I’m not arguing with you, I remember it took us a while too to reach legend.
Most people in the forum are hundreds or thousands game-time hours old veterans (it’s weird, but the game mechanics are so good it’s hard to find a replacement) and after a while you start seeing the lower difficulties as defined more by the lower hero power than anything else. The idea behind balancing the game around legend is that on lower difficulties you don’t really need stuff like weapon balancing, and legend being the highest difficulty of the base game and the optimal difficulty for loot, it makes sense to design it in a way that it’s both challenging and comfortable, and that’s the razor’s edge where stuff like weapon balancing gets really important.
BTW, I’d advice you to try legend before reaching max equipment power, if that sounds enjoyable to you. It’s better getting used to it earlier on, and a loot from a low tier legend chest is better than a top tier champion one.
Cataclysm is a whole different story. The step from legend to cata is huge compared to the previous ones. But it does make some sense, as you have no incentive to play it (discounting a few frames) other than the sheer enjoyment of challenging yourself.
This is also why (despite the fact that I play mostly cataclysm myself) I think balancing the game around legend is more important - better - than balancing it around cataclysm.
As you rightfully remind us, for a lot of people (the majority of players actually) legend is the very top of the game, and for the rest of us, playing with a subpar weapon or career - sure, balance would be great - can be seen as a challenge in itself.
Yeah it’s an interesting problem. In an ideal world, things would be “overpowered” on lower difficulties with respect to the enemies, but not overpowered with respect to one another.
The weird situation seems to be that different weapons scale differently in their power as the difficulty changes, which seems like a no-win balance situation where you need to have weapons that are must-picks on certain difficulties and never-picks on others.
It sticks out for the moonfire, I think, just due to the swiftbow and hagsbane having dubious utility to begin with at lower difficulty. Kerillian’s ranged arsenal is in a weird spot, just as a baseline.
The big reason you´d never take longbow over Moonbow on shade/HM is because the latter has no ammo or headshot requirements which makes it better for a melee needing to urgently pop specials as they go. Extremely so.
Swiftbow and hagbane have both been nerfed too much or been tweaked into only really working with waystalker. And writing of waystalker, she has a heap of passives/talents boosting any other bow by a ton while moonbow…only has synergy with bloodshot and a downtime that other bows dont have.
18 seconds isnt a lot, unless repeated, at which point over the course of a run it can quickly start adding up to a lot. Handmaiden and Shade dont have that ranged uptime even if they want to since they´d have ammo problems which waystalker doesnt.
I´d say that´s a poor view, longbow spams harder than moonbow if doing it right on waystalker, given she doesnt have ammo problems. What it is…is more like a harder hitting hagbane but with quirks.
The main problem with moonfire bow is that it has handgun levels of damage with infinite ammo for effectively zero build investment on all careers. That’s the long and short of it.
You’re hyper focused on the moonfire bow’s singular “downside,” lack of spam, seemingly without comprehending that almost every other ranged weapon in the game is punished or flat out prevented from non-stop spamming due to things like reloading or ammo restrictions.
Moonfire bow only lacks spam when compared a weapon on a dedicated ranged career with a bunch of talents sunk in to alleviate limiting factors. When you compare it to ranged weapons on careers without those talents its OP nature should become very clear indeed.
Moonfire bow is essentially a MWP RV contained within a single weapon. It’s stupidly broken.
The lack of spam downside is also over-exaggerated. I don’t wait 18 seconds for it to fully recharge.
I often use it once it has enough charge without going into that 5 second cooldown period.
Hold up here, moonfire does not let you decimate 12+ stormvermin in under 20 seconds or even match that boss damage that MWP has. It does have it´s own perks but not those.
Seems people misunderstood what I meant:
“Lack of spam” is a rather inaccurate way of describing having to deal with multiple specials at once.
You can shoot 5 medium charge shots or 6 uncharged ones.
In its current iteration, that’s plenty of damage and more than enough to kill all specials in one wave and then some since - like it was correctly said - it can be used again before it has reached its full charge.
I made no comment regarding this being somehow a problematic downside of the current bow.
My point was that nerfing the damage to the point where 1shots no longer work would result in severe ammo issues because then it would require double the shots to take down a target.
I cannot stress this enough. All my statements refer to a hypothetical nerf to its damage (as this was suggested before).
Sure, one could argue that an unlimited ammo weapon does not deserve to be able to deal with all specials in one “magazine” but that would likely make the weapon obsolete.
Attrition is rarely a threat in Vermintide 2, meaning if you cannot pass the dps check of high intensity situations, you die.
A ranged weapon that fails you in those moments is quite suboptimal.
Hence why I proposed to nerf the damage but balance it out by increasing the charge capacity.
A give and take.
The fairly recent balance patch that buffed weapons into space made me do the same thing. I f I was a very cynical old git I might say it was a fairly mercenary marketing ploy to get people like you and I to spend a bit of money on WoM.
Moonfire Bow is a bit too good at everything, and as such it’ll stay exactly the same as it’s an elf weapon and that’s enough reason to keep it S+ tier apparently.
I honestly do not think most elf weapons are amazing on their own, its the careers and their talents that make the work happen more often than not. Thats how it goes for hagbane and swiftbow at least, dual daggers, dual swords, 1handed sword&axe, greatsword and even the spear.
The weapons are not awful on their own(1handed axe being the exception) but usually its a matter of one talent or another making them shine. The only weapons she has that id call good on their own is Sword&dagger and the glaive.
The last one i´ve started coming around to in the chaos wastes.
…And well, now the moonfire which on the other hand only has a single talent that seems to add any substantial benefit across all 3 elf careers.
I wouldn’t say that Moonfire needs nerf when it’s used by WS. In other careers hands though, I’d say it definitely does, which is why I believe that if any changes are to be made on Moonfire, it shouldn’t affect it when used by WS.
This is my suggestion:
Dot doesn’t apply against Super Armor unless you headshot.
Decrease max energy and regen speed of Moonfire by 10~15%.
Second change doesn’t apply to WS. Add a sentence to the description of Arrow-Storm; ‘Uses Moonfire bow’s energy more effectively by 10~15%’.
Personal opinion, but generally speaking I think having unlimited ammo more than makes up for it. It’s true that speaking of kerillian, there’s lots of way to regenerate ammo, but I’ve end up without ammo more than once on Handmaiden with a longbow, and that’s much bigger a disadvantage than having to wait for a cooldown to refresh.
Most importantly, it’s not 18 seconds before you can shoot, it’s 18 seconds for the whole cooldown, isn’t it?
You only have to wait a few seconds before being ablo to shoot and kill something else again.
Kerillian is far from being my main, but when I’ve played with the moonfire on cata or expeditions I’ve rarely suffered for it.
No disagreement as far as MB being the best for HM and shade, no headshot requirement(faster shots than longbow) and no ammo concerns is just about as good as it gets when you arent expected to have a high ranged uptime but also wana pick out some targets here and there.
Yes, but on the other hand if you shoot again too quickly you hit the 5 second cooldown(for bottoming out) again which is harsh in a tight spot.
Having played around in both on mainly waystalker i found the bow rather subpar in QP but excellent in expeditions, very damn excellent.
This because the downside of the large downtime hit pretty badly in QP when you got a heap of elites&specials running in but in the wastes you need to hit a blue longbow to even kill a stormvermin on a headshot which sort of leaves the weapon pretty gimped. Rolling in bad stats and a bad trait on it also hurts a lot.
Moonbow meanwhile doesnt really have to give a happy little bugman’s about any kind of stats except Hero power which feeds into quicker kills and monster damage, the latter especially is a great benefit in the wastes where those types are abundant. Its downside is that it doesnt benefit well from any ammo or crit boon but its still just so reliable even if more limited.
Enough so that i tend to start my waystalker expeditions with a moonbow before i start randomly swapping around until i hit a decent enough swift or longbow.
Its since Moonfire is chop full of effects, one notable downside, ‘spamminess’. Maybe a secondary downside if you include DoT rather than 1shot burst.
I’m not sure of any other weapon in the game that is actually as powerful on its own without any other weapon talent, character passive, or character talent. Any other weapon that is powerful is often due to the character giving it additional effects to cover its weaknesses or bolster its strengths.
In many of these cases these powerful effects do indeed require a player to play rather well. Giving a very large degree of effectiveness when player skill is required to make the most of some effect. Most people I know feel Moonfire lets them just be lazy with a ranged weapon for being so forgiving and easy to use.
I feel like we need to draw a clear distinction here for further discussion. Moonfire is absolutely overpowered on HM and Shade, I don’t think that’s even a discussion point, but it is certainly not overpowered on WS. This I think presents the primary issue with balancing it. Accordingly, I really like this suggestion:
I don’t know why everyone is ignoring this suggestion, it’s literally the only one in this thread attempting to balance it in a career specific way.
This isn’t terribly on topic, but @Frostysir the Griffonfoot isn’t even close to being as overpowered as Moonfire. Sorry but being very good as a close range infantry specialist that can’t snipe specials at all beyond close range, does practically nothing to CWs even with crits, and struggles immensely against armour without crits does not compare to a bow that mulches every enemy type with little to no investment and infinite ammo while playing a melee class no less.
Is that a reference to the CoD thread? If so I think you’re being a bit snide and disingenuous here TBH. I don’t see anyone calling for Legend nerfs in this thread.
some people want WS synergy with moonfire, others want moonfire nerfs, some people are out here not wanting nerfs but also being totally adamant that the game is too easy. The CoD thread is only tangentially related to a trend I’ve seen of people flip flopping on the state of powercreep for the last like, year and a bit.
but also yes I’m being snide because I’m apparently advancing from unpaid amateur to unpaid marketer lol
Thank you for explaining. However, I don’t see anything that strange or inconsistent with this. The community is a heterogeneous mix of opinions, and naturally people’s take on the game is gonna differ wildly. Also those opinions naturally evolve over time (as they should). I was originally of the opinion Moonfire was too weak on WS due to lack of synergy. Now with a bit more time having passed I’m more of the opinion it should be nerfed for Shade and Handmaiden while being kept at the same level as now for WS.
Is flip flopping really the right term for different people having different opinions? I haven’t seen many individuals around here radically change their opinion on things week to week, and again opinions evolve so it seems healthy and good that some people do change their take on things (I’ve personally had my mind changed about many things here due to convincing arguments made by yourself and others). I just don’t really get what there is about this situation to get salty about
I’m not following you here sorry. Could you explain what you mean?
I view it as the heaviest-damaging ranged bow - that’s what makes it so strong. I know people use it as a poor man’s Hagbane, and I occasionally do that myself, but I find its AoE is kind of underwhelming and a bit of a waste against horde enemies. IMO it’s best as an anti-armor, anti-special weapon.
The fact that its damage is mostly through a DoT is meant to be the downside, and the weapon might actually be much harder for low-skill players to use, since it won’t kill dangerous specials quickly. If you can kite, though, then it becomes god-tier.
I thought the impact damage of the heavy shot does a little more damage if it’s a charged shot, but it’s not very important either way, since a light will still kill specials. But I’d put the medium charge shots just somewhere in the middle. A useful amount of damage, but not really enough to kill specials on Cata. Legend might be fine.
In general I don’t like leaning into breakpoints for weapon viability - just on account of how bad the loot and inventory systems are in the game. If this becomes a weapon that is only usable with a bunch of investment, it’s just dead to anyone who doesn’t want to build around that. That’s why its current damage peaks can’t be messed with, IMO - or not much. It just needs to be made a little less accessible under pressure to balance its heavy damage.
My issue is that I can hardly describe Legend the same way. 99% of the players I see on Legend are players that are just farming chests and they don’t really care about the gameplay or challenge. They want easy and quick runs and they will do everything to accomplish that. Never see that on Cata.
My dude, I myself sucked big time on god damn champion on like 300 hours into the game while some people already playing Legend on like 50 hours.
Main point was that is the weapon’s is useful enough on Cata, it’s with a high chance going to be absolutely fine on difficulties lower than Cata.
And on difficulties lower than Legend every weapon just works. And it’s not that players on lower difficulties care about meta and stuff.
Majority of players be like “wow I just got this new orange weapon that feels/looks/plays cool, gonna use it”. Could you guys care less at this point if Dual Daggers are oneshotting elite or that you oneshot specials with a lot of ranged weapons without breakpoints?
What you’re saying is true, my point wasn’t about weapons in specific though.
It’s that that this game had so much overpowered stuff for years even and majority of people seem fine around those things while being absolutely fanatical about specific things. It’s a non-argument remark, nothing more.
