Criticism of the class/talent system

Without going into too much depth, the talent system in this game is terrible. I’ve played more hours in this game than is healthy for me and design decisions in this game are blatantly dragging this game down from it’s potential.

Firstly you have classes that are outright worse versions of other classes. Take Mercenary and Foot Knight for example. Where Mercenary gets more crit chance, cleave, power and the ability to heal his team while staggering enemies; Foot knight merely gets some damage resistance, an underwhelming charge ability with the ability to choose between pointless infinite block or a power increase.

Then there’s the matter of pointless talents. Why have a talent that weakens enemies when landing a critical hit when a crit will instantly kill most enemies? Why have a talent that increases bleed upon a HM dash when invisibility gives you a few seconds of free melee attacks which does far more damage to enemies? Why have useless talents on unchained like block cost reduction and push arc when A) Blocking is a pointless waste of stamina and you can accomplish more by dodging or running with a high mobility weapon, B) Pushing does absolutely nothing in this game COMPARED to Vermintide 1 (except to interupt enemy attacks between swings) and C) Unchained doesn’t even use a shield weapon.

I mean when you’re making a build in this game there’s no freedom to make choices or experiment, there’s just one set of skills that is just blatently better than all the others. Zealot is just outright better than every other Saltzpyre class because of his ridiculous crit damage, invincibility and temporary health that maxes out from 1% to 100% in less than 3 seconds if you use his ult. Classes like Battle Wizard have a completely useless ultimate ability that leaves you feeling envious of IBs who taunt and go beast mode or zealots who get free speed potions constantly. Slayer is a downgrade of ironbreaker since an ironbreaker can simply take dual hammers with crit + swift slaying and do the exact same as a slayer only with a ranged weapon (which is essential for killing specials) and a swimming pool of health + defense.

Unlike the gear system of Vermintide 1 which while it still had its balance problems, Vermintide 2 offers little freedom to make unique builds without outright making yourself weaker on purpose. Yes you can still use a battle wizard, foot knight, Slayer or any Saltzpyre build other than Zealot and destroy stuff by playing the game sensibly. But it doesn’t change the fact that some abilities and talents add very little benefit or impact. The same problem is even present in weapons; Why pick a shield when it slows you to a slugs pace and makes you unable to dodge when you can pick dual hammers and have the same stamina with none of the negative traits?

I know Verm 1’s balance is far from perfect, but it leaves me appreciating the design choices of the first game. Here customization comes down to either playing in god mode or winning with a handicap. Imo the first game was very difficult at times, wheras overpowered builds in this game turn it into an unchallenging joke.

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I see you clearly dont know how to use most of those abilities and talents.
Zealot is worse than witch hunter for good team. Saying BW ult is bad shows only how srsly you downplay its upside, its stun everything its have very low cooldown, can practically be your oh shiet button and a lot of those (and lingering flames with it well its great).
Slayer is downgrade of IB… what? Are we even playing same game ?

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Once again I find myself agreeing with the point, but not the specifics. Besides, I think your title is a bit misleading; your problems seems to be with the balance of the Careers and Talents, not the actual system.

You’re correct that there still are significant balance issues, both between different Careers (though I don’t think they’re as big as you make them to be, and I really don’t agree with some of your Career comparisons; I won’t comment on which ones as I suspect others will pick on those) and in an individual Career’s Talents. A few of the Talent ones are enough to make effectively a forced pick (Zealot and Slayer lvl10 or Handmaiden lvl 25 for example) or to effectively remove one choice (the “enemy disabling you takes double damage” ones among others) out of three. On weapons’ and Careers’ side, it’s more about personal preferences - some will just fit certain players and playstyles better. Even there, though, a few do stand out, but there’s enough discussions about each one already.

Two more points about the Talents, though: Sometimes, the overwhelming usefulness of a certain Talent is just apparent, and if you try something else out you can find them surprisingly effective. The difficulty is breaking away from your own habits. It kind of leads to the other point, through an example: I have a Handmaiden build (using Spear) where my crowd control is so great I don’t want to lose aggro through invisibility. This leads me to the two other choices, even though the invisibility is significantly stronger. Unfortunately, Bladedancer still doesn’t work correctly so it’s completely useless, and I’m forced to go with the CDR Talent - which is also pretty redundant with the HM’s cooldown already being so low that I often don’t have time to reposition myself before Dash is ready again even without the Talent.

If you want more of my thoughts on specific Talents, there are one or two old posts where I’ve ranted about them. Nothing has significantly changed since (except maybe my opinions on a few), so they’re mostly still relevant.

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and

This. We definitely do not play the same game

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Please go to Vermintide 1 and use a shield with devastating blow. In Vermintide 1 you could actually send enemies flying off their feet with shoves. In 2 with most weapons the enemies just flinch slightly when you push them.

In this game you do far more stagger by spamming melee attacks with swift slaying. Again, blocking is a complete waste of time since you can dance around enemies with dodge weapons gaining infinite amounts of temp health rather than just standing there blocking attacks. In the first game there were no overpowered careers and game breaking builds so there was actually a purpose to shoving and blocking during a big wave of enemies.

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That’s not an innate property of the Shields in VT1; it’s a matter of Devastating Blow being extremely (probably overly) effective on them. I do think that the general nerfing of push strength, and especially on shields, in the Big Balance update might’ve gone slightly overboard, but it’s still a very effective control and space-making tool - effective enough to be a primary part of several weapons’ arsenal. Nevermind use of push attacks (a very important tool on several weapons).

Only rarely it’s useful to stand around holding block; at that time you aren’t really doing anything useful. Instead, blocking is one tool among many, and to be used momentarily. While dodging is certainly more effective, at least for me it still requires more conscious effort than blocking: I need to time it, watch the environment and direction, and push two buttons to do it. Blocking needs no extra awareness or thought, and one button. Otherwise, they’re equally fast to execute. So while dodging is preferable, blocking is a better (well, easier) reflexive action (and at least on some weapons, actually allows a smooth transition to specific attacks, useful specifically against the enemies who I may want to block). All this is also a reason I still prefer Parry on some weapons.

Just because something (action, weapon, Career) is generally more useful than another doesn’t meant that the other is useless or doesn’t have a place. That place just may be different from what you’re doing, or not a good fit with the current group setup.

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Just dodge to the side during a fight and swing your melee weapon (needs an eff dodge count of at least 3). There’s so many I frames that you’ll avoid 9/10 of enemy swings with very little effort. With the increased dodge distance perk you’ll become near untouchable, which combined with temporary health in V2 it makes you almost invincible to everything except specials.

Now there are a few weapons like sword and dagger where you can attack and block at the same time with push stabs. But to have an entire build based on blocking and pushing makes 0 sense in this game, especially on Sienna. By comparison Pyromancer gets increased crit chance and attack speed with her abilities which allow you to instantly wipe out groups of enemies before they can even swing at you.

I’m not even going to read the replies before I jump into this. Judging by the title and this post, it’s sounding a lot like the last few threads. With people calling the mechanics and game play trash while playing recruit and having no grasp on the real game mechanics. I’ll be interested to see how others reply.

Lol? Boss damage? Assuming your talking about HS talent? Which increases crit damage? Few other classes have this as well. It helps with dps output. Especially on higher difficulties and twitch mode when you can have 3-4 bosses at single time.

The bleed damage from HM dash is actually really good. And if the talent worked, it’d actually be viable. But it’s bugged and doesn’t do any more damage than the normal one. Think about it though, dash through 15-30 enemies dealing enough damage to kill them all. It’s actually a really decent talent.

Whoa mamma… you’re joking right? Sienna 's classes are then only ones in game that can be built for 100% block cost. Meaning she can stand there and let an entire patrol gang bang her with zero problems. You are seriously misunderstanding the power of BCR on sienna.

You’ve obviously never played anything beyond veteran with a statement like that. Or you’ve never played the game properly. Throwing pushes out during hordes should be like second nature in legend. Especially with the dodge dancing push blocks that is Onslaught.

Zealot is broken… but to say he’s better than WHC at this point is a joke. At least for DWON games, WHC > ZLOT. Zealot only shines in QPs due to the change on temp HP passive for his power VS and the A&F.

Woah… Woah. Holy smokes. I won’t even respond to this. The comments above are prolly ripping you to shreds.

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Well, I read the comments and I’m disappointed at the lack of Slayer comments. Only one person,

Perhaps it’s just so much of a joke no one even brought it up

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Some classes just dont shine in vanilla difficulties. Stagger is pretty irrelevant in vanilla legend. You need modded difficulties to make those things worthwhile.

Yikes

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Slayer is an absolutely terrible class, I’m sorry, I know that’s triggering many in this comments section but it is the truth. Main reason being that Slayer has has no ranged weapon but it’s more than that.

In order to have any tankiness as the slayer you have to spend 3 talent points on defense abilities. IB on the other hand gets gromrill, doughty and dwarf forged without even spending any talent points. Slayer gets the stacking damage buff but considering you can destroy almost every enemy in seconds without any damage buff It’s a bit pointless as a passive. You get 5% attack speed which is nice, but swift slaying gives you 20% anyway so it’s it’s unnecessary.

Assuming you took his non tanky talents like movement speed, crippling wounds and cooldown reduction, then slayer goes down in just a few hits. Look at some of the other pointless abilities like unstoppable, you should be avoiding hits by dodging not trying to attack enemies through them. And leap is just a worse version of zealots charge, only it doesn’t give temp health.

IB on the other hand, while his class is filled with defensive skills, with swift slaying you can destroy most enemies in seconds and the fact he gets a ranged weapon means he can still kill enemies like stormvermin or axemen in one or two shots. IB also gets one of the best ultimate abilities in the game.

Kinda weird how you say that dodging side and attacking, plus temp health makes you almost unkillable, but know you blame Slayer for going down in a few hits.
For the record, I’m doing all legend maps with every career, and I have done Markus, Bardin and mostly Kerillian. I play weird build, none of them follow the choices you said “mandatory”.

I played the full damage Slayer. Sure I go down faster than the tanky one, plus I play pickaxe and dual axes so I don’t even have crowd control. Sure I won’t be dealing with stuff with the ease of a master Slayer. But I can damn well deal my part of the job, and even if I rarely had a damage green circle (curse you Saltz player), I almost always got the damage taken one, cause hippity hoppity I leap toward the enemy, deleting the elite (dual axe push attack, charging pickaxe during jump, I mean this thing can kill a CW with 2 noncrit bodyhit), and going back to my team (thx to the cooldown).
And as long as the horde last, I can chain my ult to have permanent attack speed.

In the end, while I agree that the balance isn’t good, I think you shouldn’t see best choices as absolute choices. If a choice fits your playstyle more, pick it. It’d be harder maybe, but you’ll also have way more fun fun by playing the way you like to play.

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The main reason non tanky Slayers are a problem is that they have no ranged weapon to kill specials like fire rats, gunners or gutter runners.

I do agree with some of your points, but why on earth would you pick crippling wounds. Oblivious to Pain is THE best defensive talent in the game 50% damage reduction at times. Same for zealot I always pick flagellant (same talent diffrent name).

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You know that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. The talent system is full of abilities that are pointless to pick over others. Useless abilities like crippling wounds: Bosses already die in 15-30 seconds if you have a boss killing team mate like shade.

One is enough, and it’s put on Oblivious to Pain, which is too good anyway. You can get extra survivability with other Talents, but they’re mostly useful when you’re still learning the Career. Level 5 choice depends completely on your preferred playstyle (I go for the better dodge, myself) and on level 15, Adrenaline Surge lets you keep Leap and its bonus up all the bloody time. I do see the Talent choices as somewhat limited on Slayer, but it’s because a few are much more effective than the alternatives after you’ve learned the Career (and the game) well. He’s a powerhouse in melee.

The lack of a ranged weapon isn’t as big a disadvantage as it first seems, either. Every disabler can be dodged, and the Slayer puts them down fast when he gets to range. Usually, Gunners, Flamers and Blightstormers cause more problems, and the former two mostly need patience. Knowledge of the environment helps immensely with all three. Even as a Slayer, you’re still on special duty as much as anyone else.

Curious claim, as there are no invincibility frames on dodge. Dodging gives a quick movement burst, and the enemies stop tracking you for a couple of moments, that’s all. If you’re still on the way of a (effectively AoE) attack during dodge or after it, you will get hit, and a standard tactic when actual defense is needed is to dodge, but also hold block for backup, in case the dodge for one reason or another isn’t enough.

Unlike in VT1, where only three weapons got a push-attack, every weapon has it here. They’re useful in different situations, with some being as a good crowd-damage dealers, other just as supporting pushes and other stuff, and others as single-target attacks, but they’re there, and useful on all weapons. So useful for some that, as I said before, they’re part of the primary attack patterns for that weapon (Mace/Hammer or the Spear, for example).

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Sure there are plenty of let’s say say “questionable” talents in the game currently and i don’t doubt that fatshark is making some changes when wind of magic is rolling around.
However basing of slayer as a “bad class” the moment you don’t pick oblivious to pain is really stretching it not to mention most people only put point into that talent and rest into offensive ones.

He’s not a completely bad class, he’s just not as useful as IB. Perhaps I calling him terrible was a bit excessive. It’s mainly his glaring flaws that overshadow the rest of the class.

“The talent system is full of abilities that are pointless to pick over others.”

Ain’t this true for all games at the start everyone is testing abilities and talents, but after a while everyone starts using meta builds. Take League of legends, WoW or CS everyone is using same builds or trying to get the “best in slot” gear/talents/runes/weapons/items. Sure you can use different items, but they are usually beaten by this BIS gear.

That said I would love to see some balance updates regarding this, but I think Fatshark is busy creating DLC.

And they actually did change the meta at some point, by changing the ranged temp hp. RIP PyroBeam. :sob:

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