Weapons need more balance

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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I Really feel that some weapons are heavily outclassed by other weapons.

Ranged Weapons.

Biggest example of this is Handgun being outclassed by Repeater handgun.

Repater Handgun has Great ammo Efficiency , big damage , pretty good cleave , medium range and accuracy with big magazine and fast reload.

Handgun On the counterpart have bigger damage , range and accuracy but no cleave , very slow reload time , weak critical damage , advantage of shooting through shields.

I think Handgun need a serious buff maybe for Reload speed and improve cleave a little bit.

Shotguns also need some buff most probably it would need more ammo and better reload speed.

Volley Crossbow for Saltzpyre its pretty good weapon i just think it needs faster reload nothing else.

That is biggest problem of ranged weapons then if we look on some of the melee weapons.

Falchion its not bad weapon but Charged attack need more armor pierce it took to many hits to kill Stormvermin on headshots with them.
Maybe increase stamina from 2 to 3 and that would be enough for a needed buff.

2H Sword-(Greatsword) its very good weapon but i feel its Charged attacks should have bit more damage on infantry or maybe having more attack speed for Charged attacks.

Halberd is also pretty good weapon its stabs are very powerfull on Head hits but its cleave on strikes are pretty poor, so for a buff i would suggest increase of cleave on strike attacks 1st light and 1st charged attacks.

Pickaxe is also pretty lacking it should have more damage on light attacks to make it feel better, it should be Weapon in betwen of Greataxe and Greathammer.

Shield Weapons after the last buff they are pretty good the only problem i have with them is movement speed during attack is way too slow it feels like you are crawling instead of walking.
So increase of movement peed during attack would be great.

Greataxe i think it needs small cleave boost.
Each time i compared Greataxe and Greathammer i had more damage done with Greathammer over Greataxe and that feels wrong because Greathammer have very powerfull cleave with crowdcontroll while Greataxe should have more damage but it doesnt cleave good enough so it crawl behind.

PLS give your opinions and suggest other improvements if you want but dont be offensive and rude on others Thx.

9 Likes
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I totally agree.

  • There isn’t any reason to use Handgun. It needs an higher reload speed and penetration;

  • Shotguns need a buff too… Bad range, ammo, monster and armor damage. Since they have few ammo, they can be used only by Ranger Veteran and Huntsman. But why should I use a squishy ranged career only to kill hordes when I can use WHC or Merc or Zealot that kill hordes as well but they are tougher, they help more you mates and they can kill specials?
    Important thing: with hyperdensity fix Fatshark nerfed indirectly shotguns;

  • Human Longbow: much slower than Elf Longbow and Crossbow but with more or less the same breakpoints;

  • Halberd is a weaker Exe Sword. Less horde damage. Less control. Less armor damage. Almost same mobility. It should be an halfway between Exe and Spear. It needs a better mobility and more stagger/cleave on light 1. Its heavy combo needs a rework too.

  • 2h Sword should be an Exe Sword with more stagger but less damage vs hordes and armors. A good idea, but it doesn’t work. Its armor damage is really too low. And it needs another little help too… Like a faster heavy combo or more stagger. I repeat: its style is really cool but its cons are too big compared with its pro;

  • 2h Hammer: its heavy combo is too slow. It can be used only by Slayer. They could slightly reduce light combo’s speed… But heavy combo must be faster.

These are just some examples… Sadly there are tons of overshadowed weapons.

2 Likes
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Halberd can deal with armor easily.

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Yes, all the changes in WOM mean they need another BBB.

Here is my list:

Kerillian:
Sword + Dagger: Dominates everything else. Needs some kind of nerf. Only a light one, don’t make it useless.
2h Sword: Either needs a DPS upgrade on it’s light attacks, or the attack pattern changed to let it headshot. The Heavy Stab attack needs buffed to hit the SV Headshot breakpoint again.
Spear: Needs some of it’s old cleave back, it basically single target now and just can’t compete.
Swiftbow: Only viable on WS with “Serrated arrows” talent. Just make that talent baseline to this bow and open that slot up for a better talent.

Kruber:
Mace: Needs a dps upgrade to it’s light attack cycle.
2h Sword: Swap the attack pattern between light and heavy attacks but keep their damages the same. This will let light attacks sweep hordes better and heavy attacks focus elites better, giving this weapon a niche in between 1h sword and Hammer as a versatile 2 hander.
Handgun: Needs it’s hitscan bug fixed. I’ve tested and it seems like the client has some kind of desync with the host in calculating spread.
Blunderbuss: Needs it’s armor damage back. It serves no purpose if it can’t blast elites.
Empire Longbow: Works flawlessly on Legend. Needs a light buff so it can hit the same breakpoints on Cata.

Bardin:
1h Hammer: Needs a dps upgrade to it’s light attack cycle. (identical to kruber mace)
Great Axe: Either needs more cleave on it’s heavy attacks or heavy attack charge up faster - still can’t compete with Hammer.
Grudgeraker: Needs it’s armor damage back. It serves no purpose if it can’t blast elites.

Saltzpyre:
Axe+Falchion: Still OP and outclasses every other weapon in the game - all attacks simultaneously has the armor piercing and high damage of the axe, and the high cleave and headshot bonus of the falchion. Make it respect it’s source weapons (axe hits have axe damange, falchion hits have falchion damage) and it’s fixed.
2h Sword: Swap the attack pattern between light and heavy attacks. This will let light attacks sweep hordes better and heavy attacks focus elites better. (identical to Kruber)

Sienna:
Mace: Needs a damage boost and a forward move speed bost (like Pickaxe) on it’s first heavy attack. That’s all it needs. Really. I tested it a lot. It’s not an easy to use weapon which makes it seem weaker then it is, and with skilled play this change will make it competitive with the other weapons. A slight speed buff would increase it’s general usability but isn’t essential.
Dagger: Needs the push attack buffed to compensate for the bleed damage loss. Would be awesome if Light Attack 3 (the stab) had armor piercing, would open up at least one good combo.
Beam Staff: Needs it’s heat generation of it’s sniper move decreased. It’s way out of line compared to Bolt Staff.

5 Likes
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I personally really like pickaxe. It kills armored targets faster than pretty much any other melee weapon in the game, and has a light swing pattern which is pretty well suited for dealing with hordes - even if the damage and cleave isn’t that good. I don’t think it needs any changes personally.

Kruber’s spear is way better than it has any right to be, and the nerf to its push didn’t change that at all. Its heavy sweeping attack is what really makes it so good I think - it’s accessible after most other attacks, and has the cleave and stagger values of a discounted hammer. It at least shouldn’t be able to cleave past armor, and maybe tone down the stagger or cleave a bit. Not both, as that would probably be too much. Kerillian’s dual weapons should either lose their increased crit chance or tone it down somewhat.

Dual weapons in general tend to outperform their single weapon counterparts, however all of the 1h weapons are at least viable so that make up for it to some degree. I personally think all dual weapons except for Kerillian’s should move down to 4 stamina (that’s 2 shields) to offset their damage potential. Dual Axes are a good example of this.

Bolt Staff just needs a faster projectile speed for the charged attack. There’s no reason why it should be so slow.

2H sword needs better light attacks - the charged attacks are actually really good and deal with most situations effectively, but there isn’t really ever a reason to use light attacks imo unless to milk critical hits from WHC. I wouldn’t mind switching the two attacks around, keeping the cleave on the wide sweeps of the old heavy attack, but taking away the armor damage, and adding the armor damage to the old light attack. It might look kind of weird from an animation perspective though.

I personally think blunderbuss is in a good spot, but the grudge-raker needs more ammo. It is only viable on RV right now, and imo has been since game release.

Elf 1h sword could use a slight boost to armor damage on charged attacks. Good otherwise.

2 Likes
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You’re clueless.

All i had to read was “Axe+fal is OP and outclasses everything else” to know enough that you dont know what you’re talking about.

If you had said billhook i wouldnt be typing this (Im not saying billhook is OP either) Good weapons dont need nerfs, bad weapons need to be buffed.

Its pretty obvious you dont own winds of magic or you are just have no idea how good billhook is over axe+fal and every other of saltz weapons.

3 Likes
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I agree billhook is ridiculously strong, though axe and falc is absolutely OP too.

it’s really not that big a deal though lol, I’m not sure why your response is so combative.

This is power creep and isn’t good for the long term health of any non-loot based game, imo.

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Good points and balanced suggestions for the most part. My wish is to get a BBB where the devs expressly state which difficulty we’re meant to balance the weapons for. I’d definitely take som time to play around with the different weapons to provide feedback.
I do however think that it’s crucial that we know what difficulty it’s being balanced towards since the difference in weapon performance is huge going from say leg to cats. Alternatively separate BBB in two (or more) Cowering one difficulty each. @Fatshark_Hedge

3 Likes
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Can one shoot body shoot any special on cata and have very long damage falloff good weapon with clear design no need to change

Shotguns well they are in good place I would only change pellet pattern to be more horizontal

Volley yeah faster reload way faster and maybe little more cleave

Halberd is one of highest cleave weapon yeah buff it more what ? Halberd to be effective need to be block canceling but yeah

pickaxe is not even similar to 2haxe/hammer no idea why you trying to make it between it

shields yeah that slow is quite high you can’t even hit in light combo trash that you staggered sometimes.

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Outclassed by the Billhook though.

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Except that it is not. The first heavy attack has less cleave (!!!) than the first light attack due to the linesman modifier. And when you spam the first attack through the block you do it slowly. And do not forget that the halberd is the only weapon in the game that has a negative dodge range bonus of -5, which is simply ridiculous, given that even shields now have 0 dodge range bonus.

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slowly but faster than spam l1 hmmm

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Considering the current state of weapon balance, I think buffing underperformers should be the first step. That’s not to say that some weapons might not need a (tiny) nerf here or there, but right now there aren’t many weapons that absolutely overperform in a way that’s harming the game. Buffing bad weapons first and seeing how the meta ends up would be a better choice currently.

Here’s the weapons of which I think need a little love, based on personal experience with them:

Mace / Hammer & Shield
This one is just outclassed by Sword / Axe & Shield in every situation and against every enemy. And that’s while these other shielded weapons are definitely on the lower end of the power distribution as well (but fine enough for now). The main reasons for that are: 1) Armor damage (Axe attacks and Sword Pushattack - Heavy 1 combo are waaaay superior), but mostly 2) Lacking the beautiful Push - Shield Bash (Heavy 1) combo. Sword and Axe do have that combo and the capability of the first attack being that glorious Shield Bash, and therefore their potential for control is way superior, and that’s one of the main reasons to bring a Shield weapon in the first place. Also, the Hammer / Mace light attacks are pretty much redundant on this weapon since its Heavies do what the Lights do better in every way.
I’d buff this weapon first by changing the pattern of its Heavies so that the first Heavy is the Shield Bash. I’d also buff its Lights in some way. Those changes would make this weapon a lot better, but it does risk making this weapon a little too similar to Axe & Shield. I think other people might come up with more creative buffs though, and maybe a complete rework might also be in order…

One Handed Axe
This weapon is almost good, but it suffers a lot from one thing: Difficulty scaling by increasing enemy health disproportionally affects some weapons over others! (And that’s a main problem for a lot of other weapons as well.) For example: If a weapon / attack does what it does not by killing a single enemy quickly, but by having the capability of controlling and damaging a lot of enemies at the same time, that weapon / attack is still good if the enemies have more HP. You fight in exactly the same way, you have the same pros vs. cons, but fights just take a little longer, basically.
If instead your weapon has the benefit of killing an enemy in one or two strikes, at the cost of having bad control and defense (like the Axe), that could essentially work fine as well. You just need to use its mobility, but also tactically pick which enemy to strike to kill them quickly before they can attack you; Use the Axe’s offense for your defense, so to say. But when enemies now suddenly don’t die in one or two strikes because of damage sponginess, the weapon loses all its benefits, while still suffering from the negatives! The Axe is fine when it kills Fanatics / Ungors in one hit and Gors / Marauders in two, because that’s when its negatives are compensated by its killing power. When that doesn’t happen anymore, however, the Axe suffers a lot.
Barring a rework, I therefore think the Axe simply needs more Damage. If it can easily hit the breakpoints I mentioned earlier without giving up Crit Chance and Attack Speed, the Axe is a perfectly fine and viable weapon. Try it: Play it on Zealot with his damage buff vs. on Bounty Hunter (on Legend) and you’ll see what a world of difference that makes in viability. Potential problem could be that ithe Axe then becomes either good in Legend but bad in Cata, or Good in Cata and maybe overpowered in Legend… But I think even if the Axe can oneshot Gors in Legend it’ll still not be overpowered compared to other weapons.

Handgun
Suffers from the exact same problem as the Axe: When something you shoot is not deleted instantly, this weapon becomes useless because of its downsides (low ammo, slow reload). When you need two shots anyway, a more spammy weapon like the Repeater Handgun (or not switching to a ranged weapon at all!) is better in every. single. way.
Making this weapon an option is easy: It should, in every situation, on any difficulty, kill anything that’s not a Chaos Warrior or Monster in one hit. Period. You could even increase the reload time a little to balance this out. The damage it does vs. Chaos Warriors currently is pretty fair, though, so in compensation its damage vs. Super Armor specifically could then be reduced a little as well to keep it at its current damage.

One Handed Mace / Hammer
Pretty much outclassed by Sword & Mace or Dual Hammer, and way worse at Killing than it’s benefit of reasonable (but not great) Control capability justifies.
I’d like to see a buff to its Lights & Heavies in Damage and Armor Penetration, but I realize it could quickly become too similar to the Axe. Maybe just a tasty high Headshot Damage bonus instead? I’m sure other people have good suggestions as well.

Two Handed Axe
Mostly needs a buff because it’s overshadowed by the Two Handed Hammer. It just doesn’t kill fast enough to compensate its bad Defense / Mobility and mediocre Control.
A buff to Attack Speed and / or Damage could be enough to bring it up to level. I have a sneaking suspicion that it’d also be easy to buff this weapon into overpowered level, however, so some prudence is in order…

Warpick
I like the concept of this weapon, and it was perfectly fine in 1.6, but it underperforms right now.
I’d buff its lights a little maybe? Or instead give it some more mobility? In either case, a fully charged headshot should be able to kill anything that’s not a Chaos Warrior or higher in one hit in every situation. That alone would make the Warpick good, but still not overpowered since its charge time is very deleterious when facing mixed hordes.

all One Handed Swords & the Falchion
I never played these weapons very much in 2.0 and upwards, but they always felt very underwhelming.
Not really sure how to balance them properly since I lack enough experience with them, but it seems to me they could use some love.

Sienna’s Mace
There has already been said a lot about this one, and it’s on FS’s radar, so I won’t go in to needless detail here. The fact that it needs a buff seems uncontroversial to me, though.

Those are probably not all the weapons that could stand to be changed, but they’re the ones that need it most and the ones I have most experience with to form an opinion about.

4 Likes
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Difficulty scaling by increasing enemy health disproportionally affects some weapons over others! (And that’s a main problem for a lot of other weapons as well.) For example: If a weapon / attack does what it does not by killing a single enemy quickly, but by having the capability of controlling and damaging a lot of enemies at the same time, that weapon / attack is still good if the enemies have more HP. You fight in exactly the same way, you have the same pros vs. cons, but fights just take a little longer, basically.
If instead your weapon has the benefit of killing an enemy in one or two strikes, at the cost of having bad control and defense (like the Axe), that could essentially work fine as well. You just need to use its mobility, but also tactically pick which enemy to strike to kill them quickly before they can attack you; Use the Axe’s offense for your defense, so to say. But when enemies now suddenly don’t die in one or two strikes because of damage sponginess, the weapon loses all its benefits, while still suffering from the negatives! The Axe is fine when it kills Fanatics / Ungors in one hit and Gors / Marauders in two, because that’s when its negatives are compensated by its killing power. When that doesn’t happen anymore, however, the Axe suffers a lot.

Thanks for putting this into words. Quite a few weapons are affected by this and the addition of Cataclysm(+) difficulty really highlighted the issues of viability. If I need to slap a trash enemy several times with a weapon that has little crowd control or other benefits, it just becomes completely unattractive to use.

It’s also quite difficult to balance this because you can’t just buff the damage without making it ridiculous in lower difficulties (particularly Legend, where most player time is spent)

3 Likes
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Halberd needs more cleave on h1 or atleast a use. Yes attack speed is slow when cancelling but with talents you can get rid of that. And atleast not a negative dodge range. Otherwise halberd is fine and a very strong and fun weapon.

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Ye, I agree… The problem is another. Halberd needs more mobility and more control (for example more stagger on light 1).
And imho also the heavy combo needs a rework.

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What would you change on the heavy combo?

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They could make loop attacks possible on halberd i mean that if you switch betwen light then heavy etc you will be able to keep stabs or cleaves that might help so you would not need to block cancel for 1st light all the time

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Mace/Hammer & Shield
I agree with you on Mace/Hammer & Shield i think they should give it new heavy attack same as 1h hammer overhead with big damage and pierce that would make it better against armored target.

One Handed Axe
yea difficulty scaling is pretty big problem mostly with cleave and stagger on other weapons and in damage on 1h axe but i dont know how it could be fixed probably easiest would be tweaking numbers on cataclysm difficulty for enemies rather than weapons.

One Handed Mace/Hammer
This one is kinda tricky to buff properly.
It has stronger but slower light attacks than sword.
maybe increase its cleave and stagger so you dont get hit in between attack but dunno as i already said its kinda tricky.

Sienna’s Mace
Yea i always felt its kinda weird weapon and does nothing well.

I will add 1 more weapon which need buff and its Elven Greatsword

Kerilian’s Greatsword
Light attacks are not that bad but its attack moves are kinda bad because you can not hit heads properly with it.
The other big problem is its Heavy attack The Stab its mostly single target with some damage but even if you hit stormvermin in the head it deals very low damage and it should not.

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Well With 2h Sword
Well the game even say in description that its control weapon yet it has pretty weak crowdcontrol so its really weird so yea it might need more stagger atleast on heavy attacks.
i think its light attacks are pretty good right now they deal nice damage and cleave pretty well with nice range.

Armor damage
Well it has no armor damage on lights kinda ok.
Heavy attacks have some damage and on head hits its already pretty good but biggest armored damage you have on 2H Sword is its push attack if you hit head you can kill stormvermin very fast its also no problem to kill chaos warrior with it.

I dont think it needs more armor damage mostly because with heavy attack you can slice through armored targets and kill enemies behind him and if you have enough stagger power you can even make them stunlocked until other enemies are dead.

Its probably one of most complex weapons to use right and i just think it needs faster heavy attack and probably boost on stagger power of heavy attacks maybe some attackspeed buff for light would be nice but i dont want to overpower it.

Im using 2h sword exclusively on Footknight cause it seems best suited for him.