Meta Careers, power creep, all making this boring to play

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Ok, so i’ve been having a bit of a crisis in my Vermintide career, the game is too easy now, it gives you way too many tools to deal with every threat, shades 1 hit K.Oing bosses on legend, lingering flames Battle Wizards insta poofing hordes. Well, I decided to up the ante, double emps vault deeds with twitch mode? Nope easy, Deathwish, onslaught, hyper twitch, all still cake walks. And this gave me a profound realization.

The slow power creep in this game is silly, and it really highlighted how potent meta classes are compared to the less picked careers.
Some of the biggest issues in this game I think don’t just stem from class balance however, I think a lot of the careers are just simply bad designs, or a good design with poor implementation.
Most support talents aren’t very useful outside of very specific situations.
Most tanky talents aren’t very useful outside of very specific situations.
Careers are not diverse enough, and that leads to things like <4 basically similar ranged classes with 1 clearly being the best>(for example) type of model, which is very unsatisfying, even less so when multiple friends want to play the same hero.

Some questions to answer in regard to this (for example):
Why are most ironbreakers played as a ranged career, is this intended, do we like this, should it change?
Why is BH no longer picked often, is he in a good spot or are other classes just better?
Why are high damage roles almost always picked over their “more survivable counter parts” do we like this?

Over-tuning and under-tuning, shifting meta as opposed to potential achievable balance.
I don’t think anyone here is unaware of how overtuned some of the careers are WS, Shade, Zealot for example are all aggressively strong. Now as a PvE game this isn’t the worst thing in the world however, it heavily devalues other careers, not only do people ignore them, but in the case you do want to play one of the “non-meta” careers, you are instantly subject to less engaging gameplay, a prime example would be picking huntsman, a solid hero in his own right, but you are meant to take out elites and bosses, competing with a shade or zealot right now is basically impossible and you wind up twiddling your thumbs while everything melts around you. It makes the game boring.

More to come, have to gather my thoughts post this giant wall of text, but TL;DR only a few careers even seem fun to play, others are riddled with bland talent choices, boring mechanics, or simply noncompetitive play-styles or weapons that leave you waddling around while everything gets nuked from orbit.

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Is that really a thing? I’ve never seen that… How does one even do that? Concoction trait on charm perhaps? Even then, isn’t their a maximum amount of damage a shade can deal to a boss?

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dual daggers, Conc, Shrapnel, splat

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I agree that the power creep has made Legend too easy and it would be nice if we could tune down stagger and specialize weapons again there are too many weapons that clearly deal to well with everything. I do not agree however that only a few classes are fun to play (improvemants can always be made).

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Huntsman is not bad per se. He actually requires v. high amount of skill to land headshots consistently. And that is a thing that many people, including me, don’t like - you are basically required to be accurate all the time. If you halfa.s your aiming, and you spam your longbow left and right, you’re eventually going to run out of ammo. Anyway, I just felt so damn annoyed each time I missed a shot because some mob moved his head when I fired, that I eventually stopped playing, while I should just have stopped caring :slight_smile:

Anyway, this “aiming” part makes people die because they pay too little attention to their surroundings and too much to hitting ranged headshots, and with low HP pool, it’s a deadly combination.
But at least he hits hard. The issue I have is - he’s not really exciting. Yes, hitting hard is all fun and stuff, 2-3shotting CW on ULT etc. - but it lacks the blood, spit and guts flying all around. Now lets take a Slayer or Zealot - you see a horde, you plow right in, start hitting left and right, your THP goes through the roof, you’re getting hit, but a thick THP blanket protects you from further harm,ults runs out, slayer jumps again, and Zealot has to fight for a few more seconds (I’m using -30% cooldown, so I can spam it at will), and then another glorious charge into a Skaven patrol. Blood fountains, dismembered limbs, blood all over the weapons, blood all over the screen - it’s so immersive and fun.
Similiar thing works for WHC Saltz - on ult, that staggers everything, he can just decapitate several Stormvermin simply spamming light attack (with 45% crit chance it’s actually a better tactic than using stabs), his voicelines, his hat, his coat, his glorious Templar’s rapier illusion (way better than veteran rapier illusion, which has this patchwork pistol) - it’s not just killing rats, by Sigmar, it’s killing rats in style!

It’s not just about being effective, it’s about fun. Ironbreaker can chop down horde with axe, given enough time, he’s hard to kill, can mow down entire chaos patrol on his own with said axe - but it’s like a physical work with constant rhytm - chop, chop, chop, pause, chop, chop, chop. Ult makes you nearly unkillable even when you’re not blocking. But you’re not hitting any harder. He actually has 0 truely offensive talents and 1 kind of offensive (30% less overheat from drakefire weapons) - so it’s not surprising, people prefer Zealot, Slayer or Footknight - all of those can be built towards hard hitting or towards extreme tanking.

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Oh yes! I have seen several shades kill a troll in less than 2 seconds…

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While there certainly has been some power creep, I don’t think that’s been a significant factor here. The aspects of balancing that have led to the creep have primarily been about making things feel fair: tweaking Bosses so they can be soloed or sensibly clutched; adjusting Dodge so moderate lag doesn’t ruin your timing; trying to flatten out some of the worst difficulty spikes by limiting hordes during Bosses…What you forget that while all this has happened, you (and all players, really, including your team) have gotten better at playing the game too - even while getting used to the “unfair” versions of the mechanics, so now that they are fairer, you can handle them pretty damn well.

Meanwhile Shade has always been a hard hitter, what has changed is the weapons she uses to do it and the effort she needs to put in to get the hardest hits - and the community’s discovery of the hardest-hitting combinations. And that’s another thing - the longer the game is out and the larger the community is, the easier it is to find all the really broken stuff.

If you feel only a few Careers are fun to play, I’d say the problem is on your side, not the game’s. Either they don’t hit well with your playstyle, you get stuck on a certain pattern, or you’re burning yourself out on the game. I don’t really find the Careers that similar unless I purposefully play them that way, and while a few feel awkward to me I recognise that as not having found the correct style yet or them just not resonating with my style. No Career is boring (or bad) inherently; that’s just the way you choose to play them.

I’m not saying there aren’t problems here (Shade’s power certainly needs a bit of reining in, as do HS’s and WS’s ammo regen, and a lot of Talents and weapon attributes need tweaking to be real options, for example), but I am saying they aren’t as bad or widespread as you make them to be - or they lie elsewhere.

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So… not a one hit KO then.

I get what you’re saying here but your extreme exaggeration in every other sentence is making me not want to take any of it seriously.

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To kill any monster as a Shade you only really need dual daggers and a concentration potion any build investment will make it incredibly easy and/or you will be able to do it with any other melee weapon.

So I wanted to see If I can actually kill a monster with one ult:

Now this build/strategy is by far very unnecessary but hey it would still deal quite some dmg if you wouldn’t headshot in a real game.

Klick to see how the concentration build does in comparison

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Sheesh.

That’s why I actively avoid playing with shades unless they’re friends, making bossfights (which in my opinion is one of the more entertaining aspects of the game with their announcement, the threat they’re supposed to be mixed in with other enemies) a walk in the park.

The damage is just so overtuned. :confused:

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Power Creep

Monsters

We all got more melee dmg against them which to be honest is a good thing.

The problem here lies in some way to strong weapons and combinations. They just simply will have to be nerfed there is no way around that.

The power creep is especially present for the Shade as all her weapons (except Glaive) have at least two times the base ult damage they had at launch. The dagger’s used to be weak but they do around ~300 dmg base now that can be easily extended by +40% or even +125% like in the video (1.5 equipment * 1.25 barrage * 1.2 shrapnel -1)

PS:
Yes I sure about the calculation there.
Does anybody know which 20% buffs stack and which don’t?

Stagger

Way too many weapons stagger way too elite enemies way to easily.
I’m especially upset about chain staggering CWs.

Jack of all trade weapons

Are not helping either.

Hordes

They are only a real thread when they block your way to evade the attack of a stronger enemy, when they completely surround you and you have no ult or when they have stacked to hyper density.
This is mostly due to their med pack nature temp hp gives them so you can easily keep up the small temp hp buffer you have for the occasional hits.
The other one is the dodge-time-window that will render yourself almost untouchable to them even if you’re just dodging around aimlessly.

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Yea, so it’s not a 1 hit KO, he had me wondering for a bit. Haxorzist just showed that even with barrage stacks, you can’t 1 hit kill a boss. And the Chaos Spawn has the least HP of all bosses. It’s still a ton of damage though

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That it is.

Way too much damage, any other career who’s been able to dish out comparable damage has had its output reduced, because it makes bosses a non-threat. Sure, its the layer of threats that are supposed to make situations difficult, but a boss has its own announcement and even changes the music, which says to me its supposed to be a dangerous addition, not killed within seconds. (Unless you get a good knockback or several on them and push the gits over a ledge which often needs you to strike a window of opportunity)

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To my knowledge all monsters have 2100hp except for the troll that has 1800hp but we all know that we will have to empty at least 50% of his healthbar twice.

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Why didn’t you backstab for the additional damage? You used shade active from the front, and as such reduced the damage you can deal with the infiltrate, also didn’t have a grim and specced entirely into crit.
@Haxorzist

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Additionally this post isn’t just for talking about shade, a lot of the weapons feel clunky and bad to use, reduced stam regen and dodge move distance on 2h, brings up some real questions about weapons like 2h sword for example. Or the fact heroes like RV, IB, FK, ect have a lot of talents that don’t feel impactful at all. I honestly do think a lot of careers are boring FK, and IB just feel like tanky untalented versions of other careers, RV feels like a supporty yet worse version of huntsman ect. Stuff that feels slow to kill is boring.

Yeah I have a 30+ (225) kruber that is almost exclusively huntsman play, but headshotting in vermintide isn’t rocket science either, enemies walk in strait lines, its point and click for ez clap headshots.

This is also true, but I think there is more to it, like playing with other competent people, if they are running stuff like shade, zealot, slayer pretty much kill everything faster than you, even if you are a god tier sniper chaos warriors are actually a great example! Shade can insta kill multiple with infiltrate, a stacked zealot with A+F and 10% chaos can 2 shot one with a crit (if headshotting), and slayer with a warpick and chaos damage can 1 shot with an overhead.

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I think backstab damage is basically equal to headshot damage when using infiltrate

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Right, but I didn’t see the crosshair light up on the first charge attack, Didn’t think it was a headshot. 20% chaos is required for the 1 shot.

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Chaos trolls do, they have 1500, rest of the bosses have 2100 HP.

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They are often bobbing their heads while running, though, add some angles to the shots and it’s not so obvious. Some enemies are easy, but some, especially during attack animations, and even while idling, like to suddenly move. Yeah, once I got a grip, I was pretty good at it, but it negatively affected my situational awareness anyway and tired me a bit and after some time off, I could no longer perform at the level I think I should. No such problem with melee classes. :slight_smile:

You’re 100% right on the other classes’ damage and overal performance

This is also true, but I think there is more to it, like playing with other competent people, if they are running stuff like shade, zealot, slayer pretty much kill everything faster than you

And also fully agree with this.