Discussion About Temporary Health & Level 20 Talents

This is a discussion feel free to contribute your opinion.

I don’t really have an issue with it. I think NB needs a bit of reworking. But the temp hp on kill is fine to me. The problem is the other two skills are useless…

If I remember correctly, the boss killing one also resets your 1 down stance, meaning if you’re on grey, you will be back to normal. But a lot of time you don’t get a boss at all, other times you get 2. Still not as useful. Perhaps if it was for bosses and heavy specials, like CWs?

The HP on crits is kinda useless as well, even on shade with dual daggers. Maybe if it was more hp than kills, right now I think it’s 3hp on crit but 2 on kill skill. Maybe if it was 5? I dunno…

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@Fatshark_Hedge, @Ratherdone and Fatshark_Hans that I can’t find on this forum

Fatshark_Hans
We’d like to do a beta with balance, and meta changes in the future, and we’re thinking of maybe having that go live two weeks before the release date.

That’s a great idea but should we just post our opinions in separate feedback topics and discuss with each other over something you don’t even care about?

It would be great if you would take part in them too.

Gotta go to reddit for that.

Not really the engagement is almost the same no mater were you look forum, Reddit & steam.
But the most engaging are those on Reddit and as it seems here during the closed beta.

I would still prefer to remove the temporary health completely. As i told somewhere else some weeks ago, i would go this way:

  1. Remove the temp HP completely. ( Not temp Health from traits like the Mercenary ultimate or the “shieldtrait from the melee weapons”, Just the lvl 20 talents.)

  2. Give the careers more HP (25HP on tanks / bruiser, 50HP on Melee-squishys and 35HP on ranged-squishys maybe)

  3. Take the Heal-traits from the Necklace as Lvl 20 talents.

  • Natural Bond
  • Healers Touch
  • Hand of Shallya
  1. Give the Necklace new / old traits. For Example:
  • Barskin
  • Regain x Health / Clear wounds when a Monster dies
  • 50% dmg-reduction for 10s for you and your mate, after reviving him/her.
  • 20% more Hero power as last man standing
  • Revive can´t be interrupted

So just some special traits which are useful in several situations and should be available for every career. Remind that these are just examples.

  1. Boon of Shallya should be removed completely or just available as normal talent for everyone, like the lvl 5 Talents from the Mercenary (Battle Scars) and Battlewizard (Cauterise Wounds).
    You could balance the Trait for each career itself like “Shade gets 25%, Ironbreaker gets 20%, Battlewizard stays on 30%”.
    There are already 1-3 “useless/ too situational” traits on each career, so it should work to replace some of them with a “new Boon of Shallya”.
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Did you mean just the lvl 20 talents or really all temp hp? (Kuber ult etc)

Just the Lvl 20 talents at all. I´ll edit this.

I’ve read all or most of this discussion, and there are far too many things to pick on to answer anyone directly, so I’ll just toss out my general opinions on these things.

First, the three talents in general. They’re certainly not in balance, but I’ll go more to that later. Another point is that they’re boring, mainly because despite the name differences, they are the same on every character. I would much rather see some personalisation on them, unique ways of gaining temp health (or even otherwise enhancing your survivability). Ironbreaker gains a point of Temp Health for every blocked hit, Shade for every backstab… Stuff like that. They could even do something completely different: Giving Slayer an extra Wound point, allowing him to get downed twice even on Legend. But at the moment, they are the same on every character and even then there’s hardly a choice.

Health-on-Crit is problematic. There is a fundamental flaw in it that makes it nearly impossible to balance: It’s unreliable. Bounty Hunter is the only career who can reliably crit, and even for him it’s not constant or unlimited. No matter the actual crit rate, there will always happen a strings of on-crits when you really need that health, and strings of crits when you’re already full. What’s worse, neither can be predicted. No sensible amount of health given can compensate for that unreliability. Add to this that the crits usually kill your opponents too, and the problem gets enhanced. The only situation when the Health-on-Crit in somewhat better is on boss battles (both regular and Lords), where it allows health gain from the boss itself, instead of the (often scarce) trash enemies.

Health on boss kill is… Even less useful. It gives up too much for it occasional use of healing, especially since you need that health before the boss battle ends, and actual Temp Health can completely prevent that need for healing.

Health-on-Kill might well be too powerful, even when not compared to the other choices. Temp Health and its constant use is such a fundamental part of the play mechanics that abolishing it is something I don’t want to and can’t see happening. It could be toned down, though. The idea I’ve seen here that I consider the most sensible and interesting to change the Health-on-Kill is the differing amounts depending on enemy, but even that isn’t foolproof. Weapon choices (and somewhat less, breakpoints reached) affect the total gain too, as do some Career Skills. Tuning the amount gained from, say, Elites too high will give some careers and weapons again way too high potential, while tuning it too low, will cripple some. It would be extremely hard to find that balance.

TL;DR: Things need to be done to Temp Health and the three talents, but what they are is not obvious, and in any case will need a lot of care (and probably a decent-length beta test).

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It´s a pretty good idea, but i don´t think, it would work at all.
It would force the player (probably) to play with a shield on the IB and even the Shade can´t backstab the whole time. The HM is better in backstabbing with her stealth-ultimate yet.
Ok, that were just some examples of your thoughts, but i think, it would change the gameexperience / gameplay in a bad way. The traits and properties should be useful passivs and shouldn´t force the player to something especially with an essential one like temp health.

Temp health on kill is actually the best option. I don´t mean for us, I mean the design - option, because it migrates smooth into the gameplay and helps the player a lot.
It´s already pretty strong… too strong in my eyes and i don´t think FS can balance it. If FS nerfs temp health, it will become useless for “lower skilled players”, but will still be in a great /broken spot on “strong players”. That´s why i would prefer a rework in a way i already wrote down here.

There isn’t any real way to balance the 20 talents. I honestly think the temp hp on kill should just be a passive for every character upon hitting lvl 30. Then make the lvl 20 talents interesting. Something like 50 HP on boss kill, 4 HP on special kill and remove the hp on crit since pyro can abuse it. Add a random card in there, trade in the extra hp for a small damage boost or cooldown buff or something. It would have to be balanced.

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the get healed from killing boss heals wound. it is there so you can get a heal on deeds with no drops.

Temp HP on kill is overtly mandatory on literally every spec but like 3 (high crit characters), and massively contributes to the power level of players in general. This is noticeable in the power spike when leveling from 19-20, essentially changing how the game plays fundamentally. It not only makes 1/5 of character trees pointless, but it makes leveling feel very tedious, being gimped that heavily from 1-19, then suddenly being able to run Legend without issue.

This design decision imo is poor, and should’ve been a default game feature once any class makes some arbitrary level, such as 10, so people can actually play the game as intended moving from Veteran to Champion. The level 20 talents should actually apply the classes in a meaningful way, especially in a game where some classes overlap too heavily.

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Temp Health on kill is the design choice that annoys me the most in vermintide 2. I wish they had never implemented something like this. There are so many reasons why i hate it.

  • Getting hit isn’t that bad anymore if you can make enough kills to negate the damage you get with temorary health. This totally changes the feeling of the entire game. In V1 i would never have traded getting hit with doing damage. I was much more carefull. In V2 you can do that. Switchting to hagbane to create room and get temp health in the middle of a horde is deffenitely possible even if you get hit two time by some enemys. Same for some staffs of sienna.

  • Its to strong. Ever played Legend without temp health? Its totally different. Way more difficult. It shouldn’t have such a big impact.

  • Its possible to use it for venting certain weapons.

  • It makes certain careers with certain weapons way to tanky. If i take mercenary with longsword i can take more hits than footknight with sword and shield.

  • It makes weapons that already have a high damage outpoot even stronger.

In the end it’s another reason why doing damage is more improtant than anything else in this game. I really hope there will be a mod that changes that.

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Temp Health should add another aspect of tactical choice to your play, and should make you a little more aware of your team-mates status and where they need help. However;

Temp health is OP with burst damage weapons. Lining up a horde as huntsman with a bow and casually top up your Ammo and Health to full. Get in trouble in a horde as Unchained with Fireball and just bomb the hell out of everything near and the kills will outweigh your own FF. You can literally set yourself on fire by firing a fireball at your own feet in a horde to gain temp health. Flamethrower Dwarf also gets a mention here.

I think it is a mechanic to make higher difficulties a little less… lethal. Without Temp health it might promote a little more cautious play as taking an overhead from a CW will be big punishment and not just remedied by windmilling into the next horde, or fireballing your own trousers.

The possible issue with Temp Health on Kill is that Temp Health decays quite slowly really. I think being rewarded for good play, by topping up your own health to survive a horde+ Patrol for example, should be rewarded but the decay should ramp up when you aren’t in combat. Spend longer out of combat and it drops down to actual health faster.

I personally agree with @SmokerT69 in that it should be the level 30 passive everyone gets and then the level 20 talents could be completely reworked. I’d rather see much tighter class specific things in the level 20 slot.

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Well i still thought about this and i still got the same opinion… remove the lvl 20 talents completely.

Here is just another “pro”-argument:

It would offer so much more “for the team” - traits and playstyles. There is a range / AP - meta atm. Swift slaying and cdr on crit are probably the most played perks on melee weapons.
Support classes / tanks / shield-traits would become more common without temp.- healt on kill/crit.
For example:

  • Kerillians group lifereg
  • Footknights aura
  • Mercenary´s group attack speed
  • Shieldtrait on the melee - weapons
  • WHC´s temp health on elite-kills
    etc.

FS could even change the lvl 20 talents in some group buffs to compensate the lost temp health. Yes it would effect the whole “solo-playstyle” hard, but it makes the team-aspect much better and offers new and more ways to play this game. The remove of temp health would buff a lot of actually “useless” traits.

I would even like to see more ultimate-traits, that helps the team a lot.

Some new examples:

  • Zealot: His ultimate will gain a lower amount of temp health, but effect nearby allies too.
  • Handmaiden: Nerfed CD but bleeded enemies will take 10% more overall dmg from the grp.
  • Battlewizard: Every ally near the “walk of flame” will gain 5% movement speed and 5% attack speed.
  • Unchained: Every ally in the ultimate explosion will get a fire dmg-buff. That means their melee weapons, will do dot dmg like the flamesword/dagger for 10s. Her own dot-dmg gets doubled.
  • Footknight: After using his ultimate, the nearest ally will get a 15% dmg.reduction - buff. Perfect for “rescue - missions”.

These are just some idea´s. There could be even more dmg-reduction / shield -traits.

Some group buffs for skill / stick together / some ultimates + the lil health buff i recommend, would balance the game in a good state. Not only the temp health - even the range/solo meta.

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Talents that give temp hp shouldnt be on the same level between characters/ classes.

Maybe weapons should have their own multiplier of temp hp.
Maybe as a melee inherent trait(s)?
2h sword of kruber brings you much larger gain of temp than WHC’s 1h axe.
Attack patterns and cleave should be taken into consideration.
Otherwise it’s another clear advantage of using high-cleave trash-mob-mower.

Besides flamethrower crit builds ( Pyro/IB) I have never used “hp on crit” talent, as (without extreme attack speed combined with full cleave of flamethrower ) this is completely useless on 90% of the weapons.
It’s a waste of skill slot in a tree.

Frontline classes should have at least slight advantage when it comes to gaining / maintaining health.
And should gain it most effectively on melee weapons.

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Temp health generation is the de facto most important aspect of any build. Any design built around specs/weapons that generate more temp health than others would do nothing but push a new meta in which the highest temp health generation weapons become the top tier picks. This is also why all the top weapons/specs currently are built around maximizing killing speed. The mere existence of temp health generation globally controls the optimal way the game is to be played, which imo is a very bad thing in general.

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