Suggestions For Battle Wizard Redesign

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

Crossposting this from my Reddit post.

Objectives

  1. Make BW’s gameplay different enough to that of the Pyromancer.

  2. Make BW competetive with Pyromancer and Unchained.

  3. Make all her talents viable and all her talent choices interesting, i.e. let different talents enable different playstyles and avoid situations where one talent is clearly the best choice for all players.

Suggested changes

Active ability

Same as it is now, but with a 30 second cooldown and no flame trail (make the flame trail a lvl 25 talent choice). Most importantly, let Sienna pass THROUGH enemies with this ability. Currently, she can’t.

Passives

  • Remove Tranquility.

  • Change Reckless Haste to always give a consistent charge speed bonus. The bonus should be very noticeable but not huge. I suggest 20-30%.

NOTE: For heat management we’ll use lvl 15 talents rather than a passive.

LVL 5 talent choice:

  • +25% Stamina Regen

  • +1 Stamina Shield

  • +5% Attack Speed

LVL 10 talent choice:

  • +5% Power per each nearby enemy (up to 5) (same as it is now)

  • +8% Spell Charge Speed

  • +20% Power when no enemies nearby

LVL 15 talent choice:

  • Each melee hit reduces Overcharge by a small amount

  • Active venting doesn’t cost any health, but is twice as slow

  • Passive Overcharge dissipation rate is (at least) twice as fast

LVL 25 talent choice:

  • Create a flame trail after teleporting. The flame trail should be able to kill Chaos Fanatics on Legend.

  • Get a Flame Shield buff after teleporting. Flame Shield behaves exactly like Gromril Armor – it lasts until you get hit and absorbs the damage from that hit. Doesn’t stack.

  • Perform a stronger AOE explosion at the point of arrival. The explosion should be able to kill Chaos Fanatics on Legend and stagger any Elites.

The removal of “Overcharge reset on ability use” talent is meant to make the gameplay different to that of Unchained and Pyromancer, and to make BW rely on her chosen lvl15 talent for heat management.

1 Like
2

This is good but I’d go another way…
Mercenary, Handmaiden, Ranger Veteran, Witch Hunter Captain, they’re all “supportive” character (Waystalker can be if you take the health regen for team, but it’s not enough to be considered a support imo).
Mercenary gives the team more health and attack speed, Handmaiden gives more stamina regen and SHOULD be stronger on rez, Ranger gives more ressources, and Captain SHOULD be even more an anti-special (not in a sniper way, but the one who ping and help allies deal with them)

I think Battle Wizard should be the Support Sienna. Flame sword of Rhuin has been suggested many times and I feel it’s a great ult. Sienna could be the Support that gives damage and DoT. I really like the Flame shield idea tho and your level 15 talents actually.

On another hand, this would require a lot of changes for this career to go support, and I think Fatshark would prefer to add new career than rework entirely existing ones.
In the end, your Battle Wizard rework seems okay, altho I’d go even more in the path of the “Fast casting machine” with someting like a Passive (the main one or not) : For each 15% Overcharge you vent (manually or not), gain a stackable 10% Spell charge speed that will last 3 second after your next spell.

1 Like
3

TL;DR version: I think BW needs stronger support for her role, in the form of changes to Tranquility and larger ones to he Career skill.

I like the idea behind these changes, but I can’t bring myself to like the propositions themselves. I’ll repeat some of my older posts here, but I think Battle Wizard was meant for two things: the “paced” caster, compared to Pyro’s “cast all the time” and Unchained’s “tough it out in melee” approach; and charging and casting single, big spells instead of Pyro’s constant stream of fire. Tranquility is supposed to help with the first part, her spell charge speed buffs the second.

Her teleport ability doesn’t really fit either of these. It seems to be there so that sienna would have a movement skill on one career, and because the devs didn’t figure out anything more appropriate. I don’t know the devs’ thoughts, so I cannot be sure of that of course. Thus, I think it should change altogether, and I think your suggestion for it would make it even more pointless, only leaving the movement portion and leaving out what little damage or area denial it can do. A real area denial spell would be nice, or maybe the oft-proposed Flaming Sword of Rhuin (I’m not familiar with it in either tabletop version, but judging by other posters, it would essentially give a damage buff to whole party) could be worked in.

Tranquility seems good for its purpose on paper, especially with the addition of lv15 Talents, but there is one big problem: Its activation time is relatively long, especially on higher difficulties, and taking a hit resets it without compensation. A sit is, it encourages the approach of “cast a big spell or two, wait in safety, cast again”. What it need is a way to encourage doing something else than just waiting for it to activate. Removing the “don’t take hits” condition would be a simple solution, allowing you to melee, but giving it another trigger condition could also work. The first one I can think of is borrowed from BH: A melee kill. This would not only allow going into melee with her, it would actively encourage it. It has a risk of turning BW’s playstyle too close to BH, though, by striking a few hits in melee, casting a big spell, then striking in melee again.

Removing Tranquility altogether would require another passive to replace it; while in this kind of game balance should be concentrated on the completely leveled character with their full abilities unlocked, we need to consider the way there too. There’s also the more thematic choice of lv15 Talents: On nearly all careers, they modify your primary passive (I think one didn’t, but don’t remember which). In your proposition, they would essentially replace it. While I don’t think this by itself is a big concern, it might be so if the themes on Talent trees are given weight.

On your Talent propositions I mostly don’t have anything to comment; their balance certainly needs work on BW and others, just to give us more choice on them.

On particular points that I didn’t already touch:

That already is huge. 15 or 20% would be more in line with your wording, and even 20% could easily be too much for constant bonus. We already are able to notice the 5% differences in attack or movement speed.

This one’s good. It would work well to replace one of the current Talents too, but in the career’s current state, it might end up too strong.

I agree on your points on Burnout, it’s (in practice, with the already-short cooldown and minuscule damage of the flames) too strong to pass, in addition to blending up the gameplay of the three careers.

4

What about talent which would increase damage from fully charged (ranged) attacks by say 25%?

5

I really have to say… i started playing BW and she´s fine and i´ve a lot of fun with her.

I would rather prefer, that Sienna get some Armorpen-Weapons.

And yeah i play Legend with her and it works really good.

1 Like
6

I think changing her ult to what you suggested would be nice and give her a passive that reduces overcharge on melee kills or something.
Perhaps she would apply DoT effect if she reduces overcharge in this manner. I think this would promote the balance between melee and ranged far more than the current passive overcharge venting.