Before I begin I have to admit these suggestions are really heavy influenced by my own opinions and partly drastic. Both is pretty unusual for.
I loved Vermintide 1 and Vermintide 2 just needs to be little bit less edgy and it will be award winning without doubt. Thank you for this game.
The next suggestions are not meant as simple rants:
Brace of Pistols are too strong
Yes, normally you wont call for a nerf for your most loved weapon but these pistols feel weird; They do hilarious much damage with a really high rate of fire. The range is great, precise, no need for reloads and the only real drawback ist the low ammo count.
But because they are so strong I am still after many hours played shy to use them. I don’t know what I shall aim at.
Any smaller enemy is simply nuked by bodyshots. But as the pistols are not armor piercing the strongest specials are bad targets. So currently I alternate between killing specials like Poisonwinds and thinning out larger groups by especially taking out the bigger ones.
For the latter the ammo count is too low to follow that strategy while simple body hits still take out these enemies. For the hunt on specials the pistols are too slow or dont do enough damage.
On a regular match I hit with two shots before another player finishes the special with a ranged wrapon which could have it done with one projectile even without damaging it before.
I wasted 10% of my ammo.
Maybe I am nostalgic but the perfect pistol strength, for me at least, was in VT1 on nightmare:
Smaller vermins still died from body shots, the bigger ones needed headshots. Armored enemies needed multiple shots to the head. A pistol kill was really rewarding and the Brace of Pistols felt versatile. There were better weapons for special sniping and better weapons for clearing out hordes. But the Brace of Pistols were versatile enough to do both without being OP. Aimed shots had an impact but a missed shot is not a too big loss.
I miss that.
The Rapier changed towards an anti-horde weapon
Okay, I have no stats and can’t prove anything I do say now: The attack arc feels wider but shorter. The attack speed might be faster and blocking multiple hits (without Witch Hunter Captain’s passive) is too good.
The stab lacks of range and/or a forward thrust.
Short: The rapier has been adjusted for more enemies at once, makes light attack smashing viable and lost his finesse. It’s the counterpart of an submachinegun: Spray and pray and hope for crits.
I wish the rapier would hit in a narrower arc with slightly bigger range and had less stamina. Range + less stamina may favor a more dodgy playstyle with that weapon. The attackspeed is okay if the arc is more narrow. Otherwise it has to be lowered in exchange for the wider arc.
The rapier’s secondary attack (off-hand pistol) is a shotgun
And I like it not a little bit. That attack is not ranged. The fall-off is so strong with that weapon it is better to be called a long range melee attack. And that might be the intention behind it. Thus no ammo.
No secret about it: I hate it.
Okay, to utilize the secondary attack most effectively you just build it into a hit combo. Something like
LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT BANG or LIGHT BANG LIGHT BANG.
But is it a secondary attack if we roll it into any melee combo?
Also, it is counter intuitive to have a weapon which looks like any other pistol, is called pistol and held in the same way but behaves absolutely different. You might want to change the skin into a sawed-off shotgun if you want to stick to the weapon’s current philosophy.
Now here are my two suggestions. The first one is the one I favor the least but would be an improvement: Add the shot to the regular öight attack pattern. Skilled players do it anyway.
LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT(Bang).
Making it the the 4th hit acts as strong combo finisher (“Shall I hit again or parry? Risk against reward.”) and also as some kind of cooldown to make it unspammable.
LIGHT BANG LIGHT BANG LIGHT BANG …
The Block-Push-Attack would be a block with the rapier followed by a shot. Also not spammable because before I was talking about lowering the rapier’s stamina count.
My more favorable suggestion: Make it like in VT1.
It is a pistol like any other else and shares the same stats. This comes in two different flavours.
Vanilla gets it’s own ammo count and is more or less a copy-paste from VT1.
Strawberry shares one ammo stash with Brace of Pistols and Repeater Handgun but adds x ammo. If the ranged weapon is a crossbow the Pistol gets a seperate ammo count (x).
People might say that is a real redundancy but if the pistol shot comes by far faster with larger range (and lowered damage!) It becomes a weapon with taxtical options. It staggers in melee, can be used quickly on “distant” enemies like the one Blackrat which only needs one more hit but is suddenly surrounded by a horde and I can’t reach it with my rapier. But it may still hit me with it’s halberd. Or I can quickshot that one slave rat whoch just ran past me and teies to hit Sienna in the back. More tactical decisions for the secondary attack please.
Now to the really drastic suggestion:
Overhauling the Witch Hunter Captain and his career skill.
Zealot is melee focused, horde and a little bit single target. Bounty Hunter is ranged focused against single targets and a little bit anti-horde.
The Witch Hunter Captain (WHC) tries to be something between those with some support skills.
He is bad at it.
Instead the WHC should excel at (witch) hunting single targets and as counterpart to lacking horde clearing abilities he buffs/supports the team.
Animosity, his career skill, is a really bad skill for Saltzpyre with really low synergies. I call it the “noob rage mode”. The skill is either built as emergency button if you got surrounded and/or dived into a horde slaughtering - and in that case I think you failed playing the WHC; Zealot, Mercenary or Slayer may be better for you - or you prepare for a light attack fest.
I also use it to free pinned allies but the range is so small…
I present you an alternative career skill for the Witch Hunter Captain.
Sentence The Heretic
You tag an enemy (orange or red border) for x seconds. In this time the tagged enemy gains forced aggro on you. You also get +Ă—% movement speed and significantly increased crit power against the sentenced enemy. Cooldown might be somehow shorter than now. Maybe 1.5 minutes instead of 3.
This career skill offers great synergies with his other passive abilities (more damage on tagged enemies, free blocks against frontal light attacks, instant slaying of mansized enemies with critical headshots).
The level 25 talents may be the following:
Leading The Court / Jury
The critpower bonus also applies on allies.
Righteous Defense / Judge
You lose the movement speed bonus but take less damage from the sentenced enemy.
Zealotic Justice / Executioner
You take significantly more damage but slaying the sentenced enemy while Sentence The Heretic is active instantly refills the skillbar.
The WHC may specialize in a support role for bossfights, tanking/intercepting/distracting specials or bosses (duelist cc build) or a high risk high reward playstyle for skilled WHCs DPSing through taggable enemies.
Thank you for reading that far.
Bonus round: Specials shall be more special again. They are too common and weak. Remember the times a patrol striked fear into your hearts? In VT2 they are laughable weak like any other special. They are only a threat if in big numbers or if they exploit game mechanics like instantly winding up the the gatling, throwing multiple poisonwinds in 2 seconds, casting through walls, making instant 180° turn-lunges after a failed lunge…and so on. ;D