Don't nerf the mercenary

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Hello, I’ve seen an announcement “Mercenary is being played too often so we’ll nerf him.” and I object it. Here’s why I insist.

1.Mercenary is meant to be played a lot more than other classes because of its innate compatibility towards any play-style
Mercenary can take every role of VM2. So it can attract devastatingly wide user pool and has a higher occupancy rate.
For example, you can be a supporter with shield&sword, the skills “Strike together” and “On your feet, mates!”. you can be a wave controller with mace, shotgun, the skills “Limb-splitter”, “Black market supplies” and “Ready for action”. you can be a elite&special sniper with halberd, handgun, “Helborg’s Tutelage” and “Black market supplies”… and so on.
2. Huntsman is the worst career since WOM, so most of the player choose to play the ranger of other characters. That’s why the ratio of mercenary from Kruber is insanely high.
Huntsman is crippled right now. Its headshot-based method makes it stationary and so vulnerable on WOM melee-stagger meta. Also, Its monster hunting ability is dependent on teammates’ support blocking waves and attract monster’s head right in front of Huntsman. It’s far from the right place of ‘dps nuker’ so It makes Huntsman as the worst prey not a predator.
3.Mercenary’s Career Skill has the far most unique value throughout VM2 so It has to be crowded with players.
Mercenary is one of the 2 massive healer career (Mercenary and Unchanined).
Mercenary is one of the 3 career who can knock back wave, special and monster at the same time. (Mercenary, Grail knight and witchhunter)
Mercenary is the only career who can revive the fallen teammates.
Do you want to lower the ratio of the mercenary? Erase the healing&reviving gimmick out of Fatshark industry forever mash the diverse playstyles into the same kil-them-all meta.
4. Users can’t even access the actual statistics of Occupancy rate. We need some solid evidence of Mercenary being too OP.
5. With BBB giving the users a lot of choices to play, the ratio of Mercenary will go down naturally.
6. It will give the negative reaction towards premium career.
I hope it’s not real but It quite looks like Fatshark is trying to promote the Grail knight Kruber DLC by nerfing one of the very basic career of the game. It can depress people from buying furthermore new premium careers since GK itself can be nerfed for temporary DLC profits.

After all, Mercenary is the very first character to be played by player. What’s wrong with basic career being loved?

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Strongly disagree. He was definitely one of the strongest careers, having very strong melee and ranged weapons, huge power and speed buffs almost on par with Zealot, while also offering some of the strongest support abilities in the game. That’s not balanced and makes the game easier than it should be. The 40% damage reduction for the entire team could easily be an ultimate on its own, yet it got tacked on to already one of the strongest active abilities.

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There is BBB group for it, and yeah he needed nerf

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i suggest iron breaker gets the same treatment as mercenary.

axe & shield is just too good, it allows IB to just push and stagger hordes and elites forever while gromril armour will absorb the dmg he might take. axe&shield is also good against elites and horde and is faster than hammer and shield. a 30% speed decrease should make this weapon less competitive.

his ult is also too strong, unlimited block and 50% dmg reduction for 10-50 sec makes him even more tanky than he is. fatshark should just remove the dmg reduction on his ult and increase gromril armour cooldown to 30 sec since he can survive an OVERHEAD SWING.

with 2h hammer or 2h axe he can play a tanky dmg role while also absorb a hit every 10-20 sec.

with barkskin IB can get somethink like 70% dmg reduction (or did it get nerfed to the ground) which makes him near invincible.

lets talk about slayer now.

slayer is one of the best tanks and dmg dealers in the game. with his 2h hammer build he get passive 15% dmg and almost constant 40% dmg reduction against hordes making him even better than foot knight.

his ult gives him 30% attack speed and with a certain talent he will get his ult back agains hordes that he will have almost constant +30% attack speed. his ult alos staggers enemies where the slayer lands too.

and still merc is supposedly too op because he can buff his team with 10% attack speed and dmg reduction and some thp.

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On what, the beta? Yeah axe and shield is good on BBB but defintly not OP on current build. Yeah Ironbreaker can stagger hordes and elites with axe and shield but so can hammer and shield, and can most shield weapons. Gromril armour is good but thats the point of the talent, to make him tankier. Axe and shield is decent against elites and okay versus hordes, and no the weapons is not faster than hammer and shield, nor does it have the same wide sweeping arcs on most of the attacks. A 30% speed decrease is absolutely stupid, swifty slaying makes weapons 25% faster which is a lot. Imagine if the axe and shield had a 30% decrease in speed.

I’m assuming you mean 10-15 seconds but anyway. His ult actually has a 80% dmg reduction, on top of his perk which is stupid. Which is why they are changing how dmg reduction stacks in the BBB, being multiplicative instead of additive, so his ult actually has 35% dmg reduction in the beta.

They shouldn’t remove the dmg reduction on his ult because he is a tank, and a lot more focused on it than other careers. If you start removing dmg reduction from Ironbreaker other careers like footknight will have the passive dmg reduction and the utility that he brings with his charge and his increased attack speed from staggering. You can’t look at this in a bubble. Gromril armour CD is fine at 20 seconds.

Yes he can play a tanky dmg role and have some okay dmh with 2 hand weapons. WHC captain can play an elite and horde killing role along with special killing with his tags. Its okay for careers to be specialized in one thing and be okay in another.

Yeah dmg reduction was changed in the BBB.

Slayer doesn’t get a 15% dmg reduction with Skull Splitter, he gets a 15% power increase. Grimnir’s focus is an active talent with 40% dmg reduction and Slayer has 125 base HP. Foot Knight has a 25% passive dmg reduction with 150 base HP, talents that increase his block cost reduction, a hypotheical 40% dmg reduction and invincibility for 3 seconds. Slayer is not a better tank than Foot Knight.

Yeah he does, and increased power up to 30%. Do you know why he has this good melee? It’s because he doesn’t have a ranged weapon unlike Mercenary Captain. No the throwing axes aren’t useful enough to be used on Slayer, as you have to reload it so much and its not powerful enough to deal with specials on cata. You are better off using two melee weapons instead.

You’re using Merc wrong if you’re using those talents. Merc has insane horde killing, very good elite killing, good dmg reduction and decent special killing. The more the merrier, smiter and Reikland reaper all compound onto each other to make you hypothetically have up to 80% power increase against enemies. His dmg reduction is arguably better than FK’s because he can have 25% dmg reduction with blade barrier, tmhp from mercenary’s pride, 25 tmhp from his ULT which goes to everyone near him and 40% dmg reduction fro Walk it off to all of his teammates. Merc is at the very least overtuned. In fact one time I solo’d the ending of Convocation of Decay on Legend when all my teammates died with Merc, Does that make me a good player? No, I just picked Merc.

I don’t why people are complaining about the nerfs anyway. They more toned him down a bit than anything, getting rid of a chunk of his dmg reduction and slowing down executioner sword.

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when did i write this? i wrote passive 15% dmg. it doesnt matter that grimnirs focus is an active ability, its ridiculously easy to activate it.

if merc have access to too much dmg, why not change one of his dmg talents instead of nerfing a popular weapon.

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Yeah I read that wrong. Yeah you can activate Grimnir’s focus easily, you also can’t block when activating it. You are still looking at this in a bubble since slayer doesn’t have a (good) ranged weapon and is melee focused. Regardless Skull Splitter isn’t that useful since having two two-handed weapons is bit redundant, as great axe and great hammer do the same things slightly differently and war pick is the same weapon but light and heavy is reversed. Your better off going 2H hammer and dual axes with hack and slash.

Mercs dmg isn’t the problem, its the fact he also has fat dmg reduction on top of it. He isn’t the best melee career in the game as he struggles with hordes with elites in them with executioner. His power came from his versatility. Thats why on the BBB his offensive talents are the same, and walk it off was reduced to 25%. The executioners is slower on the BBB but still viable, although this change will affect the other careers more than the merc.

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But Kruber’s weapon lacks on mobility at the same time. Reduced movement speed while attack, low dodge count and dodge distance makes playing process a lot harder than you think.
Also, Kruber’s weapons are not that OP. Actually,the most of them would be the worst weapons just for being with Kruber If we remove or simply reduce those ‘mighty’ buffs. Since any of Kruber’s careers does not have a “Charged attacks can’t be interrupted by damage”, mace&shield and 2h hammer will go right into the dumpster. And What about halberd? It has a long history about getting numerous nerfs. It’s now highly dependent on attack speed since stagger, cleaving and damage is not plausible. Our beloved executioner sword would be a joke too because it won’t be able to control horde properly D:
Futhermore, That Mighty speed buff you mentioned has a condition for attacking 4 enemies on a single attack. It means the most of Mercenary’s routine has to include heavy attack. It makes playing routines of Kruber much more vulnerable (because of limited mobility).
Conclusion : Those strong buffs are actually life-support system for mercenary. Removing them means taking off the respirator from Kruber.

Like I mentioned, Mercenary is the far most fascinating career out of VM2. But Mercenary too has a critical drawback throughout the micro-gameplay. So it’s better not get nerf. Instead, We need to make more career as fascinating as Mercenary, not ruining one.

And yes, I agree. But Its feat should be replaced with more specialized one. Not just manipulating the number of it.

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Where have you seen this “announcement”? Because I am halfway sure that FS didn’t say this. Nerfs have only been handed out if something was better than supposed to. Also, of what nerfs for Mercenary are you talking? We have a long overdue nerf to Walk it Off … and yea that’s it. Ready for Action got buffed in the meantime.

So we could completely ignore the rest of your text.

Both weapons work completely fine on most if not all Kruber careers O.o

The one redesigned in this BBB?

No, it isn’t.

Which isn’t an issue because 60-70 % of Kruber’s arsenal are high cleave weapons on a career which can increase cleave even more.

Which wouldn’t be an issue. But even then weapons like Executioner and Greatsword have high cleave on their light attacks. But any talent/passive which needs some kind of combo or switching between light and heavy attacks is a plus for gameplay.

I am not sure what career you are talking about. But after reading this it certainly can’t be Mercenary. Mercenary is strong but one of the most generic careers in the whole game. He also doesn’t have micro-gameplay. He is left click, left click, chop, chop, kill.

But again. Of which nerfs are you even talking? There is exactly one Mercenary specific talent which got its damage reduction reduced. That is all.

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Idk man, but I have that thought at the back of my head that maybe they did it cuz the weapon was actually overtuned.

Ah yes there is no other way of using 2h hammer heavies than just running face to face with the enemy and charging up a heavy as they whoop your ass, spacing doesn’t exist or as one guy told me the other day, the range of the melee weapon doesn’t matter am I right.

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I don’t know what all this fuss is about but Merc is still perfectly fine.
Aside from the weapon adjustments only the shout damage reduction was nerfed so far, which is well, was kinda necessary because it made a soft tank out of well…everyone? A nerf was kinda obvious here, it was a no brainer pick , revive shout is niche (except in high weaves) because then people will sit on it.
Taking shield on Merc is a waste , he shines with 2 handed weapons (most notably Executioniers Sword and the Spear), better cleave, better crits, cuts trough hordes like butter.
Buffing his other careers make them at least viable alternative picks, altho Merc will be still the most played probably because how well rounded and powerful he is.

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