Vermintide 2's recent Big Balance Beta update tweaked, rebalanced or simply reworked just about every single career, enemy and weapon in the game. Given the sheer scale of the changes, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to hear that while the update has greatly improved certain weapons and playstyles, it has also made a bit of a mess with some of the other ones.
In order to correct these issues, as well as bring the Big Balance Beta update one step closer to a full release, Fatshark has now issued yet another batch of balance changes. The list is fairly large so if you're interested in all of the details you should head on over to the official website, but for now, allow me to share some of the more major tweaks:
Talents
- Heal on Cleave - Increased the healing granted for damaging multiple enemies. First target now triggers a minimal heal. Gets progressively more powerful up to 5th target hit.
- Heal on Stagger - Increased the healing granted from staggering enemies with melee attacks by 25%. Increased the healing granted for pushing enemies from 0.25 to 0.4 per enemy hit.
- Heal on Kill - Increased the healing granted from killing enemies by about 30% across the board.
- Heal on Crit/Headshot - Increased the healing granted on headshot/critical strike from 2 to 3.
Developer commentary: For this update we want to experiment with increasing the efficiency of all the temporary health talents quite substantially. This take intends to make most combinations of talents and weapons at least viable while making a good talent/weapon combination very strong.
Increasing the decay rate of temp health made some of the talents perform below expectation with certain weapons. By keeping the decay rate but increasing the amount of health you receive we hope to strike a nice middle-ground where it’s possible to build up a strong buffer of temporary health in combat but it won’t be as readily available once the dust has settled. Please try it out and discuss this change on the forums, your feedback is very important when tweaking this.
Traits
- Natural Bond - Being healed by other players now yield permanent health. This includes healing from First Aid Kits and Heal Share talents.
- Hand of Shallya - Increased healing from Hand of Shallya from 35% to 50% of missing health.
- Hand of Shallya - Healing from Hand of Shallya can now trigger heal share talents.
- Resourceful Combatant - Reduced internal cooldown from 5 to 4 seconds.
- Resourceful Sharpshooter - Reduced internal cooldown from 5 to 4 seconds.
Developer commentary: We are getting close to finalizing this first trial Big Balance Beta. In the future we will hold more dedicated Big Balance Betas as we make changes to the game, to ensure you all are involved in the process. This is just the beginning. The feedback you have provided thus far has been excellent in helping make Vermintide 2 a better game.
While I do approve of the direction Fatshark is currently taking Vermintide 2 in, I'm not exactly sure if there's really a need for so many buffs to temporary health generation. The various fixes to AI behavior and absolutely ridiculous 180° swings have removed almost all sources of unfair damage, so in a bit of a roundabout way, the value of temporary health has already been increased. That said, I certainly won't complain about getting even more opportunities to play aggressively and jump straight into the biggest pile of rats I can find!
Once Fatshark releases the next batch of changes, or just the update itself, I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, however, I would fully recommend you visit the PTR as the Big Balance Beta really has made the overall gameplay a lot more enjoyable.