Slayer Rework Suggestion

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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That was the case of Slayers DR talent. You needed one of them making Oblivious a no brainer unless you wanted to get smeared across the pavement. This was before the changes to dodging which itself was a bandaid fix to deal with ice skating enemies.

We wanted it as a passive before but the passive they got was just taking unstoppable out of leap, making it worse, and slapping it on our forehead and saying goodluck. Now we’ve lost a useful oblivious and we STILL have talents even in this… less than ideal example of a talent tree that are still no brainers. Like Adrenaline.

But see. Adrenaline is strong. Really strong. It gives us an endless amount of attack speed.
But Zealot gets Castigate and it’s up 100% of the time
Well… Shut up. Voice I made up for this argument. It’s weaker in both forms of it’s interaction and doesn’t give movement speed.
And if we stop comparing raw numbers it gives access to leap. While the new leap is less fun to use, hangs on so much as a pebble in the pathway, and in general is all around worse to use unless you’re jumping off of an already elevated position, it STILL leaps through an endless amount of enemies.
This can’t be slept on.

And you know what. Let’s make a comprehensive talent break down. Why not. This post isn’t nearly long enough already…
It should be noted that I won’t be covering the talents in order. But going instead from the least egregious to the most egregious in my eyes

  • Arenaline

I believe Adrenaline should be kept as a Talent. It’s powerful and have multiple uses because it gives you your career skill faster, which has multiple uses. The problem isn’t Adrenaline being strong, it’s that the other two options are weak. They’ve never STOPPED being weak. And it’s even worse now.

  • High Tally?
    You could have 10% more damage or you could take distance, movement speed, and attack speed.

  • Impatience?
    You could take 30% movement speed or you could take distance, 25% movement speed, and attack speed.

Hmm…? So how would you fix it?

  • Moving Target would be the only passive that could even pretend to compete with our new paper machete Slayer and it doesn’t exist.
  • They could also have combined Mainstay with Smiter, Mainstay with the removed Unstoppable and gave it another stack. And these would ALSO be viable. They could have made mainstay give another stack and increase attack speed and this would ALSO be viable.

Hell let’s go one step forward. They could have taken Smiter and combined it with moving Target or taken Smiter and have given it attack speed as well. Give it an extra stack too so it actually can compete with Adrenaline Surge.

You see how easy this is?

And then given that you have movement speed AND attack speed you could do actual interesting things with your final talent. We will be talking at Length about that later.

Let’s talk about these guys:

  • A Thousand Cuts
    Easy to talk about. An alright ability that is enslaved by forcing Bardin to play a certain way. No adaptability and no flexibility. A counter choice to fun and engaging talents. Useless on plague monks who are attacking as well. The only time the extra stagger from power would actually be impactful

  • Skull-Splitter
    Equally easy to talk about. Provides power but limits your build. Forces you to play a certain way. Plus the power, while nice for cleaving, doesn’t assuage problems with trying to kill armor in a wave with the 2H axe. On top of now give you less AS by proxy of getting less Swiftslaying procs.

  • Hack and Slash
    Boring. And now the only choice in this tier if you use weapons of two different types. Throwing axes don’t interact with either so it goes here. (Throwing axes are also hard as hell to use so I can’t formulate an opinion on their worth to a Slayer at this time) Something like 5% crit should be a passive. What a rather unfortunate talent and, in my honest opinion, an actual waste of a slot.

Hmmmmmm…? So how would yo-
It’s actually easy to address this one. If FS wants to operate now on the philosophy of only playing a specific type of way. They could take both A Thousand Cuts and also Skull-Splitter and change how they work. Now instead of requiring both weapons be the same they apply their FULL effect to the weapon in question while providing 50% of that otherwise. If that’s not enough then we could rework them too.

  • A Thousand Cuts could give AS under certain circumstances like time without being hit or after a charge attack. Enabling Slayers to mix up their playstyles and engaging them. Else it provides a weaker version of it’s buff and have a different enabling condition as well
  • Skull-Splitter could just provide a static boost to power with an additional stipulation to cleave cleave more under the same conditionals as above. Cleave and stagger being incredibly important, it could give extra cleave on cleave or extra stagger on stagger. Both of these would help more weapons feel useful.
  • Hack and Slash could be either set as a passive or removed and merged with the removed Crippling Wounds

So while I’m on a rowl (haha get it? What? Not funny?) we can also talk about

I’ve mentioned this before. Let’s talk about it again

  • Oblivious to Pain
    Only useful against elites (which shouldn’t hit you ever) or monsters (which still friggin hurt when they hit you given you only have 100 base hp). The only elite that can touch us are plague monks. And they’ll still shred through all of that 50% like a knife through butter. Rendering it rather pointless.
    Pointless and useless. You specialize your DR against Elites and Monsters.

  • Grimnir’s Focus
    My thoughts about this ability are known. I’ll say it again. This skill is unreliable. Things you can’t rely on it all situations are as effectively useless. The only weapon that gets to engage with it being up all the time is the 2H weapon. As it’s heavy attacks cleaves and that helps assuage damage from alternate sources. Yes it’s even unreliable for hammers with maxed out AS and swift slaying. It simply can’t be relied on. Period. By the way. Completely doesn’t work with throwing axes.

https://streamable.com/rwj0m
Secondly. It’s very important to remind you that if they then buff this ability such that it then BECOMES consistent. It becomes mandatory in all builds, invalidate currently Oblivious, remove all choice and become broken in a way old Oblivious could never dream of.
Inconsistent and untrustworthy. Taking advantage of Drengi Grit to deploy this ability means you WILL die at some point from damage you intentionally soaked for no reason other than the ability wasn’t up.

  • Barge
    Barge is a newcomer that I actually like. So it’s with a heavy heart that I have to destroy Barge. Barge gives you protection against surrounds. That’s pretty nice. It then trades this off by being useless against bosses. Useless against (most) elites. Useless against specials.
    Interesting and new Barge falls off against not hordes and has no impact on bosses and almost all specials

Hmm…? And you’d fix this how?

  • If our health is to remain at 100, old Oblivious to Pain would be fine. Maybe reduced to 30% since that appears to be the magic number these days.
  • On that same note you could take Barge and add a secondary effect. Such as the ability to have heavy push against elites or the ability for it to effect specials so you can scoot in the direction of a pouncing rat and yeet him out of the way.
  • Grimnir’s Focus could be replaced with the old form of moving target. In that way it could have synergy with my improved suggestions for High Tally and my Improved Impatience.

And now it’s time to move on to what I believe is the worst trees in this tier

Time to finally talk about:
Why is this worse in my eyes? Well just read more and find out

  • Bounding Leap
    This ability. Is honestly unfathomably bad. You put yourself either in harms way or away from your group at max distance. If you have Adrenaline Surge you can leap back there. Else you now have to walk back there. Through what will undoubtedly be a dense hyper stacked horde. And now with NOTHING else to show for it. On the assumption that you don’t run AS, that means you have 40 seconds between leaps. It’s like how Sienna now has Whoosh! But no Sienna ever will take it because Burnout exists and is flat out better.
    Bouding Leap just sucks.
    And if FS’s or anybody elses logic was that it helps you kill specials? I did this match just now solely for the sake of making a point. I’ll pass:


psst we wiped in the finale though :joy:

  • Dawi-Drop
    To you, the reader, you who are curious about Slayer, and you Fatshark especially. Do me an experiment. Go fight a boss. Use this ability. And tell me how much damage you do. Well how about chaos warriors.
    For the people who already have actually tried this ability, it sucks as well. Logically you could use your leap to jump towards a horde and cleave them. In reality your cleave doesn’t go up so your damage doesn’t go that far up comparatively. It’s a gimmick trait, useful only for the pickaxe and nothing else. ALSO requires that you run Adrenaline Surge to get any mileage out of it more than once a fight, and also has low payoff. And this is ignoring how hard it is to actually use and the fact that it can’t be used at all dependent on the terrain.
    • The first 15 hours I spent in 2.0 was going systematically through every single weapon trying as hard as hell as I can to get any worth out of this. I can’t. You can do some funny bonk chaos warrior build with breakpoints in return for gimping your damage all around elsewhere and losing a hell of a lot of crit and AS to do so.

Make no mistake. This ability simply can’t stand on its own legs.
And a talent that is only useful for a single weapon is worthless.

  • No Escape
    This ability is mandatory. Everybody takes it because it provides a hell of a lot more than movement speed. It gives damage, survivability, AND support. You get the ability to get to specials or allies, evade being surrounded in stacks or more accurately maneuver that a surround can’t happen in your chokepoint, and you gain the ability to land more hits while being comparatively safer on bosses. This ability has the problem that Adrenaline Surge has. Everything else in it’s tier is a non option.

Hmm… but how?*
Easy.

  • Give back Crunch or combine it with either Bounding Leap or Dawi-Drop.
  • Remove either Bounding Leap or Dawi-Drop and give an ability that provides DR if no DR is provided elsewhere in our talent tree.
  • Combine Bounding Leap AND Dawi Drop as it’s own new ability.
  • Let Dawi-Drop give it’s 150% but in addition allow Trophy Hunter to continue stacking for 3 more stacks on top of High Tally, if you have it.

These create powerful talent choices for your final tier that then are split based on persona preference as opposed to just being forced into the only good option

And finally. The absolute worst tier of our talents is… The first one?
(Skip to the next page break for more insight about the job as a whole)

  • Doomseeker
    This ability is strictly inferior to Fury. A horde mobbing ability that doesn’t worth with all of our weapons. It’s betrayed and enslaved by its lack of overall career synergy. You have 1H hammer, 2x Hammer, 2H hammer, pick, and the third attack of the 2H axe. Anything else stops meaty well before 5 unless you’re carving through rats like a knife through warm butter.
    With an inability to effect a lot of attacks from a lot of weapons and the return being low, this ability simply can’t compete with Slayer’s Fury.
    It also have reverse synergy. The more damage and the faster you kill, the less temp hp you get and the faster it burns between fights

  • Slayer’s Fury
    This ability is the no brainer. With the addition of beast hordes it’s damn near mandatory. The only way you’re not crumpling after one of those is taking advantage of the higher than normal temp health that these things give you. It gives you accident forgiveness (thank… god…) from the existence of elites. The only downside is that if you’re in a boss fight and that boss last hit goes to anybody but you, you’re probably going to be in a very sore spot.

  • Infectious Fortitude
    First of all insert J. Jonah Jameson here

  • Second of all
    No career skill that can be used for mitigation. No in built resistances. Two bad DR talents + the little Barge that could. And you give up the only reliable multipurpose mitigation you have “temp health” to help allies, almost all of whom are tanky or more survivable than YOU are? Absolutely not.
    The best Slayers in the world could maybe make it through a Cata map without taking any kind of damage and leaving their life to luck with their small health pool of no mitigation and no protection for the generation that Natural Bond gives to heal their allies with this talent. But I suspect that those Slayers are all playing Zealot now and still don’t use this talent. Great on RV and IB. Terrible on Slayer.

How wou~
No. This tier has problems being universal in its traits as opposed to personalized even with the ones with similar effects. But if I really wanted to fix it

  • I would first make Doomseeker provide far more gray health if during your cleave you stop meaty. This would make it something you didn’t mind doing as you swing into a horde to eliminate some armor. Or are fighting a beast horde
  • Slayer’s Fury much like it’s other kill on hp talents are betrayed by the fact that it’s the strongest of it’s tier.

I almost didn’t want to talk about it. But when thinking about tiers that are just awful? Look no further than Slayer’s Fury.

And that’s that. These are my thoughts and fixes of Slayer Talents. Worthy of its own post but I’ll slap it here. A lot of time and effort was necessary to articulate my feelings (and drown out the idgaf until it was at a manageable level to do the one game I needed to prove a point)

There’s another post I need to make about Slayer weapons. But I don’t think I’m going to bother.

Facts

Because Buddy? That’s a hell of a lot of effort for a post that will ultimately be ignored as Feedback

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Foot Knight doing it is fine though? Bounty Hunter and Waystalker repeatedly deleting bosses with their tier 6 talents that refund cooldown with headshots is fine? Shade is fine? I don’t see how this is really out of line with other talents on other careers. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that a melee-DPS class gets an option to stagger bosses with his ult, in exchange for missing out on two other potential talents with more general utility when bosses aren’t in play.

If you’ve got a better idea, say it.

Besides, you’re focusing on the fine details of numbers, which completely misses the point of a suggestion post. If they integrated Adrenaline Surge as an innate perk to Slayer, the cooldown of Leap would likely need to be adjusted to account for this sudden buff. You’re dismissing an idea based on your estimations of numbers. I’d want to playtest an idea to see if it has merit and could have the numbers tweaked, but you’re dismissing an idea and offering nothing in return other than critiquing numbers without even playtesting it. That’s insane. Absolutely.

… I agree? Not sure if you were quoting me to respond in disagreement or what. But yeah, it’s silly.

I’d say that’s a feature, not a bug, in that case. It’s actually fairly balanced because it gives insane damage resistance (and stacks with Barkskin to provide 90% damage resistance), in exchange for the added risk:

  • Slight cooldown because it doesn’t automatically refresh in attacks. So you have a brief period of vulnerability

  • Forces you to not play defensively, since you don’t gain benefits when on the defense when your guard is broken

  • Doesn’t benefit you when grabbed by specials

  • Doesn’t benefit you when using throwing axes

I’d say it’s actually not a terribly designed talent, but it’s frustrating because it’s not consistent in its utility and the other ones are consistently not good.

Already did chief. I mean, not removing crits but actually balancing them so they’re not 100% picked by everyone except people who don’t want to bother rerolling.

Crits are satisfying as a mechanic, yes, but it’s pathetic when every class just builds crit and nothing else, with very few exceptions. That post is outdated so we’ve moved on from Swift Slaying + Crit Chance + Attack Speed since release to now go to Swift Slaying + Crit Chance + Crit Power, which is even worse because now it just 100% revolves around crits.

I think the idea of crit builds as an option is good, but things that just raise crit chance to focus around pooping out crits to proc Swift Slaying and Scrounger just seem lame when they’re ubiquitous to every class. I can’t name a single class that I don’t run Swift Slaying on or that I don’t stack Crit Chance wherever possible.

It’s ridiculous. The fervor with which people are defending it really shows, to me, how OP it is. I get that crits and swift slaying is fun, but it seems like most people build crit because it’s the best option bar none.

I use Barge. I’m mostly okay with Barge because it does it’s job. But Barge is weighed again being useless against specials, elites, and monsters.

You seem to agree with me further down in your post that it’s silly that Handmaiden gets a Barge-equivalent on top of having increased stamina regeneration and higher dodge distance. Barge itself is fine, but it’s silly for that reason mainly. It complements his movement speed talents well, but its held back by his base dodge distance compared to Handmaiden who also has it.

Yeah, I pretty much agree. It’s a talent that only solely complements Grimnir’s Focus, which just makes that skill the even more obvious choice as far as damage reduction goes. I think it could just be moved to that talent as part of Grimnir’s Focus, with something else taking its place as a perk. More base crit chance, more dodge (since he’s literally naked, why is he so fat with his dodges), or something that complements his tool kit.

You’re pretty much spot-on with your hatred of the perk, imo.

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That DR is multiplicative isn’t it? I’m pretty sure it’s not additive. But what do I know. (as in i’m serious)

you could just go back to my post here boss
I care little about Swift Slaying. But I care a hell of a lot about how crits feel with the great axe. People fought me tooth and nail against Greataxe being a weapon that Slayer can use and feel satisfied using. I like having a crit happen with greataxe and watching an enemy get lopped in half. And I will fight you tooth and nail just like they did to ensure that remains.

Wanna know why people default to Swift Slaying? More damage. What other traits give more damage. Career Skill CDR but that was nerfed into the pavement. If there were other damaging abilities, people would take them or, at the very least, consider them. There aren’t. So they don’t. For my part I have 3 axes. Block Cost, Push radius, Swift Slaying, and Opportunist.
Edit: Apparently I have off balance. News to me! I guess that amounts to how often I use that thing

On the topic of Crit Power. It’s taken on two careers now because it’s additive with the headshot multiplayer. The amount of damage from a headshot crit is outrageous. I have no actual clue what FS was thinking with that change because it made two good careers outright obscene. Slayer only has one weapon that plays really nice with headshot and so only has one weapon that can use that horsecrap.

Here’s another. This one was about warpick back when it was absolutely worthless. Point. Crit is satisfying. You get rid of SS and CDR. I’ll still take crit. And I need that waste of a talent slot to make that reality a thing.

This isn’t a good trade off.
It either works or it doesn’t. If it does it’s worth taking. If it doesn’t it’s not worth taking. I’d happily say it’s terribly designed given I’d trade that for less DR in RV’s headshot talent.

Lastly

What do I win

Frankly I hate the concept of boss staggers being anywhere close to this career. Leap itself is fine. Leap is an amazingly powerful tool. It’s a dash, a steroid, a defensive and offensive tool, and is used for hordes, specials, bosses, and elites. Adding heavy boss stagger on top of that is overkill. Old Crunch was fine, and my suggestions to combine it with other tools or attach it to a steroid are preferable in my own opinion.

Everything else is just us agreeing that crap sucks but in different ways.
naturally we’re not going to see eye to eye.
So with that out of the way. Let’s get back to creating constructive coherent feedback for FS

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That DR is multiplicative isn’t it? I’m pretty sure it’s not additive. But what do I know. (as in i’m serious)

P sure it’s additive, at least the last I checked. Might be multiplicative, which would be 80% instead of 90%. I feel like it’s 90, since they say +XX%

And I will fight you tooth and nail just like they did to ensure that remains.

I won’t. I’m here for a discussion not an argument tbh, it’s getting too heated.

Wanna know why people default to Swift Slaying? More damage. What other traits give more damage.

… yeah I know, that’s why I’m saying it’s OP AF and why it’s boring that everyone builds crit. We are talking in circles. That’s why I tried giving alternate suggestions to just blindly building crit.

Yeah I’m on my phone so I’m gonna skip over replying individually to the points and just chalk it up to a difference of opinion. Both of our suggestions are at least better than what we have now, in my opinion. I can’t say whose is better because I would want to playtest ideas instead of just dismissing them straight away.

…also I mean… half of your ideas are just ideas already in the OP lol. So yeah, I think those are good ideas, thanks. The other half? Sure, they sound fine to try too. Any ideas would be good to give Fatshark. They need em.

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Oops. The intent was missed here. I was going for old timey war reenactment levels of theatrics.

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Haha, s’all good. Hard to read tone in text, someone had the same problem with me earlier.

I think we’re really on the same side, we just have different ideas.

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Iirc, Barkskin’s DR is calculated after all the other modifiers, so that it’ll never give you a 100% DR. In the Slayer’s case this results in ~70% DR when both effects are active. Well, that was the case earlier, at least, it could’ve changed at some point.

I disagree with the notion that Dawi-Drop is only useful for Pick. A 150% extra damage is huge for any weapon, even for one strike, and other weapons the Slayer has access to already have good single-target attacks also. However, this point is rather moot, as Dawi-Drop’s timing is incredibly finicky. You’ll have to strike just before you land to make any real use of it. You could try striking earlier, but you’ll be either so high that you can only hit Bosses, and you’ll open yourself to attacks pretty strongly in that case anyway. Incidentally, I think this tightness of timing is because of the new form of the Leap with its sudden acceleration at the end. It starts pretty much around the time you need to hit with the strike to benefit from Dawi-Drop, and thus a) is very distracting to your timing, and b) makes the window for the timing incredibly small.

Grimnir’s focus is largely unreliable only because of how exactly it works, at least judging by the buff icon: It doesn’t give you DR while you charge an attack or swing your weapon, like the description seems to imply, but rather starting an attack gives you ~1 second of DR. This is out of rhythm on basically any weapon, and there will be significant unpredictable gaps in its effect. If it worked exactly how it was advertised, it would at least be predictable, and you could time things (and it could actually combo with Drengi Grit). Having the ability to refresh it while it was on would make it way too strong, on the level of the old Oblivious. Mind you, I think it’s the best Talent on that row by a margin, though I haven’t really gotten to test Barge yet.

Level 10 Talents are indeed badly designed, even if every one is effective enough. But Skull-splitter is the loser there, I think - by limiting oneself to two two-handed weapons, you’re limiting your versatility quite seriously - especially for mobility, but also otherwise as all the two-handers occupy very similar niches. Generally, I think the point of two weapon options (be it two melee or melee and ranged) is to make them complement each other; that ability is pretty much removed there. Also, it’s one thing to make Talents that are pretty clearly tailored to one weapon (especially if they’re still usable with others, if not optimal), effectively limiting your options in that slot; it’s another one to limit both your options - or your Talent choice, if you want to go with a particular loadout.

The THP Talents are another beast entirely, and not about Slayer, really. They’re still out of balance, with Slayer simply having the two extremes. The healshare Talent could probably use some extra incentive in general to take it, though, especially now that several Careers lost (effective) alternative ways to generate THP. Yes, even if one or two did gain one.

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Maybe slayer could have an ability that is linked on how many kills he did in small amount of time, he would then enter “rage” mod or something. This way he would still be a lot different to zealot.

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That would be a cool mechanic for Slayer to have.

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At best you get mileage out of one shotting a storm vermin. At worse you’re now in a melee landing less overall hits for less overall damage because you’ve now gotta contend with a horde and some armor or a pack of armor using a 2H weapon without your speed. I mentioned pick because it has the highest possible upper limit. 2H axe has a high upper limit too but it amounts to 3 or so swings.

The real reason I have a distaste for the ability is because it’s hard as hell to use to cleave enemies, is obscenely hard to use point blank when you don’t want to move positions, does weak damage on cleave, requires preparation to use (3 stacks of trophy hunter), requires another skill to take advantage of it even being up (adrenaline surge), and is simply weaker than No Escape for contending with bosses. Losing an entire extra hit on the Chaos Spawn per window and 2 hits on the rat ogre per window and not having to stop attacking at all on the troll if you’re good at split second reaction based on which attack he’s going to do. I see it being useful for minotaur simply with how little you can attack him if he’s on you (it’s 1 attack and only 1). But there’s also things like contending with a flock of CWs that just completely obliterates my idea of it’s worth.

Simply put. Dawi-Drop is an attack that will do higher damage once per 40 seconds (or less with AS). No Escape is an effect that will impact every attack for 10 seconds. If you land even one extra attack on anything with No Escape that you couldn’t with Dawi-Drop, unless that drop is a pickaxe crit headshot, Dawi-Drop is rendered irrelevant

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Having now played more than a few games with throwing axes over the course of a not small amount of hours to the day, I feel like throwing an additional addendum to my post here.

I redact my statement about Adrenaline.
Throwing axes can only get the most out of them through the attack power steroid on Slayer, when you take them on Slayer. Their effectiveness takes a sheer drop as opportunity to safely recover or recall them decreases and their impact on bosses is quartered without having your 25% up for speed on throw and return.

For the sake of parity. If Slayer is to remain glass. I believe that it would be better to make Adrenaline a passive after all. Even if other alternatives existed. Without those alternatives providing speed, they likely would fall into disuse.

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