Interesting. Where can i find all the changes the mod went trough?
Also curious on if double light swing felt bad and looked bad, why go for light heavy sweep infinite chain?
Edit: you probably don’t know the answer to that question and incandesent probably already answered it before. (Unless you are someone who also helped on the mod, in that case forgive me)
Spamming left click is not a combo. It’s just what happens when you are lazy.
Speaking of which, if you can land all 3 as headshots, it will kill a SV. Sometimes I do this when I’m feeling lazy.
Didn’t read the posts past this point yet but had to talk about this but because I’ve been thinking a lot about what my ideal Halberd would look like, and a second sweep on light 2 would be core to it.
To me Halberd would be perfect if it were how it is now but with the following adjustments. Light 2 is replaced with a sweep that mirrors light 1, AKA a diagonal sweep from left to right. Light stab is thus only accessible following heavy stab since the normal light chain would now be left sweep → right sweep → overhead. Secondly heavy sweep now combos off light 2, and combos back into light 2, so you could do either of the following combos for hordes:
Lastly just some animation timing changes to make heavy stab → light stab feel a touch more smooth. I think the result would be an extremely smooth weapon that flows superbly.
I checked the forum post (Full Weapon Rebalance) and the mod page and it looks like they didn’t list the first 5 changes to the mod. But recalling from memory (and rereading comments), version 1 halberd removed the light stab and made heavy 1 a single target attack. My first comment on it was actually more accepting of the stab’s removal than I feel like now, lol.
Nah I was just into it because nothing else of interest was happening at the moment. Everything was pretty OP. I kind of miss the 3-overhead combo flail haha
God damn you for reminding me of that most majestic incarnation of flail. It was truly too beautiful for this world 
we actually did that in one version of the mod, it made you look like a helicopter 
anyway suffice to say that Fatshark’s design philosophy actually doesn’t want animations removed so you’d have to make the light chain into 4 attacks total or shift the light stab elsewhere
adding is fine, removing less so
I actually planned on testing a revised flail in the final (unreleased) update where one of the heavies would be converted to an overhead and chain into the light overheads
God I wish I could’ve made custom animations for weapons, would’ve had a field day messing with some things, but obviously we had to work within our limitations :^(
Pretty cool idea, though honestly the way you had it before with an overhead for push attack made perfect sense to me. I know it wasn’t popular cause apparently everyone needs push attack to be a get off me option 
Yeah you guys did amazing work with what you had access to. Was really hoping FS would step in to do some of those extra touches when they imported it all but ah well still very happy with what we got.
yeah me and the guys liked it a lot but it just didn’t fly with most folk unfortunately
Sometimes working within limitations can produce more unique and interesting results, because you have to use ingenuity to work around the limitation, rather than copy-pasting an already working solution, like adding 2 horde sweeps back to back to the halberd.
Hell, there’s a subclass of weapons with no anti-horde attacks at all, do they also require adding repeating horde-clear attacks? - 1h axe, elven axe, dual axes, dual daggers, crowbill.
Halberd at least has one horde clear attack out of 3 in the light combo.
If you start adding chainable sweeps with good cleave to every weapon, the arsenal would become too similar. Biggest point of single target weapons is that they require more teamwork skills and a different playstyle, but should reward the same or slightly greater results.
Of course there is a fine balance to be had about how dependant you are from your team. Single target weapons should work in quickplay with randoms.
Imo, the best way to find that balance - is to slightly increase cleave on all singletarget attacks, so you can hit 2 fanatics, or 2 clanrats, or even 2 gors by default. The stabs would deal same or reduced damage to 2nd target hit, the chops would just stagger 2nd target w/o damage. It will alleviate main issue with “singletarget” weapons, and make Halberd full light combo a workable move for hordeclear. The gameplay of hitting 2 foes with one stab - is something different and fresh.
For halberd in particular, the double chop combo would find new use (or be better at it), so it won’t be overshadowed by a buffed Heavy 2 stab (in the old moveset).
It would conflict with the idea of a flail - more powerful strikes come from spinning the chain and building the momentum. It would be wrong to have a powerful attack instantly from the block stance. I strongly believe that was the theme developers were going for. As a heavy it could work, though it would be similar to sienna flail except the damage profile.
I find this statement curious, especially the
Weapons are designed, at least partially, with their environment in mind. The game is a cohesive whole where talents, weapons, properties and traits are designed to synergise in certain capacities, or not synergise at all. This is where builds come from, it’s why they exist as they do and how we end up with a “meta”. Just about every video game has this, whether it be diablo, total war, warframe or even runescape. IF a developer produces a tool that ends up being used in a way that is “unintended” because players put 2 and 2 together, then that is bad design, especially seeing as stamina regen has been a thing long before billhook ever was, block cancelling too has been a thing long before halberd was; in vermintide 1 block cancelling was effectively the norm for most weapons
This statement is also curious to me since all of our changes were born from working within our limitations. Unless I’m misinterpreting this statement and you’re actually praising the changes here, otherwise, colour me confused.
well clearly we didn’t adjust those weapons to have horde clearing attacks, in fact, I nerfed the horde clearing of dual daggers.
it’s a good thing we didn’t do this then,
I honestly don’t think that’s true in regards to teamwork, granted that may be a way to get around it, generally all it means is an increase of mechanical intensity and indeed a different playstyle and/or build. In the case of daggers they absolutely rewarded a greater result, too great a result imo hence the nerf.
That’s fair but again this is very much in keeping with the theme in this thread of making statements on design intent without actually knowing whether or not that’s the case.
Maybe, it’s a shame we never got to test it but oh well, maybe another time. And yes it would be similar to Sienna flail barring the whole explosion thing and different light chain. it would still be very different from Saltz flail in a lot of aspects, more so than at least the difference between 1h sword on Sienna and Kruber, 1h mace on Kruber and 1h hammer on Bardin, mace and shield on kruber and bardin; and greatsword on Saltz and Kruber. All of which are complete carbon copies of each other barring cosmetics. It’d be an interesting project to maybe vary those weapons up for each character but that may not be something Fatshark wants to do and it wasn’t something we bothered with ourselves either. May be something to ask about/look into one day.
c o n t e x t
sure thing, but i give reasons why i think the intent was like that. In this case, the irl physics of a weapon.
I consider it awesome that Fatshark implements some HEMA realism into the game. The Bretonninan sword riposte mechanic makes sense, and looks great.
The old halberd moveset was also very authentic and true to HEMA spirit. Not including block cancel lights ofc.
Aight my bad there, wasn’t sure what you were referring to
oh and on flail if they wanted to go full HEMA realism they should’ve made flail 2 handed as that would be more historically accurate as the weapon is based on agricultural threshing flails…I’d kill for a 2 handed flail in verm ngl
You missed my point a bit. i understand builds exist and builds are there to cover certain weaknesses in the game. In a perfect world i would agree with your statement that devs look at weapons with their environment in mind, but tbh fatshark doesn’t look at that, or they miss alot of them, or they are ok with it (untill public outcry happens).
What i tried to adress with bringing that point into the conversation, is that everyone looked at halberd to have block cancel light as a default combo (i assume that because alot of players in this thread said so) but the halberd’s identity is that it lacks in swipes and ofcourse it will perform worse then, for example, exe when that weapon has acces to horizontal lights and a big overhead heavy. Why do we add a infinitly chainable sweep attack to the halberd? is it smoother? ofcourse it is. Does it remove halberds identity, yep. The stab chain i’m more ok with as it “fits” more, and technically if we look at the current halberd it still has 'more stabbing then sweeping" but sweeping isn’t a weakness anymore. (movement or slow attacks shouldn’t be a weapons only weakness). Did the weapon move higher up in the meta because of combo change? ofcourse, but that’s because it can do everything now. A sword and dagger will always be higher then a 1h axe (unless in very specific scenario’s), or a axe falchion will always be higher then falchion.
Should the way weapons get buffed now get a look at how their combo’s chain? i’m sure alot of weapons could be made meta (all around weapons) by doing something like that.
Also the billhook example was purely to show that billhook has a horde clearing weakness and can get overwhelmed pretty easily. Currently nobody notices any of those things, unless playing melee bh. I personally think billhook is a great and fun weapon, at its core its a great weapon. But i honestly forgot how it feels to play with the billhook, when playing it on whc and zealot this weapon is insane, alt attack stamina changes don’t bother anyone, unless you alt attacked every trash enemy in a horde, the push attack stamina combo doesn’t bother me, i just do it as i know my stam will be back, i literally never worry about that. Just wondering how many players will ask for billhook changes and combo changes if they ever remove stamina regen in all forms (which they wont, ik), or if they change push attack chain. Everyone will most likely not be happy, when in reality it’s just the same old billhook, You just only started to see it now (speaking about playerbase, not you personally)
edit: wrong person. meant for @Incandescent
Wholeheartedly disagree with this. Unless you want to argue that L1 block cancel was in contravention of what you consider to be Halberd’s identity, but that would be an innate flaw in Halberd’s original design then from that perspective.
My view of Halberd is that it’s a supportive weapon rather than a frontline weapon (which is also more realistic) and the new moveset does reflect that, it excels when you aren’t pressured on the frontline whereas when you are under pressure you’re forced back into L1 block cancels and pushing which is less effective than when you have the room to do the full breadth of attacks
But how do you know? we are just all assuming. The playerbase doesn’t know the true identity of a weapon, the playerbase will just go with whatever is effective. If we listen to majority then exe sword should get its nerf reverted, even if its barely noticeable. All the devs said in their designer comment is that they are a bit wary and are gonna see how the public reacts, thats pretty much how i understood their comment. So you are saying it’s a design flaw, when maybe it wasn’t.
Also yes i didn’t consider block cancelling original part of halberds design, i did however think its ok that block cancelling exists if players wanna go trough that. It’s just not halberds core identity, the community made block cancelling lights a default combo in their eyes because otherwise it horde clear was super bad, also because heavy sweep was bad. This doesnt mean halberd suddenly needs to be able to horde clear effectively and infinitly. Imagine like 1h axe has a horde sweep in its chain and core axe is super good at elite killing and we found out Block cancelling 1st light gives us access to that sweep every time, which covers its weakness. The axe isn’t meant to do that, but we made it that way and players who dont wanna do block cancelling will feel behind. Should fatshark then introduce a combo change where it chains infinitly?
I mean thats true, halberd struggles when he has alot on him. But start doing heavies on any 2h weapons when getting overwhelmed and you are also pretty much gonna do lights or block and push. Unless using high stagger wep and being able ot stagger them before (which when getting overwhelmed can be difficult) or using fast weapons.
I’m saying, from your perspective, it’s a design flaw if you think L1 block cancel was a problem, however
As for identity: the core identity of halberd is essentially up to the player to decide for themselves…or Fatshark if they decide to actually come out and state what each weapon’s identity is, I guess.
it doesn’t mean that but that also doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t either.
No, I’d simply say that the people who don’t feel like block cancelling will just need to deal with the consequences of not doing so. Thing is Halberd has 2 attacks that are horde clear oriented, before the BBB one of those attacks sucked and was never used, the other one is decent albeit a bit clunky and slow due to block cancelling and prior nerfs to the animation speed.
There were other problems too, the light stab wasn’t often used compared to just push attacking to access L3, the heavy lunge typically wasn’t used either. There just wasn’t any real incentive to utilize these and if you did provide the incentive then it either:
A. wouldn’t make a difference which you went with so players would opt into muscle memory
B. would just be better than the default go-to combos and thusly replace them
to solve that you’d have to go through and somehow make each attack unique enough to be used in each situation that calls for it without replacing each other, or you could do what I did and change the chains up so that you have a fluid combo for each scenario
I mean halberds identity or any weapon’s identity for that matter is what fatshark put into the game in the beginning. If they suddenly made 1h axe a horde clear weapon, i would argue it’s identity is lost, but it will get a new identity, but its old one is gone. So halberd has a different identity. It’s not the same weapon, it ha the same weapon model but has a different identity. So basically answers the second quote, i would say it shouldn’t be able to, unless you are changing the weapon drastically.
Yes block cancelling made the weapon clunky, or do you mean the light sweep was clunky looked at individually or in its normal light chain?
I mean, it was. You used light stab to heavy stab if i remember correctly. Heavy stab was used for monsters. Yes push stab combo was best if you had the stamina. Currently you don’t use any of those aswell, (heavy sweep combo aside, for a sec), you just do block cancel light, or push attack chain, and the stab chain on single target. There havent been more combo’s due to this change. There are more Effective combo’s currently, but that’s obvious if you make everything chain into each other. like chain every single target attack into each other will ofcourse make it have better single target dps or more effective combo’s. I don’t understand honestly when people say halberd has more combo’s when it doesn’t have more, its just easier distributed and makes halberd boring imo, its just sweeping and stabbing, a bit like exe is currently. Exe is just light light cancel, heavy. (yes also has pushattack uses), halberd currently is also just sweep and stab and the most effective ones are probably still the same ones as before. So the reason people give, “i like halberd because it has more combo’s” or “before it only had 2 combo’s” are just false statements
You can double chop into heavy stab which will kill SV
you can heavy stab, light stab, chop
you can double sweep
you can still L1 block cancel albeit not as effective as double sweep for mixed hordes
the old combos were
L1 block cancel
double chop
L1, L2, heavy stab (which was also rather clunky going through a horde clear attack for single target dps)
both of course had their full light chains too
Yes as i said. Effective combo’s, which makes sense if you chain them after one another infinitly. It doesn’t have more combo’s.
This is sort of my view as well. Why must the sequence of light attacks be of a singular purpose on every weapon? Why is chaining lights and heavies for more versatility a bad thing? I’d say it’s a good thing since it rewards a skill. That is way more satisfying gameplay to me than “just do lights for this situation, and just do heavies for that situation”. That’s one of the things I like about shields in this game as well.
I can sort of understand why people would enjoy the playstyle of having to adapt to what in this thread are so-called “imperfect combos”, instead of using the right combo for the job, as its a different sort of challenge. But Vermintide is in the end a game about player skill and taking on new challenging levels of gameplay by playing at the top of your skill, and with the style of adapting yourself to the imperfect combos you are just objectively less powerful compared to when you can do and switch to combos according to the situation, so I feel the latter fits this game just a lot better. And the new Halberd fits that profile well.