Why was there even a beta?

So there’s been roughly zero changes since Beta 2. The talents in particular are insulting, with completely useless ones still being untouched in spite of months of feed back.

Also, this game is apparently now called Vermingrind. I have to grind out 25 more levels (5 chars * 5 levels) just to have the talents I already had before? It’s unbelievable that all the feedback about weaves being too grindy didn’t somehow clue FS in to the idea that making people grind out levels in the core game again might also be a bad idea.

How much for a DLC to revert this patch? I want the game I originally bought back.

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The talents were a huge disappointment and I was actually hyped for them during beta 2 despite the odd ones, thinking at the time they’d be worked on and improved.

Despite all the threads on them and those poll/discussion threads BongoSkaggs did in the last beta, very little was adjusted. All the inherent design problems with the new talents that were there then still remain (Zealot’s ridiculous THP gain potential (atm not relevant as THP on cleave is broken), Unchained having a talent that messes up her heat management by doing it automatically at 50% HP, BH being unable to use his ult in its default version without losing passive CD regen etc etc).

Automatic picks had their durations overnerfed to the point you can’t utilise them anymore and that’s about it. FK’s AS on push got bumped up to 3s which went back in the right direction but probably won’t make it competitive again in that tier. Other than that nothing was adjusted.

Now we’re going to have the situation we had on live pre-WoM where you have a lot of talents that aren’t ever taken :pensive:

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Well i still do like the new talents more than the previous ones but i’m with ya its really disappointing to see the exact same issues talked in the previous 2 betas not being resolved.
I can’t even remember the amount of shade threads made during the betas but its actually bit insulting to see the exact same talents with exact same numbers being still present.

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Oh no totally, as do I, but again, there’re a lot that are never going be taken here too. Certain careers are great and have mostly only useful talents, others have a lot of issues (that were apparent already in beta 2 -.-).

It’s like instead of replacing the lacklustre talents from before, they replaced them and a lot more, but then didn’t ensure that all the replacements were actually good, viable choices. I’m not sad to see the old talents go, but some were flat out better than some of the new ones as they are now.

It’s like they replaced for the sake of replacing instead of for the sake of offering meaningful choices.

Praying this isn’t the end of it and they’ll continue to adjust them in future, but this hasn’t given me high hopes.

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Yes i agree with you completely, some of the trees really do feel like they did it just to say “oh we got new talents for all”. Then you look at stuff (basic example) krubers ult talents (lv35) and notice we still have this shitty no temp hp giving one that reduces the cooldown by 45 %. I think i commented on like 10 different threads were people argued it should be closer to 65 % at least to even considered worth while but yup its still there in the old form.

Obviously this is just the basic example of top of my head but first thing that i did when i logged in was check all the character talents and there were barely any changes -.-

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Or Shade’s one tier, 20% damage reduction for 5s on Crit, or 20% MS for 5s on Crit vs 10% MS at all times.

All the people who hate MS talents aside (myself included, but there were a lot more based on the beta polls), the entire tier design is weird. Shade doesn’t have much HP to buffer hits with to begin with, not having a dodge talent (like HM’s new dodge through enemies one) is weird, but I guess they can’t add one as it’d automatically be taken by the majority over the other two talents.

I guess I’m always going to take DR as I hate MS and I anyway max my crit chance. You basically have two gameplay choices in that tier: DR or MS.

Meanwhile for MS people you either pick 20% MS on crit (so in combat, if you stack crit chance) or 10% all the time (and afaik 10% is going to be the automatic choice if you already take 5% MS as property, that’s 15% all the time which is more than plenty). I’m just left to scratch my head at those kinds of design decisions.

Then you have HM who has 150hp instead of 100, damage talents, dodge talents, crit chance talents and AS talents. HM’s new talents on the other hand are great. Shade and WS have a lot that are underwhelming.

Kruber was lucky, the odd exception (eg the no THP CDR talent) is in there, but overall he’s got a lot of enticing choices across all his careers.

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Yeah, I don’t get it, there are so many utterly useless talents it’s unreal. What room temperature IQ person at fatshark makes the decisions here? People who have literally never played the game can look at many of these talents and understand that they are pointless.

BH second row to give an example:
20% damage increase to a target if you crit, which buffs both melee and ranged. (when he already has a 100% crit buff).
OR 1% damage per magazine size to ONLY your ranged weapon. So even with the highest magazine size ranged weapon (volley), you gain a measly 15%, which is still worse than the one that buffs melee as well.

What the hell is this?
1% ranged damage increase to the crossbow. WOAW.

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Don’t forget (based on the previous beta at least) the 20% applies to the crit that activates it also.

But yeah, that clip size on is the perfect example of a talent that’s designed to sound ‘cool’/ingenious but is actually pointless in practice.

They have the potential to make great talents, a number of the new talents are, but it feels like they ran out of ideas halfway through and/or have lost sight of how certain careers are meant to handle.

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One thing I noticed is that ranged was given the 20% bonus damage automatically in order to hit breakpoints according to the patch notes, however, enhanced power being nerfed down to 7% and power vs properties no longer being multiplicative almost entirely cancel out this bonus. Which makes ranged Cata breakpoints just as impossible to hit as in Beta 2, even though the patch notes made it sound like they wanted to address that concern.

As a side note, I wonder why they chose 7% for the enhanced power talent. It’s such an arbitrary and underwhelming number, and would only be helpful in extremely niche cases.

If it goes any higher than the stagger talents are useless. Trying to keep them all on the same page I guess.

Also, as far as breakpoints go. Using the HM longbow, I’m 1 hit killing nearly everything on body shots…

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I get not wanting to impede on the other talents, but for example Smiter offer a 20% bonus and Assassin offers a 40% bonus. So a 7% bonus is pretty lackluster by comparison. 15% was of course too high, but maybe 10% so that it’s half the bonus of what most of the stagger talents offer?

As for Handmaiden, are you sure? Marauders have 72 HP on cata and are very common, and it doesn’t seem like HM should be able to hit those numbers outside of a headshot. Though I did notice that clan rats seem to have drastically reduced HP from what I remember about the beta.

I really really like the new talents. They are far from perfect, but significantly better than the ones before. They are each more unique and engaging, and barring a few examples, are mostly up to personal/build choice rather than one being significantly better than the others.

I’m more concerned about some balance-related things being unchanged, like how Wargors are still OP (especially when stacked). I feel like the main intention of the beta was to get rid of crashes and bugs, which they delivered pretty well on.

Based on the last beta: the percentages in the talents were as a percentage of the bonuses for level 1/level 2 stagger, as in it’s a percentage of 20%/40%, not your total damage (120%/140%).

Hence with 15% power you did 135%/155% damage (not sure if it was additive or multiplicative), whereas if you took eg a talent with 50% increased stagger damage you would be doing 130%.

Can’t comment on how it is currently as I’m not in game.

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I think you’re confusing what the talents say. The stagger talents will give you 20-40 more damage on that hit if they are staggered. The 7% more hero power effects the entire character. That’s 7% more of 650 hero power, meaning that your hero power is now jumping up to 695.5 hero power. Now throw the 10% hero power talent for HM ontop of that. Increasing the hero power is a flat damage increase to everything you do. It also effects how many enemies you can cleave and stagger. And don’t forget, you still get the stagger bonus as well, just not the extra from the talents.

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Man… I’m confused and annoyed for the time when/if I have to explain this crap to friends returning to the game or new to the game.

Assuming anyone will, that is. Lol

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Fair, but in practice percent increases in hero power return lower percent bonuses to damage. Leveling up my character from 600 hero power to 650 only sees a damage increase of 5.5-6.0%, so I’m assuming another increase of 45.5 hero power would net similar gains, and that the final hero power bonuses to cleave and stagger are the same as the bonus to damage. So it’s a bit underwhelming is all I’m saying, unless a build has some very important breakpoint that they are ~5% damage or cleave away from hitting.

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Yes, there is some weirdness with the power on ranged attacks. I’ve had full fireballs on BW one shot gatlings and warps.

RV’s talents are kinda insulting if you ask me, he has like 4 complete useless talents and 3 mediocre ult talents. The only talents that are kinda exciting are put in bad spot in the tree witch forces you to always take the strongest ones.

The only things that make him unique (for exemple: zealots THP, shade backstab etc…) are ammo bag and the ability to reload faster witch in practise is only useful on grudgraker… The last time FS changed him, they gave him 10% dupe chance, yeah great…As useful as krubers “50% chance to refile stamina when block is broken”, more rng plz.

Then i look at HM, Zealot, WTH etc…who have ten billions useful passivs and strong talents that mathers in your playstile. I wish i could hear from the FS employe responsible for RV’s talent rework, hear his “mind pocess” the “idea” behind RV’s role and see him play the actual career on legend and cata. That would probably give him some useful hints about RV issues…Completly out of the loop…

Some changes seem completly random (as you pointed out), like slayer losing all his defensive talents/passive and they gave him 2 useless (but fun to use) ultimate talents. And why the hell did they change slayers ult “flying arc”, it s giving me an headeach…

Btw i m mad because this was the last chance we had for a big talent rework, RV’s is a miss and gods know how much time FS will take to aknowledge any constructive feedback AND act properly…

It’s not though. Remember, this hero power increase then also effects your properties on charm and weapons. So that’s 10% chaos is now doing a lot more as well on the bonus. Let me show you,

stagger

So, these are the max stagger damage for each talent. It’s so complex I’m not going to get into the pro’s and con’s of each talent. But basically, as you can see, only Mainstay does more damage. But, what you have to keep in mind is that is only for top damage. Mainstay deals less first hit damage. So that first cleave into a horde, the enhanced power (7% more Hero power) is going to be out damaging that talent. Basically, the stagger talents only shine when the enemies are fully staggers. Where as the 7% hero talent always shines.

I can see what people mean when they say this stagger mechanic is confusing :joy: I’m not even sure if I got that 100% correct. But from what I can tell, this is how it works.

When it comes to smiter, you always get the highest first cleave damage. But it only works on 1 mob. So the rest lose the stagger bonus. This should really only be used on single target weapons.

EDIT: Also, keep in mind that stagger doesn’t seem to work with ranged weapons. Ranged bypasses stagger. So the 7% power increases damage for them as well while the stagger talents don’t.

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@SmokerT69, are you sure that the assassin talent doesn’t work with ranged as well?
I thought the instant 40% dmg bonus for crits of assassin talent could wourk on ranged as well. (and regardless of actual stagger level of enemies. Am I wrong? it’s a bit confusing)

If that’s not the case i suppose i should get 7 hero power to max my BH ranged critical strikes.