Imo, ranged careers aren't a good idea

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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…in a game like vermintide. To understand my point you should remember Vermintide 1.

What is Vermintide? For me it’s an action game where you use all tools available, you use melee and ranged weapons in your kit to kill and survive.

What the current differentiation into ranged and melee specialists does? Melee specs use ranged for 20% of combat, ranged specs can spam ranged for 80% of combat. Almost with any career, the game will heavily encourage you to go all the way into:

  • melee spam (mercenary, footknight, slayer, handmaiden, zealot),
  • or ranged spam (huntsman, ranger vet, waystalker, bounty hunter, pyromancer).

It’s like playing “half a game” in a given moment (not quite so, but get the idea). Your gameplay is less varied due to one option dominating the other (ranged>melee, or melee>ranged).

What Vermintide 1 did great - is the balance of melee and ranged combat, almost everything was right - ammo counts, ammo sustain traits, the effectiveness of ranged.
You could use and enjoy both types of combat, mix them and feel like a hero. Overcoming a difficulty with your wits, using a combo of ranged+melee - is much more satisfying, than overcoming it by throwing more ammo at enemy’s faces, or trading more hits in melee.

The great balance of Verms 1 ranged<->melee combat reminds me of another great game - Warhammer 40k - Space Marine. It was so awesome to feel powerful in both melee, and ranged aspects, to seamlessly transition from butchering orks to shooting them and vice versa.

The only thing positive about ranged<->melee career differentiation is “rewarding balanced team composition”, which i think doesn’t work enough, because the combat when schit hits the fan is so chaotic that most of the time every1 is for himself. If the combat is easy (low-med pressure), so you can stay coordinated, then you dont need the “balanced team” to win the fight anyway.

Besides less varied gameplay, another major problem about “ranged and melee” careers is: trying to fix “ranged meta” - is an unrealistic task.
If ranged careers wont be able to spam ranged - they would be too bad relative to melees and will loose their point.
If ranged careers still can spam ranged, but the ranged damage is nerfed, then this nerf affects melee careers too, and they definitely don’t deserve it.

Just to give you a rough idea what i’d like to have instead:
Passives, talents, and ultimates don’t split careers into melee and ranged, rather, they split them into something like:

  1. “tanky melee”+“high ammo count ranged”,
  2. “fast melee”+“fast reload speed ranged”,
  3. “hard hitting melee”+“high ammo sustain ranged”.

so every career gets some perks for both melee, and ranged combat!

The differences in gameplay would be the nuiances on how you use melee and ranged on each career. Now i wish you will think out of the box here, not with just the passives and talents that are done in V2, but more creative, making career perks that affect gameplay more heavily, than +20% hp, or +2 stamina.

A very sketchy possible way of career differentiation:

  • Knight is turned into double melee career, with some small buffs to compensate (less Ult cooldown, a way to reset it faster). With good and varied weapon balance for Kruber, this would be fun, when you have two melees that supplement each other.

  • Merc gets passives/talents to sustain (or use more effectively) the repeater handgun and blunderbuss. Nerf melee a bit to compensate. Ammo sustain is probably melee scavenger from Vermintide 1 (as a passive).

  • Huntsman gets weaker in ranged, but stronger in melee with increased attack speed and mobility (higher move speed during attacks and while holding block), ultimate tuned to be useful for melee (first melee headshot from stealth one-hit kills man sized enemies). Still good for handgun and longbow, same ammo sustain principles with ranged. New ammo sustain with melee - headshotting a target in melee have a chance to give ammo, higher chance when you do a killing melee headshot.

  • Ranger vet gets 150 base hp, nerf ammo sustain, combine all 15th level talents into his passive - to drop one thing randomly from a special.

  • Ironbreaker gets +100% ammo count (from his backback), nerf dmg resist and gromril, flame weapons should overheat faster, but not doing attack slowdown.

  • WS-HM-shade. Waystaylker gets scavenger from V1, Handmaiden - regens ammo from headshots, shade from backstabs as a passive (concrete gain should be tuned individually for ranged weapons) (and backstab - tied to melee damage, not to the number of hits).

  • Witchhunter - BH - Zealot. WHC - when you tag an enemy and he dies by a teammate - you get ammo; make tag having much less cooldown for WHC so he can tag enemies more often. BH - sustain with the cycle “melee kill-ranged kill”, guaranteed, unlike scavenger, in result the same sustain, but a bit more ranged damage (crits repalced with simple dmg buff). Zealot regens ammo by taking damage (to both temp and green hp).

oh and scrounger should be removed, conservative shooter can stay i think.

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I don’t think that the ranged is all that powerfull in this game. I’m not an elite player by any means but I don’t watch elite play and think ‘shame they never used their melee’. I think 'hmm half the 'stats/bonus in this game are irrelevant at this level of play.

Let’s see the devs get all the ‘choices’ you make building a character to matter. Kerillian’s health regen is… just get rid of it its meaningless. If its to good replace it with something that has purpose, it just has no reason to be there now. Heroic intervention… why, it is just there to force a reroll on the loot RNG. Any of the regen on boss options… just stop trolling people with rubbish and make choices matter.

Ranged vs Melee is only a problem when you try to build outside of the obvious beneficial choices. Other than that Ranged is a blast… mostly and melee is still imho (as a Waystalker and Slayer Main) where this game is at. Where this game is not at is meaningful theory crafting and rewarding alternate playstyles. Let’s look at Salty’s Zealot Flail combo and think, why is this so damned bad when it feels so good. Reconsider what waystalker was meant to be, if you remove the regen survivability at least replace it with a mobility option. Wan’t kruber to be fun make any weapon other than the halberd not feel like a mistake (and no I don’t play enough Kruber to be viable with the old sword)

Ranged works because a single ranged weapon offers so many versatile modes of tactical interaction where a melee weapon is a cyclic rinse repeat process. If you’ve only got a few weapons that don’t punish you for choosing them well… melee is just going to flag in terms of fun and ranged is going to be dominant.

tl:dr fix the pointless class, skills, weapon properties and traits so that the choice 2 weapons aren’t so quantifiable better. SO that building anything other than the current ‘meta’ doesn’t feel like punishment.

When that’s done lets also point out that ranged suffers from the same issue, just tactically ranged has more versatile implementation than melee so feels less boring, except beam staff it is exactly as boring as it looks.

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O.o

keri’s hp regen is really good. in fact it was so good they had to nerf it to regen only half her maximum hp, and it’s still good now.

i dunno man, i’ve been having so much fun mixing and matching since the game came out. i’ve tested all forms of combinations for classes talents and abilities, figured out which setups are best for my playstyle, which classes i don’t like and why, which talents have the most utility all things considered.

i feel it’s the other way around actually, ranged combat is straightforward: just shoot the head, or just shoot things, or prioritise shooting things.

melee combat is a dance. there’s blocking, there’s positioning, there’s timing, there’s number of targets cleaved and damage reduced after cleave, weapons swing differently for each attack, block attack, block attack chain into light attacks or heavy attacks, different attacks have armor penetration, and very importantly angle of attack swings, and weapon speeds of blocking and recovering and range. guard breaks, stamina regeneration, parry trait timing.

many many things to love in this dance of death.

i don’t play any of the so-called ‘meta’ setups and still do great. i assume u are talking about IB pistols, pyro beamstaff, bh xbow, WS longbow.

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I disagree almost entirely. On difficulties where everything one shots you if you have less than 80% health 50% regen is meaningless. Sure it helps prevent occasional chip damage and FF from ending you but it has no impact. It makes her a glass cannon with no mobility, as I said replace it with mobility or restore it to functional.

Yeah I get that, and I’m still playing. which means I’m still enjoying it but I find the fluid move from ranged to melee great versus… beam staff or you know bounty hunter or slayer (fter i love slayer just give the poor dwarf some relevance more often a problem the OP is bringing to light). I’m just saying i think the whole ranged vs melee argument is more about dross in the build options than either method being overpowered. Melee could feel much more relevant if some of the traits had meaning or perhaps if kill or die wasn’t such a staple. DPS at range will always be the ‘meta’ in a kill or wipe game.

I can see that, I was refering tot he rinse repeat weapon attack cycles that are basicly RSI systems. Also a lot of what you’ve discussed are what makes those weapons simply not as good. Sure you can go out of your way to try a weapon that does not perform weell but at the end of the day the ability to mitigate heavy armoured high HP enemies is at a much higher priority than any other ability. Horde clearing can be done effectively with most weapons, the alternative if not true. It can be done, it simply lacks effectiveness and thus punishes you for diversifying your options. Weapons that clear hordes well should clear hordes very well, if they’re going to compete with weapons that clear patrols well that also clear hordes well.

meta setups themselves are opinions, but its clear that glaive took a hit and now its daggers, flails are in desperate need of ‘something’ to make them the horde clearing weapon of choice vs almost any of the non horde clearing weapons available to salty. The experience as a whole isn’t about how you or I, or the OP experience it, but rather as it is experienced as a whole. As a discussion of game design we need to address the meta, as a discussion of why none of my friends play this game any more :cry: we can pick out any number of issues and many of them come back to that same meta.

Also a lot of these opinions really only exist in Public games, as party composition goes a long way to resolving this. Perhaps if you couldn’t build the same archetype with each party member. Still it is clear that public play is the intended play since it is rewarded via quick play bonus a system clearly designed to offer single players a guaranteed group.

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Continuing the discussion from Imo, ranged careers aren't a good idea:

let’s agree to disagree on this one. atm i’m addicted to a WS build with daggers/swiftbow, and i only play quickplay legend, so i’m not comparing it on lower difficulties. it’s really viable on legend (especially since i’m running NB also, real quick recovery)

i hear you. i would like to change that mindset because i feel there are a lot more easier setups to play than the meta actually lol. but it’s just my opinion vs popular opinion.

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Actually this is my main complaint about the ability. It only works well if you use NB. Without it it has no impact. So I’m not going to say don’t use NB as way stalker, I think the class is very survivable (Damn if your good enough run bounty with NB) just that you shouldn’t ‘need’ to sacrifice a trait slot to make it useful. If doubling up on the trait is too powerful then slow the tick rate after 50 but don’t mute the original trait to irrelevance. I use waystalker as an example because its the one I’ve come across. No its not useless its just clearly not very impact full. When I switch to another class it is never the health regen I miss. It’s entirely forgettable and the fact that you run NB really nullifies the uniqueness of the class because. Heck anyone can NB but only Kerillian can regen to a point that makes no meaningful play adjustments comparative to other classes.

These things should make huge gameplay differences they are barely a footnote. I actually didn’t know kerillian had health regen for the way to long.

Actually yes, the meta has drifted away from the easy ‘beam staff, volley crossbow, axe shield etc’ which is why I think we are seeing the real disparity in weapon effectiveness. State of play is becoming higher skilled in general less new players etc… I don’t think we can ever ask for ‘balance’ its pretty good but a few tweaks and I could find myself loving the flail instead of just tolerating it, or feeling the spear instead of just demanding I use it or using the red god damned axe I picked up instead of being sad I have no red weapons to use. How do you people tolerate the salty axe.

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3hp every 10 secs is still huge to me without NB o.O

i kinda like this though, with the new patch i’m seeing more and more varied combinations in my runs. i like seeing people experiment, makes for interesting gameplay!

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Fully regenerating via your ability asnd being 1 shot by a slaverat… impactful. not meaningless just meaning less.

You can already see the drift back, and the state of diversity might also be a reaction to free weekend.

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??? a slaverat can’t hit you for more than half your hp, even in legend. anyway we’re digressing

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Is that meta? Prolly why I always get people asking me why I’m using the hagbane… I tell them to wait until the score screen at the end. lol…

I personally think the elfs regen should go to 75%. She doesn’t have the dodge talent the HM and Shade both have that makes them so hard to hit. Still, WS is my favorite class and she is an absolute beast. At the same time, her regen also give back ammo all the time, even if it’s not ticking HP up.

To be fair, every single weapon of the elf is viable on legend, besides dual swords. Glaive and daggers/ S&D’s are probably the most common. But 1 handed sword is actually surprising good… same for spear and the rest. It’s really only the 2 handed sword that issues arise with.

I have 200 something levels on Kerrilian. I can assure you, the regen is great, even on Legend. 90% of the time, you’re healing into temp HP anyway. But the main reason the regen is great, is because of the ammo it gives every tick, even when at full HP. At the same time, can’t tell you how many times that regen to 50% saved me from attack that went through my block or some other cheesy thing.

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now that they changed longbow to be able to kill CW much faster with headshots… dual swords is definitely viable again

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Yea, I tried it. I always go back to the swift bow and longbow, at least once a month, try a bunch of different builds and traits. Just doesn’t do it for me… always end up back with my trusty hagbane. Something so satisfying about seeing that hagbane arrow hit the horde wave running at you, they all explode and fly off in different directions like they got hit by a bomb. By the time they stand back up, they’re doing the death animation, coughing and throwing up a lung.

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i always liken it to a grenade launcher, lol

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I can’t find any numbers on this but it definetely feels like that one sneaky ratboi gets me, V1 skavenslaves do 56 damage but I know that isn’t a comparison. But you are right, the specifics are not actually that important. Even if it could not I would still like to see it restored, and not just because I like regen but am not good enough to NB waystalker.

The defining feature of waystalker, I could not play it without it. What are the other two options… pointless. That is an issue across all builds I think solving would greatly reduce the amount of ranged vs melee debate. Focus on making more builds fun and optimalish, making more of the options feel worthwhile instead of just experimental.

This is most true of the return life on boss kill. Like in what world other than modded or maybe a seriously nasty twitch run does return life on boss kill make sense. Why is it even there, why not make it life steal of bosses or something quantifiably useful.

Yes, it took me a while but hagsbane is life.

This would shut me up, but I don’t see a reason it needed to be banhammered in the first place. It was reactionary, much like people calling to reduce or remove Gromrils armour.

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before vaul’s quiver got buffed to be always on, people preferred to use isha’s embrace, which made it some heal like 3 or 4hp every 7 seconds (can’t recall specifics now)

imagine 4hp every 7 seconds and it goes all the way up to 100% hp. slap on natural bond and you can recover your entire hp bar in 2-3minutes. i even did tests on it during the beta, it was way overpowered. then came the nerf, and the buff to vauls quiver being always on, and it became clear that people favoured having more ammo to shoot rather than more hp regen. no one talks about the elf regen now because of it (which was intended)

edit: sorry i’m going off topic. i love digressing

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I can see how it would be pretty powerful and maybe even vulgar mixed with NB but on legend 2, 3 minutes doesn’t make a fail. All my fails come from catastrophic choices and are done in less than 15. You either didn’t do the wrong thing or you did and even 5 hp a second (or much more considering temp HP generation abilities) is unlikely to impact on that. What it did do though was give you a fresh health bar at every major engagement ‘I imagine’. Now that might be of value against contant ammo regen. Probably not though.

Maybe that as an alternative to vauls quiver, choose ammo or full bar regen… I don’t think that would be balanced but it would be a choice.

note* That is 3.5 minutes from 0 to 120 (Asuming 20% buff). Not exactly make or break in an intense boss, horde special explosion but certainly meaningfull in a 20 minute run.

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Changed my mind. Working temp health from a 50% baseline is a significant play style difference allowing a choice other than 30% increased healing without punishing to greatly. I don’t know what choice it would be though.

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The problem isn’t ranged vs melee. That’s a symptom. The problem is the entire career progression system in vt2.

Vt1 required balance. Vt2 encourages you to specialize. The entire debate isn’t about bugs, those are features.

Simple solution is to simplify. Get rid of all the none core crap this game foists on people, bring it back to the basics, and try adding one thing at a time (as compared to throwing all sorts of crap in and then trying to figure out what works - which apparently only peeves players off).

Look at all the stupid crap in this game. A massive keep. The time wasted running to the portal. waiting on loot box animations that no one wants to see. The attempt to turn a hack and slash into a platform game. Get rid of it.

Then go a step further. Lob those stupid f’ing careers in the trash. Elf, dwarf, witch, witch hunter, and soldier - enough choice when combined with weapon and trinket, etc choices. Seriously, just get rid of the career paths. It just rewards people who try to game the system. Why go half melee/half ranged skills when doing so leaves you good at neither compared to those who went all in one way or the other. Which brings you to the topic of this thread and the general level of dissatisfaction.

Except most think you can tinker til you get it right. Whereas I think the system you created for vt2 is ‘the problem’ in and of itself.

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agree

disagree

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