For who didn’t play Vermintide, Monks are practically the same enemy: same behavior, same pattern, same role, same high damage and resistance to stagger… but there are some small differences that make Monks better balanced enemies
Mainly three, of which the last one is the most important
Monks get melted by shotguns, that’s a drawback to balance their immense damage output
Monks normally have better spawns… but spawns are a more general speech
that’s the main point: Monks do little damage to your stamina when your block
And it’s about this third point the fix I would do… Monks (like Ragers) are exactly meant to be almost unfair, a bunch of fuc**ng super fast tanks… so if you get “caught”, you can just block and hope someone help you. I mean, you still get neutralized/disabled, but at least you still have a chance to survive (if you play near your mates)
Ragers, instead, something feel like you can’t have solutions
You enter a room, 4-5 Ragers appear on you and, unless you have super specific builds, you can’t do nothing
I was playing as Veteran and despite I use the Shovel (wich is a good defensive weapon) and some stamina boost, those Ragers destroyed my stamina and left me with less than 10% of HP in literally two seconds
In my opinion, if we reduced their stamina damage, they would just be more fair… not weaker, just more fair
Depends of the ragers you point
Dreg ones are maniac, scabs are flak.
For both, you may want a weapon that can stagger them, or you will be yourself incapacited.
HS (MKVI and VII) are good against maniac and can stagger a dreg rager, and make easy to eleminate it. But, a scab rager would laugh at your HS. Same works for catachan sword and dagger is also very good if you backstab.
A bolter can kill both ragers easily, a revolver needs to assure a critic especially with a crowd of them.
I would say that I don’t have any particular problems with them, but I fear more dreg ragers than scabs ones. However, dreg ragers and crushers are the two enemies I always consider when making a build.
And tbh, except the melee weapons I quoted, I try to use my ranged weapons and don’t go close to them cause, yes, it is dangerous.
Do they have to adjust the difficulty and make them less dangerous in my mind? I don’t think so.
Precision: i did not play vt2 (or just to test it and I did not like)
If there anything to improve about ragers is gonna be the attack pattern. I’m not sure if you realize but in V2, you have a room to quick counter attack the monk after they swing 3 attacks. You don’t have to wait for it to complete the whole combo. If they can make ragers combo similar to this, would be very nice. Otherwise, we have to rely on heavy stagger or killing them from far away.
But the part you quoted was an exaggeration just to underline the differences with Monks… I mean, I play Auric T5 I know you can deal with them in certain cases… still I feel they can have some unfair behaviors, specially when they appear on you and you don’t have the time to draw your ranged weapon. If you don’t use a build wich can stagger, the situation is really serious
As I don’t know them (and made the precision) I commented about the fact you qualified then as unfair.
And, i agree. But, would I want that they make them less unfair? I don’t think cause crusher and dreg ragers are the two enemies I have to take into consideration each time I make a build.
I would not consider taking something good against maniac if maniac were only trappers and mutants.
EDIT: as zealot you have something that is extremely useful against dreg ragers. The throwing knives…
You could try the mark 6 power sword, you can empower it while blocking (do a little dodge at same time as you briefly stop blocking) and it’s powered attacks stagger ragers. With power cycler IV you get three stagger hits on them. There is a deep dive video on the power sword here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggcSlbYWTn4
Reducing their stamina damage is an interesting approach. But as I keep thinking about it, I feel that we can’t entirely rely on V2 as a reference, given the stronger range capabilities in Darktide. For that reason, adjusting their attack pattern (as mentioned above) is as far as I would go.
While it’s true that finding ourselves in a situation where we are surprised by a group of ragers with no way out can be deadly, this scenario don’t happen very often. Moreover, we can to some extent control our position and dictate the encounter.
You are not supposed to block ragers,
you got to dodge back and shoot, or mele if you can.
They play a different role, rather than monks, which is more about awareness check, with their high burst damage and speed.
Ragers are slower but more persistent, constantly forcing you back, out of mele range, into ranged combat.
I do like the idea to slightly reduce their stamina cost.
And also, slightly decrease their range, their attack range is way higher than the visual model would suggest, at times more than a meter longer.
Being hit by a dreg Rager swiping his axes in my direction from half a room away feels a bit off.
Given that I can never quite be sure I’m actually out of their range, I’ve certainly stopped on the notion to pull out a ranged weapon near them. Not that we needed any more incentive to do that, a lot of fights are ended at a distance anyways.
A gap in their pattern would also be very nice - given the directors propensity to basically spawn packs on top of us, having a way out, once, would go a long way towards reducing the annoyance factor. Those guys get tedious when you’ve fought the fifth pack in a row without a real break.
They have a very specific 4-strike pattern. And they don’t move forward very far during it. Double backward dodge slide gives you room to pull a gun out. Sure, if you’re running with a horde clear weapon that’s going to be tricky; less so with pistol or a surge staff. But I think that’s the point. VT2 was, I believe, solo-able on the highest difficulty (? Didn’t buy the catatonic Winds of whatever package). DarkTide is designed not to be.
This is very true, we are supposed to dodge back instead of blocking all the hits. For most melee weps that I run, dodge back twice is far enough to switch to range wep and shoot them.
That’s a legit opinion but I don’t think that with less stamina damage Ragers will stop to be a serious danger… imo it would just polish these situations where they spawn on you and you’re blocked into and horde, etc etc
Yep, I’d like, I’m hoping RNG will be my friend
That’s can be another good solution for sure… but imo less stamina damage would be more useful for those situations where they directly appear on you
I’m not supposed but if they literally appear on me while I don’t have space to dodge, they should not able to melt me through my block in 2 seconds
That’s another good idea, I agree
Dunno, honestly I feel like they have more range than we could think… moreover there are a lot of situations where you can’t dodge back
When you run out of stamina with ragers around you… you know what will happen next.
So yes, it would change how we deal with rager and make them less dangerous
I mean, that would change Ragers from unfair to strong and still dangerous but fair… then, if you like them unfair like you said, legit opinion but I disagree mate
Have a nice day!
Honestly I feel they have a longer range than their “model” too… like they hit you also without hitting you
Thanks for reminding me, I forgot to post.
First video is in actual combat how it looks like, second is more about to see rager melee reach.
Conclusion of Video:
The Red number below is range of character to target, not POV to target, in mid video it reaches one, because rager attacks makes the character looks down, don’t know why.
Rager Attack Range: 3 Meters, weapon not really hitting you, as seen in video.
