Experiences of an old new player

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Since this is the feedback forum, might as well post my individual experience with the game so far and what I feel could be improved from such. Get ready for the wall xP

First, a little background info. I’m an old player of V1. And by that I mean I finished all the basic maps of V1 on Cata and one of the Dlc maps a friend brought me to. So I stopped playing with a decent endgame stuff, and haven’t seen much of the old meta at all. Since it’s been more than a year since I last played V1, most of my V2 experience isn’t colored by anything but vague memories.

In V1, I played the Elf. For a number of reasons I won’t detail here, I liked her playstyle more than the other characters (mostly because I forgot most of them…). As such, in V2 I’m mostly playing the Elf and my post will focus on that.
Life being what it is, I have around 50 hours of play, and around 70 hours of V2 learning (sounds, tomes and grimes, playstyles…). So my elf is lvl 22 and my dwarf barely 10. I did one run on legend where I got carried by my friends, otherwise I play Champion.

First point of my topic begins here. As an elf player, I feel her biggest advantage is her versatility. Her kits allows her to fulfill a bunch of roles and perform well at all of them. As Waystalker, her regen and special makes her a good ranged special clearer. As Handmaiden, she’s a good frontline unit. As Shade, she’s the best special and boss DD. And overall, she’s a great support unit to any team.
Of her jobs, all are useful, but I feel that Handmaiden is far less so than the other 2. Before 1.0.6, Waystalker was the way to go. After, Shade became MUCH more powerful. But Handmaiden is still overshadowed by the other classes of the other chars and is basically redundant. Unless I know for sure the team will need another frontline unit desperately, I never pick it. Her greatest strengths (Horde clearing and shielding power) are less than the average of the other classes, and unless you’re doing True Solos, you’re not using her.
Maybe a buff that increases allies power or something similar would make her relevante, since Handmaiden does mean you’re supposed to be at the service of the team. Anyways, a buff/revamp is needed to make her useful in general play.

Second point, the QcQ weapons. I won’t detail everything, but I will talk about all of them.
-First, the 2h sword. Why would you even use it? It’s slow and cumbersome. The heavy attack is a STAB of all things, and not a slash. The few I used of it, I felt it was in every way inferior to her other weapons. No real armor damage, no real cleave power… So, it’s a bad weapon.
-Second, the 1h sword. Never really used it, so I wouldn’t know whether it’s really good or really bad.
-Third, the Dual Daggers. Useful as Shade, if that. Too under-powered to be of any use in higher difficulties. No real horde clearing power, her heavy is single target and not much more powerful than other weapons… It’s pretty bad overall, and not a weapon that should ever see use.
-Fourth, the Sword and Dagger. With the patch, they do seem better. Though again, they’re only really useful as Shade for the double backstab potential . Otherwise overshadowed by the other following weapons.
-Fifth, the dual sword. Haven’t had the chance to get a good pair of it while playing, so no real idea again.
-Sixth, the spear, and my favorite weapon. It’s first heavy is a slash, which makes it a great horde clearer. Her push-stab is also one, which means you can heavy, backdodge, guard and slash. Makes it godly to corral a horde into the other clearer, and makes it easy to play the flanker. But the lack of armor damage means it’s all but useless on Legend, where armor is everywhere. Even on Champ, I’m playing with a disadvantage and while it helps me get better, it’s still sad to see.
-Last, but only really viable weapon on Legend, is the Glaive. Unless you’re like me and just really like a weapon, this is the one you should use. Even on Champ, the Glaive is superior to all the others. It’s first advantage is that it does armor damage, which is sorely lacking on all the other elf weapons. It’s stagger seems superior to all the other weapons as well. Does it even have a light attack? The timing between them is the 0.1s it takes for me to click longer, for what is basically a much more powerful attack with little to no waiting time. It’s also a great horde clearer. The only thing I feel is worse than the spear is the push-stab, which is admittedly little.

In short, Glaive is so much better than all the others it’s stupid. While I can accept all the weapons can’t be equal, I would really like a reason to use any of the other despite their disadvantages. Maybe the 2h sword heavy knocking down armored ennemies, or the 1h sword allowing a greater dodge distance, etc. At least something to make them viable in the hands of the general players and not only in the top 0.1% of them.

Third point, the ranged weapons, and what I took away from playing them.
-First is the Hagbane shortbow. One of the two special bow from V1, the other, Trueflight being replaced by WS special. It’s crap. And while I could mince my words, I won’t. I think it’s intended to be a boss killer, but it doesn’t work at all. Poison is only useful when you have time to let it do it’s work, and in Champ/Legend you don’t. You want DPS, not some slow acting poison which can barely be felt. And that’s not even talking about the arrows. 16 as WS? Really? That’s wayyy not enough to do any meaningful damage to the boss, and not enough to clear all the specials the game throws at you. Even with the arrow regen, you’ll find yourself with an empty quiver more often than not. A big buff either to the poison or to the number of arrows is needed to make it viable at all.
-Second, the shortbow. It’s pretty bad too. It’s supposed to be a horde cleared, but when your horde is made about 1/10 of heavily armored ennemies that your bow can’t penetrate, it’s all be useless. And with the rattling gunners shooting you from over the rock, and you have to jumpshot it and hope to hit his head to do any damage is also a big minus for it. The number of arrows is all well and good until you realize you need between 3/5 arrows to kill a special. Bad efficiency unless you’re one of the 0.1% of the playerbase, in which case you can make pretty much anything works.
(And i’m not even talking about team synergy here, since dwarf/wizard are much better Horde clearer than elf shortbow could ever hope to be.)
-Third, the crossbow for the Shade. I had a grand total of 2, one with 86 hero power and the other 125, so I barely used it. Didn’t seem that great, but I imagine with the lvl 25 talent it can be a great weapon to use.
-Finally, the longbow. Best bow, hands down. For any of the classes for that matter. Whether WS, HM, or Shade it’s the weapon of choice. Can OS specials with headshots, with a great base zoom (meaning you don’t need to press a key to zoom more for the other bows.) and a great number of arrows.

Until the update, that is. The Shade got hit so very hard, because while her QcQ power increased, her range one decreased so very much. Whereas with the WS you can get arrow back, with the Shade you can’t really. At least I haven’t found a reliable way to do it without sacrificing a lot for it.

I get the update was meant to decrease the Elf bowspam and make her more QcQ (which is pretty stupid, since the elf is supposed to take care of ennemies ‘by bow or blade’), but WS can still spambow just as before, if only needing to play a bit more intelligently (I tried, and i still can, even lvl 20…) , and Shade and Handmaiden got screwed over.
And I’m sorry everyone saying I just have to hit headshots and get good, i’m not there yet. I can hit headshots about half the time, which isn’t bad, but i’m not a machine. And most players aren’t, even on Champion, if the fact I often get the most headshots is any indication. And perhaps even on Legend, though I might be saying bull there. Nerfing the game and affecting everyone but the extremely good players isn’t really how you make it fair or good. It’ll only discourage people from getting good. Making it good in the hands of the average and great in the hands of experts is how you should try and balance it.

Though keep in mind I’m not complaining too much for the WS here. As WS, you have MORE than enough ways to regain ammo, you just have to sacrifice some of her other utility for it, which just makes her a little less versatile (still sad because it’s kinda what she’s meant for, but too much can also be bad, so eh, I can see why). With her increased arrow capacity, it’s also not too bad. But Handmaiden means choosing a talent over other obviously as useful every time, and Shade get almost gutted by it in ranged capacity.

I feel this update was bad in the sense it forces a meta on the players. Since Fatshark doesn’t want range, it just stops players from getting much out of it. A better approach would have been to nerf progressively and see what the players made out of it. Encouraging players to use melee by boosting said melee would have made more sense for all the classes, if that’s what they wanted. Even more so, why would you target Elf when you have a Dwarf with infinite ammo gun and flamethrower and a wizard that still can staff spam.
But since the patches aren’t over, I’ll wait and see before crying more about it. I’m just a tad sad to see another game getting heavy-handed instead of doing it progressively xD

Now my advice/recommendation/whatever for that, would be to nerf the talents instead. Because WS is spambow thanks to her talents. Increasing her arrow capacity back but decreasing her ammo regen would allow players to improve while leaving them a margin of error, while the top 0.1% of the game would get even more out of it. Or perhaps stop her regen entirely for a slower ammo regen. Something like that.

Since the post is getting super long, I won’t get more into my experiences. But I just wanna say, the game got me hooked, and I’m really interested in how it’s gonna go down (which is why i even bothered typing what I did, had I not cared I wouldn’t have…).
I hope Fatshark finds a way to accommodate all the playerbase, and make all the classes and weapons useful and fun. Keep up the great work guys, and I hope the game only keeps on getting better!
For everyone else, I hope we meet in game one day.

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Glad to hear you’re enjoying the game. Maybe try looking at it differently, there’s good and bad weapons/styles. Just cause something is considered bad, doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.

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I suppose.
But the thing is, you get far more enjoyment out of winning than you get out of just playing. Or at least it comes hand in hand. Playing a bad weapon consciously means you’re hampering your chances of winning. And losing over and over again takes the enjoyment out of playing how you like.
It’s like doing volleyball with only one hand. It’s an interesting challenge once in a while. But when you spend over 50 hours doing it, not only does it become annoying, you just stop doing the arbitrary limitation you imposed on yourself.

Here, you just switch to meta weapons, because you’re tired of your team/friend telling you to because you make them lose, or you’re just tired of dying over and over again.
If the game rewarded us by making them more esoteric with interesting side effects, a more diverse play-style would be both fun and rewarding, instead of just a self-imposed limitation few people bother with.
At least I hope Fatshark manages to make it more diverse than just one viable, and everything else not.

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They need to be somewhat viable though. Not dps wise, but survivability at least.

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Yeah, or at least much more fun to play then they are.
They either should be able to let you survive using them, or have enough advantages to let you use them despite the drawbacks.
For example, the Elf 2h sword knocking the armored ennemies down. A heavy knocking a row of ennemies to the side would make it fun to play, since it would allow you to give breathing room to your team and would let you take less damage.
Dual dagger having inherent backstab crit could also work.
Or at least SOMETHING that doesn’t make using them feel arbitrary challenge.

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I love using elf 2h sword though, the stab makes it feel unique compared to the other (boring) 2 handed swords. Same with dual daggers, so much fun. Haven’t played legend so I can’t really comment how viable they are.

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I haven’t played much legend either (once).
But from what I’ve seen, in Legend it’s either Glaive or nothing. There’s no in-between, because of the number of Armored they throw at you. Or you play Shade, and Dual Sword/Sword and Dagger become somewhat viable.
And I don’t really care about the animation, or anything, as long as the mechanic behind the weapons are fun. As long as they feel great to play, I could swing a giant brown stick all day long.

A comparison I thought of were True Solo runs. They’re also an arbitrary limitation. But you’re not hampering yourself the same way you do when you choose a bad weapon.
In True Solo, it’s your best against everything else. The challenge behind is different.
But with a bad weapon, it’s your best with a hindrance to your true skill.
At least to me, it feels so much worse than failing a true solo. Knowing that I could have done better had I used a better weapon.
Maybe it’s just me though xD

Anyways, with the patching going on, I hope they’ll keep going until they find the right balance. The best for everyone.

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Glaive is just ez mode when dealing with armor. The others can deal with it as well and you’ve got ranged weapons. Anyway, here’s to fatshark who on trying to improve this great game they made.

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Since last patch I play always on Legend and champion with my Shade dual daggers. Doing it great every time.
It’s up to you and to your play style.

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About the career viability, Handmaiden need a small buff, not to compare with other Elf careers, but to compare with other “tank” career. I think she’s supposed to be a Push master or something, she can dash a move around, but her talent doesn’t reflect anything.
She should get bonus rez speed, give bonuses on rez, and have more push strengh or effect. I think HM role should be the “backup” tank. Not as good as Ironbreaker or Footknight when everything work as intended, but her dash/push/rez should allow her to shine when something didn’t go as planned (a teammate behind, etc…)
(Then we got Unchained and Zealot, which are more like Offtank).

About the weapon, 2h sword is fine, it need a small buff to compete with Glaive, but you missunderstand the point of the charged attack I think. This stab can deal enormous damage to Chaos Warrior/Stormvermin head (and you got a lot of them in Legend), and it’s followed by a sweet swing that deal really well with hordes.
1h sword is just… I don’t know, but it needs A LOT of love.
Dual dagger is good on Shade, really good. The mobility it gives you allow you to dances around and dodge everything.
Sword and Dagger were my favorite weapon on VT1, and they still feel amazing here. If what you like about Elf is her versatility, then you should like Sword and Dagger, it’s really balanced (in stat sense, not gameplay balance) you got defense, offense, stagger, quick moves, cleave and mono-target damage.
Dual Sword, I never really played it, I think they’re supposed to be horde clearer. They need a bit more armor pen more me, so they can get through some elites in hordes.
Spear and Glaive are really loved, I’m quite bad with the spear, but it still feels as a good weapon ^^

Hagbane has always been a challenge to balance I think xD I still don’t get it’s role, wether it’s horde controle or boss damage…
Shortbow is ok I guess, it actually amazing against bosses (especially trolls and stormfiend) the harassment you can provide is quite nice
Longbow is still as good.
Repeater Xbow, what I use, is good. You just gotta be REALLY careful on ammo. Kill specials WHEN your mates can’t, and unload on bosses or dangerous elites. But the damage are worth it.

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Honestly, I still don’t see the real use of Dual Daggers. Feel like too bad of a weapon compared to the Glaive, or even the spear. The few advantages (mobility and speed) don’t really help making it viable as anything but a shade backup/for fun weapon. And certainly not as an Ws/Hm main weapon.
Handmaiden really need a boost, perhaps not so much as a tank (backup or not) but as a support. A passive/talent that increases the group overall strength could help a lot in making it useful. I have also never seen real clutch plays made by Handmaiden outside the hands of true masters of their crafts, which are very rare. At least not while I was playing my dwarf in Champion.

The 2h sword needs a headshot to deal enormous damage? How is it different from the Glaive, which just does everything else better as well as deal enormous damage to the armored? And the SECOND heavy is a swipe? Why isn’t it the first, because when you heavy you most likely want both the cleaving power and the clearing power. The weapon would make more sense were it in reverse.
And that’s still not counting the slow light attacks. I feel like 2h is too slow and focused on one thing for the Elf playstyle (Dodging and flanking and sniping without blocking attacks head on), while being badly balanced on top of that. But hey, it’s just my feedback, never said it was objective xD

Shortbow might be good against bosses. Never really looked back after I found I loved longbow, and my shortbow had a 101 Hero Power on champion, so the meh DPS might come from that. But I don’t really see how shortbow does better against bosses then longbow, when you take into account you’re supposed to clear the specials on the way to said boss, and will most likely not fight it with a full quiver. Even less so with it’s bad armor pene and overall shot damage. (It’s easier to do one headshot on a moving target, than have to do it 3 times without being attacked on the side. You waste less arrow and have less chances of missing.)
Xbow might be good, but when playing on quickplay champion without your mate, you can’t really afford to assume they will clear the specials. That gets you killed super easily. So, you kind of have to kill them all, and ammunition goes down FAST like that.

Maybe my problem was that I didn’t really do my tests with a dedicated team of friend, and most of it on quickplay. But you can’t really balance a game of Co-op while thinking everyone has someone to Co-op with, or friends to play with. Quickplay is still really wildly played, and you need to first balance around that, then on group plays. If Fatshark is assuming people will only ever play with friends they can communicate with beforehand, the number of people dropping the game will increase. And the overall balance will suffer a lot.
I do concede that my feedback really doesn’t show anything when doing group plays, and would probably change somewhat had I played with my friends while testing my stuff. But it’s still feedback and ways to improve the game, so here it is xD

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They are really strong on a Shade, but now both SnS and SnD got a buff on last patch and all theese weapons are viable.
On HM an WS maybe a Glaive or Spear are better

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Well, I agree that it’s somehow stupid to give best anti-armour weapon (glaive) best cleave and stagger of all elf weapons, but saying that all other melee options are not viable is wrong. Do some of her melee weapons need buff? Yes, of course. Should FS somehow nerf glaive? May be. As for me, I prefer SnS on Shade and glaive on WS, some people run Shade with DnD or SnD, with my team comp i prefer SnS, but in some situations I found DnD better, it’s also up to your playstyle.

About her ranged weapons, for Shade and WS Longbow nerf don’t seems noticable at all, I just change trait on LB from “2 arrows on crit” to “an arrow on HS”. As WS u still have passive regen of arrows, even vith halved passive u got enough arrows to clear horde and have some arrows left for specials/elites. Of course you need to aim, but hitting even 50% HS while fighting horde is enough not to run out of ammo. Also Shade have extremly good ammo regen with lvl 15 tallent, on horde u pop invis, and with 1 heavy attack backstab u can regen about 5 arrows, or even more, and with melee trait “-2% ultimate cd on crit” your ult recharges extremly fast. Sometimes it’s a risky move to do, but if your positioning is right u can easily dodge away from danger. I also found Volley very usefull at close and medium range VS elites and ShieldVermins. With 10% armour 10% skaven and power from grim it’s right click attack kills any elite/SV. SV actually needs 2 right click burst (or 6 bolts), coz first burst puts hiw shield down, and second burst kills him, or you need to flank him, but sometimes it’s unrealistic scenario. Also Volley is an OK weapon VS bosses, especially vs Stormfiend, who loves to take highground and fire his flames from afar. With ammo on HS u can kill him pretty easily. Personally I don’t like Swiftbow and Hagbane, but some people do legend runs with them, so I’m not sure it’s not viable option.

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This is so terribly wrong , i play dual daggers and dual swords on Legend runs and i have friends who play sword and dagger and spear , some of them lack in specific department’s but that’s where team composition comes into play , all weapons are viable if your skill can utilize them

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wardancer’s charge stab could use a better headshot multiplier maybe, but more then anything it needs to not handle like hot ass. releasing your RMB and clicking to swing, only to end up pushing almost a full second later makes it feel like complete garbage. throw in the lack of ability to cancel your swings and it’s just endless frustration to try and use in a game where you can cancel a damned 2H hammer overhead swing at the last second. glaive also suffers from this, but with how strong the weapon is it’s a fine way to keep the weapon balanced, leaving you open for punishment. that clunkiness has got to go for wardancer though, or alternatively everything else would need brought up. either option would make it far more viable and fun to use.

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So what you mean is, they’re obviously inferior because they lack the advantages the glaive has, and thus you have to make the difference with your skill and team comp.
Maybe viable wasn’t the right word. I should have said: “the only logical weapon you should use.” Because it’s illogical to use the other weapons.

And that’s still not viability. A weapon, in a game, is viable when it’s the equal of all the others, or has enough advantages that you can look past it’s weakness. That’s basic game balance.
Let’s take a real weapon. The rapier is viable. In a duel without armor. In war, it’s cast aside because it’s strength can’t compare to it’s weaknesses, and you’re more likely to fail ( and die…) .
In V2, Legend (which I have now played more of) is war, and using a rapier (any weapon other than the glaive) is literally handicapping yourself.
(Thought do look past the RL analogy, since I just said in a game before… But I’m sure I can find other obvious examples from other games.)

Final point is, maybe for you it works. But you’re still shooting yourself in the foot by not using the glaive since it’s still better than all the other weapons.

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For the arrow bits, after reaching lvl 25, the ammo problems on shade was lessened somewhat, and is almost non-existant on WS. HM, on the other hand, still has enough problems that you almost have to square a talent off to remain versatile.

Also, viability in a game isn’t so much as who can use it, as much as ‘is it equal to the other weapons’. If a weapon is so much better than the others, you’re handicapping yourself by not choosing it. And the other weapons become non-viable by default.
If you have to compensate for obvious disadvantages with skill and team comp, while the other weapon allows you to not bother, the second weapon (here the glaive) allows for a much higher overall skill ceiling.
Just like playing with a bad mouse and keyboard, as soon as it gets better, you get better.

So, a boost is really needed to make the other weapons worth using as something other than ‘a challenge’ or ‘I like it enough that I’ll take on the bad parts of it’

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For someone who just started legend you sure know everything about the game huh…

Every weapon has their pros and cons. Sure the glaive is pretty good at a lot of things, but other weapons can outperform it in different areas, which may require more skill to use, but with skill they would outperform the glaive. Play a couple hundred more hours and learn how all the weapons are used before making up your mind about it.

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when you have mastered the shade class, you will learn that all the lighter weapons are extremely deadly and have their uses. on a handmaiden or WS, they’re not as effective because of the lack of supporting talents.

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I genuinely LAUGHED when I read that. If you’re trying to make people feel welcome in a community, you’re doing it very badly xD
I don’t NEED to play over a hundred hours to clearly say how I feel, even more so when I feel a weapon is overpowered. It’s my impressions, and if they’re bad, then I won’t want to play for ‘a couple hundred hours’, same as most sane people. (Also when you’re playing a game, first impressions are REALLY important. Why wouldn’t I make my mind about it? It’s what’s the game showing me after all.)
I’m now at over 80 hours of play. And I must say, my opinion didn’t change one bit. I’m running consistently legend, with all the elf classes. And any classes I play, glaive outperforms the others. I do have around 10 hours of plays with the dual-daggers as shade ( as some people above have pointed out ), and I can see why they’re liked. But I still feel like the Glaive is the strongest.
Finally, I’ve done some legendary deeds. Nevermind the fact some deeds are only possible as HM, if you don’t pick Glaive for the armor pene, you get destroyed.
If on a higher difficulty the other weapons aren’t even an option, then the game still need balancing.