Vermintide 1 + 2

Ah, I don't think the Pyro ult tooltip says that it removes overcharge - interesting. I'll have to futz with it. There's another trait, which i have on the beam staff now, that bumps your attack power against the same type of enemy when you hit them, stacking 5 times. Beam staff inflicts so many hits in a short period of time that that hits max stacks almost instantly. Pretty cool.

It's the level 25 talent that modifies ult effects. Your choices are -30% cooldown (so from 60 to 40 seconds), 50 temp health on cast and clear all overcharge.

I use clear overcharge because it can be so clutch, but you can make a good argument for -cooldown, especially in combination with potions. +temp health is something I wouldn't use personally but it works great on bots. My current bot loadout is mercenary with extra ult health, pyro and waystalker with health on ult and an IB. The IB tanks, the pyro and waystalker delete specials while healing themselves and the merc heals everyone.

As for sienna weapons I don't have much experience with her yet, pyromancer is the next class on my list after I finish with shade. I do know one good breakpoint though. The beam staff blast attack is the same as drake pistols and the flamestorm staff is a copy of the drakegun, I have tons of experience using both. With either weapon the best bonuses to use are +30% to skaven/infantry. This lets the beam staff instantly kill 10 skavenslaves with every blast and the drakegun can also kill skavenslaves with a single burst attack instead of a charged stream. This does wonders for horde control

Anyone else tried the beta? I gave up on it after 2 games because there was never more than ~3 people online at any given time. I couldn't find a single full party and bots are iffy so I had trouble just getting my daily done. It appears that's because this is a bugtesting beta and not a new feature beta so there isn't much interest. I didn't find any bugs or broken mods but other people have been finding plenty. My personal favourite:

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/1...

i didn't know there was one. Based on what you're seeing I think I'll pass.

The 1.6 anniversary patch was today. I'm not going to bother linking it because it's all bugfixes.

Did anyone else try the beta? I didn't have to update vermintide today so it appears that even though I uninstalled the 5gb download I did for the beta, it still stored that data somewhere else and applied it today. Technology marches on I guess?

naw, i didn't try the beta. That said, they fixed the perpetually falling barrel in Righteous Stand and enabled the ability to turn off UI scaling for resolutions over 1080p. huzzah!

Looking forward to trying out the pub crawl, possibly kicking it with a friend who's played a bit and two complete newbies later tonight.

Anyone else here run the pub crawl event yet? It's ending in a few days and I would highly recommend checking it out.

Drunk Kerillian is best Kerillian. "If I were a door... I would be the best door, mind you."

I'm having trouble learning to Slayer. I get the basic gameplay just fine, it's the ult that I can't figure out.

One of three things tends to happen:

1. I leap and land in a group of enemies and nothing happens, no one gets stunned or knocked back and I get stuck inside the mob.

2. I try to leap and go nowhere. I get the ult buff and my camera kind of goes *HURK* and jerks upward like one big hiccup. This is a problem if I'm trying to bounce over to a blightstormer in the distance.

3. I try to leap and things hit me in melee when I'm midair. I thought movement ults put you in a dodge state and this doesn't happen? I'm suspecting lag, maybe the enemies still think I haven't moved yet.

Still haven't attempted Slayer - seems too easy to leap places you don't belong resulting in insta-death.

That said, that third item sounds like lag. I notice stuff like this almost exclusively when I dive in for Quickplay instead of playing solo. Most frequent thing I've noticed is stuff hitting me before I know it's there or before that little warning 'woosh' sound plays to let you know something is about to take a swing at you.

I think I've pretty much figured out Kerillian and Shade, so it's time for something new. The last character I have less than 100 games in is Sienna and I picked Pyromancer as my class. Couple things I discovered:

1. The pyro passive is called Critical Mass and it boosts your base crit level up to a whopping 30% at high overcharge levels. This IMO is the main draw of the class, with item boosts you can easily reach 40% crit which gives you slayer levels of melee DPS, everything just melts. Things like SV and CW are no problem regardless of what weapon you have because you can rain armour piercing crits on them until they go down.
2. At first I always used the clear all overcharge talent for pyro. Now that I have a better understanding of how the class works I switched it over to cooldown reduction instead. The former allows you to blast out two full overcharge bars of ranged DPS in a row, but I found this to be relatively unnecessary. A single bar of overcharge is enough to mangle most enemy groups and venting your overcharge is counterpreductive because it powers your melee.
3. The crowbill has a really long delay before it returns to blocking after a push attack, this can easily get you killed. This was reported as a bug so hopefully they will get it fixed before the new DLC drops.
4. Beam staff is really good at zapping assassins, the slightest touch will stun them in place and let you burn them down easily. I thought using the beam-shot charged attack would be faster (as it is for other specials) but I found that the moment I let go of the beam the assassin would instantly do a backflip and the charged shot would miss every time. Lesson learned there.

I've been testing out the Burning Head ult and I measured it's cleave value as 18. This means that the number of targets you can pierce is:

9 skavenslaves
7 fanatics
6 clanrats
3 marauders
3 plague monks
2 berserkers

Afterwards the skull will continue to fly and hit one more target. Things get more complicated with specials, you can kill up to 19 gutter runners or globadiers in a row because they have a mass of 1. All other specials can't be pierced regardless of mass.

Couple other things I learned:

1. The skull can crit which does tremendous damage, enough to one-shot a CW. The best time to use your ult is at max overcharge for the critical mass bonus.
2. The skull will dumbfire for a short distance before locking onto the nearest head. Unlike the waystalker ult there appears to be a limit to how sharply the skull can turn, so if you hit one of two targets standing beside each other it may continue on to hit something in the background instead of turning 90 degrees to hit the adjacent target.
3. The skull will always take the shortest route to the enemie's head, if you use the ult from behind or below the target it will probably hit them in the body instead. When engaging CWs you should tap them with your ranged weapon to get them to turn around before you ult.
4. The skull will never hit the same target more than once, if you hit a globadier in the body it will actually survive and won't take a second hit because the skull ignores it.
5. The skull will always stun a boss, just like a grenade. If you hit a CW or CW-type boss in the head it will do the "greater stun" which knocks them on their ass.
6. Attack speed doesn't increase the speed of damage ticks on the beam staff but it will let you use the charged blast and charged shot faster.
7. If you're playing in Twitch mode with random penalties and bonuses, the "unlimited ammo" bonus will let Sienna or Bardin attack without generating overcharge.

Pyromancer: I think I have her talented for generating less Overcharge. Not sure it's the best approach because like you said, she thrives when Overcharge hits max level.

Do you know if the beam staff primary fire ever crits?

This reminds me though that they released a new weapon for every class but I don't think I've seen any of 'em, including the crowbill. Do you have to hit lvl 30 to unlock em?

It also reminds me that I don't really get to play this much anymore. Really looking forward to the expansion to jazz things up again.

Tamren wrote:

3. The skull will always take the shortest route to the enemie's head, if you use the ult from behind or below the target it will probably hit them in the body instead. When engaging CWs you should tap them with your ranged weapon to get them to turn around before you ult.

Just like the waystalker ability, you can paint a target and then aim the shot. As long as you don't lose the lock on (usually by passing your aim over other enemies), you can curve it and still hit your target. Even with a chaos warrior that is facing you, your best bet is to paint them then curve the shot up to improve your chances of hitting the head. If they are facing away from you a headshot is still possible if you curve it a lot.

Jow wrote:

Pyromancer: I think I have her talented for generating less Overcharge. Not sure it's the best approach because like you said, she thrives when Overcharge hits max level.

Do you know if the beam staff primary fire ever crits?

This reminds me though that they released a new weapon for every class but I don't think I've seen any of 'em, including the crowbill. Do you have to hit lvl 30 to unlock em?

It also reminds me that I don't really get to play this much anymore. Really looking forward to the expansion to jazz things up again.

Pyromancer is perfectly playable if you spec for overcharge reduction, and you can make an argument that this is the best way to leave your options open. If you want to make her as strong as possible in terms of damage output, however, you want to go for something focused on crits, remembering that the crit bonus from high overcharge applies to melee weapons as well, and can make pyromancer a melee beast. Personally I have the most fun with something in the middle.

Beam staff primary fire does crit, but it shouldn't crit on the first damage tick against an enemy — this was removed a few patches ago to stop an exploitative/annoying pyromancer build. The snipe-along-beam shot should crit as well.

It's been a while, but if I recall correctly, to play with the DLC weapons (crowbill, falchion/axe, dual hammers, mace/sword) you have to (1) own the Back to Ubersreik DLC, and (2) complete the 3 missions in that DLC with the corresponding character. This will give you a blueprint that allows you to craft the new weapon. They are unlocked via Okri's challenges, so maybe double-check there to be sure?

45 minutes of audio for the pub crawl, crazy and brilliant. Thanks for sharing.

I just fired up Vermintide 1 for the first time, I mostly installed the game to check out the maps because it seems like fatshark is never going to port them over to VM2, or if they do it will be in a significantly modified state.

I feel very lost and confused, everything does and does not work like I expect it to. For instance most of the weapons are the same but I have no push attack, weapon attack combos are different, BoP and other weapons don't hurt stormvermin much etc. It doesn't help that I'm level 1 and my gear is all stock, but I know this feeling very well and I'm going to be flailing for a while until I figure out how stuff works and get over that new player hump.

I currently plan to play all of the levels at least once and see about unlocking the tavern features and trinket slots. After that I'm not sure if I'll play much, even with the "improved" bots mod they are not very smart and there are almost no public games available to join. In vermintide 2 if a rat or other enemy gets within 5 feet of a bot they will immediately turn and attack it and the bots have a 5-10 foot leash that lets them move a short distance away when necessary. In VM1 that's not the case, the bots are glued to you like a backpack and if you move forward to engage rats in front of you odds are they won't help you very much because they seem set on exclusively guarding your back. If you back into a corner you'll get into situations like this where the bots form a neat little row behind you and facing the wrong direction while single rats run up and stab you in the face.

In addition to that bots are not a replacement for humans in regards to completing map objectives. Some maps are painfully slow with only one player at the controls, carrying 3 barrels to unlock the gate on Horn isn't so bad. But carrying 5 sacks of grain to the cart by myself made me never want to play that map ever again. Not only was it dreadfully tedious but I also had to face way more horde spawns than normal because it took me 5 times longer to complete the same objective.
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/967620532723029313/31D44BDDBF2768A2D63B603FEAF6D83EF169C61E/)

The most important rule for playing with bots in V1 is position. Position is more important in V1 than V2 in general, but doubly so with bots.

Yeah the balance in VM1 is quite different, maps are smaller with more chokepoints and players are far less powerful in general (no ults!). Dealing with hordes is all about managing corners and chokes instead of the open ground circle kiting you would do in VM2.

The other half of playing with bots is ensuring they have the right gear. My bots in VM2 are all level 30 and have a carefully designed set of talents and equipment, they can easily handle legend games and only go full {ableist slur} if the game throws something unexpected at them, like any combat that takes place on narrow ledges. My bots in VM1 are totally stock, everyone but Saltz is still running default white items with no weapon traits or trinkets. My first objective is to give them all weapons better suited to special killing, Kruber has a blunderbuss, Saltz has a BoP, Kerilian has a swiftbow, all of those are relatively useless against armour and single gunners pinning down the entire party is a constant issue.

Getting to use all of the QoL mods in their original form is kind of eye opening too. Improved bot AI and the like are present in VM2 but in a limited form. You can tell bots to stick close, ping elites and use heavy attacks, but the vast majority of the options like *don't chase specials halfway across the map you idiots* are missing and that causes constant issues where VM2 bots do just that. They also allow you to use floating damage numbers which is highly educational because all of the health and weapon damage numbers are different.

IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/834764617926733551/73E2F0B80EC734534D96EAC7EB2FD33CCDCBB086/)

In one of the recent patches fatshark fixed Deprivation deeds not dropping the books. So you can do the deed and still get a full set of books for loot purposes. I just figured out that you can still get loot dice, so it's still worth opening containers. Otherwise the only items you can get are from loot rats.

One of the best parts of deprivation deeds was that there was no point in stopping and going to the out-of-the-way containers, and no reason to backtrack for the sillier books. Once you no longer care about the loot that stuff gets really annoying.

I am rapidly approaching that point but not quite there yet, at the moment I'm missing all of Sienna's staffs except for beam and 1-2 red weapons on each other character. So I still care about loot in that sense, but I no longer feel the need to maximize my loot. If someone else in my deed party wants the full books I'll make a point of getting them, otherwise I usually just snag the easiest grim for talent purposes and any other books that don't require backtracking.

I met a couple dudes in the pub queue that like to run deeds in "offline" twitch mode, the random spawns combined with the mutators create a challenging and entertaining mission. It makes things somewhat harder overall but it does make certain mutators easier, since twitch has a random chance of showering you with loot rats it takes the sting out of deprivation. It also throws a lot of bosses at you, sometimes multiple bosses at once which is great for practice. In my experience this doesn't actually make the mission take any longer because the bosses appear to slow down horde generation. In one case I finished a legend twitch deed on Fort Brax in less than 19 minutes while killing 8 bosses along the way. I don't play deeds specifically for the loot but it's a great way to get it because it's entirely possible to get an emperor's vault with just one grim because of the dice, which stacks on top of any extra reward from the deed itself.

Yeah there's a movement of people who optimize for boss killing and play 'hypertwitch' (including editing the game ini to make the twitch rounds faster) for the loot, rather than the difficulty. Personally Twitch mode isn't something I really like, so I'd rather play something else. I don't have all the reds either, but if I was playing for the loot grind I would've quit A LONG time ago, as the grind RNG isn't interesting and the rewards are pretty disappointing given the time investment. Heck, I don't think I've even bothered to open a chest in a month.

It's definitely more about getting better at the game than the loot for me. I still want loot to fill out my collection but it's a lesser priority like collecting painting scraps. I might finish a game with zero scraps or I might find 3, I might get a peasant vault or I might get an emps, it doesn't matter as much to me anymore because I know that stuff will steadily build up over time.

Skillwise my current weakness is fighting bosses as Sienna so Twitch mode is perfect for practising that. I'm also currently working on mastering Sienna's ranged weapons. I'm okay with beam staff but almost entirely inexperienced with the others. Except for flamestorm staff I guess since I'm already well versed with the drakegun. One thing I'm consistently having trouble with is the beam charged shot because I'm not very good at tracking moving targets. When I was sniping in Tribes and other games back in the day I would lead a moving target and click as they passed under the crosshair. That works great for skeet shooting pathfinders trying to take your flag away and I was pretty good at it using hitscan weapons, but it doesn't work for the beam staff because you have to hold the beam onto the same target to charge it up, and then when you release the charge there is a short delay between the beam ending and the shot landing. Plus whenever you paint a target with the beam they tend to get pushed back and jitter around like you're spraying a high pressure firehose into their face.

The skulls for the skull throne event is back on, you can get a special portrait.

The DLC for both games is also half off, I took the opportunity to get the VM1 dlc.

This new weekly event is fun. One thing you gotta be careful of is anything with an overcharge bar. I was using bolt staff with the +attack speed at high overcharge talents. When the weekly mutator kicks in it raises your crit and attack speed, when stacked with my talent bonuses this made the bolt staff shoot insanely fast AND even faster than that at high overcharge.

After a lot of practice I think I now have a good understanding of Siennas armoury. Couple of things I learned:

- Beam staff does really good boss damage if you can manage to paint the boss without breaking contact. If you use a weapon with barrage combined with the overcharge reduction talents on pyro, a str pot and a shrapnel grenade you can just barely kill a legend rat ogre before you run over of overcharge. The impact damage of the beam itself isn't that high, but the burn damage rapidly stacks up until it does 15 damage a tick, the two of them combined can burn bosses down very rapidly.

- On the other hand fireball staff and conflag have rather mediocre boss damage. The LMB fire darts are effective but don't have much DPS but the charged attacks for either weapon do minimal damage and are hard to employ without hitting your teammates. They are also flat out useless against chaos warriors and superarmour because you have to hit the head to deal any damage without crits, and the damage is negligible unless you get a crit headshot. You are much better off simply using melee.

- Sienna's dagger actually has negative block reduction and you'll need to rely much more on dodging to stay alive.

- Pyromancer's temp health on ult talent is my new favourite of the three. It just has so much utility, you can fire off your ult at high overcharge to get a crit bonus on the burning skull, then vent with your new THP. When running with both grims the ult makes the pyro almost tanky because you can hit a button to heal yourself up to full whenever you want. This makes the vent overcharge talent obsolete and I can carry a tome for the entire map without ever needing to heal.

What do you mean by "negative" block reduction?