Weapon properties and traits (updated after a little bit of testing)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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Don’t know how much talk is behind balancing weapons or the properties that make the weapon all that much better but just some thoughts

Melee traits
Swift Slaying (SS) for short - I think everyone can agree that this is the best trait for pretty much any weapon. if getting SS actived, you get what 20% crit upon whatever you have equipped.

  • why would you choose anything else as a trait besides swift slaying
    no changes for this to be made as getting crits isn’t always reliable but is doable.
    this trait works just fine as is.

Parry 100% block - (PB)
to activate PB you have to time the block exact. well, you have a very very tiny window. This basically lets you now consume stamina or basically a orange shield.

  • my only ask is to make the timing of parry window slightly bigger. This is to add a buff when playing on champ or legend. What will happen is you get swarmed and you can’t time every single hit perfectly on a hord. Now its a bit harder because they are a bit more spread out so some attacks sneak in after a parry hit. Would be great to get a little buff here.

************ tested Heroic Intervention on Champ run *****************
Heroic Intervention - plus 15 THP (temp health confirmed thp but!)
-after using this trait, rarely did I see THP given out and still had teammates dying literally beside me
I even have a picture to prove just how many times I’ve had to res some players. this trait is garbo.
this again could just be in a testing stage to see if it could work

suggested changes:

Could this trait be changed to 10 HP (instead of THP) I mean specials don’t spawn every second. This would had a little bit more team play. ( also does not remove you from gray status)

or
as Froh as suggested but not full THP bar but maybe 30% THP as that would thromp any ULT that gives THP so I take that into consideration. would not unbalance the ult super moves THP

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ currently gonna test this trait out ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
will be trying push strength to see if or how much it feels like its giving out THP later tonight

Opportunist - 50% push strength, does not feel like you get THP as they appear to be staggered, was this some oversight or just no one ever bothered to try. This is talents with the stagger option to gain THP.

suggested changes:

  • maybe just add 10% stagger or something so at least you get some THP for using this trait

or

  • 50% push plus 1 extra stamina sheild

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

resourceful combatant - is 5% cooldown of career skill on crit strike but happens every 4 seconds
-buff this to 8% but still keep every 4 seconds to reduce cool down. This just seems useless and probably why no one picks it. Or at least I never see anyone use it honestly.

Suggested Changes
Off Balance - blocking at attack increases the damage the attack takes by 20% against attacking enemy.

suggested changes

-maybe just add a couple of extra seconds so 7 secs for it to be active. Maybe more people would use it.
-or
-3 or 4 seconds 30% bonus damage increase
(this is should be a bigger bonus because you parrying an attack while attacking) should be bigger bonus than (SS) but its not stackable, which is the difference till you parry the next attack.

Weapon traits
Barrage 5% boost attack for 5 secs - this seems to be a popular choice among range weapons
-seems ok, would like to see a slight buff to maybe like 7% but 3 or 4 seconds on active timer

consertive shooter - only 1 ammo on headshots, maybe give it like 2 or 3
this only because some guns have 11 shots and they are slow and you can miss even some easy shots.

insperational shot - restores stamina to nearby allies
instead of restores stamina - have it restore 1 hp to nearby allies but cool down is 5 seconds.

the other ranged traits seem to be ok

*************** update on NB tests *****************
Tested this with Zealot career with NB on Legend run
results ( not sure what has changed exactly with NB but surprisingly I was able to get several hits, sometimes couple of heavy hits. Not lose too much health. Also got hit down to 1hp once and was not grayed but I also had the talent to not die with 1hp
Will have to do some more testing with other characters. Zealot with NB is actually not bad now, you can just eat up a drought or med kit to sustain THP if there is plenty on the field
I will say I had some really good runs with other players last night and they were happy that I was eating up droughts that no one else picked up so I sustained THP longer if I needed it.

Necklace Traits
Natural Bond - 1hp every 5 seconds is crap lets be honest.

Healing with drought or med kit still only gives you THP, if talent heal others is select you get 10 hp, if heal teammate
change to 5hp every 5 seconds.

Another player mentioned
NB gains 1 hp per 5 seconds also after every 5th hit or crit

Barkin, 40% for 2 seconds

  • change it to 40% 4 seconds,
    2 seconds is way to short.
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Natural bond definitely doesn’t need to be buffed, it already has been and it’s in a good spot. Just the melee traits (and a couple ranged traits) see huge disparity.

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how is NB in a good spot when no one uses it and its useless.

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I use it on pretty much all of my range classes, makes most sense when you aren’t engaging in melee much for thp. Also, most games, I see 2 or 3 people using natural bond at a time.

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I use it quite a bit on ranged classes as well, can also work well on zealot to heal yourself for temp hp and keep damage bonus

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Natural Bond also works wonder on Iron Breaker, where you’re just not taking much damage, or even any damage, that often.

I disagree with most of these changes, I believe only a few, very select traits need changing (like heroic intervention)

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Don’t like any of these proposed changes.

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Yep, best melee trait so far.

It could be improved a bit, but that’s probably not the worse trait.

This one, is, for sure, totally useless though. Either scrap it entirely, or give a total white temp hp bar to the saved allied, because as it is, it’s really something you’ll never choose.

Did gain some interest since the stagger “added damage” system. Probably not worth it compared to actual damage though (even if you’re stagger based, you already have enough stagger to not warrant a stagger trait).

Can be useful for latter weave (cataclysm 3+) because of the added resistance.

Again, damage gain is laughable compared to what SS gives.

… is fine as it is.

…is also fine since the nerf, it does not gives infinite ammo as easy as before, and it’s okay like this.

Is a trash talent, allies needs to be “nearby” in a small range, giving stamina could actually be great if it didn’t depends on your position to be effective. Could be used in a dreameay non existing support ranged build, that veteran bardin could possibly use.

…is actually in a very fine place right now, fitting all character with no good THP generation in higher “usual difficulties”, and also gives the infamous “1 hp shield” in the weaves that usually one shot you. Providing you with the “oh powerful” two shots resistance instead.
I actually don’t know why you find it not good to be honest, it’s way more useable right now that it was before.

Could probably last a bit longer yeah, but is probably nearing “fine” as it is.

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Natural Bond is totally usefull I use it on IB and FK with heal sharing on used healings and even on ranged classes like the green elf its OP in combination with her passive regeneration.

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I’ve already said this in several previous posts,

Resourceful Combatant reduces CD faster than SS on high crit weapons, especially Shade Dual Daggers. I use it on 1H axes and Daggers. Try it out on the dummies in the keep, make 2 sets of daggers/axe with SS and RC, and time your cooldowns while just spamming left click on the dummies. The difference is very noticeable.

I feel SS is overall best on DW and 2H weapons as of late. For other 1H weapons that have cleave and natively fast attack speeds as is (Swords, hammers) I use Off Balance.

60% BCR, +4 Stamina with Off balance is amazing on anyone. Why? Because you can choose to swift slay hack at a horde and get poked in between your swings, or you can just hold block, block a few attacks to stagger the mobs with offbalance, then do a push attack (cleaving swipes from swords and hammers), mobs take extra damage from off balance or staggered state (use bulwark or smite) and you remain safe.

For anyone confused as to why certain range classes have THP on stagger? This is a perfect build for those classes (Huntsman, Ranger Vet) I went from 1 hp to full THP in a couple of shoves and mace swipes using Boon of shallya on neck.

The reason why certain builds are popular is not just because they “can” be effective, I think it’s also because not a lot of people choose to experiment and innovate.

Scrounger is actually better than Conservative Shooter, if you’re aiming for headshots anyways, you’re likely to crit, so stack crit and you’ll profit 1-3 ammo vs 1 free headshot, if you miss and body shot, you might crit and still generate ammo. Bounty Hunter can generate full ammo from almost empty using his guaranteed crit/no ammo cost talents. Huntsman can proc massive crit bonus from head shots and his HS’s are free to begin with. Swift bow on waystalker basically has infinite ammo with scrounger (fun and silly, but not as useful as my long bow imo)

TLDR:
Resourceful Combatant best used on natural crit weapons human/dwarf axes, elf sword/daggers, sienna dagger. They swing fast as is, the extra swing speed from SS is moot and if all you do is mindlessly left click, you’re going to take chip damage. Proper meleeing should be LLR with shoves in between for those of us who like to live.

Off Balance deserves more credit for defensive play styles. A lot of people complaining about beastmen lunge attacks. I have no issues if I just turtle up and watch them stagger themselves.

Give new ideas a try people.

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  • Natural Bond isn’t the worst trait, but totally not fine.

    • On tank careers, Barkskin is much better. Normally tanks have THP on stagger and they have weapons with a lot of staggering power… so they haven’t HP problems. A tank can struggle in certain situations, for example when a disabler catches him and he takes many hits… or when he has to do a risky move to help during a critic situation. In these cases, as said above, Barkskin is much better.

    • Ranged careers are too squishy to use Natural Bond. To be brief, I will do an example. If a career has 50hp and an enemy attack inflicts 49hp of damage… Natural Bond needs a lot of time to prevent the hero death during a second attack. Moreover ranged careers must fight in melee too (it’s enough to think about how many hordes spawn directly on you), more tHP is very useful.

    • Talking about crowd control careers, it’s obv because Shallya’s Boon is better.

    But, sure, there are totally trash traits, wich must be heavily reworked, thile Natural Bonds needs only a very small buff.

  • Resourceful Combatant, in 99% of cases, charges the ult slower than Swift Slaying.

  • Opportunist should work vs every enemy, not only vs attacking ones. This would give more options to Handmain, for example, or we could have a more aggressive double hammers Iron Breaker without losing too much “tank power”.

  • Off Balance is in the wrong game. In Vermintide, tanks struggle on keeping aggro on them.

IMPORTANT: these are just few example: more interesting traits or simply those I would love to see in a better spot… but the entire traits system should be reworked.

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If we went by your suggestion, Opportunist would get heavily nerfed, since the trait allows certain weapons like shields to push stagger most enemies in the game like maulers and Stormvermin. It’s a great talent for more crowd control and pretty essential for shields.

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As already I explained above. I refuse your 99%. It’s more like 85%, naturally fast and high crit weapons do not need SS. If you are mindlessly left clicking, RC will get your ult back faster. If you play defensively with LLR/shove/dodge, SS isn’t being used efficiently anyways, so RC is even more pronounced. I feel like you should try it yourself instead of mathing.

EDIT: RC is much more useful for Ults with Long CDs, anything less than 1.5 minutes, sure, stay with SS, the difference is minimal.

Off Balance for shields is great because you’re not killing armor with your normal attacks (except axe). Shield with sword need to do push attacks for anti-armor, so I take a blocked hit to let them stagger themselves then push/stab to the face. It’s your best option against CW/SV.

Off Balance works great for DW and 1H weapons that have a cleave push attack. Synergizes greatly with 60% BCR for anyone who want to have a higher survival rate. It’s an option for less aggressive play styles that otherwise will eventually get you killed without aid. Being able to turtle in a corner and stagger mobs just from blocking and just shove/cleaving them is a life saver.

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this sounds like you just started playing the game and are making a bunch of suggestions that make no sense. pls stop before someone at FS listens to this smh

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Is this for me? If so, then if anything you’re the one new to the game and the forums. I don’t suggest anything to anyone if a build doesn’t work for me. You can argue math on one hand but reality always says something different on the other.

I just don’t want anyone else to read this thread and automatically discount viable options and assume everything other than the bottomline is useless.

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no not u, i didnt read what u said. for OP

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Well, even if, it’s actually not normal that the trait “made for” charging the ult faster, is actually a worse choice in the majority of the case than the trait that actually also make us safer offensively and defensively (as a hit stagger, it does prevent some short hits). That’s what I call “a bad choice”. Worse, it’s actually what we call “a noobie trap”, as the “obvious stated effect” is clearly not working as good as the side effect from the other trait.

It’s fine as in “It’s actually a nice choice” for bad thp gen carrier (even when it’s bumped via shallya), usually Bounty Hunter, some Sienna’s, etc …
Like, you can play Natural Bound, it’s not a bad choice, and it’s actually useful.

There’s so much others traits that are straight up terrible, than I wouldn’t touch NB at all before all the others are remade.

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I think opportunist should be changed to 50% extra pushing power all the time. Instead of it being conditional that enemies must be in an attacking animation.

Off Balance needs its damage bonus to be stackable with every other buff in the game like shrapnel and the WHC’s talent. Otherwise its usefulness tends to be redundant in quickplay.

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Item Traits (and Properties) do need significant balancing, and have needed it for a long time. I don’t fully agree with OP’s assessment about them, though.

One significant problem that touches several Traits is still their triggering being tied to crits. Crit chance on characters can vary wildly (from base 5% to near-permanent 40 or 45%, and occasionally even higher). This makes those Traits difficult to balance already as that fluctuation needs to be taken into consideration (a Trait that’s good on high chance can easily be worthless on low, and one that’s already useful on low or even average chance is likely to be overpowered on high chance), but crits can be a powerful tool by themselves already, increasing at least damage and armour penetration - attaching extra effects to them is inviting imbalance.

That said, on the individual Traits:

  • Swift Slaying is certainly overly strong, even moreso when compared to its alternatives. Adding huge attack speed boost (that incidentally also helps sustain itself) adds a lot of offensive power, but also gives quite significant help defensively as the enemies cannot get their attacks off as easily anymore - and of course, with more attacks comes greater control of the enemies also. This ties strongly to my general point about Trait trigger being crits, as SS is very much on the level of “useful even on low chance, and very powerful on high”. It’s also strong enough to warrant full crit-chance builds by itself - on pretty much every Career, even those with no innate crit chance bonuses.

  • Parry is pretty much the only reasonable alternative in my opinion. I think it’s in a good place now - it’s strong, but not overly so (especially as it use is fairly limited), and its activation method rewards skill (though I understand that the window is small enough to cause problems on high ping). It can be a lifesaver, but it won’t help forever.

  • Heroic Intervention still seems to be a remnant from VT1. I’m not sure if “saving” a friend has been redefined at some point (I don’t remember a mention in patch notes at least), but it’s generally activated way too rarely (and the situations warranting the boost is often enough questionable too) to be of real use, even with a significant effect boost.

  • Opportunist may very well be more useful now that pushing is used more, but it’s still unreliable, and afaik doesn’t hit (many, at least) significant breakpoints. It could be useful it it allowed several (well, most, really) weapons to hit enemies out of attacks they normally couldn’t, but that doesn’t seem to happen. In addition, its effectiveness is relatively difficult to confirm, which makes it seem even less useful.

  • Off Balance is usable (and maybe even useful) on a couple of weapons and Careers, but iirc its effects also get superseded by many other abilities (and some quite ubiquitous), which reduces its usefulness significantly. It’s a niche Trait, and I think there are too many ifs to its usefulness.

  • Resourceful Combatant loses heavily. In all but the most optimal cases it loses to Swift Slaying in its capability to generate Career Skill charge, and even when it starts getting better Swift Slaying still offers its other advantages, while RC still only gives faster charge, pretty much overriding the advantage in charge speed. Its effectiveness has been severely limited from what it was, pretty artificially too, again pretty much because of it being tied to crits - the cooldown “loses” any crits during those four seconds, but you still need high chance (and high attack speed, because there’s no advantage of multiple crit hits either) to get it to proc as soon as possible after the cooldown. If it wasn’t limited, it’d be able to generate a full career Skill pretty darn fast, as could be seen at one point. Its whole working needs rethinking, and it very much needs to be separated from crit in my view.

Ranged-wise,

  • Barrage is useful enough - it’s a bit niche, but it enhances certain builds quite nicely. It needs building around it, but it’s useful.

  • Conservative Shooter is quite fine - it can (in theory) sustain you indefinitely, but it needs high skill to pull off. In some cases you can even get multiple head hits off in a single shot (either through Trueflight Volley or lining up your shots well, gaining more ammo. Increasing the ammo gain from it would make it far too strong.

  • Inspirational shot is effective if used well, but its actual usefulness is still very questionable. There are only a couple of weapons that can both headshot easily enough and shoot fast enough to use it; your comrades usually either have prepared to be self-sustaining on Stamina or otherwise don’t use it enough for the boost to matter; and when (despite those limitations) it otherwise could be useful, the situation is likely too intense to keep headshotting at range. It could be useful with a coordinated team, with the whole team coordinating their builds, but in general there’re just too many conditions to be fulfilled for it ever to work.

  • Resourceful Sharpshooter suffers from the same problems as its melee counterpart, only worse because of the general lack of attack speed and/or higher crit chance on applicable weapons. Whenever it’d be worth considering, Scrounger is probably a better choice - if you’re letting crits do the work, why not let them do something useful like sustaining your ammo?

  • Hunter also suffers from being tied to crits, this time by being too unreliable generally. It has a spot for Bounty Hunter and Huntsman (who can get reasonably reliable ranged crits) but others are hard-pressed to get use out of it - and again, unless you’re going for pure damage, Scrounger is probably a better option. Needs tweaking I think, but mainly to the trigger.

  • Scrounger is in a reasonable place. I still don’t like it being tied to crits, but it doesn’t suffer or shine because of that.

  • For the two heat-specific Traits, Thermal Equalizer is useful enough (and very much reliable), but heat Sink is very limited in its usefulness. Granted, it was overly powerful before, but in its current form it’s just not worth it - on some weapons it doesn’t work at all (like Flamethrowers, where the heat is mostly generated from charging, not the attack itself), on others it just suffers from unreliability (and usually still less effect than Equalizer unless used on Pyro). Rethinking required, I’d say, to make it work more widely.

Necklace Traits are quite good now, I think; for me only Hand of Shallya seems somewhat lacking. Barkskin and Natural Bond both have a significant niche, though it may not be obvious at first. Barkskin helps you a lot whenever you mostly take damage in short bursts - not single large hits, not trickling in every now and then. It can help against hordes, DoTs, disablers and berserkers. It won’t replace any healing you might need, but it will keep you alive to receive that healing. Natural Bond isn’t meant to be combat regeneration, or a full replacement fro healing items - it’s mostly there to keep you topped off for free. It works best when you don’t take that much damage in general, to eat up the occasional hit, friendly fire or damage from venting heat weapons.

Problems for Necklaces are far greater in the Property department - Health is pretty much mandatory, and the DR Properties seem nearly useless. The only competitive ones are the defensive boosts, and of those two BCR is usually more effective (though not always).

Trinkets and Charms are in a pretty similar situation to Necklaces - the Traits seem to be quite fine (though often irrelevant due to feeling insignificant or carrying a Grimoire), but Properties need a hard look and a lot of tweaking. I won’t go deeper to it - they’ve been discussed before, and this is long enough already.

That said, thanks to anyone who read through this wall of text.

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Normally, even when I agree with the gist of a post, I can always find small things in it to disagree with. With this post, I pretty much agree 100% though.

So. What @Yzneftamz said. I agree.

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