The Kruber Problem

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
21

I did mention it’s across 4 people, which was the point of framing it that way. Too many people have been trying to argue it’s weakness from a point of either: how one of the stats is too weak (ignoring the fact that you get more than one) or that seemingly he’s not giving that buff out AoE. Not you of course, but I had it framed that way in case of others.

The fact that he’s giving those stats out to the entire party is why he’s good. I don’t think gaining 5% AS and 10% pure Power VS on each player in the group is bad.

Well, this is why I had that big disclaimer on my post. :slight_smile:

I don’t think he’s the problem. It would actually be nice if we could make a tier list for each Character-Career, but it would be so difficult, because of builds like Shotgun making RV better than he is with every other Weapon. That would kind of help show the disparity in usefulness.

Nothing seems to get changed unless it’s utterly broken to the point of being absurd anyway, sadly. People having to mod Weapon balance has proven that.

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22

Honestly, I think the buffs he gives are fine and taking the strength pots w/ proxy makes for quite a good build, in my opinion. However, I don’t think they’re any better than anything on offer from other classes with supportive elements and pale in comparison to what’s offered by Mercenary or Witch Hunter Captain; especially when taking into consideration that the support passive on Grail Knight has an entire talent row dedicated to it. I’d prefer if the 50% bonus talent was just what GK had at base with health regen (non-buffed and non-bugged) being a talent that would activate after completing 2 duties or some such type of deal.

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23

Merc should not have 40% + 25% damage reduction. Would rather he not have more DR than FK.

Suggestion: cap Merc’s total DR through talents to 20% or restructure the ult talents so that the cdr/no thp talent is the party wide DR. Put a bandaid on whichever other DR talent we just axed with a stamina regen, no one complains about being able to push more.

I don’t play hobo, no comment about him.

FK is fine. Three months ago I’d be moaning about how weak his dps is, but GK covers that, so I guess there’s really not much needed to improve FK besides the stagger from his ult being interrupted?

GK is fine imo. A little frustrating to play because of the game’s meta. Maybe bring back the increased hp IB had years ago and give GK the 210 health? Lol.

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24

Huntsman is in a pretty good spot his only problem is that his ult was (imo) overnerfed and the empire longbow has a relatively janky zoom that was added with Winds of Magic that nobody asked for and nobody likes

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25

Leave my Krub alone!!!

Go Nerf your own Carreers!!

Krub and Bardin is not to be Groped again by the Likes of you!!

GO Nerf the Rest of the Bunch!!!

STOP Calling out NERF THIS AND THAT!!!

PLAY something else!!!

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There is a Sanctioned Mod from Wave 3 that gives you more Sensitivity on Zoom, its pretty good!

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EXE is Fun, but gets Boring…

Merc is the Most fun with 2H Sword or 2H Hammer in my opinion! Ye, i mean i like a good Bashing :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But GK with 2H Hammer, oh my that is fun as Hell! When you one Shot Marauders in a row, its quite satisfying!

However cant wait for that Sweet Holy 2H Sword Weapon Illusion we use for Ult!!!
Why that is not in the Game already, only Sigmar knows! (ehh the Leeedy)

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28

For what it’s worth, I am of the opinion that Gk offers decent cc with a shield, opportunist and 30% extra power. I do not have the stagger breakpoints at hand atm but I am sure he’s able to stagger almost all enemy attacks except some zerker jumps and cw hits? (Would need to test that again, not sure). Edit: 30% power from the talent is enough to stagger monks and zerkers.

His passives are also nothing to sneeze at.

Considering that Merc offers 10% attack speed, Fk 15% dr, Huntsman 5% crit, Whc 5% crit and 20% dmg, Gk having 5% attack speed, +10% dmg, 10% dr etc. is quite good.

However, I do agree that he could do with some buffs.
Personally, I would change the movespeed ult talent to give +15% attack speed for 10 secs as to give him some much needed attack speed. Would also make that talent/row more of a choice.

The parry/virtue of discipline talent could also be changed to have built-in parry trait and give +25% crit chance (instead of 20% power) after parrying, similar to the Huntsman headshot talent.
That would give him more reason to use the crit talent at lvl 10 and have great synergy with the bastard sword heavies.

Reworking stoicism to + 50% healing received for 5 secs or so after taking a hit sounds great too.
I would also like to see the passive +10% movespeed removed and replaced with a flat 10% damage reduction, same value that Fk has.

Overall, balance is in a great spot at the moment, apart from some exceptionally strong careers like Bw, Merc and Whc, and some weaker classes like Uc, Fk an Rv that are in need of serious buffs/reworks.
The difference between most of the classes is quite minor and only requires some cleanup for useless talents such as “+25% power when out of ammo”. I would prefer buffs first and nerfs only when absolutely needed.

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The zoom is a bit fiddly but can be played around by hovering/tapping right click up until the moment you want to fully aim, it avoids the movement speed penalty too.

Other than that Huntsman is still pretty solid. He has a lot going for him, a high skill ceiling makes him rewarding to play too.

A few negatives:

MASTER HUNTSMAN: Reduces damage taken by 3%. Increases to 30% after the party kills a monster. Lasts until end of mission or death.

I don’t think he is the ranged boss killer he once was, that title probably goes to BH as of right now.
It’s also an all or nothing talent, a boss could could later in the level or not at all.

LONGSHANKS: Increases movement speed by 10%.

10% ms is fine, just another dated/boring talent, it stacks nicely with spear movement speed though.

THRILL OF THE HUNT: Ranged headshots Increase reload speed by 20% for 5 seconds.

Handgun really suffers from low reload speed, bumping this up by another 5% might help or reworking it so ranged headshots return 1 ammunition back into the “clip”. Both of which would improve his boss DPS and target chaining potential.

Other than that, maybe just new interesting level 30 talents.
Perhaps a talent to improve his clearing speed instead of focusing so much on single target damage e.g: Ranged headshots ricochet to a nearby target.

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30

I can understand the ratio behind it: Merc can has higher potential DR, but it is conditional, FK has lower, but it is unconditional. Problem is that the condition is easily met and can make the DR available in situations where it matters almost every time, whereas the FK’s constant availability of damage reduction is pointless in situations where there is no damage to resist.

I like Merc where he is, not because he is so fun to play, but Merc is a carreer that simply has a good kit. His active and passive abilities have good synergy, his talents have good synergy between each other AND between active and passive abilities, AND his weapon and talent choice allows for very easy, effective and dinstinquishable gearing towards offense, defense, utility or anything in between, without him having to sacrifice anythng. Which is a GOOD thing. You almost never see anyone running the CDR talent on Merc. Wonder why? Because it takes away the temp health, and the reduced CDR is not a big enough benefit to not only compete against the other two choices, but to also outweigh the penalty it has.

Similar thing with Shade, though the idea of basically “perma-invis” is a fun concept, it is simply unnecessary, since even without any CDR, you can be invisible pretty much any time you want, anyhow. And again, both other choices are equally strong, and losing the damage bonus is such a hefty penalty that apart from some meme-fun-builds (which are perfectly okay), the choice is essentially none.

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Merc gains 0.5 seconds for each enemy hit, pair that with his innate cleave bonus and his ult damage reduction is up quite often. While conditional, the amount of damage reduction he provides considering the up time, it’s a little too good. Merc also provides more damage reduction to allies than FK.

FK is partially conditional. For allies to gain any benefits they have to be close to him and FK has to be close to allies to reap any of the benefits from “That’s Bloody Teamwork!”. Merc’s supportive damage reduction is just “Press F and forget”.

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32

In regards to Mercenary, I think a few smaller nerfs would be a good start. Change his Blade Barrier to something like 20% DR, The More the Merrier to 15% max power instead of 25% (how it was pre-2.0) and stuff like that.

The big thing though is his ult. I’m just going to say that I don’t think that Krubers ult should give DR at all. It’s too powerful and doesn’t make sense how a guy shouting gives you more damage protection than a full suit of gromril armour. That and it’s just a bit boring and unimaginative. Here’s what I would suggest:

Morale Boost gives everyone in the team x% more healing received for 10s, granting increased tHP generation, reinvigorating them.
Morale Boost gives everyone in the team attack speed for 10s, inspiring them to kill more.
Morale Boost gives everyone in the team x% increased stamina regeneration (and possibly some extra BCR), inspiring them to hold on and defend, and granting them more stamina for pushes and push attacks.

Kruber gets a bit less max power, slightly less DR from Blade Barrier, and it removes his overpowered and simple 40% DR for the entire team for something that’s arguably more fun and interactive.

Another thing is his “Strike Together” talent. It gives everyone in the party 10% attack speed, wherever they may be. This seems a bit daft in my opinion, the talent literally calls for you and your teammates to fight together side by side, yet it doesn’t encourage that and is fine with your team being spread out. It should be an aura (maybe not as small of a radius as other auras) so that it forces you to fight together side by side as the damn talent suggests. Same with his active ability, its radius should be reduced just a bit.

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33

That combined with removing his DR is a pretty hefty nerf. Also you’re nerfing paced strikes. I don’t think you can say “minor nerfs” when you nerf every aspect of his toolkit quite substantially. I don’t think there is anything wrong with merc other than how broken his ult is. His damage output isn’t all that crazy.

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The minor was only if the first paragraph. Yes I think his ult DR should be changed, but other than that it’s not much else that really gets changed. I’m not nerfing Paced Strikes, I’m nerfing Strike Together, and even then all I’m asking is for the ability to get a reach reduction, it doesn’t have to be a small radius. He still gets 20% DR and really strong tHP generation.
I mean, should Mercenary have really strong damage reduction on top of his great tHP generation? It’s generally one or the other for most careers, not to mention his support abilities that he has and just being a strong frontliner.

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I get that I’m nitpicking, but that’s kind of an odd thing to say. Having passive DR is great.

Back on topic, this is my opinion so I don’t mind if I’m wrong, but Mercenary is one of those classes that scales with difficulty. Since there’s always things to hit, since 1v1 situations against bosses or elites are uncommon, Merc’s passives and talents are almost always up. And they are very, very strong. FK is not on the same level and some of his talents are a pain in the butt to keep up (imo, such as Counter-Punch. Waiting for the enemy to attack when it’s convenient is not as preferable as staggering them before they can attack). His passives and talents do not necessarily increase in effectiveness the more things are on screen.

Even as a shield wall, which FK is exceptionally good at being, he’s still not close to the same level as Mercenary. Why settle for just blocking and being unkillable when you can massacre hordes, elites, and everything else, burn down their homes, salt the earth, and do it while making your whole team nigh unkillable?

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36

I guess when I see aura I think of auras in this game. If you mean a very large aura, then that wouldn’t be much change. I just don’t think he needs any nerf to his damage output. I agree that his DR stacking is clearly an issue. Also, another solution may just be to make WiO multiplicative instead of additive DR. That way you don’t hit those crazy invulnerability windows or near invulnerability depending on class.

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37

The way the math works on damage reduction in Vermintide definitely needs a rework

the groupings need changing so weaker variants aren’t overshadowed and the stronger sources that stack like crazy are brought down to sane levels

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38

I mean, there is definitely a middle ground where you and your team have to stick closer together, but not literally right next to each other, and not make it so that it still spreads to the entire map (which again, thematically I don’t like since the talent is literally called “Strike Together”)

It’s 10% less power, which would out him at 30% max power. He still has innate extra cleave and passive 5% crit chance. Together with his high cleave horde clearing weapons still makes him strong. I just don’t think he should get more power than Zealot when he offers so much more.

Yeah you could nerf WiO to something like 25% DR and/or make it multiplicative, but as I said, I just don’t think it fits Mercenary thematically. I don’t think a shout should give you damage reduction like that, the examples I gave previously I think were cool, with increased healing probably being my favourite, allowing everyone in your team to build up more tHP, while still have them work for it just a bit.

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I mean, I see what you’re saying, but Zealot also gets an average of about 32% attack speed + being way tankier. So idk if comparing power to power is really the way to go on that. But we can agree to disagree on this point if you think Merc is putting out too much raw damage. It would really only matter for hordes anyways.

40

Zealot can reach an astounding extra 75% attack speed so even if he has a little less power than merc he’ll still be doing more damage per second and have an easier time. Not 100% uptime but a very high uptime with “Flagellant’s Zeal”

I personally don’t think blade barrier should be nerfed, just WiO. Maybe 40% to 30%, needs messing around with to find the sweet balance spot.

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