Why you shouldn't nerf Beastmen

Yeah, I know how it sounds. It may seem a foolhardy at the first glance, when the whole community screams about nerfing the beastmen right down. But after a while I believe just nerfing the new fraction to another boring mobs would be even more detrimental to the game if done posthaste.

It is true that, yes, some tweaks has to be made. But instead of nerfing everything down, I can see now that better BUFF INSTEAD.
Yes, we have hordes out of nowhere, silent backstabs, no footsteps of HUGE WALKING COWS and these issues have to be addressed, yes. BUT! We also have a long forgotten issues that might be perfect time to fix and at the same time fix the balance

  • We have BOTs that are not capable to perform properly at Cataclysm, because they haven’t been intended to. They walk into now like never deadly gas, trying to melee fire rats and in case of a rattling are just standing behind objects, ignoring the player’s screams of help. It’s perfect time to improve their behavior and also give players more tools to adjust their habits by more hidden and obvious options of both the Social wheel and gameplay settings.

  • We have specials that are inconsistent in behavior. One assassin is gliding gracefully across the sky like a fairy just to smash himself onto the wall, and the other is bolting at the cosmic speed from nowhere. If you can once and for all fix them to be consistent and predictable, it would ease the frustration at higher difficulties and would also make it feel less like luck and more like a skill

  • We have parts with no enemies whatsoever and have sudden horde waterfalls that players are incapable of handling due to such high numbers that break sound drivers and drop FPS. Make hordes more spread so the flow is consistent and players have time to kill them at a rate of spawning.

  • We have builds that are closely bound to crit mechanics and would not allow experimentation due to the fact that if your build is not precise and is off just a wee bit, then it is useless.

  • We also have traits and propreties that no one uses because they are too situational or worthless or both. Make new interesting and useful traits and buff propreties so they are fun and inviting to use. There’s so many interesting suggestions in the Feedback section!

  • Above all, we have weapons that are obsolete and forgotten or used close to never because? again, that “To be at least slightly effective you have to have a very certain build with no deviations”. Buff the weapons and give them new fun combos and moves.

  • Some weapons under-perform, like shields that have no wider push radius that daggers for example, and their heavy attacks can’t make a Chaos Warrior flinch

Overall, it’s not Beastmen you should nerf. Beastmen are just a catalyst that highlighted these problems to the point that they can not be put up with anymore.

I say: Do not nerf Beastmen, Fix and Buff first.

7 Likes

Regardless bugs and careers/weapons balance (that affects every faction, not only Beastmen), they are just better in everything than Chaos and Skaven. For this reason, they totally need a nerf.

Vermintide factions are meant to have pro and cons. We must not have a faction that is like Legend+ and Cata+.

12 Likes

Yeah, I agree with OP that these are issues that need to be addressed, but given that Beastmen are way out of line compared to Skaven and Chaos, they do clearly need a nerf. Nerfs can even be reverted later. Right now, there need to be some tweaks so that the game is actually enjoyable to play. The disparity between runs with Beastmen and without Beastmen is so extreme that people are UNINSTALLING THE DLC. I’ve been considering it (a big reason being how the bots get slaughtered by the Beastmen).

I don’t want the Beastmen made pointless, or have all their unique qualities taken away. They just need some tweaking.

6 Likes

The difficulty people have with Beastmen is definitely somewhat inflated by the bugs and glitches centered around them. After that it may be down to numbers and simply how they were designed.

No matter the changes done I will still think them inherently flawed when you have short ungors skewering through the taller gors with their spears. If that stay I will continue to be dismissive of this farce of a faction - that and them just having 1 special which breaks all immersion in Dark Omen when you see both skaven/chaos specials acting as stand ins despite the dead rat ogre killed by the beastmen showing evidence of their territorial nature concerning the meteor.

1 Like

Beastmen need tweaks, but FS will probably nerf them across the board and once instead of iterations.

VISIBILITY!!!

First of all, why are they so dark? In the beta they were more brown than this black, they need to be more distinguisable from each other.
Bestigor and Wargor are also black, they should stand out more from the mobs like maulers do from chaos. Wargor’s size could be that of a CW. Seeing the WH artworks, probably should have been that huge already.
Ungors basically vanish behind a wall of gors making it impossible to see when they attack and react to those attacks. if we cannot see them from the pres of bodies they can’t see us either, why can they hit us through the models of the gors?

Attacks

Maybe they have too many types of attacks. 5 or 6 wile others have like 2?
Certain attack’s speed could be lowered a bit, like the kick, the headbutt and the left handed punch.

Once these have been addressed and they are still too much, then you should look at their numbers.

2 Likes

I only really have a problem with the Gor-type beastmen, the fellows who are a tier up above the slim spear/bow using ones.

These fellas are numerous, they are stagger resistant (compared to chaos equivalents) they hit very quickly and they hit the hardest by far.

Seriously i lost like 90% of my grim cursed max HP from 1 hit and had like 3% left, from 1 quick hit with barely any animation to show it was happening.

From a guy that i was already in the middle of chaining attacks on, but he just didnt wana get staggered and smacked me instead.

With enemies like these around its no wonder people dont want to use anything but the absolutely best weapons they have access to, anything else just gets them downed.

Whether the beastmen are OP because they are unbalanced or because they are buggy is an open question. When their attack animations are so fast even when they are working right that you have no chance to dodge them, how are you supposed to know if that 80-hp backstab was your fault or because of an insta-spawn?

90% of the frustration with them is not knowing whos fault the mistakes are.

1 Like

Beastmen is a good enemy facton, they have som cool new units, support, charge attack, archers, etc
nice new additions
But, they have way too long reach, long and fast, they do damage, i can’t see the animation,
they need to have normal reach, like skaven or chaos
and it takes too long to realize when yu kill them,
chaos and skvane have faster diing animations, but beastmen stand too long

The beastmen have a number of issues when you compare them to their buddies.

  • They have a tendency to be very quiet until they’re very close. But I think that has been an issue going on with all enemies.

  • Their animations seem a bit broken. They climb something and finish it early, instantly going into an attack. [Again though, all enemies are doing a bit of that.] Gors have more attack moves than most, if not all, other enemies. It’s really neat that they’re evolving the enemies but this results in a longer learning curve for players. It also means that during intense engagements or against a ton of enemies it makes it more difficult to track what each Gor is doing. Their large moveset can be mostly dealt with using fundamental techniques that you use for any enemy though. The main problem is their animation speed on certain moves or when climbing. Things like that.

  • Gors will do like 75 damage. Marauders do just a hair less, but Marauders also don’t make up 90% of a Chaos horde. Gors make up about 90%+ of a Beastmen horde. I added a video to the end of the post.

  • Gors in particular are rather dark in certain parts of their body(their armpits/sides) in certain bits of lighting. When they start stacking up heavily, this darkness overlaps and our eyes just starting seeing more of a blob.

  • There are still a lot of people not fully accustomed to them.

  • Banners can be okay on their own, but they frequently start to overwhelm players in situations like:

    • Tight areas where players can’t reach them during hordes/specials being dumped on players.
    • Many banners at the same time or in a row during hordes/specials being dumped on players.
  • Unlike other specials, they don’t come to you so you can kill them. You can’t be rid of them with an easy shot or two. They also don’t disable you though. They just make their beastmen pals more difficult to kill.

  • Beastmen have more oppressive compositions, but less specials and no disablers. This means that if your combat fundamentals aren’t up to par enough, they tend to overwhelm you. Bestigors will charge you. The Minotaur will charge you. Banners enhance the general mass by giving them hp and hp regen. Ungor archers ping you from afar(at times, obnoxiously far). Chaos and Skaven compositions just walk up to you. The only thing that hits you from afar are specials. Their compositions and combat are simpler than Beastmen.

Now, it’s important to note that some of the aforementioned things are observations and not criticisms. I understand where OP is coming from and I do think that if a lot of the issues like quick/broken animations, lighting for them, and audio were fixed, then they’d be less of a problem for many people. That still leaves some of the awkwardness of say, Gors doing so much damage despite being the majority of a Beastmen horde. That and that Gors don’t seem to deal reduced damage even when around a bunch of other Gors. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not, but I should hope not.

This(Marauders seemingly not doing reduced damage around other Marauders) only works acceptably at all for Marauders because Marauders don’t make up the majority of a Chaos horde.

Video of horde enemies’ damage:

[Just wanted to add on that things like beastmen being very fast, audio, and a lot of the other issues mentioned here have been happening with all factions and not just beastmen. It might just be more frequent with them. I’ve had slave/clan rats hit me twice within a .5 second window and have them finish their climbing early and go into an attack. I think Cataclysm “aggression” level causes enemies to escalate even further and do ridiculous things.]

10 Likes

I have to ask if I’m doing something wrong who don’t find the Beastmen to be an overly problematic foe? Maybe I’m playing on too low difficulty, but I i experience them to be rather easy to kill as enemies with armour are even further between, or so it feels, than with Rotbloods and Skaven. Hence our weapons just carves up their naked flesh. While a Bestigor is nasty when he comes around a corner, a single bullet can often take him down when he comes charging.

Ungor archers can be a pain if you don’t have a shield but maybe its my luck or something but I’ve never experienced them pinning me like a cushion. Instead we’ve been throwing bombs or closing in to settle the matter with cold steel.

Also in regards to sounds, I don’t really see the problem with this. Are not Beastmen in the lore supposed to be stealthy ambushers and raiders in the forests? I really hope they don’t become as loud in sound when attacking as the Skaven or Rotbloods are. If people wants them to make more sound, sure, but don’t make them as loud as the other two enemy factions.

Now have the Beastmen killed me in higher difficulties? Yes, but I don’t think its happen more than with Skaven or Rotbloods. At least not relatively as Beastmen does seem to spawn more often than the other two factions, which is something that I can be critical about.

Champion difficulty of below beast men melt like anything else. They aren’t a problem until their density issues begin manifesting.

1 Like

Beastmen ambushes are silent to the point that you only know about them when you’re killed by them.

No whispering like skaven before spawn. According to a dev, this is intentional, neither chaos nor beastmen are supposed to have ambush “warning”. Why tho?

No unit sounds after spawn.

No movement sound.

They can skip backstab sound too, so you’re just fighting and then get downed by 2 dozen beastmen.

So, in a game where sounds are like 70-80% of the gameplay, you can have units that are like when you disable the sound of the game???

4 Likes

My favourite quote from now on

1 Like

I really dont get why people are so upset about beastmen ambushes/ slash them making less or no sound. I’m allready so used to check behind me every few seconds as soon as I see just one beastmen standing arround somewhere. It just became part of my gameplay loop and it’s fine. Especially during hordes if I have the time I often turn arround before one waves is finished to check whether something is comin in from behind. Once you regularly do that beastmen become much less of an issue as you can bomb them or weaken them with ranged/AoE before they get to you. And honestly I kind of like being on the lookout constantly when facing beastmen.

So 50 beastmen just put on their sound-dampening hoof socks and tip toe over to you? Whether they’re mucking through a swamp, stepping on branches/leaves outdoors, or clomping on stone, in no reality is it realistic to expect them to sneak up on you. Or beastmen spawning three feet behind you with no audio cues? If they’re like 10 meters away when music starts or something, okay, sure. For those that wish to argue “ambushing in lore” for beastmen, the ambush isn’t two feet from you with no sound. They may be hiding in tree lines or such waiting for people to pass. But that tree line is probably 15+ meters away and when they charge it isn’t going to be quiet.

It’s the most immersion breaking idiocy though when they spawn two feet from you or an entire horde is on you in the two seconds you looked away and they’re hitting you with absolutely zero audio cues before the first hit connects.

6 Likes

Beastmen will always be broken to me if they retain their poor Spawns and Audio issues.

They shouldn’t spawn just around some random corner, they shouldn’t spawn within sight, they shouldn’t spawn behind some box or obstacle and then pour over said box/obstacle like coming out of a clown car.

Enemies shouldn’t be silent in a game that has to do with audio cues telling you what is going on.

The point of an ambush is surprise and to me the Skaven/Norscan/Beastmen factions would be blood thirsty and would be charging into battle screaming/yelling/chittering and whatnot which generally saying the first two factions do pretty well. Beastmen don’t.

Beastmen were poorly designed and are incomplete as a faction since they laughably borrow specials from the other two factions while showing evidence of being territorial against said factions when it comes to a dead rat ogre killed by the Beastmen. Their “exclusive” map is a complete joke in this regard.

1 Like

I really don’t get who enjoys getting insta gibbed by beastman who literally spawn next to you without any sound cues.
There have been plenty of times when i’ve literally checked 360 and 1-2 seconds later i might lose half my hp bar to random 0 sound hit.
Sound is just so fundemental mechanic in this game that when its lacking it makes already difficult enemies so much more frustrating to deal with.

1 Like

SHHHH!

4 Likes

Just this. I agree.

All these core problems consist since the beta in several variations just as players asking Fs for fixes and Fs ignoring it.

Nothing ever happened because they simply don’t know how without rebuilding the whole game and you already payed the money. So why do anything?

You will see the Fatshark way of handling outright bad coding or gamedesign aka making the game easy enough or designing a new colored glow (is yellow already used? Time for a new 8,99 DLC!) so players shut up, pay money and grind loot.

The last time I witnessed this was when vet items got their dropchance tuned from “three pieces after 600 hours” to “one every few chests” and invincible dodging. Worked like a charm.