Halberd Discussion

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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I was initially very happy with the changes made to Halberd back when the BBB was in motion. Certainly made the weapon stronger by introducing new combos and making the heavy attacks actually useful. Had some problems that made the weapon feel unfinished, but I was hopeful that Fatshark would’ve taken the reins from there and made the weapon feel proper. Sadly, that didn’t happen, so here’s my take on why the Halberd feels wrong, and what changes I’d like to see.

The biggest problem for me are the combos. The feel and look of a weapon is very important to me personally, more important than how strong a weapon is. And the combos, while effective, lack polish to make them look and feel good.

L1 → H2 - the sweep combo needs changes. It’s 2 nearly identical sweeps coming from the exact same side, swung the same way right after another, creating a very monotonous and boring feel for clearing hordes, which I don’t feel matches how a halberd (or polaxe) should feel. Billhook works because its Push-Attack → L2 sweeps come from different angles and criss cross, making a nice X shape, while Tuskgor Spear Push-Attack → L3 → H2 combo incorporates a stab in the middle to keep it from feeling repetitive, and help reinforce stabs as a core component of a spear (or at least tries to).

Making new animations is a no-go for Fatshark, so my proposal is to change the combo to L2 → H2. Would start off with L1 sweep, then chain L2 stab and H2 sweep. Yes, this makes it less effective because it’s not 2 sweeps right after another, but it’s a small price to pay to actually make the weapon feel nice and proper. This way it flows better with subsequent attacks as well, like H2 chaining into L2 stab, which can then flow nicely into L3 overhead, unlike now with H2 sweep going straight to L3 overhead, which is visually displeasing.

This would also naturally remove the H1 → L2 combo, which I don’t think is an issue since there’s H1 → L2 → L3 combo, which is nearly identical.

H1 → L2 → L3 is the other combo that needs some polish. Rather, it’s not the combo itself that needs changes, but the animation delay between H1 → L2. All the other attacks and combos of Halberd have the same (or similar) animation delay between attacks, except for H1 → L2, which has a much lower value (or none at all), making the attacks come out right after another. It makes the combo feel alien, like you suddenly switched to a different weapon with different attack speed and animation delay values, a weapon that carries no weight in its attacks (a major criticism I have of Mace & Shield and Fire Mace as well, a big reason why I don’t use those weapons). There’s a reason why all weapon attacks have similar delay values, and it’s to keep the weapon combos nice and tied together in feel. Adding in proper animation delay values would do a lot for the weapon to make it feel proper, considering how often one uses the combo.

Lastly, the Halberd feels too slow. Even with Mercenary & Foot Knight it feels just a little on the sluggish side, and the weapon certainly doesn’t offer enough to offset the downside of slow attack speed in my opinion. With the changes above as well, it could do with being faster, so a 10-15% attack speed buff would be great for the weapon to help it feel lighter and more competitive.

Bonus - buff L2 stab to share damage profile with Tuskgor Spear stab, giving it 4 more base damage?
Buff H2 sweep so it’s more worth using than L1 block cancel?

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I really like & appreciate current Halberd.
H1 > H2 & H1 > L2 > L3 “combos” especially.

Heavy sweep armour sliding or tank and an attack speed buff would be nice.
Changing the attack direction would also be a nice quality of life, like billhook push > light.

That’s really it imo, I like the current combos and wouldn’t change them.

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This is essentially what the weapon had prior to last year’s BBB and is part of reason the halberds “attack chain” almost exclusively consisted of block canceled L1s for two and a half years.

Needless to say, this is obviously not a good solution.

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Not that obvious to me. Heavy sweep has almost double the base damage and higher cleave, if you think it wouldn’t be worth using, then what would you think about giving it elite cleave and tank modifier?

As it is right now, I personally can’t stand L1 → H2.

Besides, even right now, a lot of people still just block cancel, so little has actually changed in that regard. The people who would block cancel would continue to do so.

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Tank modifier wouldn’t do anything substantial. H2 was already given Heavy Linesman last summer. But someone forgot that Heavy Linesman by itself is indistinguishable from normal Linesman without also giving the attack armor sliding, which they didn’t implement. That’s what the weapon is missing atm.

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Tank modifier would be a nerf, in fact, since it prevents cleaving through Chaos Warriors, which I don’t think it should anyways.

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It can’t cleave through CW anyways because it doesn’t have armor sliding.

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Yes, but if it did have elite cleave, then tank modifier would prevent cleaving through Chaos Warriors. 2h hammer cleaves through elites, but never Chaos Warriors.

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An attackspeed change to the whole set might actually do the trick. Whenever Mercs passive drops it is hardly bearable.

I don’t mind the l1h2 combo, but I still never use it. Block canceling is just more save and convenient. It would be a different story if h2 actually had the armor slide that got advertised in the patchnotes.

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This. So much this.

Old halberd was Kruber’s fancypants murder-stick and I loved it.
The new one is just some streamlined, soulless tryhard-stick.

I was salty about it back then, I’m still salty about it now. :salt:

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the current differential in dps is about…
image

so having to incorporate a stab inbetween would make light block cancel definitely better. Off the top of my head I’d change the heavy sweep to be a back/reverse sweep (just rip the animation from spear and shield L2 maybe? idk) using the backspike and give it a similar profile to tuskgor H2 so it can crowd control a bit

you know you can use halberd in literally the exact same fashion as before the changes? Only thing you can’t do is lead with a heavy sweep which isn’t a big deal in the slightest. I don’t get why people are upset about having access to new combos when the light chain is exactly the same as before. The only differences are where your heavies are placed so you have access to new higher dps combos if you want them

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Assuming heavy sweep got elite cleave, I would easily take the lower DPS any day of the week. The cleave would give it a lot more crowd control against mixed hordes, and it would actually hit enemies past elites, instead of the swing getting stuck at a couple shields or 1 Mauler/Stormvermin. The DPS I’d guess assumes that the entirety of the light sweep hits at maximum cleave, when realistically that rarely happens during mixed hordes, which are quite common in at least regular Cataclysm. And honestly, if H2 got elite cleave, then it really shouldn’t combo off of L1 sweep, since that’d greatly proper its mixed horde DPS and overall control. The other advantage of H2 elite cleave sweep is that it’d offer very easy access to Paced Strikes, which are sometimes hard to proc and maintain. That’s more power and more attack speed, which further gives it the advantage.

I’m not sure that works. Don’t know if they can port different weapon animations like that, and I don’t think homogenizing halberd + spear together is a good idea either. Halberd shouldn’t have strong crowd control like spear, it also shouldn’t have the relatively low damage of spear sweep.

So, coming back to this, I dunno man. People who block cancelled Halberd continue to do so without making use of the sweep combo that much, so that hasn’t changed. And personally, I never block cancelled even before the BBB, cause I just hate the feel of it personally, similarly to how the sweep combo works now. If H2 was to get elite cleave, and the entire weapon a 10-15% speed buff, then I personally don’t think light sweep should combo into heavy sweep for the sake of balance and not making the weapon overpowered.

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that was the idea of it but FS either doesn’t like it or refuses to fix it :upside_down_face:

but yea I’d be fine with the combo being L1-L2-H2 so long as it’s appropriately rewarding

I haven’t messed with it tooo much but you sorta can but it depends. Mind you I’m an unpaid amateur so idk how exactly it works :^)

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I dunno what to tell you mate. Maybe the weapon just isn’t for you? That’s ok, there’s loads of weapons I don’t use because I dislike then for whatever reason. Just like I hated old halberd because the attack chains were crap and repeated block cancels annoy me. It sucks that you no longer like the weapon, but that’s going to happen to some amount of people with any changes.

I don’t see the need to improve the attack speed on halberd with the current attack chains. Just adding the armor sliding like it was supposed to get should be enough.

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That’s not it. I like the weapon and use it regularly. I like how it looks, I like the feel of it, I like the light attack chain, and I like the heavy attacks individually. What I don’t like is how there’s zero animation delay between H1 → L2, when not a single weapon had zero animation delay between its attacks before the BBB, I don’t like how the weapon starts to flow unnaturally from H2 sweep, jumping up to do an overhead instead of a more natural stab, and how L1 → H2 looks visually.
You can’t honestly say yourself that L1 → H2 sweep looks proper, can you? Do you think the devs would have made a weapon flow like that originally? Imagine billhook, but both sweeps swing from the same side. That’d feel awful for me personally. Not bashing the modders, I was just hoping Fatshark would have polished it instead of leaving it as is.

I’m suggesting a change because I think this would make the weapon flow better, and with the changes to H2 sweep and attack speed buff, it would also be more competitive.

I certainly do. The weapon feels slow for what it offers. The speed it has currently is not enough in my opinion. The weapon overall is honestly just a bit below average.

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tbf the push attack-L3 combo is a double overhead when it should probably be an overhead into a stab but eh, it’s less that repeated attacks are inherently problematic and more just the animation timings are a bit jank…though I figured FS would polish that ngl

instead they removed armour sliding for no reason

I’d disagree with this though, it’s on a similar level to executioner imo

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Definitely this. Double overhead feels fine and natural to me, when I guess according to what I’ve said I should find it a bit iffy. Just a small tweak to H1 → L2 animation delay would make it feel much better.

Same doesn’t really apply to sweeps though, in my opinion. No other weapon in the game has a sweep combo where it looks like you’re chopping wood with the same right to left sweeps. Imagine executioner, but all light attacks are the same. Reminds me of sweeping the floor with a broom, for some reason. Would just feel silly.

Incidentally I find executioner pretty average and well balanced nowadays. If anything they could increase H2 speed so you’re actually incentivized to not just block cancel H1 overhead with it. So that falls right into me feeling like halberd is just a bit below modern executioner.

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yea I’m down for doing L1-L2-H2 as a combo so long as it’s like, actually good

and by that I mean it needs to be substantially better on (at least) mixed hordes than L1-cancel

Then H1 could chain into L3 if you want single target stuffs

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That’s a pretty good idea actually. I like the idea of H1 → L3, and that’d be a minor buff to it, since L2 stab is pretty weak.

Almost makes we want to go make a mod for myself, although I don’t have the effort to give for that sadly.

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Also yea I like the idea of sweep-stab-heavy sweep. Just needs to have the appropriate tweaks to y’know, yeah.

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