If anyone remembers the Vermintide 2 Beta days, the Maulers used to look a bit different than they do currently.
They used to be just slightly taller Raiders with Chaos Warrior helmets on their heads.
For those who didn’t play at the time, here is a clear visual example.
Old:
New:
This obviously caused recognition problems (the kill icon being same as Chaos Warrior didn’t help either… as well as the same callout voicelines used by U5)
BUT!!!
This actually gives me some ideas to how devs could give us possible new enemy with little effort and lots of re-used code.
This new enemy should use the old Marauder Model, but instead of a two-handed axe, give him a one-handed one (re-use the asset from the Berzerker), and a shield.
So the end result would look somewhat like this:
In terms of mechanics, this enemy could be anything, but here are possible examples:
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An aletrnative version of the Mauler which spawns as ambient enemies throughout the map (like Shielded stormvermin).
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Patrol-only enemy, which only spawns as a part of Chaos Patrols (would make them even harder to deal with.
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Rare Horde enemy, which spawns in very few numbers during the horde in high difficulties.
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(my favorite) A new Special enemy, similar to Beastman Flag Bearer, who spawns in with a small group of enemies and follows the players like a kill-team.
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(similar to the above) A Special enemy, who spawns in with a group of other enemies, but also has a banner on his back, applying a Nurgle Miasma (max HP reduction) effect to the players while they are within his aura range. Though, for that, he would actually require a banner on his back to make him more visible. (A Life Leech staff could be re-used for this purpose.)
Of course, this is just a suggestion, but I honestly would love to see something new, but relatively simple like this be put into the game.
What would you say?
Edit:
The idea of Maulers having banners on their backs was brough up some time ago in this thread.