as active skill because most other active skills effects are lost the moment they have been casted + 10-15 seconds. Only THP persists far longer than the active skill itself, making it stackable.

I like that idea a bit more. It removes at least the instant effect.

Yay, more Zealot whine threads :stuck_out_tongue: I think I can live with Exhilarating Vapour, especially if it is the sole of its kind.

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I mean… Zealot needs work :eyes:

What is meant to be a high risk, high reward Flagellant career is instead
“Drop below 30 green HP and oh look we’re done”

I consider Swift Slaying a dominant trait that overshadows everything right now, it’s more than a DPS boost. It affects THP recovery, cooldown recovery, offense is generally a good defense in Official realm etc. It’s potentially unhealthy for gameplay diversity.

THP active skills technically persisting seems very minor, it’s really only a problem if you think active skills should abide some fundamental rules. In that case, recovering a large amount of THP that vanishes/reverts after 10 seconds would be more in line with your views.
A proactive utility/supportive ability that can potentially turn the tides or help initiate fights rather than potential long term THP stock.

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I agree with OP that team wide THP generation is kinda boring and offers too many get out of jail free cards for a team, especially in parties that have multiple classes with these ults.

I think the suggested changes for UC and Merc are great and would like to see them adopted. I also think RV THP on ult talent should be completely removed and replaced with something more unique and interesting. I haven’t given it any thought but maybe something like either :

  1. Team invisibility. The radius of the invis cloud is reduced in size but now all characters within it are rendered invisible for thr duration - this would help tightly grouped teams de-aggro patrols or give them breathing room to deal with specials.

  2. Decoy - while in the invis cloud the first shot fired by the RV creates a decoy that attracts the aggro of all enemies within a 10 metre radius of where the shot lands for 10 seconds. This would allow the RV to redirect some enemies temporarily and give the team breathing room. Although it is a bit too similar to the IB ult.

  3. Fear - all man sized enemies caught within the smoke cloud flee for 10 seconds.

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I’d generally agree that team wide THP on Ult talents are abuseable in their current state and a bit dull generally. To be fair I think the main offender is having both Merc and UC in your party at once, especially with Abandon that makes it extra silly.

As with most issues though, I think it’s generally better to try and address them in a gradual manner, starting with the biggest outliers.

If bomb balm was swapped out I’d say that’s the best place to start. I really like your suggestion for a replacement, especially since it could have really interesting synergy with Enfeebling flames, allowing the whole party to apply the debuff to enemies for a time.

I don’t think Merc on his own is a big problem, though his Ult row is still pretty iffy. If changes were to be made there I’d be thinking something like making the 25% DR replace THP as the default effect, then give Walk it Off the THP instead so you can’t get both THP and reduced cooldown at once. That might just make Walk it Off the de facto pick again though. On yet feet mates could definitely use some help but that’s a completely different topic.

Exhilarating Vapours is mostly just boring and a bit janky in uncoordinated teams where it can be hard to convince people to squat in your smoke cloud for any length of time. I do like how the attack speed effect synergises with throwing axes, since those things need any help they can get. Not sure what to replace it with though. Something like an enemy debuff + radius increase could be interesting. Along the lines of any enemies that enter the smoke get slowed down by 30% (movement and attack speed) for 5-8 seconds + aforementioned radius increase so you could aggressively throw it down on the frontline, or use it to cover a retreat. Would at least encourage a different use/playstyle with the Ult, which is surely what Ult talents ought to do.

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I agree with this. Support careers shouldn’t be able to dish out tremendous amounts of damage. Yet everyone knows Doomranger is a destroyer on modded difficulties, and on official difficulties, masterwork pistol is an elite/monster shredder, boosted by RV’s ammo regen. I don’t see why you advocate for RV keeping his temp hp talent compared to someone like Merc, when RV’s damage output is definitely on par with, or even exceeding, Merc’s damage output.

From what I can see, the supportive classes in the game are Handmaiden, Footknight and Ironbreaker. These guys have slightly lower damage ceilings but (try to) make up for it in their unique utility. TLDR: Granting team THP is not a matter of support role or not, at least in its current implementation.

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Yes, that would be more in line of how I perceive it.

Team invisibility is iffy and most of us probably had that idea for RV at one point. But it would only work with very severe limits like staying in the cloud and being unable to attack because otherwise … you can picture it yourself i guess. And i have doubts that an active skill which basically means your team has to stop moving will be welcome very much as most players are kinda hyperactive. I mean even the concept of “Don’t attack the patrol” doesn’t work as you always have at least one special one within the team.

Tried suggesting that once as replacement for WHC’s active skill. Wasn’t received much though.

Would be okay with changing just Bomb Balm for now. But if you negotiate you have to start big so you can compromise :stuck_out_tongue: But yea, i think the replacement would be more interesting. Although sometimes I fear that Fatshark holds back certain talent ideas even if they consider them good as we may see them for new careers. Like the bomb belt has been suggested for Ranger Veteran and ended up with the Engineer. So if Bomb Balm may be replaced - aside from Fatshark seeing the point - is also a question if suggested replacement talents may not be something they want use for Sienna’s yet undecided fourth career.

From a non-gameplay perspective this seems actually more reasonable like some kind of disorientation of the enemies due to poor visibility. Would be extra fun if they could start attacking each other, but that would be broken very fast ^^'. But it would be some new effect we haven’t seen so far. But yea, moving a bit slower and/or easier to stagger as hits come more “unexpected” would be an interesting approach.

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