Outcast Engineer, Proposed Changes

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
1

First off, i want too say that i think the outcast engineer, is at a good power level. He’s not overpowered, and he’s not weak if played right.

Here are a few changes i propose, after having played outcast engineer for a while.

Base Health 125

The engineers biggest flaw is its weak defence, a base health of 125 will help boost his defence, on top of that the outcast engineer, feels like the heavy gunner character, where as Ranger veteran feels like the mobile ranged character, this change will help bring the two further apart.

Linked Compression Chambers
The steam assisted crank gun starts firing at full speed, and allows you too move at full speed while firing

Right now, this talent is very weak, adding the bonus of being able too move at full speed while firing will make it a very strong kiting tool, and will be a much more effective tool at what it’s supposed to do, compared too now.

Gromnil-Plated-Shot

This talent is fine as long as you accompany it with a good horde clearing weapon, however it feels rather clunky and i feel that slightly increasing it’s attack speed, will make this talent much better and more fun too use.

Innovative Ammo Hoppers
Increases Bardin’s ability bar by 50%. Killing a special reduces the cooldown of your Career skill by “15%”(increase minigun ammo)

Right now the the 4 seconds of infinite ammo can be usefull, but is incredibly niche and many times those 4 seconds are wasted because of many different reasons, turning the 4 seconds of infinite shots into a simple ult gain, will solve this issue.

(the 15% is not intended to be a buff, and this should always be a little extra, instead of a massive buff, since this talent is already the strongest in the row, obviously 15% might be a bit much)

9 Likes
2

The main problem with this(and any other on special/elite kill talents) is that it loses its effectiveness on lower difficulties primarily due to lower spawn rate.This talent shines on base Cata,more so with Twitch mode active.On Legend and below,you’re kinda struggling to get free 4s ult to use on horde

1 Like
3

that’s already the strongest talent on that row; idk if buffing it is necessary

5 Likes
4

Not really intended to be a buff, the numbers can always be tweaked / specified too be gained while using a minigun etc, Just a change that i think is better compared too a 4 second buff.

5

Mostly agree, but innovative ammo hopper is already too good with experimental steam capacitor

Personally speaking, I rather want more dodge count for the minigun(currently has one :frowning: )instead of health buff.
Could be cool if they remove building pressure and give engineer ability to block damage while holding ranged weapon(with his awesome exo-arm)

1 Like
6

That’s a pretty nice idea. Here’s another one I saw somewhere around here. Since right click is a bit needless for LCC, it could be nice if this talent also replaced the aim mode with some kind of push to quickly get space for burst firing. I guess it doesn’t add much if you’re already using a shield and are quick to swap between melee and crank gun, but thought it was an idea worth mulling over nonetheless.

1 Like
7

I feel like most(half) of those buffs would be completely unwarranted, tbh. Engineer is squishy af, but also the absolute glass cannon in the game. Everything but CWs just die in his presence. Being squishy af and very awkward to clutch with is a fair tradeoff. That said:

The last row is largely overshadowed by Ammo Hoppers, which is perfectly fine as the main selling point is the 50% extra ammo. The 4 second extra is just a REALLY nice extra, which usually just means, that you can fire until you have to reset that 5th counter (Now that’s a talent that overshadows everything for the gatling - The not losing stacks in firing talent, that is.)

Compression Chambers is amazing at instantly deleting mass Zerkers that you may have missed or many marauders, when you barely have time to get the gatling going. It’s doing that job pretty well and feels amazing when you start out with the Engi, but proper positioning just makes this talent somehwat irrelevant. Being able to kite with the gatling shouldn’t be a thing as Engi can already deal tremendous amounts of damage. He should have weakness and his akward mobility should imho stay.

Gromril Plated Shots. Just doesn’t feel worth it. The pistol is a thing that exists and does a very similar job just better. Also by taking this you lose power against mass zerks and boss damage. A very hefty tradeoff to jsut be able to kill armor a little better (again, pistol fullfills this need perfectly).
What this talent needs is a lot more superarmor damage, to make it competetive against gatling + pistol and not have it’s main use obliterated by the (maybe way too good) pistol.

8

tbf you can achieve that with a number of other careers without trading off anywhere near as much.

1 Like
9

I agree about everything… and especially the quoted part would be precious for a career who needs to remain almost immobile during the ult.

10

My main gripe with the OE is the level 20 talents Full Head of Steam (+15% power) and Superior Gaskets (+10% attack speed). To maintain these buffs you have to keep cranking and discharging the mini-gun every few seconds. It’s just not worth the effort for such mediocre benefits, so I invariably select Experimental Steam Capacitors. I think Head of Steam and Gaskets would be worth selecting if they just reflected the size of your ult charge and weren’t tied to the pressure stacks. That way you only decrease/lose the buff when you fire your gun. To reflect this increased permanance of the buffs, I’d suggest decreasing the maximum benefit to +10% power and +7.5% attack speed, respectively.

1 Like
11

The only thing you really need Gromril Plated Shots for, IMO, is the quest to kill 15 Ratling Gunners, haha.

However, I think everyone is missing the real thing that Outcast Engineer is lacking; INSANE LAUGHTER WHEN HE’S MOWING DOWN HORDES. I feel like the longer he fires, the more off his rocker he needs to go. If you’ve played Borderlands 2’s Gaige the Mechromancer, think how her voice lines change as she gets stacks of anarchy. “UNLIMITED POWER!”

2 Likes
12

I like it.

13

Generally though those careers are harder to play and rely on things like headshots or backsta-haha Grudgeraker go brrr.

2 Likes
14

Base health shouldnt be changed its ranged oriented character and like eveyr ranged should have low base hp.

Gromnil plated could get little speed boost

5 Likes
15

hell just play drakegun ironbreaker or battle wizard and boom you’ve got the exact same value as a minigun but on a class that’s actually useful.

2 Likes
16

CRANK GUN BASH!!

C R A N K
G U N
B A S H!!!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

3 Likes
17

Superior Gaskets isn’t that bad (but could be better), since you can exploit it to make pressure mechanics less tedious. About Full Head, I totally agree.

Other three talents, nonsense to me, are: Scavenged Shot (on a ranged career, 10% melee power isn’t worth if compared with juicy ranged power ups); Piston Power (very cool idea, but “every 15 seconds” is too RNG) and Gromril-plated Shot (another cool idea… but the cons are too much).

2 Likes
18

I agree with the second 2 but Scavenged Shots seems ok to me. The 10% melee bonus does have the benefit of being passive with no activation requirements, and being able to quickly double shoot the handgun, or triple shoot the GR is pretty nice. It only suffers from the lack of stagger talents or other aspects of his kit to make a more melee oriented build competitive. I think Scavenged shots itself is probably fine, though its trigger condition could possibly do to be rethought.

2 Likes
19

My main issue with Scavenged Shot is the lack of Smiter. Engineer isn’t an effective melee killer without it. As he has thp on cleave and stagger and no thp on kill, it might make more sense to make Scavenged Shot stagger, cleave or hit based rather than increasing his potential melee damage. It would flow into his gameplay loop more naturally.

1 Like
20

I reckon Gromril-shots could stand to have a little less cost per shot. You lose a lot of dps taking it, don’t need total damage to be bad too. 2 > 1.5 would be nice.

6 Likes