What's in need of adjustment? - The unpopular list

Do not worry about that. It is a thread for discussing what people consider “in need of adjustment”. Some people should maybe take the language down a notch. But even then, the exchange has brought two interesting points:

  • THP is considered vital by most players (and FS has resumed this by changing its position to the level 5 talent row), however there is a tendency that some consider it overtuned. I would argue Cleave does to much when hitting 3 or less enemies and that stagger does to much with certain weapons although I do love shield slamming THP generation because it emphasises the defensive nature of the weapon. But it makes Flamesword BW even sillier. But a general tendency to tone it down seems to be there.
  • (Close to) noone contesting the Tier 1 list shows that something could or even should be done about it, one way or another

To my OP (again): From the remaining “personal issues” I think that the removal of crit chance properties would be the most influential/noticeable but also the one which I think has the most benefits for the overall game balance. Yes, of course balance changes have influence everywhere and not everything can be seen but I am fairly sure about my general assessment. Saying it has ripple effects is correct but it is close to the awareness level of water is wet. It shouldn’t also be an argument against balance changes even less against discussing balance changes.

I am not hellbent on each of these things. If I had to make a wishing order from the Tier 2, I would say we start with the unification and adjustment of the Stagger Talents close to what you suggested (although I like my numbers better :P) because it has the least chance to upset game balance and would cause the least backlash/whining in the community.
Second I would like to see is the removal of the crit chance properties. While it is among the most controversial, I am convinced the positive effects on balance will far outshine potential issues on some other fronts. I am sure it will bring the general power level of weapons and careers closer together without the need to rebalance anything else.
Third, I would like to see the removal of pushing strength as UC passive and transfer it to Chain Reaction because it is my most played career and it is kinda silly.

If the main goal is to nerf Swift Slaying then you’re going the wrong way about it.

removing crit chance properties wont make much of a difference to Swift Slaying uptime
more attack speed means more proc chances after all
even if the player doesn’t reproc it within those 5 seconds, those 5 seconds of boosted attack speed has increased the chance of a crit with each successful hit due to psuedo random distribution

all it would do is favour faster weapons & careers with innate crit chance or high amounts of attack speed even more

If you really want to curb Swift Slaying change the crit proc to an independent % chance without psuedo random distribution and add an internal cooldown

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No, it is not the main goal.

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I have to say, I’m not convinced about Scrounger in particular, especially now many careers have got infinite ammo. It would unnecessarily punish the few that don’t.

Perhaps not, but regardless of your intention, even with the current version of swift slaying it would probably make SS a non option for slower, heavier weapons on 5% crit chance careers. Probably only someone like Merc who has access to both bonus crit chance and attack speed would be likely to get passable uptime on most of the 2 handed weapons.

That seems like pretty strong overkill unless SS also got a pretty radical rework to go with it

I’m all for nerfing SS, but going so far as to make it a non option for a bunch of weapon/class combos is not something I can get behind.

I just don’t see it. I am using Greatsword without any AS talents and without Swift Slaying. And I don’t miss AS at all. I just don’t think it is needed on most weapons. There may be very few outliers where it might make a difference - something like Pickaxe maybe - but for heavy majority of weapons no additional attack speed is needed for them to feel very good and strong in public cataclysm games.

This passable uptime is actually one of the largest problem. Any uptime above 50 % in combat situations is for me absurd. It should be far less or it should come with a drawback. Generally, it should come with a complete rework of traits & properties as it makes it easier to allude specific issues. Suggestions for that are existing.

But I can not follow the mindset of “AS is needed” and “If we remove SS all weapons should be 10 % faster from base stats.” My experience does not match this. Also, there should be an argument that indeed traits are not favourable on all weapons.

I believe that what Incan was trying to say is that you need to think a bit more about the consequences of some of the major changes that have been proposed here. Not that changes shouldn’t be made, but rather that you should try to understand everything that is implied with a given change, because it may result in a game that is far less enjoyable to play or even functional.

SS in particular is simply a minor convenience to have among a bunch of traits that literally do nothing worthwhile and have been in a need of a rework for a very long time. Nerfing it in isolation is pretty much equivalent to removing traits from weapons altogether.

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Which implies that I did not think about potential consequences. You may check my topics I posted in the forum here. Most of this stuff I adressed earlier with more details. Of course they are in need for refinement and more than likely I have overlooked certain stuff. But I am most certainly not suggesting larger changes on a whim.

This here was just a summary. I think it is self-explanatory why I didn’t want to adress even more text to the OP.

Just to stick my oar in about THP, I think THP ULT talents are completely over the top. Merc + ~Unchained Ult(With Bomb Balm) ,Bardin THP in smoke and thing like WHC ULT guaranteed crits giving a massive burst of THP are complete overkill meaning you can play with impunity knowing full well it doesn’t matter if you get hit or not as you’ll have the boost again in a minute - and that’s not even mentioning the combination of 2 or 3 of these together.

Maybe THP needs another tweak so it decays a lot faster, although the key to the problem is almost everyone is swimming in THP all the time as there are so many ways of generating THP its ridiculous.

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I like this idea, it’s creative.

I’d say remove DoT from uncharged arrows. Also the 5s lockout is unnoticeable, it should be 10s. The ammo recovery rate could do with being slower too, with WS perhaps being able to get back a little of the old recovery rate via her ammo talents. Another suggestion I saw that I liked as a possible alternative was halve all the damage values but double the ammunition pool, so you need to invest more time into firing the weapon to secure kills.

Agreed on all.

Cog hammer is great but it honestly shines most on IB and Slayer as with Smiter you can hit the SV headshot breakpoint more easily and so on (otherwise you need the two properties on your trinket + Enhanced Power, which works together with some ranged weapon breakpoints on Cata but not all). Main problem I see with Bardin is that his shields and hammer weapons all work well, axes and pickaxes not so much (outside of Slayer). Hence, as many don’t like shields, you see a lot of cog hammer, dual hammers and 1h/2h hammer, not a lot of his other unshielded weapons. I’d like to see pickaxe and the others be made viable on other careers than Slayer and then see if cog hammer still needs nerfing (it may well, but right now the alternatives are so pitiful I don’t see it doing anything other than pushing me to take a shield).

Griffonfoot is amazing on BH but it is such a pain vs specials with its spread pattern (it is worse at mid range+ than blunderbuss/grudgeraker vs them, and it is horrendous vs distant blightstormers/ratlings) I’m honestly not sure what to say. Maybe it’s a bit too good vs hordes? I’d hate to see it get nerfed too hard simply because it’s such a fun, new way to play BH where you switch from deleting specials to deleting hordes.

Trollhammer mainly can become a problem in conjunction with ammo regen, but it’s quite the clunky weapon and the aoe isn’t too big. With PuGs I still prefer something that can handle specials, but that’s a general problem with PuGs (and why GK can be so annoying if you have teammates that suicide on specials while you’re screaming internally running after them and trying to save them).

Coruscation seems a fair trade off, you still need to rely on your melee + positioning vs massed or heavy armour (barring pyro LMB crits vs SV etc) and bosses get knocked out of the aoes with PuGs or bots a lot. Works great with teams that know how to kite bosses in places. I’m far from a Sienna main however so I can’t judge too closely, I’d imagine other staves still work out better for specific uses.

Scrounger and Swift Slaying do need nerfing, but nerfing crit chance just incentivises careers with guaranteed crits even more and at 5% base crit I think this’d be an over-nerf for the others. I like Salp’s idea to limit crit chance to weapons and take it off trinkets, so you can at least get 10% crit chance if you take it on your weapon.

imo a more elegant solution would be keep crit chance as is but disconnect all these traits that are so dependent on it. Crit chance should just be a damage boost but right now it’s everything from ammo/heat regen with Scrounger/Heat Sink to an AS boost and move tech + faster crits aka more Swift Slaying.

Your Conservative Shooter change is a good idea. In fact having more traits with tradeoffs the way NB does would be really neat. For Scrounger - the incredible yet bland trait - I liked Salp’s idea in the other thread to make it you get ammo back after x melee kills (it would have to scale by difficulty) or maybe after x melee elite kills to incentivise clearing threats to the team (berserkers etc).

Swift Slaying I’m not sure what to do with. Even heavily nerfed it suffers the problem that, as I said in the other thread, nothing good competes with it apart from Opportunist. If you ditched crit chance from properties, careers like Huntsman, Merc, WHC, Shade etc. or careers with high crit chance melee weapons or guaranteed crit talents would still take Swift Slaying, but other careers would all switch to Opportunist.

To sum up what I said in the other thread, Heroic Intervention is unreliable garbage, Off Balance is the lamer sibling to Opportunist, Parry can do great work but is hugely dependent on latency and doesn’t benefit from BCR so you’re disincentivised to take it in the first place, and Resourceful Combatant feels awful with such a long ICD but the moment you remove the ICD it has the same problem as Swift Slaying on high crit builds with constant uptime.

The solution I don’t see FS doing but would be an idea would be to turn Swift Slaying into an active on a long CD. E.g. for 20s you get 20% AS but a CD of two minutes. They’d need to add a trait keyind to active traits like this. Otherwise you’d need to active it through some move combo or in-game action, but I don’t really see what would work here without breaking the flow of the game (can’t use the special attack key as some weapons use this already).

Heroic Intervention and Resourceful Combatant would be much neater if replaced by some sort of trait that refunds cooldown duration as your team get pounced and take damage, basically a panic ult trait, but I’d be sceptical of adding that to the game with balance as it is now, since it’d probably be brokenly good.

Beyond that, as @Saryk pointed out, Swift Slaying is the one pure offense trait for melee weapons. There is nothing to compete with it that isn’t Opportunist (which you need to know stagger breakpoints for and many players don’t even know the damage breakpoints in this game).

Swift Slaying does need a nerf but if FS don’t improve the other traits I’m calling it right now people will either stick to nerfed Swift Slaying or migrate to Opportunist. The other traits won’t see their pick rates improve by any meaningful amount. Beyond that, they’re really boring as they are now, with Swift Slaying and Opportunist you get immediate feedback, be it rapid attacks with SS or enemies getting knocked down and crumped mid overhead with Opportunist.

Agreed and I honestly agree with @TmanDW here, ditch the stagger talent line. It is confusing as hell for newbies and veterans that don’t look into breakpoints alike. At the very least push it back to level 20, so as a new player you go THP → 2 career talent tiers → stagger → 2 career talent tiers.

I’d like to see the THP line have Cleave/Stagger/Kill available to all careers (Crit THP would have to go if they removed or lowered Crit) and have heal share moved to be a necklace trait.

Agreed on all these. I’d like to add I miss having a tier themed around OC in Pyromancer’s talent tree, like she used to. BW talents have these neat tiers, e.g. one focused on damage type (do you want a DD boost on full charge or burn damage at the cost of direct damage, or to have burn DoTs last until death), another tier focused on Tranquility and a third on striking enemies (burn DR, burn CDR, cleaving four enemies at once for AS).

Pyro’s talent tree on the other hand is a jumbled mess. She’s by no means a bad career, I enjoy her a lot (apart from Burning Head being a wet THP noodle), but the talent layout feels like someone was playing sudoku and had to slot them in somewhere.

Going with your thoughts + mine, I’d reorganise pyromancer’s level 10, 20, 25 and 30 tiers like so (some of these could use a rework but I’m mostly going with the current talents):

Level 10: Theme: General boosts

  1. Ride the Fire Wind - 10% Ranged Power
  2. Martial Study - 5% Attack Speed
  3. Fleetflame - 10% Movement Speed

Level 20: Overcharge boosts

  1. On the Precipice - Critical Mass also increases ranged power by 3% per 6 overcharge and stacks up to 5 times (15% ranged power).
  2. One with the Flame - Critical Mass also increases attack speed by 2% per 6 overcharge and stacks up to 5 times (10% attack speed).
  3. Spirit-Casting - Critical Mass increases critical chance by 8% per 6 overcharge and stacks up to 5 times (40% critical chance at 5 stacks as opposed to 30%, the same as it is now with Critical Mass + Spirit Casting).

Level 25: Resource Management

  1. Deathly Dissipation - Killing a special will prevent you from overheating for 10 seconds, killing an elite will prevent you from overheating for 2s (added the latter as per @dannylew8299’s suggestion in the Pyromancer thread to make it more competitive with Volans).
  2. The Volans Doctrine - Killing an elite in melee removes overcharge slowdown and overcharge can’t decrease for 6s (I like this talent but I see the durations being perhaps too short below Cata without the mixed hordes. On Cata 6s is perfect).
  3. Soul Siphon - Killing a special prevents THP decay for 10s, killing an elite prevents THP decay for 6s (current Soul Siphon is kinda underwhelming vs the alternatives, it needs something).

Level 30: Ultimate

  1. Bonded Flame - Burning Head grants 35 temporary health when used.
  2. Blazing Twins - Burning Head now unleashes two fiery projectiles instead of one.
  3. Blazing Echo - Burning Head critical hits refund its cooldown.

I can’t remember who suggested it but I liked the idea of giving them an anti-burst mechanic. Troll in some ways has this, his regen phase means he at least gets to breathe in a few seconds more air before being yeeted back into the chaos realms, contrast to other bosses which suffer fatal and sudden spontaneous combustion vs any sort of dedicated boss damage weapon or ult. Basically, if bosses take big chunk damage in one go they’d get a boost like the old Slayer and Zealot talents for a few seconds where any damage over a certain threshold gets a huge reduction. It’d still hurt them a bit, but it’d no longer totally nuke them.

Agreed with what you came up with, that’d work too, might be even better. Bosses are actually okay vs a team with no or little boss damage sources, Skarrik performs very well as a boss if you don’t have a team that can delete him in 2s, 10s tops. He’s a fun fight. Just normally he suffers a tragic stroke as BH Saltz’s bullets lodge themselves in his brain.

In case it hasn’t been mentioned here, my favourite idea for buffing 1h axes came from @James in the Saltz 1h axe thread: half the push cost and let them break shields more easily. Halved push would compensate for their poor stagger/control and cleave without needing to fiddle with their actual cleave etc.

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Impressive and long answer. Just to add on one thing as it has been discussed a fair bit. Of course simply removing crit chance would cause issues. But ideally it would be accompanied by a general rework of traits and properties. When I am talking about that I have always this thread:

Traits and Properties - Suggestion for adjustments - Vermintide 2 / Vermintide 2 - Feedback - Fatshark Forums (fatsharkgames.com)

in the back of my mind. Different issues talked about here, are already adressed in there like ammo economy and Attack Speed on slow weapons as well as other offense traits. It was just a bit to much for one thread. Also, the suggested system needs lots of refinement and more than likely has some issues still untouched because nobody can safely consider each potential consequence.

Generally, I would say that both a Stagger Talent rework as well as a Traits & Properties rework are things the community has been asking for. So there is a chance to take away some stuff if something else is added.

Also thanks for the input on other new weapons, it hasn’t been discussed much. As sidenote, also glad that the value of Opportunist is more recognized on a broader basis. A year back, this was not the case so much.

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I’ll take a look into that thread later today - I never saw it since I quit sometime a little after WoM launch and came back after Chaos Wastes.

Opportunist is good but it and Power vs don’t seem very accessible to many players without reading guides (since most don’t play modded realm / spend the time to test breakpoints there). The spreadsheet that gets linked sometimes helps to alleviate Power vs, at least for ranged weapons, melee is more complicated around stagger imo, but stagger breakpoints very few players I see seem to know. I’m not surprised it took some time for people to figure out Opportunist can actually be useful (although again, without knowing stagger breakpoints on the weapon in question it falls back into not so useful or even useless again depending on the weapon. Shields are at least relatively easy since they mostly seem to have similar or the same breakpoints irrespective of which mainhand weapon they’re packaged with).

there’s about a 20% difference

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Okay, what’s up with today? Was there some magical event on this day? This is the third person having a forum anniversary.

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Probably sth. to do with the WoM beta that happened around this time 2 years ago.

Edit: Oh, and the Versus trailer dropped exactly 2 years ago.

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That or everyone here just celebrated a random party I cleary was not invited to. #4

This thread is so derailed that I can probably just answer that question, without feeling bad about it.

I created the account with the “join the closed beta thing to test cata and beastman before WoM goes live” link alot of people had in their mails after signing up for it.

There was this newsletter that asked people to participate in some sort of survey and a bit later, days, or weeks, I don’t remember, the link came in your mail. I think there were multiple waves, with the final being the open beta one, so there might be more of those mass anniversaries coming up the next days.

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Why is Fervency in this list? At best it’s 64 thp with Rapier + crit/headshot thp (40% attack speed and 100% dps uptime, 16 headshots, unrealistic amount). That’s better than cleave thp for 6 seconds vs Chaos hordes, but cleave thp with Rapier vs Chaos hordes is 32 thp without requiring headshots (Rapier hits 2 Marauders when staggered, ult staggers). Against other horde types cleave has better thp generation on Cata 1 constantly than crit/headshot has burst.

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I dunno about the Unchained one. Bomb Balm gives 30 THP and it’s on a two minute cooldown. On Legend or Cataclysm that’s really not a big deal at all. Especially since you’re often saving your Ult for emergencies with overcharge anyway, not burning just to get 30 THP every two minutes.

The issue with each group THP talent is that it stays even after the career skill ended. Also, the two minute cooldown is mostly theoretical. You also gain career skill bar by doing and receiving damage which is why you can use it far more often. Add Abandon to the equation and you can use it freely and even more often.

Personally, I just think that Unchained could simply have a more interesting talent than Bomb Balm like imbuing all her attacks and those of her allies with fire magic for 10 seconds while also slightly increasing the damage of the fire dot. It would stay true with the “support” them of bomb balm but also with her offense nature. Would also make sense that her overspilling of magic (overheating) temporarily causes fire effects for teammates. Instead of simply more THP. I think there is a spell for this called “Sword of something.”

However, I have this increasing feeling that we will something like this four Sienna’s fourth career.

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