they never posed a threat to begin with… they just lack engaging counters, wailing on an HP pinata will never ever be fun. an enemy can both be hard get through AND be engaging, one weakness gets them blown up too quick? well make it a sequence of weaknesses you have to sting to kill em..
for example, shooting them in the legs, too easy? well make it so that they fall on their knees and expose their head. making it a double weakspot.
but instead we got big HP, yea very fun
I genuinely barely notice them. I click head and they die. Sometimes I hit their shield and I go oh a shield guy, then I click a few more times and they die
I’m gonna be real, on every class I deal with shield enemies just fine. I take all of the complaints I see regarding this enemy with a many grains of salt because:
I play Thunder Hammer Zealot and find no issues with killing shield enemies consistently. The Shield Enemy is perfect where it is and needs no changes. Fatshark needs to give an actual good tutorial on melee combat in this game so players stop whining about not killing every enemy in a single hit.
Tldr: The enemy is not the problem, the players are.
They nerfed them pretty fast. Are you talking about pre-nerf shield guys, or post nerf?
I don’t think so. I’ve also used the Thunder Hammer Zealot, and its interaction with shield enemies is terrible. Even landing heavy attacks on the shield frequently results in deflection, preventing you from hitting multiple enemies at once. You have to charge the weapon to break the shield, and you can only deal with one enemy at a time. Only weapons like the Power Sword can cut through shields without any interruption.
The problem is that some weapons, like the Thunder Hammer, frequently experience deflection even when landing heavy attacks on shields. This prevents you from hitting multiple enemies at once. You have to charge the weapon just to break the shield, and you can only deal with one enemy at a time. Only weapons like the Power Sword can cut through shields without any interruption.
I think its ok for them to stop your cleave. I play heavysword zealot a lot. When I see clink on the shield Im given an opportunity to mix in some single target combos
The one thing that has made me dislike Vanguards a bit recently is that they eat Krak grenades, so if a Crusher is standing behind or to the side of a group of Vanguards, the Krak grenades will magnetize to one of the Vanguard’s shields.
Why and when would I ever use a Krak to take out Vanguards?
Fatshark’s typical logic 
yeah they lowered the cleave on the strikedown lights you could just spam at horde and significantly lowered the boosted damage of the rev attack they gave it in patch 13. to me they were just making room for Mk13 chainsword that came around the same time, which still didn’t even get the level of rev damage this buffed Mk4 had. it was truly one of the periods of darktide of all time, I would regularly join all vet stacks and we’d just be chainswording and grenading everything down. You know, like guardsmen?
i like them , a much better fit for the role they do than carapace was.
i might add a slowing aura on them, something to make them more of a priority without doing actual damage.
I pop them dead in like 3 lights so I dunno what your on about. I have headtaker and slaugterer on it if that helps.
but can you recognize whats healthy for the game and whats not? have you developed an opinion on how this games powerscaling should go? have you tried thinking ahead to any outcomes of the vanguards getting any further nerfs? Can you recognize whats good to counteract powercreep and whats bad for it?
My take is that yeah, the game could rely less on spam and power-creep cycle, and would probably be much better off if that happened and inducing a more deliberate gameplay more akin to VT2’s pacing. However, that’s also not where we’re at currently, and one mismatched enemy isn’t going to solve that issue, since it’s more structural. Therefore, the bloated HP pool and resistance stands out like a sore thumb and doesn’t gel well with the state of the game as it stands.
If slowdown is desired, maybe nerf all player damage across the board and reduce the bloated spawn rates. If that was done, a nerfed vanguard would also make sense in a new scenario. Either way, they should rely more on blocking with the shield and allowing for finessing them by getting onto their juicy bits.
