Agree with most of what you said, except for nerfing ranged. I would rather see them buff melee a bit. Increase cleave, give melee more damage mitigation, anything really. Or make bosses less of a game of ping pong. Ranged sit back and damage, while melee get two swings in before getting launched off the map.
2 Likes
Ranged needs regen nerf at least, but melee definitely needs more buffs. At least stacking fix, because stacking creates situations you can not react to. You can get hit by an enemy that you neither see nor can hit, and thatâs the worst most unfair thing about melee now.
1 Like
The problem with nerfing ammo (I think thatâs what you meant by regen) is, most ranged are really squishy and arenât meant to be really effective in melee range. If you limit ammo more than it already is with most classes, you force them into poor positioning. Thatâs why I suggested buffing melee. And yes, please fix stacking hordes/ghost hits.
2 Likes
Which has been known since first closed test, but FS neither cared nor acknowledged that. Theyâre too busy making DLC hats and nerfing whatever broken bullshit j_sat uses to upload his next EPIC TRUE SOLO LEVEL 1 LEGEND RUN SIENNA video.
2 Likes
Champion is super easy with any class combination whether you are using melee or ranged at max HP. Legend is a big jump in difficulty from Champion and balancing the game around lower difficulties would be terrible for the end game experience. If Champion has gotten too easy for you maybe move up to Legend. I definitely think that some of the melee weapons could use some help (Mace+Shield, 2HS, etc) but continuously nerfing ranged based on gameplay experience in lower difficulties doesnât make any sense.
1 Like
Pretty much this ^
Champion is a joke.
2 Likes
Nobody is talking about full HP runs as a standard. In any serious VT2 community discussion the premise is almost exclusively a 2-Grim/3-Tome run, and therefore difficulty level is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The term âeasymodeâ refers to the discrepancies between MOST of the weapons, talents, traits the game offers, which can be considered balanced, and the SMALL NUMBER of very specific weapons, talents, and traits that are almost exclusively popular.
Just as a single example; Siennas using Conflag, Bolt, Flame, Fireball staves donât get to just laser-pointer their attacks as if theyâre doing a Powerpoint presentation on stage, and they certainly donât get to dish out attacks ad infinitum without worries of overheating. All of them require a certain degree of skill to properly target and launch, have different effective range limitations, and also require clever heat management.
Beam staff requires none of those. It is LITERALLY âeasy-modeâ in every aspect possible, and despite not being very high in damage theoretically, the instant aim-correction and hit-scan nature makes its time-on-target massively higher than any other weapon in the game.
These series of facts is undeniable, and being the sole irregularity in comparison to the majority of weapons in existence, it makes them by definition overpowered.
As mentioned, try gather up a team NOT using any of such similarly overpowered weapons, talents, traits in use and then see how they perform in Champ/Legend 2G/3T runs. People accustomed to above mentioned OP conveniences will immediately feel a surge in general difficulty and will often meet situations that usually do not turn up in their ânormalâ games.
That feeling of increased difficulty, the frustration of not being able to laser-pointer-click every single enemy in screen, or not being able to just point your flaming âcursorâ to the boss head and getting headshots after headshots â that is the NORMAL difficulty which most of the weapons, traits, talents are at.
Itâs at that point where the âranged is too powerfulâ misconception comes in.
In comparison, does anyone think RV Bardin is OP in terms of ranged combat? Can the RV whittle down massive number of mobs on screen non-stop at speeds like WS Kerillians or PM Siennas? Can he land pot-shots like HM Kruber or BH Saltz? Can he replenish something like 10~15 ammo per single pop of his smokebomb? Does he get a guaranteed crit skill to exploit the scrounger trait for +2 ammo everytime he shoots? No, of not.
Good RV Bardins can do very admirable level of ranged combat, but he doesnât have the luxury of easy-mode aiming, nor abnormally strong pot-shots, nor infinite supply of ammo. Heâs got limited number of shots which must be used carefully, because the 1~2 ammo resupply from his talent isnât going to just dump ammo like WS Kerillian can. THIS is the normal limitations of a ranged class. Nobody thinkgs RV Bardinâs ranged combat is simply so overpowering as to trivialize melee combat.
Iâm not saying every other ranged classes need to face all of those limitations like the RV Bardin faces, but I am saying that there are far too little limitations in terms of balance when certain weapons, traits, talents are used in combination. Thereâs always that specific career, weapon, property and trait, talent combination that is strongly recommended when new players ask about how to play a Sienna, Kerillian, or Saltz. This tendency is so much prevalent over other possible weapons/build choices, that some people even DEMAND their Siennas, Kerillians, Saltz use those settings, or sometimes go even further as to IMMEDIATELY KICK PEOPLE OFF THE TEAM when different settings are used.
Those settings, are whatâs behind ranged trivializing melee.
1 Like
Max HP as in heropower, presumably. Not no grims.
As mentioned, try gather up a team NOT using any of such similarly overpowered weapons, talents, traits in use and then see how they perform in Champ/Legend 2G/3T runs. People accustomed to above mentioned OP conveniences will immediately feel a surge in general difficulty and will often meet situations that usually do not turn up in their ânormalâ games.
On 1.0.8 Legend, plenty people actually run the less-meta setups. I see more crossbow salts than i do repeater ones, for example. Plenty fireball/conflag/bolt siennas too (personally not a fan of the beam outside of boss DPS). Although i have yet to see anyone use the flame, for obvious reasons.
Can he land pot-shots like HM Kruber or BH Saltz?
Not sure how he would not, his handgun is identical to krubers and certainly capable of pot-shots.
Can he replenish something like 10~15 ammo per single pop of his smokebomb? Does he get a guaranteed crit skill to exploit the scrounger trait for +2 ammo everytime he shoots? No, of not.
On 1.0.8, yes he does. The bomb makes you autocrit.
Heâs got limited number of shots which must be used carefully, because the 1~2 ammo resupply from his talent isnât going to just dump ammo like WS Kerillian can.
Like all the other chars, RV requires ammo talents and traits to really sustain himself (without the ammo regen trait kerillian has 0 sustain), however, with those he does quite well for himself.
based on the numbers, your shade is underperforming (should be top specials/melee/a hell lot more boss dmg and almost no dmg taken), itâs like you guys are running a 3 man team, obviously your numbers are gonna be skewed. you canât base balance off combat uptime in a game - that just is a reflection of player aggressiveness and skill, NOT class balance.
1 Like
Too bad. You should be saying this, cause they should get those limitations.
1 Like
Wasnât a two tank setup considered meta for some time?
I totally dont get it. Just played a legend righteous stand with cliche ws and pyro plus bh and me as huntsman. Steady rushing, friendly fire everywhere (I swear I poped at least one draught just to negate the dmg from Sienna for gods sake), absolutely no teamplay, the elf got downed every two metres because she constantly aggrod chaos warriors with her goddamn swiftbow rapidfiring against their armor, not giving a single happy little bunny rabbit that they just ignored it etc. etc.
Youâd think that a team like this wouldnât even get as far as the first tome. Well nope. Was one of the smoothest runs ever. Because besides the chaos warriors and my own teammates, nothing ever reached the distance to actually harm us (and the cw were taken care of once saltz or I came close enough to the rushing elf). We just facerolled trough this map like a mentally challenged flock of steelforged cows which fired arrows and bullets out of every body orifice available. I saw hordes getting wiped out before the sound even ended, flamethrowers and hooks spawning in our group got deleted right away. Not even talking about the rat ogre who died after a few sec in stunlock.
A melee based team playing like this would have been eradicated by the first ambient mobs.
5 Likes
A very interesting read. Not only informative, but also made me laugh very hard. Thanks. 
haha no. a GOOD melee based team will steamroll through maps churning through anything like butter. iâve been in good ranged groups and good melee groups, both are equally fun. basically, as long as players understand the game enough to react to special audio cues and have awesome dmg avoidance, your team is gold.
1 Like
Not to sound disparaging but its because its champ. Ranged is strong sure, but ranged careers have their drawbacks, I would say some of them may need a bit of tuning, for example, I think BH is low risk high reward, huntsman grants a much higher reward but is harder to play well, Ranger vet is mostly utility but can be a massive boon, amazing for deeds. Some balancing tweaks should be done, mostly to make range more challenging for some classes, but as opposed to champ where you can indiscriminately fire at 600 hp and just body everyone vs legend which requires a wee bit more precision to be as effective, its generally ok. I would like to see the numbers maybe toned down for lower tiers, but they are also lower tiers for a reason.
Erm, Iâm not sure you got the point (seems I a got a bit carried away there).
I stated that my team was playing very bad so a melee team with equal playstyle would have got themselfs killed.
But we didnt got killed because most ranged classes dont have the proper limitations mentionend beforehand and dont suffer from the bugged hand to hand combat and bad ping/clipping as much as melee does (while I still think that melee needs to get buffed or at least the game fixed instead of nerfing stuff over and over again to make it as bad as everything else).
I am not interested in what is better in terms of possible performance. What I tried to convey is that melee needs way more skill and practice to acquire the amount of dmg avoidance, dps, teamwork and overall perception/knowledge of the battlefield essential to hit the breakpoint of which a team can manage a legend map easily while ranged teams hit that skillevel very fast and way, way earlier.
âTacticsâ like running of and dumping ten plus arrows into an armored elite that isnt even getting dmg from it, making it angry and getting your ass wooped the second you engage in melee combat over and over again is one of these breakpoints Im talking of that is obviously not even remotely met. Same goes for melting your teammates HP away or fighting right in the open without any positioning because who the happy little bunny rabbit cares about getting surrounded?
These are absolutely rookie mistakes, still our team managed this map without stopping to run for a second (well we picked up the elf few times). Basically a speedrun. And without diffidence I propose that a melee team with those flaws, for example a kruber running solo and viciously attacking chaos warriors with lmb arming sword hits, would have been dumped right away anywhere after veteran.
5 Likes
Wrong. COmpetent melee players are doing just fine.
1 Like
We are a 2 man squad, sienna and bardin, and the rest of players are allways randoms. My point is that together, we can even carry a team of underperforming players, because they bring a lot of sustain, killing power and versatility. 