I’ve sunk only around eighty hours into Vermintide 2, and as such I have not reached level 25 on every character. Such is my limited scope of knowledge, and I am willing to admit to it. However what I have thus far partaked in has made me ponder as to whether or not the Talent Trees were or were not thought out as well as they should’ve been.
What I am attempting to imply here is that I personally feel that the Talent System is much more “tacked on” than anything else. While some Classes have some pretty amazing Talents(Ironbreaker, for example), a few others have underwhelming talents which make you wonder why you even level up in the first place.
Each Character is divided into Three Classes which from what I can tell tend to be:
Melee, Ranged, Support
However quite often what we see from the Talent Tree are not bonuses that help to accentuate these, but rather Talents like: Give Bardin 5% more movement when he’s the last one standing.
That is quintessentially useless to the point of being downright insulting that anyone would put it into the game. Even IF Bardin was the last one standing, which I will admit happens often, what he wants is not 5% more movement but one of the following:
More Cleaves allowed per swing
More Defense/HP, or even HP Regen
More Damage on his attacks and/or Armor Penetration
Faster Revival/Pickup speed
More Stamina Shields and/or Stamina Regen for blocking
Now I’m not trying to be a raging mean guy here or anything but I honestly feel that some of the talent trees need a good deal of overhauling, as they include a lot of “Garbage Talents” that most players will never ever pick. In place of those we should see Talents that help to increase Variety of Playstyle.
For example imagine if the Slayer had to choose between Damage(Critical hits/attack speed/armor pen), Durability(Temp health, defense boosts, hp regen, blocking bonuses), or Specialist(Monster slayer bonuses, boosts from taking out elites/specials). Toss in the different weapons available and you’d rarely see two slayers who were the same.
While I agree it would be nice to have more varied and meaningful talent choices Im not so sure the end result would be as you expect. The moment talents were released the community would cruch the numbers and come up with meta build for each hero / career. There would still be talents barely anyone uses.
But… we would have the choice. I dont mind having weaker talents IF they are interesting. Bardins ranger talent with special drops is probably my highlight. Playing vermintide for hours and that talent choice gave me the most joy. Others were read and chosen in a second, there is not rly a “meta”, there is good and not as good. (talent lvl 20)
But i think talents and balancing of % numbers is probably a piece of work for later or even dlcs. Would not be surprised to see new talent trees in dlcs, since its simply a huge effort for a smaller dev team.
I can fully understand where you’re coming from, there will always be a certain amount of Meta-gaming that controls the overall way people play a game. I used to play a bunch of other games and a lot of the times certain builds would become THE build used, and people who didn’t use it were considered “stupid” or whathaveyou.
However…let me give you an example. Right now Kruber’s base class has a solid talent tree setup, in my personal opinion. At level 15 for example you have the option of boosting Power while his passive is active, boosting Defense while his passive is active, or “Spreading” his passive to teammates. Offense/Defense/Utility. It means a Kruber player can choose what he feels will work best based on who he’s playing with, and how he likes to play.
Meanwhile his Huntsman Level 15 has an option of:
Getting more Ammo, Getting more Crits, getting more reload speed.
I guarantee that 99.9% of Huntsman Krubers will not pick the reload speed option. In fact most will probably go the Ammo option, as “infinite” ammo significantly out weighs either of the other two options.
Another example is how Slayer Bardin’s Level 15 has an option between:
Increasing duration of buff(s) on his passive, a defense buff to his passive, or cooldown reduction on leap with max stacks of his passive.
Again this is one of those talent spreads where one of the options(The cooldown reduction on leap) will most likely never ever get picked. Both the Buff Duration and the Defense Boost are just way too good to take a small cooldown reduction that is rarely active for a skill that is almost always fully charged to begin with.
This is why I feel the Talent Trees need to get overhauled. There are a lot of “Why would I ever pick that? Ever?” talents which need to be removed and replaced.
Excuse me? Leap reduction is awesome and probably the best one of the 3 once you feel safe enough. Slayer tbh is probably the only one that has diversity since different players need different talents to weaken out his vulnerability.
But ye I agree 100% the talents could be more personalizing / playstyle defining / interesting.
Talents trees need reworking. Fatsharks just have to follow strict rules when they make them. By strict rules I mean linearity (not quite the word but I can’t find it). So something like :
Each set of talent is following the three of sub-trees. Like for Slayer it would be Offense (crit and attack speed), Defense (Health and Temp health gain) or Utility (cooldown and stuff like the defense debuff on crit).
In addition, each line should respect a internal equality. Level 15 is passive, level 20 is “healing” and level 25 is active.
We need more defined roles of the 5-10 lines. Like one is basic stat increase (attack speed, stamina, etc…) other one is secondary (heal received, damage from venting, power under grim,…)
PS : I’d even go further with a suggestion, totally optional to make trees good, but I really enjoy trait like Ironbreaker Bardin “Less overheat on drake weapon”. I’d change the tree this way :
Level 5, base stat increase
Level 10, passive increase
Level 15, secondary stat increase
Level 20, weapon increase, large enough so choosing a certain weapon combo always give you at least an according trait (Stuff like Blunt weapon lower ennemy defense on crit, Getting damaged by venting staves release a small flame AoE that stagger, etc…)
Level 25, shared passive of temp health on kill/crit and heal on boss
Level 30, ability increase, with more RPG side that influence MORE the ability (I enjoy passive like the Bounty Hunter “Fire a single shot but more powerful”, things with pros and cons)
I also have noticed that many talent selection are obviously less useful than others. There are just a few where I actually had to think about it and found use in more than one in that level’s set. For most, there’s a clearly better talent in the set of 3.