Lvl 20 talents rant No. 25464

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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So I was going to necro an older thread on this, because I didn´t feel like spamming the forum with another of my literary masterpieces, and also, there were some pretty good points already, so I wanted to give them a bump, but then I realized necro is not allowed on this forum, so you did this to yourselves, paladins.

As has been stated about a billion times already, the lvl 20 talents are kinda broken, and for all classes at that. They are of course broken for all classes because they are the same for all classes, which is one of the issues with them, but probably the least important one imo.

The main issue is that virgin health on crit is literally pointless next to the vastly superior Chad health on kill, except maybe a couple cases, like with the beam staff a friend of mine told me about. Apparently, this one is only viable because it is also broken, but in the opposite direction, making it pretty op due to either some bug or just a bad design. There may be a couple other exceptions I do not really care about enough to look them up and evaluate them, but in almost every instance, option a) sucks and option b) is just vastly superior. Even high-speed, high-crit chance weapons and classes will generally benefit much more from health on kill than health on crit.

One of the reasons the above statement is true is because it seems that health on crit only gives you health per crit attack, not per crit hit. Which is some bull*hit. Playing as WHC with 15/23/40/48% crit chance (depending on currently active buffs) and super-quick attacks, there is no worth at all in taking health on crit. There might be if all the enemies hit with a crit would trigger the effect, but they clearly do not. Which leads me to my question, which is: “why?” If this build doesn´t remotely benefit from taking crits over kills, then why does that talent even exist in the first place? Practially no one uses it, except of some possible exploits and perhaps a couple legit reasonable builds, which I have not really verified, so please, do enlighten me down below.

Then of course there is the third talent, which very loudly screams “I was asked to come up with three talents, because we need 3 talent options for every new talent line, but it is already 2 a.m., I have a life and no idea what the game works like, but hey, based on this scribble on the wall written in blood by my predecessor who killed himself after burning down a nursery, there are some bosses in this game or something, so let´s go with that.”

Basically no one uses that unless they want to make the game more difficult, and since there is no option to remove already selected talents, the best they can do is get the ones that are the most crap. And that is where this talent shines, so if that was a design choice, it was a bold one, but it kinda works and I do respect that. It might still be rivaled by the also impressively bad health on crit, but in most cases, it would probably win.

So before I get banned and possibly locked up in an asylum, let me present something constructive instead of just being a sarcastic a-hole.

  1. Make health on crit proc on hitting every enemy hit, that way it can be pretty useful against hordes and a lot less useful against everything else, same as health on kill. Might require increase or decrease in health generated per proc, might not. It would still be pretty much the same as the 2nd talent, but at least now it might actually work properly and have some worth to it.

  2. As suggested in a slightly different way by another user a while back, make the 3rd talent generate temporary health on hitting bosses and elites (and possibly even specials).

  3. You could also completely rethink the talent line, and just do what perhaps should have been done in the first place: Make custom lvl 20 talents for every single career. Then, Shade might choose between getting temp health upon backstabs, upon kills, or upon crits (but these of course would have to have their values adjusted to make all of them viable with certain builds and playstyles, yet none of them overpowered with any builds and and playstyles). I see some degree of danger in this, as it might become too restrictive, for example, I like to play ironbreaker as a well-rounded class with a two handed axe, rather than just a super tanky tank with a shield. It would be a shame if this became far less viable, because his health-replenishing talents would all rely on him being passive/defensive/tanking. But if still allowing for pretty much any playstyle being viable as any career (to the extent it is now), it might be the best solution, but also the hardest of course.

  4. Alternatively, you might solve this very easily, safely and elegantly by making the 1st talent generate temp health on melee kill, 2nd talent generate temp health on ranged kill, and 3rd generate temp health by either blocking attacks or pushing enemies or not having been hit/damaged in the past, say, 20 seconds. The last one would of course be designed for tanks, but possibly also for quite skilled players or just players who tend to play rather defensively etc. It could give a buff that would generate something like 2 white health per second.

Basically, there isn´t too much of a problem with these talents, except that only one of them really works/is a viable option, meaning the whole talent line is a rather crappy talent design, which is also why I am posting this as feedback and not a bug report. And it just kinda feels wrong to have 2 out of 3 talents totally worthless, and I think it also sort of trips up new players, even if just for a while (personally, I got tripped up most by trying to figure out if the other two can possibly be worth it, how, when, and if not, why do they even exist).

Discuss.

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Temp health in general should be looked at IMO. The way it works now makes the gameplay feel way too carefree.

On topic with your thread though, one big problem I see is that you don’t get these talents until level 20. They fundamentally and permanently change the way you play, and that should probably happen earlier in your career.

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Well I wouldn´t be angry if they scrapped this system and basically made V1´s weapon properties regrowth (chance for health on hit) and bloodlust (chance for health on kill) into replacements, but I doubt that is gonna happen. That felt more rewarding, less certain (you may have had pretty good potential, but sometimes you just wouldn´t heal for a long time at all), and it provided you with perma health instead of expendable white health you might as well throw away if you for example need to snipe a special during the horde.

About the fact that you unlock it only at lvl 20, I don´t see that as too much of an issue. Yes, it does boost you significantly, which is sort of game-changing on legend, but tbh, you should be at least lvl 20 to play on legend in the first place. If not, then this is just one of the obstacles you put ahead of yourself, no one is forcing you to go legend already, and champion is perfectly viable with no temp health (legend is as well of course, but the need for it increases dramatically there).

What would you propose?

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Not sure what I’d propose. What I do know is that I like the feel of back to basics deeds. When the last free weekend was on, I got a new steam account and started playing on fresh heroes, partly because it meant no one was playing the crazy OP meta builds, but mostly because it meant that nobody had the L20 talents.

What’s rewarding for me is getting to the end of a fight without taking any damage. Temp health, at least in it’s current form, makes taking damage more or less meaningless since you get it all back when the next horde horn blows. Even between hordes, the flow of ambient enemies is thick enough that it’s easy to stay above 3/4 health when you’re using the temp health on kill talent (which, let’s face it, everyone is).

I feel like having these talents made available at L20 kinda screws with game balance too. The game we play before the L20 talents is totally different to the game we play when we have them. You indirectly said this yourself when you mentioned that the ‘health on monster death’ is something you only use when you want to play on hard mode.

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When V2 came out and I was levelling Slayer, I had the idea that maybe he could get some temporary health boost or damage shield per kill to represent his bloodlust and balance out his squishy nature, giving an incentive to play more recklessly and thus fit better with the lore. I remember reflecting that it would be cool, but probably totally OP and not actually a good design idea overall.

Imagine my surprise when I found that all classes had that ability, with no balancing drawback.

The real thing for me is that it makes hordes either boring clock-watching exercises, or actually give you a sense of relief if you need some health as the slave rat medpack will effectively top you up.

It should be tense, giving you the feeling that you are on the edge of being overwhelmed by the Vermintide, which surely is the point of all of this.

The first game was a bitter war of attrition against an inferior but innumerable enemy, but now it’s “Oh good, here come 100 free hit points.”

My suggestion would be to either:

Change the level 20 talents to something totally different and class specific, bringing back the V1 healing weapon traits. There are so many options here. For example, WHC could have a talent giving temporary (3s?) Gromril Armour type damage immunity on crit. Now you have a class that is uniquely suited to aggressive boss-duelling, with less utility against trash.

OR

Change the level 20 talents to permanent health on elite / special kill. With this you now have rarer, more meaningful opportunities to heal that require you to still be cautious and correctly handle the situation, hopefully bringing back some of the tense atmosphere of V1.

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It’s allowed, but frowned upon. While reminding the devs (and other players) every now and then that a certain thing is an issue, if it hasn’t been discussed in a while it’s better to start a new discussion than awaken an old one. It’s annoying and tiresome to suddenly read dozens or even hundreds of old messages just to get one up to speed, even more so when some of the older messages might be irrelevant (because of changes in the game; not in this case, though) and/or the commenters’ opinions might’ve changed.

On the actual points made, I pretty much agree. I think that having the same options on all Careers is boring, and they certainly are imbalanced. Health-on-kill is nearly always the best choice; health-on-crit is workable, but unreliable on a few setups and overpowered on one (but that’s an issue of the setup, not the Talent); and as you said, the last one is a handicap.

I wouldn’t be angry either, but I would be disappointed. As much problems as the current system has, bringing back the old weapon Traits would just reduce our options on weapons (as some kind of recovery was practically mandatory on harder levels even in VT1), and there already are few enough good choices.

Personally, I don’t think the whole system of temp health should be changed or removed (that would affect the game far too much), but some heavy tweaks to the Talents are in order. Maybe even moving at least some temp health generation to a baseline ability, and adjusting it with Talents. (Which, I think, would allow also other methods of survivability to be put on that Talent level.)

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To summarise what I’ve posted in older threads;

  1. Temp heath on kill should either be completely removed or given to everyone at level 1.
    2)level 20 talents should be weapons specific benefits per class. Kruber gets something like;

  • Great Weapons gain + 10% power

  • 1h Weapons (including Sword and Shield) gain increased crit chance to bring it close to Killing Blow from VT1

  • Shields block all Blows (including bosses) and block Assassins and Hookrats.

Or something similar along these lines for all classes.

Removing Temp Health might stop everyone getting in a mess about how easy legend is. I’m looking at you Zealot Temp Health abuser

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It does give health per crit hit that’s why you get much temp health at once with it equiped. Its only barely viable (in comparison) with a full crit build and the 10% bonus on dual wield of the elf and beamwiggler of coarse.

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Fatshark_Hans:
We’re putting that work into the release of 1.3, which should be at the end of October. Talents and weapons.

So I think we might see a change here soon.
Let’s hope the slave horde medpacks stop.

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I like your ideas, but how would the proposed WHC immunity on crit have less utility against trash? It seems to me like it could make him almost invincible against trash in particular.

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Sure, but I meant that they could rework the idea behind V1´s weapon traits into the lvl 20 talents, it wouldn´t interfere with weapon traits at all.

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I don´t think that is either how it works in most cases, or how it is supposed to work. I tested it on my rapier as WHC, and no matter how many enemies I hit with crit sweeps, it would always seem to give me 3 hp per crit. It is possible I always somehow only hit one target even when slashing into a horde, but that seems unlikely.

Of course the fact that the two characters with probably the most killing potential are the only ones remotely viable for the health on crit build speaks additional volumes about just how idiotic and pointless the current design is.

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Yeah, I guess it would have to have a cooldown to really work as I stated. One proc per 5 / 8 seconds depending on a talent?

The idea being that when the horde gets you it tends to be a few hits at a time, while with a boss you could exploit the damage shield windows to get extra hits in. Not a game changer, really, and not unuseful against hordes, but it at least fits the idea of a determined duellist type.

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Whoa… who died and made you the CEO of Fatshark?

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It´s not who died, it´s who will die unless my demands are met and the lvl 20 talents are changed. No one will, thanks to all that bull*hit temp health they will have. That is the problem.

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Let’s form a line, okay? Because I don’t think it’s fair that whoever thought “I know what’s a good talent - you move faster when everyone else is dead!” and didn’t get fired gets to enjoy life’s pleasures for a moment longer than they deserve.

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lol this thread was timely huh?

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Yeah, I am thoroughly amazed. I make a flame thread about WHC sucking d1ck compared to other classes, and a few days later, another flame thread about lvl 20 talents sucking d1ck intrinsically, and voilá, the next day, both are announced as addressed roughly the way I wanted and proposed. I must say, I am delighted and feeling a little narcissistic rn.

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Let’s close this one up, feedback on the current line up of talents can be dropped in to the beta forum :slight_smile: Peeeeace!

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