Shade’s Talent – Suggestions

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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I want to preface this by saying that my intention is to improve certain underperforming talents in hopes of increasing more build diversity. Although this can be said for a lot of classes, I want to focus on shade for now. I will try to keep my suggestions fair and short. All values are negotiable.

Level 10 (Offensive Talents)

  • Exploit Weakness: Increases damage by 20-25% more damage to the first enemy hit.

Notes: Similar to how cruelty synergizes well with cloak of mist, this change with exploit weakness will pair well with cloak of pain and gives a more focus build on single-target damage.

  • Exquisite Huntress: Increases headshot damage bonus by 50%

Notes: This provides more consistent damage while still rewarding skilled players, and it solves the issue of needing a few stacks of headshots to be consistent with cruelty. In addition, it opens up the possibility for a range build.

Level 20 (Backstab Talents)

  • Ereth Khial’s Herald: In addition to the increased backstab damage, increase the backstab radius.

Notes: I honestly prefer the backstab radius in Vermintide 1 where I can be slightly on side of the enemy and still perform a backstab. This change should conform to most shade player’s experience when they expected an attack should have been a backstab.

  • Vanish: Add an internal cooldown of 2 seconds

Notes: Prevents shade from cloaking and recloaking constantly.

  • Bloodfetcher: Return 5% of bolt or arrow

Notes: This makes swift bow more viable on shade while still having the same impact on other range weapons.

Level 25 (Defensive Talents)

  • Gladerunner (rework): Critical strike increases dodge range by 20%

Notes: This change makes Gladerunner more interesting than having a flat 10% movement speed and maintains the theme of the talent row where critical hits reward a temporary buff.

Level 30: (Ultimate Talents)

  • Cloak of Mist: Remove cooldown reduction and allow melee critical hits upon coming out of invis.

Notes: The recent change ruins the synergy with this talent and Vanish. A better way to nerf this combination is to give Vanish an internal cooldown and remove the cooldown reduction of Cloak of Mist.

  • Shadowstep (rework): Increase critical chance of range attacks by 20-25% for 6 seconds. No bonuses to melee attacks.

Notes: Whereas I envision Cloak of Mist is for hordes and Cloak of Pain is for single-target damage, the rework Shadowstep can be primarily focused on ranged damage. No guarantee critical hits because that would be just broken on some of her range weapons.

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One of the only reasons vanish is useful is its ability to chain with itself. Internal cooldowns are not only unintuitive but also severely hamper your ability to stay cloaked when behind enemies. As soon as the cloak drops once you’re done because enemies immediately 180.

Adding that cooldown essentially limits the number of enemies you can kill while cloaked to 1 every three seconds which is horrendously slow. It also basically forces you to count while fighting which sounds just awful, especially with only a 1 second margin of error.

If your goal is to limit the number of auto crit backstabs after cloak of mists, why not just give the player 5 or 6 stacks of auto crit and let them use it at their own pace?

Also, I find exquisite huntress to be quite strong with certain weapons. I feel like it’s in a good spot.

The cooldown of cloak of mists is its whole identity. I would still pick it without the auto crits and it’s one of the most fun ways to play shade. Would be a shame to see that go.

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Although giving stacks of auto crit for cloak of mist sounds like a good idea, the issue of shade staying constantly invisible is still an issue. It offers too much reward and very little risk. At most I’m willing to consider having Vanish given the added benefit of staying invisible during the entire duration of shade’s infiltrate, but that would also require removing its cooldown reduction.

For exquisite huntress, I do not see it as competitive as cruelty. This is due to how the impact of cruelty is more consistent and immediate compared to exquisite huntress. Although you can argue exquisite huntress offer certain breakpoints at higher stack, there’s hardly a difference compared when I am autocriting every enemy with cruelty. Regardless of exquisite huntress being strong on certain weapons, cruelty is strong on all weapons.

As a shade player, I enjoy the cooldown reduction with cloak of mist because it makes me feel powerful. However, it also makes me feel like I am sucking the fun out from other players due to how strong it is. I wish for the cooldown to be long enough where it warrants some thought into my action.

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My dude. Staying invisible for half the map is one of the biggest complaints about Mist Shade. It doesn’t add gameplay, it’s cheesy and bypasses the intended gameplay. An assassin class in the traditional sense is simply incompatible with V2 at its core. It will almost inevitably end up either very undertuned or kind of busted. Cloak of Mist would be much easier to balance if it was mostly about trading the burst DPS of CoP with sustained DPS of CoM. The current invisibility gimmick with Vanish just muddies the waters.

Gonna tag @Velsix for this one since I’ve seen him speak very highly of this talent in the past. I think you’re underestimating it significantly but I won’t speak beyond my own knowledge here.

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I think the stealth part can be exchanged for more powerful dodging, with enemy tracking being disabled for longer and a neat mists effect. I doubt we’ll see a big rework for Shade at this point, but I’d love to see Shadowstep have ranged crits and Bloodfletcher’s return changed to 5% ammo to create a melee/ranged hybrid build path.

It’s technically slightly higher dps in most cases, notably more with Dual Daggers at a high headshot %, as well as hitting good breakpoints and making Cloak of Mists Shade’s sustained monster dps excellent. It pairs well with Dual Swords, to the point that Dual Swords will do significant damage to a Mauler on a heavy attack non-crit headshot, and because Dual Swords get lots of headshots with the horizontal heavy. Note that for some of Kerillian’s weapons, Huntress at a high enough number of stacks will make a weapon deal more damage even when it crits than Cruelty.

I’m a bit biased because I love headshot-focused melee gameplay, and it also comes up more in modded, where the Longbow breakpoints it gives are great.

Cruelty is also pretty boring which I don’t think anyone will disagree with, same as talents like Flense.

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Thanks for the input. I won’t deny that after reaching a certain number of stacks, a shade can hit good breakpoints depending on the weapons. However, in your opinion, would you prefer an increased 50% headshot damage similar to WHC’s death knell or how exquisite huntress currently is? For me, I would prefer the former for consistency over a few breakpoints and slightly higher dps at higher stacks, but tell me what you think.

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50% on its own, without a passive to stack with (e.g. WHC has an unlisted +25% headshot damage bonus passive to stack with Deathknell) wouldn’t do enough I think, even if it was passive like Deathknell. I’d probably have to play Shade with a Deathknell talent to have an informed opinion on it (which I don’t know of any way of doing).

Unfortunately I main WHC 99% of the time so I’m not the best person to ask. I favour WHC’s entire kit and Saltz’ weapons over what Shade has.

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I think buffing this build is a crazy idea tbh. It’s extremely strong. This Talent for DW is the best on that row imo. The sustained damage just becomes crazy during Hordes/High Elite situations, whereas Crit Power can be good on Bosses and Elites.

If you get left with the Boss with Huntress you can do some absolutely ridiculous damage.

The stack of 10 is supposed to be the downside of this Talent, but on Cata/+, it’s not that difficult to maintain, due to AS and the amount of enemies. Below Cata, I can’t see how you’d even get it to 5 without it falling off.

My suggestion would be to lower the over all damage potential (@ 10 stacks), and lower the amount of stacks needed.

@ OP:
My problem with Shade is that other than with the Spear AS build, she’s mostly useful with DW builds and is still limited for choice with those.

With 2H and 1H builds she just feels awkward.

Exploit Weakness doesn’t have enough synergy with anything, and would only work with DW builds, which already have better options.

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