Elf needs a nerf

2 stormvermin ain’t a crowd - I’m talking hordes.
By the way I’m ok with upping the damage a bit, perhaps even to the point where it would one-headshot a CW.

Or ! Or, hear me out here. Or you’re conservative with your shots and use the ammo bags and boxes.

Oh Sigmar forbid, in a melee-oriented game !


You seem to think I want her to become a WP too… I just want her to be fun to play with and fun to play as, that doesn’t mean that she has to “equal a WP’s abilities effect”…
It means she has to respect her role and not overstep out on everything else, but is mostly means that a challenge should remain a challenge, not “press F to get green circles and frustrate your teammate who was engaged with an SV in what felt like an epic battle with his greatsword in the middle of a dozen shieldrats just to see everything drop in a flash of blue whistling lines, plus a gasrat, plus 2 other stormvermins, while the elf was looking the other way.” which happens every other game. The other 50% of the games, that’s a salad elf just pooping thorns in your face instead.

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I was trying to point out the difference in performance between the two difficulties, if you tell me a critical trueflight wipes out a legend wave or such i can believe that. But even so i wished to highlight that it does not do so on cata.

Which works for longbow but not so well for swiftbow or hagbane, i tried, a lot, but even so that means you are in turn hard locked to ammo boosting weapon traits. Which is kinda the case for swiftbow even with kurnous anyway.

I am sure the general waystalkers would be horrified by the idea but myself and a few others chatting on the forum are fond of the idea x)

And this happens mostly because all we waystalkers are shameless bastards running moonfire+bloodshot and most of them are also running loaded bow ontop of that.

So any trueflight they use pumps out 8 arrows rather than 3, a very stark difference both on paper and in effect.

Well, this post didn’t age well… :sweat_smile:

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@Saryk @Frostysir I remember once upon a time I was convinced WS was a busted class in desperate need of hard nerfs. At the time @Kitten did a good job of talking me down, I’d be curious to see their input here.

Honestly where I’m at with the class these days is that they’re a solid, maybe high B tier career, currently being significantly elevated above that by the stupid bloodshot ult interaction. Just looking over their actual kit is it really anything that impressive? With hagbane? Yeah that level of synergy is kind of a problem, and moonbow is moonbow. I really struggle to take much issue with a longbow or swiftbow WS outside of, again, the current dumb bloodshot shenanigans.

WS is one of those classes that just about needs an entire rework, they’re so haphazardly built around almost exclusively the ult and ranged uptime (which itself comes from ammo generation from the ult). However if you nerf those aspects too much you kinda leave the career f all compared to the other ranged classes. I dunno, bloodshot ults notwithstanding, WS isn’t that high on the priority list for me. If they’re gonna deal with anything else specifically regarding her it should be hagbane. Moonbow is obviously high priority but it’s an across elf issue, not specific to WS.

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I don’t see hagbane being as much of a problem as moonbow because I rarely ever see a Shade or a HM running it. The hagbane issue is more specific to WS and Kurnous making it too spammable - and the hagbane doesn’t feel that broken on other classes.

Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic and this is just a bloodshot issue with the ult - which by the way has been an acknowledged bug for months now…

Ah when I said specific to her, the her I was referring to here was WS, not Elf generally. I agree Moonbow is the bigger issue. My point was more that if there is anything specifically broken about WS besides the talked to death bloodshot bug, it’s how she uses hagbane. Her longbow and swift bow builds are fine to my eyes.

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I did get that and we agree on it ; I understood the sentence I quoted as “tweak hagbane”, not as “tweak WS’s interaction with hagbane” as you meant it :blush:

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Well now, in just one comment you did explain things better than i did with several, i am embarrassed :sweat_smile:

But yeah i do think you nailed it perfectly, borked talents or weapons aside, WS as a career is really not what i would call a powerhouse or a target worthy of nerfs. More like one in need of talent replacements since several talents are too weak/superior to other options on their row which kills choice.

Welcome to Vermintide 2. The relying on numbers instead of skill was there since the launch of the second game with the introduction of the power stat.

It’s only gotten worse since then.

Hagbane on WS isn’t really an issue that needs to be nerfed.
Hagstalker is forced to use Kurnous’ Reward, result in a career skill that often can’t even take down a single chaos warrior (put aside the bugged blood shot behaviour, which is unrelated) and quickly runs out of ammo in any situation without “taggable feeder spawns” (e.g. isolated boss/lord fights).
The horde overkill gets you green circles but it’s basically the same as flamethrowers - sure it works but it deprives your team of temp hp too.

The issue with Hagbane on WS is, on the contrary, that it’s the only career that can use Hagbane well at all, especially now that there are multiple DLC options that aren’t ammo-limited.

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I still feel the same.

Shade still does OP damage.
Moonbow/Hag are broken with WS.

The last 2 rows of her tree need a rework.

  • 20% CDR is a boring passive and just too good. Nothing else competes on that row
  • Last row, sustained ammo is just the easiest and best option over all (piercing is too situational, and broken interaction with Bloodshot shouldn’t count with the extra arrow Ult)

This was the thread where we discussed WS (THIS WAS PRE-MOONFIRE/JAVELINE):

Moonbow breakpoints may need some tweaking, including making it more headshot dependent.

Greatsword is decent, but isn’t as satisfying to use on anything other than HM.
1H Axe still sucks, mainly because of movement speed while attacking.
Glaive is fun on HM, but other Careers just get stuck in the mud.

Handmaiden is in a really good state right now. Crit stacking, getting Hunter up and maintaining Ult stacks, feels like you’re actively working towards keeping buffs up, which is fun.

Shade is still broken in terms of Melee DPS, and her tree doesn’t really allow for anything other than Dual Wield Crit Power or Headshot build with the CDR Ult (or Spear). She’s quite dull in terms of build diversity as half of her Talents aren’t worth taking.

  • Her Crossbow was only ever good before the Ranged Cleave nerf patch.

SoTT is good. I’m still not a fan of how strong Bloodrazor Thicket is. Would prefer this to become an AoE root with high DoT damage or something, although I think the usefulness of Blackvenom Thicket can outdo it in higher DPS Cata+ comps (e.g. with an Unchained using the Coruscation Staff).

  • Ironbark Thicket isn’t worth using over Blackvenom, as Blackvenom is still only useful because of the AoE damage increase (which becomes really strong in Cata+). Ironbark needs a defensive buff to those near to it, imo.

I’ve changed my mind on Jav. It can be completely broken on SoTT.

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I’ve run the Javelins a fair bit on both SoT and WS, my conclusion on em was that they seem overly biased towards SoT with her easy crits thanks to how much of their powerbudget is allocated to crit related stuff. Only reason they are even noteworthy on WS is bloodshot.

And writing off WS, do work just fine on her but the need to constantly go into melee to activate bloodshot to make the javs feel good on her kinda feels awkward for a ranged class, and on cata the presence of armored elites or shields in a horde kinda ruins the already very linear clearing ability.

So, i cant say they feel particularly outstanding really, although the CW stagger is kinda oddly powerful and fun in a way but not really reasonably so.

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i agree that people exaggerate the power of the javelin, (not talking about Sot yara yara)
but lets not forget they dont require ammo, that alone is worth alot, considering for each member that does not consume ammo the remaining members have more, and you basicly don’t sacrifice anything for it.
the fact that WS is even decent with it, the career with the best AMMO sustain is ridiculous and shows perfectly whats the problem with them.

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I mean, the only real reason WS is any good with em is because of bloodshot, take that away and they’re really nothing good. The ranged career makes the ranged weapon better…but only because a single talent in her kit happens to work well with it.

I think it´s more telling about the state of SoT when she is better at using the ranged weapon than WS is.

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If you ignore WS’s ult (which you shouldn’t, since one of the points of infinite ammo weapons is that she can run +33% ult arrows), then literally the only thing she has to distinguish herself as a ranged class is bloodshot and more ammo. So obviously she doesn’t have much to offer beyond bloodshot for infinite ammo weapons. Bloodshot is the centerpiece of the class, you can’t really ignore it.

If anything the problem is that infinite ammo weapons have not been balanced properly in general. Elf ranged weapons in general are all high-tier without needing further buffs, but with the caveat that they chew through ammo quickly. Moonbow and Javelin break this dichotomy.

That said I disagree that Javelin doesn’t have some synergy with WS. Having 6 Javelins rather than 3 means a lot, and Conservative Shooter + Bloodshot means that you can often sustain your ammo for significantly longer without needing to reload. In theory every elf class can sustain forever if they just have 100% headshot rate, but we all know in practice that this doesn’t exist. WS can do it pretty reliably. Great melee headshot damage also has synergy with Assassin.

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But that talent is actually so damn lame without the bloodshot bug, especially after they removed the conservative shooter synergy that enabled it to be used with longbow. And heck, even with bloodshot it isnt really all that amazing either.

What is 2 extra bugged arrows to more ammo/energy for firing? It works with Moonbow too these days and people know it.

Which is kind of a tragedy really, when a talent is so powerful it ends up defining the class more than anything else, by far.

But on the other hand, having 6 javs rather than 3 means you need 2x as long for that manual reload which in turn means you play the same as a shade or handmaiden anyway. Spamming reload the moment it is possible.

Or you run kurnous reward to try and mitigate that, i’ve seen a chunk of people who do since the difference between 6 trueflight shots and 8 isnt all that big. Kurnous reward and bloodshot are so crazy dominant for waystalker at this point i am not sure they should be integrated as passives or removed if one wants to promote the other options.

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Just did a few test games with javelin last night and damn its going well. I must have been far worse at headshotting when I used it previously on WS. Running Dual Swords/Javelin since Jav gives enough anti-elite to let me melee focus on pure horde clear when things aren’t in a line.

It’s one things to be able to kill elites or specials in a horde. It’s another thing to do a double javelin that can go through 15 trash enemies to snipe an elite or special. And do it over and over again. It’s like a Grudgeraker that also happens to do ~180 damage to armored enemies and can take out 2 SV (if both are headshots). Other highlights include killing 4 plague monks in a single bloodshot throw with bodyshots.

It’s also up there in obnoxiousness with a swiftbow user since you can spam it on every roamer on the map unlike Moonbow which requires a modicrum of restraint.

Not disagreeing that it’s a bit lame. Personally I’d also call Kurnous’ Reward a bit lame (+ it’s bad design to have the ammo regen for a class defined by ammo regen on the level 30 talent of a class).

You could run Piercing Shot though. In fact I think I’ll try that tonight.

The number of times I’ve needed to reload that were actually interrupting me killing something were pretty rare honestly. Definitely wouldn’t run Kurnous’ Reward.

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It’s funny how everyone is harping about javelin on her, while longbow is her most insane setup IMHO by far.

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Longbow with a cooldown setup is definitely top tier bs too if the user has the aim for it, in my case it’s a bit luck based but i’ve definitely had disgustingly good runs on it where i outdid myself running moonbow.