Melee Survivability

Wondering what people think about giving melee classes lifesteal? I’m probably just bad, but playing as something like the Shade or Slayer in anything higher than Vet makes them feel super weak given how fast you die. Wondering if giving classes like this 1 or 2 hp per hit while the duration of their ult buffs persist would make enough of a difference…

thoughts?

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`thoughts?`

Don’t die.

On a serious note, you need to improve your game. Also some classes gain temporary and real health on kill. Explore the talent trees.

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In fact, all of them do.

I cant speak to shade, never played her, but I can talk a little about slayer and melee in general. Vermintide has always been a mechanically intensive game with a significant skill ceiling as far as combat is involved. In the words of an many a vermintide vet “health is the golden resource” and learning to avoid damage is the main skill you develop as you play.

To that end, the two main ways to keep healthy (besides consumables like health draught) are health stealing talents and combat skills like blocking and dodging. Every character gets life steal at lvl 20 and i think that is why you dont get those more melee focused careers until later, giving you time to develop those skills as you progress.

Slayer can be punishing right when you unlock him, But i belive you can play around these disadvantages. My worry is, if you give extra lifesteal to these classes they will be far too tanky once they are fully leveled or power gamed.

Finally, I really like that the perminant lifesteal from VT1 was replaced with temporary health.

Tldr: Not too fond of more lifesteal, I like where melee oriented careers are, though i wouldnt be against melee classes getting slightly more health in kill or crit.

I know all the classes get temp health talents. I guess for some of the more melee focused careers it just seems kind of lame that you are in a bad spot in harder modes till 20+. The temp health talents (as another poster in another thread said) all seem really boring and don’t do much to further differentiate classes either.

Would be nice to see the melee classes get that as a baseline, and then for all classes to get more unique level 20 talent options.

As someone who has played a lot of Vermintide, people forget that it is a team game. I at times will take huge amounts of damage because if I hold the right flank during horde, people will let enemies through the middle to attack me in the back. Everyone is just out to do most damage, never to survive or aid your team. If someone uses shield bash or 2h hammer, enemies will sometimes fly out towards the sides, nobody follows up on them. Instead they get up and sneak attack the flanks. So what I am saying is, it may not just be you. As someone who plays on the highest difficulty I can say that the game works as is. You can get a passive (bad) regen from necklace. But other than that you have revives, pots/bandages, temp health etc.

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I think that melee survivabilty is fine how it is. The melee focused classes have talents or passives that allow them to take a lot more damage. Another useful thing to have is stamina and anything related like blockcostreduction, staminaregeneration. This needs to be used efficiently and learning how to do that takes some time. Dodging is also very important.

The other option is temporary health, which is only obtainable by killing or building crit. Both of these things are a lot easier obtainable for ranged classes. At the moment ranged classes usually deal more damage and have more kills for different reasons, but in the end that is true almost every time. As long as they are not getting forced into extended meleecombat they are safer at range and get a lot of temporary health.
Up to some point this is intended and makes ranged the safer and easier option to play. Melee adds a lot on top of primary and secondary attacks. The reloading and venting (or not venting) is replaced by blocking, pushing and dodging. On top of that there are a lot of different attack patterns specific to any weapon that allow for different light and heavy attacks. All this has influence on melee survivability.