Coruscation Staff - Nerf needed and justified

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

Coruscation Staff needs a nerf. Not an adjustement or being toned down. It needs an outright nerf. There is simply no fun allowed for the team if a player (Bonus points if he goes full power gamer with Fire Sword and Battle Wizard on top) uses the Coruscation Staff.

So let’s have a look at the current Coruscation Staff in the game and how it performs:

Spam and Casting Time:

Both the LMB attack as well as the RMB attack can be spammed quite a bit:

The LMB is a shotgun attack that can be shot up to eight times. Each of these attacks can oneshota Mauler or Berserker or Plague Monk on Cataclysm. Community is sleeping hard on Shotguns and Blunderbuss is the only Shotgun actually balanced for Cataclysm. All others have a to high niche redundancy, especially Griffon Foot on all Saltzpyre careers (although Grudge Raker on Bardin too).

The RMB is a 10 second long fire vortex with high damage (I’ll get to this). The casting time is so low that you can have six vortexes working at the same time. Or if you manage your heat a bit, you can effectively block one side/spawn point/ledge for a whole minute or two sides/spawn points/ledges for thirty seconds.

Cleave:

Coruscation Staff gets even stronger (and it is already very strong on lower difficulties due to the LMB attack) the more enemies there are on screen:

Because Coruscation Staff has unlimited cleave. Unlimited, killing everything in its vicinity.

Damage:

But the cleave is not the only thing which makes the Coruscation Staff to a wall a death:

The Coruscation Staff kills Clan Rats on Cataclysm in 4 seconds, Gors in 5 seconds and Marauders in 6 seconds. Slave Rats, Ungors and Fanatics will obviously die even FASTER. This means 80 - 90 % of a Cataclysm horde dies in six seconds or less. But wait, this is not everything:

Coruscation Staff is even able to kill armored enemies (granted, it takes at least 8 to 10 seconds for this, though that is not a long time for such a strong benefit) and it even ignores shields. The only thing the Vortex can’t kill reliable is Chaos Warriors and maybe Standard Bearers.

With all that said and shown, it should be obvious why Coruscation Staff needs to be nerfed. I have suggested changes in the past which look good on paper but are difficult to implement from the coding side. I also have seen other very bad solutions like decreasing the Vortex time, which just forces more spam but is still overpowered.

Therefore, I will suggest the easiest solution imaginable. I remembered some discussions and searched quickly on Youtube. And yes, there seems to exist a pre-release version of the Coruscation Staff:

The Coruscation Staff there has a larger radius. This version has never gone live. So, there are two possible reasons for this. The staff was even stronger and has been nerfed. Which … I really don’t want to imagine that the thing was even more broken. Or … the staff was determined to weak and underperforming.

So my suggestion is: Revert Coruscation Staff to the pre-release version. I don’t care if it is on the weaker side. It is better than the no-fun allowed staff we have right now and which is pre-dominantly used in Legend and Cataclysm quickplay. The code should still exist. Change it back and wait for 12 months and look how it performs.

Actually my suggestion would go a bit further. Aside from reverting the staff to pre-release version, add a special attack which has the stats of the current small fire vortex. However, increase the casting time to 5 seconds. Not less than 4 seconds under any circumstances. This way, you would have a tactical tool that could be used to weaken the incoming horde or a high damage burner for spawn points and ledges which needs precious time though.

Other recent balance threads

Rework Melee Traits: Overture - Melee Traits
General Design Considerations: General Design Consideration - Balance, Breakpoints, Capacity & Redundancy, Skill & Efficiency

3 Likes
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The casting cooldown for using flame vortex seems strange and would make it awkward to use. I would say there’s a couple of different things they could do without changing how it plays too much.

A lot of staffs already sort of have built in limitations. Here’s a few suggestions based on how others work that should be easy to implement:

  1. limit the amount of damage a flame pillar can do and after that threshold has been reached, have it fizzle out.

  2. Increase the overcharge for casting flame vortices.

  3. Make the charging time for the spell longer.

Any one of the above or a combination of the above with some skilled testers should help.

Another huge issue with the staff is visibility for the team. While the Battle Wizard is using AOE spam with huge DOT on Cataclysm, the rest of the team is trying to tag things through her flames and not blindsided by something in the wave of bright vortices.

1 Like
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Not exactly sure what you mean by this part. Checked the last video to be sure it wasn’t some kind of unnoticed mechanic of the pre-release Coruscation Staff.

I would assume this to be rather impractical to implement from coding. While the damage numbers are obviously tracked, I do not know if they separate between weapons and career skills. Would be weird for the vortex to disappear faster on Pyromancer because she sent a fire bullet flying. Even if it could be coded without weird bugs, it would be hard to balance. People would insist that the damage should be balanced around Cataclysm. Which would result in Legend overkill. And frankly some of the balancing should go more towards Legend.

Overcharge is meaningless in a world with an overcharge buffer. It would limit the numbers of vortexes alive at the same time. But I really would prefer another solution.

This I can get behind and is what I meant in my last paragraph (though I did foresee it as a special attack on the reverted pre-release version). Casting time needs to be long enough though so that not more than three vortexes are working at the same time. Which is why I would go with at least 4 seconds, 5 being better. This would give the Staff the more tactical dimension I would like to see more in the game. It can be used in distance to attack one or two strategic points but would be very risky to be used in melee range. This would also help with visibility.

Would still prefer to get the larger but (probably weaker) AoE attack coupled together with the high dps/long cast time special attack. Concerning visibility as the larger AoE attack should be weaker, it could also burn less bright and high.

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i would want that damage cast time etc is the same, but the more pillars you cast the less damage they all will do, so you have to decide if you set only a few which deal great damage or you spam them and they each of them will do less.

With the solution describe above you would have extactly this effect, if you cast a lot of pillars, which which deal less damage the more you cast, you will exactly have this effect of a great pillar with less damage, but it would be more versitale because it isnt one single big pillar.

And if you want more damage on single pillar, just cast less pillars.

no need for more change, i think this one is the best and most simple solution. And it encourages some decision making.

I rather prefer to force players to some kind of decision making than a straight up nerf. Decision making implements some kind of tactic and versatility and fun and makes the staff more interesting.

1 Like
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I can agree that this would an interesting approach and equally ask for a more tactical approach which is one of the goals I also have in mind. I like the idea so much that I actually made it myself 16 months ago :P:

Coruscation Staff - Adjustment - Warhammer: Vermintide 2 / Feedback - Fatshark Forums (fatsharkgames.com)

See section 1. for my description on how it works. But it is the same idea. Though, as I initially wrote. The solutions looks very elegant on paper (and I would welcome it), however it would mean that the game is able to count the number of active vortexes and able to apply them to the damage calculator. So, from the coding side this might be more tricky and most likely prone to errors. And FS either seems to be reluctant introducing new “concepts” or somehow came to think that Coruscation Staff is “balanced”.

Which is why I opted for the simplest solution existing of reverting to pre-release, in the first step. Because that line of coding should exist somewhere already.

There is also a minor issue with transparency on how the staff works, though Coruscation is kinda odd in that regard already.

1 Like
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The core problem is that the damage for 1-2 pillars (maybe 3) is totally fine but it turns very boring and broken as soon as you set up all of them. It is just about spaming. Thats why i think, if the devs could make it work, this solution i mentioned would be a nice approach to keep her strength but limiting the brokness as soon as you spam it. If you still want to able to spam it you can do it, but then rather for tactical purpose than damage purpose, which i think would be very nice and interesting.

Ah i knew i read this solution previously somewhere, i am really a fan of this one :slight_smile:

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I didn’t understand what you meant by that last paragraph. Didn’t have time to watch the videos.

Then I suppose the simplest solution is, as you said, just to increase the charge time so it’s longer like the Conflagration staff.

I also want to say again that visibility for teammates is also a problem with this staff. More translucent effects would be nice.

1 Like
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Not exactly what I said ^^’ Simplest solution would be going to the pre-release version which has a bigger AoE and causes most likely less damage (the last video has a timestamp added to it, so you need to watch at most 30 - 60 seconds). This line of code exists already and simply has to be taken out from whatever drawer it was lost in.

And AFTER that and only if FS has interest in it, they could add a special attack (like the Rapier’s gunshot) on the pre-release version with the same damage profile as right now but a far longer casting time.

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Ok, the special attack idea is what confused me earlier too. I see what you mean now.

If there is a special attack, it might need something to differentiate it visually from the regular attack.

Well, hopefully it gets a change. I have one friend who refuses to use Coruscation Staff because he has grown to resent how overused and OP it is.

2 Likes
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That would be easy. One would be the large AoE, low damage circle and the other one would be the small AoE, concentrated damage circle. Special attacks are also activated by another mouse button. … I think special attacks have to be assigned actually as they have no default button.

Yup, I also played Coruscation at the beginning. And after a while I stopped because it was to strong in my opinion. I did use it for a Legend “Back to the roots” deed. Though even with tha broken piece of equipment I couldn’t finish it.

Now I play simply Conflagration again for Cataclysm as that is an actual balanced and fun weapon and I love the stagger. That was the only thing I missed for Coruscation though it is not enough for a weakness. Actually, it can even be “abused” in the fight against Rasknitt. Because Rasknitt does not teleport away if he does not get staggered. You can keep him in one corner, burning him down if you want to. Although in QP other people would stagger him, causing the teleportation.

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I do fully agree that the staff is pretty OP and invalidates nearly all other staves minus it’s ability for ultra long range sniping

But I’ve noticed it gets really insane mostly when the pillars are stacked.

In that case I’m leaning towards capping the pillars to 2-3, maybe even nerfing the damage a little. It should still be effective against unarmored weaker targets like clan rats, but it should have more difficulty with bosses and armoured targets like Stormvermin

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Too busy hating on the elf for existing in many cases, a few might mention javelins :sweat_smile:

But i do agree that corsu staff seems to be a bit too effective when used right, and yeah, anything from fewer “shots” to inability to stack geysers would probably help. No idea what could be the best as i havent really used it while focusing on it. Tend to just play unchained with it, throw a geyser down then fight the fight ontop it. That already felt great.

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But you don’t want to stack the pillars since enemies don’t take extra damage from stacked pillars. You want to spread the pillars out.

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Halfway sure he means, when multiple vortexes are cast as most people know that they don’t stack damage. That would be insane O.o Horde would burn in three seconds or less.

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Sorry terrible wording :expressionless:

Shoulda said spammed

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I am not at all sure about this but i saw a guy who always threw down a whole bunch near on the same spot when hyperdensity happened and the clusters just melted. I am wondering if the geysers actually do not do a bit of damage when they spawn and this can be stacked for damage in that sense.