Specials are terribly designed

Poxwalker having no rule to spawn in a min distance is criminal. With occasion where we were near a door and the pox just popped and killed a member without being able to react.

A lot of the specials are just too tanky… And pox bursters can spawn way too close.

Bursters, hounds, flamers, ragers, and trappers should all have less health than they do. Bursters especially… They should barely be able to take more than one hit even from weak ranged weapons.

Suiciders from World War Z are interesting in that they combine a suicide bomb unit with a loot rat/infected survivor. They run up to you then has a prime and detonate animation, or explode if you shoot them. But if you stun or stagger them and then melee kill them they drop goodies. But of course if they do explode they’ll take out a chunk of the horde themselves too.

Yeah I dunno what they were thinking. Bursters should take less damage and also kill enemy soldiers around them when they explode.

Honest suggestion: apply a lower run speed to specials that are retreating from players. Enemies move faster than players so that players can’t just kite them indefinitely. Apply the same logic to those specials that are coded to retreat; their high speed enables kiting rather than preventing it, so it needs to go.

2 Likes

I play on 3-4, have only tried diff 5 like 3 times

Yea usually I focus specials and elite’s cus I’m vet, so I’m talking about it like they’re dealt with in isolation cus I focus most of my effort to kill them while team takes care of hordes & so on. Now I realise I’m making it sound easy - it isn’t and I of course also lose games. My point is most of the time, me and my team could’ve reacted better to the situation (meaning: not the games fault)

Yea I know there’s a distinction between Elites & Specials, but I’d rather comment on OP’s criticism rather than his wrongful labelling.

The other issue I have with the fire is that it slows you. So it breaks your toughness, high damage instantly and you’re moving slow when trying to get out of it.

This all adds up to making it really punitive to try to quickly “jump through” and the area denial that it represents even more opressive to deal with.

By comparison the V2 flamer, globadier and Stormfiend are a lot less punishing to get clipped by or making the choice to run through/into as a tactical choice.

2 Likes

I don’t agree with OP that the specials are TERRIBLY designed, but they could use some work and some are much worse than others. And I stand by my statement that they’re a little too tanky and mostly too fast across the board. Just because it’s something that CAN be played around and dealt with doesn’t mean we should necessarily have to.

I think veteran players may not get what I mean when I say “too tanky” because y’all can delete bosses in like 5 seconds haha, but for the other classes I find them a nuisance to deal with. I preferred Vermintide 2 special health where they were quite squishy in general but posed a massive threat if not dealt with. In Darktide my 450 Zealot bolter takes like 3 shots to kill a bomber on difficulty 4 which I think is a little excessive. And let’s not get to psyker where brainburst becomes like 80% worse on 4 and 5 rip

Still, time to read what they put out in the release. See you on!

Yes we Vets are quite overpowered in current meta ahaha, but that’s the kind of Guard Cadia has shaped.

I take out bomber in one hit on diff 4 with 395 Bolter while in volley fire and I completely agree with you on Psyker’s brainburst.

As you said “[specials aren’t] TERRIBLY designed, but they could use some work and some are much worse than others”. This is a statement we can all agree on and what I think the main takeaway from this discussion is for me.

The Emperor Protects!

Agree with, Bombers and Hound
Disagree with Poxbursters, yes maybe a bit to tank, but they are easy to deal, with a timed push. Considering that a push is enough against them, I didn’t find them as much of a treat as the others, especially the Hound with 360 turns and jumps.

But overall I like all of them, they all pose a different threat if you don’t deal with them properly.

ESPECIALLY when you are grey. The light beam is borderline invisible most of the time.

2 Likes

The sound before shooting is a better hint than the laser. Using that information, you can even dodge one shooting you in the back.

But yeah, Green Laser would be fine too.

Except that far too many V2 vets think that means way more than it does. I played more than my share of V2, but also realize that this game has a different enough balance that V2 experience in and of itself means no more than experience with L4D or B4B, and not much more than any other FPS.

Partially disagree, tide games have a very distinct way how they design enemies/bosses, how the spawns work, how audio plays a huge role and the base mechanics like block/dodge. So if you played enough Vermintide you’re going to know a bit beforehand how to handle stuff, because the core gameplay concepts are the same. Any other FPS game, definitely not, that will just help you aim better.

1 Like

Based on my experience

Poxburster : Psyker chew this guy all day, all i need to do as Vet is to press F to highlight their position. As non Vet (Preferably Ogryn) i just have to wait till it jump and shove em down which sometimes cancel their detonation.

Mutant : Same as above, Psyker hard counter mutant. Also you can dodge their grab, technically i always go sideways before pressing side dodge at the right time when it comes to dodging this dude.

Trapper : Their first buggy sound make their net way easier to dodge. At this point only 2 out of…10 or maybe 20 net were manage to hit me.

Rager / Marauder / Crusher : This guy are the reason why we have armor penetrating/ high stagger weapon. You can cheap shoot literally everything on every difficulty if they doesn’t exist.

Bullwark : Same reason as above, also main reason why Psyker/Bolter exist in this game

Sniper : You can blame your Veteran if that guy were unable to take down snips, also any ranged weapon with straight projectile work against this guy

Dredge Weapon team / Reaper : They exist to slow your progress down, which is a good thing in a game where you can go yatzhe all da way to checkpoint (Cough vermintide 2 cough)…

Hound : My only archnemesis in this game, by the emperor save us from this karking dog of hel

Daemonhost : If you don’t have shield Ogryn then don’t even bother hitting this guy

Elite assasination boss : At this point, this guy can be rushed ezpz by having weapon that can hit multiple times (chainsword/axe) or Ogryn

You make some good points, but the hyperbole starting right from the title doesn’t help your argument. Sure, some specials need tweaks, but there are none individually that are even close to terrible. So that starts me off disinclined to take you seriously.

The poxburster, you start contradicting yourself out of the gate by trying to compare it to the boomer, but then admitting it is nothing like the boomer. Not a great look. I main an Orgyn and Poxbursters are a non-issue for me 95% of the time, and any special should sometimes be an issue, so I don’t see the problem here. They have a distinctive sound queue so you can tell they are there a mile away, and they are less armoured than you make out. Are you arguing for them to always be one shots? Your argument seems to be that you want them to work like boomers, but this is a different game and constantly recycling old ideas is stale and boring. The only time the poxburster is an issue is when it spawns right next to you, but this isn’t a poxburster issue, this is a game spawn mechanics issue, as covered later.

Dogs and mutants are indeed janky. These are the two where I agree somewhat, their mechanics currently cause them to act in a very janky manner and required some careful adjustment. I have no issue with the general capabilities, but the way those mechanics translate in game is often an issue. I’ve discussed dogs with a friend and we concluded that the difference to gutter runners than makes them so janky seems to be that they leap from much closer, but retain the lock onto their target much better, so they seem to go through weird contortions that can mean they actually travel a long way in their leap. They need small tweaks to adjust their behaviour to be more sensible, not the usual Fatshark hammer that is applied to most changes.

Mutants have a couple of issues, which I mostly see from the ogryn’s perspective. 1 the orgyn charge and the mutant’s ignore each other, so you charge through each other, which is more than a little silly. Even if you stopped each other dead, it would be better I think. 2 When the mutant is charging, impact grenades such as those from the ogryn’s grenade fist go straight through them without detonating. Clearly an issue and I can’t believe this is as intended. The main issue I have with the mutant’s charge is it’s ability to turn 180 on a dime without slowing down. This is due to the mechanic where the mutant locks onto it’s target and unless that lock is broken by a perfectly timed dodge, nothing short of death will stop it. To the best of my knowledge it’s not psychic, so it would be cool if it stopped acting like it was, charging targets it can’t see or ones that have broken line of sight.

Ragers are again a variable threat to different classes. Parrying them absolutely works, but your milage will vary depending on your stamina. Dodging a rager is no problem and pushing them will interrupt their attack chain, unless you are totally blocked in, as a correctly timed backwards dodge will work, in addition to sideways dodges. My only issue with ragers is that they are silent. These drugged up crazed killers don’t roar or scream or anything, and it’s a little silly, they should have an audio queue. I don’t recognise the behaviour you describe from ragers. The only class I’ve seen struggle with ragers is the preacher, probably due to their melee role and limited stamina, but a revved chainsword will absolutely ruin a ragers day while also stunlocking it.

Flamers and gunners already have a setup time from when they stop moving to when they fire. I don’t have an issue with them, if there is a consensus that they needed a longer setup time, it’s not something I’ve seen.

Basically, I think you’ve overblown the issues with individual special mechanics. The issues with specials are far more to do with the game’s spawn mechanics rather than the special’s themselves. Specials (any anything else) shouldn’t be able to spawn one metre behind you from thin air, or through a door that isn’t a door without making a noise. Rusty old metal sliding doors should absolutely screech and grind as they open and shut. If a special eg a poxburster does spawn from a door near you, then you should get an audio warning before that, because it came from somewhere to get to that door and why is this particular door suddenly soundproof?

At higher difficulties dealing with specials is as much a team task delegation issue as anything else, and knowing which team member is best placed to deal with any individual special and then communicating and trusting them to do their job is key. Far too often there is a special callout and everyone turns to fixate on it, which is how things go bad.

1 Like