They don’t call the elf class the noob class for nothing 
She’s the only hero you don’t have to learn game mechanics to master. I don’t like playing the elf because it makes Legend feel like Recruit. I actually enjoy a challenge while I’m playing. It’s been like this since the first game because Trueflight had auto-aim if you zoomed in on a target. No need to learn how to aim for the head with Keri.
PEW PEW PEW = VICTORIOUS
You have to learn the game mechanics to play any class or career on legend. Saying that you will never be challenged while playing on elf is quite a frivolous exaggeration. Your ability to perform well on legend is not even tied to your class or career as much as understanding the core mechanics of the gameplay to begin with. I main elf but whenever I play any of my other alts I’m still seeing myself do really well in “damage taken” and “damage done” statistics.
It’s more important to know things like when to go in and out of combat, when to retreat and to kite, when to shift your focus in combat to specials or elites and so on. Basically a whole lot of things that literally have nothing to do with what your passives, abilities or weapons are. If you can do core mechanics well enough you can have a torch and still beat blightreaper solo.
^^^elf main
All jokes aside, playing Kerillian has always been considered “easy mode” in both Vermintide games and I think the devs created her on purpose for those players struggling with the game.
They repeatedly admitted in their live streams that they are not that good at the game and I think they made her strong on purpose. Which to be fair, all video games have that one class that outperforms all others especially in The Elder Scrolls Online. It is a way to attract all kinds of players to their games whether they are casual or professional gamers. You have to have a class for everyone.
No, you don’t need to learn game mechanics to play the elf on Legend. The very first Legend game I played was with Waystalker and I shot through everything and won. It felt cheap and I did not enjoy it. I prefer playing what others have called “sub-par” classes because, to me, it feels more satisfying to complete a Legend run without having to shoot or ult my way through.
You can get carried on any class.
I dunno, these things all feel warranted; firstly, most of her weapons from game 1 were just different combos of the same two weapons; the sword and the dagger. Those two count for four of her weapon options.
Every dual-weapon gets increased crit chance, so that doesn’t seem that weird.
All the rest of this is just complaining about passives. Every single career has passives and many are really good. Bounty Hunter’s auto-crit is obscenely strong. Saltzpyre gets bonus headshot damage on WHC. On Zealot he gets an immunity to being downed on a short cooldown! And let’s not forget Bardin, since you brought him up; Slayer is easily the strongest class in the game, and Ironbreaker is absurdly tanky. I’ve had a horde beating on me while I used a health draught and came out ahead, he’s got such damage resistance.
I don’t think there’s favoritism for characters, really, other than specializations.
In what universe is elf easy mode? Yes, you can spam ranged through a level with elf. However, you can do that with any of the ranged classes, and you can get carried on any class at all. Outside of that, though, elf is pretty damn unforgiving. Good mobility is great, but you need a certain baseline level of skill to take advantage of it. If you do get hit on any elf career, it will ruin your day.
If you want easy mode, look at unchained/ironbreaker/zealot (speaking as someone who has been spamming unchained). The tankiness you get from all three careers is absurd, and unchained in particular gets extremely powerful ranged weapons to boot. Seriously, fireball staff has infinite ammo, amazing horde control, solid boss damage, and decent special sniping. Dagger has solid horde control, great elite control with the first charged attack, and solid armor damage on the second charged attack. And if you get hit, who cares? 150hp + 50% damage reduction means that it is damn near impossible to go down through straight hp damage, you can ult away overcharge even after you go into the explosion animation, and that will also kill/knock back everything around you so you can get to safety. And even in the beta, you can spam your ranged weapon at least as much as the far squishier waystalker, because nat bond + the vent talent means that your health regen can easily make up for the couple hp you vent away.
M8 U just can’t understand it. Elf OP, VOLVO NERF HER NOW!!! [sarcasm off]
First off can we agree to leave V1 out of the discussion? I know it’s relevant towards favouritism historically - and through reading it - we now have that in hindsight, but for the purpose of this discussion and regarding balance, let’s limit it to the game we’re actually playing.
Is that fair to you?
Also, if all the little internet trolls refrain from posting their asinine comments about waifus, weebs end “insert character” mains This goes for you too @krindi. It diminishes your arguments, and does not do you, or the discussion, any favours.
I do you believe you wish to discuss your perceived imbalance of Kerillian, compared to other characters?
If that is so, please let it be a civil discussion.
Lastly - anything posted here is assumed to be in reference to Legend and Legend+ (including DeathWish mod) play and balancing.
First off, some excellent points in Yzneftamz post - thumbs up mate - I pretty much think you hit the nail right on its head.
Your argumentation about “jack-of-all-trades” and how her complete kit works extremely well within the framework of V2, is simply superb. Everyone should read this post, so please do.
Since I don’t know how to condense text into “spoilers” the formatting will be a bit messy - my apologies…
I do however want to expand on some things, mainly stuff that I plainly disagree with (krindi post, not Yzneftamz (could you have picked a more annoying name to type? 
), general observations and suggestions.
For the love of (insert chosen deity), someone message me how to spoiler tag stuff like the following, so it doesn’t become a giant wall of text/images.
| Bardin Goreksson | Kerillian | Markus Kruber | Sienna Fuegonasus | Victor Saltzpyre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axe | Dual Daggers | Executioner Sword | Dagger | Axe |
| Axe and Shield | Dual Swords | Halberd | Fire Sword | Falchion |
| Dual Axes | Elven Spear | Mace | Mace | Flail |
| Great Axe | Glaive | Mace and Shield | Sword | Rapier |
| Hammer | Sword | Sword | Two-Handed Sword | |
| Hammer and Shield | Sword and Dagger | Sword and Shield | ||
| Two-Handed Hammer | Two-Handed Sword | Two-Handed Hammer | ||
| War Pick | Two-Handed Sword |
| Bardin Goreksson | Kerillian | Markus Kruber | Sienna Fuegonasus | Victor Saltzpyre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crossbow | Hagbane Shortbow | Blunderbuss | Beam Staff | Brace of Pistols |
| Drakefire Pistols | Longbow | Handgun | Bolt Staff | Crossbow |
| Drakegun | Swiftbow | Longbow | Conflagration Staff | Repeater Pistol |
| Grudge-Raker | Volley Crossbow | Repeater Handgun | Fireball Staff | Volley Crossbow |
| Handgun | Flamestorm Staff | |||
As far as I can tell, the only one really missing out is Saltz. Sienna has an excellent and versatile choice of melee weapons (disregard balancing for now), but it’s somewhat limited, which i think is fair since she has such immense ranged capabilities.
Here are the stats for generating Ult from damage taken and hitting enemies, just so we have that out of the way as well (Values displayed represent cooldon in seconds per hit or 1 damage taken):
|Career|On Hit|1 Damage taken|
| — | — | — | — |
|Bardin|
|Ranger Veteran|0.3|0.3|
|Ironbreaker|0.25|0.5|
|Slayer|0.5|0.1|
|Kruber|
|Mercenary|0.5|0.5|
|Huntsman|0.3|0.4|
|Foot Knight|0.25|0.5|
|Kerillian|
|Waystalker|0.35|0.3|
|Handmaiden|0.25|0.5|
|Shade|0.5|0.2|
|Saltzpyre|
|Witch Hunter Captain|0.5|0.2|
|Bounty Hunter|0.25|0.3|
|Zealot|0.5|0.2|
|Sienna|
|Battle Wizard|0.25|0.5|
|Pyromancer|0.25|0.3|
|Unchained|0.25|0.5|
With regards to the rest of your bulleted list, I think retief’s post answers/counters them pretty well:
Moving on to some general arguments against Elf (and their counters):
1: Elf is BETTER than everyone else at EVERYTHING.
This is simply not true. She is perhaps objectively the best at killing bosses with Shade and Hagbane Waystalker, but both of these need a potion to move in to overpowered territory, and in case of Hagbane, actually having enough ammo available. Sienna’s fireball staff is pretty damn close when it comes to boss killing, and it doesn’t require saving resources to do so. Same with certain Huntsman and Bounty hunter builds. Several characters easily match and outmatch her effective melee dps output VS bosses too
Every argument made, whether it be hordeclear, elite slaying etc. can easily be countered because she is outclassed by another SPECIALISED character. (more on specialisation vs versatility later)
2: The EASIEST character to play.
This is such a simplistic and broad statement that countering is bothersome. So I will do it under the assumption of the following definition: _
Easiest = easiest to stay alive, easiest to kill every type of enemy, easiest weapons to use.
Easiest to stay alive: To this I do not agree. There’s a reason that Shades, Waystalkers, Bounty Hunters, Pyromancers etc. (characters with 100 base HP and no DR) have gotten such a bad reputation. It’s because they’re so unforgiving to play, and one mistake means being downed or death. This of course only applies to toughness, most of these classes are given tools to survive, but have no damage mitigation, and I don’t think anyone can argue that the easiest way of “not dying”, would be not to die from taking damage?.
Easiest to kill every type of enemy:
Again she is often matched our outclassed by every other SPECIALISED character/weapon combination. Dual daggers were a problem in this regard, and have been mostly dealt with (could still need balancing, but we’ve received no end date for beta, so let’s assume that we have time to put it where it needs to be)
With regards to her ranged weapons, other characters specialised weapons and careers have more efficient tools at their disposal.
Easiest weapons to use:
Most “versatile” weapons available to her, perhaps, but they are “by and large” as easy to use as every other career’s weapons. Some weapons are very easy to use, as they should be, and some weapons have a bit more depth to them. This is a good thing as it brings something for every type of player, no matter their skill. This is something that is not exclusive to Kerillian. I have have yet to see anyone make this argument, where it isn’t easily rebutted
3: Has the BEST weapons
Every argument made, whether it be hordeclear, elite slaying etc. can easily be countered because her weapons are outclassed by another SPECIALISED weapon/character combination. (more on specialisation vs versatility later)
4: Has the BEST Perks and/or Ults and/or Talents:
Perks:
Her kits are perhaps better thought out and cohesive, but yet again specialised careers have way more powerful perks available to them (Zealot Undying, Ironbreaker Gromril Armour etc.)
Biggest gripe seems to be health regen on Waystalker. Even at full health she is often surprisingly fragile, add grims in the mix and she may as well not have regen, except when you play really well and it may save you from the occasional sneaky slave rat. Make it an aura (like the talent available), lower its base value and buff the impact of using the share talent.
Ults:
There’s glaring issues with several of Kerillian’s Ults as a whole, but the ults themselves are not overpowered in their own right compared to specialised careers overall (except shade whose specialty is to take out high value targets). I don’t think anyone will argue that conc+shade ult is silly (conc combined with a number of ults is silly in general), same with stealth not breaking with Handmaiden 25th talent making her invisible for 3 seconds, 20% ammo regain on Waystalker also has valid concerns attached to it
Talents:
The most common argument seems to be surrounding Keri’s access to 2 talents that allow her to get ammo back on Waystalker. In part I agree with this, I would suggest changing her a bit (Later in post or perhaps in a new thread).
General idea of these changes is to free up talents to open up more choice, I’ll be posting suggestions for all ranged careers, as you cannot change one without systemically looking at the impact on her compatriots, and then holistically looking at the impact on the game.
We’ve already touched on the subject of Handmaiden and Shade Ults in combination with talents/items above, so let’s leave it at that.
What i don’t understand is why noone is mentioning the actually overpowered nature of Handmaiden’s stamina regen aura, even though it’s been buffed every time stamina has been buffed recently.
… . . . . . . . . . . . . …Are there other arguments against her talents?… … … … … . …
TL:DR - Boiled down the above translates roughly to the following:
Elf is indeed not the easiest character to play, in fact there’s a strong argument to be made that across all her careers she might have the highest skill ceiling out of all, which is why she is able to perform so well. Now that skill ceiling is caused by a number of factors, mainly how versatility > specialisation and we will be exploring this in the next chapter.
“Skill ceiling” can be paraphased to “Personal Skill Dependent Power Ceiling”, and is easily mistaken for the now classic term “Overpowered”.
The term Overpowered can only really be applied to Kerillian in the sense that her greatest strength is her versatility, and in V2 versatility is king (explained later).
Enemies and Gameplay
Enemies in V2 are abundant and diverse. The game functions through a RNG difficulty spike system that throws a multitude of mixed challenges at you. The inherent nature of RNG mixed with diversity, often creates scenarios with little to no counterplay, and this is where your dependency on your teammates, and them subsequently, saving your butt from a Gutter Runner who jumped off a mountain in the distance and is now actively tickling you to death.
There are few players who can go at it alone, and the required skill level is rather high compared to the average gamer. It is however possible, by getting “gud” and minimising risk by always ensuring an advantageous position - yet even the best players in the world experiences a significant possibility of failure.
Challenges like these that are hard to overcome alone, but with the help of your allies you can be victorious. The opposite also holds true. Allies can be as detrimental as they can be helpful.
Versatility > Specialisation
Due to stuff mentioned in Enemies and Gameplay, the game has very little room for too much specialisation. The more enemies and combinations of enemies you are able to deal with on your own, improves your odds of success, be it in a team or solo (or solo in a group). There’s a reason we see so many request to improve weapons in areas they are particularly weak in. Be it against multiple enemies, tanky enemies, bosses, armour etc.
This is a perfectly reasonable request because if everyone can only do one job, you end up being completely dependent on a teammate to deal with certain threats. This is simply not feasible given the high pace and pressure of the game. If that was to change we would have to change the very nature of the game.
Character/Career focus and efficiency
This is where we get to Kerillian again (sorry)
Kerillian as @Yzneftamz so elegantly put, a "Jack of all Trades) character. But she’s more than that. She’s a Jack of all Trades with a focus on Damage, and how you apply that damage is up to you as the player, through her choice of careers. The cost of this focus on damage, is that she is rather fragile and can go down quite easily - if mistakes are made or RNGesus decides it’s not your day to shine.
What we often see in higher tier of play is a focus on “Efficiency”. Players choosing to use 4 careers together who are efficient at dealing with threats, where some characters are more specialised than others, but still versatile enough to hold their own.
A typical team composition for high difficulty deeds/deathwish:
A Slayer be the front line player on the team. As he is a specialised melee frontliner, who can also deal with elites handily, but is weak to specials, we would need someone that is able to deal with that threat.
Second character could be a mercenary, a character able to assist on the frontline, with and ability that buffs teammates THP and amazing hordeclear speed, as well as access to an excellent single target destroying ranged weapon (Rifle). He is going to be right alongside the Slayer making sure he is not overwhelmed, and he can veer off to help the backline securing their position, as the slayer can hold his own well enough.
Now for the backline, let’s say we pick a Huntsman or Bounty hunter as these are great picks for some special/elite killing, because we know that the Slayer is weak vs specials we pick someone who is strong against them.
Now for our fourth pick… We don’t really need any more frontline, now do we? Do we double down on the elite/special slaying, bringing both huntsman AND bounty hunter? Do we bring ranged AOE clearing in the form of sienna with a fireball staff, since she also does really well against bosses?
Or do we pick an elf who can provide a little bit of everything, and bring along a hagbane bow or shade ult for that all important boss slaying?
We can repeat this scenario a hundred times, and there’s never a scenario where an elf can’t be a benefit to her team, and that’s because she’s extremely versatile. Proficient at everything, but master of (almost) none. This is where the misconception of Overpowered might play in.
Let’s take a look at Saltzpyre as an example:
Witch Hunter Captain: Primarily melee support character. Works as a force multiplier as having him on the team applies 20% damage taken debuff to most recently marked target for a duration. Killing anything that can be pinged procs teamwide buffs. His ultimate is great for clutching and giving the entire team a short boost in damage output. Has talents that can shift his efficiency towards melee or (slightly) ranged.
Has decent hp pool (125 in beta) and no damage reduction available to him.
Bounty Hunter: Primarily ranged focused career that utilises melee to buff his ranged capabilites (melee kill reset and so on.), excels at taking out high value targets and specials at range.
It’s kill or be killed, has very little in terms of clutch potential, and no damage reduction or HP increase
Zealot: Primarily a frontline DPS/off-tank hybrid. Great at melee, but nothing enhancing ranged capabilities. Has decent clutch potential and excellent damage reduction alongside a last hit divine shield that makes him unkillable for a few seconds where every other character would have died.
Now the problem here seems to be balancing weapons for all these distinct careers. How do we prevent ranged weapons becoming too powerful on Bounty Hunter, and still make them sufficient on careers like Zealot and Witch Hunter Captain?
This is where Fatshark has failed, if you ask me, and this is where we as a community can help them.
Now with ALL that out of the way, I want to proceed to what I consider to be the meat and potatoes of this very community dividing discussion.
Kerillian is not overpowered in any one area, she’s powerful and rewards skill and effective application of her weapons and abilities - because she’s versatile and the other careers are not.
I don’t really care to add to the argument overall (what’s the point), but this is false. Dual daggers from live is hands down the best anti-boss weapon. Spear is the new replacement in that category for the beta patch. Both weapons significantly outperformed the average (and dual daggers were heavily nerfed accordingly).
Most of the other weapons are roughly around the average time to kill though.
I thought I’d put in a disclaimer that any experimental changes in Beta, should be taken with a grain of salt, but perhaps I didn’t.
If you think spear is the biggest problem weapon balance wise in the Beta though, I do believe you should do some more testing.
May I ask why there’s no point to arguing my post?
Also can you reference any testing results regarding the average time to kill statement? (This is not an attempt to critisise or debunk your post, just curiosity and gathering information)
Never made that point in this thread, but cool.
Was referring not to your post specifically, but to whether Kerillian is favored. I understand the viewpoint behind it, but I just don’t think it matters whether it’s true.
Sure, check out my post history. It’s generally all mixed around, but for some of my Kerillian testing you can ctrl+f for the spear thread. For some of my Bardin testing you can ctrl+f for my bardin feedback thread.
Only thing I’ve got to say is that I’ve always thought of both Kerillian and Bardin as better than Sienna, and Sienna as slightly better than Saltz and Krubs, which is in line with their power lore-wise. Bardin’s power is more reflected by his higher skill floor though, as opposed to Kerillian’s skill ceiling, which makes sense given their species.
I can’t understand the arguing in the comments. Hate towards Elf players has been around since early vt1. This is nothing new.
My personal opinion(I play everyone fairly equally besides Sienna), Elf is pretty strong compared to other classes. That being said I have never felt like she was ridiculous or Favorited. When playing with my friends my stats are always roughly the same no matter who I play as. If you’re getting carried by Elf mains in matches maybe you should spend more time playing with new builds and learning the game better rather than making ludicrous posts in forums and blaming it all on “She just has better stats”. Elf does take some manner of game knowledge just like everyone else does. They don’t just jump into quick play then left click to get all the kills and all the special kills or what have you.
Sick of posts like this.
Honestly, this is completely true. Elf always has the best selection of melee weapons. Almost all of hers are good, amazing, or decent. Most other characters have 1 or 2 clear choices for their melee weapon, with a few average and a few mediocre choices thrown in. At least, that is my / my groups opinion.
I disagree, I think elf is one of the easiest careers to play well, but she is balanced. The difference between myself and my friend on shade and huntsman is typically negligible. I have 500+ hours on Huntsman, he has 500+ on Shade, if he goes hunts and I go Shade, we match each other even on different careers. 1 hour of shade play and I was beyond competent at it, I don’t think its particularly difficult, however some other careers require a bit more patience.
Only because of mobility, if you play a class that relies less on mobility from weapon dodge say FK, than Halberd becomes competitive if not just strait better than most of the elf weapons
From a lore perspective yea, from a gameplay perspective nah… BH and Huntsman have been extremely competitive careers.
Not to nit-pick your point but we have to get a few things straight
Kerillian’s crossbow and 2hd sword are garbage tier weapons, used as novelty, or ignored completely by anyone playing her to win games. So, effectively, she’s only gotten 1 new GOOD weapon, and even that was arguable until this recent patch.
She is the only real “sneaky” type of character w/ dagger weapons whom the talent would be thematically appropriate for. Discounting Sienna dagger - for whom it would be thematically innapropriate - and Saltzpyre, whom, again, it’s still not REALLY thematically appropriate for.
Secondly, instead of doing more dmg per backstab, like in VT1(iirc), in VT2, it has a chance to insta-kill the target. This is really a useless talent since most things will die from either 1 - 2 hits from daggers which already swing faster than most other weapons, or from 1 charged headshot, and the only usefulness it might have gained by killing something like a Chaos Warrior, or boss, is negated because they’re not “human size”.
This is actually an anti-talent. Anyone worth their salt who plays Kerillian HATES this ability. It serves to make it harder to hit things in close proximity w/ the longbow and makes you more vulnerable since your FoV is tunneled in, even when you don’t want it to be.
This ability used to be slightly mitigatable prior to a patch which took away the 3 different levels of zoom.
Even Jsat, who plays on modded servers, always plays w/ a “no zoom” mod because the zoom makes the game harder and less enjoyable as Waystalker.
With all that said, yeah, I’d agree with you that perhaps Kerillian has more content, but you can rest easy knowing that the only thing that means is that Fatshark blunders more things up for her. Especially given how hard ranged characters were nerfed this last patch.
