Hello again, my name is Karl and I'm back to provide some commentary about our upcoming balance changes that were hinted at in the last dev blog.
These changes intend to target clear outliers in both strength and weakness and attempt to bring them in line with the rest of the game while keeping their intended design.
First up was Pyromancer, as she was constantly brought up during discussions during the development of the Necromancer. Community perception was that she was lacking in identity which we agreed with. The fire wizard careers were always close to each other in how they played, even in the initial development of Vermintide 2. Part of the issue is that we allow each career to wield every staff available to Sienna. The spells that the staff brings dictates what ranged role Sienna will play and we then empower the roles through the use of talents. Currently, it’s not enough to get the feeling of uniqueness.
The new changes to Pyromancer aim to set the careers further apart through how they interact with her overcharge and melee mechanics.
- Battle Wizard aims at bringing a balanced playstyle. Moving between casting spells and melee while venting overcharge through the passive.
- Pyromancer leans more into the ranged side of Sienna, unleashing a lot more spells through improved overcharge capacity and spells scaling with that overcharge, but having a harder time getting rid of accumulated overcharge mid-fight.
- Unchained leans into the melee side of Sienna, choosing between risk and reward with high overcharge gains with the tools to completely dump overcharge when needed.
We made these changes to Pyromancer help achieve this goal:
- Moved 'Volans Doctrine' to Passive
- Reduced 'The Burning Head' cooldown
- New Perk 'One with Aqshy' - 50% increased max Overcharge. Added support for increasing Overcharge bar size to fit increased max overcharge :^)
- Replaced ‘Volans Doctrine’ with 'Flamestrike's Tutelage' - Sienna gains 80% reduction on Venting damage. Each nearby enemy decreases the damage reduction by 20%.
- ‘Exhaust’ replaced with ‘Dissipating Rictus' - The Burning Head grants 50% charge speed and Overcharge explosion immunity for 12 seconds.
- Increased the duration of ‘Deathly DIssipation’
- Increased the power bonus from ‘On the Precipice’
- Increased the max power bonus from ‘Ride the Fire Wind’
Next up was Engineer. Perceived not only as weak, but also clunky to use. The clunkiness of the crank gun was clear and we have some changes lined up to alleviate that. The perceived weakness was a bit more tricky. We didn’t see this as an issue of damage output—frankly if the Engineer is allowed to concentrate fire he can put out some ridiculous numbers. But that's not when the true mettle of a career is tested.
Vermintide 2 is quite easy when you are on cruise control running through levels and killing anything before it is a threat. The true test is when the unexpected happens. When a mauler teleports behind you mid overhead while the elf pulls the chaos patrol just as two assassins spawn. This is what creates those intense stories of heroic clutches that you want to tell your friends, but also where we felt the Engineer fell flat. With no panic button, clunky weaponry, and low health; the chances of his survival were quite slim.
It is a part of the Engineer’s design to be a ranged powerhouse that has to be protected. We want to keep the same spirit of the Engineer, but right now the ranged power to clutch potential ratio is a bit weak.
The following changes aim to bump the Engineers ranged prowess as well as offering the players some form of a panic button through the use of bombs:
- Increased Engineer Health to 125
- Increased 'Gromril-Plated Shot' damage
- Increased base fire rate of 'linked compression chambers'
- Reduced base Crank Gun starting fire rate
- Reduced base Crank Gun fire rate gain per shot
- ‘Build Pressure’ no longer loses stacks while firing.
- Can ‘Build Pressure’ while on max ability bar
- ‘Build Pressure’ stacks no longer lost on full bar.
- ‘Leading Shots’ replaced with ‘Ingenious Ordnance' - Bardin creates a bomb every 80 seconds and explosives no longer deal friendly fire damage.
- ‘Head full of Steam’ now grants Attack Speed instead of Power.
- ‘Superior Gaskets’ now causes pressure to be lost upon firing instead of over time and each stack of pressure grants 4% power.
- ‘Experimental Steam Capacitors’ replaced with ‘'Perilous Overclock' - Building Pressure at Max stacks restores 25% charge and grants 15% crit but damages Bardin. Each Overclock increases damage suffered.
- ‘Bombardier’ now also causes Bardin to start missions with 3 bombs.
- ‘Piston Power’ now also restores all stamina when triggered.
Warrior Priest was the third career to receive some functionality changes to his talents. The main grievance we wanted to tackle was Righteous Fury and when players receive it. We wanted to try to move away from the ‘feels bad’ moment of having your hammers start to glow just as the final enemy of the wave is slain.
These new passive talents and changes aim to alleviate that while providing interesting ways of playing the warrior priest:
- Base Shield of Faith now renders the hero immune to ranged knockback and allows them to trample through lesser enemies.
- Replaced ‘Divine Excoriation’ with 'Blazing Bright' - Taking damage grants Victor Fury. Entering Righteous Fury grants Victor Shield of Faith.
- ‘Empowered Smite’ replaced with 'See My Wrath' - Shield of Faith grants Victor 60% Fury. Smite now deals 40% of the attacks damage.
- ‘From Fury, Fortitude’ now also grants Fury when Victor kills enemies.
- ‘Prayer of Vengeance’ now grants the party power versus Monsters
- ‘Unyielding Blessing’ now increases the duration of the Shield to 10 seconds and causes the shield to pulse when attacking.
Battle Wizard
Battle Wizard has been overperforming especially when combined with the very strong coruscation staff. We are bringing down the strength of the overperforming talents such as Famished Flames as well as adding a couple of seconds to the career skill cooldown to reign in the Battle Wizards running rampant:
- Increased the cooldown of 'Fire Walk'
- Reduced the damage reduction per burning enemy from ‘Soot Shield’
- Reduced the bonus damage to damage over time effects from ‘Famished Flames’ to 100%.
- Reduced the reduction to normal damage from ‘Famished Flames’ to 15%.
- Increased Cooldown Reduction from 'Volans Quickening' to 40%.
- Increased the damage of 'Lingering Flames'
Necromancer
The Necromancer hit the ground somewhat smoothly balance wise, but there are some talents we would like to bring up to par. We had hoped the potential of Army of the Dead would carry her over the line, but actively using her skeletons leaves her rarely getting full value out of the talent.
We are tweaking the behavior of the talent to keep that same potential, just easier to use:
- ‘Army of the Dead’ now reanimates 6 additional Skeletons that decay after 20 seconds. (these can still stack)
- Reduced the amount of Overcharge vent needed to trigger ‘Lost Souls’ and increased their damage.
"Boss Killer" Careers
It has been brought up that our boss killer careers are a bit too good at their job to the point of trivializing monsters. This patch we are nudging down their strength through the following tweaks:
- Grail Knight will see a reduction in their very easy to use power level talents as well as an increase to the cooldown of Blessed Blade
- Not Shade specific but Dual Daggers, Shade's main tool to annihilate bosses will see a reduction to the monster damage modifier
- Bounty Hunter will after an age see Double Shotted getting bug fixed. No longer triggering twice and reducing cooldown by 40% twice. We are increasing the cooldown refund to 60% to compensate.
Javelin and Coruscation staff have been running rampant for a good while. We are bringing down the strength of these weapons to let the rest of the heroes join in on the fun:
- Javelin will see a nerf to armor damage as well as a significant reduction in cleave in an attempt to reduce the extreme versatility of the weapon.
- Coruscation will see a reduction in overall damage as well as a decrease in the duration of the damage over time effect of the flame patch coupled with an increase to the tick rate in an attempt to reward keeping enemies inside the actual flame patch.
Most of our one-handed weaponry is underrepresented and or is underperforming. The fantasy of our one handed weapons is that of increased finesse and mobility that comes from having to wield and swing less weight. As such buffs to one-handed weapons should target, headshot damage, dodging, crit chance and stamina to name a few. As a first stab at giving the one handed weapons buffs that are accurate with their fantasy we have reduced the cost of pushing to 1 stamina for most one-handed weapons. More one-handed weapon buffs to come.
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Direction for these changes are inspired by various discussions on our community platforms and cross-referencing some of the more popular balance mods available. So if something is not sitting right and you feel like you got a solution make sure to let us know on Reddit, Steam, or the Fatshark Forums. This is us working together to shape the game into what we want it to be.