[PC] Vermintide 2 - The Big Balance BETA

I finished an analysis of the hunter crossbow build for bounty hunter to fill in some of the gaps on the spreadsheet today… Dang it!!

@Fatshark_Hedge Just testing out some weapon changes in themodded realm with the Creature Spawner (since there’s no Super-Armored or Monster Dummies in the keep) before I went to test out the new balance changes, a couple of bugs came up. If I sound critical, I don’t mean to direct it at you all or your work (you’re putting in the effort to have this balance thing, which is more than I’d expected), I only want to emphasize the severity of these issues.

  • Slayer Bardin’s Dual Axes’ damage numbers are nerfed across the board. Light and Heavy attacks do equal damage against every Armor Type except Armor-- Where Heavies still do more damage than Lights (and Push-Attacks are counted as Heavies), but less than pre-beta, as opposed to
  • (cont.) Dual Axes have been reduced to _broken_worthless gutter-trash, less damage against armor, less critical/headshot damage, Push-Attack does Light-Attack damage now (except against armor???) and, in the unlikely event that you, Sigmar forbid, cleave with an attack, it does less damage (which is an issue I also take with the 1H Axe updates).

  • Two-Handed Hammer now cleave armor like 2H Sword, returning 2H Sword to useless gutter-trash once more by comparison. With its higher base cleave, the 2H Hammer can cleave more armored targets than the 2h sword, while also dealing better damage to them. I don’t know if this is intended (I kind of hope it is, gives 2H Hammer a purpose besides “worse version of 1H Hammer/Mace”), but there you go, 2H Hammer cleaves armor now.

  • Everything you added the new slam mechanic to is a bit wonky. If you get too close to your target, they don’t become the “Single Aimed Target” and don’t take damage. Not a huge deal and not as easily fixed as the other two issues I mentioned (I’d imagine, giving the history of difficulty this game has had with regards to determining what the player’s target is), and not probably something anyone will notice as shields were worthless gutter-trash before this beta anyway and nobody will have any point of reference, but, there it is.

Other than that stuff, though, I really like literally every change to, in particular, the War Pick, 1H Sword, Executioner Sword, all of Kerillian’s weapons, and all of Saltzpyre’s weapons (I guess his 2H Sword has been nerfed by the existence of Bardin/Kruber’s cleaving 2H Hammers, but it wasn’t his best or even really a fun choice to begin with…). Anyway, hope things get straightened out with regards to the Dual Axes, especially, and hope to hear some discussion about the other stuff I mentioned!

Ooh, also, level 20 Talent changes; I like’em, and they encourage some previously worthless gutter-trash weapon-usage (Shield + Anything), 1H Axe, etc…

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As a halberd main, I find it useless now. On top of decreasing its power, it is very slow now; even with +10% attack speed. I think it’s ok to decrease its power but not the speed at that level

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It was nerfed good, on that i agree. But it deserved it. Try to adapt to the new difficulty of handling the weapon. Before it was ez mode, now you have to be more precise and careful, and use more varied attack patterns, get use out of stabs that have more reach. Imo its in a good spot. Probably should add a bit more reach to both stab attacks (light 2 and charged 2). OR make the stabs a bit faster to wind-up (which makes sense realism-wise).

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Dual axes are specific to that class to compensate the lack of ranged weapon in my humble opinion.
That dual axes “nerf” is a bit worrying. But as FS stated this beta is planned over time so if it’s not working as intended there is still time to tune it properly :slight_smile:

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Dual axes were no-brainer choice for slayer. It reduced variety of loadouts. Now it should be more in line with the other weapons (haven’t tested yet tho). If the slayer turns out to be too weak now, then it’s his career should be buffed (talents and perks), not dual axes, imo.

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Great work guys :wink:
Continue :slight_smile:

2h Swords for Kerillian
Increased power across the board for the heavy stab attack.
Increased range for everything.
Gave push followup and increased critical chance of 25% and better cleave modifier while making a bit faster.

Thank you, this was sorely needed.

Natural Bond - No longer prevents using healing items.

Good change. Now i dont have to fear being ridiculed or worse when i bring this into public games.

2h Swords for Saltzpyre and Kruber
Slightly reduced effectiveness of push followup attack overall, reduced critical/headshot bonus specifically.

I do not understand this change. The 2h sword was not overpowered to begin with. You needed 2 or 3 push attacks to kill a stormvermin. Thats not overpowered.

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Fair point

Sword and Shield Kruber has a sudden and noticable jump in how good it is. Temp health is very clever with the shield bash because of the new talent that staggers on temp health so shield push is valuable and allows your TEAM to make easier kills, and the improvements to the sword make it able to deal with SV much better. Viability of the weapons has improved markedly. Thank you!

@JLB made a post in my difficulty thread about the backlash to ez stuff getting nerfed. It’s all here;

Double Daggers hit too hard

Halberd useless now

Pyro non existent.

Sword and dagger dead

Waystalker now mediocre

Raised a wry smile from me.

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All of those threads stem from understandable frustration and each one of them has some truth in it. Beta exists so that people would come and try out changes - balance should be sought on both sides of spectrum. Ignoring complaints about strong stuff getting weak is silly, in my opinion. There should be a way for everyone to reach at least a modicum of satisfaction.

I agree with the majority of the changes so far, and I’m enjoying them. But, Dual Axes for Slayer got hit to hard in my opinion. The guys in my group are not even running them anymore, which is kinda weird when you think about it… Dual Axes are a slayer specific weapon, and people are not even using them anymore. People are running 1 handed hammer and pick axe now, lol. 1 handed hammer can 1 shot SV with the over head and pick axe 2 shots CWs. 1 handed hammer also handles horde clear. There doesn’t seem to be any place for dual axes anymore…

Same goes for the Double Daggers. Even being spec’d for elite killing, it now takes 3 hits to kill a SV with daggers. Meanwhile even the spear on WS is killing elites fast than the daggers. Spear headshot on WS deletes them in the 1-2 combo of the heavy spear. 1 handed sword has become the new meta until the glaive is fixed.

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Thank you so much for shaking the bag and providing real change to the game. This could be the beginning of something great.
The following is only based on weapons testing alone, I’ll expand on issues that come up with specific careers later and weapons-career combinations.
Some initial thoughts after playtesting:

*The dodge window
is way too long. But it’s a nice change to the ice skating ballerinas chasing you across the map. Maybe it can be tweaked to be somewhere in the middle?
Track during windup (Telegraphing phase), no tracking during execution of the actual attack (Weapon swing phase).

1h Swords for Kruber & Sienna

  • Feels really good and viable now. Don’t understand the damage buff to unarmoured targets though. Seemed fine as is.

Burning Swords for Sienna

  • Has a really nice feel to it, but is still lackluster vs superarmour (Chaos warriors and Lords with super armour).

Burning Daggers for Sienna

  • Again feels nice, but for the time investment doing H1->H2 to deal with armour effectively it should have more “umph”. Personally I think speeding up H1 wind up and attack

animation and allowing to follow up with H2 without actually charging (hold lmb H1 → LMB Quickattack = current H1->H2). This way the damage can stay the same, but the speed of

execution and risk of pulling off the attack seems more balanced.

1h Axes for Bardin and Saltzpyre

  • This weapon makes no sense to me. Compared to the 1h hammer it’s basically got the same damage profile, yet you sacrifice control, cleave, speed and defense. The only thing setting

it apart is that it can kill as stormvermin with 3 light attacks, but it takes the same time as 1h hammer doing 2 heavy attacks - which produces the same result. Heavy attack damage

on body shots on chaos warriors seem to be the same as well.

1h Hammers and Maces for Bardin and Kruber

  • Still a great weapon. Giving incentive to not block cancel after L2 is good, BUT it’s just not enough tbh.

2h Axes for Bardin

  • BUG: Seems like pushattack is unresponsive sometimes after heavy attacks (particularly H2 the right to left swing) H1->H2->Block->Pushatk seems to reproduce consistently
  • Don’t understand the nerf to push attack. Reasoning?
  • Very strong, very simple. Could use a higher skill ceiling, like better breakpoints on headshots.

2h Hammers for Bardin and Kruber

  • Seems alright. Maybe the armour cleave is a little weird, but without it the weapon struggles to provide the control its role implies.
  • Push attack->H2 feels a little wonky sometimes, seems like a timing issue if you start holding LMB too early. Especially with no atk speed buffs on gear.

2h Picks for Bardin

  • Seems great. Balance changes makes sense and the weapon does good work.

Crossbows for Bardin and Saltzpyre

  • Seems great. Still not a fan of ranged damage dropoff though.

Dual Axes for Slayer Bardin

  • Overall changes seem pretty good.
  • Light attack changes are great.
  • Would like to see windup be a bit faster on Heavy attacks.
  • I’m against nerfing headshot damage. Headshots should be rewarding.
  • Push attack change is good.

Handguns for Bardin and Kruber

  • Works.

Shields and Axe for Bardin

  • I don’t know where to begin with this weapon. Ironbreaker Bot can use it, maybe some players can, but I just find it clunky, slow and unintuitive.
  • Shield slam (H1) seems to work pretty good.
  • Nothing else I can really commend about this weapon.
  • I think Pushatk->shield slam would be nice. That’s about all I can contribute.

Shield and Hammer for Bardin and Kruber

  • Best shield option available.
  • Feels intuitive and actually functions as a “tank” weapon.
  • Really low clutch potential, but makes up for it in staying/holding power.

Flails for Saltzpyre

  • Light and heavy changes are nice, but wasn’t needed.
  • Flail didn’t really need more stagger or damage. It needed mobility, which it sadly didn’t receive with this beta.

2h Swords for Saltzpyre and Kruber

  • The last thing the 2h sword needed was a nerf to its best anti armour move. If you insist on keeping it like this, then improve the armour damage/speed on Heavy attacks.

2h Executioner Swords for Kruber

  • Has become a straight upgrade to the 2 handed sword now, while decreasing the skill ceiling.
  • Needs slight tweaking (nerfs) to light swing damage. I’m all for it having more stagger (it is a big, heavy piece of metal) than the 2h swords, but cleave and cleave damage should

be less.

  • Heavy overhead could still use a damage buff in my opinion, but the crit chance increase is very helpful I must admit. Maybe have Heavy attacks have charge up stages like the

2hpickaxe → even the same damage profile would work.

Halberds for Kruber

  • Sensible damage changes
  • Light attack chain has become too slow.
  • Heavy combo seemed reasonable speed wise.
  • Nice to see more viable attacks in its attack chains, adds more depth to the weapon.

Empire Longbows for Kruber

  • Reasonable, still gets the job done. Ranged damage falloff - stil not a fan…

Shields and Sword for Kruber.

  • Push shoves enemies out of push stab range most of the time.
  • Combos feel good and are intuitive. They just have trouble actually hitting anything. Feels weird.
  • Light attack spam combo works ok.

1h Swords for Kerillian

  • This weapon feels fantastic.
  • Damage increase seemed unnecessary, but damn this weapon fun to use now. Such an amazingly well designed weapon, that requires knowledge and skill. Has the most depth of any weapon

available in the game in my opinion. Now I just need to “git gud” with it.

Glaives for Kerillian

  • Boring but effective.
  • Light- and push combo is a bit too fast.
  • Heavy combo seems like it’s in the right spot now though.

2h Swords for Kerillian

  • BUG: Pushattack has 100% crit chance.
  • Heavy stab needs a further buff (like 2x the damage), particularly on headshots/crits, and especially versus super armour. Where’s the logic in a long windup precisition stab,

which ends with you stopping almost completely (can be negated with H2 or properly timed dodge), when the damage it delivers is significantly less than that of glaive H1->H2? It’s

got the same damage profile as spear H2 it seems, or extremely similar but awkward hitboxing for the attacks and way less mobility and fluidity to it

  • Speed of transitioning into and from H2 and back to light attacks or push attack should be buffed to increase fluidity.
  • Light combos are nice and function smoothly with push attacks as well.
  • Damage profile and cleave should be tweaked though. Higher damage and cleave damage as the angle of the light attacks basically makes it impossible to be rewarded for headshots,

maybe higher crit chance and multiplier on light attacks as well, to make it more “elvish” or whatever. Right now it’s just a combination of the Kruber 2hand and the spear. But worse

than both.

Dual Wield Daggers for Kerillian

  • Bleed is still quite powerful. I would suggest lowering bleed damage, but allowing you to stack bleed procs, building up damage against single targets like monsters and maulers.
    *I need to play around with it more, but so far nerfs to heavy attacks seem reasonable.

Dual Sword Dagger for Kerillian

  • Weapon is basically garbage now.
    It was supposed to have the strengths of both sword and dagger, being counteracted by being off balance → meaning you are slowed down after every swing (already represented in the

game) while you maintain speed and mobility on the balanced dual weapon setups (no slowdown). Instead of listing everything wrong with the weapon in its current state I’ll list my

suggestions:

  • Light sword attacks should match the damage profile of dual swords.
  • Push attack should be changed to H2 from dual daggers. Damage profile matching 1 dagger heavy stab and 1 push attack stab from dual sword.

Make these changes and it’ll be a great weapon on all 3 elf careers

Dual swords for Kerillian

  • These changes show how too much of something breaks the game. In this case it’s crits. Too many crits. There’s no reason to use anything but light attack spam as the crit ratio on

these are through the roof. The stagger it provides trivialises all enemies and boss damage is quite insane. Did a melee only run alongside a slayer friend (competent one at that)

and managed to not only get more melee kills, but also deal more damage (significantly so), and I wasn’t even using swift slaying. When you put that in the mix, it’s even more

unbalanced.

  • Dual swords only needed means to deal with armour and super armour. Not constant critical hits. It literally crits more than it does regular hits now.
  • Takes a while to kill Chaos warriors, but it gets the job done. No matter how many of them there are.
  • Light attack spam is superior to heavy attacks.

Spears for Kerillian

  • Light attacks vs unarmoured did not need a buff.
  • Absolutely fantastic and spot on changes with regards to armour. Along with the 1h elf sword the spear is absolutely amazingly balanced now.

Falchions for Saltzpyre

  • Faster attack speed feels good (at the cost of damage per swing).
  • Damage values align pretty well with the other 1handed swords, which is sensible. It never made sense that it did more damage per light swing than an executioner sword.
  • Stagger is way too high. Completely trivialises stormvermin and even chaos warriors and maulers seem to stagger too often.

Fencing Swords for Saltzpyre

  • Offhand pistol stagger is maybe a bit overtuned.

P.S.
Unlike some people on the forums I embrace the fact that V2 is not V1.
Its unique identity comes from the massive amounts of enemies, their variety and how they mix together. This is also where the difficulty scaling comes in. The right coctail of enemies to make it hard for the players. It’s a chaotic and frantic experience and to this end our dear heroes should, and are, a lot more powerful than they were in V1. This is a good thing. Characters active are there to be used depending on the character. Ironbreaker ult is the “Oh sheet” button to save the team from certain death, and should be used sparingly and at the right time, Which is reflected in its cooldown time and overall “power”, whereas the handmaiden’s ability is more of a utility class dynamic, that provides a tool to empower her playstyle, hence can be used a lot more often and freely.

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Been playing around with Battle Wizard and Lingering Flames. I’m a bit curious as to how it works with different kinds of burning effects.
If I for example use an attack that causes a high dot effect, then hit with a low dot effect, what happens? Will the high dot get replaced? Also, does Fire Walk cause a dot or is it just a visual effect from them touching the fire trail?
Also noticed leeches would teleport away after being dotted, but it feels like they won’t die from it, but when they come back, it seems as if their hp has dropped to 1 and then stopped.

Hey,

are you guys aware how unreliable the burning head is in the first place?

If I try to bounce it off a wall around a corner to try and hit a special, it’s more likely to bounce off into a random direction instead of trying to hit anything.
I can never tell if it will hit one slave rat and bounce upward into the heavens taking it’s entire damage pool with it, or go through halfways a horde and bounce then off into infinity and blowing the rest of it’s damage pool.
Also, it spend it’s entire damage pool on ONE armored enemy. No problem with chaos warrior, and it goes through the mauler too, but this problem is especially big on the skaven. If a SV is hit first, the BH is gone. The same with the packmaster and the armored specials like the ratling and the flamethrower. Even if I target a smaller rat beside the SV, as soon as it hits the armored enemy, the head is gone. Since the head almost kills a CW on legend, I’m pretty sure it should be able to kill 2SV and damage a 3rd before it extinguishes.
Was this taken into account before nerfing the head?

HaleScourge currently spawns specials in the rivers after you come down the lift from the first area. Every single special we got was in these rivers trying to shoot us. Ratling gunners, flamethrows, gutter runners, etc.

This is the only thing that strikes me as sorta counter-intuitive and needlessly pushy. Sienna is many things, but she is definitely NOT a melee focused hero, at least not as BW or Pyro. Forcing her only options of temp health generation on melee feels like a cheap shot to brute-force people into melee with her just because her ranged game is strong.
The same holds true for all other ranged heroes, but BH at least USED to have a clear incentive to seek melee to reset his ability and WS has her passive health regen and very strong melee weapons. For HS and RV, they were leaning towards the melee-ish side, anyways, but I can’t help but feel this is a very blunt and needlessly forced attempt to “defuse” the “ranged meta” by essentially stripping temp health generation away from ranged weapons.
Whether or not I find that a particularly good idea (which I don’t, at least not this way), this definitely does NOT cater more towards a carreer’s definition more. If a ranged hero has to rely on his melee more for benefit, that goes against their definition as a ranged hero. Again, I am not saying it it should or should not be this way (this is an entirely different debate), but imho, it _re_defines those carreers to quite a bit, which is the opposite of catering towards the already established definition more. Sienna’s core identity in this game has never been melee focus on BW or Pyro.

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Dear @Fatshark_Hedge, just a quick question. Can we expect a weekly write-up of which elements of the feedback was being taken into consideration/acknowledged when moving forward with the beta? For example, if people know you are looking at Pyro again, the number of “omg, pyro ded!” topics might not pop up every hour. :slight_smile:

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That’s taken care of by the beam staff change though I think? Crit can no longer proc on first damage tick.

Ran shade today, what you wrote about DD is wrong or your game is broken. I can’t see any difference in Ulti damage on DD atm. However, horde clear is pretty sh*t now.