Vermintide 2

Spear isn't good. It could be, but just isn't. No weapon is good for legend other than Glaive, really. Like yeah you can complete maps with other weapons, but you're just making it harder on your team and yourself. Glaive charged attack does twice the damage Wardancer/Spear do on charged attacks, at the same speed(more or less) and with an easier way to land headshots(glaive is an overhead, wardancer/spear are thrust and as such require more precise aiming). If you fuck up the headshot on spear, it does like 1/5th of the damage(unless you also miss on the glaive, then I think it's back to half too). Obviously Spear is much better at dealing with hordes because Glaive is, quite frankly, pretty garbage at it, but that's not very relevant when you can deal with hordes with it anyway as long as you don't fuck up too much. Spear has a large push/block angle, more stamina and the push stab is a quick large swipe making it excelent with Handmaiden innately high regen since you can basically spam push stabs to clear everything safely, but that's all irrelevant in the face of the amount of armored units in legend.

On legend, pretty much every ambient pack has an armored mob, and while stormvermins can be dealt rather easily with non glaive weapons(still taking more hits and requiring more aiming), chaos warriors are a pain in the dick without a glaive. Hell even with one they suck, after the recent changes, it takes like more than 2 headshot glaive charged attacks to kill one. Now imagine when there's several chaos warriors, which happens rather often, and you're trying to kill them with a spear or another weapon and it takes like 6-8 charged attacks PER chaos warrior. Meanwhile obviously you have to keep dodging stuff and what not. Obviously you're not alone, but the longer you take killing chaos warriors, the shittier the situation you're in if a horde or other specials are mixed in.



Dual daggers are ok-ish on Shade though, with the new cd on infiltrate. Basically assuming you use 2%crit cdr, high crit build and 30%cdr on infiltrate, you can use it pretty often, and an infiltrate dual dagger charged attack will kill chaos warriors from the front on legend(or so I hear, I haven't tested, but it does do a lot of damage, might need the headshot but since dual dagger is an overhead, it's not hard from the front). You can also kill stormvermins with backattack non charged LMB spam like 25% of the time, which is a decent enough odds.

That said I still think Shade is a huge detriment to your team due to how squishy it is and how poorly it handles many situations. It's good at a few things, when the ult is up, but feels bad at so many other things. Dual dagger horde control is ultra garbage on legend for example because you need to headshot zombies to actually kill them in one hit, a body shot takes like 2, maybe 3hits, not entirely sure and stagger fuck all, so during large density horde spawns, you're basically kinda praying as you try to line up the headshots that you won't hit another zombie shoulder instead. You can't push for shit, block/push angle is stupidly low so you lose all your stam blocking something that's slightly to the side unless you parry, you have 100health and no defensive mechanisms at all(unlike say Slayer who's fucking tanky as hell in legend due to having 50% damage reduction at all times), it's just not good in most situations. You can kill that one chaos warrior every 20-30secs, but what if you aggro a chaos warrior patrol, then you're kinda super fucked with that shitty cooldown(mind you in general chaos warrior patrols you're super fucked in most setups but like Huntsman/Veteran Ranger ults).

You do high boss damage, if the boss keeps attacking something else, but here's the trick, if you do high boss damage, the boss turns around, so you need an IB taunt to actually do good damage(assuming it works, I haven't played ironbreaker since the patch, I just play Slayer Bardin lately), or a purple pot to spam the ult(which does ridiculous damage mind you with the new CD and Decanter for longer duration). But is boss damage really that useful? A purple pot pyro sienna can do high damage AND stagger the boss at the same time. A purple pot foot knight will let everyone do good boss damage by keeping it stuck in place. A str pot Huntsman can do high boss damage from range, a str pot BH can too if there's some trash around to melee. It's not like you need a Shade to deal with bosses, and even if you do have one, their efficacy is reliant on the rest of the group or having the right potion(you don't always find that purple pot before a boss).



Just feels not worth it. I still think Shade needs another mechanic for it to be good, mostly for the general gameplay. Maybe Murderous Prowess changed to something like, if you've killed something, gain a 3sec buff that reduces damage by 35% and increases attackspeed and power by 20%. Some shit like that would be great, and honestly I don't think it'd be overpowered on a class that's mostly melee range with 100health and is forced into suboptimal weapon choices to synergizes with its mechanics. Even if it turns out overpowered, it's better than the current state, can adjust numbers later, but they should definitely buff the shittier classes asap to offer some variety. Shade and Battlewizard are really shit, and Zealot is really meh too. They can work on buffing average classes like merc/handmaiden/ranger/unchained after that, or nerfing pyro.

Beam staff still great, just requires more venting. Which does make it shittier to level with, since venting options are super limited at low level. That said since that was the case beam wasn't really that amazing anyway for lvling. I leveled Sienna with a bunch of fireball and that worked fine. It's not like recruit/veteran require beamstaff do everything solo power, you can just kinda roleplay a melee wizard and still be 100% fine. In fact you have to melee a bunch regardless of what you use until you can get temp health to vent or passive good vent stuff like at least 10pyro for the grim one(and you still have to melee a ton before you pick the first grim which on some maps is pretty late like Against the Grain.

Conflag might be better as an option now though, maybe similar to Bolt staff in viability from what I've read, which would give 3 decent staves. Fireball I guess is alright too, suboptimal but works fine. Flamethrower still garbage imo.

Nerf to longbow hurts Kerillian ranged spam a lot. I just did a Skittergate legend run and I couldn't shoot at hordes constantly with only the passive. In fact I didn't shoot at hordes much other than like 5arrows or so every now and then, cause I ran low at some point and didn't want to be out of arrows when specials spawn. I didn't actually run out of arrows, but I used the ammo boxes and had to pace myself. Which isn't that bad really, Kerillian melee options are great anyway. That said if I got Scrounger or some shit on it it'd probably be fine, but doesn't seem worth dropping Hunter which basically gives me 25% power on boss fights.

Probably hurt Kruber a lot more, since he doesn't have passive regen like Kerillian, you have to shoot to recover arrows, and it's somewhat unreliable unless you're very good at constantly landing headshots. Not sure why they nerfed both bows when I assume the nerf was meant for Kerillian and not Kruber.

The datamining and actual theorycrafting is still underway, without mod support yet a lot of the testing is hard to do.

Here's a general overview of the best choices based on what I've seen. Everything is subject to change and playerskill trumps everything as usual, push attack is a new VT2 move that happens when you hold LMB after doing a push(block then hold LMB basically).

Kruber
Melee weapons: Halberd top tier, reset first swing with block for hordes, push attack+light attack for armored. Everything else is kinda meh, Warhammer and Executioner sword are useable but you'll want high attackspeed to compensate for how slow they are. Sword+shield is decent at lower difficulties.
Ranged weapons: Longbow and Blunderbuss/Handgun. Longbow is Huntsman only and is by far the best weapon, can damage anything even chaos warriors. Blunderbuss/Handgun is for other classes, Handgun has better more precise shot but unless you headshot it's not great on legend. Blunderbuss has spread so it sucks at long range but can one shot a lot of stuff at mid range.

Bardin
Melee weapons: Shield+axe, 2H Hammer, 1H Hammer, Dual Axes. Dual axe is Slayer only and is a must for them, push attack is stupidly overpowered since it attack with both axes fast+accelerates movement+is overhead so easy headshots. Shield+axe is the defensive option, good moveset to kill stuff stormvermins with, not great for chaos warriors but light attacks pierce armor so not terrible. Hammers are great for horde control and killing and have decent anti armor option(first 2 light attack on 2h hammer, heavy attack on 1H hammer, overhead so good chance to hit headshots too). 1H hammer has higher dodge.
Ranged weapons: Grudgeraker, Drakefire Pistols, Drakefire Gun. The flamethrower is fairly limited in use but is good at what it does. Only worth using with special kill classes in the pt imo since it does jackshit at range. Pistols are a great versatile ranged option, infinite ammo, range isn't the best though it becomes very innacurate past midrange, alt fire great for hordes. Grudgeraker has limited ammo but the most damage and deletes specials and elites pretty quick.

Kerillian
Melee weapons: Glaive, Spear, Dual dagger(shade only). Dual daggers are only worth using on Shade imo, to maximize backstab+ult output. Very poor horde control/defenses/stagger otherwise so even on Shade it's not necessarily the best choice. Spear is the defensive weapon, good block angle, very good push attack, increased reach but not so great at dealing with armored targets. Glaive is generally the best elf weapon for legend due to all the armored targets, heavy attack is stupidly strong against armored(2nd hit specifically, you can whiff the first hit on purpose to prevent stagger/to use movement, as long as the 2nd hits). Does ok at hordes.
Ranged weapons: Longbow. Honestly imo the only worthwhile ranged weapon, does the most damage per shot to kill specials quickly, perfect accuracy(does have drop at longer range so have to compensate for that), fast travel. Can use Swiftbow or Repeater Crossbow decently too if needed. Hagbane is pretty bad.

Saltzpyre
Melee weapons: Falchion, Rapier. Rapier is faster and kills hordes very efficiently and the heavy attack does very high damage IF you hit a headshot, but if you don't it's poor damage especially versus armored. The gun on special attack has super short range and does so so damage, not worth using a lot of the time imo, but ammo is infinite on it. Falchion is a bit slower and you want to cancel after first 2 hits for hordes(3rd hit is an overhead), but it has innate armor piercing like an axe yet is faster than the 1h axe and does the same damage.
Ranged weapons: Volley Crossbow, maybe Repeater Gun. Repeater was nerfed last patch, haven't tested it. Might still be good on BH but not worth on other classes. Volley is what you want, good piercing power, can fire 3 shots, each shot counts individually for procs like Scrounger(2ammo return on crit) so you can get a ton of ammo back on crits.

Sienna
Melee weapons: Dagger, Mace. Mace is good for antiarmor, both light attack and charged attack are overhead that do good damage, but otherwise the weapon is kinda sucky. Dagger is a bit better for all situations but armored, and can be used to move faster with push attack to reposition. Melee weapons only relevant for leveling, once you reach 20 you can more or less stop using melee weapons entirely due to heat management options
Ranged weapons: Beam staff, Bolt staff, Conflag staff. Beam staff was just nerfed, but is still probably the strongest, can do everything nicely, horde control at range with LMB or at short range with RMB, sniping specials and boss damage with LMB+RMB beam explosion. Bolt staff is ok but requires better aiming and is worse when being overrun. Conflag was buffed to be fairly decent, does ok single target with LMB, does ok aoe with RMB which does damage armored targets decently. Not as good as the other 2 but viable if you want a change and might be better at lower levels too.

Class wise balance is a lot better lately and is pretty decent. Battlewizard is still pretty shit but everything else is more or less useable.

Gavinmad said:

fuck me sideways why couldn't they do something to de-incentivize animation cancelling, i fucking hate it

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It's not really animation cancelling anymore, it's just resetting the combos. You can't actually cancel block most shit anymore, but sometimes the moveset are shitty past the 1st or 2nd move so you want to block to reset it back. This is mostly a thing with halberd and glaive, I think you can play everything else with mashing, but halberd has a very varied moveset on LMB for example, a swing that's good at clearing hordes, a thrust that good at basically nothing and then an overhead that's good against armored units/shields. So spamming LMB is just really bad on it, and you want to cancel into another swing repeatedly for hordes.

The halberd in general is a finnicky weapon to use, but sadly it's by far the best option for Kruber. Warhammer and Executioner sword are semi viable though, exe sword does ridiculous armor damage on heavy attack(it's a huge overhead with big damage bonus on headshots) but it's ungodly slow so you need attackspeed on the weapon, the charm and possibly on talents if you have one to make good use of it, and even then you might get overrun if you're back to the wall during a horde on your own. Warhammer swings slow but does clear better than exe sword, while doing less damage versus armor but still reasonable.

It's one of the reasons I didn't like playing as Kruber. Can play as Huntsman so you shoot stuff a bunch instead of meleeing, but you need a Scrounger longbow to sustain, and probably lvl 15 too.

That said on lower difficulties even the shittier weapons will cleave/stagger/kill everything quickly and the amount of shit is lower so it doesn't matter nearly as much.

No idea about controller, never tested and I never play any sort of FPS/TPS with a gamepad if I have the choice.

For weapon balance the big difference compared to VT1 I think is that they added chaos mobs right, and Chaos Warriors(the big armored fuckers) are fairly common and much tougher to kill than Stormvermins, so you really want good antiarmor weapons for Legend(the new name for Cataclysm). Also because they have a special type of armor, Super Armor or whatever, which basically ignores most ranged weapons unless it's a crit or headshot, so you rely on melee a lot to kill them(you can technically kill them with ranged if you chain headshots but it takes a stupid amount of time, it's like 12arrows from the elf longbow for example on champion, not even the hardest, even Kruber longbow which does damage on bodyshots when fully drawn takes 3 headshots). And because obviously not every weapon is as good as the others for antiarmor, that skews the best weapons towards whatever can handle armor well enough, while still being decent at hordes. Stuff like swords in general are great at killing hordes but bad at killing armor which makes them almost all pretty bad universally, since you can handle hordes fine with antiarmor weapons.

They'll hopefully buff heavy attacks on everything against armor to balance weapons better. Axe-type weapons doing antiarmor on light attacks is fine but the fact they also generally do more damage than even heavy attacks on many other weapons is retarded.

This isn't as much of an issue at lower difficulties where chaos warriors are very uncommon though, but at Legend you'll generally fight like 20-25 of them per run, quite often several at the same time, and if it takes like 12 heavy attacks to kill one in melee, while they're swinging at you with other shit around, you're gonna have a lot of trouble.

And on classes, it's somewhat balanced but some classes are definitely "better" than others, just the worse classes aren't completely shit and can contribute nicely enough.

%damage vs armor can be good if you need a treshold for stormvermins one shot, but vs skaven would be better in this case too as I think you can get skaven+chaos on the same item. Still better than vs berzerkers though. There's a lot of not great stats, even the % power vs aren't great unless you hit tresholds on common enemies. The damage they add versus boss is basically irrelevant.