Make Ranger Veteran great again ;)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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So with Ranger Veteran having lost his very short liason with 100% crits during active, I was thinking of ways how to make him attractive anymore. I don’t say “viable” because he was before, but he is one of the more boring carreers in game for a couple of reasons. The first being that his active is extremely bland and you can’t use it too often due to its long cooldown. The 100% crits kinda made up for that and actually gave bardin at least some resemblance of boss killing power, but being back to the old thing, it’s kinda meh to say the least. The obvious suggestion being giving him increased crit chance, but again, it’s nothing to write home about if you cannot rely on it.

My main gripe with him is that his passive, the other defining factor in a carreer, isn’t actually his passive… it’s his team’s. His passive benefits the team the same way it does him, it doesn’t actually give the carreer an edge. Don’t get me wrong, him being credit to team is good, but I kinda wished it did something that benefited Bardin more than the other’s.

I think his level 15 talents are a good place to put such a mechanic into action. It’s nice that he makes bomb drops for everyone, but the talent should also further improve his on bomb use. Same goes for the enhanced ammo drops and the potions, so I figured why not discuss some ideas what could happen on lvl 15 for our favourite dwarf that could also kinda balance out the lost crits.

Suggestion for Battle Brew: Enemies hit by bombs increase Bardin’s hero power by 2%, up to 20%, for 15 seconds.

Suggestion for Grungni’s Cunning: Picking up Bardin’s ranger ammo increases Bardin’s critical chance by 25% for 15 seconds.

For Master Brewer, I have two ideas. The easier one being that drinking a potion restores hit points (I would be in favour of true hp, but I know FS don’t roll that way anymore, so I guess 20 temp hp would be in order). The other would be that each potion had additional effects (after all, he is a master brewer :wink: ). Concentration potion may further grant additional critical chance, speed potion may indeed regenerate a small amount of hit points, strength potion might have further increased damage and grant infinite block stamina.

Happy to see more suggestions!

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I don’t think RV’s Lv15 Talents in general need anything more, as bomb and ammo generation are both quite good. One allows the whole team to use bombs pretty freely, and extra ammo can actually keep the whole team in good ammo, even while firing quite freely. The latter is the primary reason I think the certain crits on Career skill was too strong, as it rendered that Talent completely irrelevant.

Master Brewer needs looking at, though. While potions are good, it really only works slightly more than half the time, because usually, the team carries Grimoires. That’s likely to make potions go to waste, and make them useless after a certain point for two team members. Personally, I’d like to see it either changed completely (To maybe a special, low-effectiveness heal item?) or at least gain some usefulness when the team is carrying a Grimoire or two, likely for the carriers alone. 5% Power for a character with Grimoire might be a possibility, but that’s a bit unimaginative.

For general interest boost on RV, I think upping his damage boost upon Career Skill or giving his a raised critical chance during it (certainly not the full one it was, but maybe 10-20%) would be good.

Bardin’s not the only one with team boosts. Handmaiden, Knight, WHC all have their (primary) passive boosting others too, and mostly, so do their Talents.

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Yes, he is not the only one. He is also not the only one where I think it needs tweaking. I think all “team” abilities should benefit the one having them a little more so it gives them a more defined profile.

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Love the bomb idea. You can play a bomber dorf build with his talent and Grenadier on trinket, but it relies on teammates being friendly enough to pass you the bombs and can do some pretty crazy damage. I found it really fun and interesting.

Talents like this crazy jibberish:

  • Reduces bomb damage by 50-75%, but Bardin can use them 1-2 more times.
  • [Tar Bomb] Bombed enemies are slowed by ‘x’ amount
  • [Where Did I Put That Bomb?] Chance on melee hit to give Bardin another bomb

Ok, it’s a bit crazy. Imagine how fun this would be though.

Bardin ‘Gpudestroyerx’ Goreksson

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Making shotgun weapons actually useful against bosses would go a long way. Right now you might as well just be farting in their general direction for how little damage it does to them.

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Bombs not dealing FF was suggested here Add dwarf ranger passive skill "no friendly fire when he trows a bomb" , which also seems like a good idea!

Also, how about giving ranger bardin’s bombs always the effect of both bombs, no matter what bomb he throws?

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share potion to team when he use it as passive.
idk make him a team player.
he is in shadow no one use him like 95% u will never see him in game. that 5% is players who hunt 13 maps for okri chalange. i see more WHC then ranger dwarf.
but yeah he needs some love. i finish my 13 maps on legend with him and i can say i will never use him again till he gets some love(buff)

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The main issue with ranger Bardin, no one is attached to any of his talents or abilities. Most people like the Grudgeraker.
The lvl 15 talents, the only one that isn’t redundant is the extra ammo. Taking the bombs, gives the team to many bombs they know what to do with. The exact same thing can be said about the one that gives potions. The extra ammo is always good, especialy for your team, like shade with repeater xbow.
I think all of his lvl 15 talents should be removed, and his extra ammo one should just be in his passive.
If this isn’t a good idea, I would suggest to combine battlebrew with the one that gives potions, adjust the nrs accordingly. This way the talent won’t feel so redundant. Now give him a new 3rd talent option.

To me after playing alot of Bardin and alot of that as ranger. The only talent I’m truly attached to, is the reduced ranged spread for my grudgeraker.
His passive, his special, all the other talents, I wouldn’t mind if they got scrapped or changed.

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Giving him more ammo and leaving potions and bombs at the same time would be too OP, and removing those talents completely would make him even more boring.

But Improving those talents is a great idea! For example Master Brewer could give Bardin Proxy for free and Battle-Brew could either give Shrapnel or reduce FF for Bardin throws.

Right now Bardin’s problem is not that he’s weak, but that he is hella boring.

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Your main point about him being boring, is the exact point I made.
I also added that combining his bomb and potion talent should be adjusted acordingly. Like I said in the post, they are redundant and kinda pointless. I don’t see how added proxy or shrapnel would fix that problem at all.
My main thing is to remove that entire row and the second row of talents. Move his increased ammo talent to just the base version of his passive, and give him 2 new row of talents.
Maybe we could get some interesting choices with the new rows.
Like I said above, I wouldn’t mind if all of his talents / passive / special gets replaced. I don’t think alot of people would mind that.

The proper way to support your team, isn’t the way they have done it with ranger. A proper example is mercenary captain and witchhunter captain.
If we could remake it to be in the same vain as those 2 classes support, that would be swell.

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Here is an example of a new row at his lvl 15 talents.
1st choice. Crossbows get increased amount of enemies it can pierce and when you kill 3+ enemies with one bolt you get increased power and give a smaller version of the buff to your allies around you.
2nd choice. Grudgeraking killing a tagable enemy replenishes some ammo for you and your team.
3rd choice. hitting a headshot with handguns increases reload speed / attackspeed gives a smaller buff to the team.

These are just something silly I came up with quickly, I bet someone else could come up with something alot better.

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Touching only on the lv15 Talents here:

At the moment, extra bombs is by far the most useful and common choice. Bombs are always useful, can save you from quite bad situations, and nothing but the players’ own actions (or lack of them) hinder its effectiveness.

Extra ammo is a somewhat worse option: With all the ammo retention Traits and Talents, it’s just not usually useful, even if in my experience it can keep practically the whole party on high ammo practically by itself. (I tried a very trigger-happy GR build at one point, before I even had an Orange weapon. There was plenty of leftover ammo, enough to sustain another similarly trigger-happy build, even with me eating up a lot of the extra drops.) The best thing to happen to it would be a reduction of ammo retention in general, but that’s a different topic, already discussed quite a lot.

Dropping potions, on the other hand… Well, the bug not dropping Concentration potions (which should be fixed soon enough, btw) aside, this is something I wouldn’t pick myself. Potions are more situational than Bombs, need a bit more than “ohexcrementIneedsomethingtohelpme NOW” to use… And often, are useless to two characters in the party. Because they’re carrying Grimoires, in case that wasn’t obvious. I don’t think adding Proxy or something else here would help; that particular one’s not that easy to manipulate to usefulness, and besides, it would just reduce effective Charm options. Adding another effect, applicable to Grimoire bearers only, would be a better option, but I don’t know what exactly that effect should be. +10% Pwer would be easy, but stacking with the other “Grimoire gives Power” effects would likely be too strong, so I think something else completely would be the better choice. Attack Speed buff? Movement Speed buff? Damage Resistance? I don’t know.

In general, I think RV is quite good now, in fact, even if he is a bit boring like others have said. Talents need more work, but so do everyone else’s. Using the Talent tweaks to give him bit more character, a more specialized feel, would be nice, but that’s quite hard to do. I also wouldn’t say no to a slight Crit chance buff during his Career skill, but only slight.

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I do agree with your statement in general, but I think giving Ranger Grungni’s Cunning as passive AND something else at 15 would be too much.

Yes, his passive definitely needs an improvement. My idea - it should give some ammo to Bardin when teammates pick up ammo sacks and Bardin should get base amount and that bonus when he picks them himself. Becauase right now if you don’t pick Grungni’s Cunning either teammates steal all your sacks and you don’t feel like playing ranged class at all, or they leave them to you and sacks completely lose any meaning, cause this way it would be easier just to give Bardin ammo for specials straight away.

Proxy would allow Bardin to support his teammates with dropped potions without having to sacrifice personal bonus from trait. Shrapnel isn’t as good as Proxy in that regard, but that’s an offhand suggestion and although it’s not as good, it would steal allow Bardin to better support his teammates.

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Here is how my games go when I pick battlebrew or whatever the other one is called.
We all have bombs, there is 3 extra bombs on the floor, so people just chuck theres for the heavens and pickup a new one.
Chuck that speed pot beause 4 more potions on the ground, just so you can run faster for whatever reason.

bombs are great, they are still situational same with potions. No matter how you slice it, you end up with to much of either of those talents. It’s not needed, I always feel like “why did I even go with this”.
1 out of 4 maps I would feel satisfied with either of these.
Slapping proxy or shrapnel on to them won’t change that fact. How about actualy improving his “ranged” capabilities so feels like a ranger.

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Depending on what he gets, I don’t know how you can say that. However, I shall repeat my self again, I want to remove / replace all of his talents / passive / special.
The way he is now, he will never be interesting. For me it’s all about grudgeraker, nerf that and I won’t touch him.
Give him a specialized feel more in line with merc captain and witch cap. He needs a clear role.

Actualy, extra ammo is the best and only useful one of the three. You get to much of either with the others, you just end up wasting most of what you would “gain”. Besides, that shade with repeater xbow sure appreciates getting a full clip from special ammo. More ammo is always useful, especialy when every one playes their ranged specialized classes. When they don’t, it’s actualy even more useful, now they to can pew pew forever.

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I wish more people would adapt to this talent. Whenever I play with a bomb giving RV on my team I make a mental note of it and use bombs frequently on hordes or clusters of elites and it’s super effective.

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The extra ammo is definitely the best choice imho for two reasons: First, it is the most reliable and the least redundant. Bombs are nice to have and all but it is either like you say, you get too many of them and don’t even find good reasons to use them, or you don’t get any at all if you need them and with the ammo pickups, you have a hard time to sustain yourself as Bardin. With the extra ammo, you can always count on it dropping and the amount is enough to sustain the whole team.
Second, the last reason allows for running completely different setups with the other heroes, especially those that don’t have an easy time sustaining their ammo. HS Kruber can be geared almost to his former glory if you don’t have to watch your ammo that much, HM can be geared into an absolute boss-shredder, BH can become an even more crazy ranged DPS-machine. That is one reason I am suggesting to give bomb and pot drop more viability - they are gimicky, but unreliable and can become redundant.

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given how middle of the pack Ranger Veteran is in everything, I really think he could use another level passive.

at the least he could use something to synergise with his ranged offense or reduce incoming damage.

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Considering he isn’t really a true ranged character, but a melee ranged blend, he should have 125 hp.

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He definitely doesn’t feel hardy like a dwarf should. Would love to see some decent defensive talents available(not something silly like taking 25% less damage if you’re already almost dead) and a flat boost to his HP.

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time to run concoction and be a god