Vanguards finally nerfed

vanguards should stay trash mobs cuz they r mobs. if vanguards r supposed to be stronger, then they should be considered as elites and can be pinged like other elites. mobs with shields aint supposed to be as tough as elite bulwarks

I really would hate them becoming elites, cause they are simply boring as such. When they die quickly being trash, it’s bearable. But they don’t really pose a threat on their own, neither they are fairly visible or their numbers are limited like in case of bulwarks - they just a boring time waster. I suspect as elites they’ll be spammed much more than bulwark too.

Adding some damage resistant turd that is barely a threat and just requires you to spend a lot of time poking them is the lamest way to design an elite imo. I would rather see a elite requiring you to employ your skills to fight, like in case of Crushers or Ragers than that.

the fact you could circumvent them by pushing or breaking with certain weapons is the entire point of them, you just want a shield enemy that blocks 270 degrees never flinches and spawns as a trash mob, most dont

That’s what they were like in Vermintide 2, so another thing from the good rat game succesfully copied to Darktide.

Well done that it only took them a few months, I suppose. Better late than later, eh?

Pretty sure others are following me just fine. I don’t think the issue is with me.

I never even saw these guys as janky. Their designs seemed thought-out from a design standpoint, and a frontal block cone works for them exactly as it worked for players in VT2. And, well, every shield enemy. I don’t even know what “jank” you’re talking about, you just keep saying that. I think it’s literally a skill issue and you’re just trying to play it off as jank.

That’s not what I wanted or called for. It’s not even how they originally were. This is 100% just a strawman.

I notice a trend among the people who wanted them nerfed, that they do not actually understand how the mobs worked. I think that’s the major issue here.

Yes I am soooo terrible at the game. It must be that and everyone replying to you is just a bad player, as you keep saying at every single opportunity.

If you thought they were challenging before the “nerf” then I’d argue it is you who has the skill issue.

Oh come on. They took multiple heavy branx pickaxe hits to the head. For a wee grunt, that is jank AF. Their “cone” was like an invisible zorb for kark’s sake. Pure jank!

You just keep ignoring my comment that I would like to see their challenge increased in proper ways now that their jank has been fixed, but all you do is retort to any point (literally any point) with “sKiLl iSsUe!” as if any of us were having trouble fighting them before?! Every person who has replied to you has said that they didn’t find them challenging. They were not challenging at all.

Would I like to see their difficulty increased in a much better way than HP sponge? Yes! So why carry on saying the same thing?

Why not make some suggestions that would boost their challenge instead of just moaning about the change?

invincible shield

bigger shield

shield cannot be dropped, only opened up temporarily

group together to form walls, barriers

carry spears

moan on forums

etc etc

These would add genuine challenge.

Feel free to recommend some others that we can suggest to FS.

from the mirror thread, where i suggested beefing crushers & bulwarks into what vanguards were supposed to be in their non-castrated form.

basically bind each player to an engagement and force him to pay attention to certain enemies instead of breezing through.

This is why Id like to see them with giant shields and they slowly creep towards you to hem you in. They could move in groups. Would actually be quite a bothersome disrupter!

Claiming otherwise would however dismiss all the people that took the Vanguards in stride, not seeing a singular need to form an opinion on them, let alone see them as any form of obstacle.

It would also ignore the addition of Vanguards overlapping with a fairly noticeable increase in how fast are the runs cleared, at least for some parts of the playerbase!

Like it or not, but there’s a subset of players that can very easily view the addition of Vanguards as:

  • a legitimate nerf to difficulty
  • community moaning for nerf to a nerf as hint for a possible shortage of skill

Don’t tell me there isn’t a room for some skill questioning?

My issue w vanguards is that they were too chewy of an enemy.

I found no problem killing them or surviving against them. Its just they were not satisfying to kill. I do like the mechanic of needing to break their shield to actually do proper damage against them because I like the noise. I like how they aren’t a simple one shot enemy, one that is actually decently immune to the raw gluttonous strength we possess, I feel vanguard was a decent step in the right direction just implemented a bit suboptimally.

Fighting 5 of them isn’t a problem. It forces me to fall back, which means they do their job of resisting speed running very well. But they aren’t pleasing to fight. I think they should only spawn in 5s when the team is progressing too quickly

Sorry you apparently couldn’t handle them.

Oh, so it’s not jank at all. They were doing their exact purpose of slowing down the player.

I fully support the pickaxes doing better against them, though. I have actually suggested what changes they needed - which was not many. They were a well-designed enemy, but people have gotten so comfortable at this game that they refused to learn and implement the tiniest of new skills.

What changes did they need? Well, making it so the pickaxe was better against them, and perhaps less spawning. That’s about it.

Is the jank in the room with us now? Because what people seem to call jank just seems to be “the design of a tanky enemy meant to not be deleted instantly”.

Yet they complained endlessly about them until they were nerfed to the point where they functionally don’t exist. They weren’t “HP sponges”, they were easy to kill with a tiny action that is apparently not hard at all for you, you just apparently could not do it and therefore found them tanky.

How fun that, in hindsight, you think complaining is bad now that you got what you wanted?

A terrible idea. This means that players can get stuck by them the same way that Bulwarks used to do. It would mean that the ONLY viable tactic against a large group would be using aoe. Having their shields be breakable is a good design.

If you mean visually, sure. If you mean in-game - well, you already complained that the size of the current one was “jank”, is this really what you want?

Same issue as unbreakable shield.

Kind of a neat idea, until you get trapped in a corner by them, can’t open them up because after you softly push on one twice his buddy’s shield eats your attack.

What I’d suggest right now is that they gain back some HP. They are as flimsy as cardboard right now, most of the time they get killed when someone is just mindlessly m1-spamming into the horde.

With their nerf, most runs are just an exercise in holding W. Unless you get some very new players for a team, each run is incredibly fast. There’s basically nothing to slow players down. Skitty especially just makes sure everything goes incredibly quickly and smoothly, with ranged rezzes, instant-sniping of specials, and ofc The Claw that deletes every single big, elite enemy.

Which is why I suspect the devs added Vanguards; they realized they needed something chewy that is not instantly invalidated by The Claw. Now, there’s just . . . nothing. Between Zealots, Skitties, and Vets with Kraks, bosses dies almost immediately.

I mean even more so now sure but let’s be honest was the vanguard really adding anything to combat beyond more tanky bruiser

Nope I didn’t. You’re clearly not reading what I am writing so I’ll not bother responding further. I just have to repeat myself over and over.

As for all your other comments, you’ll find answers to them all in my original comments that you’re not reading.

“Let’s make a grunt have the hp of a bulwark!” Wow what a design master stroke.

G’day.

Bulwarks are a much tougher opponent than Vanguards ever were. They have impenetrable shields, and one can beat on them indefinitely, only to receive stunning shield bashes in return that are impossible to dodge. One has to wait for Mister Bulwark to deign to attack on his own, and hope that the player’s strike is not blocked by another Bulwark’s shield – since those shields seem to be considerably larger than they visually appear

Great but none of that had any actual relevance to my comment that you quoted so I’m not sure of your point?

Just incase you didn’t notice the quote marks, I was somewhat sarcastically paraphrasing bizarrescalp

Long overdue change.

that you also cant stagger, and have it be the only mob with passive damage reduction, so great. make enemies (esp elites and specials) actually interesting to fight, butt not like this

nothing, and it wasnt supposed to either seeing it is just a bruiser with a shield. if it was supposed to be much more than make it like a shielded mauler or smth

You’ve just seemed slightly evasive about what the “jank” is, which makes me skeptical that there even was jank.

I look at how they behaved and just saw that there’s a hitbox in front of them in a flattened box shape. It tended to catch attaacks due to how weapon hitboxes work and interact. If a weapon hitbox hits the enemy, but also the shield, the game has to ignore the body hit and only count the shield hit for it to work.

Basic stuff, but like - honestly, I have no idea what you even mean by jank here.

Even in their nerfed state, I continue to just get them to button up and move behind them and eliminate them for fun, and to prove to myself that I’m not hallucinating this apparently overly-challenging skill. It’s quicker just to M1 spam at them, though, and half the time I don’t even realize I’m fighting them - they just die.

As something to slow down the player’s mulching speed, they really are just non-existent now.