Moonfire Bow is Overpowered

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Yes, i said it and i can support this statement.

I just made a quick damage test on the dummies as handmaiden, only being on Heropower 650 without any power increasing talents, properties or traits. Here are the results:

Moonfire Bow unpowered charged body shot vs. infantry: 29.25 + 7 + 12 * 8.25 = 135.25 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered light body shot vs. infantry: 29.25 + 6 * 8.25 = 78.75 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered charged head shot vs. infantry: 50 + 7 + 12 * 8.25 = 156 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered light head shot vs. infantry: 50 + 6 * 8.25 = 99.5 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered charged body shot vs. armor: 14.75 + 1.75 + 12 * 4.25 = 67.5 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered light body shot vs. armor: 14.75 + 6 * 4.25 = 40.25 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered charged head shot vs. armor: 25 + 1.75 + 12 * 4.25 = 77.75 Damage

Moonfire Bow unpowered light head shot vs. armor: 25 + 6 * 4.25 = 50.5 Damage

Needless to say that the Moonfire Bow is able to kill every special on legend with a light attack body shot without the need to reach for any form of breakpoints. Same as with cata and charged body shots, though the light shot already does more than enough damage that surely a breakpoint for infantry specials can be reached even without going full into the build. Just for a little comparison, Waystalker needs 4 specific properties and 2 talents to even come to the point of oneshotting every special on legend with a charged body shot from the Longbow and that is already the highest she can go with one arrow.

Of course we could say that Moonfire Bow is limited, but 6 light shots or 4 charged shots are fairly enough for the majority of situations. No, i am going a little further here and say that Moonfire Bow is basically a Handgun with unlimited ammunition, no reload time and a small AoE. Moonfire Bow alone trivializes legend runs even in a newbies hand, it has almost no weakness. Its effective against infantry, armor, super armor and monster resistance. Its easily the best weapon in the game right now by a margin and only because its clearly overpowered.

I see the problem in the DoT. It usually does way more damage than the initial hit, almost around double the damage. That needs to be toned down. Moonfire has to be nerfed to the point that it needs to reach breakpoints to flourish on legend +. Right now the breakpoints are more of an unneeded joke, like killing stormvermin with one light body shot.

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Ammo regen is really strong, that’s for sure. So many of my builds are focused on ammo sustain - not having to worry about that frees up traits and talents that I can use to make the build stronger in other complimentary areas. Don’t need to mess with scrounger, conservative shooter, or Kurnous’ Reward.

It’s weaker in the area of total damage output per minute, and time to kill if you are dealing with an imminent threat (you might need to load on two or three arrows when one or two would have worked, but more slowly). The hagsbane suffers from this problem as well, and while the Hasgbane has fewer short term ammo needs, it has the ammo sustain concern which is going to require talents or traits (or maybe both) to support.

For Shade and Handmaiden, who have to rely on traits or teammates for ammo sustain, this is basically a no-brainer, which seems like a problem to me. I feel like most weapons should be competitive picks for each subclass. I think the melee weapons for Kerillian do this well.

For waystalker, bloodshot almost perfectly pairs with the fire / cooldown operation of the moonfire bow. Serrated shots seems doomed to only be viable on the swiftbow anyway, and attack speed for 5 seconds on headshot seems way too unreliable to really be worth it. Moonfire makes piercing shot and loaded bow much more viable if you don’t need the ammo.

Waystalker is kind of an ult-centric class anyway, so freeing up ammo sustain concerns indirectly buffs her other tools which is also a pretty significant feature of her kit. Do you really need to worry about the DPS difference against bosses with hagsbane when you can justify picking up an extra arrow on ult or immediate headshot regen, essentially for free?

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Good analysis. On cata, its biggest drawback (well, size is relative) is the time it needs to kill some specials with DoT.
On a side note, its friendly fire should also be toned down. I know that players are supposed to watch the FF, but 40 damage over time to an ally with a single shot is way too punishing.

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Its better than the Handgun. Handgun needs four properties, or two and EP to do what the Moonfire does. You can effortlessly run Smiter, or Assassin and still onehit every special and you don’t ever have to worry about ammo sustain. The rate of fire is also in favor of the Bow.

The dot needs to be toned way down so it cant kill every special with minimal investment on a body shot. The time it needs to kill is hardly relevant. The arrow staggers specials, while the dot keeps ticking, which leaves the specials hardly time to do harm. It also stays on stormers, leeches and eshin while they teleported out of sight.

The “only six quickshots until bow has to recharge” mechanic is not a hindrance in any way either, since that’s up to six dead specials. Even during cata you hardly have more than that at once.

That weapon is complete elgi umgak.

How can one nerf the ammo sustain of Shade in one patch, and come to the conclusion that an endless ammo, enhanced handgun would be the right thing to release?

(I really cant wait for the next weapon pack. I can already smell the SwiftBow with integrated Chain Lightning and the explosive bolts crossbow.)

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I object.

Game has not been balanced for legend for a long time anyway, Fatshark has even gone out of their way to add stuff that´d be silly strong there without a care. Even if it is the highest non dlc difficulty it´s just not a good balance argument as it is now.

And so as for cata, it´s a bit overtuned but the drawback of a limited amount of shots every 18 seconds hits home hard there and it only really needs to lose a little damage against specific targets but otherwise it´s fine.

If it was balanced as you ask for legend then it´d be trash for cata, too many shots needed to kill anything and too few available.

This is hyperbole as heck really, the best weapon is the griffonfoot pistols in the hands of a BH and noticably so at that. If an elf and a BH are both shooting hordes then the elf will blow all her shots to kill 1 wave of enemies while the BH is well into clearing his third wave. (cata)

I am not even kidding, watched a BH kill 7 maulers + entire rotblood wave in just a few shots in QP earlier today. And the difference only becomes more pronounced in higher pressure modes like weeklies, modded difficulties and the expeditions.

Furthermore the dang bow only really works in anti horde if enemies are super clustered since the AOE is smaller than it´s visuals suggest. But for sniping fewer specific targets, boss damage and infinite ammo without a care it is indeed the best bow which does mean it´s great for HM&shade.

Looking to be shooting nonstop though? Hagbane and longbow both beat it in waystalker hands.

Because Shade was abusing infinite hagbane strategies just like waystalker, but with all the added melee perks of shade. That´s why bloodfletcher had to go as much as i hate the idea since it hit volley crossbow too.

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This is impossible to accomplish though, each class has their unique talents&passives that innately makes some weapons work better or worse. Like how shade´s “cloak of pain” ability does much more damage with DD or SnD than any other of her weapons.

Handmaiden has her weapon choices laid out for her in what she takes from her finale row, some will be much better or worse depending on what she picks from there.

Similarly when comparing hagbane and moonbow on waystalker you hit the realization that the latter does a lot more damage right away but it has a significant downtime and the former ends up running away in damage as those timers pile up.

Plus what do you even use piercing arrow for anyway? Chaos warriors and some bosses? Those things that your teammates likely decimate anyway? Extra arrow?..Actually does a ton with the present bloodshot bug holy moly.

But swiftbow ? Its only decent/good with the waystalker bleed and cant be buffed since the combo would be overpowered then.

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Everything’s OP on Legend and I’ll never stop repeating this.
Though, it’s pretty strong on Cata too, but to be honest in some cases it takes too much time to kill specials in one shot on Cata, so that’s a drawback for you.

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Please don’t ruin almost the only weapon from this paid DLC that I can effectively use in my solo games.

I paid my money, after all - for real weapon, not dead toys for collection.

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This sounds reasonable, but on the other hand, if even on legend you need breakpoints to oneshot specials with the handgun, perhaps it’s just as reasonable to ask for a slight nerf.
I haven’t played it enough, and not on legend, to have an opinion about it.
But even if many things make you feel OP there, being able to oneshot things too easily is a bit boring, so I see no point why things shouldn’t be balanced there, even if it’s no longer the top difficulty of the game. (Well, tecnically it is if you don’t want to pay for WoM).

@Ghoth1ckov1tch Things can be balanced without breaking them, hopefully they won’t overdo it.

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To be honest that tells us more about the current state of handgun rather than Moonfire bow

If you find anything “boring” or “too OP” in this game you can always play Cata+ stuff.
That’s definitely not a solution, just an advice.

Honestly I’m in the club of people that believe balancing should be done around highest difficulties and I’m totally fine with some weapons being overpowered on lower difficulties. That’s their point. A stepping stone for those who seek some git gud action.

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Everything you mentioned are tradeoffs. You discredit those trade-offs and scoff them off as unimportant when you shouldn’t.

  • You need bounty hunter period. Moonfire is effective on all 3 elf careers and nothing changes between them. Your not doing this on zealot/witch hunter captain with the same effectiveness.
  • Scrounger is mandatory requirement. Moonfire you can use literally any talents you want no restrictions at all. Many even recommend not caring because the weapon’s so overkill.
  • BH needs to take lv25 melee resets blessed shot talent. Moonfire frees up any thoughts on taking bloodfletcher/quiver of plenty.
  • Always needs time to reload. Kerillian ‘reloads’ while in melee combat (aka cooldown of 6 seconds).
  • Need to work in a melee kill to keep ammo up. I can just turtle and hold block/dodge as kerillian offering no risk to reload moonfire while Saltzpyre does.
  • Griffonfoot will still be a poor special killing weapon from range.

Now, I do see the balance of two separate things. Griffonfoot is good because it combos well with other mechanics in the game. Moonfire is just straight up good on its own without any additional talents. The only talent that interacts with it I believe is bloodshot + rewards. Where bloodshot fires another arrow. Rewards refunds some magic charge. Though hagsbane is arguably better than moonfire strictly because of those 2 talents and the 5% more dmg to an enemy hit.

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How exactly is everything OP on legend? We are talking about the weapons here, not the player skill, and the vast majority of weapons on legend need to reach full breakpoints to even come close to kill important threats with one hit. We shoulndt kid ourselves here, only very few people are able to constantly headshot every threat in every situation. Not even True Solo cata players are able to do this and thats not really the problem of skill but the problem of the weird movement of the AI.

Now, lets go with the weapons. Every Sniper weapon needs 2x Power vs. Infantry and both Power vs. Chaos and Power vs. Skaven to body shot every special and that is far away from overpowered. Thats actually good balance, because you need to max out your character to reach a specific point. Cata is not in that balance anymore, because some breakpoints cant either be reached anymore or you have to decide which breakpoint you choose for which specials, for example. If we go higher than cata, then breakpoints will eventually completely vanish and that is far away from being balanced, showed by players using only specific careers and weapons, with a specific one-dimensional strategy.

Thats also one of the reasons why cata breakpoints often times not really work on legend, because they are usually overkill.

Anyway. Since Moonfire bow doesnt need to reach any breakpoints and is able to do the job of several other ranged weapons arguably even better as a non-powered weapon, it is fairly obvious that the weapon is overpowered. It really doesnt matter that the DoT takes a while on cata to kill specials, because they will be dead eventually and that takes only around 2-3 seconds at most. Even if the special still attacks or disables, it will still be dead, so just dodge it.

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Only for the Moonfire Bow wielder. For the teammates getting friendly fired, not so much. (The friendly fire damage alone is a telltale sign that this weapon is overpowered.)

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I’d definitely not call the handgun underpowered though. That’s why I used it as a comparison. It’s the best weapon at what it does, but it does require some investment.

I agree, I just disagree about legend being a “lower difficulty”. You said highest difficulties, plural, and those are precisely legend and cata.
Legend is the highest difficulty of the base game, and for whomever didn’t or doesn’t want to buy Winds of Magic.

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Except they cant, if the weapon becomes “balanced” for legend then it will be trash for cata and nothing else. Reversely some weapons like hagbane if buffed to be notably good in legend then they´d be horrendously overpowered in cata instead. There is no middle ground.

Griffonfoot? Am i really the only one seeing all these bounty hunters running around and solo decimating armies without any pause? Literally no pause in attacking at all except the time it takes to sometimes reach melee kill a few mooks to reload the guns and then keep shooting…

He´s wrong, not everything is OP in legend…but a ton of stuff is disgustingly overpowered instead.

Bosses can get 2 shot by the likes of a Grail Knight.

Chaos warriors, the supposedly heavy infantry elite warriors die in 1-2 headshots from a lot of weapons, not even abilities. Before they finish more than 1 attack that likely miss.

No but on the other hand if we look at BH crossbow, waystalker with the bleed, battlewiz bolt staff and Huntsman then we see a pretty steady trend of long range oneshots. With no cooldowns as a bonus.

“Breakpoints? Extra power? Like i give two birds.” - is how most of those weapons go in the hands of the right careers when faced with specials in legend and even cata. Just looking at the weapons without looking at the careers using them is a giant fat mistake.

Except on cata you got events and high pressure modes, like say convocation of decay or chaos wastes, where you will be looking at more than 6 targets spawning in at the same time or at least very rapidly without any breaks. And being only able to shoot 6 at that point is really not going to impress anyone or anything.

Nope, but good sir, you need to start looking not just at the fancy excel files&calculators but also at what goes down in game for the reality is that most ranged careers in average hands have no problem decimating enemy populations on legend.

Several of them do it even on cata.

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Grail Knight having burst damage on his ultimate is not really a good comparison to a weapon usable by every career of the respective hero. Chaos Warriors dying with 1-2 headshots on legend is not doable by “a lot” of weapons at all. Breakpoint Handgun can do it and a specific BH repeater gun build can do it, no other ranged weapon can (except the obvious Trollhammer). Melee weapons cant do it either, except specific ones which are used by specific careers so the weapons again are supported by the career. The Moonfire Bow doesnt need that.

BH crossbow, Waystalker with Bleed, BW with Boltstaff and Huntsman still need a fully maxed out build to reach the breakpoint of always killing specials with one body shot. Even the Handgun still needs to reach a breakpoint to one shot maulers. Moonfire Bow doesnt need any of that.

Cata Chaos Wastes is a joke man. I finished all the CW achievements in the release week and it wasnt even much of a challenge. Cata CW is almost like Champion in adventure mode. On cata adventure mode, there wont be more spawns than 6 and they are still manageable with a non-powered Moonfire bow.

My man, you need to look at the numbers. Its obviously overpowered. Give me an actual point on why this weapon is fine as it is.

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@Frostysir

Moonfire is overtuned for what it is.

It’s an infinite ammunition weapon fulfilling multiple roles available on every Elf career.
The drawbacks don’t really hinder the weapon that much, especially with pacing.

Handgun is at least limited on a melee career, it’s a one trick pony weapon limited by a 1.5 second reload & ammunition. Merc & FK still have to go for headshots to conserve ammo.
Huntsman can put it to work.

Griffon-foot is poor against armour & bosses + a very ammo hungry weapon.
BH makes it work.

If Moonfire’s capabilities were limited to just WS, it might feel a little more in line.
Instead it turns HM/Shade into semi ranged hybrid careers with it being at the forefront of gameplay unlike Handgun on Merc or Griffonfoot on WHC.

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Oh ho? So an career having the ability blow up a monster every 40 something seconds isnt overpowered or notable by your standards? I see, i see…

But no really.

This whole “it needs no extra stats to be good” argument is bogus because on other carers you will inevitably slap on some extra power vs chaos,armored or infantry or whatnot here or there if only to fill out slots. So you hit half the breakpoints on something like boltstaff without even trying unless you had all your power aimed at monsters&berserkers for whatever reason.¨

And on the likes of boltstaff, as long as you hit just a bit of vs chaos/armor you now do 80 damage per CW headshot, to a guy that has about 150 health.

I think you are missing the reverse side of the coin here, sure moonfire needs no career boosts to be good as it is but on the other hand there are no career boosts that affect it which becomes very notable on waystalker. Well except bloodshot but that requires melee to activate and pulling and fully charging that bow there is far from risk free unlike hagbane.

As for melee weapons being unable to 2 shot things without career boosts? oh alright so if a weapon or a few are hilariously overpowered in the hands of a specific career or two but just not on their own? Then its fine ? Well now.

I think i got a peek at the logic behind Fatshark´s balancing of masterwork pistol in ranger hands.

What the heck man? We were talking specials here, maulers are elites with a specialty for health?

Specials are not elites!

…I seriously beg to differ, your weapons are massively downgraded and without a very good teamcomp you will struggle like hell against monsters or patrols + hordes /specials. Elf longbow for instance doesnt kill stormvermin on a headshot until you upgrade it to the blue grade.

6 specials at most at the same time? Were you even playing cata? Or did you have the “- specials” on every single map you played? I ran through the citadel with extra specials and i killed 80 myself in a single run through lasting 15 minutes.

And i had a team with me who were also killing several nonstop.

Because it has about 6 shots before it hits a 18 seconds cooldown and that hurts in cata, thats all it takes. The only nerf it needs is going down from 1 shotting maulers to 2 shotting them and 2 shotting firerats. Plus this is even worse if you are shooting elites ontop of the specials…or rather you cant do that?

You shoot either elites or specials when they come in, with 6 shots you cant have both, and that´s all. If you want really overpowered then go play with griffonfeet bounty hunter in cata, does the same job but he has no brakes on the train.

…

But that said i´ll refresh my statement and mention that i think moonfire does need a nerf against maulers&firerats to reach a need of 2 shots a piece. Then it´d be fine for cata.

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That was more of a hyperbole, though it’s not far from truth.
Point was that majority of weapons perform just great on Legend.
Most of the time you don’t need to care about breakpoints or attack rotations that much.
It is really hard to balance out weapons so that they’re balanced on majority of high difficulties. If something’s good on Cata it’s in most cases going to be OP on Legend.
And I never argued that this weapon isn’t really strong.
My point was that people shouldn’t really focus on balance around Legend.

Also to be fair there’s still so much more even more broken stuff in the game I’m amazed how people focus on Moonfire Bow.

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With pacing? That´s just saying the weapon is bad under pressure which is a complaint you just raised on handgun.

.

The ammo comment however is fair.

“Makes it work” is a funny way of saying “he kills everything in sight that someone else doesnt snipe before he reaches it” but well.

…If shade or HM fire the bow like that they should have frequent breaks of about 18 seconds where they cant shoot anything, how can that match a melee uptime that has none? The only plausible answers are a slow pacing that allows it, or the users being assholes shooting through their teammates.

The former is on you and the latter isnt related to weapon balance x)