Monster Balance

So, everyone knows by now that the monsters vary hugely in their threat level.

Plague Ogryn is basically a joke. Even messing up and eating its overhead doesn’t pancake you as much as you’d expect. Really only a danger if you are brand new to the game or its weird, turn-on-a-dime charge throws you off a cliff (which is sometimes unavoidable). Even Roger in Vermintide is honestly more threatening.

Beast of Nurgle is not really threatening, but kind of annoying. Punishes you hard for a dumb mistake, OR if it spawns and you are stuck in a hallway. Generally thought to be the most annoying and worst boss in 'tide game history, which is fair.

And the Chaos Spawn, which is hyper-aggressive, sticky, has the really annoying grab, and attacks far quicker than any other boss. They’re not bad, I don’t want them to be nerfed . . .

But is this level of imbalance in the monsters intentional? Like, should they be more comparable in threat level? If you hear boss music and see a Pogryn coming, you can practically ignore it. If it’s a Beast of Nurgle, you can ignore it unless you’re in a bad place. If it’s a Chaos Spawn, its target really needs to kite it well.

Ignoring interactions of Arbites’ dog with it (which are particularly silly with Chaos Spawn grab), what do people think? Should these bosses be made more equal in threat? Do you think the weak ones should be made more threatening? The strong brought down to be weaker? Should the Beast of Nurgle be completely reworked into something that isn’t a vore fetishists fantasy?

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IDK, they’re kinda OK I guess for what they are.
The real threat has never really been the monster, it’s all the other crap that spawns with it, the monster always felt like a way to amplify the rest by cutting off a a large section of the immediate area and making you fight differently and split your team up etc.

Also, maybe it’s just RNG, but it seems like a monster always spawns with a lot of mixed hordes with tons of armored elites since the last batch of tweaks.

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The part I hate is when the silent groaners and trappers sneak up behind you. :sweat_smile:

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I think you are underselling burgle, for it to be no threat, you need to have space for kiting and ammo or team that will hit it from the back. Without either of conditions it’s ultimate area denial, debuffer, can push stronger than pogryn, at the same time doing high damage. It also disabler and if you are eaten, you can be damaged by outside enemies. And as cherry on top it heals itself.
You are right about spawn and pogryn, pogryn absolute joke, threat level lower than poxwalker, i have no idea what needs to be done to it, to buff it.

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its still no problem but often people are to soy to simply attack it cause they are scawwed of getting swallowed even though they almost always got a shout chorus etc ready

if people simply attack it a burgle dies in like 5 seconds

This exactly. Monster damage should not be buffed if they’re going to spawn with a conga line of Specialists, mixed hordes and Elites.

That said if it were coded so that boss spawns disabled disabler spawns at least while they’re alive, then sure buff them.

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DT bosses can’t damage you with overheads through the block, unlike in V2. So meleeing them lacks depth.

Plague Ogryn is just extremely slow and has nothing special, aside from charge. It’s just a big poxwalker kinda.

But even V2 bosses became lame cause of new careeres and weapons.

V1 rat ogryn was the closest to how it should be (even tho kruber with repetier+str potion could destroy it) - Tank from L4D.

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Yes
No
Maybe

I really just want more monster class enemies. Enemy vehicles or daemon engines and stuff.

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They made plogryn hitboxes larger but some VT2 vets malded hard at the idea of not locking the thing on the spot and dodging all of its moves without the dodge button. After all its like the rat ogre which was equally boring to fight.

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What I really dislike about the Chaos Spawn is how much goddamn space it fu**ing takes. It pushes you around mercilessly. And it’s got an ass the size of Manhattan ! It’s strangely annoying and difficult to hit from behind with weapons that have average or below-average reach, because it pushes you away even when you’re behind him !

This was NOT an issue in Vermintide 2. WHY ?

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This was also not an issue about 6 patches ago. The “dump truck ass” rear hitbox is likely yet another bug they’re content not to address as they let more and more stack up.

There’s higher priority stuff, but the 1000 cuts are starting to get real annoying.

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I think the shield bosses are more annoying in the sense that the shields body block you, which is frustrating because they almost exclusively appear in tight spaces like your m… Nevermind.

Right now if havoc wants to be difficult, it throws 3-5 bosses at you and I think this is unfun, especially if you get twins + BoN in a tight space. I would like to have ideally a limit to bosses at the same time and simultaneously more threatening elites.

Yeah, in a narrow space it’s pretty bad, but most areas have decent kiting potential. And with decent slide-dodges they are literally just no threat. Or with a Psyker bubble. Or a Bolter.

Now two Burgles stacked on top of each other? That’s rough.

burgle is annoying because it’s not fighting you very much, it’s rather denying a fight by taking up space and slowing you down with its puke. and when you’re the only one who got puked on, it can grab you surprisingly quickly, and you can’t do a damn thing about it. even worse when it crawls away with you somewhere into fire.

i don’t like burgles and would rather see them reworked into something that charges aggressively when wounded, spews nurglings etc.

as has been said, the main threat comes from specials that sneak up while the team is distracted with the boss, and burgle does a good job at hiding them because people try to get in its back, thus getting separated.

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Sometimes enemies even hide inside the Burgle. XD I had a run end when two Reapers decided that inside the Burgle’s hitbox was the best place to stand.

Monsters certainly don’t feel weak when there are 4+ of them running around, lol.

That’s the thing, sometimes they kinda feel.

Sure it depends on the environment, but soloing four plague ogres in Auric Mortis isn’t actually that big of a feat. Especially when compared to two Spawns coming at you desynced!

When you dodge one Plague ogre you kinda dodged the other three as well, same unfortunately doesn’t apply to the Spawns

I dont think we should include Mortis Trials when discussing boss balance. There is a lot of wonky stuff you can do there. Unlimited ammo, one shotting bosses with electricity, being immortal for 30 seconds, regenerating health, and a ton of other things.

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In a Maelstrom game yesterday with randoms it was Monstrosity spam. Must been mix of 10-12 full or weakened monstrosities and 2 or 3 would spawn at same time.

All it took was 1 guy with heavy bolter and 2-3 reloads each one and someone else act as bait to keep it still.

Without saying, the team just pinged all the ammo for him. Strange how people share ammo then right!

The biggest threat to me is the knockback, Which can be funny unless your the runt flying off the edge.

I think spawning Monsters in areas with these hazards make them more difficult than people like to admit. Additionally, them near a DH is always an interesting challenge.

I think the current monsters are fine, Adding a new one to the mix would be my ask. Id rather have FS add new layers to the game instead of fine tuning the current Monster Jam.

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