How Vermintide 2 is specifically designed to punish Melee and reward Ranged combat

Thats for sure true.

I can agree with most of this. I certainly appreciate the effort put into making this critique.

I feel that the only way out of this mess is for Fatshark to open a dialog with the community. They’ve been rather silent, and admittedly it’s frustrating.

There a several things in place that make me think that they had much larger plans for, but gave up halfway through. Then to hear about the stance system they had wanted to implement…

All I know is that this game could be an amazing game, more so that it is now.

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I was pretty in agreement about that, but as I’m walking my way to different careers in legend, I don’t care much anymore about this issue. The only point that seems still critical are boss deleting careers. I’ve seen teams of “subobtimal” choices easily handle several legendary runs. Once you’re properly geared up and benefit from a minimal amount of discipline you can do wonder in legends. One thing that is critical is horde management, when you don’t have ranged horde cleaners.

Is this as “easy” as ranged? No. It’s more fun to have well rounded teams, and people swtiching from their melee role to shot the occasion troublemaker.

Of course I realize there is large difference between PU games and this feeling of mine, though I usually play in pairs or trio and rarely with full premades.

A lot of “bugs” or whatever are still “host/client” issues. The most are easy avoidable as Host. Just permadodge 2 aa, push , 2aa etc… melee is quite fine… as Client? Skill wont help you vs invisble hits.
But Yeah i see the problem in free loot Range classes like pyro/waystalker/bh… I Never carried so hard with any career like with them and i dont even play meta builds…

Good that some ppl here first defend their chars and range meta and there is no issue with endless ammunition or pyromancers ultimate. But this here is ok now. XD makes me laugh

Btw even as melee , you can quite easy “outdodge” every Boss

Also i like how a 1 inch pavement stops Sir Kruber’s extremely valiant charge :rofl:

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As a melee-first, probably slightly above average legend player, I’m generally happy with the state of the game. I play all 15 careers at least a little, and I enjoy the game more & have more consistent success playing melee careers than I do paying ranged ones. Melee combat is dangerous, but dying almost never feels unfair to me; I almost always feel like I know what I could have done differently to survive (or at least prolong) the encounter.

One thing that I’ve noticed a lot is that less successful players tend to fight in corners where enemies won’t spawn behind you. If that’s your go to move, then melee becomes very fragile, as surges of horde can often overwhelm the position – though a couple 2h hammers in sync can hold off almost infinite horde. But if you don’t have just the right team comp to hold the line without give, then ranged feels like the only option. If the horde gets to your position, you’re in trouble, so you have to erase it at a distance. To avoid this, you really have to fight in areas where you have room to fall back instead of getting overwhelmed, even if that means sacrificing some main horde dps to keep the space behind you clear.

Oh, and yes, you do almost have to use ranged to counter certain specials, but nothing is forcing you to spam ranged.

Reddit tends to be a meta echo chamber, where only people who already agree with a prevailing view get to have their voices heard. But that doesn’t mean everyone shares that opinion. I’d like to see a tweak to the troll so it’s not a guaranteed fail with low dps (downed players should never be unreachable behind a gas or fire wall, and maybe troll regen could be tweaked so it doesn’t start until 1 second after the troll last took damage) but overall I’m very happy with the state of the game. To me, this is the best combat I’ve seen in a long time.

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Just about the troll/stormfiend…

Everytime someone dies, the most players will go on or just stay/fight at their position. Ok it´s not always possible to fall back enough, but the most of the time, you just could go back as far as possible, so the dead one would spawn near to you in front of the “wall” or just in a “safe-zone”. It´s pretty possible to avoid nearly everything, like you already said.

The only thing that drives me nuts is hookrats ignoring the slot. Like you said OP, it’s extremely infuriating trying to hold the front line protecting the squishys, only to be dragged off into the sunset by a hook you can’t dodge. Or it’s really difficult to dodge, because you’re surrounded. And not only are they hard to dodge, they’re impossible to hear in advance because of the horde audio taken priority.

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Another point witch op did not talk about: Horde pathing.

Horde will usually come in a straight line and so it only takes 1 arrow/bullet/pellet to hit over 10 ennemies witch makes ranged weapon extra efficiente. In some maps like Rightous Stand hordes will always come in a straight line witch makes the map really easy.

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I’ve a meeting with the live team tomorrow (which is a collaboration of various departments in the production team as well as management reps) and this subject will be an item on my agenda.

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WEEEW

We did it lads.

That’s really awesome to hear. I hope a lot of the underused melee weapons are made more legend viable friendly because of it.

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Most of this ranged meta QQ is a list of things that need to be fixed along with exaggerations and zero-evidence claims.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/8rqzk7/favourite_class_polls_results/

Polls tend to show that melee-focused classes are arguably more common (at least by self-declared survey results). Sienna, the game’s premier ranged character (no ammo on all ranged options) is likely the least common character seen (roughly tied with Kruber). Ironbreaker is extremely common, but no one complains about him despite IB having access to infinite-ammo Drake weapons. Meanwhile, Shade is obviously melee-focused and arguably the most common Kerillian class. Complaints are focused on Huntsman because of two factors: free ammo via some of the best elite-sniping possible when played well, and simple boss-melting potential, yet Huntsman is most likely Kruber’s least played class. Slayer doesn’t even have ranged weapons, and he’s far more popular than Ranger Veteran, who helps enable ranged-focused parties by providing shareable ammo and bombs and is oddly left out of most “ranged meta” complaints.

Ranger Veteran struggles with ammo consumption if attempting to use ranged weapons exclusively (especially if other players are taking his ammo), Bounty Hunter needs and relies on Prize Bounty for ammo sustain (meaning he’s only pumping out free shots periodically or if he’s also swapping back and forth between melee and ranged for guaranteed crit resets), Waywatchers frequently use Swiftbows that are less effective than they appear (crippled kill potential against elites/specials while spewing out a lot of arrows), and Sienna pays for her ranged effectiveness by having melee weapons that are generally worse than those available to other characters + she’s the least (or second least) common character. Huntsman requires a fair amount of skill for “infinite ammo” sustain, he’s fairly underplayed, and the only reason he isn’t completely terrible in melee is the Halberd.

“Ranged meta” complaints are arguably baseless due to the fact that the game simply has a lot of issues that need to be fixed that all affect melee more severely than ranged combat + melee is actually more prevalent than ranged.

I don’t mean to completely discard complaints from melee players when there are ranged-focused teammates dominating their matches. It’s true: playing as Slayer with a Waystalker, a Pyromancer, and a Huntsman generally isn’t fun. No one wants to be the person stuck watching everyone’s backs while they eliminate most targets at range… even though the odd one out is doing an important job looking out for specials ( a single slaverat behind your group can take out a fair chunk of health from a squishy ranged character in a single attack, let alone a special) However, such moments are less frequent than you might expect. The poll results suggest that parties with so much ranged focus are less common than commonly thought, and if you pay attention to your group’s ammo indicators, you might see that ammo-using, ranged-focused teammates are actually running low more frequently than you’d expect, especially if they’re bothering to shoot hordes at range (when they could be meleeing everything for no cost if doing it properly). Consider that those ranged-focused comps may be less successful, as well— squishy characters tend to make for bad Grimoire carriers, and a whole team of 100-health ranged characters can be killed off very quickly with less potential for clutching (who’s more likely to live long enough to revive allies in a horde-miniboss-specials smackdown: a Waystalker or a Zealot?). Boss battles invariably involve the whole team, and some of the most effective methods for dealing with a boss require skilled melee work (Shade, Slayer, Foot Knight with a Concentration potion). Remember that a squishy getting focused by those unblockable attacks dies faster than a melee character, and if that ranged character is doing more DPS than a melee character, they’re going to receive aggro (barring purple pot stealth spam as Huntsman and Ranger Veteran, the least common Kruber class and least problematic and least common Bardin class, respectively).

Yes, the game needs fixing, and Fatshark could be a lot more transparent (and a lot more focused on the core gameplay rather than slapping together a console port for an unfinished game when the first DLC and dedicated PC servers are already late). That being said, this whole “ranged meta” thing is borderlining on meaningless. Half of the problems mentioned are heavily affected by whether you’re the host or not, meaning that the eventual dedicated servers should reduce their impact significantly (and if they’re still an issue, they’ll be so prominent that it’s unlikely that they won’t be “fixed” in one way or another; ex: dodging unblockables).

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P R O G R O E S S

hips

Inb4 people find a way to make this negative.

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btw smoker taught me how to post gifs.

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severalpeoplearetyping

Is fixed now.

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You’re still really bad at it lol

severalpeoplearetyping

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:frowning:

I tried!

I agree with some of the things here but I have to be honest… Melee is still extremely effective and generally safe. Hyperstacking is an issue until you get used to it and learn how to react to it but the biggest problem is just how bosses do random unpredictable 180 slams and, in the case of spawn, constantly leave melee range.

Zealot has access to devastating ranged options but he’s often far more devastating and safer in melee. Slayer is a beast. Kerilian melee is beastly in general, same for Kruber. There are definitely some annoying quirks when it comes to melee but it isn’t a “balance” issue. It’s a bugfix issue, ie. You sometimes take cheesy and unavoidable damage while meleeing.

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It’s important to make melee less random and more skillbased, but as to the other suggestions in this thread…

  1. You can’t remove ammo from ranged classes. 14/15 classes have ranged weapons. If ranged careers have less ammo, then everyone has less ammo. Either the ranged hoover up all ammo on the map and the melee have nothing, or the melee hoover up the ammo and the ranged can’t do their job.

  2. Ammo back on melee trait is a uniquely bad idea. It means melee classes will be MUCH better suited to regain ammo than ranged classes (which don’t have nearly as good melee/tankiness/CC ults). This means if you want to play ranged, why would you not just take a tank?

  3. As for nerfing Sienna’s various careers, their ult time etc - she has the absolute worst melee in the game. Forcing a BW or Pyro into more melee than today is a terrible idea without a complete rework of the careers and their weapons.

  4. Nerfing heatsink - again a very bad idea, as it works differently on different weapons. It’s good on some, mediocre at best on others. A skilled Sienna doesn’t even run heatsink, but hunter or barrage because once you’re good enough, you’re able to create room and enough temp health to vent when needed. As such, nerfing heatsink is really nerfing a crutch to allow less skilled players be able to perform, and sounds like a bad idea.

  5. Melee should absolutely do more damage to bosses - even several ranged weapons could use some boss damage increase.

  6. Bosses should not be allowed to insta 180 switch aggro slam.

  7. The CW punch is fine. I used to think it was unpredictable, now I only get hit by it 1 in every 20 times. In general against a CW, you can get in two attacks, then you should hold block, because something’s gonna come. It’s a skill issue.

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