War Priest of Sigmar - Detailed Balance Analysis

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
41

And that is excellent design in my opinion, specially given that you’re almost guaranteed to have an actual lawnmower in your team.

But always too close to the end to trigger a serotonin release :stuck_out_tongue:

Well it does decay fast, and these ambients would be a way to manage the bar and actually play around the charge to have it available for the next horde or monster trigger, but in practice ambients just die before you get to them and you end up starting from an empty bar at the beginning of most hordes.

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Me :slightly_smiling_face:

Personally, I think WPOS should be able to match the staggering power of FK/IB in some way. As for Hooks, ways to help with that would still be more stagger options, or increasing killing speed or movement speed. For the topic here, shield-stagger specifically, they could increase the stagger power to match that of Slayer “Crunch!” and/or Unchained “Wildfire”. Maybe that, paired with Opportunist or Prayer of Might or something I’m not the math guy could create a build that works on staggering a boss, while also making it work against more annoying common stuff (again, hooks), which would be great for the class in my opinion. More build variety, more supporting impact, more fun.

I’m going to correct this person’s statement real fast while I’m here yet again!

A lot of Grail Knight’s use Ex Sword, that’s pretty clear at this point in time, he’s been around a while.

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My only 2 major gripes with WPs balance currently would be righteous fury’s uptime/activation being a bit wonky (it comes up way too late or activates at really pointless moments) and the current bug with implacable calculating the DoTs incorrectly so you’re taking 36% of the damage instead of 20%

fixing those two things, one of which being a bug fix, would leave him in a really swell spot imo

Oh and 3rd major gripe would be not having access to more of Saltzpyre’s arsenal; would’ve loved access to a falchion at least. However, I already know that’s an uphill battle since that’s in Games Workshop’s hands :upside_down_face:

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Those 2 things are definitely his most obvious issues yeah

I still firmly believe he needs a bit more to him to compare to other classes similar to him, as well as the other Saltz careers. He’s playable, but does feel a bit lacking, even during RF, in my opinion.

We were apparently pretty lucky to get the Flail+Shield lmao

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At least flail should be a thing.

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Developers asked about Flail, and were declined by Games Workshop.

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Do you mean his ult ? Cause his hammers sure pack a lot of stagger in their swings

GW have had an eye-roll inducing behaviour with their IPs for some years now. I consider us lucky to even have mods for this game.

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Yes, at least because that’s the best place to put it, probably.

Specifically a large strong knockback, like FK/IB have access to on very short cooldowns (Valiant Charge/Gromril Curse).

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Imagine using saltzpyres sexy greatsword on warpriest :weary:

Hammer only was a mistake

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I was just thinking the other day how insanely cool enhanced smite would feel with Greatsword heavies. Thankfully there’s always mods to at least play around with stuff :blush:

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51

Great class, great analysis.

As with all new classes, WP needs a little post-release tinkering and smoothing out, a little rebalancing.
It just so happens that unlike Sister of the Thorn, WP is a little on the “underpowered / inconsistent” side of the fence, as opposed to the “overtuned / absurdly effective / far too consistent” side of the fence. But don’t worry, it’ll all work out.

If they made the Fury mechanic less random (perhaps allowing it to be activated, or removing the out of combat decay) and fixed his bugs, and if they let +curse resistance continue to add to his HP, he would feel unique, have a unique niche, have unique interactions, give a rather worthless stat new meaning, and overall accomplish what we all want with a new class: a fresh, effective role for a familiar character.

We don’t want or need major changes for WP, but the class does need more consistency and more player control over his mechanics. We don’t need to leave his “Holy Fury” as a pseudo-random mechanic that isn’t entirely random but can “go off” at the exactly wrong time. Removing the decay is a step in the right direction; allowing the player to choose when to activate the buff is the real key to making WP a true, top tier contender. No one finds RNG exciting, and without some way of controlling his “Holy Fury” bar, it is essentially RNG; while the proc is not truly random, it also isn’t controllable in any practical way - and thus the class feels hit or miss, which will always have an impact on the quality of the class.

Just ask WoW players: Retribution Paladins felt and performed twice as good when their core mechanics relied on player skill and player control instead of players making the most of semi-random mechanics.

Simply giving players more control over WP strengths will go very far in making this class truly competitive. After all, we always have to choose 4 characters out of 5, and always have to choose 4 classes after that (with the only exception of Sienna still). Making WP feel great and perform great is important.

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52

@dannylew8299 Yo turns out my man is adept at half swording and they STILL won’t let him use a sword :triumph:

WP Half Sword
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Edit: Oh dear, I think my heresy has been detected. That’s an errrrrr, interesting stance you have there Saltz.

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So in case you haven’t guessed from looking, he seems to adopt the stance of whatever weapon he previously had equipped. This is the result of changing to GS after having the bonk book out.

Also GS + Enhanced Smite, Opportunist, and Prayer of Might is every bit as badass and I’d thought. Stagger locking groups of SV with heavies and watching that satisfying delayed hit between each heavy restagger and hold them there for the next hit is just chef’s kiss

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Cooked up a new buff suggestions template fresh out of MS Paint. Green words are buffs, orange words are nerfs. Below are some notes about these suggestions, some of which is repetition from things I’ve said before, since I said nothing with the last image, but I’ve said them again because what’s another few thousand words right gamers

WPOS buff
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Righteous Fury: Uptime arguably should be increased slightly in some way, since it has low uptime regarding a majority of situations and often feels random and uncontrollable, resulting in sometimes (more often than it should) providing little to no value at all! There are even more different ideas about balancing it today, but the argument mostly usually falls upon it just being inconsistent and unfun to play with due to the nature of its design, which is unfortunate but can be fixed up with a variety of options. Provided in the image are some of the popular ideas floating around separated by big letters

Shield of Faith: Block cost reduction and increased staggering power. You should be able to accomplish things during invincibility that you would assume invincibility would help with. You can be guard-broken while invincible, and the damaging blast staggers all specials except Hook Rats (this is a Cataclysm and higher issue, as the damage kills Hook Rats below Legend)
Something else to consider would be adding staggering power equal to that of Mercenary Career Skill “Morale Boost” to the class somewhere, to compare to the other tanks (Foot Knight, Ironbreaker) better, as they have strong AoE stagger options. This should probably be connected to Shield of Faith, but there are a number of ideas…

  1. Morale Boost level stagger on Shield of Faith by default, with reduced Crunch! stagger on United in Prayer (double monster knockback is silly)
  2. Morale Boost level stagger somewhere within tier 30 talents, but not United in Prayer
  3. The above, but with Crunch! as the stronger stagger, and a weaker stagger as the weaker stagger, though in my opinion this would not adequately compare to other tanks in power (Morale Boost stagger on Shield of Faith would still be at least half as frequent as large-area staggers available to FK/IB)
  4. Replacing Prayer of Vengeance crit power with a powerful stagger, akin to Gromril Curse, though this would disrupt the theme of this tier

Enemy of Chaos: Damage against armor, rather than just super-armor. Hammers should generally be pretty good against armor, and WPOS has “Unyielding Blessing” a talent that specifically improves his fighting ability against Warpfire/Gunner Rats, so this change would be thematic to his strengths while keeping his current power relatively unchanged against most hordes, most specials, berserkers, and Maulers.

Unstoppable Force: This talent currently is much weaker than the other choices, as the defense it provides is arguably much less impactful than the offense provided by the othe choices. Providing it with a small melee power bonus improves both its offensive and defensive capability, while also making it a more appealing choice.

  • Divine Excoriation: Arguably the weakest of the choices here, I have added an average-sized movement speed buff, which improves his general mobility a little bit, while also helping with his repositioning between shockwaves.

Empowered Smite: The removal of the delay on Smite is to provide immediate value from the buff provided by the talent. This should have little negative impact on the current combat flow of the talent, as the stagger effect will apply with your current swing, rather than your next swing, but still apply on your next swing, because your next swing will have its own Smite closer to it! Makes sense, right? The reduction in the damage bonus towards Smite is to both account for the immediate value of the increased stagger power, as well as the other offensive buffs added elsewhere in this suggestion. I do also believe that the talent could stay the way it currently is alongside these changes without much issue, but I’ve opted to suggest a rebalance for it regarding its possibly too-hight damage and the clunkiness of delayed Smite, and also because I think this change would be just very slightly better. All small reasons, but added together it all feels significant enough to suggest and also explain in too much detail lmao

Prayer of Vengeance: A small buff to the critical hit chance, to provide more of an offensive buff (crit power is arguably a pretty weak damage bonus), and also pair extra nicely with Sigmar’s Executioner. Other options for this talent could include adding attack speed/damage/power to it or even changing it entirely. I don’t think too many people would be terribly upset if it was changed to another stat boost or another unique ability, but I’ve suggested a rebalance with the original talent in mind for simplicity’s sake. You’ll notice many if not all of them are fairly simple.

I’ve opted to exclude attack speed in this suggestion and to focus on critical hits and direct damage, as those are the thematic and actually existing directly offensive bonuses currently available to the class (Also crit chance is easier to gain, which improves Swift Slaying uptime, so attack speed is indirectly gained that way). Defensive abilities are quite good already (stagger power, health, healing, access to hammers) and my only issue regarding defense is the lack of a big boy stagger like other tanks as I’ve already mentioned.

Would love to hear more thoughts.

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I only have 2 things I feel strongly enough about to comment on here.

  1. I really think enemy of chaos is fine as is. It’s more flavourful and lore friendly currently, and most normal armoured enemies don’t have so much health it’s really needed. Just having a big juicy damage boost on one of the tankiest enemies in the game is pretty handy. If I were to adjust it at all I’d make it work the same as power vs properties, so it affects both damage AND stagger.

  2. I don’t particularly like your ideas for enhanced smite. The current 0.8 s delay is pretty helpful for keeping things stagger locked between swings which is helpful since you have little attack speed to work with. It’s equivalent stagger to a medium weapon push. Having that activate at the same time as one of your high stagger hammer attacks basically just wastes the extra stagger. It also just looks and feels really good as is. Changing it to just smite but a little extra damage is pretty boring. I also think nerfing the damage would likely lead to it being picked even less often. It’s already competing with team green health generation. I get you’re trying to balance it around the other damage options you’ve added, but I think that in turn hurts the balance of that specific row.

Apart from those 2 things a lot of the other changes I’m whatever on. Only thing I could say I can wholeheartedly get behind is an uptime buff to righteous fury and ult stagger knocking packmasters off you/team mates.

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Lore-wise I think he’s supposed to lose a fight to a CW lol. Enemy of Chaos actually affecting power would be great, since it says it should (how many times has this happened now?), and since it would increase his capabilities against mixed groups of enemies. Improve his designed strength! My buff suggestion goes back to other competing classes (being double-melee and tanks) having access to much higher burst-damage weapons/talents, often used against armor as well other high-health enemies (more applications), so I’d like WPOS to be a bit better at hitting hard, or hitting in general, since he doesn’t have options like that. Doesn’t have to be tied to Enemy of Chaos, but some power or something affecting consistent DPS, or something with more general use would be welcome.

I think the pick rate is a little high for “From Fury, Fortitude”, or was, since I also think the pick rate for it will be going down now that his damage reduction passive is working as intended. If healing is less used, the damage is probably the next best choice. Poor Divine Excoriation though. I’m fine with this talent either way within my suggestions, but I have suspicions it would be a strong pick. Maybe I nerf it too hard though, but that’s what discussions are for. I’d love to be wrong, it’d be more damage as is and less for the developers to do! I do see that players tend to primarily gravitate to the healing options in this game, but then I also remember every Waystalker joining my game using Spirit Arrows lmao I’m blaming the elf

You’re right about it being good staggering between swings because I could take a nap between some of WPOS swings lmao

Appreciate the feedback, though I wish more people would discuss this stuff, all it takes is 1 content creator to make a video the day of release saying the new content is amazing and poggers and overpowered and then he’s stuck cranking his gun in the corner being the worst class in the game for 13 months lmao I don’t wanna do that to my beautiful bald boy

It’s so weird with WPOS, it’s like they fine-tuned him in so many ways to underperform, like why stagger a Leech and Assassin, but not a Packmaster? 4 seconds of push cost reduction? Crit power? And of course, the dead horse that is Righteous Fury at this point lol, though to be fair, there’s other classes with more numerous bad talents.

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I haven’t used this one much, but I suspect it’s a fine talent if you want more control because the rest of your party are swishy, low stagger dps classes or similar. It’s just got really stiff competition in that row. It’ll probably never get picked much, but I’m fairly fine with its small niche.

Yeah my main issue here is your proposition essentially amounts to a double nerf to my mind.

My guess would be that’s because packmasters have pretty extreme stagger resist. They probably wanted to avoid a situation where it reliably staggered every enemy around you, even highly stagger resistant elites. I do think they were too conservative though, it could afford to have more stagger strength. Actually I just made a post with some testing and it is possible to stagger packmasters with it, just the requirement is absurd. 30% power vs, prayer of might, AND EP to hit that breakpoint. Especially pointless when you consider 20% power vs or 10% + EP is enough to guarantee the dot will kill it outright on Cata.

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It doesn’t stagger elites but it floors trash enemies. (360° stagger radius)
kinda overkill horde control considering his weapon choices BUT it does make a cool thwomp noise
it does work well in tandem with unstoppable force and hammer + tome to create space for spell charging

otherwise it’s kinda meh, something like “During Righteous Fury kills reduce the cooldown of Shield of Faith by 2%.” would be far more competitive and useful in both selfish/supportive builds

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I wonder if it can achieve any decent stagger breakpoints, and whether having opportunist on your weapon has any effect on it. If you could get it to the point where it’s staggering man sized elites at least out of their light attacks I could see that being pretty damn good control.

Then again flail and shield kinda does that for free, so a little irrelevant for him.

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What would you think of it being extended to berserker enemies? Since there’s a precedent (Wargors count as berserker), and WP’s damage vs them is poor (unless the book has good damage vs them or something, I haven’t tested it). I’m not sure what it would be called then though.
This would mitigate the weaknesses hammers have vs berserkers without buffing them on other careers.

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Getting a bit questionable lore wise, but I have no issue with that suggestion from a gameplay/balance perspective.

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