Yet another Witch Hunter thread

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

Greetings,

i know, the Witch Hunter Captain is certainly a topic which is often talked about and several threads already exist, but i have the need to talk about it once more.

I am WHC main since the release and i believe i am fairly experienced with him. Thats why i am 100% sure, that he lacks the specific drive compared to the other careers. As a Support character, i mainly play defensive, focused on slight cc combined with slight anti-Special, and make sure that atleast a tome and a grim get safely to the end. My only time to shine is during a bossfight, when i help my team with the stacked buff combination of tag + ulti + shrapnel for massive damage in a short amount of time.

But more than often, my existence feels lackluster and i am sure, i could have helped my team more efficiently when i just would have picked BH.

I am aware, that WHC can deal with a horde through dodging and ccing with rapier. I am aware he can deal with specials through tag and crossbow. But he doesnt deal with it efficiently, compared to other careers. He is the only one, who actually needs to stack power vs. whatever to get to a breakpoint to be compareable to other careers.

Like, you are able to body one shot stormvermins with a crossbow, when stacking power vs. skaven/armored + tag. But his reload speed is already so low, when you tag a stormvermin and shoot it, BH and WS already shot two other Stormvermins in that time. Even when stacking power vs. infantry/chaos/skaven, he needs way to long to deal with a horde, compared to any Sienna with a conflag staff, any Kerillian with hagbane, an IB with flamer or any other dwarf with a 2h hammer. A WHC cant excell against any other career, when played by people with the same skill.

This isnt such a bad thing, WHC is obviously a support career and i do support my team with safely getting the books to the end. But even compared to the other support careers, he seems to be lacking something. Ranger Veteran brings constant ammo and bomb supply, Mercenary has a gamechanging ulti that revives downed teammates, BW can just stagger everything with conflag and Handmaiden has way better clutch viability. Many of these reasons are also bound to the weaponry. But what has the WHC? Mainly buffing the damage of the team and that is only useful against high health targets like bosses and maybe CW, since elites and specials are usually one shots for several careers anyway. And, being honest here, the damage buff is negligible, especially when specific careers are in your group, like Shade and Huntsman.

Well, i am not one who only criticises but also one who wants to present some solutions.

So, what i want to see is:

  • increasing the health of WHC to 125
  • reducing the cooldown of the ultimate to 2:00 min
  • increasing the light attack damage of the rapier
  • a faster animation of the rapier pistol shot/blocking should overwrite the animation
  • either more ammunition for BoP or higher damage against armored

And here is what i would really want to get him more drive:

  • the damage buff on tag should stay until the tag ends. (Only on WHC tag)
  • the ultimate also boosts the attack speed
  • has power vs. skaven 5% and power vs. chaos 5% as passive
8 Likes
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WHC, to me, is a clear case of: Sounds good, doesn’t work. You read all those nifty abilities that are in his kit and think “Wow, that sounds really cool and powerful!” Then you play him and he is meh.

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WHC is weaker.

But most of it is due to over nerfing. And its not just the WHC job itself it also extends into weapons which also affected it.

It needs the Health set to 125 which is halfway between Zealot and Bounty Hunter, since it is quite literally half melee, half ranged and a hybrid of both.

Also the Ult needs to be reduced down to 1 minute.

There is no justification at this point for a 3 minute CD on it. Back in BETA when it was 100% crit rate for 8 seconds… YEAH a 3 minute CD was justified… but now its ONLY +20% and 6 seconds. So there’s no excuse at this point for a 3 minute CD… not when you have Pyro launching Burning Head every 40 seconds and wiping out a field of enemies or one shotting CWs… or Kruber Footknight knocking down everything in its path every 30 seconds.

CD on the Ult needs to be reset to 1 minute now.

And the Weapon Nerfs just killed the WHC…

Weapons were the only thing propping the job up… and then Fat Shark nerfed them… I’ll go into that in the next post.

1 Like
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You know I should probably give you an idea of just how far this circle jerk goes and how this chain reaction hosed up the Balance of ALL the Saltzpyre melee weapons and where it comes into play.

We’ll start with Step 1.

Step 1. The Alt Fire Rapier pistol nerf…
Back in Beta the Rapier’s Alt Fire Pistol actually did full damage out to about where the Brace of Pistols did. It wasn’t really a problem either. Mostly because of how clunky the thing is to use. So you missed a lot at any type of medium range… still anything within about 10-15 yards you could hit and kill.

One problem… The Bounty Hunter’s passive…
The Alt-Fire Pistol is counted as a Melee Kill… not a ranged kill.
(Previously this weapon was not usable by the Zealot, and may not have been by BH either. I don’t remember whether it was or not)
So… the Bounty Hunter could reset their Crit Passive at range just by killing something with the Alt-Fire Pistol… and then instantly have their Crit back. Which was not intended since it was supposed to be a Melee kill to do it with.

So they nerfed it so it only did max damage out to where it is now… so it couldn’t really kill anything at Range anymore… (which is stupid given that it has a 2-3 second reset on it so you’re not going to run around racking up massive ranged kills with it no matter what).

Rather than, you know be smart like… Make it a WHC weapon ONLY …or locking out the Alt-Fire portion on BH…
…or you know… making the pistol shot count as ranged damage so it didn’t DO that. Which would have been the smart play.

Instead they took out this HUGE balance factor of the Rapier vs Falchion out of the equation.
(vs Two handed sword eventually)

So now its just clunky, pointless, and little more than a gimmick.

Step 2. Patch 1.05 Accidental Nerf.
Patch 1.05 was indeed necessary. They had miscalculated the Hero Power threshhold so all weapons were >doing more stagger, cleave, and damage than they were supposed to be doing… and Half the jobs in the >game relied on the intended Power level… or their passives and skills would have no actual effect on the >game. So half the jobs in the game became useless until they fixed the power level to be where it was >intended

Unfortunate Side Effect: The Axe which never had much cleave in the first place, and only provided minimal horde clearing ability… lost ALL of it. So whenever you used the Axe… it would get you killed in a Horde.

So as to where there used to be a smooth transition between the Axe, Rapier, and Falchion with regards to their capabilities (Horde Clearing vs Armor Piercing vs Shield Users vs Elites)… The chain was broken, because the Axe no longer provide even the minimal horde support it used to… leaving only the Rapier and Falchion as survivable weapons in a horde and breaking the smooth transition between them all.

Step 3. The Two Handed Sword Buffs…
Greatly increased the viability of the Two handed Sword… one problem… They forgot to increase the Reach… so it was STILL the same reach as the Falchion and less Reach than the Rapier. So all those improvements were for nothing. Since the Falchion had similar cleave and stagger and was much faster. So it made a better Two handed Sword than the actual 2 handed Sword.

(See Vermintide 1 Patch 1.10 where they had to make this EXACT same balance change to get the balance between the Two Hander and Falchion right https://steamcommunity.com/games/235540/announcements/detail/1594702673365327848)

Problem number 1… This of course made the Falchion seem like it COULD do anything and was better at everything than every other weapon… (See Step 1, and Step 2… to see why this magically and mysteriously poofed into existence… and wouldn’t be a problem had those two things never happened)

Problem number 2… IF they actually DID increase the Reach… the Two Hander would FAR overshadow the Rapier’s main job as a Horde Clearing Weapon. BUT… that wouldn’t be a problem had they not NERFED the Alt Fire Pistol Shot in the first place as that would still be a balance factor for the Rapier and no one would care.

So even if the Rapier had lost its Primary Spot at Horde Clearing to the Two Handed Sword… It still could kill targets at Range where none of the other weapons could. Hence Fat Shark COULD extend the Reach of the Two hander to be longer than the Rapier… and not the idiotic reach of a dinky little Short Sword (Falchion).

(And likely Kruber’s would give the Halberd a run for its money too)

Step 5: The Falchion Nerf…
…and the last straw that finally broke the back of the Melee Weapons. With the only weapon that HADN’T been Nerfed left… of course its able to do everything. … So they nerfed it by half the AP Damage on it… making it pointless to even use now.

QUICK NERF THAT TOO… Its UNbalanced… Oh wait… its really not.

The ONLY reason the Falchion looked that way was was because of… Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4, which lead to Step 5.

SO NOW…

We come to the end of this big Circle Jerk…

At this point the ONLY way for Fat Shark to fix all this… is to GO BACK and Remove ALL the previous nerfs that were either intentional due to bad decision making… or accidental due to the necessities of the Patch.

Because right now the Balance between the Weapons which Started out really good…

Is now in the Tank…

EDIT: They basically screwed themselves because they had the right balance from the beginning… and then screwed it all up.]

3 Likes
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While i generally agree that WHC could use some buffs, i definitely disagree with a lot of what was said:

Compare him to other melee careers and he is fairly solid at it. +20% damage, possible +15% extra gives him almost +40% damage. Even compared to ranged careers that can be quite good.

He is the only one, who actually needs to stack power vs. whatever to get to a breakpoint to be compareable to other careers.

Every career pretty much has important breakpoints, I’d say he has one of the easiest times hitting them due to the aforementioned buffs.

Even when stacking power vs. infantry/chaos/skaven, he needs way to long to deal with a horde,

He has access to the very same weapons as a BH/Zealot.

with flamer

A flamethrower is a dedicated anti-horde weapon, you sacrifice a lot using it, i’d argue that a special/elite killer like WHC being better than you with it would completely defeat the point.

or any other dwarf with a 2h hammer. A WHC cant excell against any other career, when played by people with the same skill.

How on earth are you slower than a 2h hammer at horde clearing? It has less cleave, hits far slower and deals low damage per hit too.

But what has the WHC? Mainly buffing the damage of the team and that is only useful against high health targets like bosses and maybe CW, since elites and specials are usually one shots for several careers anyway. And, being honest here, the damage buff is negligible, especially when specific careers are in your group, like Shade and Huntsman

20% is definitely not negligible.

  • increasing the light attack damage of the rapier

I’d say the rapier is in a good spot horde clearing wise. It definitely doesn’t need more damage on it’s lights.
If anything, i’d argue that the one thing it’s lacking is chaos warrior damage, having a special rule that makes it do less damage vs them compared to normal armor (the only other melee weapon to have this is the falchion on it’s light attacks). Remove that and i’m happy with the rapier.

While i generally disagree with your train of thought, this statement is probably the worst you made.
Several fairly obvious issues: The rapier is a hybrid, it’s horde clearing is but one of it’s aspects. It is far better vs armor for one.
The falchion already overshadows the rapiers horde clear.
The rapier would be plenty unique as a high mobility (90% block movement speed vs 50%, 1.2x dodge distance vs 0.95) hybrid, but it’d also be fairly unique in that it has 2 stages to it’s charge, a unique push, which while a lot weaker, is cheaper to do, frontal block cost reduction on a non-shield weapon. The pistol is definitely in no way required for it to be anything unique.

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I can almost move at walking speed through a horde with the Rapier… I can’t do that with the Falchion. The exception being Chaos Hordes and even then as long as you’re going headshots with Deathknell you’re still able to do it better.

And Armored and/or Shields is the worst thing you can go against with a Rapier.

As to your disagreeing with my train of thought… well I was there in the beginning. I remember how things used to work. What came about and why those things all fell apart.

And why…

…these days I can’t even find any PUG group with WHC in it… except rarely even though they were all over in Beta.

You see Zealots all over and Bounty Hunters… but there’s a mysteriously lack of any WHCs.

Gee you don’t suppose this is why huh?

The WHC suffers from a serious case of overnerfing… and ill thought out decisions by the Dev Team.

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Did you really say the pistol shouldn’t be a unique part of the rapier and pistol?

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The +40% damage are needed, because they make him competitive in the first place. But only combined with the stacking of power vs. whatever. This is not compareable, a BH just needs a fairly easy crit chance build to still outshine the WHC.

Almost no career actually need to reach their breakpoint to be efficient. WHC is almost the only one who need to reach it to be competitive.

Even so he has the same weapons, his overall character is not able to get the same out of the weapons as the other careers do. He outshines only with the rapier.

Thats what i am getting at here. WHC is not an anti-special nor an anti-horde, he justs supports the specialised careers. Like i said before, he cant compete with the specialised careers when played by people with the same skill. Its just not possible. His anti-Horde is too weak and his anti-special is too slow. He certainly could do the job eventually, but not comparable to the specialised careers.

A 2h hammer is always able to hold a point against any form of thick horde, whereas rapier wouldnt be able to do that, since it is too weak. You need space to dance around.

20% is indeed negligible. Again, its only worth for high health enemys like cw and bosses. Since anti-armor builds are standard anyway in legend, cw are getting destroyed anyway and bosses can be handled with anti-boss careers or you just use shrapnel.

Rapier need definetly more light attack damage, horde clearing is its job. If you want more damage against cw, i would suggest you take the axe.

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Falchion does not overshadow rapier horde clear. I can clear entire hyperstacking hordes whilst stabbing stormvermin in between. Falchion doesn’t even come close.
I think the rapier is the only real viable whc legend weapon sadly.

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Falchion not only allows faster walk speed while striking, it also cleaves through more enemies and deals almost twice the damage. The only advantage of the rapier is that you hit 20% faster.

And Armored and/or Shields is the worst thing you can go against with a Rapier.

The rapier can even one-shot stormvermin on WHC, definitely wouldn’t call it the worst thing.

You see Zealots all over and Bounty Hunters… but there’s a mysteriously lack of any WHCs.

I did not disagree that WHC needs a buff, just with your arguments.

Most of your examples were weapon nerfs, which would affect zealot more than WHC.

Uhm you might want to read that again. “In no way required” Vs “Should not be”.

If a BH is outshining you in melee, that’s definitely on you.

WHC is almost the only one who need to reach it to be competitive.

WHC is the one career where i don’t actually bother with them, i still do just fine. Could you enlighten me on these very important breakpoints?

Even so he has the same weapons, his overall character is not able to get the same out of the weapons as the other careers do.

Any argument why that might be?

A 2h hammer is always able to hold a point against any form of thick horde, whereas rapier wouldnt be able to do that, since it is too weak. You need space to dance around.

You said “Even when stacking power vs. […], he needs way to long to deal with a horde, compared to […] any other dwarf with a 2h hammer”.
The 2h hammers ability to stagger, not deal damage, is irrelevant there.

20% is indeed negligible.

Can you please enlighten me how 20%, one of the highest damage buffs in the game, is negligible?

Rapier need definetly more light attack damage, horde clearing is its job. If you want more damage against cw, i would suggest you take the axe.

Rapier definitely needs more damage vs CW, elite killing is it’s job. If you want more horde clear, i would suggest you take the falchion or greatsword.
Although i will actually provide some arguments as to why:
A rapier is a stabbing weapon, it’s purpose shouldn’t be flinging it around wildly to take out hordes, but to go for precise strikes.
It’s stabs have a unique feature of 2 charges, which sets them apart. It’s lights don’t have any special rule.
They aren’t overpowered vs SV, having them deal the same damage to CWs as they do to SVs (like rpetty much every other melee weapon) isn’t going to be overpowered.

You have any as to why it’s light damage needs to be buffed?

The falchion has: Faster movement speed while hitting, almost twice the damage (on headshots too), a lot more cleave.
The rapier has: Hits 20% faster.
Any argument as to how the rapier would be better?

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1 hs = 1 dead slave rat or fanatic. Faster attack speed and push stab make hordes a joke. It’s got more stamina as well. Walk speed while attacking is irrelevant during hordes. It’s all about dodging.

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Vs. skaven: 1 bs = 2 dead slave rats (3 if you hit the head on the 3rd, but that might be a bit niché).

Vs chaos: 1hs is a dead fanatic too, except that it deals almost twice the damage to marauders, while it also damage the others a lot.
I don’t find the pushstab much use on the rapier, it’s not bad, but it’s push is just hilariously weak. Definitely would rather not have a pushstab, but an actually useful push.

Dodge distance is the same.

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The push stab is for interrupting enemy attacks while slicing their heads of at the same time.
In my experience, rapier is a lot easier to control hordes with over falchion. Getting cornered with a falchion is game over. Rapiers speed allows me to keep up with any amount of enemies.

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And in my experience, the falchion does it better, but since stating experiences is pointless:
The falchion not only staggers more enemies per swing, but also staggers more per second and does way more damage per second.
Do you have anything to substantiate yours?

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No it doesn’t.

Prior to the Falchion Nerf… I ONLY used the Falchion over the Rapier in Legend level play because it had BOTH survivability in a Horde + AP on Armored along with heavy stagger for taking down Shields. Post Nerf… there was no reason for the Falchion anymore… And there is an enormous amount of Elites in Legend.

The Rapier far outstrips it in Horde clearing… But blows chunks the minute you get Armor and Shield in the picture… it was literally the ONLY reason the Falchion was chosen most in Legend level play.

Rapier far outstrips it in a horde. But the Falchion could do the job… unlike the Axe…

So prior to the Falchion nerf…

…what you had was the Rapier on one end of the Spectrum (easy Horde Clear)… the Axe on the Other end (Armor and Shield anhiliation)… And then the Falchion (lesser horde clearing, and lesser AP, but similar stagger to the Axe)… now the Falchion is junk for AP… and the Rapier easily beats it in Horde Clearing… about the only thing the Falchion does now… and worse than the Axe is Stagger and take down shield users.

NOW to address your other point… about the Weapons and WHC…

Because the actual WHC abilities had been mega nerfed in BETA… the only thing propping up the job WAS the weapons… which prior to all the nerfs I just talked about regarding the Saltz melee weapons… were ALL very balanced against each other in Beta (Exception 2 Hander), they were some of the choice melee weapons to use.

(Hence, why its relevent and affected the WHC so much and not other jobs)…

And why few people play this job anymore… ie… why you never see them anymore… but you do see a lot of Zealots and Bounty Hunters.

Remove the Nerfs… WHC goes back to being just as strong as the others.

SAME way it was in Beta back when people actually played it in larger numbers…

By the way… since I’ve been back and playing Sienna… how many WHCs do you suppose I’ve seen in all my pickup groups?

A whopping total of 3… vs the 12 Zealots and 9 Bounty Hunters.

FOR the Record: I can also go through ALL of the individual powers on the WHC that were nerfed as well if you’d like… And you can see how bad it was…

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Well you are demonstrably wrong.
Rapier staggers 3 slaverats, 3 fanatics, 1 marauder per swing.
Falchion staggers 5 slaverats, 4 fanatics, 2 marauders.
Rapier hits ~20% faster, meaning you essentially stagger 3.6 fanatics in the time it takes for the falchion to do 4, and that’s with the most generous enemy. On marauders or slaverats it’s not even a contest.

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Oh you want to talk Theory… not reality… well ok.

You forgot something in your theory… the actual strikes of the weapons… Two Diagonal slashes… one Overhead for Falchion.

Rapier is continuous side to side strikes never broken.

So on top of faster speed… there’s no interrupt while using it. When you’re using WHC and Deathknell, each headshot is a kill on a horde with the exception of the certain Chaos mobs in a Chaos Horde. You can literally move at walking speed through Skaven Hordes side strafing them.

The Falchion in order to hit all targets requires a side to side strafing motion with the swings of the weapon back and forth to catch all the targets in the Horde with the third being the overhead so only 1 hit.

Or you have to cancel the 3rd strike interrupting your swings, which you don’t have to do with the Rapier… its continuous killing.

Rapier base damages Two… with 20% faster speed.

Falchion base only damages 2 with one more staggered.

Its why the Rapier kills faster in a Horde.

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Stats are the reality of the game.

You forgot something in your theory… the actual strikes of the weapons… Two Diagonal slashes… one Overhead for Falchion.

The falchion, unlike most weapons, has a near instantanoues block cancel. You are basically not sacrificing any time canceling on it, unlike a rapier, which has a severe delay on it. Once you get the hang of it, there is 0 downside to block canceling the falchion.

third being the overhead so only 1 hit.

Every single target in the game is capable of cleaving through 1 slaverat and 1 fanatic (meaning they hit 2).

Rapier base damages Two… with 20% faster speed.
Falchion base only damages 2 with one more staggered.
Its why the Rapier kills faster in a Horde.

The rapier damages 4 slaverats and 3 fanatics, staggers 3 of both.
The falchion damages 6 slaverats, 5 fanatics, staggers 5 slaverats and 4 fanatics.
It also deals twice the damage per swing.
It’s why the falchion kills faster in a horde.

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That doesn’t address anything I just told you.

The Rapier Block cancel is a hell of a lot faster than the Falchion by the way… it takes two seconds to go into the game and see that.

Rapier is almost instantaneous blocks… Falchion while good… is not even close to what you’re describing.

The only thing that can be said of the Falchion in a Horde is that it can do that job… its in no way better in a WHC’s hands.

Its only value… prior to the nerf was the AP… which was half the value of the Axe so it still worked good enough on CWs, and could still do good damage and stagger on armored units and shield users, which the Rapier cannot. Even on Just Armored users it takes a full 2-3 second charge with Rapier to do full damage… and still didn’t stagger. On Shield users its seriously subpar.

But with Falchion PRIOR to the nerf you easily wiped them out in that time. So prior to the nerf the Falchion was worse in the Hordes but significantly better on armored and shields… now its worse on hordes has little to no AP… and can only stagger. Making pretty subpar.

So basically removed this weapon from consideration for WHC.

Can it be used?

Yeah… but now its worse than the Rapier at anything other than Shield users. So if you really need AP and stagger, you may as well just go with the Axe, because the Falchion can’t do the job anymore.

EDIT: Unfortunately though… the Axe can get you killed in a Horde… so even that is iffy…

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Demonstrably showing that you are wrong on multiple accounts, undermining your point by pointing out it’s based on falsehoods?

The Rapier Block cancel is a hell of a lot faster than the Falchion by the way… it takes two seconds to go into the game and see that.

Yeah and you will see that it’s not. You can attack → block → attack on the falchion before even the shields fully show up. The rapier is not able to do that, it’s block has a much longer mininum holding time.