[PC] Big Balance Beta - Available Now!

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Announcements
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#83

Have you ever used the repeater on BH with a Hunter build? You take prize bounty, and every 10 seconds you alt-fire it at no ammo cost, you get +25% increased damage on the blast (so massive damage at whatever you’re aiming at), and +25% melee power for the next 10 seconds. Rinse and repeat, sprinkling in some single-shot fire to kill specials.

This has always been a very viable build for BH that shifts him more towards melee. Only now, the build is even stronger because the repeater blast is going to have massive cleave vs hordes and be able to oneshot chaos warriors.

#84

Would you guys consider adding a damage reduction while downed, which scales with the difficulty?

It’s one of the main reasons Barkskin is so necessary on Cata, because without it you get disintegrated while downed. Also make it so it doesn’t stack with BS. This would be a step towards opening up the choice of neck Traits beyond BS on every character.

Also I’m quite happy you’ve taken on the Mod, as lots of people gave input as to what would make the Weapons work. Sad that it took so long, but maybe it gave us all a better understanding of how the game works, so we got a better quality balance at the end of it.

I’m also glad you added your comments. It will be interesting to see where you can make more interesting changes than the modders were capable of. E.g. your comment on Sienna’s Mace losing it’s identity.

Hopefully you look at WS last 2 rows of Talents too! :sweat_smile:

But yeah, thanks a lot for such big changes.

2 Likes
#85

The patch is really nice, but testing it so far has proven that Sienna’s (Unchained) talent called “health to cooldown” which has been revisited in said patch does not work in game. I tested it at first in HUB area and it worked beautifully well, even kind of to a ridiculous degree. Relaunching the game helps, but when you enter on any map it stop working again.

1 Like
#86

Tested the Bounty Hunter tier 30 talent Just Reward, and it seems to choose enemies that aren’t even available to kill, like specials that havnt spawned. Not to mention it possibly being a random horde enemy where you have to ask your teammates to stop killing so you can hunt it down. Do teammates contribute to BH’s reward?

3 Likes
#87

As a long time player, I’m extremely worried about some of these changes. Vermintide has a meta of course and players will always gravitate towards the meta weapons, but branching out into other weapons shows that there are many with insane, meta competing capabilities. I’m worried that trying to push weapons into their respective niche is going to result in a net power creep.

Many of the weapons mentioned here are good already, just sometimes require a certain subclass and build to really fully appreciate. Elven greatsword on handmaiden with some stam is absolutely S+ tier for horde clearing, nothing keeps up with it. Swiftbow on waystalker is brokenly powerful with near infinite ammo, high horde damage, and great special/armored unit support with quick charged shots. Throwing axes are one of the best overall utility and damage ranged weapons on RV/slayer, capable of chain staggering the biggest units. (if anything reduce the amount of friendly fire it does, that’s the single biggest reason I don’t pick throwing axes. The hitbox is just WAY too big and results in frequent hits when a teammate is behind/beside me.)

Overall some of these changes (especially swiftbow 100% and throwing axes) seem a bit… much and will push some weapons into incredible category. I also disagree with changing movesets on most weapons. The moveset is ingrained in the weapon and playstyle. Greataxe and halberd specifically are odd, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be changed to suit a modder’s whim or viewpoint.

Same thing with talents. While some of them are uninspired in the base game, the modded/new ones feel horrendously out of place at worst, overtuned and clunky at best.

I really, really do not like the RV talents. A special ale dropping is terribly out of place in the game and there’s nothing else like it in the entire game. And the numbers are just… worthless?
The last line of RV talents are your niche, build talents. Rangers ambush let’s you account better for firing into monsters/patrols or wiping a patrol by yourself. Surprise guest is the utility option for a repositioning, revives, stealth kills, and mobility. Ranger’s parting gift is the item buff which plays extremely well into RV item use identity. All of these have uses in the RV toolkit and I’ve played with them all, effectively. RV is team support, not team heal slave. Handmaiden and BH talents would be horrendously overpowered. These are already strong classes.

Going off of modders advice and choices is just in general a poor choice. Usually going to swing the pendulum of balance too far, in this case towards power creep (especially with talents). I think my takeaway point to this is that upsetting core movesets and talents is not a great idea, and be extremely careful with numbers.

1 Like
#88

I apologize for my English
Hello, I read your patchlog, and I have only one question - do you even play your own game?
Oh look, elves love a Sword and Dagger. Nerf! If people love something, you definitely need to nerf. Now seriously upnet double swords, very much, and then six months later, “oh, something swords often pick up, nerf swords!”
That’s the whole point of “balance.”
Oh yes, glaive’s whole problem is few stamina shields, otherwise it’s an ideal weapon! sarcasm
Glef was so loved in the first part that in the second she is still below the level of Skavenblight
Elven two-handed? Boost fast attacks? He destroys the wave without any problems, the only thing he lacks is damage in armor, which is partially compensated by the charged ones, but this is somewhat difficult during a cataclysm.
Elven ax. Severe attacks? Seriously? With this ax in hand, the elf will be swept away during the wave. when I tried to play with him - serious teams just kicked me, this is an anchor on the neck of the whole team.
So, we have come to double daggers. I remember the times of the release and subsequent patches, when the shades with daggers pulled the wave just enough for the next one to appear. Then they has been improved, and now on the legend of cataclysm you can somehow fend off the wave, but this pleasure is below average because of the ultra-short distance. And now this will not happen. Although maybe I, with my 900+ hours and 200+ levels per elf, just did not learn how to play
My second profile character is Sienna. Anyway, not bad, but is Flaming Flail aoe damage for an already good charged attack? All Sienna will become miles fighters and will kill by 800+ rats, and if it is the first or third, then the score will obviously go to 1000+

#89

what the heck, why will i be nerfed just because someone want a “ballanced” meta for a PVE game?

1 Like
#90

This is it. Right here. Put far more eloquently than me.

1 Like
#91

I agree with him, played the weekly with a friend and it barely managed to hurt clan rats while just blinding the party. It functioned as a leech deterant but using her ult just for that is disappointing at best.

#92

Thank you for reaching out. I have one question, perhaps the most important question in this entire thread.

What difficulty are you using as baseline for balance?

#93

I get what you and @Areythix are saying but it’s not just off our advice and choices, there was a lot of community playtesting that went into our mod and we bounced our ideas off of various people in the community at all levels of play and even some developers

There’s a lot more that went into this than just “oh we made a mod based on our own personal opinions and fatshark decided to run with it” which it feels like is something people are missing when criticizing FS’s work/choices here.

9 Likes
#94

All of these talent changes are entirely Fatshark’s ideas.

6 Likes
#95

At what point became clear that outright removing all extra crit chance from sword and dagger was a great balance change?

Is the intention to force more people into two handed weapons like glaive and 2h sword?

I simply don’t understand the change at all to be honest and it’s the very reason I’m questioning the whole patch.

1 Like
#96

Thoughts on BH Talent changes:

Necessary Means -

I don’t get it. Was this talent being abused? Is this meant to be an improvement? It’s even more useless now, especially without any ammo gain talent.

Inspired Shot -

This talent is not very interesting & doesn’t even interact with Blessed Shot. It’s very easy to keep active (especially with rapier) so it’s basically a flat damage bonus. And not even a significant one at that.

Hunter’s Pursuit -

This talent was already a good choice. The buff was unnecessary & frankly makes it kind of OP.

Just Rewards -

This talent seems really awkward. It’s very unreliable & random as it often chooses enemies you won’t even see in the next minute. It also crowds the buff UI, which in combination with Grail Knight & other buffs means you can’t tell what enemy it is or if Blessed Shot is up. I expected it to work by choosing a specific enemy in the vicinity that would be highlighted & have a “bounty” placed on them. As it is now you don’t really have to go out of your way to kill enemies, you basically just get a buff if a specific kind happens to show up.

Buckshot -

The armor piercing is very welcome & makes it much more viable. The extra pellet count is hard to judge but it seems to do more damage in general.

2 Likes
#97

If I play elf, I play it to play something kinda different from markus and bardin you know? Something fast, maybe dual wield since she’s the only one with it.

So sure, everyone’s playing dual dagger/dagger and sword, lets just nerf them into the ground, so people can be miserable and use yet another 2 handed weapon.

Bah, as soon as I read you are going off of a mod I instantly lost the little hope I had on you as a game developer.

1 Like
#98

You test group was already invested in the mod because they like it and downloaded it and continue to give feedback on it. The community you tested it on were already in love with it and those who didn’t like it left it alone. Now we’re all stuck with it like it or not.

Also there’s people paid to develop balance changes. Aren’t you a bit fed up they’ve got paid for your work?

5 Likes
#99

Our mod didn’t touch Sword and Dagger at all, that one’s entirely Fatshark’s decision

6 Likes
#100

Not really the mod was just a vector for feedback we would’ve given fatshark anyway

If anything I’m incredibly flattered they chose to run with our mod to the extent they have, it’s certainly not something we expected. Also you’re only “stuck with it” insofar as it’s a beta and fatshark decided our changes lined up with what they would want to do anyway so idk what to tell you on that front; give feedback and see what happens I guess? In any case it’s certainly not like our ideas were unpopular so in my eyes this balance beta is just fatshark acting upon feedback that already existed, our mod was just a catalyst.

10 Likes
#101

I think enough people gave feedback to your mod for it to be the closest thing to a decent starting point for them. They’ve even expressed where they’re not sure about certain changes, which is good.

And hopefully they can go beyond what your changes did, and offer us something you were not capable of doing in the mod.

@Argonaut14 I completely see where you’re coming from too. They seem open to feedback though, and as I mentioned above, questioned a few of the changes. We’ll have to see how things pan out.

4 Likes
#102

Yeah there’s things in the patch I’m not sure on myself and will provide feedback as I play and form my opinions on things and feel it all out (and compare data and such where possible)

I just have trouble understanding the negativity towards the patch when it’s a beta and everything is liable to change (and more than likely will)

There’s a good chance a good chunk of our changes in the mod won’t make it through to the final release which is fine by me as long as we have a healthy increase in weapon diversity/viability.

8 Likes