The bots should give you a potion if you're critically wounded, like you are after exploding.
But there's no way to do so if you have a tome yourself ! But I think I see what you're getting at.
Question, how do you check and redeem quests? I keep getting a prompt for a quest buto can't seem to redeem it.
That's what step 3 is for. You play until you find a healing item, then you pick it up so that you place the tome on the ground. Then you waste your healing item and explode so that the bots will give you there healing items.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Is there a point to the flame thrower staff? Other staffs have a GTF off me option, and then there's also the sword. It seems slow and sucky to use
Flamethrower staff is butts. Lousy stagger for something that's purely short-range, too much heat buildup, poor damage, awful range, and the alt fire is pretty useless; the dwarf has a flamethrower that has the same flame attack, but it's immensely better. Fireball staff is okay if you aren't on Champion/Legend (it causes friendly fire damage with splash damage on higher settings and is terrible because of it). Bolt staff is like playing a magic machine gunner and is solid if you've got good aim, but unfortunately the beam staff has better damage, range, speed, and horde control so there's no reason to use the bolt staff unless you just really want to. Conflagration lobs fairly high-damage fireballs as a main shot, BUT they do not cause splash damage so it doesn't hurt allies at higher difficulties unless you actually hit them with it; the alt fire can annihilate hordes and, more importantly, staggers anything but bosses so it can be a lifesaver if you trigger a group of armored Chaos Warriors. You can interrupt all of their attacks with the alt attack, so they never get a chance to smash anybody.
Beam staff continues to be the best, though. Ridiculous range, the shots are hitscan, and it has TWO alt shots: one is a ranged damage pulse, and one is a close-range shotgun-esque blast the shreds hordes. You can get insane damage output with the right perks and have multiple flaming skulls to fire per minute, which is more than enough to deal with most armored enemies. And if you find a concentration potion, you can stunlock every boss except level-specific ones. Conflag is better for fighting grouped armored units, but people are generally aware enough of armored units now that they know how to fight them and the team doesn't really need somebody to control armored units.
Melee-wise, the mace couples well with the beam staff because it gives you a solid anti-armor charged attack and the beam shotgun blast is plenty to knock hordes off you. Dagger is fast but weak, mage sword is slower but has better damage and has a decent sweeping charged attack. The sword is her weakest option and there isn't much point to it, as the other three all cause fire damage on a charged attack as well as melee damage. I prefer the mace, but the fire sword and dagger are both also workable as long you know how to use them.
I forgot about the beam staffs second alt fire. I need to get a con flag to try it out while I'm on veteran. Got a beam staff and have just been using that and making them. Although I gjess beta progress may vary over.
Sienna's dagger is, IMO, by far her best melee weapon and sits in a class of its own over her other weapons with only the mace being any competitor worth mentioning. The light attacks aren't the selling point, its all of the other attacks in its toolkit. Everything about the weapon is fast. It comes out fast and you can raise your guard near instantly. The push stab does a ton of damage, is easy to land headshots with, and has a powerful bleed dot tacked on. It also lunges sienna forward at a speed that outpaces running speed. Combined with the trait that it is one of the few weapons in the game that only consumes half of a stamina shield per push stab, it lets her use the weapon as a mobility tool to move quickly around the battlefield. Heavy one is a powerful flameburst with infinite cleave and a strong stackable dot. Heavy 2 pierces armor, hits in the same ballpark as the maces's heavy head bonk, and applies the same burning dot that stacks with heavy 1's flame dot. With the right gear loadout, you can kill legend stormvermin with a single quick heavy 1/heavy 2 combo and a tick of the dots. Anything less than an elite can generally be shut down with a pushstab to the head followed by a quick light slash or two to the head. It is admittedly easier to use the mace to fight chaos warriors, but once you've got the knack of landing dagger heavy 2's against CW's heads, then there isn't a single mob that the game can throw at you that can't be comfortably taken down by the dagger.
My experience in legend is that you're better off stacking as much redundancy as possible to recover from shit hitting the fan than you are maximizing performance for when the team is operating like a well oiled machine.
To that end I rate the conflag staff as superior to the beam staff for its ability to stabilize the situation when armored patrols are inopportunely pulled. Unchained is superior to pyromancer because she's a god damn juggernaut that won't be laid low from a surprise glob or an errant heavy blow from a glitched soundless mob, and living bomb will never fly over the horizon to pull an armor patrol. I've found zealot players outperforming bounty hunters because, like unchained, they're god damned juggernauts who refuse to die no matter how much bullshit gets thrown their way. Ranger Veteran stands out as one of the best classes that you can have in a legend party simply because of that bomb talent to keep the team ever stacked to the gills with more powder bombs than you know what to do with. Shade sticks out as the most useful elf class for her ability to dunk bosses, and the short cooldown on her ult combined with crit gear and resourceful combatant let her essentially have stealth ready at all times to deal with chaos warriors or break aggro to cleanly get a longbow shot against specials. All of kruber's classes are great additions to a legend team, with them all having his superb elite shredding melee weapons, Merc having the run saving ace in the hole of the ressurection shout, Huntsman having heavy boss damage, and FK essentially having stuns on tap at all times.
Mainly was playing Markus and got him to level 8. I ended up watching some youtube videos before playing to get an idea of shit not to do since I didnt really have much play time in the first Vermintide at all.
I really enjoyed using him and chopping down crowds and Moral Boost was great for keeping us going when we got overwhelmed.
After that I gave the dwarf a go and he was alright, the shotgun is cool. Only got him to level 3.
Too many games splitting my time, still playing Warframe a ton, then I have FFXV which I am strangely enjoying, then doing some stuff on the Division, I think I will make room for this one as it is satisfying to murder rats.
I just grabbed this on Steam as well. Any recommendations on starting classes for someone who never played the first one?
Oh boy, I'm sure there are a million opinions but here is mine. Start with a Melee class either Dwarf or Mercenary. Learn the timing of blocks, hits and how weapons work. Then if you want to switch to a ranged or hybrid class do that after you understand the rhythm of melee. IMO if you start with a ranged heavy class its harder to learn melee because you don't do it as much.
Then when you are playing WayWatcher you're be less panicked when a Rothelm wants to hug you and you need to stab him.
Two of the biggest tips for new players are that all of the melee weapons that have shields are garbage, and that the melee weapons that can't kill armored units are not viable outside of the easiest difficulties.
At the higher difficulties, it's not uncommon to be fighting dozens of storm vermin at a time. You are a liability to your team if your weapon bounces off them. Small Groups of chaos warriors are common as ambient trash to push through. At the highest difficulty you may be forced to fight through a patrol of a dozen CW's supported by maulers and shield marauders.
Two of the biggest tips for new players are that all of the melee weapons that have shields are garbage, and that the melee weapons that can't kill armored units are not viable outside of the easiest difficulties.
At the higher difficulties, it's not uncommon to be fighting dozens of storm vermin at a time. You are a liability to your team if your weapon bounces off them. Groups of chaos warriors are common as ambient trash to push through.
So any sort of Sword and Board variant is a no go outside of Recruit? Bummer
Nowhere near as well as some of his other options. The 2H hammer, 1H hammer, great axe, and war pick can all make mincemeat out of SV while offering superior horde performance.
Axe and Shield on Ironbreaker is BAE in solo quickplay. The knockdown and block potential with the loads of stamina has saved my bacon numerous times. If I'm in a group of friends, then I will typically take great axe or 2H hammer - at this point I'll just go Slayer, though, because psycho shirtless dwarf with a mohawk is hawt.
Since my teammates tend to be murderfuelled khorne-cultists (if I'm going to judge them by the way they're playing) I think I'll stick to axe&shield on Ironbreaker. Combining good blocking, superior knockdown and still good performance against armor is a gamesaver.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited July 2018
Axe and shield on Bardin is leagues and leagues away from terrible. Offers tons of protection for the group, has a powerful shove thanks to the shield, and really hacks up armored units. Drake pistols alt fire neuters regular hordes before they can quite hit melee range anyway, and it's a pretty lousy group if it needs Bardin to handle the crowd control himself. Just leave the proper ranged damage to the classes that are actually good at it, and make sure everybody that's better at crowd control can safely do what they need.
2H axe offers better damage but sucks for protection (and is still worse than Drake Pistols for crowd control) and hammer + shield is lousier against armor. 2h hammer is the easiest of the lot and powerful, but I absolutely prefer axe+shield at Legend to chop up the inevitable Chaos Warriors.
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FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
Axe and shield on Bardin is leagues and leagues away from terrible. Offers tons of protection for the group, has a powerful shove thanks to the shield, and really hacks up armored units. Drake pistols alt fire neuters regular hordes before they can quite hit melee range anyway, and it's a pretty lousy group if it needs Bardin to handle the crowd control himself. Just leave the proper ranged damage to the classes that are actually good at it, and make sure everybody that's better at crowd control can safely do what they need.
2H axe offers better damage but sucks for protection (and is still worse than Drake Pistols for crowd control) and hammer + shield is lousier against armor. 2h hammer is the easiest of the lot and powerful, but I absolutely prefer axe+shield at Legend to chop up the inevitable Chaos Warriors.
everything you said about keeping the AoErs safe and etc is easily accomplished by the 2 handed hammer heavy attack with all its crowd control. same with Chaos Warriors, the over the head attack is king as long as you bonk the head. it's just faster and better, but if you want to use axe and shield it's also really good, probably the only good shielded variant of a weapon, other than maybe Kruber's sword.
None of the shield weapons are good compared to the shieldless weapons. Axe and shield is just the least shit. The vaunted "shield bash" is more likely to throw off your teammates headshots and make enemy animations harder to read than it is to help. The reason that the conflag staff's staggers are useful and the shield bashes are anything but is because the conflag staff can project them to the enemy backline so that your teammates can handily read and dispatch a smaller force. Bardin is far better off with RV or Slayer in legend, but if he is going to pick his least useful class then he should leverage his gromril armor by leaving the shield weapons at home. The same for both drake weapons. "They kill hordes really", whoopdee fucking do, the higher difficulties are all about mulching armor and deleting specials while hordes are the least menacing threat by a large margin. The handgun, grudgeraker, and xbow are more valuable.
A larger list of tips:
*Backdodging away from attacks will rarely help you. Most attacks are designed to punish fleeing people and have hurtboxes larger than they appear that they should have. You want to side dodge to avoid attacks. Retreating can trigger enemy running attacks, which are more threatening than their normal attacks. Especially stuff like the notirous "roller skating Mauler/CW"
*Healing a teammate with a medkit will remove the "at death's door" state where you have a grey screen and will die rather than be downed the next time your health bar is depleted.
*The disabling attacks of Hookrats, gutter runners, and leeches can all be side dodged. Keep that in mind if you find yourself in their sights but aren't able to get off a killing blow in time.
*All of the mini-bosses have attacks that can bypass blocks. They're generally ground pounds that they use when you're at point blank range.
*The rat ogre is most safely tanked by exploiting his extremely predictable attack patterns. By barely entering entering close enough to his personal space, you can prompt his block penetrating ground pound attack. Just inch into range, dodge back when he starts the pound, and then inch back in again. You can hold him completely stationary this way.
*The chaos spawn is more erratic. He can do a ground pound, but he'll often do a trio of blockable smashes that pull him forward. There is a window after the third attack where you can squeeze an attack of your own in as well. Kite him in a circle to keep him mostly stationary for your team. If he raises his tentacle arm, then you need to dodge away to avoid his grab. If someone gets grabbed, then you can force him to drop them by using an interrupting action. Bomb detonations interrupt, and additionally some character's special abilities can interrupt the grab.
*The safest place to be around the bile troll is directly point blank on top of him. Side dodge behind him when he tries to attack. Attacks with his arm can be safely blocked. Attacks with his axe will penetrate your block.
*Minibosses are knocked backwards by bombs and some special attacks. If you get them near a hazardous ledge, it's possible to knock them off the ledge to their instant death. They'll pretty much never get close enough to the ledge for one knockback to push them over, but several in succession can do the job. Footknight Kruber is notorious for using the purple potion to spam his knockback special to KO bosses this way. Ranger veteran's bomb talent is extremely strong in part for its ability to give a team a full set of 4 bombs, so a coordinating team can work together to knock out a boss that way.
*Once you start getting orange gear, the special trait "Natural Bond" is a huge noob trap and an outright liability. It is better to downgrade to a blue necklace than it is to use an orange with NB. The health regen is very negligible, its ability to mitigate chip damage is wholly eclipsed by the temp-health on kill talent at level 20, and the downside of being unable to self-heal with medical supplies is a MASSIVE liability to your team. It is common for players with NB to be vote kicked out of legend runs for a reason. It's even worse on tanky characters like IB or Unchained since they're usually carrying the grim and it is entirely unacceptable to put a grim at risk by removing the grim carrier's ability to heal with whatever healing items present themselves.
*A good team wants to maximize redundancy of roles so that the team isn't hampered if anyone gets killed or forcibly split off from the group. To that end everyone should be able to kill any special and everyone needs to be able to take care of armor. That basically boils down the the flamethrower weapons being drawbacks for the team. "Excelling at killing hordes" isn't laudable. The slayer gets a pass since his twin axes are the best anti-armor melee weapons in the game, and that is something worth writing home about.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Axe and shield on Bardin is leagues and leagues away from terrible. Offers tons of protection for the group, has a powerful shove thanks to the shield, and really hacks up armored units. Drake pistols alt fire neuters regular hordes before they can quite hit melee range anyway, and it's a pretty lousy group if it needs Bardin to handle the crowd control himself. Just leave the proper ranged damage to the classes that are actually good at it, and make sure everybody that's better at crowd control can safely do what they need.
2H axe offers better damage but sucks for protection (and is still worse than Drake Pistols for crowd control) and hammer + shield is lousier against armor. 2h hammer is the easiest of the lot and powerful, but I absolutely prefer axe+shield at Legend to chop up the inevitable Chaos Warriors.
everything you said about keeping the AoErs safe and etc is easily accomplished by the 2 handed hammer heavy attack with all its crowd control. same with Chaos Warriors, the over the head attack is king as long as you bonk the head. it's just faster and better, but if you want to use axe and shield it's also really good, probably the only good shielded variant of a weapon, other than maybe Kruber's sword.
But the thing is, with AoE characters around then the crowds that Drake Pistols already cripple before melee range become completely trivial anyway because you've got AoE characters; the AoE characters are going to melt those hordes without any help, the Drake Pistols are just backups in case they aren't looking in a certain direction (or if you want to snag a bunch of quick kills to pile on the temp HP). Conversely, those AoE characters are inherently vulnerable to getting one-shotted by Chaos Warriors and struggle to kill them on their own at melee range, so keeping armored enemies away from the squishies is the most important thing to be doing.
2H hammer still kills Chaos Warriors, sure, but the axe+shield is faster and inherently has piercing damage plus a lot more dodging ability from the increased stamina. And trying to bonk one Chaos Warrior on the head when it's coming at you is fine, but they aren't always facing you to give you a clear shot. So it gives better protection for the classes that you want standing behind you killing hordes, and also provides the tools to stay alive better when an armored column inevitably hops over a wall onto your group.
The two are at least close enough that I'd say it comes down to preference over necessity. 2H is simpler but less flexible, axe+shield is more complex but gives more useful tools. The only outright cut-and-dried advantage the 2H hammer has is that it looks and feels a lot more satisfying to send piles of bodies flying left and right; chopping down a whole pile of Chaos Warriors with the axe is satisfying, sure, but it just doesn't have the same visceral appeal as watching a dozen or so rats go flying away with each swing.
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FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
Axe and shield on Bardin is leagues and leagues away from terrible. Offers tons of protection for the group, has a powerful shove thanks to the shield, and really hacks up armored units. Drake pistols alt fire neuters regular hordes before they can quite hit melee range anyway, and it's a pretty lousy group if it needs Bardin to handle the crowd control himself. Just leave the proper ranged damage to the classes that are actually good at it, and make sure everybody that's better at crowd control can safely do what they need.
2H axe offers better damage but sucks for protection (and is still worse than Drake Pistols for crowd control) and hammer + shield is lousier against armor. 2h hammer is the easiest of the lot and powerful, but I absolutely prefer axe+shield at Legend to chop up the inevitable Chaos Warriors.
everything you said about keeping the AoErs safe and etc is easily accomplished by the 2 handed hammer heavy attack with all its crowd control. same with Chaos Warriors, the over the head attack is king as long as you bonk the head. it's just faster and better, but if you want to use axe and shield it's also really good, probably the only good shielded variant of a weapon, other than maybe Kruber's sword.
But the thing is, with AoE characters around then the crowds that Drake Pistols already cripple before melee range become completely trivial anyway because you've got AoE characters; the AoE characters are going to melt those hordes without any help, the Drake Pistols are just backups in case they aren't looking in a certain direction (or if you want to snag a bunch of quick kills to pile on the temp HP). Conversely, those AoE characters are inherently vulnerable to getting one-shotted by Chaos Warriors and struggle to kill them on their own at melee range, so keeping armored enemies away from the squishies is the most important thing to be doing.
2H hammer still kills Chaos Warriors, sure, but the axe+shield is faster and inherently has piercing damage plus a lot more dodging ability from the increased stamina. And trying to bonk one Chaos Warrior on the head when it's coming at you is fine, but they aren't always facing you to give you a clear shot. So it gives better protection for the classes that you want standing behind you killing hordes, and also provides the tools to stay alive better when an armored column inevitably hops over a wall onto your group.
The two are at least close enough that I'd say it comes down to preference over necessity. 2H is simpler but less flexible, axe+shield is more complex but gives more useful tools. The only outright cut-and-dried advantage the 2H hammer has is that it looks and feels a lot more satisfying to send piles of bodies flying left and right; chopping down a whole pile of Chaos Warriors with the axe is satisfying, sure, but it just doesn't have the same visceral appeal as watching a dozen or so rats go flying away with each swing.
I mean, i still disagree with you on what's best vs Chaos Warrior, but there's really nothing left to say and I'm going to focus on the fact that you mentioned the ultimate value of the two handed hammer:
visceral appeal as watching a dozen or so rats go flying away with each swing
I'm still generally carrying around the pistols, anyway, because of their flexibility. depending on what my party comp is I might be forced to take my rifle, though.
Man, switching from Saltzpire flail to Bardin is jarring. From going completely crazy spamming attack and timing the third and fourth hits to get shield enemies to the slow, pondersome charge of the hammer swing
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
It's like chopping wood, if wood was hundreds of pounds of flesh. All about the rhythm.
None of the shield weapons are good compared to the shieldless weapons. Axe and shield is just the least shit. The vaunted "shield bash" is more likely to throw off your teammates headshots and make enemy animations harder to read than it is to help. The reason that the conflag staff's staggers are useful and the shield bashes are anything but is because the conflag staff can project them to the enemy backline so that your teammates can handily read and dispatch a smaller force. Bardin is far better off with RV or Slayer in legend, but if he is going to pick his least useful class then he should leverage his gromril armor by leaving the shield weapons at home. The same for both drake weapons. "They kill hordes really", whoopdee fucking do, the higher difficulties are all about mulching armor and deleting specials while hordes are the least menacing threat by a large margin. The handgun, grudgeraker, and xbow are more valuable.
A larger list of tips:
*Backdodging away from attacks will rarely help you. Most attacks are designed to punish fleeing people and have hurtboxes larger than they appear that they should have. You want to side dodge to avoid attacks. Retreating can trigger enemy running attacks, which are more threatening than their normal attacks. Especially stuff like the notirous "roller skating Mauler/CW"
*Healing a teammate with a medkit will remove the "at death's door" state where you have a grey screen and will die rather than be downed the next time your health bar is depleted.
*The disabling attacks of Hookrats, gutter runners, and leeches can all be side dodged. Keep that in mind if you find yourself in their sights but aren't able to get off a killing blow in time.
*All of the mini-bosses have attacks that can bypass blocks. They're generally ground pounds that they use when you're at point blank range.
*The rat ogre is most safely tanked by exploiting his extremely predictable attack patterns. By barely entering entering close enough to his personal space, you can prompt his block penetrating ground pound attack. Just inch into range, dodge back when he starts the pound, and then inch back in again. You can hold him completely stationary this way.
*The chaos spawn is more erratic. He can do a ground pound, but he'll often do a trio of blockable smashes that pull him forward. There is a window after the third attack where you can squeeze an attack of your own in as well. Kite him in a circle to keep him mostly stationary for your team. If he raises his tentacle arm, then you need to dodge away to avoid his grab. If someone gets grabbed, then you can force him to drop them by using an interrupting action. Bomb detonations interrupt, and additionally some character's special abilities can interrupt the grab.
*The safest place to be around the bile troll is directly point blank on top of him. Side dodge behind him when he tries to attack. Attacks with his arm can be safely blocked. Attacks with his axe will penetrate your block.
*Minibosses are knocked backwards by bombs and some special attacks. If you get them near a hazardous ledge, it's possible to knock them off the ledge to their instant death. They'll pretty much never get close enough to the ledge for one knockback to push them over, but several in succession can do the job. Footknight Kruber is notorious for using the purple potion to spam his knockback special to KO bosses this way. Ranger veteran's bomb talent is extremely strong in part for its ability to give a team a full set of 4 bombs, so a coordinating team can work together to knock out a boss that way.
*Once you start getting orange gear, the special trait "Natural Bond" is a huge noob trap and an outright liability. It is better to downgrade to a blue necklace than it is to use an orange with NB. The health regen is very negligible, its ability to mitigate chip damage is wholly eclipsed by the temp-health on kill talent at level 20, and the downside of being unable to self-heal with medical supplies is a MASSIVE liability to your team. It is common for players with NB to be vote kicked out of legend runs for a reason. It's even worse on tanky characters like IB or Unchained since they're usually carrying the grim and it is entirely unacceptable to put a grim at risk by removing the grim carrier's ability to heal with whatever healing items present themselves.
*A good team wants to maximize redundancy of roles so that the team isn't hampered if anyone gets killed or forcibly split off from the group. To that end everyone should be able to kill any special and everyone needs to be able to take care of armor. That basically boils down the the flamethrower weapons being drawbacks for the team. "Excelling at killing hordes" isn't laudable. The slayer gets a pass since his twin axes are the best anti-armor melee weapons in the game, and that is something worth writing home about.
Why is natural bond bad when you can still heal others and are usually carrying a tome? It sounds like it'd be good?
Everyone I play with, and we'really just doing veteran and champion, has been using it. I mentioned I heard it's a big noob trap, yet it seems to work out? Is it just bad on legendary?
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Most things work on Legend, but some require a higher level of play to make them work. Some options are just easier. I've played with a fair few NB folk, and sometimes it's no issue, and sometimes they're obviously not up to it.
Honestly, team composition matters much more than items or individual subclasses. A team should have someone who can effectively CC or block hordes, someone who can pick off SV and specials at range, someone who can kill Chaos Warriors in 1-2 shots (and this person usually also fulfils boss killing, so that is covered as well), and someone who can revive well under fire. Those don't have to be different people, they're just roles that need filling.
As an aside, shields also block ratling gunner fire, which blocking with non-shield weapons does not. Generally not a big deal given that you usually kill gunners the moment they spawn in a good team, but occasionally when they're shooting you through a wall or from under the swamp, it can be nice.
The big problem with NB is that its benefit is mostly an illusion. What I call "fair weather games" lull people into the trap of thinking that it's useful. Fair weather games are games where everything goes smooth sailing and you never get horribly beat up. You complete such games with full health, and that seems really impressive. But take a step back and seriously consider if its slow heal over time actually made a difference? If that slow HOT kept you topped off, then you at most only took small scratches over the course of the game. You probably didn't need the heal over time to stay alive, and you probably would have survived without any necklace healing boosts, just from temp health from kills, or from what healing was present on the map. If you think back carefully, I bet that your team was probably procing the "you're wasting healing" audio lines during these fair weather matches simply because they were chugging the potion to avoid leaving it behind, but they weren't really beat up much in the first place since things are going so swimmingly.
But, when things take a turn for the worse, suddenly you're in a huge bind. If you get downed, then you need to be healed to get out of the grey. But if there are only healing draughts around, then you CAN'T heal. If you're the last player standing, then you CAN'T heal. If your teammates are alive and have a medkit, then you are BURDENING them with burning a precious medkit to keep you alive when generally those are better served for healing a tome carrier in the field. If you were a tome carrier, then the burden wasn't quite as severe but medkits are RARE in legend and they're often not available. It's unforgivably bad to put NB on tanky careers like IB, FK, or Unchained since they're generally the optimal grim carriers in the party and it is unforgivable to put a grim at risk by so severely limiting the avenues that they can be healed in the event that they get mortally wounded.
The "it keeps me from dying a death by a thousand cuts" or "it lets me recover from venting heat" arguments fall short since the temp-health on kill talent accomplishes the same end, except the healing output from temp health on kill is orders of magnitude more potent than NB healing without having a crippling drawback. That already superior healing from temp-health on kill can be bolstered by a whopping 30% by running boon of shallya on your necklace instead. You could run the heal dupe trait, keep your options open to use the healing, and achieve the same end of "letting my teammates have the healing supplies" if the heal dupe procs even once since one full heal from duping a medical supply is probably going to be comparable to all of the glacial healing over time that you would have received from NB.
In other words, it's simply "win-more" trap. It's an effect that, when you're already in a winning position, makes it look like you're winning really hard. But when the chips are down and you're losing, it does very little to help you take a losing situation and reverse it into a winning one. In fact, in this case it actually actively inhibits you when things are going bad. It makes bad situations worse.
In conclusion, the advantage of NB is so tiny that I'd say that it's an illusion that will almost never change the outcome of a match, while its downside is a crippling setback that has the potential to lead to loss of books or even full team wipes. I'd go as far to say that you're better off not equipping any necklace whatsoever than you are equipping a necklace with NB.
I actually ended up in a champion game just like that where we only fouND potion's and the guy carrying it was a liability. Before that we found plenty of med kits and thing's were running smoother as we were a much more solid group of 4.
Every time I think about picking this game up again, I remember all my levels are low and no one would group with someone running the next from easiest difficulty anymore.
In a lot of ways the grinding and leveling made the game worse
The grind to character level 30 and 300 item power is dumb. I got my characters maxed, but it certainly didn't didn't help keep my friends entertained. They've got like one character partially leveled and the rest at zero.
They could have just started us at 30:300 and had the only grind be searching for good gear rolls.
The bots are generally better than most players down on recruit/soldier though, so you can just start hosting a match with bots and finish it with whoever joins in. The bots are better than 90% of the players on veteran too. I recommend ranger veteran/foot knight/unchained/handmaiden as the bot classes.
Highlights that I've noticed:
*Natural bond no longer prevents the use of healing items. IMO it's probably still bad but now it's no longer "you're using NB? Guess you're getting vote kicked" levels of bad.
*Beamstaffs can no longer trigger on-hit effects on the first tick of the weapon. IE, no more wiggling the beam to charge your ult in 0.12 femto seconds.
*Bounty Hunter's blessed shots no longer resets on melee kill. Instead he has a new talent that lets blessed shots reset on melee kill. This talent competes with the talent that allows blessed shots to not consume ammo.
*Cleave reduced on pretty much all ranged weapons (Less winning forever for just casually launching an arrow at enemies in single file)
*The "scrounger" trait now only returns a singular round of ammunition upon crit instead of two. It should be less trivial to go-infinite with ranged spawm
*Shieldvermin remain "open" for longer once their guard is broken, so some idiot spamming lights is less likely to reset the SV's guard after you but him open.
*All of the level 20 talents for all of the careers have been reworked. If you don't remember, this is the tier that 100% of careers took temp-health-on-kill 100% of the time. Temp health on kill no longer exists. There are new talents for generating temp health, and none of them let you regenerate temp health with ranged attacks.
Really amazing changes here. We should have had them months ago, but better late than never.
Hmm, yeah, good - let's just keep hitting pyro Sienna and Beam staff with nerfs instead of addressing the reason nobody wants to use any of the other staves(they suck).
Well, at least the Unchained buff and melee weapon buffs start to look like a good alternative now...
Posts
That's what step 3 is for. You play until you find a healing item, then you pick it up so that you place the tome on the ground. Then you waste your healing item and explode so that the bots will give you there healing items.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Flamethrower staff is butts. Lousy stagger for something that's purely short-range, too much heat buildup, poor damage, awful range, and the alt fire is pretty useless; the dwarf has a flamethrower that has the same flame attack, but it's immensely better. Fireball staff is okay if you aren't on Champion/Legend (it causes friendly fire damage with splash damage on higher settings and is terrible because of it). Bolt staff is like playing a magic machine gunner and is solid if you've got good aim, but unfortunately the beam staff has better damage, range, speed, and horde control so there's no reason to use the bolt staff unless you just really want to. Conflagration lobs fairly high-damage fireballs as a main shot, BUT they do not cause splash damage so it doesn't hurt allies at higher difficulties unless you actually hit them with it; the alt fire can annihilate hordes and, more importantly, staggers anything but bosses so it can be a lifesaver if you trigger a group of armored Chaos Warriors. You can interrupt all of their attacks with the alt attack, so they never get a chance to smash anybody.
Beam staff continues to be the best, though. Ridiculous range, the shots are hitscan, and it has TWO alt shots: one is a ranged damage pulse, and one is a close-range shotgun-esque blast the shreds hordes. You can get insane damage output with the right perks and have multiple flaming skulls to fire per minute, which is more than enough to deal with most armored enemies. And if you find a concentration potion, you can stunlock every boss except level-specific ones. Conflag is better for fighting grouped armored units, but people are generally aware enough of armored units now that they know how to fight them and the team doesn't really need somebody to control armored units.
Melee-wise, the mace couples well with the beam staff because it gives you a solid anti-armor charged attack and the beam shotgun blast is plenty to knock hordes off you. Dagger is fast but weak, mage sword is slower but has better damage and has a decent sweeping charged attack. The sword is her weakest option and there isn't much point to it, as the other three all cause fire damage on a charged attack as well as melee damage. I prefer the mace, but the fire sword and dagger are both also workable as long you know how to use them.
My experience in legend is that you're better off stacking as much redundancy as possible to recover from shit hitting the fan than you are maximizing performance for when the team is operating like a well oiled machine.
To that end I rate the conflag staff as superior to the beam staff for its ability to stabilize the situation when armored patrols are inopportunely pulled. Unchained is superior to pyromancer because she's a god damn juggernaut that won't be laid low from a surprise glob or an errant heavy blow from a glitched soundless mob, and living bomb will never fly over the horizon to pull an armor patrol. I've found zealot players outperforming bounty hunters because, like unchained, they're god damned juggernauts who refuse to die no matter how much bullshit gets thrown their way. Ranger Veteran stands out as one of the best classes that you can have in a legend party simply because of that bomb talent to keep the team ever stacked to the gills with more powder bombs than you know what to do with. Shade sticks out as the most useful elf class for her ability to dunk bosses, and the short cooldown on her ult combined with crit gear and resourceful combatant let her essentially have stealth ready at all times to deal with chaos warriors or break aggro to cleanly get a longbow shot against specials. All of kruber's classes are great additions to a legend team, with them all having his superb elite shredding melee weapons, Merc having the run saving ace in the hole of the ressurection shout, Huntsman having heavy boss damage, and FK essentially having stuns on tap at all times.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I really enjoyed using him and chopping down crowds and Moral Boost was great for keeping us going when we got overwhelmed.
After that I gave the dwarf a go and he was alright, the shotgun is cool. Only got him to level 3.
Too many games splitting my time, still playing Warframe a ton, then I have FFXV which I am strangely enjoying, then doing some stuff on the Division, I think I will make room for this one as it is satisfying to murder rats.
Oh boy, I'm sure there are a million opinions but here is mine. Start with a Melee class either Dwarf or Mercenary. Learn the timing of blocks, hits and how weapons work. Then if you want to switch to a ranged or hybrid class do that after you understand the rhythm of melee. IMO if you start with a ranged heavy class its harder to learn melee because you don't do it as much.
Then when you are playing WayWatcher you're be less panicked when a Rothelm wants to hug you and you need to stab him.
At the higher difficulties, it's not uncommon to be fighting dozens of storm vermin at a time. You are a liability to your team if your weapon bounces off them. Small Groups of chaos warriors are common as ambient trash to push through. At the highest difficulty you may be forced to fight through a patrol of a dozen CW's supported by maulers and shield marauders.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
So any sort of Sword and Board variant is a no go outside of Recruit? Bummer
The problem with them is that you give up an excessive amount of killing power for way too much stamina. It's just a horribly Ill advised trade off.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
2H axe offers better damage but sucks for protection (and is still worse than Drake Pistols for crowd control) and hammer + shield is lousier against armor. 2h hammer is the easiest of the lot and powerful, but I absolutely prefer axe+shield at Legend to chop up the inevitable Chaos Warriors.
everything you said about keeping the AoErs safe and etc is easily accomplished by the 2 handed hammer heavy attack with all its crowd control. same with Chaos Warriors, the over the head attack is king as long as you bonk the head. it's just faster and better, but if you want to use axe and shield it's also really good, probably the only good shielded variant of a weapon, other than maybe Kruber's sword.
A larger list of tips:
*Backdodging away from attacks will rarely help you. Most attacks are designed to punish fleeing people and have hurtboxes larger than they appear that they should have. You want to side dodge to avoid attacks. Retreating can trigger enemy running attacks, which are more threatening than their normal attacks. Especially stuff like the notirous "roller skating Mauler/CW"
*Healing a teammate with a medkit will remove the "at death's door" state where you have a grey screen and will die rather than be downed the next time your health bar is depleted.
*The disabling attacks of Hookrats, gutter runners, and leeches can all be side dodged. Keep that in mind if you find yourself in their sights but aren't able to get off a killing blow in time.
*All of the mini-bosses have attacks that can bypass blocks. They're generally ground pounds that they use when you're at point blank range.
*The rat ogre is most safely tanked by exploiting his extremely predictable attack patterns. By barely entering entering close enough to his personal space, you can prompt his block penetrating ground pound attack. Just inch into range, dodge back when he starts the pound, and then inch back in again. You can hold him completely stationary this way.
*The chaos spawn is more erratic. He can do a ground pound, but he'll often do a trio of blockable smashes that pull him forward. There is a window after the third attack where you can squeeze an attack of your own in as well. Kite him in a circle to keep him mostly stationary for your team. If he raises his tentacle arm, then you need to dodge away to avoid his grab. If someone gets grabbed, then you can force him to drop them by using an interrupting action. Bomb detonations interrupt, and additionally some character's special abilities can interrupt the grab.
*The safest place to be around the bile troll is directly point blank on top of him. Side dodge behind him when he tries to attack. Attacks with his arm can be safely blocked. Attacks with his axe will penetrate your block.
*Minibosses are knocked backwards by bombs and some special attacks. If you get them near a hazardous ledge, it's possible to knock them off the ledge to their instant death. They'll pretty much never get close enough to the ledge for one knockback to push them over, but several in succession can do the job. Footknight Kruber is notorious for using the purple potion to spam his knockback special to KO bosses this way. Ranger veteran's bomb talent is extremely strong in part for its ability to give a team a full set of 4 bombs, so a coordinating team can work together to knock out a boss that way.
*Once you start getting orange gear, the special trait "Natural Bond" is a huge noob trap and an outright liability. It is better to downgrade to a blue necklace than it is to use an orange with NB. The health regen is very negligible, its ability to mitigate chip damage is wholly eclipsed by the temp-health on kill talent at level 20, and the downside of being unable to self-heal with medical supplies is a MASSIVE liability to your team. It is common for players with NB to be vote kicked out of legend runs for a reason. It's even worse on tanky characters like IB or Unchained since they're usually carrying the grim and it is entirely unacceptable to put a grim at risk by removing the grim carrier's ability to heal with whatever healing items present themselves.
*A good team wants to maximize redundancy of roles so that the team isn't hampered if anyone gets killed or forcibly split off from the group. To that end everyone should be able to kill any special and everyone needs to be able to take care of armor. That basically boils down the the flamethrower weapons being drawbacks for the team. "Excelling at killing hordes" isn't laudable. The slayer gets a pass since his twin axes are the best anti-armor melee weapons in the game, and that is something worth writing home about.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
But the thing is, with AoE characters around then the crowds that Drake Pistols already cripple before melee range become completely trivial anyway because you've got AoE characters; the AoE characters are going to melt those hordes without any help, the Drake Pistols are just backups in case they aren't looking in a certain direction (or if you want to snag a bunch of quick kills to pile on the temp HP). Conversely, those AoE characters are inherently vulnerable to getting one-shotted by Chaos Warriors and struggle to kill them on their own at melee range, so keeping armored enemies away from the squishies is the most important thing to be doing.
2H hammer still kills Chaos Warriors, sure, but the axe+shield is faster and inherently has piercing damage plus a lot more dodging ability from the increased stamina. And trying to bonk one Chaos Warrior on the head when it's coming at you is fine, but they aren't always facing you to give you a clear shot. So it gives better protection for the classes that you want standing behind you killing hordes, and also provides the tools to stay alive better when an armored column inevitably hops over a wall onto your group.
The two are at least close enough that I'd say it comes down to preference over necessity. 2H is simpler but less flexible, axe+shield is more complex but gives more useful tools. The only outright cut-and-dried advantage the 2H hammer has is that it looks and feels a lot more satisfying to send piles of bodies flying left and right; chopping down a whole pile of Chaos Warriors with the axe is satisfying, sure, but it just doesn't have the same visceral appeal as watching a dozen or so rats go flying away with each swing.
I mean, i still disagree with you on what's best vs Chaos Warrior, but there's really nothing left to say and I'm going to focus on the fact that you mentioned the ultimate value of the two handed hammer:
I'm still generally carrying around the pistols, anyway, because of their flexibility. depending on what my party comp is I might be forced to take my rifle, though.
Why is natural bond bad when you can still heal others and are usually carrying a tome? It sounds like it'd be good?
Honestly, team composition matters much more than items or individual subclasses. A team should have someone who can effectively CC or block hordes, someone who can pick off SV and specials at range, someone who can kill Chaos Warriors in 1-2 shots (and this person usually also fulfils boss killing, so that is covered as well), and someone who can revive well under fire. Those don't have to be different people, they're just roles that need filling.
As an aside, shields also block ratling gunner fire, which blocking with non-shield weapons does not. Generally not a big deal given that you usually kill gunners the moment they spawn in a good team, but occasionally when they're shooting you through a wall or from under the swamp, it can be nice.
But, when things take a turn for the worse, suddenly you're in a huge bind. If you get downed, then you need to be healed to get out of the grey. But if there are only healing draughts around, then you CAN'T heal. If you're the last player standing, then you CAN'T heal. If your teammates are alive and have a medkit, then you are BURDENING them with burning a precious medkit to keep you alive when generally those are better served for healing a tome carrier in the field. If you were a tome carrier, then the burden wasn't quite as severe but medkits are RARE in legend and they're often not available. It's unforgivably bad to put NB on tanky careers like IB, FK, or Unchained since they're generally the optimal grim carriers in the party and it is unforgivable to put a grim at risk by so severely limiting the avenues that they can be healed in the event that they get mortally wounded.
The "it keeps me from dying a death by a thousand cuts" or "it lets me recover from venting heat" arguments fall short since the temp-health on kill talent accomplishes the same end, except the healing output from temp health on kill is orders of magnitude more potent than NB healing without having a crippling drawback. That already superior healing from temp-health on kill can be bolstered by a whopping 30% by running boon of shallya on your necklace instead. You could run the heal dupe trait, keep your options open to use the healing, and achieve the same end of "letting my teammates have the healing supplies" if the heal dupe procs even once since one full heal from duping a medical supply is probably going to be comparable to all of the glacial healing over time that you would have received from NB.
In other words, it's simply "win-more" trap. It's an effect that, when you're already in a winning position, makes it look like you're winning really hard. But when the chips are down and you're losing, it does very little to help you take a losing situation and reverse it into a winning one. In fact, in this case it actually actively inhibits you when things are going bad. It makes bad situations worse.
In conclusion, the advantage of NB is so tiny that I'd say that it's an illusion that will almost never change the outcome of a match, while its downside is a crippling setback that has the potential to lead to loss of books or even full team wipes. I'd go as far to say that you're better off not equipping any necklace whatsoever than you are equipping a necklace with NB.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
In a lot of ways the grinding and leveling made the game worse
They could have just started us at 30:300 and had the only grind be searching for good gear rolls.
The bots are generally better than most players down on recruit/soldier though, so you can just start hosting a match with bots and finish it with whoever joins in. The bots are better than 90% of the players on veteran too. I recommend ranger veteran/foot knight/unchained/handmaiden as the bot classes.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
edit:
Looks like the new weapon skins are identical to the old ones, but purple instead of blue. Six months of development there.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Thre's some real GOOD STUFF in here though. Overperforming classes and weapons getting nerfed, underperforming classes getting buffed, talent reworks, etc. Beta notes here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/552500/announcements/detail/1691557965432069240
Highlights that I've noticed:
*Natural bond no longer prevents the use of healing items. IMO it's probably still bad but now it's no longer "you're using NB? Guess you're getting vote kicked" levels of bad.
*Beamstaffs can no longer trigger on-hit effects on the first tick of the weapon. IE, no more wiggling the beam to charge your ult in 0.12 femto seconds.
*Bounty Hunter's blessed shots no longer resets on melee kill. Instead he has a new talent that lets blessed shots reset on melee kill. This talent competes with the talent that allows blessed shots to not consume ammo.
*Cleave reduced on pretty much all ranged weapons (Less winning forever for just casually launching an arrow at enemies in single file)
*The "scrounger" trait now only returns a singular round of ammunition upon crit instead of two. It should be less trivial to go-infinite with ranged spawm
*Shieldvermin remain "open" for longer once their guard is broken, so some idiot spamming lights is less likely to reset the SV's guard after you but him open.
*All of the level 20 talents for all of the careers have been reworked. If you don't remember, this is the tier that 100% of careers took temp-health-on-kill 100% of the time. Temp health on kill no longer exists. There are new talents for generating temp health, and none of them let you regenerate temp health with ranged attacks.
Really amazing changes here. We should have had them months ago, but better late than never.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Well, at least the Unchained buff and melee weapon buffs start to look like a good alternative now...