Full Weapon Rebalance

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
41

Ah, so that’s how that works? Interesting. That definitely makes it a lot more tricky then. While elven axe and axe & shield should probably get buffed in the same way, the fact that falchion and 1h sword uses it too seems a bit weird.

You could nerf axe & falchion in other ways to compensate. No one wants to nerf it into irrelevancy, but I think that it should, if anything, be a strong berserker type damage dealing weapon. You could nerf its mobility, dodge, stamina etc, to make it more balanced.

2 Likes
42

I think buffing damage is a little hard if nothing already has that damage profile.
As for other feedback I’ll start with:
Mace & Sword:
I like the change to the light pattern, the extra stagger from the first 2 hits lets you capitalize on extra cleave from the sword hits. I don’t like the change to the heavy attacks, feels like they don’t do what they are meant to very well (armor damage) and the previous version was better.
Falchion:
The heavy attacks feel very good, but light 3 is kinda hard to reach from a single target perspective, if heavy 2 was followed by light 3 it would give falchion a more unique single target combo than just ‘use heavies’.
The push attack follow up seems a little slow in comparison to the speed of the rest of attacks, one that is incentivized by it’s extra crit chance.
Halberd:
The change to the light pattern feels good, it looks a little wonky imo repeating the same animation for consecutive attacks but that’s w/e. I do like the change to the heavy attacks, they have good stagger strength to be used on elites and the lights handle hordes pretty well. I think it’s very close to being billhook 2.0 even though it’s a little less mobile but the dodge range buff was nice.
Elf sword:
While I haven’t used it in a match yet, the heavies feel satisfying. I think the old combo where H2 was third felt better. The lights got a much needed finesse boost but they do less damage individually than the dual swords do which also have more cleave.
Dual swords:
Just testing in keep and they can do insane damage on crit headshots just from light attacks (around 50 vs armor and 109 vs unarmored) while also having really good cleave and base damage and attack speed.
Elven greatsword & glaive:
I like the changes but haven’t tried them outside the keep. They both now perform similar roles though.
1H Axe:
I agree that it felt to fast and just stun locked every elite hard.
Mace & shield:
Everyone wants shield bash to come first in the heavy chain, but I think having heavy 2 come after a push attack would be nice. That heavy 2 does feel a little too strong, idk.
2H Axe:
Also think it’s a little too fast but giving heavies linesman was good.

2 Likes
43

I suspected something like that. So in order to buff the Axe damage to where it should be, the Falchiaxe needs a rework entirely, or a different damage profile on its axe strikes, at least…

I feel the Axe attack speed and armor damage is in a good spot, but its damage vs. infantry needs to be better. @Rebel basically said everything I wanted to say.

Anyways, really great work! I’ll see if I can mess around with this mod for a bit, and I hope FS takes note of it so they can use it as a beta test of sorts for their own balance changes, maybe.

1 Like
44

If you don’t mind I will keep out of this as our understanding of this game is far to different and I had enough exhausting discussions recently (and one with a person completely immune to logic and common sense). If there is for some reason the wish to discuss, we can use other communication means like the PM system. So I will close here with some general remarks.

First, as I already said I have the feeling that these weapons have been changed within a confined system as base. I believe you that you have used as much data as possible. However, I don’t think that you are even close to what FS has. You have no data on which weapon is used how often on each difficulty, you have no data on success rate per weapon, you have no data on success rate per weapon combinations. I have certain doubts that you have considered synergy effects in a sufficient manner since you have no data for that one other than theory crafting or testing. I do believe that you have put immense thought in these changes based on your game philosophy and I do believe that you have done excessive testing. However, I assume that you have mainly tested weapon in solo performance and maybe a few combinations. But the sheer amount of possible combinations in further combination with talents per career make a sufficient testing impossible which you normally would compensate by data.

And honestly (and this is another reason why I won’t discuss much here), even after tweaking the mod and the values, I do not think that this will fly with FS even in the (already not possible anymore) case of everyone in the forum agreeing. These changes go more or less against everything what FS tried to achieve with Combat 2.0. Combat 2.0 had a few goals and most of these changes are undercutting them.
This is for the most part a difference in game philosophy. For me it seems you want a game where a player can be alone and surrounded by a mixed horde and still have the means to be in complete control and move forwards. FS on the other hand seems to want a game where the horde can push you back and where being surrounded will most often lead to death.

Of course large parts here are assumptions and I certainly don’t want to talk down your efforts. But this is my opinion, so take it as that. I don’t think FS will be very swayed by this.

2 Likes
45

How do you feel about Flamestorm Staff? It’s probably my favorite weapon, but I feel it generates a bit too much OC w/ both it’s attacks, the charged-attack doesn’t stagger elites consistently enough (monks/CW), and it’s damage vs monsters is a bit too low. Otherwise great weapon balanced by it’s lack of range.

46

It was never the intention for this mod to be the basis of actually implementing balance changes (we would need an actual Big Balance Beta from Fatshark for that), the point was to be able to actually playtest some balance changes and generate useful feedback based on play experience instead of just talking about what a weapon would hypothetically feel like with certain changes and whether it would hypothetically feel overpowered.

4 Likes
47

You’re saying the bots carried? I hope that’s true. My boys are pitiful in WoM lol.

48

The current state of balance does not support this. Many weapons can solo hordes and elites. At least 10 quickly come to mind not even including ranged weapons. There is just a number of weapons that don’t perform any role well enough to be used over other options. That’s where the whole idea of every weapon doing one thing falls apart.

1 Like
49

Update for Mod: Patch Notes

1H Axe
Additional attack light speed increase reduced from 12% to 8%
Animation delay after light 3 reverted to 0.3s (0.45s in vanilla), 0s previously
(Attack time for light chain is nerfed to 1.74s, 14% buff over vanilla, 3% buff over L1-L2-L3-block cancel vanilla, 12% nerf to attack speed over last patch)
Move speed while attacking reduced from 100% to 85% (75% originally)

Greataxe
20% boost to attack speed on Light 3 reverted

Halberd
Move speed during Light 1 reduced from 100% to 80%, (75% originally)
Heavy 1 is a cleaving attack again, damage profile reverted to default, added heavy linesman and the ability to cleave armor to H1
Light 2 slowed down by 10%

Mace (Sienna)
Move speed during lights nerfed from 100% to 80% (60% originally)

Shields
Lost their move speed buffs (Axe and shield’s bonus move speed was missed, but will be nerfed in the next update to default)

Handgun
Cleave buffed 50% to match crossbow

Repeater pistol
Reverted to vanilla, change that remains is linesman on the bullet spray and additionally the bullet spray has been given 50% additional penetration against Chaos Warriors on crit
to allow it to oneshot CWs on Cataclysm with at least 50% of pellets hitting the head. Previously it was short 24% damage assuming every pellet hit the head with the maximum power possible on Bounty Hunter.

Volley Crossbow
5 projectiles reverted to 3
Reload speed nerfed from 3s back to 4s (5s originally)
Cleave increased by 150% to match crossbow
Ammo pool boosted by 50% (from 30 max ammo to 45)

3 Likes
50

Nerfing handgun reload to 1.75s is a probable change based on feedback so far.

1 Like
51

Do you mean you annul the buff you gave to it with the mod? Or it’s another kind of nerf?

52

About that Axe: Is it possible to release an experimental version where its damage is increased instead of its attack speed buffed? We’d know that it makes other weapons too crazy, but just so we could see how the 1H Axe would feel.

1 Like
53

This is such a cool idea and thank you so much for putting so much work into this.

I will comment with more feedback as I try stuff out.

So far tried FK Sword & Mace + Handgun (Legend Screaming Bell with bots). Felt better overall than base game, but it felt like spamming heavies was the best option in most situations, while they still put out lacklustre armour damage. Maybe nerf the cleave on heavies a bit but give them better armour damage. Some extra crit chance, maybe on push attack would be nice, but might be overkill, will see what others think.

54

I could see your point about spamming heavies. I think that’s a pretty real problem. It did get an armor damage buff by about 24%.

1 Like
55

Armor damage is about 24% higher on Heavies now. A little less cleave and much less stagger.

Yeah you could make it chain like 1H sword. Afraid the armor damage would be too high though. It is meant to be more of a horde clear weapon than an armor damage weapon. Might be worth a look if people say it still isn’t quite strong enough.

Is that good or bad?

Aye. We had no ability to change that. It looks super goof.

We didn’t change the animation pattern of the heavies. At least not as far as I know. We did change the damage profile of one to remove the cleave. That way it’s a purely armor damage combo. As far as light attacks, they were given the profile of one weapon of a heavy attack from dual swords. It doesn’t have the same horde clear as Dual Swords, but they light attacks are sufficient and they do armor damage. The thought behind all the 1H swords, (wiz/krube, elf, and Falchion) was to give them each their own flavor and role. Wiz/krub is more horde clear/cleaving/headshotting, elf is more armor focused, and falchion is the most balance. At least, that’s the hope.

Probably way too strong actually. Will definitely take a look at a more elegant solution.

Haven’t they always :slight_smile:

Heard, heard and heard.

Appreciate the feedback! Keep it coming, please. We’ll keep making changes as long as people are interested (or until FS takes over).

56

Ok yeah, it’s pretty minor, overall the weapon feels much nicer, and the light attacks definitely shine on pure hordes, it’s just when there’s a lot of mixed in armour/elites it becomes a heavy spam fest. Arguably not even a problem, and I don’t know how it could be adjusted to be better anyway.

On a different note just tried out axe + volley bow BH and my gosh this is so fun. It’s so close to my ideal BH playstyle it’s eerie. Feels pretty perfect to me right now. Volleybow actually fits a niche, but it’s not so strong you’re gonna solo hordes with it. The cleave buff is the biggest difference I think, and again it’s impactful without feeling overturned.

Sorry don’t have much useful feedback there, to me those two weapons feel pretty perfect on BH at least with how you have them tuned now.

2 Likes
57

Just tried another legend round with BH, this time falchion + Rep Pistol.

Falchion might be a bit overturned. Mostly just all the bonus crit chance. It was ending Chaos Warriors quicker than it probably has any right to. It was strong with BH, so I can only imagine it’s disgusting with WHC. Push attack crit is fine, on heavies and light 3 might be a bit much.

I’ve always enjoyed playing rep pistol with Hunter and prize bounty, so having my usual opening shot on a horde to get Hunter going actually take a decent chunk out of the horde certainly was appreciated. Not sure this changes much overall though. Still basically unusable for anyone other than BH, and the alt fire’s interaction with scrounger compounding its ammo woes is still the biggest issue, even for BH. It’s certainly viable, but I dunno how you make it work well on higher difficulties where you really need to be firing more often than your ammo sustain allows.

2 Likes
58

Ah okay, I didn’t use mace & sword much before, but that’s just how it felt to me.

I don’t think the weapon needs it, it felt pretty strong as is, I just think it’s a cool idea.

I think it feels off, like it has the same swing speed of the other light strikes so it should have about the same time between strikes.

I think it was before BBB that the heavy pattern was different.

I suppose that’s true, except one was clearly undertuned.
1 more thing about 2H axe, the heavies seem too slow (not that they’ve changed in this mod, just what I felt after using it for hordes.)

1 Like
59

I mostly follow what Rebel says here. Some weapons have mobility hindrance in order to actually stay more niche. That’s a part of their thematic.

Most of the changes focus on increasing weapon mobility. And using drakefire pistols as an example, we do reduce the 2 thematic things about that pistol here.

But I think some changes should be a bit less on the dodge range, or attack speed, and more on damage for example.

So first, back to the basic board, maybe we could have some sort of spreadsheet with pros and cons on each weapons and tweak accordingly starting by this.

1 Like
60

Just did a Cataclysm run on Festering Ground with BH volley crossbow + 1h axe:

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with this build:
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Ranged horde clear on this is really strong, like around bluntsman levels. Shreds everything without a shield. Kills maulers and stormvermin nicely with blessed shots (oneshot if all hit). Doesn’t do as well against berserkers as I would’ve thought though, needs 2 or more bursts to take them down. Gets countered pretty hard by shields. With this build I had nearly infinite ammo (can’t spam bursts all the time though, do have to sometimes wind down a bit)
Special killing with it is really good too, it’s like a bit worse than repeater handgun. Suffers a bit at long ranges, but with its big ammo capacity it can kill a lot of specials in one go.
The big balancing factor is the reload speed (which by the way 4s is perfect). It makes it really awkward to reload during hordes, especially if you’re swamped by enemies.
Honestly I’d probably reduce the cleave it has by 50% (100% higher than vanilla, rather than 150%). It is super fun to use though, Saltzpyre has a horde clearing ranged weapon with this, fulfilling a similar role to blunderbuss without being all that similar mechanically.

1h axe is perfect in terms of speed. It’s noticeably faster without looking like you’re using some cancelling technique to remove the animation delay. Armour killing is solid too, now what would be left is to increase its base damage and it would be perfect.

P.S. I have never been more frustrated with bots in my entire life. They are such sacks of shite. They don’t ever frontline for you, obstruct your shots all the damn time (for the love of Sigmar get out of my face, Kruber, I’m shooting here), and if I’m dodging backwards to reload my damn crossbow, they’ll dodge back with me, with their ranged weapons out while a horde is sliding their way towards us with running attacks. The moment they engage a monster they’ll fight it in that specific place, no matter how horrid it is (mmm, yes, corridor stormfiend, drink that warpfire). Sometimes they’ll literally stand with their handgun out and get wacked by a raider. I was reduced to avoiding chaos patrols to win, cause otherwise they’ll get themselves trapped in a corner while there’s tons of room everywhere, and get swamped by disablers.

5 Likes