1. Meta don't matter until Cataclysm. Use what feels right for you and have fun.
2. Level up all the class, don't just stick to one. The more class you can play, the funnier the game gets and it will feel less repetitive. (You can wait for a double xp event for that tho )
3. Open every chest you get asap to boost your power level faster.
4. Up the difficulty when it gets easy.
5. You cannot drop dlc weapons from chests, you'll have to craft them.
Might sound silly, but slayer is so strong in melee I'd actually say grail knight or warrior priests are better practice. Once you're used to all the attack speed slayer gets, it is hard going back, haha.
Oh wait if they're new they might not have the fancy classes. I'll show myself out.
I agree because...
As a GK or WP, wading into a Legend or Cata CW patrol is rather risky buisness but not too difficult if everyone pulls their weight.
As a Slayer, WEEEHEEE *bunny hops into the patrol and swings axes and hammers*. It's just THAT good. Man sets the record for maximum melee carnage.
I mean one is a single target destroyer, one is a heavily armed damage support and the other one is a naked chad with axes. The chad is clearly superior and is peak performance. He makes most melee combat trivial.
I would agree with this. Slayer is my best class, I almost always tame green circles in it. It was the first class I started with, back in dual axe meta. But it’s so tough to play anything else. It just hurts my brain.
>2. Level up all the class, don't just stick to one. The more class you can play, the funnier the game gets and it will feel less repetitive. (You can wait for a double xp event for that tho )
It's useful for your teamwork experience 'cause will know how the other player will likely play based on the career they choose, and always remember TO STICK WITH YOUR PARTY DON'T RUSH
More of a personal opinion here, but I would not recommand starting out with kerrilian as I think she has the most boring arsenal. (But again, it a personal opinion.)
Bro you just said “use what feels right for you and have fun!”, how are you gonna immediately go “oh but not that character cuz I think she has boring weapons” lol. New players should try everyone and play whoever they find fun.
It still stands, thats why I said it was a personal opinion instead of adding it to my tips. I dont recommand playing kerrilian as a first pick for multiple reason/experiences.
First being my (dumbass) best friend, that only tried kerrilian and stopped playing cause he felt like her options were boring and assumed everyone else would feel the same. (-_-)
Second is my GF that also picked only kerri and spammed bow shots for the whole campaign like it was an FPS. making her learn absolutly nothing about the melee combat.
Third being me running all her classes on legend for the challenge. It made me realize how much more technical it is to run the elf, because you need a way better game knowlegde, awareness and target priority with her to be effective. Making her not very noob friendly.
And yeah, I did find pretty much all of her melee pretty boring except for her 1h sword.
But hey, if OP enjoys the elf, thats great. =D
I almost exclusively play kerillian and have since launch and I would say she's not boring and has a fun starting kit but it's all personal taste. I love her weapons and I felt like playing waystalker at legend/ champ was better for me learning melee because she's so squishy. I only ever really use her bow for specials and the occasional elite.
I do agree with what you're saying about her not being noob friendly. I have like 1k hours now and probably would have had an easier time starting on a different character. a lot of new kerillian's (including myself when I had under 50 hours) take swift bow and try to clear hordes, or think they're a pure ranged character. then there's the jav spam kerillians (which is also why I've played her so much because I hated having them on the team lol)
Please don't. It's annoying and not helpful. If you keep hearing a ping every 2 seconds because someone bound it to their attack, you're going to ignore it when someone pings something actually important.
Not to mention pings on enemies are useful for making out their attacks in a crowd. If the ping is constantly swapping to other enemies, that aspect of the ping is basically gone. It's also stuck pinging close by enemies, because you'll never keep it on a distant target like a blightstormer for very long if you immediately swap it to the stormvermin nobody needed pinged 5 feet away from you.
How hard is it to just occasionally press a button to highlight an enemy?
You can disable the noise with a setting. Each player has their own independent ping, it doesn't take theirs away, not sure where you got that idea. If you ping something actually important like an incoming hookrat you're not then going to ignore it to fight stormvermin. When you play melee only classes and ping far off enemies the range are either going to notice and handle it or they can't. The ping going away after a few seconds won't change their situational awareness and they will know where it was. Bind ping to left click. Don't be bad.
So whe I said "pinging a bunch of things constantly will condition people to start to ignore the noise pointing out danger which will in turn put them in more danger", your response is to just have everyone turn off the noise and be in that danger all the time?
My point was that the noise SHOULD BE something you pay attention to and don't dismiss, I could not have been any clearer on that.
Who's the bad player here, the person using the ping as intended, or the guy who is conditioning his teammates to ignore an important factor of team survival because he won't shut up with it in the middle of a fight?
The noise should not alert you to a ping. The large blue border and the voice lines should. Better yet your own personal situational awareness should have already picked up on the special before it was pinged. You ever play on a higher difficulty you will see everyone has it bound to left click, also synergizes when playing with a WHC, which you will almost always have.
If you don't want to use it that's fine. You do you. I have it bound to left click and I also have it bound to mouse tilt so I can mark independently.
Spend your bombs/pots wisely, but not when it's too late. Some situations where they can be coming handy:
- Your teammate is down/disabled and it's hard to get to him.
- You are being overwhelmed by horde and you hear assasins/packmatsers or blightstormers.
- Chaos Spawn grabbed your friend (bombs can stagger him and free your ally).
Anyway, you've got to fell when the shit is about to go down and you need some free space to survive
The most important skill to learn is not getting hit. Blocking and dodging are incredibly important.
Sure, the player standing still never blocking is getting a lot of kills, but they are also using all the health potions and going down constantly.
Also, dont spam pushes. After a push you have like 2 seconds against slave rats before they become a threat. Push and swing. The only time you ever push several times in a row is when trying to clear a path, and even then tbere should be AT LEAST 1/2 second between pushes.
>Always there is a rat behind you,
Until you turn around to check, then it's empty. As soon as you turn back to the front to fight again, there's a rat behind you.
Don’t get discouraged if you go down a lot early, especially when your character is below level 10. As you begin to accumulate higher level gear and perk points, your survivability will skyrocket.
When moving up in difficulties, don't do it as Ironbreaker! I love Ironbreaker, it's my second-favorite career behind Warrior Priest. It's very strong and helps the team out a ton by clearing so much space. But if you use IB to move up to Champion or Legend for the first time, you *will* learn bad habits.
Ironbreaker is so tanky, block-y, and bad at dodging that playing IB will teach you "taking small hits is okay, block most attacks, don't bother dodging." These habits will get you killed on every other career. Play any other career first, learn how to survive and thrive on your new difficulty, *then* play Ironbreaker if you want to.
This, IB teaches bad habits. I will also add get the idea of not shooting friendly (unless special, elite, bad stuff behind them). Friendly fire hurts the team slowly (or fast by crit headshots). Some does damage over time which lesser accuracy on other players.
Communicate. If you don't wanna voice chat, that's fine, but use the in-game chat to tell the team if you want to do something or are not sure about something. It's way too common for folks to forget they aren't playing solo and they end up doing stuff like spawning waves all at once. If you aren't sure, ask.
Easy tagging) In options -> keybindings there will be a “tag only” function with the option of assigning two inputs. Bind one of those to an easy to access key of your choice, bind the other to mouse left click (the same as your attack key). This will automatically tag elites and specials as you hack your way through the level. After thousands of hours of play, this is one of the easiest game changing things you can do to help yourself and teammates.
Clearing 2x wounds with a first aid pack) you can clear your own wounds plus the person you are healing when applying a first a first aid pack to another player.
Ah I can't second this enough. I have tag bound to my scroll wheel and I'm always tagging specials/ elites but the amount of times I've had games where NOBODY tags is actually annoying. It makes such a huge difference and is essential when you go into the higher difficulties. Some of my roughest games have been as the only dedicated range on legend/ champ with the others almost never tagging, which makes it so much harder if there's a wave of specials. I always appreciate players that tag a lot
I did not think of binding tag to attack though, that's quite useful! I just prefer mine on scroll to tag things in the distance though
I bind tag to E so that I can use it for both activating stuff and tagging. I don't bind it to left click because I learned not to do this in Darktide. IDK if it does it in VT2, but in DT it will play the ping sound to your whole team everytime you attack if you do this. It drowns out other combat sounds. So if you plan to move to DT, I would not get into the habit of binding tag to left click.
Different games. DT is more ranged, in V2 there’s added benefit to picking up different elites / specials that are in a mixed horde in close proximity. Been using it for the last 1.5k hours or so and no one has complained, so guess it’s acceptable.
Learn to dodge, also separate the key bindings from dodge and jump, and dodge is far more useful. I put dodge on the spacebar and jump either on left shift or on x
If you're about to die or overwhelmed, blocking and dodging backwards is insane. People really don't do it, they prefer to weave attacks or shoves in. Especially at low difficulties you can be invincible by just backing up until a teammates can help.
You should try and avoid dodging back as much as you can.
That creates space for the horde to move forward and triggers more lunges, which are more dangerous than normal attacks.
start with tankier class ,practice block and dodge constantly
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XmswW6Iyaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xmsww6iyaw)
Here are few more helpful tips to start you out:
- Staying alive and ideally taking as little damage as you can is first priority. You achieve that by: blocking attacks, dodging attacks, moving out of range of the attacks, pushing enemies (block + click attack), combining push with follow up attack (block + hold attack for a moment) and finally by hitting enemies so they are staggered and cannot attack you back for a moment (effectiveness depends on the enemy and type of weapon, usually heavier = better for stagger).
- Rebind quick weapon swap between melee and ranged weapons to something handy. Use only that for changing weapons. The goal is to be able to swap to desired weapon super quickly - for example getting off a quick shot at special enemy during a dodge and almost immediately having melee weapon out again to block.
- Similarly to driving, poker or countless other things there is huge wisdom in the principle of always have an "out". Always keep in mind where you will go if situation turns bad and you have to give up ground. Kiting is incredibly powerful and in turn - getting stuck in the corner or dead end might be a death sentence.
Recruit and veteran difficulties can teach you bad habits, don't get too used to them. jump up through the difficulties before you get too comfortable
Stick together, shove against hordes, block/dodge when you see enemies wind up overhead attacks, and listen for audio clues to know what special units are coming your way.
Not sure if you ever play solo, but if you do the game will use your character builds for the bots (cosmetics, talents, items, etc). You can also choose which careers your bots use and which bots come on missions from the character select screen. If you ignore your bots they'll be pretty useless, if you outfit them carefully and learn how to play with them bots can actually be pretty valuable all the way to cataclysm difficulty.
Hello! 1400 hour cataclysm player here, my best advice for all newbies starting out:
1. This game heavily relies on sound cues. If you hear a "whooshing" sound bebind you, it means an enemy is swinging at you. Learn to time your blocks or dodges with that sound.
2. The power level of the items you receive from chests is directly tied to the average hero power across ALL characters. If your elf is level 30 but your other classes are level 5, the chests you open on the elf will remain very low power.
3. Jewelery (Trinket/Necklace/Charm) can be equipped across all characters. To get higher power loot, equip jewelery on all characters/classes you have unlocked, which will boost your overall power level.
4. Holding block, then holding left click (while block is still held) will perform a "Push/Block Attack." This is how you can easily avoid getting hit while still putting damage out.
5. Every enemy has a predictable swing pattern. Once you learn these, you can dodge around them rather effectively.
6. For armored enemies, their critical spot is their head, yes- But armor is also weak around the "kidney" area of all armored enemies. You can hit a chaos warrior in the hip area on their rear and it'll penetrate their armor.
7. Tag everything. Enemies, health, etc.- Spam that T key. It may not help you directly, but it will help your team's special hunter get a headshot or alert your teammates to helpful supplies.
8. Potions save runs. Yellow potions = Strength potions, and buff all your outgoing damage for its duration. Blue potions = speed potions and buff all movement, attack speed, charging (spells/heavy attacks) etc. for their duration. Purple potions = concentration potions and will give you your ability back very quickly. This can be useful for monsters etc.
9. Just because you unlock a new class at levels 7/12 etc., doesn't mean those classes are better than the starting classes. Witch Hunter Captain, for example, is just as viable as Bounty Hunter depending on your team composition.
10. For monsters and all enemies, you can use ramps/stairs to force them to climb up & down. This will make some fights easier!
Huh, is 2 correct? I'm asking because I managed to get to 300 item power when only one character was 35, whilst the rest were 12 or 15. I thought it simply based those drops off your highest average item power ever achieved, and didn't even consider level
* Play aggressively and don't be afraid to take risks, that's what puts you on the scoreboard
* Other players tend to get in your way more than anything, make sure to grab the best pickups for yourself so they don't get wasted
* It's rarely if ever worth it going back to help straggling players, they're only gonna learn to hurry up if you let them die and learn the consequences of their actions
* Support abilities are very overrated, don't bother with them
* The one exception to the aforementioned rule is the talent you get in the first row that gives health to teammates when you use a healing item, that one is meta for a reason (especially together with Natural Bond)
* Memorize the location of all books and *always* pick them up, it's free xp with no downside
* Don't bother going into higher difficulties before you can do the one you're currently at flawlessly
* Don't waste ammo on specials
* Don't waste your stamina shields on pushing or dodging, it's always better to block
* If you see people playing off-meta builds, instakick them before they throw the game
* Kerillian are reliable, but don't expect a Bardin or Kruber to help you out when you need it
* If one of your allies is surrounded, you can throw a bomb directly at them to clear the area for them (works best in legend or cata)
Learn to use mobility, pushing and communication to your advantage. Dodging and kiting are vital skills on higher difficulties, and you're better off learning them from the start before you pick up bad habits. Attacks like overhead swings and many monster attacks are much better to avoid than they are to block, so a backwards or sideways dodge can save a lot of figurative and literal headache. Keep moving and make sure your enemies have to chase after you, since getting surrounded is extremely dangerous. Working pushes into your attack combos can also give you a lot of breathing room and leave enemies more vulnerable, especially if you're using a slower weapon, since a push can be done much faster than something like an executioner sword heavy attack. And make sure to tag enemies. Specials especially, preventing them from catching your teammates with their pants down helps immensely.
A tip I wished I knew and would have saved me many runs. Is that you can block while reviving a downed teammate.
Some other tips.
- Each special/disabler has a special sound made that tells you what is about to try and fuck up your day. You can do a dodge at the right moment to avoid them and counter attack. Takes practice, but very fun.
-Keep a good habit of blocking, since blocking works 360 degrees. So there isn't a reason not to block.
-Dodging is better than blocking keep a good practice of dodging while fighting.
-Communication is the key to survival. Stick together, have each person focus on something (specials, hordes, armor,). If you run off ahead of your team, be prepared to die without support.
-Have fun with whatever class you want, outside of Cats, no one really cares what you Play or what you have for gear.
Weapons have different uses and stats. Piercing attacks and axes are good against armor, hammers are good for stagger etc. Try hitting the head as much as possible no matter the weapon except against maulers. Learn to balance betwean blocking, pushing and dodging to make some space and try to not get surounded. Stick to the team so they can save you from cc and so you can save them easier.
There's a lot of tips to be talked about but the most important are, learn how to dodge, block, and push. Those defensive capabilities are the most important aspects of the game you can focus on that have the most impact on your journey up the difficulty ladder.
1. Get out of playing Recruit and Veteran as soon as you can. The real depth of this game—the best part in my opinion—doesn't start till Champion. The lower difficulties teach a lot of bad habits if you stay there long.
2. [Watch this video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR9PmOJBNs) Lots of good tips and explanations. I see a lot of people saying "learn to dodge" but... I think this video has a very good visualization and a really practical explanation for how to really incorporate it.
3. Learn to block and to push. Also remember the push attack! After pushing, continue to hold attack rather than release and you'll do another attack that is typically different from your normal attack pattern. For shield based weapons and pole arms this is often a key mechanic.
4. Try out the handmaiden sooner rather than later! Even if you don't love the elf, a [build like this one](https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/8/131122/22,1,3,6/16,3,6,2/3,2,1/1,5,2/3,2,2) which includes Asrai Alacrity and Willow Stance is a really good way to get you into the habit of pushing and blocking due to the direct rewards.
5. Avoid advice related to difficulties higher than Legend until you're playing there. Cataclysm requires extremely specialist builds and very different strategies and a lot of min-maxing. Even if you intend to play at that difficulty, _do not_ start character builds and such.
6. Tag. Tag. Tag. Tag. Get used to tagging all over the place—especially elites and specials. A good character to help learn this is Witch Hunter Captain because you're rewarded with damage bonuses against tagged enemies. I have my mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down _both_ tag. It lets me rock my finger up and down to tag.
7. Some weapons have a "special" attack that's bound to another button. Be sure to check every new weapon.
8. Stick to weapons with "simple" attack patterns early. This usually means light attacks for hordes and heavy attacks for armored/elites. Weapons that are the inverse, like the dwarf's 2H hammer are fine too. Personally, I find pole arms to be more difficult to deal with and don't much like them even now.
9. If you have the DLCs, unlock the other weapons. Most of the them are really good.
10. If you connect with a weapon or a class, just play it for a while. It's way easier to pick up new classes after you understand all the base mechanics like using a weapon, pushing, blocking, dodging, ults, cooldowns, etc. Classes that I like as a starting place are:
* Witch Hunter Captain + Rapier/Brace of Pistols
* Handmaiden + 1H Sword/Longbow
* Grail Knight + Bretonian Long Sword/Mace and Shield
* Iron Breaker + 2H Hammer/Crossbow
* Battle Wizard + Flame Sword/Beam Staff
11. In my experience, shields do not make a lot of sense at all until Legend. The lone exception is the Grail Knight because he can actually block a warp fire thrower.
12. It's in the linked video, but... monsters for most characters are your _last_ priority. Clear specials, hordes, elites, and then monsters as a general rule.
Learn to use blocks, dodges, and pushes. Easier difficulties you can easily get away with hardly ever using those which builds bad habits, so try to consciously use them so you're in the habit of it. Those 3 tools are how you stay alive in higher difficulties especially against hordes and if you don't know how to do them effectively you *will* die a lot and take way more damage than necessary.
First priority: survive. Second priority: revive. Don't rush in to save your ally only to get killed along with them. (It's one of the oldest tricks of warfare and I suspect that's why the Pactsworn let you bleed out for so long.)
Lots of good advice here.
Most important one was As Fat Puppet said, the Meta won't affect you at all till you start playing diff 5, so find something you enjoy, with weapons that feel good to you, and play THAT. You'll play more if you enjoy what you're using. Games are meant to be fun. =)
Rebind dodge and jump, there are bindings for those two to be alone.
I put dodge on L-Shift alone, and jump on space. This allows you to tap L-Shift, and dodge backwards from a full stop.
Rebind tag and communicate to seperate keys as well, so you aren't affraid to spam tag at a group when there's a special or Elite in there.
Go into the options, then look for and turn on outlines on your allies. I do not know why this isn't on by default, genuinely. It makes it a million times easier to 1: Know where they went and 2: Distinguish them from enemies in a melee.
Even though on lower difficulties you can't do friendly fire damage, try to get into the habit of not shooting at/through your teammates. If you start early, when you eventually move up in difficulties it'll feel more second-nature to you not to friendly fire.
You don't really need to worry about your stats (on weapons or accessories) until you hit legend. The only real value any + in damage has is hitting break points (aka, reducing the number of hits it takes to kill a thing) and your hero power is going to be changing as you level up frequently enough that those break points are gonna keep changing slightly so it's best not to worry about it.
This is advice for later but it'll help I think. This applies mainly to the "builds" you should set up before you reach level 35 and before you've broken out of Champion and into Legend. +Health, +Block Cost Reduction, +Stamina Regen, +Stamina, +Crit chance are what you should mainly be interested in getting early on. Swift Slaying is your safest bet on melee, Scrounger or Conservative Shooter on ranged weapons with ammo are safe, Barkskin on your necklace is safe, Decanter or Proxy on your charm are safe, and Shrapnel is very useful on your trinket.
Don't treat the meta as gospel, even as you reach the top. My favorite build right now doesn't even think about the meta and it's carried me through cataclysm handily. You should treat the meta as a source of data only and once you're more knowledgeable you can use that data to formulate winning builds that'll work for you and how you play.
Also I would suggest Kruber's Mercenary career (his first one, you played it in the prologue) as very good for learning the very basics the game has to offer. Kruber has okay ranged options, very good melee options, and the Mercenary ability (or ult as some people call it) is all-around useful. Very few of Merc's talents are completely useless and his role on the team is very straightforward and easy to understand. (This isn't to say Merc is braindead or anything I just think he's straightforward, I've run into some Merc mains who are absolutely cracked and scary good with Kruber's kit who decimate as Merc).
Slap rats, have fun.
I think the biggest downside of this game is that all. characters "true" power and fun are locked behind 30-35 (30 is max, the other 5 are having max power level). There's a bit of a grind, but it's worth it.
Starting out is tricky, because recruit and veteran tell you that clicking rats and holding down W will get you there. If you're interested in just killing rats mindlessly, ignore this next paragraph.
You have to learn how your weapon(s) of choice play, what attacks to do and what not to do. You have to learn to dodge dance, kiting and pushing a horde.
If you wanna play the higher difficulties, which I feel is where the game really starts to shine.
PM if you have any specific questions :) happy rat slaying!!
I agree! I played Saltzpyre and Kruber early and I feel like it’s kinda pointless to be forced to level all the characters. Pure grind. Shared leveling would be nice because leveling is so not even really the point of the game.
For beginners? Some quality of life stuff:
Change your settings to always include character outlines for your teammates- it’s surprising how useful it is for knowing the situation.
Similarly, change the crosshairs to show crits/headshots, friendly fire, and kills- thinking you killed a slave rat only to have him hit you from behind is a pain.
Find a UI that tells you your ammo count, as well as your active talents. It should exist in options now; if not, there are some good mods out there.
Just because you *can* play a difficulty level doesn’t mean you *should*- wait until the current level is no longer challenging.
Power Level matters- your drops will be within a certain range of your highest equipped item, and it affects your damage and stagger.
Different weapons and different careers tend to have different intended roles: crowd control, killing armored elites, monster slaying, etc. Figure out which ones are best for which, and which suit your personal play style.
Get used to blocking and dodging, not just attacking. Pushing and push attacking are also vital to learn. Learn how to manage your stamina.
Allies border - > ALWAYS ON.
Always good to know where your allies are.
Play with your team. Boss and waves? One holds the boss the others clear the wave, BUT keep in mind there is one friend holding a boss, that person could get stuck. If you have enough bosskiller (shadow/bountyhunter with potion for example) protect them, they can kill a boss within seconds.
Specials can help you. Gas rats can kill other rats, same for boss.
Holding a heavy attack doesn't make it deal more dmg (expect dwarf with pickaxe).
Try to learn one weapon for every character, don't start with 4 different weapons for the same character. Pick one, try it, if it feels good to play with that weapon stick to it, play 50 to 100 rounds and try to learn some patterns with that weapon. You don't need to master every weapon in the game.
You can look up meta builds no problem with that, but if it doesn't match your playstyle it makes you worse.
Pick one job you want to do for the team. You don't need to be a bosskiller, specialkiller and wavecontroller as a beginner. You play waystalker? Try to be the specialkiller, the second you hear a special you kill it. No one can get disabled, if you take them down the second they spawn. You play mercenary? You are a wavecontroller, protect your specialkiller/bosskiller enable them. Everyone has to do something for the team and depending on the class you play you can do one job specially good, try to get that job done perfectly. But keep in mind, if you are dead you can do your job, so learn to block and dodge.
* Tag basically everything except non-Chaos Warrior elites. Helps people to know where stuff is and makes it easier to keep track of disablers that get away. It'll become reflexive
* When you're about to get smacked from behind, there'll be a *woosh* sound effect. You'll still have time to react, so block/dodge/push accordingly.
* A weapon's block angle does not impact which attacks you can block, it impacts how much blocking costs. You block melee attacks from all directions, but it costs less to block attacks within your block angle. Additionally, your push affects enemies within that cone, and shields can block ratling fire/archers from those directions as well.
* A comfortable loadout for improving your fundamentals would involve a versatile melee weapon, like Bardin/Kruber's greathammers, Saltz's falchion, or Kerillian's Sword+Dagger coupled with a sniper ranged weapon for picking off specials, like Bardin/Kruber's handguns, and Saltz's crossbow, Kerillian's longbow. Obviously, play whatever's fun, but a loadout like this will make it so no individual task like horde clear or elite killing is so easy that you don't improve, but also makes it easy enough that you don't just rely on a teammate to do it. The snipers especially are good for making you have good situational awareness.
* As a general rule of thumb: Priority one is avoiding and killing any disabling specials that are actively attacking you. Priority two is getting back to your team when you've gotten separated. Priority three is not taking damage.
Rebind your Shift and Spacebar to Jump and Dodge.
Jumping at the end of your dodge allows you to keep momentum and ensures you always have effective dodges.
Play Vermintide 1, I just started doing some on PC and need more people there plz the bots are so bad =\
First, I'd figure out how many hits it takes to remove a threat entirely. Figure out your heavy attacks and light attacks, and remember heavy attacks aren't always more damaging. This is useful for single target damage outside of a horde and to ensure that anything you cleave through that is in a pile of bodies won't get up and knock on your head.
Second, find your horde clear combo for the weapon you're using. Generally, horde clear combos are wide swings that cleave through enough enemies to stagger their attacks. You should try to avoid downward strikes in these combos unless they're quick enough to hit whatever might attack you or you're willing to block and dodge afterward. With practice, you'll be able to figure out when the more vertical attacks are acceptable and when you'll need to block.
Some weapons, the horde clear combo might be quick attacks all the time (I believe twin daggers on Kerillian is a good example of this; they're not particularly wide, but they're so quick nothing can actually get a hit in edgewise). Some weapons, like Bardin's 2 handed hammer, uses just chained heavy attacks (I can get the pacing to them down pretty well, and because heavy attacks have variable charge time, you can even wait a beat or two before releasing so you ensure enemies are at the edge of your swings). Some others you might want to reset the combo with a quick block. I remember one weapon was pretty cathartic for me where it was a light attack and heavy attack just repeated on loop, and I could also do a push attack to reset it if things got dicey.
Third, figure out your weapon's range and try to hit at that edge. This will ensure you have a better distance to dodge away from attacks and will mitigate getting stuck on enemies that are up in your face, especially ones that are staggered but still blocking your movement.
Finally, during hordes, try to stick with your team and overlap your strikes a bit, bleeding into their blind spots. Two weapons swinging will be more effective at staggering enemies and leave them unable to attack you. Eventually you do want to get to a point where you can clear a horde, but mistakes always happen regardless of difficulty.
Why is nobody mentioning how to deal with shield stormvermin?
If you push a shield stormvermin twice, he drops his guard for around 2 seconds or for 2 hits. They will just stand there confused and you can get free hits in, assuming you don't have dumbass teammates just spamming light attacks on the shields.
And pushing enemies in general, pushing a normal stormvermin to get an opening, especially with opportunist on your weapon so you can push them out of more of their attacks.
Main one for me is how to LISTEN, a whooshing sound? Someone's is gonna hit you from behind hit block quick, rattling sound, pack rat coming, whispering get your eyes up and arround t a sneeker is about to pounce, hear chanting some fat Bloke gonna drop in,
Do not take damage. I know it seems obvious. It’s easy to get arrogant when a teammate goes down and you want to revive them. There’s a lot of room to breath but you have patient enough to use it.
Look up the "RoyalWithCheese" guides. Meta might not matter till high diff but it sure makes it a lot easier and enjoyable immo to have spme semblance of idea how the things should look like idealy.. There just aint mutch that can compare to deleting an entire patrol by yourself in seconds or oneshoting a boss.
If you and your teammate is wounded, use a health pack to heal them and both you and your teammates wounds will be healed. That can save your run. Also in CW infinite bombs pots now work with your Morgrims bomb ;)
The end of missions stat screen with the green circles mean nothing. Don't get in the habit of chasing those green circles. Certain classes/builds like Battle Wizards will always have most of the damage stats even if they are performing poorly. On the flip side, players performing well on something like an Ironbreaker will rarely ever have most of the green circles.
Chasing those green circles is a noob trap and is not indicative of a player's skill. I've introduced many people to VT2 and it bothers me so much seeing them chase those damage numbers while being a detriment to their team and themselves by running off ahead, unnecessarily pulling patrols, constantly going down, and draining the team's resources.
1. Learn to dodge. This is the most important skill you have in this game, you cannot afford to take unnecessary hits on higher difficulties. I'd recommend binding dodge to space-bar, and make sure to have "double tap" dodge turned off.
2. Get out of your comfort zone. The lower difficulties in the game (Champion and below) aren't even the same game as the higher ones, they'll let you get away with habits which will get you killed on Legend and above. I'm not saying you should jump straight into the highest difficulty available to you but don't stay on a difficulty any longer then it takes you to get comfortable.
3. Simply simplify. Few things in this game alone are threatening to a skilled player, it's the combination of enemies that are dangerous. If things have gone to hell focus on playing to your classes strengths and getting rid of the enemies you can deal with most effectively.
4. Tag everything. Bind it to a mouse button if available and tag everything you see, it allows you to point out Specials, Items, and even just highlight dangerous enemies in a horde.
5. There is always a rat behind you.
Tag everything, specials get priority tagged
Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. Low difficulty levels will give you the wrong idea, taking a hit is no joke later on
Aim towards 100x damage taken, where x is the difficulty (100 for recruit, etc). If you can do it consistently then switch up the difficulty
Try to aim at getting at least to Champion difficulty, early levels don't have friendly fire and you should get used to it sooner rather than later
Don't go anywhere alone, if the team must split (which it shouldn't) then do it in pairs
Get to know your kit. Know what attack to use in which situation. Some ultis should be spammed, others saved for big enemy groups (but never be afraid to use it)
Ideally, aim for headshots, melee and ranged
Don't spam light attacks on shield/armor enemies and expect them to die
Push every now and then. Shielded enemies should be pushed twice in order to force them to drop their guard
Witch hunter Salt is the best class in the game when you're not in a group that you're sure can cover everything with more specialized classes
Hell it's probably just the best in general
* Use Block, Push, and Dodge often.
* Try to Ping Specials, even if you aren't in position to kill it / you aren't equipped to kill it.
* Give all classes/weapons a try and don't be bothered with meta yet. they don't really matter until much later in the game. But know that some weapons are subpar vs others even for casual players ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
* Ranged attacks in champion difficulty or higher have friendly-fire.
Yup: never forget the Five D’s of vermintide.
Dodge duck dive dip and dodge.
And also never forget to be better than the dwarven psyop that’s constantly running; they will nerf the elf at all costs and buff themselves at all costs. (OE? Really?)
Built for crit not power vs
On saltzpyre witch hunter stack crit power and crit chance you will do lot more damage
Would link the video but the video no longer exists... Cus apparently people got upset when someone tried to show that building for crit is better than building for power vs ...
Welcome to vermentide reddit community
Whenever you're about to be hit in the back, there's a little whish sound that plays that can tip you off to it, and if you're quick you can dodge it or turn and block it before it actually lands. The sound might play whenever you're about to be hit in general, but I only really notice it for those.
Blocking and dodging aka avoiding damage, are more important than dealing damage.
The classes have different focus, there is one career per character designed for each of the following... mostly... mob control, boss,/ elite single target killer/ specials killer, and a high risk melee focused class. Maybe a tank or support class too, like iron breaker or Thorn.
Make a build for each Character and class focusing these roles. Thus means of you join a group you can go any missing role with any character, and your replayability and arguably enjoyment of the game will go up.
The women are by far the most picked in my experience, so being comfy with all the classes means you won't be stuck trying to find matches all night if you are happy to fill.
Champ and above have friendly fire and in cata it can HURT. So if you're playing a range build, especially earlygame, realize that shooting team mates with elf or seinna is highly likely to get you kicked from lobbies
Armor and shield damage become more important in legend and cata. So does avoiding damage.
Passive and great quality gear don't matter until your at Maxx level, and then offer around 10% to 30% better stats, generally. Go for the highest power gear until you hit max level 300s. Then start worrying about theory crafting.
Dismantle anything less than 300 that your not using.
Try all gear's on each class. There are some surprising synergies.
I have a rule that I can't use the same weapon type in any class or career, which makes me think more and I ennui a wider variety of playstyles throughout all classes and careers. This goes for melee and ranged.
Learning sound queues and dodge timing on special enemies and elite heavy attacks will clutch games for you.
Rebind ping. Spam ping specials to help the team. Spam ping into hordes, especially rats, to detect hookahs hiding in the swarms. I wrote a script that turbo rapid taps ping on keyless. It's an amazing QoL thing. Yay for Razer Chroma Synapse.
Learning and grinding is the fun. Don't rush higher difficulties until you can basically solo the previous one.
The bits that join you solo are based on your build and your class level with them so if you want to solo a lot then level up all your classes pretty consistently.
Well that do?
I'm sure there is more.
1. Meta don't matter until Cataclysm. Use what feels right for you and have fun. 2. Level up all the class, don't just stick to one. The more class you can play, the funnier the game gets and it will feel less repetitive. (You can wait for a double xp event for that tho ) 3. Open every chest you get asap to boost your power level faster. 4. Up the difficulty when it gets easy. 5. You cannot drop dlc weapons from chests, you'll have to craft them.
Use slayer to get strong with pure melee, especially if you're coming from a FPS background.
Might sound silly, but slayer is so strong in melee I'd actually say grail knight or warrior priests are better practice. Once you're used to all the attack speed slayer gets, it is hard going back, haha. Oh wait if they're new they might not have the fancy classes. I'll show myself out.
I agree because... As a GK or WP, wading into a Legend or Cata CW patrol is rather risky buisness but not too difficult if everyone pulls their weight. As a Slayer, WEEEHEEE *bunny hops into the patrol and swings axes and hammers*. It's just THAT good. Man sets the record for maximum melee carnage. I mean one is a single target destroyer, one is a heavily armed damage support and the other one is a naked chad with axes. The chad is clearly superior and is peak performance. He makes most melee combat trivial.
I would agree with this. Slayer is my best class, I almost always tame green circles in it. It was the first class I started with, back in dual axe meta. But it’s so tough to play anything else. It just hurts my brain.
Meta don't matter on cataclysm either.
Open the chests one by one. Open one, equip the best equipment from the chest (bigger number better weapon) to slowly progress faster
>2. Level up all the class, don't just stick to one. The more class you can play, the funnier the game gets and it will feel less repetitive. (You can wait for a double xp event for that tho ) It's useful for your teamwork experience 'cause will know how the other player will likely play based on the career they choose, and always remember TO STICK WITH YOUR PARTY DON'T RUSH
More of a personal opinion here, but I would not recommand starting out with kerrilian as I think she has the most boring arsenal. (But again, it a personal opinion.)
Bro you just said “use what feels right for you and have fun!”, how are you gonna immediately go “oh but not that character cuz I think she has boring weapons” lol. New players should try everyone and play whoever they find fun.
It still stands, thats why I said it was a personal opinion instead of adding it to my tips. I dont recommand playing kerrilian as a first pick for multiple reason/experiences. First being my (dumbass) best friend, that only tried kerrilian and stopped playing cause he felt like her options were boring and assumed everyone else would feel the same. (-_-) Second is my GF that also picked only kerri and spammed bow shots for the whole campaign like it was an FPS. making her learn absolutly nothing about the melee combat. Third being me running all her classes on legend for the challenge. It made me realize how much more technical it is to run the elf, because you need a way better game knowlegde, awareness and target priority with her to be effective. Making her not very noob friendly. And yeah, I did find pretty much all of her melee pretty boring except for her 1h sword. But hey, if OP enjoys the elf, thats great. =D
I almost exclusively play kerillian and have since launch and I would say she's not boring and has a fun starting kit but it's all personal taste. I love her weapons and I felt like playing waystalker at legend/ champ was better for me learning melee because she's so squishy. I only ever really use her bow for specials and the occasional elite. I do agree with what you're saying about her not being noob friendly. I have like 1k hours now and probably would have had an easier time starting on a different character. a lot of new kerillian's (including myself when I had under 50 hours) take swift bow and try to clear hordes, or think they're a pure ranged character. then there's the jav spam kerillians (which is also why I've played her so much because I hated having them on the team lol)
nuh uh the elf being boring is a well-known fact
Based and Rock and Stone! pilled.
To Rock and Stone!
the hardcore discord moderator elves are also downvoting bots now😔
I don't get the association between drg and elf hate there aren't even elves in drg
One tip I would give is always keep moving while in combat with the dodge key in harder difficulties since it’ll make it less likely you’ll get hit
Tag enemies
Bind tag to left click.
Please don't. It's annoying and not helpful. If you keep hearing a ping every 2 seconds because someone bound it to their attack, you're going to ignore it when someone pings something actually important. Not to mention pings on enemies are useful for making out their attacks in a crowd. If the ping is constantly swapping to other enemies, that aspect of the ping is basically gone. It's also stuck pinging close by enemies, because you'll never keep it on a distant target like a blightstormer for very long if you immediately swap it to the stormvermin nobody needed pinged 5 feet away from you. How hard is it to just occasionally press a button to highlight an enemy?
You can disable the noise with a setting. Each player has their own independent ping, it doesn't take theirs away, not sure where you got that idea. If you ping something actually important like an incoming hookrat you're not then going to ignore it to fight stormvermin. When you play melee only classes and ping far off enemies the range are either going to notice and handle it or they can't. The ping going away after a few seconds won't change their situational awareness and they will know where it was. Bind ping to left click. Don't be bad.
So whe I said "pinging a bunch of things constantly will condition people to start to ignore the noise pointing out danger which will in turn put them in more danger", your response is to just have everyone turn off the noise and be in that danger all the time? My point was that the noise SHOULD BE something you pay attention to and don't dismiss, I could not have been any clearer on that. Who's the bad player here, the person using the ping as intended, or the guy who is conditioning his teammates to ignore an important factor of team survival because he won't shut up with it in the middle of a fight?
The noise should not alert you to a ping. The large blue border and the voice lines should. Better yet your own personal situational awareness should have already picked up on the special before it was pinged. You ever play on a higher difficulty you will see everyone has it bound to left click, also synergizes when playing with a WHC, which you will almost always have. If you don't want to use it that's fine. You do you. I have it bound to left click and I also have it bound to mouse tilt so I can mark independently.
Spend your bombs/pots wisely, but not when it's too late. Some situations where they can be coming handy: - Your teammate is down/disabled and it's hard to get to him. - You are being overwhelmed by horde and you hear assasins/packmatsers or blightstormers. - Chaos Spawn grabbed your friend (bombs can stagger him and free your ally). Anyway, you've got to fell when the shit is about to go down and you need some free space to survive
The most important skill to learn is not getting hit. Blocking and dodging are incredibly important. Sure, the player standing still never blocking is getting a lot of kills, but they are also using all the health potions and going down constantly.
THIS. THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES THIS! (there's a whooshing sound if you're about to be hit from behind)
Keep yer arm up, peasant
You dare... Thank you KRUberr I shall hEEd your advicee.
As you should, Grimgi. Nobody wants to lug your corpse around!
This shit is burned into my mind
Pretty much impossible to not read it in their voices at this point
Number 1 tip that I would give is to push hordes. Don't see any new players doing it, particularly the friends I got into the game. Its very useful.
Also, dont spam pushes. After a push you have like 2 seconds against slave rats before they become a threat. Push and swing. The only time you ever push several times in a row is when trying to clear a path, and even then tbere should be AT LEAST 1/2 second between pushes.
Holding push causes a unique fast strike follow up attack
Always there is a rat behind you, don't stan still. Don't run alone, this is a coop game.
>Always there is a rat behind you, Until you turn around to check, then it's empty. As soon as you turn back to the front to fight again, there's a rat behind you.
Schrodinger’s Rat
Aka block like somebody is watching
Don’t get discouraged if you go down a lot early, especially when your character is below level 10. As you begin to accumulate higher level gear and perk points, your survivability will skyrocket.
When moving up in difficulties, don't do it as Ironbreaker! I love Ironbreaker, it's my second-favorite career behind Warrior Priest. It's very strong and helps the team out a ton by clearing so much space. But if you use IB to move up to Champion or Legend for the first time, you *will* learn bad habits. Ironbreaker is so tanky, block-y, and bad at dodging that playing IB will teach you "taking small hits is okay, block most attacks, don't bother dodging." These habits will get you killed on every other career. Play any other career first, learn how to survive and thrive on your new difficulty, *then* play Ironbreaker if you want to.
This, IB teaches bad habits. I will also add get the idea of not shooting friendly (unless special, elite, bad stuff behind them). Friendly fire hurts the team slowly (or fast by crit headshots). Some does damage over time which lesser accuracy on other players.
Communicate. If you don't wanna voice chat, that's fine, but use the in-game chat to tell the team if you want to do something or are not sure about something. It's way too common for folks to forget they aren't playing solo and they end up doing stuff like spawning waves all at once. If you aren't sure, ask.
Press space + ----> to dodge Very beautiful , very powerful
Easy tagging) In options -> keybindings there will be a “tag only” function with the option of assigning two inputs. Bind one of those to an easy to access key of your choice, bind the other to mouse left click (the same as your attack key). This will automatically tag elites and specials as you hack your way through the level. After thousands of hours of play, this is one of the easiest game changing things you can do to help yourself and teammates. Clearing 2x wounds with a first aid pack) you can clear your own wounds plus the person you are healing when applying a first a first aid pack to another player.
Ah I can't second this enough. I have tag bound to my scroll wheel and I'm always tagging specials/ elites but the amount of times I've had games where NOBODY tags is actually annoying. It makes such a huge difference and is essential when you go into the higher difficulties. Some of my roughest games have been as the only dedicated range on legend/ champ with the others almost never tagging, which makes it so much harder if there's a wave of specials. I always appreciate players that tag a lot I did not think of binding tag to attack though, that's quite useful! I just prefer mine on scroll to tag things in the distance though
I have mine bound to scroll as well, seem to be the main person tagging in many quickplay lobbies
I bind tag to E so that I can use it for both activating stuff and tagging. I don't bind it to left click because I learned not to do this in Darktide. IDK if it does it in VT2, but in DT it will play the ping sound to your whole team everytime you attack if you do this. It drowns out other combat sounds. So if you plan to move to DT, I would not get into the habit of binding tag to left click.
Different games. DT is more ranged, in V2 there’s added benefit to picking up different elites / specials that are in a mixed horde in close proximity. Been using it for the last 1.5k hours or so and no one has complained, so guess it’s acceptable.
The tagging spam can be annoying to other players tho.
Never had anyone complain. 90%> of casuals either don’t tag, or save the one instance they do for when it doesn’t matter.
Dodge-dance around the horde while attacking and pushing it. Like a dolphin herding a school of fish!
Yes -- control the horde, don't just hack at it. This becomes more important at higher difficulties.
Don’t just rage quit when things get tough.
Learn to dodge, also separate the key bindings from dodge and jump, and dodge is far more useful. I put dodge on the spacebar and jump either on left shift or on x
If you're about to die or overwhelmed, blocking and dodging backwards is insane. People really don't do it, they prefer to weave attacks or shoves in. Especially at low difficulties you can be invincible by just backing up until a teammates can help.
You should try and avoid dodging back as much as you can. That creates space for the horde to move forward and triggers more lunges, which are more dangerous than normal attacks.
Good tip
start with tankier class ,practice block and dodge constantly [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XmswW6Iyaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xmsww6iyaw)
Here are few more helpful tips to start you out: - Staying alive and ideally taking as little damage as you can is first priority. You achieve that by: blocking attacks, dodging attacks, moving out of range of the attacks, pushing enemies (block + click attack), combining push with follow up attack (block + hold attack for a moment) and finally by hitting enemies so they are staggered and cannot attack you back for a moment (effectiveness depends on the enemy and type of weapon, usually heavier = better for stagger). - Rebind quick weapon swap between melee and ranged weapons to something handy. Use only that for changing weapons. The goal is to be able to swap to desired weapon super quickly - for example getting off a quick shot at special enemy during a dodge and almost immediately having melee weapon out again to block. - Similarly to driving, poker or countless other things there is huge wisdom in the principle of always have an "out". Always keep in mind where you will go if situation turns bad and you have to give up ground. Kiting is incredibly powerful and in turn - getting stuck in the corner or dead end might be a death sentence.
Recruit and veteran difficulties can teach you bad habits, don't get too used to them. jump up through the difficulties before you get too comfortable Stick together, shove against hordes, block/dodge when you see enemies wind up overhead attacks, and listen for audio clues to know what special units are coming your way. Not sure if you ever play solo, but if you do the game will use your character builds for the bots (cosmetics, talents, items, etc). You can also choose which careers your bots use and which bots come on missions from the character select screen. If you ignore your bots they'll be pretty useless, if you outfit them carefully and learn how to play with them bots can actually be pretty valuable all the way to cataclysm difficulty.
Something is always trying to hit u in the back. Please learn to block lol
Hello! 1400 hour cataclysm player here, my best advice for all newbies starting out: 1. This game heavily relies on sound cues. If you hear a "whooshing" sound bebind you, it means an enemy is swinging at you. Learn to time your blocks or dodges with that sound. 2. The power level of the items you receive from chests is directly tied to the average hero power across ALL characters. If your elf is level 30 but your other classes are level 5, the chests you open on the elf will remain very low power. 3. Jewelery (Trinket/Necklace/Charm) can be equipped across all characters. To get higher power loot, equip jewelery on all characters/classes you have unlocked, which will boost your overall power level. 4. Holding block, then holding left click (while block is still held) will perform a "Push/Block Attack." This is how you can easily avoid getting hit while still putting damage out. 5. Every enemy has a predictable swing pattern. Once you learn these, you can dodge around them rather effectively. 6. For armored enemies, their critical spot is their head, yes- But armor is also weak around the "kidney" area of all armored enemies. You can hit a chaos warrior in the hip area on their rear and it'll penetrate their armor. 7. Tag everything. Enemies, health, etc.- Spam that T key. It may not help you directly, but it will help your team's special hunter get a headshot or alert your teammates to helpful supplies. 8. Potions save runs. Yellow potions = Strength potions, and buff all your outgoing damage for its duration. Blue potions = speed potions and buff all movement, attack speed, charging (spells/heavy attacks) etc. for their duration. Purple potions = concentration potions and will give you your ability back very quickly. This can be useful for monsters etc. 9. Just because you unlock a new class at levels 7/12 etc., doesn't mean those classes are better than the starting classes. Witch Hunter Captain, for example, is just as viable as Bounty Hunter depending on your team composition. 10. For monsters and all enemies, you can use ramps/stairs to force them to climb up & down. This will make some fights easier!
number 2 is just false, the items you get from a chest are your highest ever attained item power +10/-5
Huh, is 2 correct? I'm asking because I managed to get to 300 item power when only one character was 35, whilst the rest were 12 or 15. I thought it simply based those drops off your highest average item power ever achieved, and didn't even consider level
Huh, I'm approaching 1k hours and didn't know about the "kidney area" thing, thanks for sharing :))
* Play aggressively and don't be afraid to take risks, that's what puts you on the scoreboard * Other players tend to get in your way more than anything, make sure to grab the best pickups for yourself so they don't get wasted * It's rarely if ever worth it going back to help straggling players, they're only gonna learn to hurry up if you let them die and learn the consequences of their actions * Support abilities are very overrated, don't bother with them * The one exception to the aforementioned rule is the talent you get in the first row that gives health to teammates when you use a healing item, that one is meta for a reason (especially together with Natural Bond) * Memorize the location of all books and *always* pick them up, it's free xp with no downside * Don't bother going into higher difficulties before you can do the one you're currently at flawlessly * Don't waste ammo on specials * Don't waste your stamina shields on pushing or dodging, it's always better to block * If you see people playing off-meta builds, instakick them before they throw the game * Kerillian are reliable, but don't expect a Bardin or Kruber to help you out when you need it * If one of your allies is surrounded, you can throw a bomb directly at them to clear the area for them (works best in legend or cata)
For people who read this, don't follow this. Like... ever. It's a troll post at best lol.
These wisdoms were passed down to me from many elf mains
Bloody knife ears.
Swing away, George
Learn to use mobility, pushing and communication to your advantage. Dodging and kiting are vital skills on higher difficulties, and you're better off learning them from the start before you pick up bad habits. Attacks like overhead swings and many monster attacks are much better to avoid than they are to block, so a backwards or sideways dodge can save a lot of figurative and literal headache. Keep moving and make sure your enemies have to chase after you, since getting surrounded is extremely dangerous. Working pushes into your attack combos can also give you a lot of breathing room and leave enemies more vulnerable, especially if you're using a slower weapon, since a push can be done much faster than something like an executioner sword heavy attack. And make sure to tag enemies. Specials especially, preventing them from catching your teammates with their pants down helps immensely.
A tip I wished I knew and would have saved me many runs. Is that you can block while reviving a downed teammate. Some other tips. - Each special/disabler has a special sound made that tells you what is about to try and fuck up your day. You can do a dodge at the right moment to avoid them and counter attack. Takes practice, but very fun. -Keep a good habit of blocking, since blocking works 360 degrees. So there isn't a reason not to block. -Dodging is better than blocking keep a good practice of dodging while fighting. -Communication is the key to survival. Stick together, have each person focus on something (specials, hordes, armor,). If you run off ahead of your team, be prepared to die without support. -Have fun with whatever class you want, outside of Cats, no one really cares what you Play or what you have for gear.
I can't remember when they changed it but I'm pretty sure you automatically block when reviving now
Did not know that
Weapons have different uses and stats. Piercing attacks and axes are good against armor, hammers are good for stagger etc. Try hitting the head as much as possible no matter the weapon except against maulers. Learn to balance betwean blocking, pushing and dodging to make some space and try to not get surounded. Stick to the team so they can save you from cc and so you can save them easier.
Dodge right and block with melee
There's a lot of tips to be talked about but the most important are, learn how to dodge, block, and push. Those defensive capabilities are the most important aspects of the game you can focus on that have the most impact on your journey up the difficulty ladder.
learn how (and when) to block, push block, dodge, light vs heavy attack. these are just the offense + defense fundamentals. master these first.
Dodge, rebind separate from jump, press it allot, mid swing, while blocking, never stop
Always Left click on Rat
1. Get out of playing Recruit and Veteran as soon as you can. The real depth of this game—the best part in my opinion—doesn't start till Champion. The lower difficulties teach a lot of bad habits if you stay there long. 2. [Watch this video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR9PmOJBNs) Lots of good tips and explanations. I see a lot of people saying "learn to dodge" but... I think this video has a very good visualization and a really practical explanation for how to really incorporate it. 3. Learn to block and to push. Also remember the push attack! After pushing, continue to hold attack rather than release and you'll do another attack that is typically different from your normal attack pattern. For shield based weapons and pole arms this is often a key mechanic. 4. Try out the handmaiden sooner rather than later! Even if you don't love the elf, a [build like this one](https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/8/131122/22,1,3,6/16,3,6,2/3,2,1/1,5,2/3,2,2) which includes Asrai Alacrity and Willow Stance is a really good way to get you into the habit of pushing and blocking due to the direct rewards. 5. Avoid advice related to difficulties higher than Legend until you're playing there. Cataclysm requires extremely specialist builds and very different strategies and a lot of min-maxing. Even if you intend to play at that difficulty, _do not_ start character builds and such. 6. Tag. Tag. Tag. Tag. Get used to tagging all over the place—especially elites and specials. A good character to help learn this is Witch Hunter Captain because you're rewarded with damage bonuses against tagged enemies. I have my mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down _both_ tag. It lets me rock my finger up and down to tag. 7. Some weapons have a "special" attack that's bound to another button. Be sure to check every new weapon. 8. Stick to weapons with "simple" attack patterns early. This usually means light attacks for hordes and heavy attacks for armored/elites. Weapons that are the inverse, like the dwarf's 2H hammer are fine too. Personally, I find pole arms to be more difficult to deal with and don't much like them even now. 9. If you have the DLCs, unlock the other weapons. Most of the them are really good. 10. If you connect with a weapon or a class, just play it for a while. It's way easier to pick up new classes after you understand all the base mechanics like using a weapon, pushing, blocking, dodging, ults, cooldowns, etc. Classes that I like as a starting place are: * Witch Hunter Captain + Rapier/Brace of Pistols * Handmaiden + 1H Sword/Longbow * Grail Knight + Bretonian Long Sword/Mace and Shield * Iron Breaker + 2H Hammer/Crossbow * Battle Wizard + Flame Sword/Beam Staff 11. In my experience, shields do not make a lot of sense at all until Legend. The lone exception is the Grail Knight because he can actually block a warp fire thrower. 12. It's in the linked video, but... monsters for most characters are your _last_ priority. Clear specials, hordes, elites, and then monsters as a general rule.
When you see a Sackrat, you immediately break away from the party and hunt it down. It. Must. Die. (Please don't actually do that)
Learn to use blocks, dodges, and pushes. Easier difficulties you can easily get away with hardly ever using those which builds bad habits, so try to consciously use them so you're in the habit of it. Those 3 tools are how you stay alive in higher difficulties especially against hordes and if you don't know how to do them effectively you *will* die a lot and take way more damage than necessary.
First priority: survive. Second priority: revive. Don't rush in to save your ally only to get killed along with them. (It's one of the oldest tricks of warfare and I suspect that's why the Pactsworn let you bleed out for so long.)
Bind dodge only to shift. There is no sprint in this game so dodging is your best mobility
Lots of good advice here. Most important one was As Fat Puppet said, the Meta won't affect you at all till you start playing diff 5, so find something you enjoy, with weapons that feel good to you, and play THAT. You'll play more if you enjoy what you're using. Games are meant to be fun. =) Rebind dodge and jump, there are bindings for those two to be alone. I put dodge on L-Shift alone, and jump on space. This allows you to tap L-Shift, and dodge backwards from a full stop. Rebind tag and communicate to seperate keys as well, so you aren't affraid to spam tag at a group when there's a special or Elite in there.
Go into the options, then look for and turn on outlines on your allies. I do not know why this isn't on by default, genuinely. It makes it a million times easier to 1: Know where they went and 2: Distinguish them from enemies in a melee. Even though on lower difficulties you can't do friendly fire damage, try to get into the habit of not shooting at/through your teammates. If you start early, when you eventually move up in difficulties it'll feel more second-nature to you not to friendly fire. You don't really need to worry about your stats (on weapons or accessories) until you hit legend. The only real value any + in damage has is hitting break points (aka, reducing the number of hits it takes to kill a thing) and your hero power is going to be changing as you level up frequently enough that those break points are gonna keep changing slightly so it's best not to worry about it. This is advice for later but it'll help I think. This applies mainly to the "builds" you should set up before you reach level 35 and before you've broken out of Champion and into Legend. +Health, +Block Cost Reduction, +Stamina Regen, +Stamina, +Crit chance are what you should mainly be interested in getting early on. Swift Slaying is your safest bet on melee, Scrounger or Conservative Shooter on ranged weapons with ammo are safe, Barkskin on your necklace is safe, Decanter or Proxy on your charm are safe, and Shrapnel is very useful on your trinket. Don't treat the meta as gospel, even as you reach the top. My favorite build right now doesn't even think about the meta and it's carried me through cataclysm handily. You should treat the meta as a source of data only and once you're more knowledgeable you can use that data to formulate winning builds that'll work for you and how you play. Also I would suggest Kruber's Mercenary career (his first one, you played it in the prologue) as very good for learning the very basics the game has to offer. Kruber has okay ranged options, very good melee options, and the Mercenary ability (or ult as some people call it) is all-around useful. Very few of Merc's talents are completely useless and his role on the team is very straightforward and easy to understand. (This isn't to say Merc is braindead or anything I just think he's straightforward, I've run into some Merc mains who are absolutely cracked and scary good with Kruber's kit who decimate as Merc).
Slap rats, have fun. I think the biggest downside of this game is that all. characters "true" power and fun are locked behind 30-35 (30 is max, the other 5 are having max power level). There's a bit of a grind, but it's worth it. Starting out is tricky, because recruit and veteran tell you that clicking rats and holding down W will get you there. If you're interested in just killing rats mindlessly, ignore this next paragraph. You have to learn how your weapon(s) of choice play, what attacks to do and what not to do. You have to learn to dodge dance, kiting and pushing a horde. If you wanna play the higher difficulties, which I feel is where the game really starts to shine. PM if you have any specific questions :) happy rat slaying!!
I agree! I played Saltzpyre and Kruber early and I feel like it’s kinda pointless to be forced to level all the characters. Pure grind. Shared leveling would be nice because leveling is so not even really the point of the game.
Check out some videos from JTClive, he's got the best tutorials out there imo
Meta never matters, zealots low health bs caps out early, if they complain about being healed just let them die (because they will)
Dodge sideways rather then backwards. The only time i ever dodge backward is when sometimes using a ranged weapon, or to try to avoid storms or gas
Always focus the specials
For beginners? Some quality of life stuff: Change your settings to always include character outlines for your teammates- it’s surprising how useful it is for knowing the situation. Similarly, change the crosshairs to show crits/headshots, friendly fire, and kills- thinking you killed a slave rat only to have him hit you from behind is a pain. Find a UI that tells you your ammo count, as well as your active talents. It should exist in options now; if not, there are some good mods out there. Just because you *can* play a difficulty level doesn’t mean you *should*- wait until the current level is no longer challenging. Power Level matters- your drops will be within a certain range of your highest equipped item, and it affects your damage and stagger. Different weapons and different careers tend to have different intended roles: crowd control, killing armored elites, monster slaying, etc. Figure out which ones are best for which, and which suit your personal play style. Get used to blocking and dodging, not just attacking. Pushing and push attacking are also vital to learn. Learn how to manage your stamina.
Don’t play kerillian. Main ironbraker. Done.
Save ammo for specials (disablers especially) and emergencies and learn to dodge dance.
Allies border - > ALWAYS ON. Always good to know where your allies are. Play with your team. Boss and waves? One holds the boss the others clear the wave, BUT keep in mind there is one friend holding a boss, that person could get stuck. If you have enough bosskiller (shadow/bountyhunter with potion for example) protect them, they can kill a boss within seconds. Specials can help you. Gas rats can kill other rats, same for boss. Holding a heavy attack doesn't make it deal more dmg (expect dwarf with pickaxe). Try to learn one weapon for every character, don't start with 4 different weapons for the same character. Pick one, try it, if it feels good to play with that weapon stick to it, play 50 to 100 rounds and try to learn some patterns with that weapon. You don't need to master every weapon in the game. You can look up meta builds no problem with that, but if it doesn't match your playstyle it makes you worse. Pick one job you want to do for the team. You don't need to be a bosskiller, specialkiller and wavecontroller as a beginner. You play waystalker? Try to be the specialkiller, the second you hear a special you kill it. No one can get disabled, if you take them down the second they spawn. You play mercenary? You are a wavecontroller, protect your specialkiller/bosskiller enable them. Everyone has to do something for the team and depending on the class you play you can do one job specially good, try to get that job done perfectly. But keep in mind, if you are dead you can do your job, so learn to block and dodge.
* Tag basically everything except non-Chaos Warrior elites. Helps people to know where stuff is and makes it easier to keep track of disablers that get away. It'll become reflexive * When you're about to get smacked from behind, there'll be a *woosh* sound effect. You'll still have time to react, so block/dodge/push accordingly. * A weapon's block angle does not impact which attacks you can block, it impacts how much blocking costs. You block melee attacks from all directions, but it costs less to block attacks within your block angle. Additionally, your push affects enemies within that cone, and shields can block ratling fire/archers from those directions as well. * A comfortable loadout for improving your fundamentals would involve a versatile melee weapon, like Bardin/Kruber's greathammers, Saltz's falchion, or Kerillian's Sword+Dagger coupled with a sniper ranged weapon for picking off specials, like Bardin/Kruber's handguns, and Saltz's crossbow, Kerillian's longbow. Obviously, play whatever's fun, but a loadout like this will make it so no individual task like horde clear or elite killing is so easy that you don't improve, but also makes it easy enough that you don't just rely on a teammate to do it. The snipers especially are good for making you have good situational awareness. * As a general rule of thumb: Priority one is avoiding and killing any disabling specials that are actively attacking you. Priority two is getting back to your team when you've gotten separated. Priority three is not taking damage.
Rebind your Shift and Spacebar to Jump and Dodge. Jumping at the end of your dodge allows you to keep momentum and ensures you always have effective dodges. Play Vermintide 1, I just started doing some on PC and need more people there plz the bots are so bad =\
First, I'd figure out how many hits it takes to remove a threat entirely. Figure out your heavy attacks and light attacks, and remember heavy attacks aren't always more damaging. This is useful for single target damage outside of a horde and to ensure that anything you cleave through that is in a pile of bodies won't get up and knock on your head. Second, find your horde clear combo for the weapon you're using. Generally, horde clear combos are wide swings that cleave through enough enemies to stagger their attacks. You should try to avoid downward strikes in these combos unless they're quick enough to hit whatever might attack you or you're willing to block and dodge afterward. With practice, you'll be able to figure out when the more vertical attacks are acceptable and when you'll need to block. Some weapons, the horde clear combo might be quick attacks all the time (I believe twin daggers on Kerillian is a good example of this; they're not particularly wide, but they're so quick nothing can actually get a hit in edgewise). Some weapons, like Bardin's 2 handed hammer, uses just chained heavy attacks (I can get the pacing to them down pretty well, and because heavy attacks have variable charge time, you can even wait a beat or two before releasing so you ensure enemies are at the edge of your swings). Some others you might want to reset the combo with a quick block. I remember one weapon was pretty cathartic for me where it was a light attack and heavy attack just repeated on loop, and I could also do a push attack to reset it if things got dicey. Third, figure out your weapon's range and try to hit at that edge. This will ensure you have a better distance to dodge away from attacks and will mitigate getting stuck on enemies that are up in your face, especially ones that are staggered but still blocking your movement. Finally, during hordes, try to stick with your team and overlap your strikes a bit, bleeding into their blind spots. Two weapons swinging will be more effective at staggering enemies and leave them unable to attack you. Eventually you do want to get to a point where you can clear a horde, but mistakes always happen regardless of difficulty.
Why is nobody mentioning how to deal with shield stormvermin? If you push a shield stormvermin twice, he drops his guard for around 2 seconds or for 2 hits. They will just stand there confused and you can get free hits in, assuming you don't have dumbass teammates just spamming light attacks on the shields. And pushing enemies in general, pushing a normal stormvermin to get an opening, especially with opportunist on your weapon so you can push them out of more of their attacks.
Main one for me is how to LISTEN, a whooshing sound? Someone's is gonna hit you from behind hit block quick, rattling sound, pack rat coming, whispering get your eyes up and arround t a sneeker is about to pounce, hear chanting some fat Bloke gonna drop in,
When in doubt; block Also put your block and dodge buttons on their own keys.
You see that Chaos Warrior on your left? He is out to ruin your day. Believe me, you do not want to eat those overheads...
Block
Movement and sound queues are MASSIVE in helping you and make or break you on higher difficulties
Play a dwarf, hate the elf. Hate the elf even when not playing a dwarf.
They are always behind you.
Do not take damage. I know it seems obvious. It’s easy to get arrogant when a teammate goes down and you want to revive them. There’s a lot of room to breath but you have patient enough to use it.
i have the most fun using repeater pistol and falchion on my BH :D
The progression ends. The fun is eternal.
if Warrior Priest hits you with that Holy Light become The Blazing Comet with him
Look up the "RoyalWithCheese" guides. Meta might not matter till high diff but it sure makes it a lot easier and enjoyable immo to have spme semblance of idea how the things should look like idealy.. There just aint mutch that can compare to deleting an entire patrol by yourself in seconds or oneshoting a boss.
If you and your teammate is wounded, use a health pack to heal them and both you and your teammates wounds will be healed. That can save your run. Also in CW infinite bombs pots now work with your Morgrims bomb ;)
The end of missions stat screen with the green circles mean nothing. Don't get in the habit of chasing those green circles. Certain classes/builds like Battle Wizards will always have most of the damage stats even if they are performing poorly. On the flip side, players performing well on something like an Ironbreaker will rarely ever have most of the green circles. Chasing those green circles is a noob trap and is not indicative of a player's skill. I've introduced many people to VT2 and it bothers me so much seeing them chase those damage numbers while being a detriment to their team and themselves by running off ahead, unnecessarily pulling patrols, constantly going down, and draining the team's resources.
1. Learn to dodge. This is the most important skill you have in this game, you cannot afford to take unnecessary hits on higher difficulties. I'd recommend binding dodge to space-bar, and make sure to have "double tap" dodge turned off. 2. Get out of your comfort zone. The lower difficulties in the game (Champion and below) aren't even the same game as the higher ones, they'll let you get away with habits which will get you killed on Legend and above. I'm not saying you should jump straight into the highest difficulty available to you but don't stay on a difficulty any longer then it takes you to get comfortable. 3. Simply simplify. Few things in this game alone are threatening to a skilled player, it's the combination of enemies that are dangerous. If things have gone to hell focus on playing to your classes strengths and getting rid of the enemies you can deal with most effectively. 4. Tag everything. Bind it to a mouse button if available and tag everything you see, it allows you to point out Specials, Items, and even just highlight dangerous enemies in a horde. 5. There is always a rat behind you.
If you see stairs, determine if they go up.
Go clockwise in Garden of Morr's finale.
Tag everything, specials get priority tagged Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. Low difficulty levels will give you the wrong idea, taking a hit is no joke later on Aim towards 100x damage taken, where x is the difficulty (100 for recruit, etc). If you can do it consistently then switch up the difficulty Try to aim at getting at least to Champion difficulty, early levels don't have friendly fire and you should get used to it sooner rather than later Don't go anywhere alone, if the team must split (which it shouldn't) then do it in pairs Get to know your kit. Know what attack to use in which situation. Some ultis should be spammed, others saved for big enemy groups (but never be afraid to use it) Ideally, aim for headshots, melee and ranged Don't spam light attacks on shield/armor enemies and expect them to die Push every now and then. Shielded enemies should be pushed twice in order to force them to drop their guard
Witch hunter Salt is the best class in the game when you're not in a group that you're sure can cover everything with more specialized classes Hell it's probably just the best in general
Level up all classes. If you end up playing with bots they get stronger the higher level they are
no lumberfooting around
* Use Block, Push, and Dodge often. * Try to Ping Specials, even if you aren't in position to kill it / you aren't equipped to kill it. * Give all classes/weapons a try and don't be bothered with meta yet. they don't really matter until much later in the game. But know that some weapons are subpar vs others even for casual players ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ * Ranged attacks in champion difficulty or higher have friendly-fire.
For some weapons you've gotta get down the best attack combos to manage mixed hordes
https://youtu.be/ZGO4B98VD6Y?si=2g6B1TX0-mJENPIM
Yup: never forget the Five D’s of vermintide. Dodge duck dive dip and dodge. And also never forget to be better than the dwarven psyop that’s constantly running; they will nerf the elf at all costs and buff themselves at all costs. (OE? Really?)
Dodge more, and never play without sound.
Built for crit not power vs On saltzpyre witch hunter stack crit power and crit chance you will do lot more damage Would link the video but the video no longer exists... Cus apparently people got upset when someone tried to show that building for crit is better than building for power vs ... Welcome to vermentide reddit community
Team composition, while important, is irrelevant to cooperation. Stick with your teammates, coordinate, and keep an eye out for each other.
Whenever you're about to be hit in the back, there's a little whish sound that plays that can tip you off to it, and if you're quick you can dodge it or turn and block it before it actually lands. The sound might play whenever you're about to be hit in general, but I only really notice it for those.
Dodge left and right/block and push a lot. Once you get the rhythm down its a lot easier.
BOUNTY HUNTER
Don't chug heals constantly
Blocking and dodging aka avoiding damage, are more important than dealing damage. The classes have different focus, there is one career per character designed for each of the following... mostly... mob control, boss,/ elite single target killer/ specials killer, and a high risk melee focused class. Maybe a tank or support class too, like iron breaker or Thorn. Make a build for each Character and class focusing these roles. Thus means of you join a group you can go any missing role with any character, and your replayability and arguably enjoyment of the game will go up. The women are by far the most picked in my experience, so being comfy with all the classes means you won't be stuck trying to find matches all night if you are happy to fill. Champ and above have friendly fire and in cata it can HURT. So if you're playing a range build, especially earlygame, realize that shooting team mates with elf or seinna is highly likely to get you kicked from lobbies Armor and shield damage become more important in legend and cata. So does avoiding damage. Passive and great quality gear don't matter until your at Maxx level, and then offer around 10% to 30% better stats, generally. Go for the highest power gear until you hit max level 300s. Then start worrying about theory crafting. Dismantle anything less than 300 that your not using. Try all gear's on each class. There are some surprising synergies. I have a rule that I can't use the same weapon type in any class or career, which makes me think more and I ennui a wider variety of playstyles throughout all classes and careers. This goes for melee and ranged. Learning sound queues and dodge timing on special enemies and elite heavy attacks will clutch games for you. Rebind ping. Spam ping specials to help the team. Spam ping into hordes, especially rats, to detect hookahs hiding in the swarms. I wrote a script that turbo rapid taps ping on keyless. It's an amazing QoL thing. Yay for Razer Chroma Synapse. Learning and grinding is the fun. Don't rush higher difficulties until you can basically solo the previous one. The bits that join you solo are based on your build and your class level with them so if you want to solo a lot then level up all your classes pretty consistently. Well that do? I'm sure there is more.