[PC] Big Balance Beta - Available Now!

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Announcements
209

Kruber

1H Sword
This was already one of Kruber’s better weapons. Its well rounded, speedy, and mobile. I like that this will reward precision and skill with it.

1H Mace / 1H Hammer
I love the changes here. It feels great!

2H Hammer (Kruber + Bardin)
I like the push attack, and the bug fix, but the core reason the 2H hammer is not a good weapon still exists. Its heavy strikes are too slow and have too little range. In cataclysm the horde density makes this a poor choice because the enemies pile in before you can swing again. It takes a low dps weapon and makes it lower because you need to weave in block/pushes too often.

2H Sword (Kruber + Saltzpyre)
The mobility change is nice, and overdue. However, it doesn’t change anything. Its just a great sword that light attacks faster. On cataclysm you still almost never use light attacks because horde diversity means there is almost always armor or shields in the pack. This weapon just doesn’t have enough diversity to be interesting or useful.

Mace + Shield/ Hammer + Shield
Making the shield bash the first heavy strike was absolutely needed. The weapon still feels a little lacking in overall damage. It is absolutely terrible against armor. Unless that gets addressed this will never be a viable weapon.

Halberd
Great changes to this weapon. It feels much more tactical now. Love it!

Executioner Sword
I am really disappointed here. I do not think this weapon needs to be nerfed. Other weapons need the Exe’s versatility. It is not fun to use with this nerf. Reduce its total stamina instead of making it slower. That provides it a weakness to counterbalance its well rounded offense without neutering it.

Tuskgor Spear
I don’t think the spear needs a nerf. This doesn’t kill it by any means, but it just feels unnecessary.

Both the nerfs to Exe and Spear feel like shallow attempts to make the other weapons look good by tearing down Kruber’s better weapons. Maybe more attention needs to be given to why those two weapons are used far more often than all of his others. Make the other weapons interesting and useful, don’t take the interesting and useful weapons and take that away.

Isn’t Kruber already the least played character? (no including the immediate aftermath of GK release) Why would you make his best weapons worse?

210

So every weapon should be great vs both elites and hordes?

Hard disagree, I think a weapon that powerful needs downsides, and being more vulnerable and having slightly lower horde DPS is a good way to do it.

Don’t see how this is relevant honestly, Kruber isn’t least played because he’s the worst character or whatever. Character popularity is influenced by a lot more than just weapon strength.

3 Likes
211

Considering that most (if not all?) dedicated ranged characters have ways of generating ammo, its good to see the survivalist cache mechanic used in other ways.

I also definitely approve of the changes to Bardin’s Axe and shield. A&S often put you in a weird situation where you were the last man standing, and could kite/CC almost indefinitely but had such sluggish swings and low DPS you couldn’t do much about it. The faster and more responsive attacks really help to make you feel like you can be a bit more aggressive and contribute some damage when you need to without fundamentally changing your role as CC.

1 Like
212

Shade repeater crossbow needs more ammo

213

I am not adamant on weakening the characters. If appropriate i support buffs (see my Unchained thread for that).

Pre-WoM bleed wouldn’t be so good. The point why I liked the Bleeddancer talent is because it can all horde enemies if you just stack for it. It was a choice to sacrifice in other areas to get a really strong active skill. You could dash through a horde and keep going forward because everything behind you would drop dead or at least partially reducing the risk you took by dashing through.

The weakened Bladedancer from Pre-WoM wouldn’t fulfil this function. It would do damage but the enemies wouldnt die (maybe Slave Rats). I would just have a lot of enemies not liking me going after my throat. It doesn’t hurt to add it a baseline. But I wouldn’t see any benefit other than to make the invisibility talent even more preferable.

My point: The new talent is a nerf to Handmaiden (and/or a Handmaiden’s gameplay options/variety)

214

Inspired Shot - (Reworked)
Melee strikes makes up to the next 6 ranged shots deal 15% more damage. Ranged hits makes up to the next 6 melee strikes deal 15% more damage.

I prefer the old Inspired Shot and it was my favourite part of playing BH. In my opinion it’s too much of a hassle to keep an eye on your stacks for that new talent and having 15% more damage is not as impactful as having your guaranteed crit, especially against heavily armoured enemies.

Please don’t bring this change over to the official realm.

1 Like
215

Ahhh… There’s the “switch” part of the bait we’ve become accustomed to from FS. You had me worried there…

216

I’m a little sad to see some of my preferred talents are being completely changed, but most of them are for the better. For example, Trample was a great low-CD Shrapnel, so to speak, but I don’t think it stacked with, say, WHC’s Witch Hunt passive, and the new Trample effects sound freaking great. Overall most talent changes, even for ones I previously didn’t care about, will make me want try them out or at least consider them. Good stuff!

On the other hand, the new It’s Hero Time is very situational and I’m iffy about its usefulness. I’d say at least half the time you’re going to have your Valiant Charge either fully available (which means the talent does nothing) or more than 50% filled (which means it has limited effect). Previously you would get a massive run speed boost any time an ally was downed, grabbed or pounced, which, although short-lived was always useful. I mean, I get what it’s going for, because I myself often use Valiant Charge to save someone incapacitated, but when the new talent isn’t doing anything part of the time, it’s as if you didn’t pick any talent at all for that row. Perhaps in addition to the rework it could also increase his movement speed by a smaller amount for just a few seconds?

I’m also going to miss Bladedancer’s bleed, which admittedly I didn’t use much until a week or two ago, but it’s a really fun alternative to the boring Power from Pain critical chance if you’re feeling bad about putting extra pressure on the team from repeatedly going invisible with Gift of Ladrielle. Don’t get me wrong, the new Bladedancer (Perhaps they should change its name as well?) is fantastic, but it’s a shame to lose the bleed option as a result.

Oh, and one last thing! While everything is being tested and given feedback, I think now would be the perfect time to look at the Huntsman/Footknight/Handmaiden auras. Increasing the radius of these auras by 50% or possibly even 100% would improve their contribution to the team without forcing everyone to stay within kissing distance. I have never heard anyone say that the aura sizes are so much as adequate.

But anyway, really looking forward to most of the talent changes being put into the live version!

2 Likes
217

Awesome, good work modders and fs

218

Because it nullifies any ranged weapon that isn’t the crossbow. They don’t see this of course, because they’ve never playtested a thing.

219

Fantastic job.

An interesting example of how inadequate perception of balance from patch changes’ authors can lead to some amusing build designs by players. Looking forward to how it’s going to be implemented.

220

That is not what I am saying, and there are more categories for a weapon to excel at than hordes and elites.

I don’t know what difficulty you play. I’m in cata 100% of the time. Exe is not great in hordes because so much armor and shields are mixed in. Its passable, its usable, but its not great. Mob density gets so high it can’t even cleave through an entire swing of rats unless you are on Merc with the extra cleave bonus and even then not always. This change snowballs more than it lets on, too, because less swings also means less procs. Exe in hordes relies on swift slaying to keep up, nerfing its ability to maintain that is another nerf that is unaccounted for here.

That is my viewpoint when I say more weapons should mimic Exe. Exe is good at Elites, passable at hordes, passable at bosses, poor at mobility, poor at defense.

That seems completely reasonable to me.

The proposed nerf makes it worse at ALL those. If it should be worse at hordes, lower only the light swings speed. If it should be worse at Elites, lower its heavy swing speed. If it should be less mobile reduce its dodge distance or attacking movement speed. If it should be less defensive reduce its max stamina.

I do not believe the Exe is so OP that it needs to be made worse in every category.

Sure it does. People play whats fun, and its not fun to be ineffective or feel like a burden on the team. Kruber’s melee weapons, in general, stink when compared to Elf, Dwarf, or Saltz. Especially in higher difficulty.

Kruber has poor weapon variation, and of his weapons only two are used with any regularity. Yes, there are plenty of melee weapons to choose from, but only spear and Exe offer anything unique/interesting that also played well. Everything else was just… meh.

2 Likes
221

What weapons do you think are great vs hordes if exec sword is just passable? That would mean all bar like two weapons are bad vs hordes, which is just blatantly not true. Arguing that exe struggles vs hordes on cata is just so completely out of what I’ve experienced and seen others say that I have zero idea how to even address it.

The nerf is barely noticeable, and a huge amount of his other weapons got buffed too. Focusing on a pretty minor nerf to a clearly very strong weapon (your own struggle vs cata hordes aside) while acting like he’s going to have no good weapons now is just silly.

It also got extra crit chance in its light chain, so I’m not sure the point about SS is true.

Right, which doesn’t hold up when Kruber is the least picked hero despite Merc being easily one of the best classes in the game. Also not sure how relevant this point is when a bunch of his other weapons got buffed, unless you think people are only ever playing him for exec sword and a single extra push on spear, and will refuse to play regardless of how strong other weapons are.

2 Likes
222

The change should be felt pretty hard (in my opinion) if it was done the way it was described, so I would reserve judgment on it being “minor” until we can see it reflected in Armory or the the decompiled source code to see if it actually went through because people saying it wasn’t noticeable is strange to me.

223

10%~ would be a notable drop in DPS, but I don’t think it’s big enough to describe as a major nerf when the weapon was quite strong already. Particularly when it got a buff to balance it out too.

And yeah I’ve seen a few people saying they can’t even feel it at all, would be interesting to see if that’s just extra SS on light spam or an actual error or what.

224

Kruber’s best weapons for horde killing in order (imo)

  1. Spear (by a longshot, not even close)
  2. 1H Sword
  3. 2H Sword
  4. Halberd
  5. Executioner
  6. Mace+Sword
  7. 2H Hammer
  8. SnS
  9. Mace
  10. MnS

I’m gonna purposefully leave out his two newest weapons. I just don’t have enough playtime with them.

1-4 are there because they can deal with elites/shields in hordes without really impacting their ability to deal with the trash as well. Looking at that list I am pretty comfortable saying Exe is passable at horde clear and not nearly his best.

I disagree. It is very noticeable to me. The third light strike getting extra crit is inconsequential to me. In hordes you generally needed to weave in pushes after 2 light attacks to keep the horde at bay. This is especially true now with slower swings. Point is you are unlikely to naturally swing into Lstrike3 before needing to interrupt your attacks to block or push. The main benefit of the extra crit on the third strike is helping you follow up a heavy strike with another crit (chain is heavy strike->Lstrike3), which is mainly useful when chonking out an elite during a horde and needing to return to light attacks.

I’m not focusing on the Exe nerf. You quoted two specific pieces regarding Exe from my original post, which covered most of Kruber’s weapons, and commented on it. This discussion stemmed mainly from that. We don’t need to talk about Halberd or Mace+Sword or anything else because I don’t think we have any disagreement about them being in a better place now.

Yes Kruber is getting other weapons buffed, but I don’t see why that means Exe needs to be nerfed. Many of these buffs, while nice, don’t address core weapon problems to make them engaging and enjoyable. Halberd is the one exception, the changes to it make it vastly more usable and do actually address its problems.

Not what I am saying at all. Not sure where you got that idea from. I said very clearly I did not think the nerf was gonna kill spear. To me it just makes +2 stamina on it or necklace mandatory instead of optional. Spear will still be my #1 choice on Merc.

What the Exe nerf is gonna do is make it unusable on everything but GK. GK’s will only use it to one shot CWs and other Elites. Pretty much no reason to use it outside those situations. If you think Exe was too powerful you need to take a closer look at Halberd and 1H Sword, both of which are more powerful in the beta than the pre-nerfed Exe. After more playing today I’d say 1H sword is probably Kruber’s best weapon now.

I’m gonna make a separate thread for Kruber weapons and get a little more specific with my thoughts. More than happy to carry on this talk there if you’d like.

1 Like
225

Not guna lie. The ranger changes are pretty friggin nice. The ranger REALLY needed this buff.

226

Who cares about your lousy stinky bombs, take a jug of healing salve and lather it all over me from stealth!

227

This is seriously bad move, you guys should not f-up the good weapons, but fix the bad ones.

These kind of changes have many implications. For example now it’s just complete garbage in higher weaves.

Tried few runs yesterday and it’s like no, this sucks so hard, I can’t do the damn heavy attack on a chaos spawn properly, because it’s too slow and I’ll get hit and that was only Cata II.

The Exec was already very much on the edge, when it came to attack animation on heavy attacks without some attack speed buffs.

I really hope this change gets reverted, this is not the way to go.

It’s different if you make dual daggers few % slower, since one can still attack, but if you make very slow attack weapon with low dodge count and dodge range even slower then it renders it useless in high difficulties when enemies attack faster. Especially when you can’t even stop the damn animation - this feels so fu… bad and needs tweaking. Like what am I supposed to do with this, when I can’t do the heavy attack and lights do nothing basically, in terms of stagger and damage to elites. And … I can’t dodge around like elf.

It’s not like Exec is uber OP on official right now, it’s just good and fun to play. And so should be the other weapons. Reason people don’t play the rest much is because it just sucks, either in attack animations with no other proper benefit to compensate for sub-par animations or in terms of damage. It’s been like this forever with the low performing weapons. And now we get the most favorite weapon rekt… come on.

2 Likes
228

You don’t know what “balancing” means - look it up.