Footknight: Staggering Force should be a passive

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
62

I personally feel it would, as the shield bash would hit more enemies, and the light attacks would stagger more. It would definitely help the Mace and Shield a lot as well, as a stagger cleave increase would have very good results on its high stagger cleave attacks. This would let a FK conserve stamina more easily. Additionally while it’s good for shields to synergise well with FK, I think other weapons should as well. The stagger cleave could be a talent or passive, or could even just be a part of the Staggering Force talent + add a 15% stagger power passive.

Iirc FK gets a ton of ult from getting hit by anything. Combine that with attack speed ult which will make the ult generation very fast. If anything I’d rather a longer cooldown with more impact. It almost feels cheap currently. Same problem I have with Handmaiden - ult is up so often I find myself using it for fun rather than tactical usage. I’d rather a somewhat stronger ult with a bit of a longer cooldown (45s might be good). Just a personal preference though.

I’ll be honest I just want the Greatsword to be good on FK in a way that’s unique from Mercenary. Looks too good but the only current synergy it has is Bull of Ostland. Bull of Ostland is a strong talent but Merc’s extra cleave and the Greatsword are a better pair.

I get what you’re saying. Currently FK can charge CWs but when the CWs get back up FK doesn’t have much to use against them besides base weapon stuff (nothing unique unfortunately). Other careers have fun mobility options, stagger or other mechanics to do things outside of their ults. This basically means if FK doesn’t take Staggering Force they have no cards when their ult is on cooldown which is just boring. A little stagger passive just gives FK more options and build variety while also making the CW stagger build into a reasonable non-meme build.

And for anyone that thinks that would make FK broken, again, I’m fine with cross-career balancing instead. Perhaps the best wording would be: FK should at least have 15% more stagger power at base than other careers.

Edit: One thing I find annoying is that to reach high tier stagger breakpoints I make fighting less stagger resistance enemies awkward for myself and my allies because I send these enemies so far back. It would be great if there was some way for FK to invest into applying a light stagger to CWs and lower mass elites alike without sending everything flying, as a trade-off kind of build path. So something like “Kruber now flinches elites out of all attacks but cannot apply a stronger stagger than this with their weapons. Valiant Charge and Bombs are exempt from this.” No idea where that would go though.

1 Like
63

Yep, don’t worry, I didn’t want to accuse anyone, it was a general speech. I talked about Merc as example to confirm what someone else wrote: there are many careers that can bring a lot of stagger and, at the same time, inflict much damage. So it’s not only about Merc.

And this is the point… In my opinion Merc isn’t one exception. More careers are strong as Merc and can overshadow FK’s work.

I can imagine you disagree and it would be legit. Just different opinions. I just wanted to explain my words, but I prefer avoid a discussion about this.

Ye, I was meaning another thing.

Currently CW’s breakpoint is totally a meme build: you need Staggering Force + 30% chaos/armoured + Tag Team + Enhanced Power… moreove there are those limitations that I wrote. Moreover you could not stagger the CW’s diagonal attack yet.

I think we are all agree that it’s a not worthing build.

With some stagger power as passive we could transform this breakpoint from “meme build” to an interesting/valid option… but this doesn’t mean make it too easily accessible.

Example: passive stagger + Staggering Force + 20 or 30% chaos/armoured would still be a huge investment.

Well, it would depend also on what weapon Krub is using… but, yes, it’s true. Anyway, honestly, I don’t think this thing is so relevant. But I respect your opinion.

I agree that FK should have synergies also with the other weapon… but the quoted part, if I have understood well, it’s not possible.

Shield’s bash is divided in three components: one of them can hit one only enemy (that one under the crosshair). While, the other two, can already hit an infinite number of enemies.

Exactly!

1 Like
64

From what I’ve read, the issues raised appear to be power creep, tankiness, dps and the huge investment needed to reach certain stagger breakpoints (berserkers and CWs).

  • Power Creep: As mentioned, only one chaos warrior can be staggered at a time without ults. Making this breakpoint easier to reach, particularly on deeds, higher and modded difficulties where elites are everywhere, shouldn’t have much of an impact.

  • DPS: More stagger means more time in high stagger states with more damage bonuses, as well as more opportunities to attack

  • Tankiness: As concerns have also been raised about making him too similar to IB, I would propose either 10% extra health (165 base or 195 with health on necklace) as a passive OR in contrast to the WHC, the ability to tag enemies and take x% less damage from them.

  • Stagger Breakpoints: 15% appears too inconsequential, instead 25% extra stagger either with heavy attacks or against the first enemy hit by an attack. This way he can easily deal with 1 elite at a time.

  • Other ideas: Each stack of stagger with bulwark also increases the stagger taken by 5-10%. Not an expert of the stagger mechanic but the idea is after a valiant charge or crit shield bash it’d become increasingly easier to keep the enemy staggered. Would stop stuff like CWs getting staggered and then going straight into an overhead as you continue to attack them.

Also, either a talent or passive which causes critical heavy hits to cause the highest level of stagger? Possibly headshot requirement for non shield weapons to activate?

2 Likes
65

Power creep isn’t about if it will have a big impact, power creep is when you try to make a career better just because another career is stronger. It’s fine to do this but you have to be careful, and in this case where alot of people are using the argument: “Merc can stagger better and has also better dps”, if thats the reason to give fk 30% passive stagger power then thats powercreep. It doesn’t matter if it can only stagger 1 cw at a time, or 500. that would be called overpowered or broken.

1 Like
66

Yep, I agree… especially about Valiant Charge and how it should afflict the enemies. I miss the old Trample, it was perfect to reach the feel that a real battering ram hit the enemies and left them “stunned”, “fragile”.

Honestly I would add a weaker version of Numb of Pain as default and I would re-intruduce Trample.

Anyway, in general, about Power Creep, from one side it’s wrong demand for a buff only because another career’s strength… but, from the other side, in this game there are more careers that fulfill the same role… so it’s fair give some balance also watching the “rivals”. Every career must have a space.

Anyway, as the thread shows, I only exposed internal FK’s problems… very rarely I cited other careers. Just to say that I didn’t “ask” any power creep.

1 Like
67

I mean, it would be enough to no longer need tag team and enhanced power for a bunch of break points, which effectively frees up two whole talent rows. I wouldn’t call that inconsequential personally. I certainly wouldn’t want it to only affect certain attack types, as that would be unnecessarily limiting for some of his weapons. I’d say 20% is probably the upper limit on what he should be given before it starts to maybe be a bit much.

3 Likes
68

To start off I’ll say that my crusade against Battering Ram/Wide Charge wasn’t justified, but for different reasons.

I don’t think Footknight was reworked in a way that suddenly makes him meta and a popular pick like some other careers, but I’ll say that when his options were equally weird, it felt nice to build aggresively for Bull of Ostland.

If I build for Bull of Ostland now, during the moments where I really need Battering Ram, I just think why didn’t I pick an actual DPS and why am I here, just to suffer? So in a strange way I’m more inclined to play him as pure tank than ever before.

In other news, I don’t intend to repeat the Big Balance Beta feedback thread. The only meaningful and cruicial piece of data I gleamed here is this:

If you pick a Shield on Mercenary or Grail Knight, you can become pretty alright at Crowd Control. The reverse, however, is not nearly as true.

If you pick damage on Footknight, the options are kinda’ crammed in there, but not nearly as readily availiable or versatile as a flick of a weapon switch.

So, not to ruin anyone’s parade, I’ll just say for what he does Footknight is pretty balanced. Does he do enough, does someone else do too much? Ehh, I’ll leave it up to your interpretation.

4 Likes
69

Is Merc overpowered? If yes, then he should be nerfed, possibly to be put on par with FK. If Merc is not overpowered, then what is the issue with bringing FK up to the same level? I would only consider it power creep if it made him better than Merc.

Somehow I don’t think that an extra 15-25% stagger power, either base or when some condition is met, is going to make him better than Merc. Particularly if it’s to replace the extra stamina, then it would be a minor buff indeed.

There is also a big difference between being able to stagger a CW out of overhead after speccing heavily, and being able to stagger multiple CWs. Base staggering force as a passive might be too much in this regard, but I’m sure there’s a number that would make FK just that little bit more effective and fun to play.

1 Like
70

I don’t know enough about the breakpoints so 15% may be plenty, particularly if the talent is kept allowing for 50% stagger power.

Genuinely curious about why you feel it would be too limited being heavy only? Apart from mace/shield and maybe halberd, I find myself constantly heavy attacking

71

Well i agree with what your saying. my comment was just about powercreep, not about the impact of it. purely pointing that out, even if it doesn’t have alot of impact.

72

In my opinion, regardless Merc comparison, FK has some internal problem.

I think that even with +100% stagger you could stagger only one CW at once… this because, shield bash part that can stagger CW (the central part under the crosshair, where the stagger is higher), can hit one only enemy.

1 Like
73

Yeah the talent would definitely need to remain or it would be a loss overall.

Mostly because of pushes, but also just because I don’t see the point of limiting it like that. If I wanna stack for a 1h/2h Hammer light attack breakpoint, why not? Or a Greatsword push attack break point? Etc.

2 Likes
74

Funnily enough that does seem to be FK’s role really. Charge - get hit to get ult back - charge again - repeat. It’s fun but also limiting.

This is a pretty good point. It could be some light form of opportunist instead if it needs to be curtailed in someway, like 20% stagger strength against an attacking enemy. Being an in-your-face heavily armoured interrupter is pretty fitting for FK.

2 Likes
75

I personally don’t think it would need to be curtailed at 15-20%, the more pertinent question to me would be how to integrate it without giving him a 4th passive. I already suggested above it could replace the stamina shield passive, but I can appreciate that would unnecessarily hurt sword + mace builds a bit.

Another possibility which I quite like would be to have it replace the 10% DR passive and buff protective presence up by 5% to 20% to somewhat compensate. This would further encourage playing around the aura, and honestly having two separate DR passives always felt kinda messy to me.

1 Like
76

This is a subjective rant of mine because I’ve always felt the auras were too passive.

Rant

I feel like FK is limited by the aura. It’s an interaction that has to be taken in to consideration when the rest of FK is balanced and yet it won’t ever feel good or interesting because it’s a passive effect that’s spread amongst an entire team that just lets other players get hit more.

Compare Protective Presence to Paced Strikes - triggering Paced Strikes feels good, rewards the player with more responsive combat and encourages them to make the best use of Kruber’s high cleave weapons by frontlining. Protective Presence encourages a player to stay near allies and rewards them when they get hit (which is something that someone with a ‘protective’ identity should be designed to prevent, not mitigate). This leans into the high amount of ult cooldown FK gets from receiving damage and Valiant Charge’s low base cooldown, which all accumulates into FK just spamming the charge. Unlike IB with Gromril Armour, it’s rarely a calculated decision. Even Slayer and Zealot can actively decide to take damage from weaker enemies while doing heavy attacks to hit-trade with on kill temp or to kill something that needs to be dead asap. FK just gets to survive and charge.

Protective Presence could be 50% damage reduction for everyone in the aura and it still wouldn’t feel good, it would just turn FK into a career that you get the worst player on the team to play because it’s free damage reduction. The new Taal’s Champion essentially does this in duos.

WHC’s tag is a team buff done right. It requires active tagging, thinking about what to tag, how that will affect what your allies will target etc. The ult regen on elite stagger talent is a step in the right direction.

FK might just not be for me. I don’t want my ideas to come in the way of how other players enjoy FK.

I don’t personally think it would need to be curtailed for balance purposes, but would like to see it be something that the player has to actively think about and change their gameplay a little instead of just spamming pushes and attacks.

I don’t even want to get into how what I’m asking for would negatively affect Riposte Hunter Captain haha. Though an across the board stagger nerf for everyone but FK would be good for Riposte I suppose.

2 Likes
77

They could just merge the extra stamina and the 10% damage reduction into 1 passive. It wouldn’t change the gameplay one bit and would make space for the stagger power passive

1 Like
78

I think they could add the stagger power as a new passive (afterall FK’s passives are only two, and dull; while there are more careers with three)… but, if Fatshark wants to maintain the same number of passives, another option could be to fuse someway Protective Presence and No Guts, No Glory.

Specially now that dmg reduction doesn’t stack additively, the cases where a 15% makes the difference are very, very few.

79

But FK does have three passives? 10% DR, Extra stamina shield, and protective presence. I agree they’re dull though, and also pretty weak compared to other classes.

80

They’re referring to the passives that sit in a row below the active passive and the career skill but above the level 5 talent row. Huntsmen and GK have three passives, while Merc and FK have two. Afaik Pyro only has one!

2 Likes
81

Oh I see my bad. In that case yeah, I see little problem with just straight adding 15% stagger strength as an additional passive then. I still think he’d then just have an ok overall set of passives comparatively

1 Like