Other ‘Tips and Info’ threads for other Characters are linked at the bottom.
- Battle Wizard
- Pyromancer
- Unchained
- Necromancer
- Links to other threads
Feel free to ask or answer any questions, and I’ll add it to the main post, so it’s easier to find. I will add, remove or reword sections on request.
Introduction:
These are discussion threads, where the aim is to share and test different mechanical interactions or gameplay strategies that aren’t made clear by game descriptions or by general gameplay experience. For that reason I will not be focusing on breakpoints too heavily.
Links to other guides:
These are links to builds and in-depth information on every Career and Weapon. My guides are more to share information and mechanic interactions that aren’t obvious or take some testing:
For in-depth guides with specific stat builds and breakpoints, check out Sleezyrats and Royal w/ Cheese’s guides on Steam guides:
Steam Community :: Guide :: Tweaking Your Build (Supplement to the Build Guides)
Movement Speed techniques with all Characters/Careers/Weapons:
Steam Community :: Guide :: In-depth Movement Guide
1. Battle Wizard:
1. Battle Wizard:
Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 50s (45s with 10% CDR) - 25s (with 40% CDR) - 0.5s (removed with Fire From Ash)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.25s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.5s
Tips:
- Venting damage is not lowered by Damage Reduction
- Potential 40% Cooldown Reduction before Fires From Ash (10% on Trinket)
- Potential ?% Damage Reduction with Soot Shield and Barkskin
- Potential 45% Attack Speed with Immersive Immolation
- Potential 70% Cast Speed Reduction at high Overcharge
- Tranquility (Passive): Not casting spells for 6 seconds automatically ventilates Overcharge increases Overcharge decay speed by 200%
- Fires from Ash: Killing a burning enemy reduces the cooldown of Fire Walk by 3%. 0.5 second cooldown
- Famished Flame increases Incendiary Bomb damage
- Volcanic Force is applied to Bombs damage
- Volcanic Force is not applied to Career Skill damage, not even if Ranged Weapon is charged up
- Volcanic Force does nothing for Beam Staff
- Volcanic Force increases Coruscation Staff’s damage, but is nowhere close to Famished Flames over all
- Volcanic Force for Fireball Staff is worse than Famished and Lingering Flames, due to the ability to spam more Fireballs for Burn damage
- With Conflagaration; due to Barrage, and the need to spam cast, Famished and Lingering Flames seem like they’re better options than Volcanic Force
- Battle Wizard’s Volcanic Force talent affects the damage of Flamestorm’s left click attack. This might be a bug
- Flamestorm can work with all 3 second row Talents. Lingering is for high population density/high health modifiers and Specials (Cata+), spray everything and kite, Famished Flame deals a lot more burst AoE, and Volcanic Force deals extremely high burst on unarmoured, but requires a lot of health and timing to make it work. LF and FF are likely better than VF because of this
- Lingering Flames is a good alternative to a Special Killer, if you want to run a high AoE damage Weapon, with a group comp that’s low in Special killing power
- Career Skill benefits from both Famished and Lingering Flames
- Unusually Calm stands out as the best Overcharge burner due to a lack of downtime on higher difficulties
- Beam Staff’s sustained Beam Attack benefits from Famished Flame, and so lasering down Monsters works a charm
- Famished Flames also reduces Overheat explosion damage by 30%, because it is considered self-dealt damage
General opinion:
Whether built for CC or pure AoE damage, Battle Wizard is generally perceived to be one of the strongest Careers in the game, with some fun Ranged Weapon options.
The Staffs make builds feel more unique, and are well complimented by their respective Talents. Generally Famished Flames is best up until Cata++, where Lingering Flames can be extremely strong.
Lingering Flames can also replace having a Special Killer for triple melee + Sienna party composition (Slayer, Grail Knight, Warrior Priest & Sienna).
And ofcourse Volcanic Force and 20% Armour + 20% Infantry and Enhanced Power for Bolt Staff.
In terms of Melee, Fire Sword and Dagger are your main 2 options, due to Soot Shield and Fires From Ash. Other things can work, but the safety of those Heavy 1’s and ability to build more THP for more spam shooting wins out over any of the other options.
Pure damage and not DoT Melee Weapons don’t feel as if they have any other bonuses either.
Immersive Immolation is stupidly situational, as they only benefit you in Horde situations. You could try playing on on higher difficulties, but then you lose out on the Damage Reduction that would stop you dying to overheads and sprint attacks. Fires From Ash is safer, due to it giving you more AoE stuns.
All of her Staffs are viable for her, with Bolt Staff being better on her than any of the other Sienna Careers.
Synergy:
Any melee heavy team comp, that create space for to spam.
Any Careers that can feed her Damage Reduction, Temporary Health or True Health.
Any Careers that can give her bonus Power for ranged damage.
Questions:
2. Pyromancer:
2. Pyromancer:
Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 50s (45s with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.25s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.3s
Tips:
- Venting damage is not lowered by Damage Reduction
- Critical Mass (Passive): +5% crit chance per 6 overcharge. Stacks up to 5 times. 25% Crit Chance from Overcharge
- Potential 50% Crit Chance with Spirit-Casting (80% with WHC)
- Potential 45% Attack Speed with 40% Crit Chance or 40% Attack Speed and 50% Crit Chance
- Potential 15% Movement Speed with Fleetflame (20% with Stam/MS Trinket, 25% with Bounty Hunter’s Buff, which, sadly, noone uses)
- Bonded Flame benefits from Boon of Shallya
General opinion:
Pyromancer is the mostest glass cannon on Vermintide 2. If you take little damage and get as much ranged damage off as possible, you’ll absolutely destroy everything. There’s also extremely viable melee builds, where using Parry and Opportunist are both viable options. Parry on higher difficulty can help you survive situations you wouldn’t otherwise, as you have no AoE stuns.
Talent row 25 has two competetive Talents in Fleetflame and Flamestrike’s Tutelage. I’d recommend Fleetflame for melee heavy builds, especially with Sythe and Dagger.
Bonded Flame, Blazing Echo and Dissipating Rictus are your best Career Skill choices, with Bonding Flame being safest. Dissipating Rictus has the most skill/damage potential, but is very finnicky. Blazing Echo with a WHC (Crit buffs) in the party.
All of her Ranged Weapon options work, with Bolt Staff being the weakest due to lack of Cast Time Reduction or damage increases to make it hit breakpoints, you need to rely solely on Crit RNG (with Hunter).
Whether you’re a ranged or melee heavy build just depends on your team comp. Melee is always safer, even though Pyro is still very squishy, as you’re able to build lots of THP. Parry Trait can be used to give you more room for error.
The most simple all-rounder build you can take is Beam with Hunter, to spam Blast Attacks for Hunter Procs and then keep spamming or switch to Melee Weapons.
All of the Melee Weapon options are viable.
Synergy:
Any melee heavy team comp, that create space for her to spam ranged damage.
Any Careers that can feed her Damage Reduction, Temporary Health or True Health.
Any Careers that can give her bonus Power for ranged damage.
WHC and WPoS with their Crit and Crit Power support builds, respectively.
Questions:
3. Unchained:
3. Unchained:
Health: 180 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 203 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 120s (108s with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.25s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.5s
Tips:
- Venting damage is not lowered by Damage Reduction
- Potential 45% Attack Speed
- Potential 67.5% Melee Power (92.5% with Barrage or Hunter)
- Potential 57.5% Ranged Power (with Barrage or Hunter and Fuel For The Fire)
- Potential 110% Block Cost Reduction (130% with Footknight)
- Blood Magic reduces Overcharge Generated by Blood Magic by 49.8%, and has 15% Damage Reduction, at full stacks (unsure how this is calculated)
- You can use your Career Skill over max Overcharge, which will stop you blowing up
- Enfeebling Flames should be maintained on Bosses. Beam Staff’s Beam applies Burns, so lasering the Boss will ensure the debuff stays active
- Blood Magic (Passive): 50% damage taken transferred to Overcharge. This does not affect damage from venting overcharge or fall damage. Applied after all other damage modifiers
- Frenzied Flame: Increases attack speed by 15% while at or above high 50% Overcharge
- Dissipate: Block cost is reduced by 50.0% when Overcharged and blocking attacks vent Overcharge. Applied after other block cost reductions
- Abandon: When Sienna overcharges she starts rapidly (4 times per second) exchanging 1/15 of her health for 10% ability cooldown
General opinion:
Playable as a tanky frontliner or as a pure DPS.
In terms of talents, Outburst and Chain Reaction are trying very hard to be CC Talents, but can’t compete with 15% Attack Speed on top of 60% Melee Power, which inherently has a lot of CC, but also gives damage.
On Row 10, due to the versatility of Attack Speed, Frenzied Flame is better than any of the alternatives. With Attack Speed you can Damage, Stagger and generate THP. Whereas Outburst only offers a slight bit of damage and CC, which isn’t necessary when you consider the Melee Power gained from Unstable Strength. However, Fire Sword with Outburst and a DPS Career Skill can work pretty nicely.
Chain Reaction Staggers smaller enemies, but as with Enfeebling Flames, is less effective due to the short duration of Burning effects. Coruscation Staff, Flamestorm Staff and Beam Staff have the most potential to proc this, but it’s still only a small Stagger on Infantry enemies.
Enfeebling Flames is weak due to low Burn times from all Staffs, except Coruscation Staff, which could potentially make it work in tight areas, or on Bosses.
Test Enfeebling Flame uptime on keep dummy:
- Set a the dummy on fire
- Consider how long it will be staggered from your Burn attack
- Consider the time it takes for that enemy to do damage - if it even is going to
Row 20, and 30 both have a lot of choice, with Conduit, Natural Talent and Fuel For Fire being useful in pure Range builds, while using Fire Sword to make up for the THP loss.
All Melee Weapons and Staffs are viable with Crowbill and Bolt Staff being a little more difficult to use on Cata+.
Synergy:
Any melee heavy team comp, that create space for her to spam ranged damage.
Any Careers that can feed her Damage Reduction, Temporary Health or True Health.
Any Careers that can give her bonus Power for ranged damage.
Questions:
4. Necromancer:
4. Necromancer:
Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 110s (99s with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.25s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.25s
Tips:
- Potential 25% Crit (Soul Harvest increases this exponentially)
- Potential 42% Attack Speed with Vanhel’s Danse Macabre
- Potential 97.5% Ranged Power with Death Ascendent and Barrage
- Skeletons can take FF from some Range Weapons (hopefully a bug?)
- Staff Attacks do not need to Burn to trigger Malediction of Nagash effects, such as Soul Harvest
- Reaping Crits cause attacks to go through Shields (unsure about Chaos Bulwarks)
- Summoning Skeletons stuns enemies where you summon them
- Using the Skull item, and holding R to burn Overcharge, uses one of your Skeletons to clear all Overcharge
- Barrow Blades applies Malediction of Nagash to enemies for both Cursed Blood and Soul Harvest
- Ordering your skeletons to attack disablers just before they catch you does not work to save yourself
- If you’re downed, your Skeletons fall to the floor and can’t attack
- Dread Seneschal Skeletons will Stagger enemies in their path, including Elite enemies, when sent to attack
General Opinion:
Check Royale w/ Cheese’s guide for a lot more info, as I don’t intend to test Necromancer:
Steam Community :: Guide :: Necromancer DLC Guide
Necromancer is very versatile and can be built for anything you want. As you get so many stats from the Talent tree, taking more defensive Stats on you gear is recommended. Even with Curse of The Undeath stacks, she can be quite a glass cannon, due to her health pool. The Skeletons make up for this on lower density, but on high density, they’re either dead or enemies walk passed them.
Her playstyle is more of a balance, with the Skeletons, making sure you have enough to block some enemies, while also having enough to burn Overcharge, which is difficult to get rid of without Skeletons. Lost Souls helps with this a bit, but using Skeletons is better.
All of her Talents work and there’s none that stand out as bad.
Reaping is sometimes absurdly strong or frustrating, as it either deletes lined up Elites, or you’re hitting one at a time, with most of her Weapons.
For a Melee focused build, the old Beam with Hunter and Reaping + Soul Harvest is very good. It makes dealing with Patrols very fun. Using Dagger with Parry (Stam+Crit) works best for me on Sienna, as it makes high Elite density much easier to survive.
To use Vanhels Danse Macabre, I’d recommend using Spirit Leech and Army of The Dead with a good Elite killing Weapon. Timing Malediction of Nagash could be very good for this build, to have lots of Skeletons each time you use your Career Skill. This is the most supportive build for Necromancer, as the Skeletons draw aggro, and block enemies.
Withering Touch adds a DoT to all attacks, making it a very good Horde clearing choice. In testing it does low damage, but consider your Skeletons damage too, and any other DoTs you’re applying.
Both high Power (Death Ascendent) and a Crit build (Reaping) work for Ranged spamming, with Reaping offering more for Melee. I would stick with Soul Harvest with a Reaping build, and Heat Sink, if you really want to spam. Cursed Blood would probably be better for extremely high density, such as Cata+ and Deeds.
All Melee Weapons work, and lower armour penetrating Weapons, like 1H Sword, can be improved with Reaping. Just bear in mind that you have a low health pool, so take something you can survive with.
All of her Ranged Weapons work, with Bolt Staff being extremely RNG, as usual. You can however spam left click for Hunter like on Pyro. I haven’t tested breakpoints, as I find the RNG a bit boring.
Conflag with Death Ascendent’s(Barrge) single target damage is fun to play around.
Synergy:
Anything that can give her THP, as she struggles to stay fully ranged with certain builds.
WPoS, GK, Waystalker’s health Regen.
Questions:
How are Stagger Talents applied to Reaping?
Do attacks that add burn, but kill trigger Sould Harvest? E.g. killing an enemy with the Heavy1
5. Links to other discussion threads:
5. Links to other discussion threads:
Bardin:
Saltzpyre:
Kerillian:
Kruber:
Sienna:
