I’m not that expert about Warhammer’s lore but, if I have to imagine a Ranger, I think about a small man that furtively moves among trees, that appears and disappears to silently kill chaos dudes. A man who loves the silence and calm… a silence broken only by the laughter of friends drunk from an excess of craft beer.
So, why should he be a “bombs master”? Why should he use something so loudy and dirty?
Looking at Engineer’s skills tree, I got an idea in order to make both the careers (Engineer and Ranger Veteran) more balanced and distinct. More in line with their styles.
Ranger Veteran: he can craft arrows, legitimate, he’s a bushcraft expert. He can craft potions, even more legitimate, he is used to craft homemade beer… and he knows aromatic field herbs… but, once again, why should he craft bombs?
In my opinion, Scavenger talent, should give only potions. This for three reasons:
make Ranger more lore-friendly;
improve the talent itself: currently we have a 20% to drop one item among 5. Too much RNG;
make Ranger more distinct from Engineer, who is the real bomb master.
Engineer: he’s an expert about technology, gunpowder and steam… so his synergies with bombs are super cool! Engineer is the career wich has to fulfill this niche, not Ranger Veteran.
But there is a problem: the ability to carry three bombs is cool and fun… but it’s useful mainly at lowest difficulties. On hardest contents it’s very rare to have an excess of bombs to keep… so, in my opinion, he should have some way to craft/drop bombs, how currently Ranger Veteran does.
Conclusion: I would like to make Ranger more potions-focused, and Engineer more bombs-focused.
If Ingenious Improvisation was reworked to do something with potions like in built proxy or similar then honestly I’d be pretty down with that but there are definitely some problematic implications.
His bomb talents are already pretty brokenly good, but I’m still fearful giving him access to infinite potions could prove even more ridiculous. Especially since with conc pots or concoction it could become self sustaining in a way bomb dupe is not. I mean, wouldn’t that basically give him access to non stop ults courtesy of conc pots?
yeah potion duping would not be an option because of that, it’s too abusable and obviously so
a built in super-proxy could be neat; sharing your potion effects with everyone within the smoke bomb radius. Would be decently powerful, enough to compete with the temp health cloud maybe
What if Ingenious Improvisation was altered to something like every 3rd potion consumed dupes? Then go with your proxy Ult idea to replace Ranger’s Parting Gift? Doesn’t seem too abuseable but still decently strong?
To be clear I don’t personally think Ranger Vet needs a rework, probably just a few talent tweaks here and there. Really just theorycrafting for the sake of it I guess. A potion oriented class would be kind of cool, though it’s so potentially problematic it’s probably not something I’d actually want FS to do.
idk about a potion centered class, just a build path that goes beyond the bog standard ammo spam.
I don’t think class reworks and/or tweaks at this point are about classes being too weak (barring foot knight) but more akin to classes having core mechanical issues (zealot), being too powerful (battle wizard) or having identity issues (Unchained and perhaps ranger veteran).
One thing that is also very much a problem across the board in vermintide is that talents are still very heavily suffering from illusion of choice. A lot classes have maybe only one or two talent paths that are any good at all while the rest are either objectively worse, even if still viable, or just total memes.
Although perhaps that means every other class is simply too strong relative to the content in the game. Foot Knight doesn’t bring anything to the table that another class doesn’t but also other classes either do it better or bring more value from other areas. He most certainly doesn’t compete with Mercenary but Mercenary is also overpowered so take that with a grain of salt.
I also can’t imagine any scenario where I’d want a foot knight over a grail knight or an ironbreaker
Eh, I wouldn’t say he’s that much weaker than most classes. I’ve gotten good use from him in the DWONS runs I’ve tried, in terms of being viable he certainly is, and he’s one of the main classes I play for fun. Although it’s probably fair to say that he’s overall weaker than IB or Mercenary and GK.
He’s viable but I mean, throwing axes are viable too but they definitely suck compared to other options. He’s certainly not in balance with the classes with which he’s competing in either dps or durability and being a stagger bot is not a particularly valuable niche especially since battle wizard can just do that anyway while still being grossly powerful in numerous other aspects and not taking up a Mercenary or GK slot.
Our favourite mustachioed knight without a horse needs some love is all I’m saying (also this is very much so off-topic for the thread, apologies)
His build diversity might not be great, but since the last BBB I haven’t unequipped M&S on him, and I don’t think I even have played any Kruber that wasn’t FK. That is one of my favorite builds in the game right now, and it’s plenty powerful. In terms of overall loadout power, class theme, and fitting role in the team, I’d even say FK with M&S is pretty damn near to what I’d consider the “gold standard” for what a class should be!
I recognise his build diversity isn’t great because with most other weapons he is overshadowed by Merc and sometimes GK, but if he even gets changed, I really really really don’t want them to mess with the beautiful synergy of this loadout.
The build for the curious: M&S with Opportunist (item properties: AS, power vs. Skaven for the Plaguemonk stagger breakpoint, BCR, Health), THP on stagger, attack speed on push, mainstay, tag team, counter punch. Works really well, and next to stellar control its damage output is suprisingly good.
I don’t think you can build an identity that’s based on potions. As for other comments that say RV lacks identity (or has identity issues), I’d say I disagree. As it is now, he’s cut out pretty clearly to be a ranged career - Grudgeranger for horde clear, crossbow/handgun for elite/special clear and throwing axes for more monster damage (even if they’re a bit subpar) and Masterwork Pistol for everything throwing axes do but better. Then in terms of talents you can specialize into either improving yourself at your given role, or improving your support capabilities. Seems to be a pretty solid identity.
Of course, with the advent of Engineer, I personally would like to see Ranger become more of a hybrid, with maybe lesser ranged potential but increased melee power and overall durability, sort of like Mercenary but shifted more towards ranged.
There’s also the question if there’s anything even wrong here to begin with. I don’t think it’s that bad that Bardin has access to 2 different ranged focused careers, and Engineer is still quite different from Ranger, even if they share some similarities. Considering how many careers are in this game, it’d be hard to make one completely unique and distinct from each other, simply due to how this game is made and how it functions (you can’t have pure support or healer classes like you can in an MMO), so I don’t see anything particularly wrong that both Engineer and Ranger have talents and traits for buffing bombs for example.
I think that’s probably more suited to the dude with a heavy plated mechanical arm
tbh the more I think about it, it’s engineer with the identity crisis rather than RV. RV still has design flaws though much like any other class (imo) regarding talent choice
Yeah honestly Engi has much more of the groundwork already in place to be half competent in melee between crank gun bursts. Unless you go for all the talents that maximise crank gun uptime, he’s gonna have a fair bit of down time to be in melee or using his ranged weapon. The only problem is that that build option isn’t terribly competitive with just speccing for max crank gun spam, and he lacks the durability for him to want to make use of the melee bonuses he has available to him.
Tweaks for Engi generally is a whole other thread, but if either Engi or RV is to be given more of a hybrid identity, just looking at the current talent trees it makes more sense and seems like less work to me to pick Engi.
Engi already has hybrid groundwork laid out for him yeah
it’s just that the groundwork is hilariously bad in terms of numbers. Usually I try not to be overly harsh when it comes to these things but Engi’s melee build path is just that bad
10% attack speed that disappears as soon as you have your ult charged, no smiter, worse DR than any other ranged class with such an option, and 10% bonus power which is also worse than any other ranged class with melee buffing options. Stack that on top of the fact his ranged capabilities and pretty much entirely tied to his ult and you get a very statistically underwhelming class if you don’t optimize for the minigun.
The smiter thing is egregious imo since it’s a known issue for a long long time now that classes without access to that or assassin are intrinsically worse off in melee.
Yeah honestly I’ve almost stopped factoring stagger talents in at all they’re in such need of an overhaul. Hard to bring them up without wanting to go on long tangential rants just about them. (Just saw your edit after writing this)
If the 10% AS didn’t wear off at full charge, he had more base durability (probably just more health) and piston power was just generally a bit… better? (Bonus damage/lower cooldown/greater control over trigger etc.) I think you’d be looking at something pretty respectable considering he still has the crank gun on top of all that. Certainly some of the numbers could also be tweaked up a bit with no real risk to balance.
Apologies though this is pretty off topic at this point.
On OP’s post itself I don’t quite know what to say. I don’t exactly object to the idea, but knowing how slow things move I’m not sure it’s where I’d personally want to see balancing efforts spent. RV honestly seems 95% fine to me, and I don’t find that he lacks an identity, in fact I find him one of the more unique classes. I can’t say I’m terribly worried about the overlap in bombs as a secondary/tertiary aspect of their identity, to me the problem is more just that Engi’s bomb passive/talent don’t really do a whole lot for him, and Engi as a whole is just a bit lacking in a number of aspects. If balancing effort is spent on RV and/or Engi at all I’d prefer just talent tweaks and the like to give each of them more competitive build options (swap out “dead” talents etc.).
There isn’t really much there tbh, RV probably has as much groundwork laid out as Engineer if not more flexible; RV Smiter, changing Disengage ranged power to power + 3 potential new talents. (No Dawdling, Last Resort and Foe Feller) -Numbers adjusted accordingly-
What about balance?
RV has access to stealth, party wide ammunition, healing and attack speed among other things like potions, bombs and a lot of ranged DPS to boot. (Obviously not all at once but a lot to compete with)
vs
Engineer hybrid career with potential bomb synergy.
In my eyes it makes more sense for Engineer to be a full fledged ranged career, a lot of DakkaDakka DPS and RV to lean more as a hybrid role but with more utility.
problem is no amount of Dakka is gonna realistically compete with infinite ammo on a grudge or masterwork pistol unless you gave the minigun an absurd level of uptime or made it shred armour which would be getting into overpowering territory imo
Aye that’s true.
If Engineer is given real ammunition sustain and Ranger Veteran’s ammunition sustain is made melee dependent and encouraged players to enter melee I could see it working. If anything it might be a healthy nerf to Doomranger.