No, people asked to replace meaningless talents with better ones, not scrap the entire talent tree and start over.
There are better ways to implement shield play without overhauling the entire games mechanics. A lot of which, were discussed by me and many other people in the forums:
-Shields: I understand you just put in a new stagger mechanic in the game to incentivize their use, but I do not feel that this is the correct way to go about it, or perhaps, not the complete way. I’m sure that I’m not the only person who has mentioned this before but, Shields trade maneuverability for defense. Still there are certain attacks, like Chaos Warrior overheads, or monster hits that can either completely eat through your stamina bar, or directly damage you through your block if you don’t stack +%reduced block. This is a VERY simple problem to solve, imo. Remove the chip damage from boss monsters and give the shield bash a much greater threat counter. Also, prevent the ability to be grabbed Chaos Spawn as it’s impossible for the shield bearer to optimally keep threat and dodge the move effectively, OR, keep the grab, but allow Bardin to stick the shield in the Spawns mouth to defend himself. How cool would that be!? Bardin being grabbed by a Chaos Spawn while defending his team-mates but still giving the spawn hell as it tries to chew on him! Now that truly sounds like a valiant Dawi thing to do! If bosses break the shield bearers guard, the stagger on the shield bearer can last longer than usual, allowing the boss one direct hit to the player, unless they’re just far enough away to use their shorter distance dodge to avoid it. This way the shield bearer isn’t invincible to the boss.
What is your purpose, really, when you’re playing defensive? To give your teammates a better strike at the enemy. How does the current shield wearer do this? He (or she) doesn’t. Bardin is the only person who’s able to effectively taunt off any enemies from his teammates that might be in trouble, but even so, it’s on a HUGE timer, and otherwise, there is no reliable method of keeping agro from mobs. Well, if shield bashes and slams were themselves tiny taunts, this would make the shield a million times more valuable, and it wouldn’t be super overpowered because of the range and movement limitations. This would also give a reason to ever take +shield block/push radius. Say that, any mob shield bashed would keep it’s agro on Bardin (or whoever the shield bearer is) for something like 5 seconds, and could be reapplied so long as the player had stamina to shield bash. This would give immense utility to team oriented tank players, without making them too OP. It’s literally their role to absorb as much damage for their team as possible. The more mobs they pull onto them, the harder it will be for them to maneuver or keep blocking the enemy hits, but the less pressure there would be on his team-mates which would then have the freedom to dispatch the assailants, or snipe specials or elites. This can also work for a boss but on a smaller scale, for instance: 3 shield bashes or slams and you’ve got his attention for 5 seconds, giving your team the opportunity to deal damage to it, or to deal with other threats, once you have no more stamina, you disengage and let your team deal with the boss until you can pull it off again. If you stay on the boss too long, you face the challenge of your guard being continuously broken and the shield bearer becoming overwhelmed.
These could be inherent in the weapon themselves, the class, or be a selectable talent for more build options. You can choose which you think is the better option, but I think having it be inherent to a shield or class, is the way to go, and you can make shield enhancing talents to bolster their effectiveness. This is the basic tank/dps dynamic, but in an action team-oriented game! I understand this is sort of how it’s supposed to work, that enemies that are pushed are more likely to go after the person who’s pushing them, but I would wager to say that with a shield, it needs to be absolute, given the massive trade-off in power and movement that you sacrifice. Furthermore, this would create a really interesting build opportunity for +% stamina reduction to block, or can be combined with opportunist for more stagger builds. AND this would ALSO be a viable option against the Charging Beastman elite. Without that chip dmg protection though, this is a only a half measure. I urge you to consider these changes because I really enjoy using a shield, and can only see it becoming more fun to use with these changes.
Listen, it would be hard for anyone to summarize the entirety of the Vermintide suggestion and feedback information. The only solution I can offer you is to go back and read some old posts either here on on reddit. There’s a lot of them, and many of them go into great detail and theorycraft about the core aspects of the game. I made a post that escaped the beta info purge which, I believe, brings up a lot of valid criticisms of the 2.0 mechanics (barring the changes they did with the latest patches). If you can look past my “crassness” and have the patience, I recommend you read through it here: