Lingering Flames is Busted

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

I never complain about classes being too strong as this is a co-op game. However, the current state of BW is insane. It’s not that the build is just strong. It’s that it allows you to cheese basically any content. You can kill entire patrols, hordes, etc. by pressing ult on a 30 second CD and holding block. Lingering flame needs to be nerfed or removed. Perhaps it could extend the duration of your burn without making it infinite.

The other problem with the balance of BW is that it isn’t risky. Being able to do 2x the Damage of other careers should be risky. For example, waystalker, pyro, and bluntsman are all relatively squishy characters. To do max damage, you need to be able to use your ranged weapon with things in your face. With BW, you ult and knock everything down then just hold block for 10 seconds until they all disappear. It’s silly. The worst part is that it won’t get fixed until the next “season” of the weaves because leaderboards.

4 Likes
2

How much dot damage does her ult do?

3

Kaboom does between 33% and 80% more damage than Conflag dot depending on armor type.

2 Likes
4

It does same as fire sword charged, and less than full charged conflag
From testing on spawned enemies its deal same amount of damage

It dont look like that talent work at all

5

That’s incorrect. You need to test again. I suggest using the dps buff from UI tweaks.

1 Like
6

dps buff in ui tweaks, what?

Go test it yourself because right now spawned enemies get same damage

7

As already said into Zealot thread, in this situation where the game is pretty unfair, nerfing a career is the last thing I would think.

I’m a Kruber main, so I’m not defending my favourite career, but imho she is just very strong, not op.

“You can use the ult and then wait for Lingering Falmes’ work”, about what difficoulty are you talking? Because a career must be always balanced about the last one (in this case, Cataclysm). Where you can’t “wait”, you must kill everything must fast possibile, and mainly you must stagger enemies to stop them.
Sure, BW melts hordes (this is her work), but she has two weak points:

  • Specials: if you use “meta staff” (fireball, conf), your power vs Specials will be very low;

  • Elite: she sucks against armors. And as already said, you can’t ignite a CW and just wait that the flames kill him. You will be overwhelmed. And you will see a lot of hordes full of SV, CW and “charge Guy”.

Other Sienna’s careers are more risky, but they have their pro and cons:

  • Unchained: she can reach the highest power (more then Zealot) and the highest toughness (more than IB/FK). You can decimate an horde with the spells and then fight the survived Elites and stagger the world thanks your bonus power;

  • Pyro: if we consider the entire map, BW can spam more spells. But if we consider a short amount of time (for example when your team must deal a bad situation and you need all the damage possibile), Pyro will be better. Because she can use the entire overheat like BW (and remember she has some “free spells” thank her crits), but then she can “empty” it thanks her ult and to spam other spells. And think if you have a purple pot.
    Moreover she can easily kill an annoying Special with her ult.

Both are better in melee (thanks to power or crit%).

The general balance it pretty good, there are just some good but overshadowed careers that must be buffed a little.

8 Likes
8

Balancing is around legend not cataclysm

9

I know that a game must be balanced around the highest difficoulty… then I don’t know if Vermintide follows another “rule”.

10

You can absolutely nuke a SV patrol (on Cata even!) with BW. Here is me doing so with a Variant of the build Sleezy is talking about (this is without Kaboom and on unoptimized gear, too): Twitch

Another, less extreme version, of me not touching conflag (as much now that I look at the vod, ha! ) and taking out about 8 with just a firesword: Twitch

Edits because I realize I popped two conflags in the last vod, but point still stands about LF being overtuned. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
11

Great videos, but we should know how many kills were “just last hit”. That Conf Staff has very good stagger is certain, but about damage I have some doubts.

12

Couldn’t tell you because it’s in live so no damage numbers, but my team barely touched the patrol in the first video. If you noticed I started the conflag pretty early before they reached it, LF is nothing to sneeze at where it’s at right now. You’ll notice the assassin gets roasted pretty quickly by LF in the second video as well.

That’s not to say I want the build gone, it’s just a little bit overtuned. You can have powerful without being completely godly.

2 Likes
13

Do you think that the problem is just LF?

15

I play Sienna Unchained on Cata.
My build is that of a tank who staggers enemies and does crowd control (flame sword, fireball).

I feel like the new stagger technique really comes into its own as a disabler.
When my matches are over, generally I have a high overall kill count, but I’m rarely the top.
For the most part, I keep enemies vulnerable/weak so that my team can purge them.

This is to say, I feel like the technique is really only effective in a synergistic sense.

Let’s take the first video where you killed off the storm vermin. For that to happen, two allies completely covered your back, while Kruber kept the enemies funneled into a tight gap. Without their constant, active protection, you would have been dead in a heartbeat. This was great teamwork.

In your second video, you did an excellent job of controlling the partrol, but it was your allies followups that ultimately killed off the units. You did your job very well, and they did their jobs very well.

I think cross/class synergies are the last things we should Nerf.
If one character completely runs the field, that’s a bad thing.
If one character makes it so the team can run the field, that’s the best thing.

5 Likes
16

I think it’s a mix of both as why would you run one without the other (but would agree famished compounds the build, maybe)? I used LF in 1.6 and enjoyed it, though I think it was more niche then. So I certainly don’t want LF removed as it’s super fun and satisfying.

3 Likes
17

Yeah for sure, teamwork plays a large part of it (in the last video in particular since they are far, far more proficient players than me, obviously), but…

idk, the build feels like it completely nullifies the threat. I’ve been in situations sometimes (but not often) where it’s just me, a conflag, and firesword and can control without the team; it’s harder, for sure, but still does massive, massive damage. The problem could just be solved by taking other talents, but the build far overshadows other things that can be built. Which is why I would agree with Sleezy on some points, not for the removal of LF of course, but to bring other things more in line so other builds can also have chances to shine. It’s not LF that’s the problem, but a combo of these talents that I think, are.

1 Like
18

Honest exchange of experiences:

If I have my back to the wall, and I’ve already created a slight gap, I can control a horde flood. The same is true of any instance where I have to worry about <160 degrees of coverage.

However, if an elite/berseker charges me, and my stagger dance gets interrupted, I can die.
The same is mostly true if I get surrounded, but that goes without saying.

I am at my absolute effectiveness, when I am working closely with a melee damage dealer.
This build has a blind spot against bosses (a concoction fireball barrage being the best bet), and can at best, slow/temporarily disable a group of chaos warriors.

I guess I’m reacting to the “control without the team” sentiment, because I think that’s a very situational statement: when I am in a situation where I can stagger a specific flow (and composition maters here), then I can control that part of the field. If nothing is able to strike at my back, I either have a profound terrain advantage, or the team is actively controlling other parts of the field so that I can do what I do best.

[edits, grammar and phrasing]

1 Like
19

Yeah for sure. I think control is way easier on BW than, say, Unchained, specifically because of her ult. Burnout you can just run away; Kaboom you can just hold block and wait for things to die. Unchained, as you mentioned you play, has a much more complicated way of getting out of tough spots, whereas BW can just go “gotta run, bye!” so you’re working for it much harder than I am, which is what I think OP was getting at. I’d say you’re playing Sienna as she’s more meant to be played. :slight_smile:

Ofc, the game is best played as a group; I’d be deluded if I went in saying I could do Cata all by myself, but comparatively, I’m doing things other careers have a much harder time doing, with much less effort. I certainly am much happier and more effective with a solid frontline to help me.

That’s my standpoint, at least.

1 Like
20

Oh you mean lingering flames is the reason weaves over 100ish are completable?

21

I was using this build for many months, but no one ever cared or mentioned BW until they saw me using it in a game. People would say BW was terrible. When WoM beta came out, I laughed because they basically took what I already was doing and buffed it, making burn a whole specialized thing. It’s like when a majority of the community thought hagbane was utter garbage until I made that thread about it(this is when the game first came out) and then people started saying sometimes it was busted even though literally nothing changed with it at the time, during all~ of that time.

Burn damage has always been pretty awful unless you do very specific things. Like how beam staff has high burn DoT when charged long enough and flamethrower can stack burns effectively. You always have such a strong pro and con though. Most players once armor reaches their face just collapse immediately. I say most because in my experiences a lot of Sienna players seem to struggle with melee and effectively weaving their melee and ranged attacks. But regardless, I’ve thought about how you could really nerf this sort of talent set up without making it terrible. The thing is, you really can’t. Not directly.

When a skilled enough player is given these tools, they’ll do a lot of work with it. Obviously, the lower the difficulty the more “busted” something is going to seem. I don’t know what difficulty Sleezy is seeing all of this on, but it’s really important to note what difficulty it is when discussing balance. You could make the 1h sword look like excalibur in recruit. The other day I had a guy say “Hagbane is gonna get nerfed 'cause it’s OP” because I was 900 weave power, +barrage, +str pot, against a Veteran difficulty boss. Yeah, obviously it’s going to be deleted. Change that to 600 hero power, barrage, str pot, on cataclysm and it’ll be a whole different story.

You’re given opportunity to use those tools to the fullest by having things like team members defend you, not a whole lot of other stuff around, and also by having enough skill to know to weave your staff, sword, and venting to effectively control and dismantle those enemies. However, if you run into an enemy like a chaos warrior, the burn damage isn’t going to be of any value so you have to use a -30% damage weapon. Using a weapon like a flame sword is going to be like using a pool noodle against them. There are only two super armor enemies you’ll end up fighting with any regularity and that’s chaos warriors and wargors.

Even if you lower the damage to +100% burn instead of +150%, you’re going to see similar results. There are only two real ways I could ever think of for adjusting how effective this sort of design is. You either increase the armor you fight in a level or you adjust how it affects armor. However, you affect everyone in both cases in an attempt to adjust the effectiveness of one career. If you change burn, then you affect everything burn related and all of Sienna’s talents and careers in an attempt to address two talents.

This has been one of the largest issues. There is such a disparity between builds on certain careers right now. There is actually another build that’s amazing but I’m keeping that one a secret for me for now. Improving other builds/talents/weapons/etc. is the ideal path. I mean, I don’t think Zealot has ever seen a nerf so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯ . Inb4 This comment gets Zealot nerfed.

2 Likes