So when you will balance Beam Staff, Fatshark? I'ts been really long

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
63

It’s not just the staff that makes the beam staff broken, it’s when you combine it with the legendary traits and her level 25 ability that it truly becomes broken. It’s really good at level on a character leveling, but it’s stupid strong once it’s maxed out.

Ult recharge on Crit. Vent Overheat on Ult. Hold left click at a horde and you’re going to get your Ult filled before your overheat is filled. You’ll get to do this multiple times per horde.

Elite/Special far away? Point the staff LMB beam at the head and then tap RMB. Dead enemy after 1-2 shots depending on what you shoot at. If it doesn’t kill it in 1 shot it will still be staggered.

The staffs “down side” is that it zooms in by default on LMB and you loose vision. If you pay attention this risk can be mitigated and if you have a DPS protecting your back this risk can be ignored.

Bardin is my main but I’ve leveled Sienna to see how strong she was. If there is a Sienna in my group with a Beam staff guess what… I’m going to play body guard for the next 15 minutes. Winning is more important than my stats.

64

Guys, Pyro outperforms every other ranged characters… careers like huntsman, WS, BW could be good, but outclassed by Pyro beam staff. Only BH can deal with her, he just kills faster in mid range… but for one second? 1.5 seconds? Pyro is more versatile/efficient.

This thing must be fixed… then as they wish… they could nerf Pyro or buff the others (my favorite option :stuck_out_tongue: )

65

If you think Sienna, a Bright Wizard, isn’t supposed to consider her staff and magic as her primary means of disposing the many enemies she encounters, then I’m not sure either of you understand what a Bright Wizard is and what they’re supposed to do.

The game may have an emphasis on melee, but that isn’t to say certain characters and/or their careers aren’t geared towards an alternative play style. Each character(with Sienna being an exception) has two careers geared towards a balanced/melee play style and one ranged career. This gives players options and expands the diversity of play styles. When strictly considering the overall theme and tools provided to players, it is clear that the game is indeed melee-dominant. However, just like in Vermintide 1, you can specialize yourself towards ranged and use that as a primary means of slaying enemies. There aren’t nearly as many traits in Vermintide 2 and you’re limited to 1 trait per weapon so specializing in range isn’t as easy unless you use one of the provided range-focused careers.

In regards to the topic of this thread, it’s true that beam staff is too strong at the moment. I don’t use it when I play Sienna(I enjoy her other staves more), but I’ve seen what it can do. The beam “pop” that it can do for burst damage against single targets is pretty silly with how strong it is. It seems it’s also easy to abuse certain traits on the staff and the way it functions. A lot of people consistently use it because of that and it helps them get by in games, even if they’re lacking a bit in skill.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve out-classed numerous Pyromancers as Kerillian and Saltzpyre(I don’t like Kruber much). Looking at it objectively, I’d say what generally gives many Pyromancers their “edge” is the abusable parts of the beam staff. When using other staves, she’s easily comparable to other characters/careers(assuming all players are of similar skill). That’s my experience on the matter, anyways.

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66

I will admit that the Beam Staff seems a little too good at everything at the moment. At the same time, I don’t want it to be nerfed because I play Unchained and I kind of feel like I need it at the moment. It may be a crutch perhaps, but it doesn’t feel quite as OP on Unchained as I bet it does on Pyro. Perhaps it’s Pyro talents that need to be nerfed instead? Too much synergy?

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feel free to ignore how players are actually playing the game vs what you THINK the game should be like. sienna’s kit is obviously ranged, her strength lies in her staffs. show me a legend run where siennas actually use melee 90% of the time as a ‘primary weapon’. to me a primary weapon means the main weapon a class will use most of the time for killing. if you want to call sienna’s primary weapon a melee weapon, sure go ahead.

btw throwing personal insults will just belittle your arguments and make you sound childish, just some feedback for you, may not want to do that if you’re trying to push a point. learn how to handle people’s opinions sometime maybe.

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69

i don’t follow the development of the game. i PLAY the game. the reason why vt2 is turning out to be ranged focus is because it’s a safe tactic to secure legend runs. why engage in dangerous melee if you can avoid it totally? why take the dangerous path instead of doing something safe? i’m not someone that complains about legend difficulty because i know that almost all dangerous scenarios can be prepared for and saved with good play. part of that good play is understanding when to jump into melee and when ranged is a better option. if you want to believe that sienna isn’t meant to be played ranged, that’s an opinion that’s not shared by the general population.

people attack me personally because they normally don’t have good arguments. it’s a technique to shift focus away. search ‘ad hominem’ in google.

70

A sienna using melee 90% of the time is something that not even unchained will do. There’s supposed to be a fine line between going ranged and using melee. That’s the point of battle mage, that’s why unchained exists, and that’s why pyromancer, Siennas most ranged focused class, still has numerous talents designed to help her melee.

That’s why things like shield of tam and, to a lesser extent, dissipate exists. The phrase is intent vs execution. It’s obvious what the goal was and what it ended up being. Sienna’s can use their staff to kill storm vermin, berserkers, and entire hordes with impunity, heat management is nonexistent and inconsequential which allows you to use your close range alt fire instead of your melee weapon. These things may have been designed to be strong, but there is a serious breakdown somewhere in the process that titled it from strong to arguably overpowered.

Again, intent vs execution. They clearly didn’t want conflagration staff to be bad. They didn’t want fireball to be nigh unusable due to it’s splash. They certainly didn’t want melee to feel like it’s only job during hordes is to sit still and let Sienna handle everything (on champion). And they may not have even intended for it to be able to one shot stormvermin. We’ll never know.

What you’ve explained here:

is called the path of least resistance. Players will always cling to the easiest way to handle something. No part of that confirms that it’s the way things should be.

Regardless, all we need FS to say is “yes this is how things are supposed to be” or “not this wasn’t what we wanted this to be like” and you’ll have these conversations squashed. But as with saltz having his killing potential tuned all the way down, I imagine that the answer to this debate will likely be one you’re not going to be happy with.

The only reason it’s not an even bigger problem than it could be to me is because I do nothing but Legend, often in the morning and the number of Siennas I run into are lower than what I would get if I played Legend during the evening or (heavens forbid) champion.

But don’t think for a second that it’s fun for anybody else to have no ability to kill things coming into a chokepoint or even in open fields because they all die before you can get to them.

Edit: After rereading this I should note that I don’t think it should be nerfed out of the ability to do the damage it does. Rather I really think heat needs to be looked at both for her and IB.

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71

I have found Sienna main :D. Or lets say “Beam Staff Main”

Listen - developers said they think of V2 as melee-oriented game so go ahead and tell them that you think they are wrong about their own game and their vision of game is not important to you because you want to stand afk with left mouse hold and just kill things.

I recommend playing Diablo 3 then.

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72

eh, i’ve already said i’m an elf main and hardly play sienna, but sure, believe whatever you want. it’s kinda apparent you’re one of those people that just have one view of things and refuse to listen to anything else.

my point stands that the devs can say whatever they want, but current game design is what it is and players will adapt to it. melee-oriented game does not mean every class has to be melee-focused. eh, why am i bothering to explain my opinion anymore lol.

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73

my point stands that the devs can say whatever they want, but current game design is what it is and players will adapt to it.

That is why we ask for nerfs. Legendary should not be difficulty where by “adapt” you mean standing still with infinite range weapon option and delete everything in sight while at the same time actively countering two main game mechanics: overheat (ult vent) and ult cooldown (CDR on crits from beam) and having both close range and long range “range only” weapon.

This is not adpat- this is easy mode, not much different from simple cheat running “no overheat on wizard”.

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74

you are clearly running with extremely good mages to be able to stand still and delete everything in legend mode and to call it easy. i cannot relate.

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you are clearly running with extremely good mages to be able to stand still and delete everything in legend mode and to call it easy. i cannot relate.

Sadly yes. If there is “good” player using beam staff, mostly whole run turns into escort the wizard instead of co-op game where you should try to compensate where your team mates are lacking.

76

The Beam Staff really needs to change.

It is unbelievably boring to play with a Sienna pyro/beam staff, to the point where I immediately quit a match if I see one present(legend), because there’s no point in me being there, I’ll only be protecting the beam staff wielder during waves (which she hardly needs if they come from one direction).

Patrols are also made a non threat thanks to the shotgun staggering them forever with overcharge removal on crit.

It is a master of all trades as someone here on the forums said earlier, it needs a slap by the nerfbat.

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77

I don’t use the beam staff because its boring and almost feels like an exploit.

To me, the biggest proof that it needs tuning is the fact that half the Pyros I see don’t even know how to use it properly, but are still…successful I guess you would call it.

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78

Not only that, if there is bad one and he suddenly is forced to draw his melee weapon they can’t do anything: they don’t know how to dodge, how to kite, how movement works, how to fence horde, melee elites- they just die. Because why would they ever need to learn all that basics if all you have to do is hold left click with occasional right button click or hold.

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81

I’m not sure if you’re ignoring peoples points or just suffer from a lack of reading comprehension.

Sacrifice everything? What are you giving up for heat management that would create more DPS? Spamming an ult every 5-10 seconds is an increase in DPS as well as dumping all heat. Sienna sacrifices virtually nothing. That is my primary compliant about this staff.

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82

Don’t feed troll. He is just salty. Just flag his post as off topic

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83

@EppE not to mention with all the grey health you get using the god-staff even if you - god forbid - have to press R a few times instead of F, you barely lose anything besides a bit of max HP that will be full of grey health most of the time anyway.

Pretty much this, when someone resorts to insulting a bunch of people with a few poorly thought out oneliner phrases you’ll know it’s not worth it to spend any time on it. Even just glancing at the nonsense they posted made it clear they’re just here to derail the topic rather than add something constructive. :l

84

For the most part, yes, she sacrifices very little, for Pyro at least. Unchained would get hit a little bit harder by this, as to spec for heat removal requires investment into block properties, cooldown reduction, etc. and wouldn’t really spec for damage anyway.

I’ll admit, I would prefer Beam Staff nerfs weren’t too massive, but I play Unchained, not Pyro.

I feel like there is an easy way to balance the Beam Staff:

  • Reduce the base damage of the beam detonation, but increase the headshot multiplier. This makes it so you have to be accurate and can’t just destroy things with body shots.
  • Reduce the damage of the shotgun spam, but keep the staggering properties.

Done. You now have a long-range sniping, short-range control staff that lacks the damage of Bolt’s left click but makes up for it with greater control over hordes. Bolt and this offer two sides of the same coin now. Bolt has more LMB damage with the downside of having to charge a snipe, etc.

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85

I agree on the latter suggestion but for the former suggestion it’s still so very easy to get a headshot on beamstaff since you basically have a pointing stick with zoom-in.

Maybe turn it into a damage-over-time effect to turn it into less of an instant-gratification weapon that it currently is. Keeping the stagger for control and reducing the damage on shotgun is a good one though. The level of control on this thing is out of whack but balancing it’s damage would weigh things out a bit more.

As for heat, even tapping R one or a few times with all the grey health this thing generates usually suffices for me and is almost entirely safe in it’s use if you play adaptively or run with NB