There’s been various commentary about it all throughout VT1 and now VT2, but here are the highlights:
VT1
Better dodge distance weapons
Unlimited dodge count weapons
Best red weapons in the game (SnD and Glaive)
Had the only orange weapon that didn’t have Killing Blow tied to one specific pair trait
Faster swinging weapons
Ability to move faster than other heroes by swinging your weapon (Dual Daggers, later gained by Ceremonial Dagger for Sienna)
Hagbane bow (best AoE weapon in the game)
First DLC (Drachenfels) added the Glaive - hands down the best melee weapon in the game at the time - for Kerillian
and more
The devs admitted it. On several streams, they stated that all the heroes have their strengths and weaknesses - except for Kerillian who was created as the hero that could “sort of do it all”.
VT2
Given 3 new weapons (most careers gained 0-1, hers gained 2-3)
Given 10% extra crit rate on most of her weapons, a bonus not received by anybody else (with the exception for Slayer with Dual Axes - a new weapon that’s OP compared to others)
Given health regen on her base class, no other class received
Given ammo regen on her base class, no other class received
Backstabbery trait from VT1 was removed from the weapon properties, and instead given to only the Shade
Hawkeye trait from VT1 was removed from the weapon properties, and instead given to only the Waywatcher
All ranged weapons substantially reduced in ammo, but elf was given three methods of regaining ammo that aren’t dependent upon firing your ranged weapon; a couple other classes got something here or there, but as usual elf was given more
Now, from a Lore perspective, Elves in the Warhammer universe are tremendously better than Humans across the board. But Dwarves are significantly better as well and Bardin doesn’t stand out significantly over Sienna, Kruber, or Saltzpyre.
I find it frustrating that not only is there not a strong effort towards keeping the classes balanced, but that there’s clearly (and admittedly) an agenda to make sure that Kerillian is always better than the other 4 heroes.
But shush, don’t you dare suggest they nerf the elf. MUH NERFING HEROESS!!11 WAYSTALKER IS FINE!! L-LOOK AT PYROM… UM… BOUNT… UH… SLAYER IS STRONGER!!! ELF IS BALANCED!!!1
Really though, the reason for all this is quite simple. Most fatfish designers are elf mains. Im pretty sure they said that themselves. I mean you’ve been there, so you’d know. And they realized at least one thing before the game was released - most people would be elf mains too.
They’re not going to dare to bring their precious overpowered waifu down. Most people primarily play her. Because most people are…
…well, I’m going to wait until I post a few more threads I’ve been meaning to get around to. Because if I try to define an elf player with my personal defnition, I don’t think I’m gonna avoid a nice thick ban.
And really though I mean did you forget all the petition for a 2handed sword for the elf? Everyone was asking for it, weren’t they? There’d have been RIOTS in the streets if this vitally important elf weapon wasn’t added. V2 wouldn’t have been a proper sequel without an elven greatsword that just so happens to have an anti-armor stab attack that Kruber very obviously did in the intro to V1 but then all him and saltzpyre got for 3+ years was swipes and only now do we get something to work around armor but the smelly garbage can dwelling elf just gets to have that and then some and its still one of her worst weapons WORDFILTER PLEASE
I certainly don’t think the “favoritism” is as strong as you’re claiming, or that it’s on purpose.
You take it to mean that Kerillian is meant to be good at everything, and it certainly can be seen that way. But I take it to mean that Kerillian was meant to be the jack-of-all-trades character, as opposed to others’ more specialized options. Unfortunately, balancing a jack-of-all-trades is a very delicate job, and it’s likely to end up on the side of “master of none”, who can do a bit of everything but can’t do anything quite well enough to keep up with the specialists; or above average at everything, when they can do almost everything almost as well as the specialists, but without the corresponding weaker side. It does seem that Kerillian has slipped to the latter category (and frankly, that’s the better option; with one slightly overpowered character, others are at least forced to play something else, but with one underpowered one, very few are going to choose her), and that even the “jack” role has slipped out in favor of mobility and fast weapons - pretty clear power creep, I’d say, even if part of it probably has happened even before publishing VT1.
While I said that I don’t think there’s actual favoritism for her, things do seem that way, and it might be good for the game if her role was redefined a bit (either rolling back to the “jack”, or by deliberately focusing her as a fragile speedster), and her abilities and weapons rebalanced according to that. All of this is so ingrained in her at the moment that it is a separate, huge undertaking, and needs to be done very carefully, and is probably mostly beyond the scope of the current balance beta. Some of the issue do certainly belong in the beta’s scope, but we’ll see if those are addressed and if, the now they affect the whole package.
I’ll also claim that part of the apparent favoritism is because the game (unforeseeen by the devs, and really only apparent after a long time of active play, by a lot of people) more or less subtly favors certain kinds of abilities and playstyles, and Kerillian happens to fit those styles well. Which then means that this needs to be looked at a lot deeper level than this.
Effective ranged, mobility being the most effective defense, offense subtly favoring multi-target or fast hits (and now in VT2, dealing with armor)… It’s not a simple thing, and if solutions are wanted to the base instead of just building around the things, ever more complex and difficult to solve.
Her melee options certainly feel the best, the mobility thing is huge imo, if you want the same mobility on other ranged careers you have to opt for less effective melee weapons.
Anyone who thinks elf is OP by comparison is obviously not playing other careers correctly. There have been considerably more unbalanced things in the past, like perma crit beamstaff / active spam pyro, who could afk the whole game by just spamming F, or infinite ammo volly crossbow BH, because of weapon swap bug, I would say even current huntsman with breakpoints is better, being able to not even full draw body shot 1 hit every special is pretty awesome.
Totally agree. 2h Axe is still pants and 1h axe got a nerf to its cleave on 2nd hit. Both these weapons needed buffs not nerfs. Instead 2h hammer gets a cleave buff against SV’s and 2h axe got its attack block nerfed against armor smh cause it was useless to use in the first place. 2h Axe vs hordes is just asking to get hit even with attack speed properties and SS. I thought fatshark were balancing weapons? Where is the balance for 2h Axe and 1h Axe then…
And that’s exactly why its on the beta branch, and not tossed directly in Live (or in a short-lived beta where no changes can effectively be tested before launching it): So that we, the players who actually have more experience in playing the game, can help in finding the correct balance for things.
IIRC, crossbow also gets 10% crit on crossbow zoomed shots, and bh can spam ranged crits like nobody’s business.
Health regen is nice, but really not that impactful on higher difficulties. There’s a reason why almost everyone takes ammo regen at 15, and it isn’t just that ammo regen is strong in its own right.
RV gets effective ammo regen baseline (while waystalker locks it behind a 15 talent), huntsman gets infinite ammo if he can land headshots, bh gets infinite ammo with a weapon trait, and sienna gets infinite ammo on every single one of her ranged weapons. Oh, and rv can supply the entire team with ammo or give his team extra bombs.
Backstab really isn’t that good in vt2.
Waystalker increased zoom really isn’t that good in vt2, and plenty of ranged weapons can roughly match longbow’s headshot damage.
Already talked about ranged ammo.
Elf has more mobility, but has no damage reduction on any of her careers. She also has relatively weaker offensive melee boosts than merc/slayer/zealot/unchained
Hagbane bow isn’t really the clear best aoe anymore (at a bare minimum, fireball staff is a strong competitor).
Yes, if you list every single good thing that the elf gets with no point of comparison, she looks op. If you list things in context, she seems a lot more reasonable.
Being better at some aspects and worse at others isn’t called favoritism, it’s called diversing player’s gameplay experience.
Where’s the problem in being a typical “jack of all trades” type of character? In VT1 she wasn’t a core character in team’s setups at Cataclysm runs, she was just preferred as a pick to Viktor, which wasn’t very versatile for the time being. In VT2, she was outclassed in early days by the Huntsman, and later on, during ranged meta, she was kinda there, in the shadow of Bountyhunter and Pyromancer, with slightly better melee, but without pre-loaded burst-damage ranged options.
She had very few outstanding melee options before the balance BETA, but so did many other careers, which are also getting their underused weapons buffed across the board, I don’t see how this favors Kerillian in expense of the others.
Just a little note here: I fail to buy the whole “objectiveness” of your view if you call for an imaginary “agenda” and then proceed to attack and label other users who disagree with you just to devalue their opinions:
To conclude, I don’t see how BETA changes for Kerillian can flip the entire game upside down. She may or may not be toned down a bit, but she is not the focus of this update anyway, while QoL, weapon balance and ranged META (which she wasn’t even a part of) - are. She basically got what other classes got, but I guess equality just isn’t enough for some people.
I don’t see what’s so bad about people enjoying playing the game the way they want to. If they “main elf” then, in your eyes, that makes them somehow inferior to people that “main” other classes? There is this absurd notion going around this forum that there always is something extremely broken and needs immediate fixing (sure, there some game-breaking bugs and outright not intended mechanics, but that’s in every game). It was huntsman first, then BH and Pyro, now it’s back to elf. Nothing seems to make denizens of these threads happy. It’s not like it’s a PVP game, but you sure sound like it is one. “Hurr-durr BH, Hurr-durr Pyro, Hurr-durr Elf”. I’m not saying that this game is about coming together and singing Kumbaya but I definitely feel like there should be more positivity going around this community. As in we should come to decisions that do not just alienate big chunks of playerbase. How about such alternatives - make other classes stronger, give them some more tools to play with and then create a new difficulty level above “Legend”? I mean, this is one thing I came up with on the spot, but it certainly sounds better to me then continuous stream of sour comments that are targeted to pit people against each other just on the basis of the career they enjoy playing. It’s not like “elf mains” sit there thinking “oh man, I sure do enjoy the fact that people cannot have as much fun playing their classes as I do”. In reality, most of them wish everyone had the most fun possible when playing the game. It’s just an inherent mentality problem that I noticed got tied in to how people perceive this situation. Anyway, if anything I said came out as negative I do sincerely apologize, I just wanted to vent some frustration on the subject.
I agree that the problems aren’t as bad as some people make them to be, but even a PvE game needs balance. If something is too strong, be it a Career, a weapon, or a particular combination of different things, it will overshadow other aspects. Shade’s strength against Bosses overshadows others’ fighting capabilities against them. Live halberd overshadows Kruber’s other weapons. Beam Pyro overshadows her other builds, and a lot of other players’ efforts. And too easy or too hard gameplay in general both overshadow the feeling of success. There still needs to balance in things, even if it’s different and perhaps a bit looser than in competitive PvP games.
Shade is a class literally designed around the fact that she kills bosses better than others. Her overshadowing others in this aspect is what it’s supposed to be like. It’s like saying that Mercenary overshadows everyone with his ability to stunlock any living being to oblivion compared to others. It’s what their design is like. But, besides the point, I agree with you that, of course, there should be balance in all things. However, I do think that there is this obvious trend to shift focus of negativity every patch onto something else until it’s watered down and brought to mediocrity.
