Sienna's Beam Staff is a Concern

It’s been talked about a lot and a lot of other people have made threads expressing how this staff is too powerful. I’m not going to talk technical, but merely from a sidekick’s standpoint. I’ve never felt this specific disdain about a weapon since Vermintide 1’s Bolt Staff in its broken OP days. For those who weren’t around during that time, the staff in Vermintide 1 was an ‘aimbot’. It’d track enemies around corners much like our current Trueshot Volley and Flaming Skull. People would, 100% of the time, throw bolts over buildings and around walls and kill specials long before they ever became a threat. It killed multiple enemies in a single throw and it generally trivialized the game on all levels before balances kicked in. If that sounds familiar, we absolutely have people playing Pyromancer and doing that 100% of the time here too!

The second I’ve started every match with a Sienna Beam Staff player in recent days I have wanted to quit immediately and after the sixth time in a row today my night’s been ruined. It ruins the fun of the game and my interest in the round right off the bat. They run ahead immediately and start clicking everything on screen long before we can raise our slings and arrows. Every time I get into a melee engagement I can’t even enjoy the basic gameplay since everything gets shotgun OHKO’d. No other weapon can pick off every single enemy like it’s nothing with no cooldown time and, due to class quirks, absolutely no worries. Hopefully Fatshark’s looking into toning this down. Balance notwithstanding, this feedback is just how I feel getting matched with it. It creates a lousy situation on higher difficulties and one at the core level of the experience.

Which is to say, it’s not fun playing next to someone who is fielding it. I’m feeling roughly the same way about the Drakegun during hordes. Fighting hordes and weaving in and out of them in Vermintide 1 was the best thing ever. I can’t really blame Drakegun for this because there’s a lot more unavoidable damage and now we have to deal with shields, not to mention the Phantom Swing issue plaguing melee. The Drakegun is also totally specialized for this occasion, while the Beam Staff does whatever it wants. I know these weapons are what Legend is balanced around specifically but…

Vermintide 2 seems to demand specific roles from everything now whereas in V1 everything was viable for a lot of reasons no matter how the team was set up, but this is just how I feel. Again, yeah, Beam functions in V1 like it does in V2, but here it’s another staff that encourages her to never use melee.

And if there is one technical thing I would say, it’s that any ranged weapon that lets someone coast through a round with 0 melee kills should be looked at twice then thrice.

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Its a jack of all trades. Kills anything at range, stunlocks specials, clears hordes alone and Pyromancers active is super strong aswell… low cooldown, high damage, auto aim, staggers bosses…

There is a difference between calling something OP and crying for nerfes and giving feedback that something is simply too good compared to everything else. In this situation the beam staff is simply too good and really needs adjusting.

Also lets not forget general balancing has not really been looked into by fatshark as they look into fixing more but I HOPE they don’t wait months to fix this mess.

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Yeah I’m trying to avoid whinging “overpowered”, things will change in the future, but the way I’m seeing it used I just can’t get behind. Especially not when I’m trying to decompress after a day.

I mean they could actually start by removing the absurdness that is venting temporary hit-points and see where this leads to.
Obviously beam is going to need some adjusting even after this but from my personal play this is one of the things that really contributes to the power this staff is currently having.

Honestly if you do not get into a shitty position you never vent nowadays anyways. Ult is on such a low cooldown (Especially with Resourcefull Combatant sometimes only 5 seconds) that venting is a thing of the past (With “Clears all overcharge”- Trait).

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Obviously the case but it would still slightly limit the spamming power this staff is having (personally not giving it a thought currently since i can just clear heat with ability or just vent some free hp) and one of the better ways to nerf the staff instead of removing its power is to touch how much heat it generates. Which in turn is kinda useless nerf if you can just start venting temporary hit-points.

Might not be enough but i’d personally would love to see its heat generation being touched first before going onto the numbers side.

Sienna with the Beam Staff and a pyromancer build is so optimally overpowerful compared to any other Sienna setup that you literally cripple your team if you play any other type of Sienna.

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Sure in that case you can just go ahead and run the trait that makes crits remove overheating and you never have to use your active or vent ever again.

As it stands there are currently too strong alternatives to venting so you can permanently use stuff you are not supposed to use 24/7.

Hmh good point and something i forgot to account for.

i know a solution…lets just nerf every ranged weapon to the point where melee is the only viable option in the game and then complain when a special kills you from range

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@electrodynamo
cmon its not a secret that beam is op^^ A little adjustment would only be fair, even though im scared beam will never be played again. Sienna was in v1 and is here in v2 probably the one character that is played in a meta-wise the most. Has anyone seen the first career of wizard in a game? ever? FS has to test it for a long time, then whatever is the “strongest” staff will be played by the majority of players.
On lower difficulties fireballstaff absolutely destroys entire maps even stronger than beam, but champion+ it is so bad… you cant play it. That is an issue for me, if every staff would be viable at legend we would have more diversity.

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Beam staff is powerful and versatile but Sienna herself is very squishy and DOES take a lot of skill to play compared to say Kruber just spamming light attack with Halberd.

I like that in Vermintide 2 Fatshark is trying to create different roles for heroes to play. You say "Vermintide 2 seems to demand specific roles from everything now whereas in V1 everything was viable for a lot of reasons no matter how the team was set up, but this is just how I feel. " like this is some sort of bad thing.

It is fine for Sienna to be a glass cannon, and it seems a bit like you’re just mad she gets more kills than you or something, like you think each class should get roughly the same score “like in v1”. I think it is nice that Team Comp matters in V2.

If you’re playing a tankier class that doesn’t die in a few hits you shouldn’t expect to get as many kills as a glass cannon. You should focus on protecting your DPS from stray vermin sneaking up from behind, or stuff like a Chaos Warrior they can’t down quickly, protect them while they’re venting, keep them healed up, tank taunt and stun bosses for them and so on. On Legend you can have real problems if your comp is too tanky or too squishy. You’ll either have trouble downing bosses or a mistake or bad positioning will result in very fast wipes and very difficult to revive.

I know what you’re feeling though, like Sienna is stealing the show, but you just have to change your priorities to supporting or tanking the dps instead of trying to outperform them.

If you haven’t actually leveled up Sienna yourself, I’d encourage you to give her a shot to see how challenging it is to really play her at peak performance and to avoid damage. If you really are able to finish a champion/legend map with 0 melee kills, then that is because you had some great teammates tanking for you giving you that opportunity to do what you’re best at using the staff.

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The issue at hand is that sienna even outdoes victors and kerillians by alot, making them feel useless and bored. I know i am when there is a horde coming and you cannot shoot properly because the sienna is in front of you strafing around, and you cannot go into melee range because she will burn you to death. So you are left with watching the back, kill off stragglers and maybe a wave of the horde if you are lucky.

And another thing that is a bitter side effect of the combination being extremely strong, people start being careless, rushing ahead alone, and as soon as there is a horde that is not coming from one direction in a straight line, they usually go down because they refuse to use melee or dont know how to properly because the beam staff has literally carried them past the need of melee in most cases. They also blindly spam their active, which has led to quite alot of annoying teamkills, accidentally by the projectile being stupid and bounce into you, or sometimes they just throw it through you to kill that one stormvermin, thinking they are doing you a favor. Most siennas I see with beam staff also think of themselves as 1337 h4xx0r levels of good, carrying your sorry ass just because they are so nice.

Following scenario: We were in the sewers of convocation of decay. Our dwarf was fighting two SV inside the sewer corridor, and i was jumping down from the elevation to help him. The sienna also “helped” by tossing a flaming head down, which ended up hitting me and killing me. I said “ffs wizard”, to which he responded “yeah i totally aimed that for your ugly face”.

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I think the main problem with beam staff is its versatility. It has no weakspot and THREE different attack options. Compare it to, say, the flamethrower, that has practically one (the primary spurt i do not count since it has one use: farting away gutter runners and packmasters), every other staff has two. I actually do not think that the beam staff needs too much tweaking to be on par with all the other staffs and everything else: give the explosion more overcharge (or maybe a seperate cooldown), give the primary more overcharge and remove the zoom (give that to bolt where it effin belongs ^^).
Problem is not beamstaff itself but how it combines with pyromancer and her abilities. Her special fills the small gap the beamstaff does not cover too well (armoured targets and bosses. not saying beamstaff cannot do that, but it is definitely none of its strengths).

It is also just a problem that all of Sienna’s other staff options simply are not up to par on Legend. The bolt staff can hold itself okay-ish (it deals too little damage on RMB even fully charged for the overcharge it generates and has a sniper-ish feel to it, but no zoom), but everything else suffers from the same problem: not enough dps. Conf staff primary is okay, secondary takes too long to fully charge up and does not kill clanrats / cultists in one hit (which it should imho), fireball staff does not deal enough damage and flamerstaff is just a worse version of drakefire cannon and has no place in the hands of ANY Sienna that wants to contribute (it absolutely needs a second attack option).

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Agreed. The main issue with fireball and conflag staves are that the burning DoT on everything that inflicts it is absolutely pitiful. In vt1, the conflag would kill enemies with the burn, not the initial explosion.

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Define a lot. I see the same 10-15 (out of XX thousands) players migrating from one thread to another thread with some nefarious agenda in mind.

That’s actually NOT the class problem. The problem is players. So maybe stop playing with kills hungry idiots? Just a suggestion.

Hopefulyl they are not.

GOOD. If I wanted to play a spellsword I would play as Unchained. (battle wizard is broken).

Right…let’s ruin a working class and turn it into another broken one. Maybe they should fix\buff the other classes that are utterly underwhelming and useless huh ?

then your kerillians are doing something wrong.

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Because we have a choice on who we get to play with on quick play, totally forgot about that.

Thats a whole different issue. Bounty hunter and waystalker are regarded as very good careers, and they still get outperformed in every regard by a pyro beam staff sienna. Against hordes, against specials, against bosses.

I dont consider trying to avoid friendly fire, both giving and receiving as “doing something wrong”. And what about victor?

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’ its the players not the weapon’
Right on cue.
With that thing EVERY Sienna become kill-hungry and she destroys the game for others. The only reason I am not complaining is because I do Legend or play er myself as unchained. But I can tell you that 90% of players run her like OP described.
No way around it boyo. The weapon is overpowered and needs a nerf.

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I’m sorry, but if you are not getting a comparable (if not higher) damage playing kirillian then you are clearly doing something wrong. The elf is still really powerful

Bollocks.

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There is a whole thread about these ‘bullocks’, boyo and all you can give us is comparing an OP weapon to an OP character.
Good job, boyo. Keep it up.