Unchained's Passives

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

Question about how the Unchained’s passive abilities work. They are increased melee power and reduced block cost at high Overcharge, correct? What counts as high overcharge, is it only red? Does Sienna get any bonuses to these two at all if she is only at orange overcharge instead? If not, these passives (moreso the melee power one) rarely come into play if you manage your overcharge correctly.

Either way, could it be scaled to be similar to the Pyro’s in that it gives a bonus based on overcharge level? Perhaps something like 0 at grey, plus 5% melee power and block cost reduction per stack of overcharge?

2

Look at your bottom left. There are 5 separate levels of overheat. Currently, the bonus to melee damage from overheat is broken and grants no bonus at levels 3, 4 and 5. The block reduction is working correctly, meaning you can get over 60% block cost reduction (with 2x30% items and overheat).

Unchained is a tricky career to play well. You should not rely too much on your melee damage increase, but the reduction of overheat by blocking provides good synergy between melee and range. Mind you, blocking mobs reduces overheat by a negligible amount, but blocking a heavy CW or boss attack will instantly remove all overheat. Blocking an overhead SV attack will remove about half your overheat.

3

Definitely noticed the amount on the block, CWs empty my bar in one attack.

I’m curious if block cost reduction would help me with chip damage, as the weakness of using blocks to reduce overcharge is mainly in hordes, your stamina gets emptied and it won’t budge your overcharge bar. If I’m in a horde with high overcharge and my F on cooldown, it’s problematic. If I have enough block cost reduction, can I make blocking those small hits effectively free, somewhat remedying the problem?

I just started playing Unchained and I’m having some trouble, but I’m also stubborn and want to make it work. Still trying to figure out mechanics and weapons, can’t really decide on a melee weapon. Flame Sword seems neat, but the delay before each charged attack goes off bothers me. Dagger is nice and fast but range is tiny and blocking is an issue. Mace is great anti-armor but is slow as heck. Haven’t really tried regular Sword yet.

4

It is worth looking into the mechanics and numbers behind stamina and blocking. But basically, yes, you will definitely notice the incredibly high block cost reduction, as long as you have stamina. Parrying (a timed block) against heavy attacks is a good alternative as the stamina cost will be reduced significantly. I would say choosing what to build (say, stamina vs block reduction) is also a matter of play style. If you like push-stabbing a lot, then chances are you’ll go through your stamina quickly.

Sienna’s melee weapons (all 4 of them) can be relatively weak compared to others but their different roles have definitely been more refined since 1.0.5. Try adding some attack speed when using mace - i think it helps. Blocking right after the first hit let’s you restart the mace’s sequence, meaning you can keep using that first armour piercing hit. Dagger gives you a lot more mobility - push>stab will propel you forward, dodge count and dodge distance is better. Flame is indeed tricky to use but is supposed to compensate with its DOT abilities that can hit an indefinite amount of enemies, the only weapon to do so afaik. Her regular long sword is great vs hordes, but not so much vs armour and heavy armour.

So yeah, there are a lot of things to consider and her talents seem to allow more flexibility in terms of builds. I’ve been most successful with her when treating the overheat bar as her real health, and using your health bar as a sort of dispoasable resource since you can have so much more of it than other careers. Which also means the benefit of temporary health is upped. Hopefully some of the good Unchained mains here will put their 2 cents in.

5

I do main the Unchained.

Flamesword and Mace benefit SOO MUCH from attack speed that I ended up stacking it on both my charm and my mele weapons. You really notice that 10% attack speed trust me.

I also quickly realized that your real health as Unchained is indeed your overheat bar and not your traditional health bar. It’s to the point that I stopped using Curse resistance on her. You can actually put regen on Unchained (which I always do) and essentially stop caring all that much about your green health.

I mainly build around attack speed (for when I want to use flamesword and mace) and block/stamina.
I normally prefer block cost reduction over raw stamina, since you can get a base of 60% from your weapon & necklace which stack with the 30%(?) from high overcharge. Which essentially save you form having your block broken while being high heat… and therefore getting the extra hit that will make you explode.

On my trinket, I go for Stamina regen (to further increase my survivability) and Ability cooldown reduction. Again, you don’t really care about your health since you’ll die form overcharging if you actually end up going down.

Build your talents around overcharge reduction too.

Keep in mind that the Heat sink shenanigans that Pyro does with her passive doesn’t transfer well at all on Unchained. So Bolt end up being pretty bad. Beam is still Beam. Fireball is good and so is conflag.

I would recommend to get reduced overheat on most staves. With one exception.

Indeed, with Flamestorm staff you want the trait that recharges your Ultimate on crits, and that hols true for every carrer. It’s kind of an gem hidden into the pile of crap that is the flamestorm staff. For you see, (keep in mind that I also increase the crit chance) if you burn a horde down with that particular staff, your Ultimate is going to be refilled. Even the old BW ultimate (when it took ages to refill) could go from 0% to 100% if you used that tactic.

That being said, Flamestorm staff is still bad due to its non versatility… and the fact that you become unable to kill every thing that you actually want to kill with range weapons… and the fact that hordes will die before they get in reach of your flame storm staff if your team is half decent.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Unchained’s ultimate frees teammates from being grabbed by packmasters (and other disablers). It also stun them and force them to go back and try to grab you later… it can be useful in hordes.

Lastly, be VERY CAREFUL about your teammates. FF is particularly dangerous for Unchained for not only does it impact your heat bar a lot, but your teammates have NO CLUE how much overcharge you have, which can lead them to think that it can be worth it to FF you to kill an enemy, while it most certainly was not.
To counter that, try to inform your teammates when you are in high overheat, so that they are aware when to avoid shooting you at all cost.
Just as an example, shotguns (grudge/blunderbuss) FF gives you like 70-80% overcharge… at least last time I “tested” (the type of testing that take place without your consent) it.