I love WHC but he is a stacked career. Is the goal is to reduce his pick rate or balance him in such way that he isn’t a must pick?
A controversial change, remove Witch-Hunt; Killing Shot is powerful enough to be a main passive.
Witch-Hunt could go to a new career or an existing career considering FS said more reworks are coming down the line.
Well to me Reposte is kinda useless, only worth is if in combination with killing shot to fast kill stormvermin but the amount of effort required doesn’t really make it worth i would probably use it only with greatsword. But i know of some people that like it so i have no interest in removing it.
I really feel WHC pretty fine even if a couple of talents are not interesting for me still feels pretty fair and balanced.
What does a Witch Hunter Captain if he doesnt wich hunt? XD but serusly id you remove it then WHC loses is identity and his usefulness drops considerably.
His party wide usefulness drops sure, but I assume more players associate WHC game-play with crit insta kills than damage debuffs. That’s his identity to me at least, crit insta kills, a “headshot” career.
But then a lot of his breakpoints just go out of the window and just hoping for a crit headshot to kill an elite fast is not really reliable so it wouldn’t be a good pick plus this will make the only build available to stack crit chance on him. Overall a step in a bad direction.
WHC is very strong in many fronts however I don’t think he really manifests as too strong/versatile until cata+ (or decent skilled legend tier) due to squishiness penalising him relative to easier careers. Hence I can understand why people consider this a low priority nerfing.
Certainly though WHC offers a ton of support AND damage (but comes in a fairly vulnerable package). If it was me I’d tone down flense and cast away and probably call it a day, my opinion is that deathknell should probably be meta at high level and flense should be the reliable or beginner option to help the career be powerful without the headshot rate. Cast away just gives him a bit too much horde control for his heretic-hunting identity.
I like the support options he brings though and wouldn’t want to change those.
I think it’s the opposite. Enemy health and density eventually outpaces burst damage. It’s why Lingering Flames gets more use in Cata+/high weaves. Defense becomes top priority and being able to still be doing damage when the enemy is giving you zero openings is pretty valuable.
Deathknell is only worth it if you’re hitting breakpoints.
Flense is definitely the main offender, and Cast Away makes the Billhook and Rapier too effective. Still, I think bringing the precision side of WHC to the forefront of their identity would go a long way in lessening the number of ‘Fervency and WHC go brrrr’ memes.
It really depends on the mode. On some high tier Weaves WHC loses a whole lot of effectiveness, but in modded the insta kill is very useful. However, outside of crits WHC is fairly easily outpaced by other dps careers (excluding Flense of course). As you said Deathknell relies on breakpoints to be effective and there’s not many of those above Cata that aren’t for the Crossbow.
A 25% increase to the headshot bonus damage would help greatly with this.
There’s this talent for WHC that’s good for high damage and quick strikes after blocking that I’m sure you would like.
While I think it would be bad if WHC’s tag was removed completely, I also wouldn’t be against more self-oriented options. Like:
Probably wouldn’t get anyone any friends but it would be no worse than the old form of Taal’s Champion. I’d pick it in a heart beat even if it was just the attack speed though lol.
From my perspective, it would ideal if WHC was a headshot career that could specialise into crit, further headshot damage or support (Flense could be interesting as a support talent, can’t think of anything for it atm unfortunately).
We definitely don’t want WHC forced into only doing good damage on crits. I agree.
Here’s some ideas for Cast Away that plays off of Eternal Guard and/or parrying:
Yes, but it shouldn’t be the top pick over deathknell. Lingering flames got indirectly nerfed by removing talent synergies from it, purely because of that reason. It didn’t have any downsides. Some would argue flame sword famished is too strong, exactly for that reason, it gives safety and good dps with no effort while also enabling her defensive talent + synergising extremely well with her temp hp talent. The downside of flamesword, which is armor dps, is so little nobody even notices and its not even that bad, only on super armor.
Also yes stagger and things that ignore mass limits are always gonna be best choices on high level content. But this is cata or legend we are talking about, not cata+ or weaves.
Flense should be the ‘easy’ horde talent. and deathknell should be skill talent, and obviously skill should give better results. An idea would be that flense bleed doesn’t work on headshotting and only on bodyshotting, where the flense user would have to make sacrifices and not be able to use his killing shot passive or something. but this would probably be too much a nerf.
I agree with you so long as Flense receives no mechanical changes. However, in the ideal world I’d like to see Flense stand out as another option that takes as much skill as Deathknell does and is equally rewarding (or as close to being so as is possible).
Here’s some more w̶o̶r̶d̶ ̶v̶o̶m̶i̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r ideas I came up with for making Flense a skillful option:
Attacking enemies applies 1 stack of bleed, up to 3 stacks. Each stack does very minor bleed damage and increases the damage you deal to affected enemies by 7.5% per stack.
Kind of a melee Barrage. Gives additional synergy with the 1h Axe. Could be tied to headshots or just bodyshots.
Attacking enemies applies a stack of bleed damage that deals very minor damage. Attacking and applying another stack of bleed within 0.25s of the first stack ending increases the bleed stack’s damage.
No idea what numbers would work for this, but I like the idea of an almost tempo based approach to combat. It might require a small visual effect (though I think it would be fine even without one).
Increased cleave power by 7.5%. You deal 20% less damage, but every enemy you cleave in an attack causes your attack to deal 10% more damage to the next enemy hit by it, up to a maximum of 40%.
Essentially inverted or equalised cleave damage. This has nothing to do with bleeding so it doesn’t really work as a Flense change in the form I’ve presented it in. However, this could be an interesting talent idea for Mercenary - to really represent gaining momentum.
I would also rather see flense be a skillfull option, but to be honest i also don’t really have an issue with ‘easy’ talents (what i mean with that, is talents that activate without thinking or doing something different). The issue i have is that its too good for something that requires not input or skill. Yes headshotting is better at single target, but how much of that do you actually notice in a game of cata or legend?
1st idea: I don’t really see how this would make it more skillfull, we would still only just spam m1 and have the full benefit from it.
2nd idea: The same as above, you mostly attack in that timeframe anyways. Unless this would make it so its not usable on slow weapons.
3rd: Not really a fan of this one, idk but it doesn’t seem worth it to use this one? by just reading it.
I don’t really know how you could make flense be skillfull. I think the only option would be to reduce its effectivness but keep it as a 'passive" talent. While also not making it useless. There are plenty of things they could adjust which would achieve that. They could make bleed lose damage on the more enemies ur attack cleaved. They could make it where you can only apply bleed to one enemy (3 stacks), but when it dies it spreads to nearby enemies (1 stack) up to a certain limit of enemies (numbers examples, as per usual in these kinds of discussions)
I don’t think there’s a world where flense can have even ground with deathknell, it’s either clearly better or it’s not. But if you do manage to get killshot removed then that might be enough to force the deathknell meta without too much drastic changes. At worst a small knock to its armor damage and boom, you’ll have a whole forum full of WHC mains wondering why they can’t slice and dice Stormvermin patrols without a strength pot + Fervency.
The bleed takes a little bit to end, so ideally it would encourage switching targets frequently rather than focusing in on one, which differs from Deathknell. Now that I think about it might be better at ths if instead it was like this:
Attacking enemies applies a bleed effect that deals very minor damage. Attacking within 0.6 seconds of the bleed effect ending results in a significantly more damaging bleed effect. Attacking before the bleed effect finishes simply results in the base bleed damage.
Edit (clearer version): Attacking enemies applies a low damage bleed effect that lasts for 2 seconds. If you attack an enemy within a 0.6 second window after the bleed ends, you apply a high damage bleed.
No bleed stacking. So if you attack an already bleeding enemy you’ll just do normal non new Flense damage.
So if you attack too early you basically get nothing or a small amount of damage. Attack at the right time, and you get good damage. Do this against multiple enemies with the right timing, and you get great damage.
The bleed’s damage would have to be subject to the same damage drop-off melee weapons get from cleaving as otherwise it would be too powerful with Saltz’ higher cleave weapons. It also might be good if the damage of the bleed increased the lower your weapon’s cleave limit is (so higher damage with a 1h Axe balanced out by hitting less enemies). Of course the Axe and Falchion’s axe attacks would need to slowed down a little to make this reasonable (they should be anyway, at least l1).
Oooooh, i missread it.
Yea that would work, but it would result in players not knowing when the bleed ends and missing out. Unless you give it a debuff, but that would be difficult to track for every single enemy.
One thing they could also do is have deathknell be the single target headshot dmg talent, riposte be counter attacking single target and flense be bleed dmg single target (bodyshot). So change flense to only work on 1 target, or capped at like 2-3, and do something like hitting an enemy makes them bleed for 1 damage, the next hit will do 25% increased damage against bleeding targets. A way to change riposte could be, pushing or blocking just as an enemy is about to attack, do 25% dmg next attack.
Just have this entire row be the same in style, but different in playstyle. Yes deathknell would probably be the clear winner here, but only if you can consistently headshot. But this is all theories, i would have to play it to know it.
edit: wait, i missread it again i think. So you mean: You hit an enemy, it applies a bleed with minor damage and if you hit that enemy after 0.6 seconds it will add a more powerfull bleed ontop or increase the minor bleeds damage by a certain amount? actually pretty simple, idk why i struggled. i understood it as: you have 0.6 seconds to hit the enemy again or u’ll lose ur bleed.
I feel like it might punish players to much and be “cluncky”, nobody wants to stand around and not attacking. If you make it so players don’t lose their bleed by attacking too fast, then you could just nerf flense’s damage, as that would be the same result.
In its current form WHC is not fine as he is. He is good, a tad too good. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust him so he gets to the majority Level of the careers and is actually in balance with the intended difficulties. As there is a Winter-BBB planned anyway, it will also not take away that much more ressources.
Currently, WHC has five! passives:
Of these five, three are unique passives which can not be replicated by any other effect in the game. Witch-Hunt is most obviously the most iconic and shouldn’t be touched. Eternal Guard could be removed but I don’t think it is where the issue with WHC lies. Sigmar’s Charm is more crit. While everything based on crit is busted in this game, removing it would not be really solving anything. So this leaves Power of Sigmar or Killing Shot.
Both work under a similar premise of getting headshots for “increased” damage. However, here lies the fault with Killing Shot. For horde enemies the increased headshot damage alone is already enough, so the effect comes down to the elites and specials in the game. In Vermintide 1 this was less a problem for the same effect because (although only changed at a later point) just spamming fast light attacks did not damage Stormvermins. However, in Vermintide 2 spamming fast headshots attack always do Damage (especially with the introduction of crits) which makes Killing Shot just a happy-go-lucky spam fast attacks mechanism . Therefore, we shouldn’t throw out the idea of removing Killing Shot completely (at least as passive) or changing how it works.
There are different ways how this could be accomplished:
You could also completely remove Killing Shot from the game (or at least make it a talent in a suitable position) and WHC would be still a super strong career. But there may be other options. Also not sure if Killing Shot alone is the problem with WHC. Like said, everything related to crit is busted in the game and WHC is a crit-based class -_-
Would the Killing Shot effect only apply to the Riposte crit or would Killing Shot itself be combined with Riposte? Either could work well, though it wouldn’t solve my personal gripes with Riposte (that is, it’s limited effectiveness against non-mansized (with the exception of monsters) enemies compared to Deathknell, which is fine I suppose, but it hardly feels good knowing that you’ll do nothing to a CW in any reasonable amount of time unless you get lucky with random crits. My entire thread was certainly not a plot to make it so I could have both Riposte and Deathknell. I have no ulterior motives..
This would be very appropriate for WHC. It likely wouldn’t be enough to balance Killing Shot on its own, but it would help mitigate his effectiveness in chaotic situations and require more skil. It would be enough if combined with any other change I think.
I dislike that kill times between using dedicated anti-armour attacks and just spamming lights mindlessly against mixed hordes rarely feels different enough to justify heavies (Flense on top of all this amplifies the issue). Perhaps Killing Shot could be tied to heavy attacks? This would make it bad for the Falchion and particularly the 1h Axe unfortunately, but all of Saltz’ other weapons would still work well with it a least.
Crits are quite strong, particularly because getting them doesn’t require the player do anything but play normally and attack (with the exception of a few talents). It would be interesting if there were no random crits and instead more skillful ways to get them but I doubt it would go down well with the community.
Sorry I just realised I didn’t answer your question. The goal of my original suggestions are to balance WHC in a way that causes less overlap with BH (range) and Zealot (melee horde clear) while also changing WHC’s identity from crits and headshots to just headshots, with crits being a possible path the player could take in the talent tree. I didn’t have pick rate in mind, but this would likely result in less WHCs but for good reasons (since the other two careers would be more distinct and WHC would be more difficult to play).
In the set-up I had in mind Riposte would still grant a sure crit attack which would then slay all man-sized enemies. So there would be issues with Chaos Warriors and Monsters, but you would still have the sure crit-effect.
That would need a closer look at the weapon set for the heavies only. It might cause issues with weapons where the heavy attack is also the high cleave attack. Out of my head I think this would concern Greatsword only (not particularly known for headshots), maybe Billhook too. Luckily he has no Warhammer.
I think cleave is the better choice. It would support weapons like the 1H Axe where a Killing Shot seems appropriate for the light attacks but for weapons like Rapier or Falchion players would need to switch to heavy attacks to get a chance for the effect.
Overall, I could live very well without crit at all. But it is to late for that and would need major rebalancing for three or four careers. If you want to make it more technical, that could work as well. But heavily depends on the condition trigger.
EDIT: Concerning the Flense discussion, a random idea that just popped up my mind: In the past we had at least one talent (for Handmaiden) where a significant buff would come with a malus. So how about choosing Flense would reduce crit chance by 10 % (Default + being Fabulous WHC Bonus)?
Just saying lads:
If you put killing shot into a talent, that talent will become the must pick
Not if you adjust it accordingly. Also, there are enough suggestions how Killing Shot could be changed in general.
I mean
Is rather nebulous. Most suggestions I’ve seen don’t do much to fix the issue unless the intent is to just make killing shot useless
Like someone here said, killing shot will always be best. Unless they make it useless. Very hard to balance. How about changing it’s trigger? Make it every x headshot?
So combine that with your ideas: riposte gives killing shot on counter attack; and passive killing shot is every 10th strike or whatever