The new updates to the Vanguard have proven somewhat divisive on the forums.
I for one appreciate the reduction of jank (nonsensical bloated HP even without shield, or weird invisible-zorb-like shield hitbox etc) BUT I would like to see them buffed in new ways to add genuine challenge.
Feel free to make suggestions here!
Some suggestions from myself:
shield is made larger (vertically, more like Roman wall shields).
shield can no longer be dropped/destroyed and can only be opened up temporality via an appropriate counter
shield enemies group together and move as a wall
shield enemies can guard bombers, gunners or reapers
some shield enemies have long spears
shield enemies stand ground together in pinchpoints (acting as barricade)
These are just loose ideas so don’t expect a fleshed out powerpoint presentation!
Just riff and give the Designers some ideas to play with.
Whether you agree with the recent changes or not is irrelevant to this thread so please spare us your venting. Just some positive suggestions to add new challenge please!
They should have damage resistance against AoE and DoT from ranged weapons (Purgatos cough) when their shield is up.
Ideally, they should also block explosions with shield and guard enemies behind them, but that’s not gonna happen before the infinite cleave on some AoE is fixed.
I’m wanting for having them function similarly as they did in VT2:
Most attacks not being able to bypass the shield from the front except for some (flail, crusher special)
Vanguards to have the same HP, mass & hitzone values as its infantry counterpart
The shield opens to a cumulative stagger threshold (and not damage) so stagger builds/weapons can very easily open them up while weapons with little stagger have to rely on the double push or struggle otherwise.
With how the enemies’ slot system works, they naturally will try to box you in and form a sort of wall, I don’t think the extra effort on making them move different as a more traditional “wall” will be very useful.
Though our suggestions, mine included, will end up achieving very little if player power remains as is. So in the spirit of the Darktide tradition, can we get some more buffs??? But for all the other enemies this time. Bonus points if some core game mechanic gets reworked for no good reason.
I am not familiar with the VT2 enemy but yes this sounds logical.
If the shields were genuinely tough, it could certainly add an interesting element IMO. I guess they’d just need to magnetise to each other if in proximity. This would create a bigger shield mass and tougher wall for the player to break.
Well yes indeed. Players need some game-wide nerfs and enemies need some game-wide dmg buffs. Assuming we got our wish and this did happen then interesting mechanics, such as the shield suggestions above, would carry much more weight.
Are we going to keep ignoring the fact that it’s harder to knock them down than it is to knock down Crashers or Bastions?
Yeah, it’s even easier to knock down a Captain than it is to knock down a Vanguard.
Since the update a day ago? I’m not finding them difficult to stagger currently.
That said, if they are far, far less dangerous then their shield being annoyingly resilient can be a good thing to throw in the mix IMO, providing it’s done correctly.
Well yes indeedy doody, of course we gonna say that in the same week a entirely harmless and barely noticeable enemy got nerfed to a wide acclaim from the community
No the whole point of nerfing them was to make them less annoying to fight. Everything you suggested would make them far, far more annoying. I thought the point was fun.
I disagree and also don’t see how you can dismiss it from a single sentence FFS. You don’t even know how the mechanics would work yet you claim it would be annoying lol. People want more meaningful combat. Then there needs to be elements that force different approaches.
Feel free to reread the last sentence of the quote you posted and reply with some suggestions that aren’t “annoying”.
I’m not a fan of the idea of their shields being unbreakable; I think that it’s important to avoid the problem that groups of Bulwarks brought, where you can’t get enough to open their shields to allow you to hit vulnerable ones. The shields need to be breakable, it just shouldn’t be quick or easy, so that there is SOME kind of “release valve”.
The idea of them moving in a group is neat, if it could be pulled off. I feel like formations might be challenging to implement.
A well-telegraphed, taller enemy with a longer-reach spear would be good. I would want to avoid the issue of Beastmen early on in VT2, when you can’t see the second rank who were attacking from beyond the first rank of enemies, leading to unavoidable damage.
All I’d really suggest for Vanguards is that they get some of their lost health back, because they are so easy to kill now. Not as much as before, but some.
If a double push (or enough stagger) opened them up though then I don’t think they’d feel as problematic as bullwarks. Also much less dangerous. It would certainly require a good bit of testing.
Thanks and yeah it could be fun and possibly quite scary too. Even if they just gravitated near each other like magnets then it could have a cool effect.
Yes a whole new enemy could be a lancer or spearman. Something with some reach. Definitely something we are missing in DT. I’m not familiar with vt2 so can’t comment on the beastmen. I would say that I’m sure FS will have learned much from vt and vt2 but from all accounts that doesn’t seem to hold true!
I think the health should go to the shield and only the shield, which is why I’d be happy if the shield was bigger. It just didn’t feel right that identical enemies had such differing hp during fights. More armour on them could help I guess. They don’t need to be unarmoured.
Thank you for the constructive reply btw. I know we went at it in the other thread but this feels like good discussion so thank you
I agree with others comments on the forums though…it would be nice if some enemies really forced different tactics beyond ‘pulp them a bit faster’. These shield enemies have the potential to do that with a few tweaks imo
What are the design goals of the Vanguards? It’s a few parts:
First, is to replace the bulwark as a shielded enemy that is less visually and spatially obstructive. It does this by being human sized and carrying a much smaller shield. They do replace the Bulwark while being much less annoying to fight but how they occupy the space is something that could use some work that I’ll circle back to later on.
Second, is to stop certain sources of cleave from penetrating hordes. On the ranged cleave front, firing things like the plasma gun and manstopper shotgun blasts into hordes is just less good and builds around PBB and Desperado are also nerfed a bit. It does not block inferno staff like Bulwark shield which could be something to change but honestly it’d wouldn’t do much unless you’re point blank blasting into the Vanguard shield. This seems fine.
On melee cleave, unga bunga into the bodies of hordes is nerfed, this is good. Wide sweeping attacks will often get blocked by these dudes in actual combat due to animations even if you’re a headshot god. But on the Ogryn and Skitarii with their height advantage this enemy was a non-issue for many weapons even with unga bunga. One thing I would change is to make the enemy reactive to your attacks a bit. Like if they are in between attacks you can just hit them right in the head over their shield with a simple strikedown attack while they’re staring right at you holding the shield. You can also hit them frequently if you’re just standing as close as possible to them regardless of what animation they’re in. They should block attacks if you’re in standing right in front of them in this scenario, rewarding footwork if you don’t want to spend the minimal amount of stamina to do two pushes.
For explosive cleave, they do nothing but I think that whole mechanic needs some tweaks rather than some specific interaction with Vanguards.
Third, is to make melee combat more engaging. I found that I was swapping between single target combos and horde clear and moving around to get away from their shields more than previously. But also in most scenarios they were completely ignorable, just kill everything else and cleanup the Vanguards at the end. They attack slow, can be staggered out of all attacks by a simple push, and they don’t impede movement any more than a poxwalker would. There’s just not pressure on the player to actually engage with them. You can spawn 20 of these guys and just block and dodge through them while you hit actual priority targets. It’s even easier with double push to stagger. Having a shield bash/push that they can trigger that doesn’t delete stamina like Bulwark and just denies the player space/free movement would be helpful in making them more threatening.
Reducing Bulwarks and introducing Vanguards is generally good. Large groups of Bulwarks were incredibly annoying to fight. But the previous configuration did make the game harder: Bulwarks needed specific tools to deal with them that had drawbacks versus other enemies, required teammate cooperation (e.g. one aggros them to turn the Bulwark weakside to the rest of the team), blocked far more space and could actually pin players into nearly unwinnable situations. Vanguards don’t necessarily need to replace that challenge gap all by themselves. But they are the pretty much the only balance lever being pulled right now, and they keep getting made easier to deal with. What’s to come is still unsure. In the meantime, the game has lost such a degree of challenge that I’m just playing VT2 these days.
Other suggestions I have:
How are players to know if specific weapons interact with shields in unique ways? Is this mentioned in the UI anywhere? Kuli’s Guide and nowhere else? Something to address.
Add knockback to Vanguards when they get BTL’d, they don’t need to get knocked on their ass but they need to get knocked out of the way.
I’d rather every other enemy in the game get some tooling than for them to keep changing vanguards. Give every enemy dot and explosive resist; make it havoc exclusive if you must. The only source of dot resistance for enemies in the entire game is the green stimm.
