Pyromancer Balance Pass Role Comment

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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  • Battle Wizard aims at bringing a balanced playstyle. Moving between casting spells and melee while venting overcharge through the passive.
  • Pyromancer leans more into the ranged side of Sienna, unleashing a lot more spells through improved overcharge capacity and spells scaling with that overcharge, but having a harder time getting rid of accumulated overcharge mid-fight.

This suggests to me that the the devs aren’t really aware of how these classes have been played.

Battle Wizard has always been the choice for a spell-focused Sienna career. Her powerful modifiers on the level 10 talent line and her ease of venting due to Tranquility (not to mention even better venting effects from the level 20 talent line) solidified her as the ranged focused role and she has been this way for years. Literally only one talent of hers (universal level 15 talent line doesnt count), Immersive Immolation, consistently effects her melee abilities. Speaking of her melee abilities; many Battle Wizard players take the flame sword for, among other reasons, its ability to let her to get out of melee so she can go back to shooting and to keep her safe until Tranquility vents for them. Battle Wizards want to avoid melee combat as much as possible, even more so now that they are the only base game career effected by Overcharge slow.

The reason the community wanted Volans Doctrine as a passive for Pyromancer is because she was never played without it. Why? Because Pyromancer has always been the 50% melee 50% ranged career for Sienna. Not taking Volans Doctrine made her frustrating and ineffective to play. Pyromancer has always been more capable in melee due to her lack of Overcharge slow penalties and her high crit rate. Pyromancer also has more in her kit and talents that improves her melee abilities via attack speed and crit chance. This, combined with her lack of FREE VENTING, led to a pretty defining combat loop for her: get to high overcharge by picking off specials/elites or whatever with your staff, then rush into melee with your high crit weapon and finish off the stragglers at blazing speed.

I only want to clarify these careers’ identities because if any other changes are made, which I’m sure some will, I think it’s very important to remember this. Pyromancer may have been conceptualized as the ranged specialist career and Battle Wizard as the versatile ranged and melee combo career, but in reality they are reversed.

I also wanted to ask why Martial Study has remained untouched in Pyromancer’s tree? It’s underwhelming, boring, and (at least to me and others I’ve seen play her) never picked. Compared to 10% increased crit chance or up to a 25% power buff, a measly 5% attack speed buff is going to be a hard sell. Buff it or replace it.
Dissipating Rictus is very cool but needs some sort of screen effect that shows when it is about to end. As it stands now it is very easy to blow yourself up accidentally.

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To be fair, that is very much in line with what Pyromancer is supposed to be thematically, about to burst at a moment’s notice if not careful

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There is also a buff icon with a damn timer so it’s not like the info isn’t right there already :person_shrugging:

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I don’t know about you but I find it a little distracting to be constantly glancing at the buff icons when I’m in the middle of combat, and if you aren’t doing that with Rictus you will die.

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If I blow up I want it to be because I got greedy and messed up, not because I didn’t notice a teensy icon in the corner of my screen go away while I’m in the thick of it.

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Is the mod that lets you put buff icons in the middle of the screen no longer working? I dunno I just glance down quickly for stuff like that it’s pretty easy to tell from a glance how close your are. If you’re just spamming and get used to your staff of choice you can probably get a good feel for how many consecutive casts you get in the duration pretty quick.

I’m inclined to think more screen effects is a net negative.

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I understand not everyone likes screen effects and I totally get that. They could make the screen effect a toggle option and we both win.

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It’s not that teensy

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Agree with your whole post
All Sienna is ranged-DPS-leaning. Battle wizard’s the caster, pyromancer’s the hybrid, unchained’s the melee. Necromancer is hybrid but in a more binary way, like you make her good at casting OR melee.

How to improve? Yeah the 5% attack speed talent is hungry for a change that focuses on melee. And absolutely we need better indication of the Rictus and Deathly Dissipation timers, ideally a combination of sound & visual FX.

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Minus that whole part where they want to jump balls deep into any horde to set them on fire while relying on soot shield + fire sword stagger +thp generation to nullify any real danger as enemies rapidly turn to charcoal.

But indeed, BW was better at spamming ranged thanks to her passive and whatnot letting her more easily deal with the overcharge which let her shoot more without taking damage from venting. That said, Pyro has solutions for this now, like free venting, and she was always the one with a magic fireball (skull) for an ability.

Doesnt really matter how good she was in melee when BW could just jump into any horde to annihilate them…could? I mean, can. BW was just better at everything and honestly, i kinda still think she is.

But at last i do not think Pyro is outright too bad now, i did enjoy my last bunch of games with her a lot.

Fair question really, i suppose it might be some strange fear it be too strong when paired with the new attackspeed talent she got on the…20th? Row.