Gifts of the Wolf Father and Patch 5.2.0 Patch Notes + Hotfixes!

Hotfix 5.2.2 - December 20

This one is tiny, I promise!

Fixes

  • Fixed Bestigors and Minotaurs ending their charge early if they have to run around an obstacle.
  • Fixed an exploit where an Outcast Engineer with the “Bombadier” talent gained 3 new grenades when leaving and rejoining a game. Cheeky!
  • Fixed a bug where Outcast Engineer’s “Superior Gaskets” talent did not provide power on clients.

Hotfix 5.2.1 - December 19

Fixes

  • Fixed crash when bots use true flight attacks like Waywatcher ability or Necromancer “Lost Souls” which target enemies that get removed from the game.
  • Fixed a bug where a Sienna premium cosmetic item was missing its store icon.
  • Fixed a bug where “Lingering Flames” DoT stacked. Sorry, Battle Wizard mains!
  • Fixed a bug where Engineer’s “Bombardier” talent did not give Bardin three bombs on first spawn. Engineer mains can now once again aim for the back of the elf’s head!
  • Fixed rare crash where Mercenary’s talent “Strike Together” could crash the game when the target ally was removed on the same frame as when buff was applied.
  • Fixed a bug where Warrior Priest’s talent “Blazing Bright” granted him Fury when he was knocked down. You’re not a Necromancer, Saltzpyre!

As a side note, we know the patches have been abnormally large in size as of late. This is because we’ve changed our patching structure to one that doesn’t bloat the game over time, but we’ve found that it leads to patches turning into extremely large downloads.

We’re currently looking into improving our building and patching process to avoid this issue, but it may take some time. In the meantime, we apologize for the inconvenience of these large patches!


Known Issues:

We are aware of an issue where the Eternos-Ichor Glaia Weapon Illusion appears to be locked for some players, despite redeeming it successfully via Gifts of the Wolf Father.

Please rest assured we are looking in to this, but due to the holiday period, there will be a delay in resolving the issue. We also want to assure you that the illusion is still in your inventory, even though it is inaccessible.

Thank you for your patience and apologies for the inconvenience.


Heroes,

A Merry Mondstille to all of you! The Wolf Father is coming around again this year and shall be handing out some lovely gifts for all of you! We wanna take this moment to thank you guys for being with us throughout the years, and to express our hope that you continue accompanying us into the content that awaits us in the future!

This patch includes the activation of the Gifts of the Wolf Father calendar and a balance pass on careers and weapons to address some of the bigger pain points regarding balance!

Gifts of the Wolf Father

Starting from today December 13 all the way to January 7, log into Vermintide 2 each day to receive a gift from us! Most of these gifts are Premium Cosmetics, but there’s some other, equally attractive goodies in there that we hope you’ll like!

All players have a 2 day grace period to claim each of the items from each calendar day as they unlock (plus the day of release itself, for a total of 3 days), so even if you miss a day or two you won’t miss any rewards if you log in regularly!

For console players, please note that you must be in online mode to claim items from the calendar.

Balance Changes

We heard your feedback regarding certain overperforming and underperforming careers and weapons, and so we’ve done a balance pass on some of the biggest offenders (Looking at you, Battle Wizard and Javelin!). In case you missed it, we released a dev blog going into the changes and the thought process behind them, check it out here.

And, if you’re interested in the detailed changes themselves, check out the patch notes below!

New Premium Cosmetics: The Frost Guard Collection

Perfect for this cold Festag, a lovely new collection of cosmetics has arrived for our heroes, with a new hat and skin available for the following careers:

  • Pyromancer
  • Slayer
  • Mercenary
  • Waystalker
  • Witch Hunter Captain

You can learn more by visiting this post on the Vermintide website!

Regarding Bot AI

We’ve heard you guys loud and clear that you’re dissatisfied with the performance of Bots as of late, particularly as the previously sanctioned Bot Improvements mod became unsanctioned with the launch of Necromancer.

While most of the features in said mod had already been integrated into the base game in previous updates (alongside the features of other sanctioned mods that were integrated as QoL features), there’s some features that are still missing and that we’ll be looking into adding in the near future, such as making bots not heal Zealot players unless they’re on their last wound, or making bots follow the Host more consistently (instead of splitting up among all the players or acting indecisive).

That said, a lot of the complaints related to Bot AI are not related to these missing features, but rather to bot performance being lacking in other areas. We are investigating these issues to hopefully also address them in the future.

Controller Support

We’ve also added native support for Dual Sense and Dual Shock 4 controllers, showing the correct prompts and letting you use the controller without needing to use interpreter software!

Monday the 18th: Developer Stream - News about upcoming content!

This Monday, we’ll be having a stream on Twitch! Hosted by the fantastic Ishka alongside our developers: Game Designer, Karl; Design Director, Joakim; Product Owner, Erik! Tune in at 5 PM CET today to chat with our developers, ask questions, and learn about what we’re working on next!

Versus!

For everyone who missed today’s stream, surprise! We’re SO excited to re-reveal that we’re working on Versus! We still can’t say much other than “It’s coming!”, but if you have any questions, we’ll be compiling a list and hopefully answering them later on in the future, once we’re ready to reveal more. We’ve started up a thread where you can let us know your thoughts and questions, tell us everything, ask us everything!


Without further ado…

Patch Notes for Patch 5.2.0

Balance Changes

Class Changes
Outcast Engineer

  • Increased base health to 125. All that metal he’s lugging around has gotta count for something!
  • Bardin no longer loses stacks of pressure while firing or when the bar is filled. Bardin can also build stacks of pressure while the bar is full.
  • Reduced base Crank Gun starting fire rate by ~33%.
  • Reduced base Crank Gun fire rate gain per shot by ~33%.
  • Talent 2-1: ‘Leading Shots’ replaced by new talent ‘Ingenious Ordnance’ - Bardin creates a bomb every 80 seconds and explosives no longer deal friendly fire damage.
  • Talent 4-1: ‘Head Full of Steam’ - Changed to: Bardin now gains 15% attack speed on max stacks of Pressure.
  • Talent 4-2: ‘Experimental Steam Capacitors’ replaced by new talent ‘Perilous Overclock’ - Building Pressure at Max stacks restores 25% charge and grants 5% crit but damages Bardin. Each Overclock increases damage suffered. (Currently bugged and giving more Crit than it should!)
  • Talent 4-3: ‘Superiour Gaskets’ - Changed to: Pressure is now lost when firing instead of over time. Each stack of Pressure grants 4% power.
  • Talent 5-2: ‘Bombardier’ - Bardin now also begins missions with 3 bombs in his pocket, on top of the original effect. It pays to be prepared, eh?
  • Talent 5-3: ‘Piston Power’ - Changed to: Every 15 seconds Bardin’s next Charged Attack gains massive stagger and restores all stamina.
  • Talent 6-1: ‘Gromril Plated Shot’ - increased damage by 100%.
  • Talent 6-2: ‘Linked Compression Chambers’ - increased fire rate by 20%.

Slayer

  • Talent 2-3: ‘Hack and Slash’ - Increased crit chance to +10%.

Battle Wizard

  • Increased the cooldown of the career skill ‘Fire Walk’ to 50 seconds.
  • Talent 2-2: ‘Famished Flames’ - Reduced bonus DoT damage to +100%, reduced the base damage reduction to -15%.
  • Talent 2-3: ‘Lingering Flames’ - Increased the tick rate of DoT damage by 100%.
  • Talent 5-1: ‘Soot Shield’ - Reduced the damage reduction per burning enemy to 8%.
  • Talent 6-1: ‘Volans’ Quickening’ - Increased Cooldown Reduction to 40%.

Pyromancer

  • Talent 5-2: ‘Volans Doctrine’ has been turned into a passive ability.
  • Reduced the cooldown of the career skill ‘The Burning Head’ to 50 seconds.
  • Added new Perk: ‘One with Aqshy’ - 50% increased max Overcharge.
    • Dev Note: (The bar is visually bigger to fit increased max overcharge, too :^) ~Karl).
  • Talent 2-1: ‘Ride the Fire Wind’ - Increased max power bonus to 25%.
  • Talent 4-1: ‘Deathly Dissipation’ - Increased duration of effect to 12 seconds.
  • Talent 4-2: ‘On the Precipice’ - Increased power bonus to 20%
  • Talent 5-2: ‘The Volans Doctrine’ replaced by new talent ‘Flamestrike’s Tutelage’ - Sienna gains 80% reduction on Venting damage. Each nearby enemy decreases the damage reduction by 20%.
  • Talent 6-1: ‘Exhaust’ replaced by new talent ‘Dissipating Rictus’ - The Burning Head grants 50% charge speed and Overcharge explosion immunity for 12 seconds.

Necromancer

  • Talent 5-3: ‘Lost Souls’ - Reduced amount of overcharge needed to trigger to 12%, increased stagger, increased base damage, increased damage vs armour, increased damage vs monsters. (Whew, that was a lot of buffs, eh?)
  • Talent 6-1: ‘Army of the Dead’ - Changed so that Raise Dead now reanimates 12 Skeletons, 6 of which decay after 20 seconds. Spooky!

Bounty Hunter

  • Talent 6-2: ‘Double Shotted’ - Fixed a bug where it could trigger multiple times in one shot. To compensate, increased the Cooldown Reduction reward on headshot to 60%.

Warrior Priest

  • The base version of Shield of Faith now renders the hero immune to ranged knockback and allows them to trample through lesser enemies.
  • Talent 4-1: ‘Divine Excoriation’ replaced with new talent ‘Blazing Bright’ - Taking damage grants Victor Fury. Entering Righteous Fury grants Victor Shield of Faith.
  • Talent 4-2: ‘Empowered Smite’ replaced with new talent ‘See My Wrath’ - Shield of Faith grants Victor 50% Fury. Smite now deals 40% of the attack’s damage.
  • Talent 4-3: ‘From Fury, Fortitude’ - Changed it to ‘Each Kill now grants Fury and during Righteous Fury restores Health to the party.’
  • Talent 5-1: ‘Prayer of Vengeance’ - Changed it to bless the party with 25% power versus Monsters instead.
  • Talent 6-1: ‘Unyielding Blessing’ - Changed it to ‘Shield of Faith now lasts 10 seconds. The shielded hero’s attacks cause the shield to pulse staggering nearby enemies.’

Grail Knight

  • Increased the cooldown of the career skill ‘Blessed Blade’ to 60 seconds.
  • Talent 2-1: ‘Virtue of the Ideal’ - Reduced Power per stack to 8%.
  • Talent 2-3: ‘Virtue of Heroism’ - Increased Heavy attack power bonus to 30%.

Weapon Changes
Sienna’s Coruscation Staff

  • Reduced the amount of pellets in the primary attack to 9 (down from 12)
  • Reduced the overcharge cost of the primary attack (to 6).
  • Reduced the duration of the fire patches from the secondary attack to 6 seconds.
  • Reduced duration of the Damage over Time from the fire patches to 2 seconds.
  • Increased the overcharge cost of the secondary attack (to 9).
  • Reduced max stacks of Damage over Time from the fire patches to 5.

Kerillian’s Dual Daggers

  • Reduced damage vs monsters by ~20%.

One-handed Sword (Kruber & Sienna)

  • Reduced the cost of pushing to 1 stamina (Half a shield).
  • Increased damage and cleave damage on light attacks 1 and 2.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 1 for light chained attack 1 and 2 by 20%.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 2 for light chained attack 1 and 2 by 48%.
  • Increased overall damage and cleave damage of heavy attacks.
    • Increased overall damage on hit index 1 for heavy attacks by ~7%.
    • Increased overall damage on hit index 2 for heavy attacks by 80%.
    • Increased overall stagger on hit index 2 for heavy attacks by 20%.
    • Increased overall damage on hit index 3 for heavy attacks by 100%.
  • Increased heavy attacks’ damage vs armor for the first target by 20%.
  • Increased cleave stagger of heavy attacks.
    • Increased overall stagger on hit index 3 for heavy attacks by 50%.

Two-handed Sword (Kruber & Saltzpyre)

  • Increased damage and cleave damage on Light Attacks.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 1 for light attacks by 11%.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 2 for light attacks by 76%.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 3 for light attacks by 80%.
  • Increased damage and cleave damage on Heavy Attacks.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 1 for heavy attacks by 11%.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 2 for heavy attacks by 40%.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 3 for heavy attacks by 66%.
    • Increased damage vs hit index 4 for heavy attacks by 44%.
  • Replaced the damage profile of the push attack with the damage profile from the Bretonnian Sword’s 3rd heavy attack.

One-handed axe (Bardin & Saltzpyre)

  • Reduced the cost of pushing to 1 stamina (Half a shield).

One-handed hammer (Kruber, Bardin & Saltzpyre)

  • Reduced the cost of pushing to 1 stamina (Half a shield)

Kerillian’s Javelin

  • Added damage drop off range similar to Bardin’s Throwing Axes.
  • Reduced thrown javelin damage & stagger at dropoff range.
  • Reduced thrown Javelin overall damage by 5%.
  • Reduced thrown Javelin headshot damage modifier by 7%.
  • Reduced thrown Javelin cleave by ~80%.
  • Reduced thrown Javelin damage modifier vs Super Armor by ~20%.
  • Reduced thrown Javelin damage modifier vs armor by 8%.
  • Reduced Javelin melee headshot damage modifier by 12%.
  • Reduced Javelin melee non-crit damage modifier vs monsters by 12%.
  • Reduced Javelin melee crit damage modifier vs monsters by 5%.
  • Reduced Javelin melee’s damage boost when using Shade’s career skill to 2.8.

Kerillian’s One-handed Axe

  • Changed the order of the light attack moveset.
  • Added new damage profiles for light attacks 3 and 4.

Kruber’s Sword & Shield

  • Replaced the damage profile of the 3rd heavy attack with the damage profile of his one-handed sword’s first heavy attack.

Features & Tweaks

  • Added native support for DualShock 4 and Dual Sense controllers.
  • The souls from the Necromancer talent ‘Lost Souls’ now ignore unalerted patrols. Hehe, whoops.
  • Equipped portrait frames now also show up in the Main Menu / Hero Selection screen.
  • [Controller] Removed unnecessary button prompts in the pause menu.
  • Fixed an issue with scrollbars when using smaller screen resolutions.

Fixes

  • Fixed the bug where claiming a Daily Reward while in Offline mode would bug out all of your hats. No more bald Kerillian!
  • Fixed issue where effects that would let you throw a grenade without consuming it would re-equip the grenade (Except for the Potion of Endless Bombs, he he he).
  • Fixed UI bug with the Emporium where an icon could get stuck on the screen.
  • Fixed a bug where disconnecting while in a chaos sorcerer vortex would make the game silent.
  • Fixed a bug where teammates’ attack voices could interrupt themselves.
  • Fixed lots of issues with Outcast Engineer’s sounds.
7 Likes

Revert immediately

7 Likes

Fatshark…you pulled a Gaijin with WarThunder: posted the proposed balance change notes two days ago, completely ignored any feedback the community gave, and just pushed the patch with major, major balance changes. It would’ve been nice to have a beta of these changes, at least.

9 Likes

And why are the daggers getting nerfed because SHADE had a build that was kinda bad in most cases except monsters for which it was good?

So nerf daggers monster damage, which are kinda bad in ALL other aspects except speed, and then give WP an option to give a total of 100% extra power vs monsters in total for the team? This isnt reducing overall monster damage, it´s amping it. While making one of keri´s worst weapons even worse.

Senseless nerfs added with powercreep ._.’

That said, i do like a lot of the other stuff, i like it a lot, but please take a second gander at a lot of this stuff.

4 Likes

I see 0 reason to use Dual Daggers now when the Sword and Dagger 2nd heavy does the same damage

4 Likes

:eyes: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh is it Tzeentch Twins

1 Like

i wish to see throwing axes reload speed increased one day! copium

1 Like

They share the same damage profile, so Sword&Dagger got the exact same nerf.
It’s just not listed in the patch notes.

3 Likes

Don’t forget there there are 0 nerfs to Masterwork Pistol or Trollhammer Torpedo because the damage on those is perfectly fine :slight_smile:
Oh, and you should totally use Beam staff with Lingering Flames and just beam a monster - very balanced. Lingering Flames in general is completely broken atm.

Uff, that are some major buff numbers for the careers. Gromril shots 100 % damage? So now everything outside of Chaos Warriors drops like flies on Cataclysm just so people can follow their fantasies of mini-gunning a Chaos Patrol?

Also, those Javelins numbers O.o Outside of cleave, they are very very low. To call this a nerf is brave. This will not change anything for the spam. The Javelins will still be spammed at Cataclysm, only that the horde application is reduced.

3 Likes

That is the only darn use that was significant in terms of power!

Killing ambients any darn weapon can do, even moonbow which i categorically do not approve of much at all. But if the main use is gone then what is left is just a hollow husk, the longbow alt is real :sob:

I thought that edgy face masks are a BH thing.

Thanks for ruining dual daggers. Just did a game with them and the damage nerf is massive. These weapons weren’t that good at all to begin with. They had crap cleave, stagger, low stam, and horrendous reach. The only thing these weapons brought to the table were boss deeps and you ruined it without compensating any of their lacking qualities. It was already a hard argue for me to use them in regular play outside of my Shade build for Fortunes of War. The only other class that salvages them somewhat was Sister of Thorn and even then it was a cute little thing to play around with. I don’t agree with this one bit.

I also don’t like how you ruined one of my favorite staffs for Unchained, Curo. That staff is really fun to play with and you basically destroyed it, without, once again, buffing her other staffs or making them as fun as Curo.

Thanks for the Warrior Priest buffs though. He’s more fun than ever now that shield activates on fury.

4 Likes

I personally did not like this one at all , previous one felt a lot more fluid while this feels awkward instead.

Revert immediately

3 Likes

the “divine excoriation” talent no longer exists or only works in the ultimate, it’s a shame… one of the coolest and most effective talents on a large number of enemies, it could be added to the level 10 talent “Unstoppable Force”
Talent_WarriorPriestOfSigmar_10_01
Talent_WarriorPriestOfSigmar_20_01



I believe that this talent, even visually, is cool, and adds life (visually) to the WP kit, removing this will only limit it to the golden hammer and the shield

:stop_sign::stop_sign: post update :stop_sign::stop_sign:

I don’t know what fatshark’s intention was to just exclude the talent, “divine excoriation”, the new stun effect you can’t even notice that it’s happening during the shield, in the past the talent that reduces the blocking cost by 50% was a perfect match with the divine excoriacão, because when it hit enemies, the WP could quickly push all enemies without wasting much energy, simply very useful and cool, besides it wasn’t “OP” as it didn’t cause damage. These changes were just to please the “MAIN GREEN CIRCLES” who want to get top dmg…
It’s a shame to remove such an interesting talent that had a huge synergy with other talents and was useful in all modes: weave, chaos weastes, twitch…
A talent like that was thrown away just for a few people to have fun catching green circles.
it’s a pity.

I can understand why people are not very happy with some nerfs, but I feel some reactions are a bit overdrawn. Dual dagger / sword & dagger do 20% less monster damage and is suddenly useless against them?! It basically means you now have to hit 5 instead of 4 times to do the same damage, to monsters only. That’s not very dramatic. And BH’s ult now refunds 60 instead of 80%. That also doesn’t seem overly harsh. It only prevents deleting a monster while simultaneously stunlocking it when under the effect of a potion, which was total büllshit anyways. None of these things do anything very substantial about the actual problem of the ridiculously large discrepancy in monster damage between normal fighting and ults / some specific weapons, though. I hope these changes are being combined with others in the future to do something about that.

And as for the Javelin nerfs: I haven’t actually tried that out, but it seems like a fair idea to have them be like longbow but with slightly lower damage in exchange for infinite ammo. I think the main problem, however, is that javrlins, moonbow, and longbow are basically the same weapon but with tweaks. Because they all basically do the exact same thing / have the same niche: Trying to oneshot enemies with an accurate shot. I think a better change would have been to make the moonbow more like an elven take on a handgun (slow reload, kills on bodyshot) or grenade launcher (area of effect), and the javelin more like a handgun or some other niche instead of a longbow variant. But that would require another beta.

As for the class changes, I’d need to test them out to see how they work now. Nothing seems very dramatic, but I do suspect that BW & GK’s changes are more of a meta-shift than anyghing else. But I’m excited to try a lingering flames build that has power to it in any case. For old times’ sake. Hope it’s not too cheesy.

4 Likes

Glad you’re buffing the one handed weapons but a few have been left out like Keri’s sword, Salty’s falchion, Siennas Crowbill, and others… Would like to see them get some love as well. Giving some of the one-handed weapons 1 stamina pushes isn’t going to be enough to make them desirable over a lot of the other options still, though.

Bardin’s throwing axes also need help, as well as the long-dead Moonfire bow. Please make it worth taking again. I hope there are some more changes being worked on to these weapons.

Curious to try out the changes!

Its not that its too much of a change per-se, its that the reasons for it are wrong and the implementation of it, even more so.

Its basically “Shade was killing monsters too fast with daggers so we are nerfing daggers” ← this in spite of the fact that Shade was the only one who sometimes used daggers seriously since they are quite bad for everything else. Rather than just nerfing Shade and buffing the daggers so that the other 3 careers would actually have a reason to consider using them, better diversity.

Then as for the whole " We think our monsters are dying too fast" thing, why make necro so darn good at killing monsters then? Why give Warrior Priest the whole new Prayer of Vengeance which likely adds much more damage than Shade lost?

1 Like