The 4.3/4.4 Changes to Shade's Ult Are Bad – Analysis and Suggestion

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
21

Taking something away from a career because it is good at that while having obvious weakpoints isn’t a good idea. Careers that are good at everything may deserve nerf but BH just isn’t one as he lacks survivability, and by survivability I mean ability to have guaranteed survival and revive by pressing F like most of the others. Take monster/lord dps away from him, and you are looking at a worse WHC. Also we have so many tools to deal with monsters these days to call BH too good at what he is even supposed to be good at.

FF issue is a whole another thing as it’s not the problem DS alone has. Even if we are talking about the issue I would put up MB and crit Torpedo before talking about DS.

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I’m more about changing that talent - and the insane FF it does - rather than removing an asset for BHs.
If it indeed is a bad talent most of the times and the specific set of conditions it requires is indeed that rare than it’s just bad. But I don’t agree with the last part.
It’s in my black list because (together with having killed me a bunch of times - apologies for repeating, but it’s better to have a dead BH in your team than one doing TKs, intentionally or otherwise) it’s one of those talents which trivialises boss fights, and together with a few others (used to be shade, I’m not sure right now due to her nerfs) causes all the fuss about “bozzez too ez, lulz” when they are fine challenges when you haven’t got over the top DPSs.

Besides, I run almost exclusively into BHs who run DS over the other options, which is a clear sign that talent needs to be balanced, one way or the other.

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Vast majority of BH uses DS because other talents don’t shine on Cata and above. You pick BH because you need boss dmg. Without it BH is just a worse WHC. Also BH’s DS isn’t the only thing dedicated on monster dmg. We have MWP. Torpedo. Piercing Shot. Shade. Beam Wizard. And this new half-tree lady. You want them all nerfed? I can respect that. DS alone? No, that’s not fair for BH.

FF is something else. I won’t repeat as I’ve already explained my thoughts on this issue just above.

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DS is not alone, true. Moonbow is especially bad (Dot for 40 damage is crazy). I don’t remember crit torpedo damage, a normal shot should be around 15 IIRC. But still, DS stands out doing a whopping 100 damage. That and MB should definitely be reduced. I’d half BH ulti FF and bring MB on par with the hagbane.

I agree with you. Having a version of the ultimate dedicated to boss kills is the right call. I’m criticizing the execution rather than the idea. The problem is mainly the potion interaction. That brings the talent from reasonably effective on good execution (what may be cynically considered meh) to absolutely mental. Something has to change.

I do. Or rather, High monster damage is ok to me. Insane monster damage isn’t. Shade has been reined in for example. Time will tell if it’s too severe a change. SotT has to be reined in aswell (at least RI). I’m not aware of any beam wizard build which does insane damage - while good. And the Torpedo is more for stunning bosses than damaging them. Plus, no career fits this description

more than the Engineer.
I can sympathize with your affection for the BH, in fact I agree with most of what you said about it. I’d probably increase the damage his ultimate (any version) does against monsters, while getting rid of the ridiculous roof it has. You can’t tell me BH doesn’t spring to mind when thinking of “list of careers which trivialize boss fights”. That’s not to say BH (or shade, to go back to the topic) don’t deserve some love. In the past I’ve suggested nerfing the concentration potion instead, so you could only get a free ulti out of it.

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It seems your main issue is about how overall monster fight is on V2, rather than DS, if I am not mistaken. You find DS outstanding only because of how it interacts with potions, namely Concoction I suppose. This is something you haven’t mentioned before and I can partially agree with it; partially because of the examples I’ve suggested above, the ones that do not rely on potions for boss dmg. Beam wizard just do insane amount of dmg by left click hold. Hunter+Shrapnel Torpedo basically does what BH does with DS and potion. RV does all that in a cozy invisible status with MWP.

I understand that you want all of them nerfed by now and I can respect that, if you can suggest ideas that can improve monster fight experience in V2. However I can’t agree that DS stands out so much because of said examples.

I have little affection on BH btw, as Engineer and BW is a career I pick for boss dmg. They do what BH does against bosses even without aiming for heads.

The desription on BH fits Engi as well, yes.

I find FF issue on the said weapons more problematic because of the frequency they are fired, and AOE aspect.

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I created a Forum account just to contribute to this discussion. As a Kerillian main I did really like the Shade Cloak of Mist gameplay. It felt very rewarding if you managed to pull it off - flanking a patrol, using your ability in the right moment / position and killing them all without getting decloaked. It was always high risk though since you were usually in a very very dangerous position. If you hit one enemy that wasn’t facing the other way you would lose stealth and they would all immediately turn around and do their best to punish you. Now with these changes this is the situation where you will start almost every time you use the ability to flank. In fact I think the ability is no longer viable for flanking at all, and I only use it for utility (revive, getting out of a bad spot, sometimes to snipe a special) or frontline DPS.

There are many better ways to tune the ability down without taking away the signature playstile like you did with this change. My preferred way would be to slightly reduce the guaranteed crit duration (3 seconds instead of 4) or a longer cooldown like Rapax proposed. But the current change is probably the worst “nerf” since it kills the most fun use of the ability and makes it feel very very clunky.

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The only idea i’ve got is changing concentration potions so they only guarantee 1 extra use of ultimates. They could either put a cap on it so that when you reach your full bar the effect stops or change it so it works as a “radiance” of sorts. Conc potions are the biggest offenders in most scenarios. They would still be very valuable, but a bit less so.

Returning to Shade’s changes:

I think FS intended to remove the extra damage rather than the interaction. It’s true though that it’s currently hard to pull off backstabs on normal enemies. How about if cloak of mist changed the condition of invisibility, guaranteeing invisibility on backstabs rather than backstab kills?
That way you could still pull the flanking manouver, but you wouldn’t be able to slaughter a patrol so quickly.

EDIT: or they could make the invisibility from vanish last longer, so you would have a better chance to proc it again. Either change would enable the playstyle without adding the extra damage back.

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I love cloak of mist, it is such a pleasure to use it. I hate that they removed the initial crit, and i truly hope they put it back. I have to belive that if you are of a different opinion you dont use shade as your main character and perhaps are tired of losing rings to shades.

Maybe the problem is there are players that are too good out there, they will find and master any advantages and even though vastly outnumbered they can manage to force change to things about the game that are mostly appreciated.

I would like that they try to make the other two lvl 30 talents more appealing in order to compete with cloak of mist.

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Not at all. It is a bad game design because it required almost zero skill to insta kill every non CW mob in the game from invis. Zero mechanic investment. It does make it very “fun” if you’re the shade. You get to delete the entire map and trivialize content you once found challenging. It’s not fun to play with. Not to mention, any half decent shade player makes the game virtually impossible to lose because, when everyone else dies, they just run invisible to respawns. Negating the risk and increasing reward is not how the “risk/reward” system to work. Advocating for the cloak/vanish playstyle is actually mind boggling. Literally only shade mains want this brought back. It is as bad as the lingering/famished BW or the kaboom spam BW. Maybe worse.

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30

What you are describing here sounds extremly exaggerated to me. Maybe Im just a stupid bad player, but i do always play on cataclysm and with a decent success rate on quickplays, and very seldom do i get blamed for being lousy.

If Im the last player alive I hold all my fingers and toes in cross in hope to get to the downed team mates before I die, and Im silly proud if I manage.

It sounds to me you should try to play the shade yourself and do the things you are describing to see how easy it is.

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I guarantee you they have lol. Counter point, how often have you been playing classes other than Mist Shade? I very rarely play her, but the odd time I did pre nerf I was honestly astounded how easy she makes everything. It’s not a playstyle, it’s largely just circumventing game mechanics through invisibility and sheer DPS.

I am sorry that a bunch of people have lost a mechanic/interaction they enjoyed, but honestly it’s hard to imagine a version of the cloak of mist/vanish interaction that isn’t incredibly cheesy. They should probably just start fresh with CoM and replace it with something that has interesting interactions that don’t break the game. There’s a reason she was banned from the Onslaught tournament.

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I agree that the old Cloak of Mist + Vanish was definitely overpowered, no doubt.

However, as outlined above, the current 4.4. iteration leaves Vanish as a mostly impractible and clunky niche talent - basically the same as it was before Cloak of Mist got introduced. That is bad design.

At the same time, Cloak of Mist still remains problematic in its current state as it retains its massive cdr, thus allowing for strong frontline options with a short cooldown for invis.

In summary, the current adjustments in 4.4 do not achieve any positive change but only break synergies without adding anything in return, as well as not touching otherwise debatable designs.
Refer to the original post for more detailed arguments.
The current changes to all the different ult talents + the base ult should be reverted, they are bad either way, no matter how you look at them.

In short, no, I do not think that old Cloak of Mist and Vanish should come back in the exact same form.

The changes that I proppsed to Cloak of Mist and Vanish in my original post are aimed at creating a version where the interaction between Vanish and Cloak of Mist remains intact but it would do so in a nerfed state (basically, reducing the potential damage output and the invis uptime).

This version would be more comparable to other careers that are also designed to kill multiple enemies from stealth, such as Rv and Huntsman.
(I am aware that some community members are opposed to invisibility existing in general yet that discussion would exceed the scope of this topic/post).
The point is that the existance of other classes that are able to attack from stealth (and remain stealthed while doing so) showcases that this design is not unique to Shade nor is inherently problematic by default.

Instead, the idea behind Cloak of Mist + Vanish is fine.
Rather, it is the execution that was overtuned and allowed for too much damage and too much safety on a cooldown that was too short.

By limiting these factors in the way described in the post, I think the combo of Cloak of Mist and Vanish would be more in line with other classes/abilities.
Furthermore, it is always possible to tweak the suggested numbers further, e.g. from the suggested 20% cdr to 0% cdr or give Vanish a cooldown that will not allow it to be chained into more Vanish procs etc.

Lastly, Cloak of Pain should not get touched at all (literally no one even argued for a nerf to it).
Nor should the ranged crit on ult get removed since it presents a tradeoff: 1 ranged crit (which is not much for a 60 secs cooldown) compared to the melee damage boost on infiltrate if you melee.

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33

I dont cheese play her even if it’s possible. Maybe something needs to be done to fix her, but I do hope they find an equally satisfying way to hunt from the shadows as I think it should be the speciality of shade.
I have been playing all classes for a long time, mostly shade though, and if I think back, maybe the best time was before they added the cloak of mist with 4 seconds crit…
The problem then was that cloak of pain was the only viable alternative, which kinda sucks because I really wanted to use the other talents.

What about these:
Talent 1: Cloak of pain as today (but without removal of crit).
Talent 2: As cloak of pain but with less bonus damage and less cooldown
Talent 3: As shadowstep but the strike also staggers all enemies around you

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Just anecdotal, but I run vanish all the time with dual daggers and spring heeled Assassin. The primary mechanism of avoiding damage is kiting groups and picking off the edges. I find that with movement speed and proximity to allies I often trigger invisibility mid fight just running around spamming light attacks. This helps clear aggro and lets me occasionally chain some additional backstabs mid combat without my ult. As long as my teammates can hold their own the horde will thin dramatically from the back as a result.

I think the movement speed particularly helps me get to enemies targeting heroes other than myself, making backstabs non trivial but relatively available.

That’s all without ult synergy, which can make the whole situation much easier to set up.

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Vanish is not a “literally unusable” talent by any means.

Nevertheless, the old Cloak of Mist with its guaranteed crit on first hit provided a reliable way of making use of it.

Getting the occasional, random Vanish proc is exactly the sort of clunky niche function I was describing.
True, Vanish does work and can be helpful but it can also just as well be counterproductive to randomly drop aggro on the rest of the team.

Moreover, running the risk of being caught out of position during high pressure situations while going for backstabs only to hope that Vanish will proc when you need it (because the ult can no longer guarantee that/relies heavily on rng to get it to work/see original post) is poor design in my opinion.

Vanish should have a reliable way of triggering it when you need it - getting semi-random Vanish procs throughout the match when you don’t actually really need them matters little.

An unpredictable talent that fails you in critical moments is an awkward and unenjoyable mechanic that is frankly not that good - especially not when said talent used to be reliable.

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36

I guess my point was

  1. I don’t find it to be clunky
  2. I don’t find it to be niche
  3. I don’t find it to be that random. I can tell when I have an enemy in front of me that will trigger it. I do get it sometimes when I don’t expect in a horde of trash but its reliable when I am expecting to get it.

It’s actually a very nice utility that gives shade some extra tank in high pressure situations, allowing her to alleviate pressure on her allies more easily.

It can be counterproductive to randomly drop aggro near teammates but I don’t have that problem with vanish. It’s actually kind of implicit in the design, if you have the aggro you’ll not trigger vanish. If you don’t have aggro you’ll trigger it and it won’t matter either way.

My experience isn’t the same as everyone’s I guess but I run vanish a lot because I think it’s fun, highly potent, and remarkably useful in a wide range of situations. In it’s current state.

I do usually run cloak of pain though just for the single target deletion + safety, which I find to be invaluable. I’d like to try cloak of mists.

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This gets worse the higher the difficulty as raw damage non-crit backstabs will deal less and less damage to an enemy’s hp to the point where Vanish requires a set of specific conditions to work, thus making it clunkier and more niche than before.

Do you mean that Cloak of Mist + Vanish is not safe due Vanish not proccing reliably with Cloak of Mist?
Before 4.4/4.3, the combo of Cloak of Mist + Vanish was considered op precisely because it allowed you to stay invis (=safe) for far longer than Cloak of Pain, while also dealing much more damage.

Besides, using Cloak of Pain and Vanish is also negatively impacted by the current changes since the 2nd Cloak of Pain invis hit is no longer a guaranteed crit, therefore making a Vanish proc not guaranteed.

Ultimately, if Vanish works well enough for you in your experience, that’s perfectly fine and I’ll just agree to disagree.
In my opinion, the 4.4. iteration of all of Shade’s ults is a change for the worse that, among other things discussed in the original post, has made Vanish + Cloak of Mist more awkward due to its less reliable bevavior.

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I did say I haven’t tried cloak of mists much but I will concede that yeah, knowing I wasn’t going to get invisibility after an ult would change how I use the ult. With cloak of pain I can kill a chaos warrior in a huge crowd no problem. With cloak of mists, knowing I didn’t hit the breakpoint for a chaos warrior backstab, I would probably pick a different target in a different position.

That’s, of course, a tradeoff for being able to do it roughly twice as much. Cloak of mists seems great for battlefield mobility and establishing flanks for squishies but I’ll have to actually give it a shot on legend.

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So I gave cloak of mists a try and I liked it. I felt like losing the ability to effortlessly one shot high health targets was a balanced tradeoff to being able to cloak twice as much and still chain crit backstabs.

The point of contention seems clear: You can’t guarantee a crit on the first backstab so you lose reliability on procuring vanish out of cloak of mists.

During my play session (Legend) I found the following:

  1. Invisibility allows you to walk through enemies, making it possible to headshot backstab stormvermin by standing somewhat inside them which is a kill without crit. Even with their horrid posture. Spring heeled assassin and move speed buffs make this somewhat easier.

  2. In higher pressure situations I found it useful to start a backstab chain with a trash mob rather than a high priority target to procure the guaranteed crits and vanish. Then it was easy cheese to kill everything else in reach.

  3. The double uptime on cloak made it possible to clutch revive an entire team as a sole survivor and get great distance between myself and enemies when needed. (With some sweat - of course). With cloak of pain this is much harder or even impossible.

  4. I was able to cloak flank basically every horde with impunity since I got my ult back so fast. In non mixed hordes this made me a friendly fire liability but in mixed hordes it was wonderful.

So I liked it. I feel like I might even like it better than cloak of pain even though not being able to one shot a chaos warrior was a little sad. I would say cloak of mists gives higher survivability than cloak of pain as long as you pick the right targets to break cloak the first time and/or reliably land headshot backstabs. The double uptime is really great for flanking and you can do enough damage to trash to trigger vanish and start your crit chain.

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Your discovery of Cloak of Mist is in line with what has been said about it since it got added 1 year ago.

Even without the old interaction with Vanish it’s still a debatable talent that makes clutching incredibly easy due to a low cd invis and its a high dmg output - the detailed version of this discussion can be found in my original post.

Concerning your points, I will point out that non-crit backstab kills on elites are unlikely to happen on higher difficulties (=cata and above), regardless of headshots as they have too much hp.

Besides, backstab headshots are still not exactly reliable with enemies moving/getting staggered/killed/etc. when playing with a competent team that knows how to play aggressively.

Additionally, I explained in my original post why having to rely on a trash enemy to start a backstab chain is a plainly bad design choice:

If your argument is that Vanish is a perfectly fine talent in the current state of Cloak of Mist/Pain, then I disagree.

Yes, Vanish can still work (and when it does it is exactly as overpowered as before, so the changes still do not rein that in at all) but its trigger conditions with the changed Cloak of Mist/Cloak of Pain have become a lot less predictable.

It now requires a specific set of several conditions to get use out of it, which makes it significantly less userfriendly and far more awkward than what is reasonable.

As a direct result, the synergy between Cloak of Mist/Cloak of Pain and Vanish has been severely undermined.

Reliability is a key part of what makes mechanics work well and feel good. Vanish has objectively become less reliable for the many reasons outlined.

Furthermore, the synergy with Vanish being broken is just 1 negative aspect of the current changes to Shade’s ult.
As demonstrated in the posts above, these changes are entirely backwards and only have unsatisfactory consequences without any positive parts.

I fail to see a valid reason to defend the 4.3/4.4 changes.
They do not actually fix any issue with Shade (see original post for these issues) and this iteration of Shade’s base ult and ult talents is frankly worse on all fronts (unjustifiably so).

The changes should be reverted and Cloak of Mist + Vanish should be addressed in a different manner, e.g. like the suggestion in the original post.