I’ve played the game for a looong time, and as the new stagger go out I was sure about one thing: I have no idea how stagger really works (still don’t) but I do understand talents.
But recently I started doubting it after reading the description thread.
Can someone summarize those talents for me?
I used to think that mainstay/assassin are the top, smiter/extra AP are mid-tier and Bulwark is garbo. Is extra AP actually the best overall dmg talent?
Assassin/Smiter are top picks as they largely circumvent the entire stagger system and provide a constant melee damage buff, Mainstay/Bulwark are useless due to the very restrictive time frames during which they are applicable, EP is worth it for reaching ranged/stagger breakpoints or if most of your damage comes from DoT effects and the likes.
I try to explain this simply as I can so some nuance might be lost.
First you got the stagger system itself (it functions regardless of what lv15 talent you have)
it goes from stages:
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0 unstaggered, No damage increase
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1 lightly staggered, enemy takes 20 % increased damage
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2 heavily staggered/enemy is climbing, takes 40 % increased damage
You accumulate stagger simply by smacking enemies, shoving, using heavy attacks or abilities. Bigger the weapon generally longer the enemies stay in stagger 1-2 animations.
Stagger talents in essence modify or boost the behavior of above in some ways. Vermintide wiki has an excellent table to show it very easily and I will be borrowing it here a little bit. (Stagger - Vermintide 2 Wiki)
Assasin: For basic hits (body shots, non crits), Assasin does nothing, however what makes this talent so powerful is the fact that if you crit or hit a headshot you will always be doing 40 % increased damage regardless of what the enemy’s current stagger state is. In short it counts the enemy as always being in stagger 2 state if headshot or crit happens.
Currently the biggest damage increasing talent in the lv15 row.
Smiter: modifies the stagger 0 state behavior and nothing else.
The first target you hit with your attack receives damage as if it were in stagger 1 state. This is really the only thing you need to understand about this talent, it’s extremely powerful on single target weapons like executioner sword heavies, because you will always be hitting a single target, so in theory the heavy should always deal at least 20 % increased damage unless the target is already in a stage 2 stagger in which case the damage is 40 % like normally. Useful for 1 shot breakpoints.
Do keep in mind the wording, the first target hit. So, if you were to cleave 3 enemies, only the first target you hit would take the 20 % increase and the rest would be treated as being in stagger 0.
Mainstay: This talent simply increases the stage 1-2 damages from 20-40 to 40-60 respectively. In theory this would be THE talent for massive cleaving weapons who want to stagger/unbalance lots of enemies. Unfortunately, the breakpoints are rarely there and generally you can get the same with enhanced power, with some exception’s.
Enhanced power: Increases total Hero Power by 7.5% before other buffs are applied. This does not mean however that it replaces stagger system like many people would believe. You still have the core 20-40 % increases even when this talent is in play.
Only talent that increases ranged and dot damage.
Bulwark: In short terms, it debuffs the enemies you stagger to take 10 % increase damage.
In theory excellent talent for something like shields who want to keep enemies off-balance constantly and for teammates to kill them. However, the debuff only lasts for 2 seconds and 10 % generally is not enough to really compete with the other choices.
The below table, should also help to make it bit clearer.
(Source: V2 wiki)
Anyways I hope this cleared at least something. Comments and fixes appreciated, I tried to assimilate the information pretty quickly so there might be some flaws.
Looks like Bulwark really needs some lovin’
I’ll be taking AP on a couple more careers…