The next BBB - List of Balance Concerns: Shade, Gk, Bw, Ranged Classes and More - Feedback and Suggestions

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
41

@Rapax

To touch just upon the Grail Knight at this point, I’m afraid the fundamental problem lies within the fact that he is a Grail Knight. These guys are completely over the top and beyond ridiculous in Warhammer lore. They eat armies, malevolent champions and great monsters for breakfast. Someone who has proven himself worthy before the Green Knight and the Lady would simply have no issue walking over anything and everything that Vermintide II currently throws at the heroes, which is low-level to mid-tier enemies at best. A handful of Grail Knights can, according to Warhammer lore, get as much killing done between themselves as an entire army of ordinary soldiers. So this career should completely blow Merc & Foot Knight out of the water in the melee combat department, given what it is.

Of course that you need some measure of reason for the sake of gameplay, but making it an objective to bring him in line with Kruber’s other paths conflicts fundamentally with his identity as a Grail Knight. He could have been a Questing Knight perhaps, but the decision can’t be changed at this point. That being said, in my opinion he isn’t a major offender currently. Powerful for sure, but I think he requires plenty of skill in order to actually perform well. I see plenty of people struggling a lot with him in public games, generally due to the lack of understanding of basic game principles which become quite relevant when you don’t have a ranged weapon or damage mitigation. He could use more meaningful and interesting talents, but I don’t think his killing power is out of line with what he is supposed to be. I don’t really play mace&sword or executioner sword so I can’t comment on their performance from my own experience, but when I see people running them, they are either doing great because they are fantastic players with thousands of hours of try-harding on board, or they completely pancake to slave rats because they don’t have a clue. It’s hard to judge these things in a vacuum.

42

I’m not that good. I hadn’t played Dual Daggers or Shade seriously until that run. If a player isn’t at a level of skill and knowledge that’s high enough for Cata, they can play Legend. There are plenty of difficulties to choose from, and Cata is a dlc one.

Twitch is rng and not skill dependent. Some deeds are okay. Modded Onslaught is skill/knowledge based. Deathwish brings more emphasis on positioning and understanding kite loops than the vanilla game could ever hope to do its current state, even if it messes with weapon/career balance in some bad ways. Combine both Onslaught and Deathwish and we get a difficulty where team work, kiting together and not just slapping crit chance and attack speed on everything is important.

Excessively high dps lets Shade ignore gameplay aspects like positioning. Excessively high stealth up time compounds this fact further and makes it true even on modded content.

I didn’t play well and still did a Cata true solo through brute force. That’s silly. I bet the average Cata player could do it without too much trouble if they threw Vanish on top.

43

A lot of good ideas to bring balance a bit closer and to reign in those overperforming. Also, mostly just very nuanced changes. Still, the problem with every BBB will be how to present in to the community so people don’t whine unjustified about nerfing.

As you said, you have raised a lot of topics and I don’t know how much the next BBB will and should accomplish. I think for the moment, it will concentrate of the talents of the so far untouched careers. I would expect minor changes to Mercenary and WHC, just to avoid the overstacked builds. I would expect a general rework of the Zealot core design as it is just not functioning currently (and no, not because of regeneration but because the risk/reward-ratio is borked, like … having zero risk). I would expect medium changes to Waystalker, Pyromancer and Battle Wizard. Not sure about Slayer, personally I don’t think he should have so much uptime of the career skill. But as I expect some larger changes I am not sure how I should weight in currently.

As for the ammo sustain discussion. We had this one recently and I agree. I am against the concept of a theoretical possible ammo self-sustain on non-ranged careers. One of these is Conservative Shooter where you never run out of ammo. Therefore, I completely support the regeneration for only every second headshot. Adding the once per shot trigger may be a bit overkill though as @alsozara said.
But I think ammo sustain should be tackled after the talent balance is mostly done in a separate BBB concentrating on traits (even though they obviously interact). But the adjustment of ammo sustain traits as well as the unhealthy nature of broken Swift Slaying and the extremely niche application of Heroic Intervention. Ultimately, Fatshark’s decision on how much at once they want to tackle. Hard to say. But we have several topics which deserve a visit like Talents/Careers, Ammo Sustain & Traits, THP adjustments, Stagger Talents.

I will single out just one of your many points:

I completely agree. It was okay before without the stagger power increase and it should be reversed. The issue is also not only with the Flaming Flail before people say it would be easier to just change the weapon. I may agree to a compromise like adding the stagger power effect by overcharge however only in reduced capacity (like 30 % instead of 60 %) and as talent (like either replace Natural Talent or Chain Reaction with it).
I fear the train of thought was to enhance and focus her melee style to separate her from the dreaded often cited Pyromancer. However, the conclusion is wrong in my opinion. They should just tone down Pyromancer melee crit build and leave Unchained untouched. No melee attack should have a crit chance above 20 %. Overall, they should use the next BBB to adjust the different focus points of Sienna’s careers which will be doable as Pyromancer and Battle Wizard has been left untouched last BBB. What I would like to see is:

  • Battle Wizard: Control-focus like directing hordes and staggering them at the cost of lower damage output
  • Pyromancer: Ranged-focus either single target damage or AoE
  • Unchained: Melee and close-quarter effect-focus like Outburst and Frenzied Flame and Dissipate and her active skill and to a Enfeebling Flames.

Like this you would have three more distinctive careers with different focus. As said above, Pyromancer and Batle Wizard would need medium sized changes to their talent trees while Unchained would remain mostly the same (although there are some useful changes which could still be made like re-adressing Abandon and Bomb Balm mostly). But most important, for the moment they should reverse the stagger power increase by overcharge.

As for the question if the changes mentioned in the OP would make the game more fun. Of course, without doubt this will be the case. A better balance between the careers and also in regard to the different difficulties will always yield a more positive gameplay experience and make up for a better co-op multiplayer experience (you know, the thing the game has been marketed for). There has been a lot of power-creep and just toning down some stuff is needed and recommanded. For those who wish to live out their power fantasy, they always have the option to go down a difficulty within the official realm.

44

I beg to differ with regards to the “meta” careers. Not arguing with saying that Shade, Bw, Whc etc. are the top picks but that is underselling the ranged classes imo.

E.g. a doom ranger setup with grudgeraker is among the highest dps outputs in the entire game, or Ws with hagbane can easily demolish most threats and reach a gross amount of dmg dealt thanks to aoe ranged weapons. Bh is a staple for boss killing and Bw is a ranged class that has been dominating the game for 1.5 years etc.

Slightly reducing overall ammo sustain on all classes would mean that the difference in ranged power between melee and ranged classes remains the same while also adding either more melee incentives or buffs if we follow the discussion between @Incandescent and @James.

Agree, I was aiming for that by giving him base 10% damage reduction and making Stoicism better.

It’s harder to balance Gk at times because the quest boons are rng, e.g. he can get another 10% dr (15% dr with the improved quest boon talent) which should make him quite a bit sturdier.
If he does not get that quest, it would only remain at 10% dr base - a lot worse but still better.

Agree that this is a potential risk. I added the option of just reducing the stagger power of the aoe down from boss stagger level to Slayer jump without (or even with) Crunch.
I like the idea of trading some stagger safety for raw dmg but I can also see why removing the stagger completely could end up killing the viability of Fervency.

That’s a real issue, not just for Bh but overall, on other ranged classes as well as on melee classes (e.g. shotgun Ib, repeater pistol Whc, etc. - why play them when other options do far better in terms of ammo sustain?).
Some weapons struggle more to get ammo while others are practically swimming in it.
Not all weapons need equal ammo sustain but the gap between the best and the worst ought to be smaller so players can justify their fav choice.
Ideally the ammo count for each ranged weapon should be tweaked individually.
Although I think that this is more weapon dependent rather than career dependent.

Tough question since Scrounger is very rng and as you said these setups are not pushing the power levels too far either. Still worth it to look into that though.
Maybe a cooldown during which Scrounger cannot trigger again?
Although throwing cooldowns around is not really the most fun way of balancing, e.g. Resourceful Combatant got nerfed into oblivion partly because of the punishing cooldown on it.

True, the identity of a class should be kept in mind in order to stay true to the setting and retain a proper theme and immersion - if possible.

Nevertheless, I find myself more leaning towards this approach to balancing.
Otherwise Ib would need to have 95% damage reduction due to his Gromril armor and only really take damage from gas and warpfire.
Sienna would also have to be souped up like crazy to represent a proper wizard, Burning Head would need to kill full regiments of unarmored chaff etc.

In terms of balancing Gk, changing the suggested talents should not hurt his performance more than what is justified.
Although, to be fair, he does perform better on higher difficulties and these changes would only solidify this perceived mediocre performance on lower difficulties due to the lack of elites for him to kill, whereas he would still scale well into modes with more elites.

@Incandescent’s suggestions of a nerf to Mace&Sword might also add enough already so not all of my proposed changes to Gk might be necessary.

45

Based on official realm or modded realm?
Doomranger is definitely up there for modded realm but I can’t really say the same for official realm.
There’s simply not enough density to make full use of the Grudge-Raker nor is there a constant stream of specials/ammunition. He’s undoubtedly strong but not OP.

Horde clearing speed isn’t as important in official realm anyway, Slayer can chew through hordes and elites, Ironbreaker is exceptional + amazing durability and utility.

Besides that point, I sent some feedback/suggestions in a ticket, to reduce the amount of burst ammunition recovery RV offers among other things.
Essentially reducing his caches to one every 20 seconds and a talent that allows RV to speed that up through melee combat.

46

Indeed, there are fewer enemies and fewer specials on official, especially on lower difficulties, which means that Rv gets less ammo.
At the same time, fewer enemies overall mean he needs less ammo overall as well and will still do exceptionally well for how comparatively little Rv requires (point shotgun at horde/mauler waves/zerker waves/monk clusters/unarmored specials - just let your team kill the specials for you - pull trigger, ???, profit, never run out of ammo, rinse and repeat).

This is not limited to doom ranger: pistol ranger, bolt Bw, hagbane Ws, blunderbuss huntsman etc. are all very strong for being able to go full ranged for a miniscoule amount of effort.

Standing back, being fairly safe and spamming powerful ranged weapons is overtuned in general.
To me, it creates a wrong dynamic when a class can hang back, hide behind the frontline and demolish heaps of enemies without ever really running out of ammo (or caring much about heat).

Your suggestion of adding a “melee phase” where ranged classes have to stop shooting/run out of ammo and have to go on a short ammo recovery trip in melee would be quite welcome and a less drastic change compared to reducing ammo sustain in general.

Changing it like that would probably be fine, idk, would have to test it, for instance just how long should that melee phase be (case in point: Bh killing 1 elite in melee or just ulting it and getting 30% of max ammo is too little effort imo).
Ultimately, it addresses the same issue so it’s cool with me.

Lastly, I remember there having been a good post about this issue back during the BBB in summer, I think it was by @Ganjii96 about his concerns about the “ranged meta” or so?
It was on the BBB subforum, which is not accessible anymore.

47

You gotta be careful because I feel like a few of those range builds don’t really hit their stride until cata (and above) and you are talking about all-game balance here.

For example bolt BW one shot breakpoints are less impressive on legend where many careers can also hit them with much faster weapons. Doom ranger doesn’t have the horde density or ammo supply to really get the most out of the grudge etc.

Personally I feel like bolt BW and doom ranger are in an OK place for regular cata (although BW is a bit too good in general). They both offer a lot of killing power but are fragile and reliant on melee characters to hold the line.

48

I wouldn’t call BW fragile, she is probably the safest ranged career with fire sword, fire walk, soot shield and stagger thp.

49

BW needs a few different changes

for starters her ult talents need tweaking to be more in balance with eachother

Volcanic Force and Famished Flames are a problem; lingering is a meme that probably shouldn’t exist as it does currently

Soot Shield and BW’s synergy with Fire Sword H1 spam are also an issue, especially since her temp gains are rather lackluster if you’re not spamming that or dagger H1. Problem here might just be stagger thp in general on her OR it’s just that fire sword is too effective in its 1 dimensional nature

(my thread on firesword linked on the OP would help partly with this I reckon)

50

Ok, she is more resilient than she should be. But bolt battle wizard isn’t exactly stellar when under constant melee pressure is my point, she wants a frontline to operate around.

51

To be fair, you need to be trying extremely hard to manage to get downed as an IB, which I think is quite fine and the whole point of the career and its flavor. And amusingly enough, that’s exactly what I had in mind for the burning head. Right now it’s just a very weak and unreliable trueflight shot. I wouldn’t mind it being changed towards something like a huge swath of fire that just deletes everything in front of the pyromancer, naturally with adjustments to cooldown and perhaps with the downside of generating a lot of heat.

53

The wording is correct, it’s up to 40%.

Getting hit just reduces his stacks by 1 or by 10% DR.
The DR is also additive with itself rather than multiplicative.

A slave rat deals 40 damage, 4 stacks of Thick Hide reduces that to 24 damage.


54

In that case I have a bug report to write. The DR only goes to 10% on PS4.

55

Constant melee pressure would be bad for her indeed but that holds true for all ranged specialists and isnt a meaningful downside, and she has her ability to just demolish most hordes that might try it on her.

Then ontop of that she has one of the best upsides in her bolts packing a metric ton of damage, even on bodyshots. In moments where the waystalker stops to aim down Wizard is already throwing a blast towards something and likely kills it.

56

BW is actually pretty hard to keep pressure on: her ability to stun-lock everything with Fire Sword, be highly durable due to her extreme sustain+damage reduction AND the ability to just blink out/mass stagger of any tough spot lets her flex very easily into a frontline role for as long as she needs to be there for until there’s space/reason to start shooting again

57

Can we put the balance of classes lower on the priority list than fixing bad gameplay design?

Zealot needs help. Every hero likes to have healing except him. Simple fix would be instead of being low HP he gets his stacks from taking damage recently. e.g. Getting hit by a trash unit gives 1 stack for 30 seconds. Getting hit by an elite or monster gives 3 stacks. Max 6, taking damage from any enemy refreshes the stacks. Now he can heal away and not feel bad while still having his identity of self flagellation increasing his righteous fervor.

Witch Hunter Captain is poorly designed as a damage booster. Both lore wise and gameplay. How does you looking at a berserker increase your damage when the captain hates all berserkers likewise? What kind of skill check is there to earn it? Let WHC keep the damage as a passive +20% damage dealt to taggable enemies. Or have the damage be earned as whenever an enemy is dealt damage by WHC they take 20% more damage. Simply boosting damage for ‘free’ is unintuitive to new players and reduces the difficulty for better players.

Healshare sucks, it’s on every hero, and it eats valuable temp HP talent space. Giving the healshare talent the same rarity as on kill talent would balance it out. Players like agency.

Thematically giving stealth an entrance period on Shade ult (2-5 seconds after you activate ult you go invisible, but you get the damage available immediately) would still be fun for players without making stealth too strong. As far as the permanent stealth goes that’s more an issue with the talent than the ult. Making it a strong (4-6 second) stealth on backstab but then needing to wait a brief period (10 seconds) still gives patrol killing power, without giving it the horde slaughter power and patrol delete power.

Grail Knight has no attack speed steroids and is thus relegated to fast attacking weapons and hard hitting ones. Practically making his weapon choice Sword and Mace with Exe Sword as backup. Rather than nerfing weapons and nerfing talents/hero give the player more agency in weapon choice/talent choice. There is an argument to be made to reducing the gap between weapons after the hero using them has adjustments to make them less dependent on it.

Slayer needs help too. His talents are restrictive to such a degree to force one play style as the only such. At level 20 he can choose, movement speed for 2 seconds, 10% damage, or 30% attack speed (~65% cdr means constant ult uptime). So the CDR/AS gets picked and then you sit at 37.5% AS. Swift Slaying caps you out. 10% from weapon and charm does too effectively. So his level 10 talent choice is regelated to 2H weapons increase power by 15%. Just because he only has one ‘optimal’ play style does not mean to nerf it! Slayer is arguably the weakest hero in the game.

Sienna. Oh boy. BW is the strongest hero in the game. Too many tools, tons of damage, safety, stagger, etc. And yet I’d not suggest nerfing her until many bugs are fixed first as her power may not be tied to a normal game without bugs.

Outside of egregious out performers I don’t think anything should be nerfed. (At current time that appears to be the masterwork pistol only) Yes I am advocating power creep. Why? Because until bugs get fixed, players will resort to BS and cheese to play the game. Nerfing strong heroes/talents/weapons just leaves players stuck between choosing to put the game down and play something more fun or grinding for an unfun and glitchy game.

58

Yes, there are fewer enemies on lower difficulties, which means that ranged classes do not get to shoot as many targets or can get as much ammo.
However, fewer enemies overall also means that the the targets they they do get to shoot still have the same impact, especially since fewer enemies mean they need less ammo too.

In fact, the lower the difficulty, the less pressure on the ranged classes due to a lack of enemies, elites, specials etc. which results in them being able to range down threats with even more impunity.

Tackling the overperformers and reining them in should have little effect on their viability on lower difficulties as the intended changes only tone them down to a reasonable level.
The goal is not to go from op to trash, but from op to good/in line with the rest.

A class that is still very good on cata and above will not struggle on anything below cata - and if they do get surpassed by another class on say, champ or legend, fine. Then let these difficulties have their own “meta” that is balanced.

Furthermore, lower difficulties cannot be used as an excuse to block meaningful change given that balance on lower difficulties is rarely an issue that is brought up.
Which begs the question: are there even balance issues on lower difficulites? (Sth. along the lines of “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”).

And if there are, they usually are not overly affected by changes to the very top of official difficulty.
And should that ever be the case, then I’d rather cross that bridge when we get there instead of not moving forward at all.

Unless I am misunderstanding your post, nearly all the points you raised are tied to classes/talents?
E.g. a rework of Zealot has been asked for several times, including in my original post.

I mean I agree that fixing bugs is important although I am not aware of any bugs that make Bw op, that blame lies with the talents.

In hindsight, I probably should have added somewhere in the original post that I am specifically talking about the PC version of the game, whereas you seem to be referring to the PS4 version.

I am not familiar with the console versions and I am unsure if balance on PC and console are comparable to any significant degree due the existing differences like breakpoints and enemy hp and mass values.
For instance, I cannot comment on Slayer being the weakest class on console - although that’s definitely not the case on PC.

59

I highly, HIGHLY suggest making different threads for different topics. As much as I would like to contribute to this discussion, I will not. Not in the format this thread presents. Everybody’s replying to one another and it’s impossible to talk about one singular subject without getting caught in the middle of a different conversation.

Make no mistake. I approve of bringing attention to what needs balancing/changing but this is just a mess.

60

Would it still stagger elites and monsters with the reduced stagger? If not, I’m not sure if it would be higher dps than default Animosity (since the default stagger gives more time to attack which results in higher dps as well as giving the stagger damage bonus). In terms of feel, it could also make the ult feel more like a ‘press f to crit’ effect which I think would be unsatisfying.

61

I feel like at least 50% of OP’s post is silly hyperbole & missing the forest for the trees.

Many of the ‘problems’ mentioned exist due to the nature of the games design. By the nature of giving players so many choices there’s going to be certain combinations of weapons/careers/talents that perform much better than the norm. And there’s also going to be stuff that just never performs well by comparison. That’s just an inevitability.

That’s not to say there aren’t legitimate balance issues that should be addressed. But that players tend to identify the symptoms of issues, rather than the cause. Players also tend to fixate on small things instead of holistic improvements to how people interact with & enjoy the game. Which leads to these giant lists of many tiny complaints and reactionary suggestions.