Hello, I’ve been a victor main since the first game. I love his character and his visual style, and enjoyed using all of his weapons in the first game-- however in the switch to Vermintide 2 I’ve noticed that they are a quite different in strengths.
Melee
The rapier: Honestly, my favourite weapon in both games. It feels really good to use to me, I don’t know if the sword itself needs anything. However, the pistol could do with more reliable stun power, before 1.0.5 it could stagger most unarmored enemies on hit kinda regardless of dropoff range. This allowed it a niche even though it did very little damage past melee range.
The falchion: Its a pretty good jack of all trades weapon, (maybe too good?) I think if anything it should have the big armor penetration moved to only on heavy attacks.
1h axe: So I feel like this weapon is supposed to be anti armor, and it doesn’t really do that great, it also kinda falls short around hordes. To avoid making it just another falchion and buffing cleave, I would enjoy if the heavy attack got buffed in damage so it could be more useful against big heavy targets.
The flail: I’ve been having a lot of fun with this new toy, being able to penetrate armor on the overhead lights and completely ignore shields is very nice. It’s pretty solid at crowd control, and being able to stumble chaos warriors with it sometimes feels really cool. I don’t believe it needs any buffs or nerfs.
The greatsword: So the most recent buffs were a big step in the right direction, however I feel like the greatsword is still a bit on the weak side, (although tbh I still haven’t used it much since the buffs). I think it could use a bit more armor pen on the heavy attacks, fighting Stormvermin takes a long time compared to some of his other weapons EDIT: Upon trying this weapon more after hearing about its low range, I see what people are saying. I definitely think it could use more range.
Ranged
Brace of pistols: I’m pretty biased on this one, I love the brace. They look cool, feel cool, the recent 5 ammo buff was very nice. I’d love if it was to get 5 more ammo or 20-30% less dropoff. It struggles on hitting targets from far away.
The crossbow: Alright, I loved using this weapon in the first game. I could just aim at any rat and if I hit the head it was gone. It doesn’t seem to be doing the same damage in this game at all, my shots with the crossbow don’t seem to be rewarded very well. I’d like for the crossbow to get a damage buff to be able to at the very least headshot kill every special (aside from chaos warriors of course)
The volley crossbow: This weapon currently just outshines the normal crossbow in every way, but its not entirely it’s fault- given that the normal crossbow just isn’t great at all. To be honest its probably Saltzpyre’s best ranged weapon, it deals with hordes very well while not sacrificing much special killing power given that it can just keep shooting. It doesn’t feel overstrong except on Bounty Hunter, where you can basically have infinite ammo. I don’t know how I would reduce the power of the volley bow so that it wouldn’t make it feel bad on other classes and still viable on BH without crowding out other choices.
The repeater pistol: Honestly, I haven’t really used this weapon since the nerf, and barely much at all before it, either. Given that the alt fire was changed to be less armor piercing and more cleave I can only imagine that its just a worse volley bow? I think it was a good change to reduce the armor piercing because deleting chaos warriors should come with a cost of sorts instead of just being free, but not sure where this weapon sits now.
Well that concludes my comments and thoughts, sorry if I rambled too much/at all. What do you guys think about his weapon choices?
Don’t care much about other careers except WHC… and all I can say is, the Rapier is the Alpha and the Omega of WHCs. The only melee weapon that truly synergizes well with the given potentials of the WHC.
I think it does amazingly well against armor, and that’s it. The axe cannot deal with hordes no matter how hard I try. I love the aesthetics of it, but it feels like a liability. I love it’s push stab, and burying it in stormvermin skulls feels amazing. I can’t see it being brought to legend though.
I tried using the Brace on WHC with a crit build and trying to use it for boss damage but it just didn’t feel like it did much at all, and I may as well have been autoing the boss not wasting ammo.
See I feel you on the axe, but at the same time I just don’t want it to end up being a reskin of the falchion and I feel like it would end up that way if the cleave got buffed up enough to deal with hordes well, which is why I only put forward the heavy attack buff. I think you might be right either way though, I just want the weapons to be unique choices because there are only 5 of them.
Now on the other hand with the brace, I think the brace is pretty good boss damage to be honest. I bring it along with WHC 90% of the time and I think the boss damage is pretty good. Maybe not as good as volley bow, but I think with WHC ult and the extra 8% crit chance from a marked enemy you can easily take off a third or so of the hp with the extra crit ammo from scrounger. If lucky enough to be around an ammo box I feel you can easily do the majority of the damage to the boss unless you have a shade with grape juice or something.
I know how you feel I’ve played him as a primary in V1… then played him since closed Beta in V2.
For the most part I agree, though honestly I prefer the Falchion for other reasons currently… but there is no doubt this is the top grade horde clearing weapon at present for the WHC.
Its very speedy, and staggers a lot of enemies and keeps them staggered. Headshots with Deathknell means pretty much any Horde based mob is going to die in one hit.
Big knock on it comes from its lack of AP and pretty poor damage/stagger vs shield users. Its a serious liability when taking on Shield Users and Chaos Warriors.
This could be mitigated to a certain extent if the Alt-Fire Pistol shot kept its full damage out to about 10 yards and had the same AP as the Brace of Pistols… Instead its 10 feet. Which is too miniscule to make any real difference on anything. And its hard to use, and too clunky, and hard to aim.
Even though this COULD be something to work in the Rapier’s favor, when comparing it to the Falchion… I most often take the Falchion as its benefits outwiegh the Rapier. Not that the Rapier is a bad weapon at all.
No the Armor Piercing is fine… mostly because its so weak. Take this one to the Armored Training Dummies and you’ll see how poor it is… its like the Rapier Body shots type poor.
It also has a large amount of stagger and cleave… meaning this often acts as the 2 handed sword in this game. Mostly becauses the 2 Handed Sword is functionally poor compared to this weapon.
The Falchion is faster, and has similar cleave and stagger. AND shockingly… the same Reach as the Two Handed Sword… but we’ll get into that in a moment.
Actually the Damage on it is the HIGHEST of all the Saltzpyre’s weapons… one problem… the first two strikes are generally only hitting one to two targets at MAX… Both due to the lack of cleave (though it has massive stagger)… and the angle the strikes come in.
IF the 3rd strike of the weapon (the clearout shot)… was its FIRST strike… rather than the last, it WOULD indeed be much more satisfactory with regards to at least providing minimal horde clearing ability. Right now it doesn’t even have that.
Honestly this is all they’d need to do to make this one much more usable. Its downside… is just too much of a downside… hence why it loses out to the Falchion so much.
And yes I have used it on Legend… its doable… but ONLY if you use the Volley with it and thin out Hordes first before they get to you.
Can’t speak on this one as I never use it, but your words mirror pretty much everyone else’s that comment on it.
Agreed the Buffs to it were HUGE… in comparison to what it was… unfortunately it still has a serious problem, and why it never gets used… except rarely and never in Legend that I’ve seen.
The REACH…
As Comical as this is… the Two Handed sword has LESS reach than the Rapier… when it should at least have the SAME reach… And its got the SAME reach as the Falchion… which it should have MORE reach against… making the weapon completely pointless to use even after the buff.
The Falchion is a better Two Handed Sword… than the Two Handed Sword because of this. The Falchion is obviously faster, it has a great deal of cleave and stagger… and still can manage (weak) damage against armored targets on light attacks.
So it makes the Two Handed sword little more than a lower version of a 1 handed sword in terms of reach.
Negating the entire purpose of the Two Hander, and in turn making it a weaker weapon in comparison.
Imagine that… a 5 and 1/2 to 6 foot long weapon has less reach than a 3 foot long Rapier… and the same reach as a 2 foot long Falchion.
If the Two Hander had the same reach as the Rapier… then At LEAST we’d be talking… but right now the Falchion completely replaces it as the mighty two handed sword… only has the reach of a short sword.
Hey there are cool, I use them on occasion with WHC because the Always Prepared trait gives you 33 ammo on them. BUT… they’re still only really good for special killing, and/or wiping out the 5-9 Berserkers/Monks that come charging out of nowhere at you. The Charged Shots wipe them out in seconds.
They can be used on Boss Mobs… but we’ll get into that in a bit. They are NOT a horde killing weapon… they are way overkill, as the damage on unarmored targets is extremely high. And they dont’ have as much penetration as the Volley or Repeater.
So don’t expect to be racking up huge kill numbers with these, that’s not what they do and not what they’re capable of unless you’re standing next to an ammo crate…
They are still a nich weapon… but after the ammo increase, they CAN at least fulfill that role well.
I agree, this one isn’t even a consideration to me. It just doesn’t do enough base damage with the ammo it has to justify it. This one needs to have higher damage considering the base ammo is only 14… so unless you’re killing everything in one shot with it… the Brace OR Volley are much better at doing its job than it is.
The only real advantage it has is that there’s not much dropoff in damage at Range. And its got a lot of penetration on the Bolts it does have so COULD be used to thin out a horde… but reality is the Volley is just much better at that.
This one is actually the best all around weapon… at least on BH and WHC.
I mean… no… its weaker at killing specials than the BoP which requires fewer shots… but you can at least use a Charged Shot at close range to wipe them out. And its better at killing them at really long range than the BoP since the damage dropoff isn’t as bad.
Boss Mob killing its about the same as BoP… with one advantage. More ammo. And its easier to make a Charge Shot (3 Bolts) to the head than it is to fire three individual shots from the BoP.
Still Brace of Pistols does large amounts of damage on Headshots to Boss Mobs so its no slouch there. But still the Volley can come out slightly ahead here due to ammo.
Charged Shots from Repeater do the same as the Volley, (actually more since its 8 shots assuming they all hit).
The REAL reason I rarely use this… is because I get trigger happy with it. And despite it having the most ammo out of all the choices I still burn through it like its nothing and expend more shots than are necessary to take something down… so I end up wasting a lot of ammo with it.
I am playing WH from V1 aswell and the situation didnt change much. The only useful melee weapons for Legendary are rapier and falchion. I dont think they should nerf those weapons. Instead they could buff the other weapons so they become viable. LAsst patch they buffed the 2h sword but its still not enough. Its slow and penetrate only on heavy hits and its damage is just not good enough. I dont know who is the guy behind balancing weapons but i think most ppl would do better…
Rangeds weapons are kinda different from V1. Even more narrow selection of viable weapons.
Siege crossbow is top right now as it can handle everything and Brace of Pistols are kinda good cough.
Conclusion: If they cant buff weapons in their game for more than year to make them viable there must be something wrong in their team …
Personally would rather have increased ranged on it’s charged, they seem to fall short.
The greatsword: So the most recent buffs were a big step in the right direction, however I feel like the greatsword is still a bit on the weak side, (although tbh I still haven’t used it much since the buffs). I think it could use a bit more armor pen on the heavy attacks, fighting Stormvermin takes a long time compared to some of his other weapons.
Personally would say a range increase, since it’s range is the same as falchion, which is kinda stupid.
The crossbow: Alright, I loved using this weapon in the first game. I could just aim at any rat and if I hit the head it was gone. It doesn’t seem to be doing the same damage in this game at all, my shots with the crossbow don’t seem to be rewarded very well. I’d like for the crossbow to get a damage buff to be able to at the very least headshot kill every special (aside from chaos warriors of course)
I’m a bit confused, because it should one-shot every special in the head, with the only exception being packmasters, which like with most ranged weapons, take reduced damage and have higher health. I think it’s nonsense though that some weapons do significantly increased damage, while others just get nerfed into the ground vs them.
The volley crossbow: This weapon currently just outshines the normal crossbow in every way, but its not entirely it’s fault- given that the normal crossbow just isn’t great at all. To be honest its probably Saltzpyre’s best ranged weapon, it deals with hordes very well while not sacrificing much special killing power given that it can just keep shooting. It doesn’t feel overstrong except on Bounty Hunter, where you can basically have infinite ammo. I don’t know how I would reduce the power of the volley bow so that it wouldn’t make it feel bad on other classes and still viable on BH without crowding out other choices.
I would say the fault lies more with how scrounger works on it than anything else. Shoot into horde, gain back all the ammo.