except it is a trash mob, in your case it would b better as an elite like a shielded mauler
than make them interesting to fight, rn they are just a waste of time
They need a redesign.
Let us stagger them to the ground more easily and let the dmg resist come from the shield (which they should be better at using, and/or it should be bigger), rather than some weird and counterintuitive “dmg resist” setting against all damage that is completely at odds with the npc’s appearance. It’s a baseline human after all.
Melee hordeclear with cleaving weapons was never this game’s problem anyway. It’s always been about fire and explosions. They can still be burned down easily, kited endlessly, stunlocked with smite, or deleted with grenades etc. so whatever problem they are supposed to solve they, in fact, don’t.
It’s unfortunately clear that the complainers are going to win the day here over the health of the game.
I think being presented with obstacles that don’t require 2 to 3 builds to get by is pretty good for the game
That is exactly what I made a post about when they released. I don’t think this enemy is a bad idea itself, I just find it’s odd that instead of making them an enemy that counters those things that are unhinged at the moment, they make them tanky against melee but completely vulnerable against Infernus and AoE. That’s just another reason for people to go for the screen wipe meta builds.
i dont mind obstacles, butt make them interesting, bulwarks are passable as a shield unit bcs you can get around them and they are an elite unit. vanguards are elite cosplaying as trash that do nothing except being a hp bar to hit a bit harder than others, thats it. Hell, you are discouraged fighting them and focus on actually threatening units instead. i want them as well, smth similar to stormvermin from VT2 would be cool by having a mauler 2handed and shielded variant. and making vanguard a trashmob with shield which is slightly tougher, not this.
as long as its like this no wonder people keep complaining, its rather disingenuous to say that other people have nothing worthwhile to say yet you do. i think we all want new units and more interesting combat, butt for me and alot of others, this isnt it. i hope we can find what it is tho.
shrugs in ogryn
bullrush +2 karsolas semi-heavies and they are gone in auric(maelstrom)
cant remember them being much of a nuisance in havoc 40 either cause there its even more concentrated fire and no getting away from the group to solo snack.
it’s there, it’s durable, it’s not gonna reward your perilous combustions or survivalist or any of the other dozens of talents that need elites, and you’re actively choosing how to maneuver around it
i have nothing to add, they’re perfect, my beautiful baby heretics changing the way people engage hordes without forcing a meta i just love them and their breakable shield so much 
The people complaining about Vanguards seem not to care about anyone else’s fun, basically. It’d be great if they could nerf them for lower difficulties but leave them as-is for Auric and Havoc, but I don’t expect that will happen. Instead we’ll likely just get an over-correcting nerf that will render them essentially non-existent, and people who enjoy the shallower M1-spam will be the main party appeased. Those of us who like a little more challenge and nuance to our gameplay will lose out.
They’d be perfect if they, and other horde enemies in a small area behind them, had resistance to dots until their shields were broken. And maybe get a few other weapons/attacks that ignored/did extra damage to the shield.
They’re not that bad to take down even with their shields intact if you hit the shield once, dodge behind them, and attack their backs/back of their heads. Most weapons make quick work of them that way. Even in a group, at the edges you can usually start picking away at some from behind. 
My personal beef, alluded to in the original post, is they look the same as anyone else but are far tougher; this is especially jarring if someone broke their shield. Now you have a rank and file enemy that ‘suddenly’ takes more damage and eats your cleave.
I really think they need a visual pass if they’re going to stay with these enhanced stats or their stats should be changed so they’re ‘just’ a standard enemy with a shield.
I wish that they were more like bulwarks (vermintide) or shielded stormvermin: Enemies with powerful shield mechanics, but where fundamentally just ordinary mobs behind the shield. If you could outplay or work around the shield in any capacity then they would crumple just like an ordinary raider.
There is nothing challenging about vanguards. They’re unreasonably fat stacks of HP on a harmless target. There is no skill involved in outplaying them. No threat that they pose. It just takes an obnoxiously long amount of time to chew through the darn things if you’re not exploiting overpowered stuff like the flamestaff that needs a nerf of its own.
If your whole tactic is to just let them facetank you, yes, there’s no nuance. But you can also just learn how to deal with them effectively.
At this point I’m less bothered by their HP as much as how their design seems to penalise non-meta weapons. The shield stopping weapons like the thunderhammer and shovel dead when those weapons rely on stagger to function makes them very oppressive.
Something like a tac-axe lets you quickly swing at the head over the shield and if you hit the shield, it’s not a big deal. I pretty often kill them with it in a horde realising they were there. Combat axe is much slower and with the head DR even if you get their side they take some butchering to kill.
I personally wouldn’t nerf them too much, but I do think they way they interact with certain weapons needs to be looked at.
thats exactly the job they’re supposed to do.
bind the mindless clickers until the rest of the horde punishes and downs them.
then its all the uproar about vanguard being too tanky, when mr. tank control-one click is overwhelmed keeping track and priority of whats around him.
and honestly there are nowhere near enough “checks” of that kind in the game to weed out those that try to faceroll to the exit with cheap outliers
There is no counter-play except having the exact right weapons against them or more brute force.
You can’t push them open, you can barely stagger them, even from their backs and sides they have still have more health than every other non-elite/special by an order of magnitude and more health than the majority of elites. They have ineffable damage resistance on their only weakspot.
The idea of them as a speedbump has merit but the way they have been implemented is boring and unsatisfying. They’re essentially a non-interactive training dummy of a damage sponge.
They suffer the same problem of a lot of Darktide’s design where they are either very feast (they get minced by meta weapons/builds or very specific weapon attacks) or famine (other builds and weapons take exponentially more time to deal with them) with no in-between.