I’ve put in a lot of play time during and after the beta into Kruber and Bardin to get the mercenary and IB 100 mission hats. Here’s what I would consider the biggest issues I have with the current patch:
1. Skavenslaves
Slaves are the most frustrating enemy to fight because they have a tendency to initiate running attacks from 2 feet away. If you have a group of slaves in front of you and move or dodge backwards what tends to happen is the slaves will form a rolling waterfall of heat seeking running attacks that hit you in sequence like a chainsaw. This can also happen if you shove rats back, they will immediately dash into melee again and often stack on top of other rats to create hyperdensity. If you do anything but block you will immediately take a hit that interrupts what you’re doing and opens you up to further hits. If it’s just 1-5 rats this isn’t a big deal, but if there are a lot of rats you will have no opening to hit back, especially if you have a slow weapon like 2h hammer.
IIRC this used to be a big problem with fanatics and I can’t remember what they did to fix it. In any case it should be impossible for rats to execute a running attack unless they start a sufficient distance away. They also shouldn’t run at players already engaged by a wall of rats.
2. Hyperdensity
This is a well known problem and Fatshark has taken measures to fix it. It’s not perfect but it feels better than it used to. The currently problem I have with the system is hyperdensity on a small scale. Sometimes when you engage 2-3 enemies they will all stack on a single spot instead of spreading out to surround you. For instance if you see a stormvermin in front of you and have a 2h hammer it’s a simple matter to smash the rat on the head and kill it. But the moment your hammer lands a second stormvermin pops out of the first one like a chestburster and smacks you with an overhand attack. A similar problem is when multiple enemies somehow sync their animations such that it looks like one enemy is attacking you, but it’s really 2 enemies in lockstep that are clipping together.
These kinds of issues are nothing new if you’re fighting next to a drop or a ledge the enemies are climbing up. What makes them such a problem is that they keep happening on open ground where that shouldn’t be an issue. Obviously whatever section of the game code that’s responsible for telling enemies to spread out when attacking isn’t working in some cases.
3. Ratling gunner/flamer stagger
Increasing ratling gunner/flamer stagger resistance was a good idea on paper. However the implementation didn’t work out so great. The basic idea is that light superficial hits will be ignored while the rat is attacking, this makes the players expend more effort to suppress them or just bring a bigger gun. In practice however this increase makes the rats completely immune to drake pistols and swiftbow. You cannot stagger them with any attack even if you’re pounding critical hits directly into their faces. Hagbane and Bolt staff suffer from this to a lesser degree because light attacks can’t stagger but they have a heavier attack to fall back on. Every other ranged weapon either kills the gunners in one shot, or reliably staggers them in one shot.
Effectively this change ended up being an unintended nerf to drake pistols and swiftbow. I think they should either reverse it or change gunner stagger thresholds so that cumulative light hits will add up and stagger them (especially crits/headshots).
4. Ambushes
I don’t like how the game currently handles ambushes. They feel like “ultra-hordes” because they aren’t any smaller than regular hordes and they pour enemies onto you from all directions. It ends up being 3-4 times harder than a regular horde and it can be extremely frustrating if the director keeps throwing them at you, or spawns one during a boss. Particularly given the skavenslave issues I mentioned above.
I think ambushes should be reworked to make them distinct from hordes. The number of enemies/waves should be cut by half (maybe more) and a random number of marauders/berserkers/stormvermin would be mixed in instead. This makes ambushes short and sharp like they should be instead of just being a horde that spawns on top of your head.
5. Scrounger
The current implementation overperforms at the high end and unfairly nerfs weapons with low ammo. Weapons like handgun and blunderbuss suffer the most because they have very slow reload speeds and thus fewer chances to hit and score a crit, and when they do crit they only get a single ammo back.
I strongly feel that Scrounger should be returned to it’s old flat rate of 2 ammo per crit. The single target limitation is perfect and doesn’t need to be changed.
6. Shield pushing
I don’t recall anything in the patch notes about this so it may be a bug. The stagger strength of shield pushes has been reduced since the end of the beta. Previously your pushes were strong enough to stun and interrupt stormvermin and maulers regardless of what animation they were in. It was also effective against berserkers and CWs with a little help from other attacks or crits. This ability to stun on demand is one of the fundamental reasons to bring a shield in the first place and removing it is a heavy nerf. I strongly feel that this should be reversed.
7. Maces/shield
Mace/shield is currently underperforming, in fact I’d go so far as to describe the current implementation as “garbage”. Both compared to the other shield weapons and especially compared to everything else. When compared to 1h mace it has the same light attacks, but it’s heavy strike is weaker than the 1h mace light 4 finisher attack. It’s push attack is pathetic compared to the 1h mace heavy, costs stamina to use, and has an especially weak headshot multiplier.
When you look at the other shield weapons they are very similar to the 1h version of the same weapon. Axe/shield is a lot like 1h axe, only you have a shield and trade mobility for protection. Same with sword/shield, the attack patterns may be different but the basic hack and slash stats are the same. Mace/shield is the odd one out because it’s a heavily nerfed version of 1h mace with no redeeming features.
Here is how I would rework the weapon:
- Add a Light 4 overhand attack to finish the light attack chain, same as 1h mace.
- Buff push attack power and headshot multiplier to match 1h mace heavy.
- Increase power for the heavy 1 sweep attack until the armour damage becomes 10. (about 15% more)
- Push attacks now chain to Light 3 which lets you do an overhand smash, an uppercut, then end with another smash. This combo increases your armour damage output for the same stamina. (the 1h mace works a similar way with heavy 2 chaining to light 3)
- Light 3 now chains to shield slam, which lets you do Light 1-3 then slam for crowd control. This also opens up the bigger Light 1-2, Heavy 1, Light 2-3, Slam combo for even more horde clear.
8. Handgun
During the beta handgun cleave was nerfed down to 5.66. This puts it below the 6 needed to cleave marauders, meaning that hitting a marauder will stop your shot and you won’t hit any further target. This is a big problem if you’re trying to kill specials behind other enemies, the primary reason anyone would bring a handgun in the first place. Frankly I’m baffled as to why anyone though this was necessary. Handgun is already tied for the slowest attack speed in the entire game and no one uses it on hordes, it’s exclusively for specials and elites because of it’s slow reloads and limited ammunition. Handgun suffers even more when you factor in the scrounger nerf and the buffs to other weapons like Repeater that now leave it in the dust.
Handgun cleave should be raised to 8.48 which would put it back on the same level as Longbow and Crossbow. This is not overpowered by any means, especially given that those other weapons have almost twice the attack speed.
9. 2h weapon and shield dodge range
2h weapons like hammer have the worst dodge range by far, something they share with shield weapons. I think they should be buffed slightly in that regard because the dodge distance is so short it can be impossible to avoid things like packmasters and boss overhands. Even if you dodge at the right moment and your ping is acceptable the distance travelled is so short that you will get hit anyway.
10. Drakegun/Flamestorm + Drake pistol
I still see people who have no idea how to play around these weapons, they constantly run in front of the people trying to use them. My suggestion would be to add a marker on the ground whenever a player charges up the heavy attack on drakegun or drake pistols. This would work just like conflag staff, only instead of being round it would be cone shaped to mark the danger zone.