Pyromancer Beam build nerf

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
61

I think I figured it out.

I was playing WS + Swift last night with a Pyro + Beam. We were almost always side-by-side when hordes/elites rushed us. Both our temp. HP would blow up during this which means we were both claiming a lot of kills. This was similar for elites like SV.

Considering how much people trash legend swift bow and waystalker I found it interesting since I’m not top tier with the class.

The first thing I noticed was the other two players would constantly run in front of my shots but almost never in front of the Pyro.

This got me thinking the reason people might hate Pyro + Beam so much is because of the visual feedback. Everyone can see that bright stream and realize they’re being boxed in by it- can be naturally frustrating. Since they don’t see my shots at all it means that’s an opening to get at the horde to them.

Just a different angle to consider at least.

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Just had a game on my wifes, PC. Start of into the nest, at the first tome we got a horde. The slayer and BH just stood next to the pyro and watched her beaming the horde. I’m sitting there like, you have got to be kidding me… Get in there and kill lol. I just hopping in and started going ham with my daggers. She hit me with the beam a lot, but temp HP kills more than made up for it.

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“sienna, so hot right now =o -stares-”

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This has been addressed about 3 times in the past. We don’t need this thread.

Beam wiggle method is a significantly inferior way to play sienna pyro. If she is a problem for you then you’re a scrub, not getting into the action properly and need to learn the characters and mechanics to a higher level.

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No wonder these threads come back, given these lackluster responses that are to put it politely, high on one’s own farts. :slight_smile:

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100% agree. With the right build you just roll the beam over a horde for 2 seconds, get your ult, and then kill half the horde with it. Then do it again another 2-3 seconds later. Thats on top of the Beam staff being one of the best elite / special killers, and on top of Pyromancer already being one of the best classes.

Plus its really annoying to play with. They constantly roll the beam over you as they twaddle it around with no strategy or effort whatsoever, and then they end up killing 600+ enemies just through their ult while only killing maybe 50 enemies through their combined sword and staff… Its honestly a stupid build.

There is a reason almost all PuB Pyromancers are running this build. Its too effective right now.

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67

Which is verifiably simply not true. You can try it out with mods in the keep how many enemies the burning head can kill. This kind of overexaggeration is precisely why I am so vocal about this. One burning head DOES NOT KILL HALF THE HORDE, not even on a crit. This is something ANYONE can verify by themselves.

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Not with a single burning head, I agree - but taken as maybe 3 or 4 burning heads fired off during the whole time the horde is there, possibly the burning head accounts for a good amount of the dead slave rats, not even taking into account any SV or others that get wiped out by the head.

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It was an exaggeration… I really hoped I would not need to point that out, but here we are. If you are smart enough to realize this, then focus on the points being made and not on the satirical math.

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[quote=“Beravin, post:69, topic:27581, full:true”]
It was an exaggeration[/quote]
Which is precisely what I criticised. Thank you for noticing.

If you are smart enough to realize that your exaggeration was precisely what you based your argument of this build being a certain way upon, you’d get why being precise in this matter is essential. The power and capabilities of this build is exactly what the whole argument is about. Misrepresenting it and then claiming it was all just a hyperbole (which I assume is what you meant with exaggeration) doesn’t help anyone. The burning head kills around 6 enemies (excluding specials and elites), which is so far away from being “half a horde” that your exaggeration just simply misrepresents the power. Your argument was “The build is too effective”. Then don’t exaggerate it’s effectivity. That would sound like a smarter thing to do go get your point across then claiming some made up BS that anyone can easily debunk by just trying it.

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My entire argument was hardly based on an exaggeration, the heck is wrong with you? Pyromancers kill a sizable chunk of any horde in a competent team just by tapping around the stick of doom, getting their ult up, and killing a portion of the horde on demand. If it required a slight amount of skill or investment to do, then I would not mind, but you literally just flick the damn thing around and get free crits.

So what if I used a bit of exaggeration to make my point? Are you suggesting yourself or others are above the very same thing you accuse me of? Of course not, kindly shoo and stop being ridiculous. I’ve seen people who dislike the build, in this very thread, getting accused of being mediocre players just because they don’t like this stupid mechanic. Exaggeration is used on both sides, and sensible people ignore it and focus on the actual meat of the matter. Using some exaggeration does not make a whole argument null.

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This was PRECISELY your point: It is too effective because it behaves a certain way (killing half the horde). This is an entirely different point to make than

When assessing how powerful or effective something is, quantities count because that is what we use to compare it to other weapons, builds and abilities.

In your case, it kinda does, especially since the amount of enemies it can potentially kill is very easy to determine and what we need to determine whether it is “too effective” or not. The beam staffs secondary also kills " a sizeable amount" of a horde. So does the fireball staff. So does the flamethrower. So please don’t shift goalposts now and start throwing a fit because what you wrote is nonsense.

Goal post shifting and diversion, has nothing to do with the argument at hand.

Does not provide any argument for or against anything.

Sensible people don’t resort to nonsensical exaggerations as an argument when it is the only thing to pack their point.

I have nothing against disliking the build. Nobody is forcing you to use it. But misrepresenting something just because you don’t like it is a poor argument to make if it is your only point.

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73

Fine, you want me to type out my issues without exaggeration?

  • Friendly fire, particularly when people are in melee. (Yes, it varies…)
  • Easy access to what I feel is a crit exploit, which also works on other weapons / classes. (This is my main gripe, as it makes a lot of other stupid builds work. Tried the same thing on an IB Drakegun yet?)
  • You don’t even need a weapon outside the fishing beam, and a twig to block with.
  • It can kill chaos warriors faster than a shade when you compare the cooldowns (which is Shade’s entire job).
  • It loses no ability to kill elites or specials, unlike other staffs (fireball, firestorm, etc) that sacrifiice a lot for their horde clear.
  • Pyromancer is extremely strong WITHOUT this build, it doesn’t need this on top of everything else.
  • It outclasses a lot of other builds and weapons for effectiveness, despite the fact the other builds are considerably harder to use. Dragging a laser over a horde repeatedly should not be so rewarding.
  • Did I mention friendly fire?
  • Most other classes at least have ammo or short range, while the wizard can do this at any range.
  • Above all, and this is my personal bias, I’m bloody sick of seeing it. I play public Legend QPs, and the damn build is everywhere to the point where I never see anything else when BW is picked.

I aint using math because I don’t know the numbers. But I have played for over 700 hours and seen it used plenty, and used it myself a few times. I am talking from experience, not theorycrafting.

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My take on those points:

Friendly fire: meh, fireball staff is far worse. Getting tapped by beam doesn’t hurt that much unless they are really trying to hit you. Randomly getting singed by a fireball staff can knock off 10hp a pop. For that matter, a careless bounty hunter will hurt you a lot more than a beam sienna.

Easy access to a crit exploit: There are plenty of “exploits” that end up being core mechanics of a given game. Simply calling it an exploit isn’t enough to prove that it should go away.

Don’t need a weapon: There are plenty of builds that can do just fine with one weapon as long as they are supported properly, and a pyro that mispositions and gets surrounded is not going to do very well unless she switches to melee.

Kills chaos warriors fast: dual daggers can 3 shot chaos warriors without using a cooldown at all. Chaos warriors are a pain with most weapons, but this is far from the only build that can shred them. It may be the best build against them, but I’m not convinced that it should be nerfed because of that.

It can still clear elites and specials: dd/hagbane waystalker has great waveclear, great boss dps, and can handle elites/specials just fine. BH and huntsman don’t have quite the same level of waveclear, but they are arguably better against elites and specials.

It outclasses other builds: I’m not convinced of this at all. It outdamages a lot of builds, yes. If you position really well, that means that it outclasses a lot of builds. If you mess up your positioning or miss a special, you sort of just die, when some of those builds you “outclassed” would remain standing. In practice, if an average player is trying to maximize their legend quick play winrate, I don’t think that any form of pyro is the best option. It might be a good option for an elite player trying to speedrun maps, but I don’t think it is actually the best option there either (mostly because of the lack of mobility). It definitely is one of the best options for getting green circles in winning runs, but I don’t think that that is a useful metric.

Friendly fire again: see above

Ammo: yup, waystalker/bounty hunter/huntsman/ranger veteran are all well known for being short range or running out of ammo regularly.

See it a lot: fair enough. I don’t notice it enough to bother me, but to each their own.

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75

Its good you admit that. Nothing anyone will say, will make you change your mind.
Maybe you should just try to avoid playing with them. Just leave the game or ask them politely to change their build. Ranting here will change nothing.

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The beam staff isnt nearly as overpowered (at least in relation to other vt2 weapons) like it was at the start of vt1.

My Problem is burning head and to a lesser extend trueflight arrows.

I spend my fair time playing back when bolt staff and trueflight meant you could just hold w and spam on until all rats where dead. It got old very fast and although FS took month and month to balance it they did in the end.

I still get flashbacks to this phase when i hear “fly free little one” and hearing it every other second makes me leave the group in shivers (not to mention the horrible pacing many aimbot siennas force unto the team).

The game would be much better if there was no autoaim crutch in the first place but since this won’t happen I hope they nerf the availability of churning head hard or make its trajectory more linear so it doesnt zig zag around like a maddened burning flying squig on crack. Now that i think of it i hope they do both.

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wow i was writing a reply but went for a lunch break, and i came back to your post which is super similar to what i was about to post.

if you’ve played 700 hours then you should know that there are far more versatile builds than pyro beam staff. the build kills rather slowly, and cannot handle multiple armored units effectively.

ever been in a fight with a chaos patrol as a pyro? if you don’t have a potion, you’re not going to perform as well as some other classes, and going to have to resort to trying to get your burning head up by time-wasting wiggling, or going all melee-mace on their heads. if there are a lot of armoured targets, pyro’s burning head only stops at killing 1 of them.

ever seen an RV decimate an entire horde with a shotgun? one blast will take out half a horde, when pyro will still be trying to wiggle on the first 2 rats. if a leech teleports in, beamstaff usage is to try and snipe it two or three times. a shotgun would just delete it instantly. what about 5 stormvermin at a distance? 5 shots from empire longbow or crossbow. compared to pyro, burning head would just kill one, then she has to resort to slow sniping again. or perhaps compare it to my favourite, the swiftbow, which kills 2 rats per shot, and 2 arrows for 1 marauder. there are many situations where a pyro just CAN’T dish out the damage required for a quick resolution. and for some reason proponents of pyro seem to think that her burning head is up 100% of the time. it is not.

they won’t run out of ammo if you have specced for it well and do the correct things. waystalker can fire for ever on a swiftbow, the rest of the bows are more for situational shooting. BH shouldn’t run out of ammo period, huntsman WILL have an issue if the pyro keeps rushing and tagging every single ambient mob, the RV just needs to get a crit shotgun-butt hit on a few rats and he’s back up to full, plus he has ammo drops.

all this talk has gotten me hungry for using the grudgeraker on hyperdensity horde. love it when my computer slows down after shooting dead 20 rats instantly

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Pretty sure he was being sarcastic, at least that’s how I read it xD

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Pretty much this, and this time, half the horde is not an exaggeration. Graker is probably one of the best horde clearing ranged weapons currently in game. Beam staff actually has only medium overcharge-to-damage ration, one of the reasons why running RSS is often combined with overcharge clear on burning head. Most of Sienna’s ranged options are actually quite well balanced overcharge-wise, with bolt staff being the only one that seems noticably on the bad side, but they ARE your main damage dealing tools.
I think one of the reasons we are seeing less and less craze about Sienna and “the ranged meta” in general is not only because of recent changes to melee, but also because people have gotten used to almost all carreers and weapons, have most of the reds and there are many ways to inform yourself about builds. There are streamers and other sources for guides on how to build effectively, and I still entertain that melee weapons benefit alot from that. You could still argue that builds like RSS beam are “op” because they are so easily accessible and for the amount of effort you have to put into them, they are quite effective. But on an overall scale, there is SO much more you can do that sooner or later, you will abandon this build or only run it in very specific group setups where it can actually make alot of sense to bring it along.
It kinda reminds me of BH. BH can have unlimited ammo and just run around shooting anything and that works. But then you look at veterans like j_sat who brought more intricate and exotic builds a wider mass appeal, and now you see more people running around with the “Hunter” build because IF you have the skill for it, it is alot more versatile and covers more bases, since you will still hardly run out of ammo and have an absolutely fantastic blend between melee and ranged, since both supplement each other: Your ranged weapon gives you the hunter buff so you can melee better (e.g., you can build a falchion to 1h kill fanatics with hunter buff) and melee resets your blessed shots. Combine that with the CDR on your active ability to use to both snipe elites and specials in critical situations as well as an impromptu panic button to get some space in melee, and you got a very well rounded build that is still not that OP because you are squishy.
In the end, RSS beam staff is like almost anything in this game: You can play it “safe” with “low effort” builds like this and still play decent, or you can go all out with higher risk (in Sienna’s case: venting overcharge quite a bit) but higher reward. To me, this means the game is actually rather well designed in this aspect, since it allows accessibility to characters, carreers, weapons and talents for people who want to get started with certain heroes, but still allow for higher-risk-higher-reward optimizations.
The RSS thing is a good thing and actually speaks to the quality of the design here.

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Last message :arrow_down_small:

I don’t think he ever clarified if it is a bug or not (contradiction) or if the supposed fix covers the intended part or not.

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