Onslaught Series Tournament Rebalance Mod

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Mod Discussion
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Responding here to avoid derailing the other thread further^^

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Issue is just that with a ranged weapon that has very low ammo on a melee career you generally want to keep it for specials, and in moonbow´s case you wont clear out any significant amount of enemies with …is it two fully charged shots you get with those nerfs? Unless enemies are hyperstacked in one or two spots.

Using carelessly then going into melee with another group and not having ammo for specials is a big no-no in my books, even more so with a longer downtime. Heck, the reason i got really into longbow waystalker was because too many of my teams were too prone to dying to dying to specials going free.

Having it become a built in feature even if more limited is still better than what we got now in live or in the mod.

Oh indeed, she did and does work without it, problem is, half her kit is kinda effectively disabled and despite being called an assassin she plays exactly the same as waystalker or handmaiden in melee except very short and not too frequent ability procs.

The modded cloak of mist leads into a build that is kind of just a somewhat safer but less powerful Witch Hunter Captain.

As for cloak of pain generally, the only good uses of it is killing chaos warriors or something like a packmaster in a horde but, it´s not a cool or amazing ability by any means. There are dang weapons that do that with no problem or cooldowns, this is something i think someone at Fatshark probably thought about too which is what spawned cloak of mist+vanish schtick…which is quite unfortunate as she´d be better off with a proper rework instead.

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So well to be clear, while the invis build is something i consider bad for the game it is however also the only build that actually enables her full kit to be off use. Only way to solve that is a rework where she drops all or nearly all these backstabbing gimmicks for something that works more upfront.

Like a counter style of some kind, suggestions and idea´s are up for debate.

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I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to a shade rework. But I see good elves make a lot of use out of backstabs without com/vanish. So i don’t know if shade mains in general would enjoy the rework.

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You completely, for some mystic reason, leave out the most broken part about Shades Infiltrate. Its a 60 sec tops CD that turns you invisible, for up to 5 seconds, during which you can do whatever you want and still get your damage benefits after you hit something. Its not just a damage boost. Its a get out of Jail card, a rescue a team member joker, a “let me heal up in peace” safty net, and many other things. Ontop of that there is still the interactions with invis and being the last one standing.

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How is it even possible to make use of it? O_O

Only way is if enemies are stunned since they must be unable to turn and face the elf, but to enable that you rely on your team or something like dodge/push spam while trying to get around a target. Or if said target is doing a slow attack, like an overhead.

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Well sure for a few elites or so that doesnt sound too unreasonable? But it still means it has no use for say horde fights or such which is a pretty big missing chunk. And headshots do more damage too…

5 seconds is not amazing by any means though? Sure you are safe but…you get 2 hits for free then you are as visible as anything else around, and it´s a freaking trap to use it to save teammates because if its an elite or a few mobs too many they will just hit the downed guy with a 50% chance of doing an attack that just kills them outright while you are clapping them on the back. While invisible.

If looking at those aspects of it then Handmaiden´s dash is far superior, one of her options even demolishes hyperdense enemies which is a rarity for a melee trick!

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You either get 5 seconds with a nuke attached to it, or 5 seconds with 4 seconds 100% crits attached to it on a 60 seconds CD. You can do whatever you want during those 5 seconds and still get your damage done afterwards.

Now take a look at the other Invis careers, which have actually choose if they want to escape, do damage, help someone, or yourself.

Good thing is, you don’t have to mindlessly pick up everyone when in a situation like that.

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Nuke? :rofl:

It does less damage than the GK double stab if i dont remember it incorrectly, has 20 seconds more cooldown and it only hits 1 target (wasting most of the damage ontop in the form of overkill) unless you specifically use a dual sword build to hit a few more.

Cherry ontop is that most of the monster damage is locked into headshots with daggers out of all weapons if i am not mistaken. And even then it´s less monster damage than say a beamstaff BW or hagbane waystalker that are shooting freely.

Amazing, you get to reposition then hit enemies with your damage, which is flat out worse than the WHC one, and your basic combat abilities are worse than his as a result of the rest of the kit when abilities are not in play, but hey, you have a safe way to run away in a pinch.

And you cant really make use of any of your passives or even the level 20 talent row for the vast majority of the time, enjoy!

Dwarf ranger does whatever he wants,he has the time for it, huntsman has to pick but on the other hand, with a longbow he can do 2000-4000 monster damage in a single ability charge with a maxed setup. That´s like 1500 more damage than the shade does at her best vs his worst. It also translates into multiple chaos warriors kills for one.

How unfortunate is it then that if someone goes down in a horde then this little trick is entirely useless? And if they go down outside a horde then this trick is probably not going to have any impact either since say any ability like UC firebomb that just makes space gets the job done faster and more safely?

If its use to kill things to secure space before reviving then we can just note that there are other abilities that kill average mobs faster and move on.

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Or if your teammates are simply attacking. Unless you’re saying a mob can face two directions at the same time, which would be a feat. You also have synergies with IB taunt for clearing up large packs of enemies. Outside of those scenarios, I mainly see elves backstab elites with a fast weapon like SD for Insta kills. Probably not great when fighting hordes. Again, it’s something people have been doing for 3 years. Backstabs didn’t instantly become impossible without com just because com exists.

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88

I’d rather have something like that or a career skill version of Deepwood staff tbh.
A way to manipulate selected enemies rather than stealth.

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It is a ranged weapon with infinite ammo and a charge period. Once you learn your costs and timings it’s fairly hard to ever find yourself in situations with no ability to shoot, unless there’s a load of specials up at once.

Shoot a shot or two into density without fully depleting and you’re fine to melee until you need ranged again. It’s a big part of what makes it so strong.

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90

I mean it has 2/3 the cooldown of WHC Ult, and Elf has at least comparably good if not better melee and ranged options. I don’t love how similar CoM and Fervency are in the mod but I’d say it puts her roughly on par with WHC if anything, and he’s one of the strongest classes in the game :man_shrugging:

You know the great thing about a mod balance patch is you can actually play it to see how it feels rather than just theorise. Have you actually tried any of the things you’re commenting on yet?

CoP admittedly might have been hit harder than is warranted by the Assassin changes, but that’s another topic entirely.

As I pointed out before you’re in a team with 4 people total. You shouldn’t have aggro of 100% of the enemies or even close, even if you’re somehow paired with 3 ranged classes who are trying to hang back from the frontlines which is basically worst case scenario for her. Then there are all the AoE stagger abilities going off in this game. I fail to see how backstabs are impossible without stealth. So what if you don’t get great uptime in hordes without an IB, you don’t really need that for hordes, Shade has no trouble dismantling normal horde enemies in normal frontline combat. She also has a pretty excellent headshot damage talent for the situation, or can just crit fish with her very high crit chance weapons.

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91

For Cloak of Pain:

A Dual Dagger light attack can still 1 shot bodyshot a Chaos Warrior on DWC3 with Smiter + Cruelty + 20% Power vs Chaos + 10% Power vs Armour (or 40% Crit Power) during Cloak of Pain. Obviously that would be a meme build, but the damage is still very high. Dual Sword lights with just Smiter + 10% vs Chaos (does not need Cruelty) on DWC3 will bodyshot any enemy with less health than a CW. A Dual Sword heavy will bodyshot a CW.

It might change some cleave breakpoints but there aren’t any of those on DWC3 for Shade during CoP, at least not worthwhile ones I can find. There are some cleave breakpoints on Cata 1 that are affected, but I don’t know how important they are to CoP. It will make the ult require more precision by making Shade need to hit their main target first more often rather than cleaving into them.

It does negatively affect CoP’s boss damage, but Shade does more damage on headshots to bosses than on bodyshot/backstab during CoP anyway.

TL;DR Cloak of Pain should be fine. Breakpoints don’t seem to change much with Smiter.

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I think Moonbow could have a niche as sorta the elven version of a Handgun: Powerful with 1 shot bodyshot capability, but with the risk of getting caught with your pants down. All it needs to become that is less shots before empty and a longer recharge duration. Gives it a niche that the elven ranged arsenal hasn’t got yet, and its spammability is its greatest issue right now anyways.

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93

Kind of relevant, since this is a rebalance for modded.
There is no 1 shot bodyshot capabilities in Cata3 via Handgun.

If you go for Gunners/Fire bodyshot kills, you cant kill Globadier/Leech/Stormer/Hook even with a close headshot. They need two bullets no matter what.
If you go for the Leech/Stormer headshot build, those two and weapon rats will die via Headshot, the rest needs at least two bullets no matter what.

(WHC changes that drastically, which is another reason why he is so powerful, and why I would love to see the range damage boost of his passive removed.)

The best part: With all those limitations, Handgun is still Krubers best range weapon on Cata3.

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I do not know about you but as far as i recall it was often mentioned when discussing Shade that her passives and level 20 row just did not make much sense because honestly, you get so little out of them.

Dodge dancing around an elite fishing for critical hits is all fine and dandy but…that only really works with any certainity when you have cloak of mist but then you waste a fair lot of it´s time. But if you just fight upfront you´re just a worse WHC.

The one time this was not the case is when bloodfletcher gave enough ammo to enable Hagbane/elf volley but that wasnt quite problem free either.

I was talking about the mod here, for i am not mistaken then 2 charged shots should be enough to trigger the overheat lockdown.

…This statement is silly?

Puts her on par with WHC? That guy during fervency kills anything smaller than a chaos warrior in a single light attack headshot, with flense he demolishes hordes and with rapier or even some billhook heavies he can demolish monster faster than Shade does.

With no abilities in play i am also fairly sure he ends up being stronger too.

What does she get? 100% crit chance on a somewhat shorter cooldown? Yes, but unlike him her crit synergies relies on backstabbing which is not doable without the likes of vanish / IB taunt to enable it for her so it´s useless for most horde fights. And vanish is effectively gone in that mod.

= Shade is far from on par with WHC there.

She may still be strong yes, hard to not be really with 100% crit on demand at times, but she is also very bland and lacking in identity since she effectively ends up playing like fervency WHC but she´s worse at it.

Admittedly i have not, which i also stated as a thing for SoT talks.

However, it doesnt take a genius to realize that if Shade relies on CoM + vanish to play as an assassin then she´ll fail to do so without em. And if her tricks becomes “100% crit chance for 6 seconds on demand” then that´s a WHC ripoff since she loses the whole backstabbing trick.

Oh i absolutely agree, she doesnt need that and is still solid…problem is just, she´s also absolutely bland. If i wanted to play a fighter who walks up to hordes and demolishes them in a dance of blades i´d play Handmaiden.

Something being strong does not mean it has flavor, excessive spice just burns your tongue and you wont taste anything. Where´s the assassin here? I do not think one can be found without a rather comprehensive design overhaul if it takes the present cloak of mist + vanish cheese to give her the identity.

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Less of a question of whether backstabs are impossible or not, it’s more of an issue that they are not quite enough “bang for your buck.”

Regardless of the circumstances, backstabs will not occur as frequently as Whc’s headshot passive or most other passives that define a class outside of their ult, like Merc’s Paced Strikes, Rv’s ammo drops etc.

Those also do not have 100% uptime yet they A) happen more frequently and B) have greater reward attached to them.

What do backstabs give you on Shade?
Instakills with crits, that’s a legitimately strong effect.

The rest are all pretty meh?
The passive 50% more damage on backstabs is less damage overall than headshotting (and headshotting does not require as much setup as it occurs more frequently in normal gameplay).

The level 20 row that is meant to improve the main passive is weak overall:

Ereth Khial’s Herald with a +25% increase to backstab damage is like ~10% more overall damage - but only on backstabs, which means it’s still less damage than headshotting. This talent is neglible.

Vanish in this mod is largely useless for most scenarios but kiting/running away or maybe getting 1 snipe shot off.
However, it’s kind of necessary for it to be bad since dealing large amounts of damage while invis on a low cooldown is too cheesy. If it were to be reworked, probably best to change it to sth. else as invis is too hard to balance correctly.

Bloodfletcher: The only weapon that can really benefit from this is longbow, the rest cannot be sustained by Bloodfletcher.

Yea more ammo for longbow is nice but not exactly what you want from an ammo related talent.
You want to be able to properly run hagbane, repeater crossbow, swiftbow, even moonbow if it worked with bloodfletcher (which it should given that Ws’s Kurnous’ Reward works with moonbow). You want to run weapons you cannot normally use.

It’s the same reason the ammo related talents on Whc, Merc, and Hm are not picked:
because they just don’t do much other than giving you a bit more ammo for the sniper weapon that already comes with Conservative Shooter, so there is not that much to be gained from it in the first place.
These talents are not enough to sustain a ranged weapon that is not a sniper.
Generally, you’re better off with some other talent - except Shade’s level 20 row does not offer anything that’d be much better.

If the level 20 row offered some greater rewards (like more ammo for Bloodfletcher, more damage on backstabs in general and a bigger boost on Ereth Khial’s Herald, some other effect for Vanish), it might look different.
As it stands, backstabs are not impossible but there’s a clear lack of reward, especially since the uptime on backstabs is not as high as it is for other passives.

This is not meant as criticism of the mod btw since it’s not intended to rework these things, just some general observations.
It might also sound more dramatic than it actually is but the design of Shade is just a bit off.

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96

I just view the backstab thing as a mitigator for otherwise low bodyshot damage. Without it, Shade’s damage on enemies that are focusing on teammates and are subsequently difficult to headshot would probably be too low for a 100 base health dps career. With it, Shade benefits from teammates, especially aggro soakers like IB, instead of being worse off with them.

WHC’s Killing Shot is often worse off with teammates that have high stagger/are good at taking enemy aggro. Only exception is with Billhook because of its reach and speed but that still requires good aim. I don’t think WHC without Flense and Fervency is too much above Shade in the mod.

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Even if you include flense and fervency, Shade still has moonbow, which is still pretty OP.

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Pretty sure it’s 3 shots to deplete the energy bar. Have you played with the mod, yet?

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Yea that makes sense and is good way of looking at it.

However, the backstab focus is on the weaker side compared to all other passives.
It’s just is a bit lacking as a career defining passive compared to other main passives.

To put it into perspective:

  • Whc:
    Killing Shot is not his main passives, that’s Witch-Hunt (tag bonus).
    Killing Shot (instakills) is a minor passive.
    Power of Sigmar (+25% hs damage) is a minor passive.

  • SotT: A Murder of Spites (more damage to wounded enemies) is a minor passive.

  • Gk: Knight’s Challenge (+25% damage on first target) is a minor passive.

  • Shade:
    Assassin’s Blade (+50% damage on backstabs) is a minor passive.
    Murderous Prowess (instakills) is the main passive

All of these are similar to Assassin’s Blade and Murderous Prowess. They are there to enhance the damage dealt in some form.
Except Murderous Prowess is her main passive, the passive that is supposed to be enhanced by the level 20 row.

The other “do X to deal more damage” passives are all minor passives (even Killing Shot), meaning they just exist and that’s the end of it.

They are not meant to be the full deal, the passive that defines the career by virtue of being enhanced by level 20 talents.

This is where the issues start.
It’s hard building an entire class around sth. that is essentially a minor passive for other careers.
But for Shade, the backstab aspect gets used as the main passive, meaning the (comparatively) small “do X to deal more damage” trait gets overblown and turned into a central characteristic of the class.

You called it a “mitigator for otherwise low bodyshot damage” and I agree with you, that’s what it boils down to.
One ends up with this mitigator being treated as more than it can hope to be due to its lesser uptime and lesser reward. Its rewards correspond to the rewards of minor passives on other classes, not to those of main passives.

That does not necessarily mean that it’s not balanced, maybe the rest of the class is so strong (see Sleezy’s moonbow comment) that you can get away with having a minor passive in place of a main passive.
Yet, it highlights how the backstab part on its own is a bit lacking.

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No i have not, i based my guess of 2 shots based on how it has 4 fully charged shots in live and the google doc stated that the heat costs had been doubled.

That she does, but on the other hand, do you not agree that it´s pretty skewed that she can hardly utilize so much of her kit when those aggro soaking teammates arent there?

And if we take away moonbow, which an overall elf thing and not shade exclusive, then what´s left for CoM shade? Being the notably inferior WHC? Or for CoP (average elite&monster killer) which has had longstanding problems too?

What does the career shade do that makes her stand out and play differently, makes her have her own style and flavor?

5 seconds of stealth every 60?..