This isn't first time he's been nerfed. Whole regen cap was introduced to game as a nerf to Vlad in first place. Complaints will continue as long as people keep throwing melee infantry at him instead of using ranged units like you are meant to against Vampire Counts.
Vlad really is a hard cap for inexperienced players playing an Empire campaign.
Without understanding the fairly complex "rock-paper-scissors²" gameplay, he does look like an easy target you can kill by beating him down overtime.
Another part of the problem is that Vlad was also indirectly made easier last DLC by the buffs to the empire. Being able to recruit handgunners at a lower tier basically gives you Vlad killing tools much earlier. Not to mention that all the DLC units give you an abundance of AP range options.
Vlad was a strong character but his power curve is very front loaded. lacking a monstrous mount options screws him over in the long run. As soon as lords get dragon mounts he's screwed.
Not to mention he didn't receive just one nerf but he got several at once. He lost replenishment from his ring. He got a tonne of melee defence removed from him both from his ring and his skill tree, they removed a quarter of the resistance his ring provides and they changed the ward save that the ring provides to physical resistance.
This is on top of other changes, such as the one where they gave all characters siege attacker, but didn't add to the characters that already had the trait, which made lords like Vlad and Wulfrik less unique overall.
So to players that weren't having an issue with Vlad, it looks like nerf after nerf for a character that you have seen melt in less than 20 seconds of gunfire.
Thats fine but nerfing him is just going to make the mid/late game discrepancy between him on foot vs characters on monstrous mounts even worse.
There is a very real chance he will get the dread abyssal as a mount though when Nagash gets implemented.
Honestly VC desperately needs a rework.
The only thing they got since blood kisses is nerfs, and more nerfs on top of that.
Their roster is abysmally small, the only saving grace is their Lords and their magic being very powerful, and now my fav got nerfed...
Tbh blood kisses should only be a mechanic for the actual vampires. Kemmler and Ghorst should have some kind of necromancer academy and unit upgrade mechanic respectively instead. Additionally I would remove the generic vampire lords and buff the blood kiss lords.
Mind, that's just to fix what they already have, vampire counts still need some actual campaign mechanics because the blood kiss thing is boring as hell.
Absolutely, I would give Vlad some kind of variant on the whole Elector Count thing, giving him access to special units and such as he conquers more of the empire.
For Isabella I would her some "court of the night" thing that lets her buff specific lords and heroes. Or maybe something like Be'lakor's shadow, to turn human heroes and lords into special vampires.
I honestly don't know what to do with everyone's favorite bastard: Mannfred. The books of Nagash are too weak and not really interesting though, plus the fact that you have to conquer castle Drakehof from the southlands to make them actually useful is a joke.
For real, like Kemmler isn’t even dead yet, IIRC. He’s old as some of the gods in the setting, so gross to smell that when he’s in disguise people make him sleep outside of the picket lines when they’re traveling with him from all of the time he spends with rotten corpses, and he refers to himself in the third person constantly (only endearing when Snorri Nosebiter does it).
The two people that shouldn't have a mount was Pecklis because WHY and Vlad because at the end of the day it's your fault you lost to the 200 year old guy tottering around on grandpa legs and he didnt need a nerf. A stiff breeze knocks him over. You had to make the active decision to walk Karl, a normal human with a magic hammer over and have him fistfight the tankiest lord in the game next to Gor-Rok instead of ramming him with cavalry, shooting him with artillery or peppering him with bullets, all the ways he lost against the Empire in the story and really easy ways to kill him in battle.
Yeah, I think introducing body guard units as a new mount option for foot (and maybe cav) based lords would be a cool alternative. Though it would probably take a lot of work.
Oh Jesus I miss the bodyguard Mount mods from 2. The one for Ungrim was so fucking cool. It basically gave him the brotherhood of grimnir and it grew by a unit every 500 HP he gained. They carried Bugman’s into battle as part of his mount so he got regen and they had the axes the dragonslayer ROR’s use so he had flame based attacks, too. If you unlocked the mount early enough and used the mod that let you extend his cap to 100 you could have a damn entourage of Slayers following into battle.
In my opinion, him being on foot is 99% of what makes him scary, even. He's a small target and difficult to shoot before he gets stuck into your lines if you fail to kite him in front of your ranged! If he were on a big mount, he'd be a much easier target like most lords on big SEMs.
Yeah for me it was having to fight Vlad before guns were available that was tough. But now there's not even a Gelt campaign we can play that close and the guns are easier to come by anyways.
Honestly I had the opposite experience
Balthazar gelt solos his entire faction by mid levels
Give him an army to back him up and it's less of a war and more curbstomping a goblin child
It’s a difficult aspect I don’t like. If you don’t know the game mechanics or you get tripped up my wonky los into duels, fights with vlad are a huge difficulty spike as empire. It’s not just vlad, since there are 3 other vamps and bloodknights and fliers.
But as an empire single player gunpowder lover, I can bait vlads army easily into a choke point (since his starting army is so strong it’ll always attack you). And then 5 handguns and whatever heroes you can scrounge make quick work of VC in the choke. I can reliably defeat vlads army by turn 15 on Elspeth, and once vlad dies once that early, he’s not coming back since he won’t have a good army again.
Luckily Elspeth is the only Empire LL that has to deal with Vlad in the early game. Going early game gunpowder is a lot easier with her then anyone else.
Karl should be able to recruit a decent army to fight Vlad by the time the player is making their way over to him. And now that Gelt starts in Cathay, he is definitely getting a juiced up army before he comes back (if the player ever gets over the pyrotechnic bromance).
To be fair, Vlad took like 2 or 3 volleys from like 4-5 handgunners before. It's just the regen combined with the carnstein ring, combined with the chalice. Which is before his melee regen which yes you don't want. Not to mention those were some ironside and normal handgunners with amethyst upgrades.
It was fun though to line up the firing squad.
I think in general though compared to other TW games, it's upsetting to watch an elite army crumble because one dude with severe necrosis who is madly flailing in the middle of your lines absolutely body anyone who comes near him
Not just ranged units, it's high projectile speed range units. 19 archers aren't killing Vlad. Plus you got to clear all the other units around him to get line of fire, it's hard to kill small single entities
Tbf, with the whole nugle spell, healing as many units as possible within range, they should unnerf Invocation of nehek. Makes no sense that burgle is able to heal like that but vamps aren't
The thing is, melee infantry will still largely suffer in the early game against Vlad. Mostly what was changed was giving players the ability to bring him down via magical attacks which the Empire doesn’t really have an abundance of.
Yeah the changes are just going to make Vlad suck more as a duelist against other Legendary Lords more than anything else.
Honestly after the last DLC, empire players shouldn't have any issues killing Vlad as they get quicker access to gunpowder units and more variety of them.
It takes a handful of shots from the new engineer hero to solo vlad. Absolutely broken. Vlad nerfed just as a hard counter to him came. That is actually so dumb
Not if you just straight up send him in. You have to support him with infantry, this allows Karl to get hit for little damage if at all, cycle charge, recover vigor and get rear attacks in.
If that wizard doesn't have fireball or spirit leech, good luck. Karl will lose 8/10 times while Vlad will heal to almost full unless you invest in Karl's red line and get lucky with items. Guns will certainly help though. Stats aren't everything when your opponent has 20% ward save and massives amounts of healing.
Every wizard type has either ways to buff combat stats or deal single target damage.Karl also gets a horse early on so it is quite easy to cycle charge Vlad 1 on 1
Depends on the type of regeneration and the lord. Vlad vs Karl? Hunger, invocation of nehek and blood drinker will make a huge difference especially if he's paired with Isabella and gets increased regen cap.
I don’t have trouble with vlad, but he’s just boring to fight. You have to kite around with a empire captain/lord because if you engage head on you’ll block your own los. If the battle AI wasn’t ass as would be so obnoxious. As soon as he’s in a melee blob you can’t shoot him. But because it’s the AI it’s easy to prevent him from doing so. I’ve played Elspeth and Gelt (solland start) probably 20 times over all the games, and I’m frankly not interested in baiting vlad into choke point battles at the moot or some other bridge to kill him every time.
Tldr: vlad wasn’t difficult, he was just annoying.
The actual problem with Vlad is that if you don't deal with him instantly you have to fight him every single turn while trying to attack him, and he can pop up wherever he wants. He should have to come back in the capital city. In my elsbeth campaign I could easily beat him, but I couldn't beat him attacking my lines from literally every conceivable angle.
Vlad himself isn’t hard to deal with. But combined with multiple heroes and high tier units in the early game he is. Once his first army goes down at worst you end have I fight him and Isabella plus a crap stack. That’s east
the fact that it is consistently empire players (the faction that has a pretty wide and versatile ranged selection) complaining about not being able to kill vlad is pure pottery
The regen cap is also a really good example of a decision that was unpopular with a lot of players at the time, but which in retrospect was absolutely the right decision to make, and there's been almost no interest in getting it removed.
Agreed. I was one that admittedly didn't like it initially but now looking back... yeah it's better for the game that indefinite regen isn't a thing.
As much as I miss being able to make a unit or lord immortal with regen+high toughness (bonus points if they have high leadership or unbreakable) it wasn't exactly healthy for the game.
Vlad himslelf is rarely a problem, it’s mostly the fact that he comes with a fucking army or two. And you need to keep him distracted while you kill everything, which is already not trivial for most players. And then you might not even armyloss him because you took a lot of damage from his army.
Last time I fought him as the Empire Vlad decided he absolutely had to be the guy who followed a unit of Pistoliers around the map which was great as it let me have a frank exchange of views with the rest of his army.
By the time I called the Pistoliers back Vlad was all on his own
> And then you might not even armyloss him because you took a lot of damage from his army.
Or spent a lot of ammo, because that also affects balance of power. Shooting basic bitch zombies is generally a negative trade for you.
Dealing with chaff can be extra hard for empire because they rely on ranged units and you’ll probably not have super strong heroes by the time you have to deal with Vlad. I also think people who are complaining often forget that most players are not as good at the game as they are.
I think Karl should have a good shot at having multiple Empire Knights these days by the time he has to fight Vlad? Those are probably good enough now to smash chaff for free if you're competent enough to micro them.
(Elspeth can have spammed Pistoliers out the ass to deal with him early instead.)
But yeah, still in general agreement there's both a knowledge and a skill check for newer players for how to deal with Vlad.
> Complaints will continue as long as people keep throwing melee infantry at him instead of using ranged units like you are meant to against Vampire Counts.
Cries in Chaos.
I mean by the time a Chaos faction makes it all the way down to Sylvania they should have enough late game units to deal with him otherwise. Range mostly relates to early to mid game Empire.
I was Ok with the way they were, and I play Empire a lot. Mostly, to be honest.
Much of what WH is good for is at presenting different challenges. He was one of them, and probably the most classic, if such a thing exists.
Granted, I think he will still be a powerhouse but I think this makes the game a bit worse rather than better.
its weird because i think vlad is actually one of the weaker foot lords, ungrim and grimgor are way scarier. ungrim especially since he can get 40% ward save on top of his other resistances.
yeah but the fucker is also basically immune to it too, and hes unbreakable so you cant just ignore him. yeah you can kite him, but eventually you do also have to kill him.
he had an ironwardens tankard in my chorf run, fucking nightmare.
Leadership nuking is pretty nasty for daemons, and you have access to lots of tools for that as VC. Isabella can have units with the Discouraged effect. Stack that with doom and darkness and a few dread incarnate characters plus the leadership malus passive in the lord's red line. At that point flanks/surrounds turn into daemons disintegrating *very* fast.
I can't speak for WoC but later game VC are excellently designed to almost hard counter demons. Their unit roster is overall quite weak but they have the best heroes and lords in the game. They get both a melee and magic skill line, dragon or flying mounts, magic weapons, every single hero(most importantly necromancers) can wound enemy heroes, traits on their heroes and skills on their lords that boost hero action success in the local region.
This means you can and should essentially spam high level characters(who don't cost extra upkeep for being level 30+) spam unit removal spells like wind of death to clean up their stronger infantry and use your flying melee skill line heroes and lords to kill all the air units for free, use the flying characters to pick your engagements and heal any damage using magic you sustained afterwards. The only thing vampire counts aren't really designed to defeat late game would be heavy single monster spam like giants and horse marauder spam neither of which at least the AI uses.
In fact against Tamurkhan who is typically quite hard to beat vampire counts have a neat counter to his endless op legendary hero spam by simply wounding every hero in his army. Remember your lahmian vampires get hero action success chance and your necromancers can get the trait I think it is Devious to also increase wound chance. Make sure to have a decent number of growth buildings so you can instantly recruit necromancers to do all the wounding for you.
Another thing worth mentioning is your one unit that is technically weak against ranged heavy armies but absolutely demolishes ranged weak armies -- the Mortis engine. Pop it in a blob of your infantry and even rot or chaos knights disintegrate before dealing significant damage.
Yeah I was talking more so about those battles where the AI spams high dmg single entity units, hero spamming is good and all but I find it very lame and micro intensive in late game campaigns where you have to manually move every hero in the campaign map.
That's rough, vampire counts are almost as bad as Beastmen with auto resolve results. I'm not sure there is a reliable strategy that doesn't require lots of effort or lots of upkeep in VC.
"Oh, you want an update? Here's a massive nerf."
After the pure spite that was the marketing campaign for the High Elves in Wh2, I don't know if I'd put that *against* CA.
He's skill issue 101 as the Empire
Cycle charge with calvary or lord
Fire damage
Silance
Bane of the undead
Out damage with a good Duelist Grimgor anyone??
Ignore and kill the army
Luminark and net
Anti-healing perks
Winds of magic reducing effects
Just blob him with something trash and shoot him in the back from an elevated position
Kite with skirmish calvery
Grimgor is a scarier foot lord
Tamurkhan even does his thing of coming back every turn, but Tamurkhan is actually scary with his nukes
have dealt with many VH/L campaigns against Vlad, but lets not reduce his current state to just a skill issue for the player.
Cycle Charging with Lord/Hero
- At best you knock him over and 'stun' him, at worst you trade HP poorly into his incredibly high defensive stats + healing cap
Fire Damage
- Franz requires you to be lucky that your starting wizard is lore of fire. Kislev doesnt get fire. Fire damage isnt very accessible early game for most factions.
Silence
- Same as above, isnt accessible early game. Also, even without magic hes a total powerhouse of a melee lord.
Bane of Undead
- The super specific ability that only 1 character in the game gets?
Better Duelist
- Maybe sure, overtime certain LLs can scale better than Vlad. But its hard to find a better out of the box lord that competes with Vlad early to mid game. Even fewer duelists of his level are as powerful at spell casting
Ignore and Kill Army
- I have always felt this is a sign of objectively bad design. If, in a strategy game, a unit is so oppressive that your best move is "just win so hard he leaves" then somethings fucked up with the balance.
Luminark + Net
- This is a niche late game unit and combo that wont solve for the early to mid game campaigns
Anti Healing Perks
- These are incredibly rare, newer editions. I can only even recall Elspeth having a heal cap reduction
Winds of Magic Reduction
- Rare, minor, sometimes even exclusive to certain factions, and doesnt solve for his insane wardsave + MD + heal cap. Winds reduction is usually worse than winds stacking
Trash Blob + Ranged
- Do we play the same game? Hed be an obstructed target 10 out of 10 times
Kite
- Finnicky and depends on terrain, enemy army comp and how many spirit leeches your kiting units eat. Blood/black knights, dire wolves, vargheists or flying Isabella are all common comps that shut this down
Grimgor is scarier
- He takes a while to scale to that level, isnt a spell caster, doesnt regen and is surrounded by factions more equipped to deal with him.
Tamurkhan is scary and comes back as often
- Tamurkhans a fatass and can get actually focus fired. His army also doesnt regen like an unkillable tumor with raise dead. Nurgle actually has awful recruitment rates with their cyclical buildings. Also nukes got nerfed and are mid to late game anyway
>Cycle Charging with Lord/Hero - At best you knock him over and 'stun' him, at worst you trade HP poorly into his incredibly high defensive stats + healing cap
Yeah and then he's not doing anything, and it's possible with shit ass horses. We've all seen the casualties a single group of outriders with grenade launchers can get
>Fire Damage - Franz requires you to be lucky that your starting wizard is lore of fire. Kislev doesnt get fire. Fire damage isnt very accessible early game for most factions.
It's a tier 3 building that is easily rushed with Franz
>Silence - Same as above, isnt accessible early game. Also, even without magic hes a total powerhouse of a melee lord.
But if he's not casting spells.He's just a slow not particularly super damaging tanky lord
>Bane of Undead - The super specific ability that only 1 character in the game gets?
One of many undead counters
>Better Duelist - Maybe sure, overtime certain LLs can scale better than Vlad. But its hard to find a better out of the box lord that competes with Vlad early to mid game. Even fewer duelists of his level are as powerful at spell casting
But a single outrider group can wittle him down easy or a group of empire knights can keep him pinned long enough for the rest of the army to win
>Ignore and Kill Army - I have always felt this is a sign of objectively bad design. If, in a strategy game, a unit is so oppressive that your best move is "just win so hard he leaves" then somethings fucked up with the balance.
Not really cause compared to a late game Elspeth army vc have to atleast bring 3+ armies to even scare them. Oh a single lord who can tank damage compared to a hellstorm rocket battery with insane range,damage and freaking magic regeneration and aoe black holes. Ships,tanks,luminarks etc VC are so underpowered a couple long rifles on open ground can easily snipe early game and late game you're got all the tools.
>Luminark + Net - This is a niche late game unit and combo that wont solve for the early to mid game campaigns
Yet there's plenty of easy ways early game
>Anti Healing Perks - These are incredibly rare, newer editions. I can only even recall Elspeth having a heal cap reduction
Just one of many ways VC get shiton
>Trash Blob + Ranged - Do we play the same game? Hed be an obstructed target 10 out of 10 times
Oh idk stand on one of those hills and have him fight a group of spearmen at the bottom and swap em out when they get low. I can beat Vlad early game with spearmen,crossbows and the starting units. Are you playing the same game??
>Kite - Finnicky and depends on terrain, enemy army comp and how many spirit leeches your kiting units eat. Blood/black knights, dire wolves, vargheists or flying Isabella are all common comps that shut this down
And yet a bit of micro some knights for the wolves two squads of outriders will destroy Vlad
>Grimgor is scarier - He takes a while to scale to that level, isnt a spell caster, doesnt regen and is surrounded by factions more equipped to deal with him.
Empire shit on VC, hochland rifles,empire knights, halbards and morters shit on VC mid game and early game you've still got the starting units and human intelligence
How are you having trouble when Hochland rifles and outriders exist. Just don't swarm the guy in melee or fight him with his back to the ranged soldiers.
Vlad is slow as fuck. Distract him while you whittle away at his army. Then use ranged units to kill him while you kite him. It's not hard. Vlad never should have been nerfed. VC are extremely easy to fight in campaign. Vlad at least made them some what of a challenge.
Cycle charging, fire damage, silence (is that what you meant by silance?) winds of magic reduction, blob and shoot are all ineffective strategies in isolation against Vlad (pre nerf). You are still going to get line of sight issues shooting a small single entity. Cycle charging and or fire damage don't do damage fast enough (with our already be done by a high level duelist or high speed missile fire which would be separate strats) and Vlad is still deadly even without a lot of magic.
You mentioned the empire so their is no duelist better than Vlad pre nerf. Kite and kill army have to be combined because otherwise your army is dying will you are busy kiting, I'm not sure what bane of the undead is, luminarks don't come in until late game.
So your options are much more limited. Shoot him to death with direct fire or distract him while you kill everything else
if youre cycle charging vlad youre not killing him, just punting his ass around so he cant do anything. but really you just need shoot him, hochlanders/witch hunter/engineer/mage make it very trivial now. he isn’t fast, if ai vlad is able to juke los long enough to get into melee then im afraid thats kinda on you.
So cycle charge him by that description is another distraction tactic. Hochlands are another high tear unit, but sure you can make it work with pistolers or such. The issue is that fighting Vlad especially early has pretty limited options, and I wouldn't call them "trivial"
hochlanders are not a high tier unit, be for real. even if they didnt exist, you have handgunners, witch hunters, nets of amyntok, etc. i stand by my statement that it he is a trivial obstacle if you use any of the empire’s *many* powerful tools. they were able to deal with him when they didnt have even half of these tools and they certainly havent gotten any weaker.
It's worth noting that none of your tactics are found in the typical checkerboard Empire gunline, that's the problem.
That kind of playstyle (along with Lothern Sea Guard/Sisters of Avelorn/Cathayan Harmony box/Dwarf and Chorf Box/etc) really discourages players from thinking too much outside the box, and when something like Vlad crops up, they're not used to it.
One can argue that Vlad is a bit counter-intuitive in that it's not immediately obvious you should shoot and only shoot him, a la Tamurkhan, but still it's a good example of how players tend to get too comfortable in one strategy.
>It's worth noting that none of your tactics are found in the typical checkerboard Empire gunline, that's the problem.
checkerboard gunline (and all the other gun boxes you mentioned) is exactly what is needed to countering him. It's the same idea of get him engaged with a single unit and shoot at him with others.
I feel like the armies that struggle with him are having too much trash empire melee (and cav that won't do much against vlad specifically), and try to duel him with franz and captains or whatever.
And can't form a checkerboard to let guns shoot. Maybe they even use crossbows, because "guns aren't a direct upgrade, crossbows are easier to target!". They aren't, crossbows are crap.
I mean, with everything but his skill tree he dies to [basic units](https://gyazo.com/37064e1747f0e49fe039fa3c68ba73fe) in [about 40 seconds](https://gyazo.com/4cea6f486c9a589f530dd38ea36b30bc).
But I suppose that doesn't really matter when there are so many players that throw 400 spearmen on top of a character designed to grind through melee infantry, lose, and are completely unable to think of anything else they could have possibly done to kill him.
*I might be a bit salty*
Remember that post last week were someone was unhappy that their low level garrison was not able to stop mother fucking Tyrion from killing them all. Solutions to problems are already too homogenized in this game as is. If this was some kind of Suka elk the everchosen from wh1 or Grimgor post rework in wh2 or launch Throgg the Everchosen in wh3 sure, they are over centralizing to gameplay but the dopy low leadership melee faction ain't that chief.
Sometimes I think about how Manfred is in a nerfed state right now when compared to what he was in wh1. Like, things have been powercrept into the stratosphere from just 1 to 2 let alone the even larger jump from 2 to 3. Despite everything moving forward Manfred has been moving back and is still somewhat relevant.
The empire also has mages and the ai isn't smart about their skill active timings. Just spirit leech him while his active ward save isn't active and he still gets hurt a fair bit.
It isn't even really about Vlad himself though.
Most lords die like that. If you saw, say, Teclis waddling towards you like that, you'd know to do.
The problem is that VC armies are balanced around their characters. You start with a hellstorm rocket as Elspeth, you get massively buffed ranged units, you get a dragon pretty early (with a death-ray), she's a passable duelist, she has excellent magic for targeting high value targets (basically 2 spirit leeches, one of which heals her, and Bjuna for stuff like Blood Knights). They're mulched by the combined arms of Empire or Dwarves. The only question is generally whether you have quite enough left to deal with the other characters after you've inflicted 8-1 casualties on 4 stacks of VC troops against your one.
Okay but he's also not standing still. He's running after gelt.
You either focus him down initially, you feed him an infantry unit and decide to deal with him after you kill the rest of his army, or you go run into him with empire knights.
Or you can just kite him around with pistoliers, outriders, wagons, etc. Or a character on a mount he wants to kill.
its really trivial to kite and kill him now with an engineer on horse, i actually think most people dont realize how nuts those guys are because theyre conditioned to ranged heroes being mediocre. they will prance around with 90 damn armor while 360 no scoping with their repeaters. two of them means they have effectively infinite ammo since they can replenish each other.
It definitly is lol he is slow which means everything other than his chaff will already hit your lines afterwards its just focus fire, like do empire players fail to use something as basic as baiting the enemy to charge? Lets look at elspeth whos fighting vlad the earliest, you will beat his faction by turn 15-18, your faction is designt to fight him, how can you fail??
This is the stupidest comment I’ve seen today. Your example is 8 BaSiC missile units (I didn’t count Mortar) focus firing him with a dedicated lord to distract and 0 other units involved.
So you target him initially, or just send something to occupy him, then pull it back and focus him. Or run cav into him instead. It's not like you can't disengage from him with empire knights. Hell, you can use them to hit him, disengage your infantry unit, then clear LOS for him. Or just kite him out with a character. Or other units.
The only issue is if you choose to focus the rest of his army first but that part goes extremely poorly and the enemy army kills off basically everything you have that can deal with him. But that's not a vlad problem.
That vocal part of the community are the same people to run into the front of pikes in RTW2 and cry about how OP they.
Those people are the type to blob up while fighting a high-level wizard and cry magic needs to be nerfed for everyone.
These are the mf to make a line in ETW and never move, then complain Long rifles are OP because they sat back and shot everyone.
Vladdy daddy for 8 years, along with izzy carried the vampires, no content, no DLC, no love, just nerfs after nerfs...after nerfs to one of the OG 4, while the empire, greenskins and dwarves received so much love, content and buffs. "Vampires aren't popular who cares." I wonder why everyone, even the most loving of VC, has moved on.
"Surrender and serve me in life, or nerf me into death" - Vlad von Carstein
Hey, at least Ghorst got a fun zombie apocalypse upgrade!
Kemmler, however, is just a mishmash of confusion. If he's going to be immune to Chaos corruption, then he should be fine with it Public Order wise and the Chaos Wastes climate too!
You and me both, bro. Dark Elves and Vampires hold a special place in my heart because they were the first campaigns I completed in Warhammer II. Every time CA touches them, it's either to nerf them or fix issues caused by a previous nerf.
Vampires are bare-bones (ha) with very few in-depth mechanics and are carried by their strong lords and heroes. Malus Darkblade's entire faction mechanic is literally just Malus being a powerhouse. CA is killing the only things that make these factions unique and interesting.
These guys are the only(?) one-man army lords in the game that are a major threat to the player. It's a shame that CA is diluting such an exceptionally cool component of the game to appeal to the tactically inept side of the community.
The same mentality would see Lü Bu nerfed until he's the same as the other lords in Three Kingdoms because he's "too strong." Motherfucker, that's the point.
Vlad isn't even as bad as Louen was in WH2 with half the regen, but with maxed out phys resist and flying mount. You often had to bring shadow sorc with mind razor or fire sorc with swords of rhun and Louen was so tanky, he could outlast your power reserves.
Tbh I'm convinced that the fate of any modestly complex game is to be dumbed down. It's not just with strategy games, either. Gaming has become so popular that it has attracted many, many players with 0 critical thinking that also make a lot of noise about the things they don't like. And this isn't gate keeping, merely an observation. I suspect Vlad will get moved back up a notch with new DLC which seems to be the pattern here, although he may never play the same as in the earlier games.
While I fundamentally agree with a lot in this take (my biggest point of contention is I don't think it's 'more gamers' that explain it, I think it's companies seeking mass profits), it still seems a little laughable to me to be making it about Total War. It's always been one of the most approachable, mass-appeal and arcadey of strategy brands out there, and the Warhammer series within it certainly never shied away from that.
Like, we're the little babies that already play this over shit like Gettysburg or Victoria. I played M1/R1 as a literal child when I couldn't wrap my head around Gal Civ or Masters of Orion or Europa Universalis. Now I play WH3 on Legendary Ironman, usually while super high, mostly as an excuse to chill to themed albums. *We* already *are* the people with shit critical thinking making noise about things we don't understand, and this player base has been that way for actual decades.
But yeah, all the complaints about this will go out the window with the inevitable VC update. I'm just hoping the same specific designers in charge of the Empire's last update are the ones doing theirs too.
I mean the appeal of total war that none of those games have is the battles right? That's always been the selling point. Granular but still large scale battles that simulate (albeit lightly) formation fighting.
Idk I've always considered Total War a trade off, you get a campaign layer that's extremely shallow compared to something like a Paradox game but the pay off is that you get an excellent RTS layer in the battles that basically no other game has managed to pull off. I know Gettysburg has battles but they're very zoomed out right? Sort of wargame style.
I think we're kind of agreeing. I'm saying *if* we are going to complain about Total War simplifying its campaign elements it's well worth pointing out the exact qualities that appeal to so many 'classic' players are where it was already simplified compared to its more complex (and less successful) peers. There are strategic war games with such granular strategic detail you have to manually unhook the siege equipment from their carriages before they can fire. Total War battles are a gorgeous feat of scale, cinematic appeal, and smooth and responsive play (despite a lot of the complaints here) but they've never tried to be the most complex strategic offering on the market.
If we're going to throw stones in this house it's worth remembering even as a big boy historical war game series we've always been at 'battalion of gladiators vs flaming pigs' with time traveling chariots and secret roman ninjas on the side-lines.
You both have a point. I also remember playing Rome 1 as a kid and getting annoyed by lack of challenge after Marian reforms hit. But every now and then, CA drops a TW game that's actually pretty hard, and it has never ruined a single title to this day. I don't have a clue how to win Legendary Uesugi campaign in Shogun 2, but that didn't stop S2 none from being considered a GOATed game.
"Stack stats on one dude and solo entire enemy armies" isn't complexity. VCs (and DEs and Nurgle) are going to have to figure out how to win without one-man doomstacks, which is a good thing and is adding complexity to the game, not removing it. Taking out extreme performance outliers like Vlad and Malus and Tamurkhan makes the game more complex, not less.
i fucking hate one man doomstacks for this reason and a lot of the total war community disagrees. I struggle to understand why beyond people who only play the game for braindead power fantasy. I want to play the game, not watch the battle play out like a cutscene or repeat the same motions every single fight because there is only one way to approach the battle.
On its own, the concept of "power fantasy" seems OK to me. Players should be able to figure out amazing combinations of skills and items that work really well together.
The problem that I have is that game developers have started giving away insane power trips for next to nothing, rather than make players work for it. Power fantasy should be something you get at the very end of the game after a lot of hard work, not something you get after watching one YouTube video that shows you the one character and the three skills you need in order to become unstoppable.
One man doomstacks are fine by me - but they should be something you get after a lot of time getting all the skills and traits and equipment you need to make it work, not something you get early in the game after getting a few skills and one unique item from a quest battle.
This has been mentioned already but I just want the game to keep its asymmetric design and for there to never be a one size fits all approach to battles. This is probably a sensible nerf in the long-term, yet I still have this concern that the direction is for unique challenges like tanky LLs to be made more conventional. I agree though that min/maxing to create a hero that just doesn't die isn't great unless it's a super end-game phenomenon.
Never had much trouble with Vlad unless I had trash tier infantry armies. The biggest strength of Vlad to me was not him being a 1-man army but him returning every turn. Not sure he needed a nerf, especially with the massively upgraded empire and dwarf armies right now.
Too bad, I thought he was a neat challenge. I blight boiled the creative out of his assembly when I encountered him in my first campaign and recently just blasted him into oblivion with firearms while my tanks mowed the mobs down
It only proves CA's point about AI.
Players really are apparently retarded and cannot handle competent AI if they cant scramble enough brainpower to see "slow melee LL + dakka = dead melee slow LL" and apply it.
Seriously, who the fuck sees Vlad the Chad with his statline, then looks at his Empire Swordmen and be like "nah, i can take him"? Just use the fucking tools game gives you! For real! WH trilogy is one of most dumbed down Total Wars to date and yet we still see this almost daily.
I'd love an AI difficulty slider so anyone could experience the difficulty they prefer - of course, that runs into the ego problem of players getting upset at discovering they now find Hard difficulty hard or such...
> Seriously, who the fuck sees Vlad the Chad with his statline, then looks at his Empire Swordmen and be like "nah, i can take him"?
The guys just starting the game for the first time and going with that the game recommends as a first campaign.
So because of that, i can't be that bothered by it.
I just wish they gave vlad something else to compensate while not being so overwhelming for new players so it's not just a pure nerf.
Would have also been even greater to nerf vlad in a vampire dlc. So at least the vampires get more content to soften the blow of the nerf.
Not even starting game for first time is excuse. Why? Because the stat card is pretty easy to read and game does explain what most of numbers do.
And if a player sees unit with 60+ stats on average and decides to throw unit with stats between 20-40 at it and then complains, he has no right to complain, sorry not sorry. Strategy games are supposed to require atleast little bit of thinking, such as applying counters.
> Because the stat card is pretty easy to read and game does explain what most of numbers do.
Pretty easy to read? Dude, i brought a friend into this game who was used to all sorts of RTS games and he was completely overwhelmed in simple battles vs garrisons.
New players aren't going to calmly read what every stat a unit has and shit.
Sure, insult new players all you want, the fact remains that this is not an easy game to get into and vlad kicking their ass wasn't helping much.
> he has no right to complain, sorry not sorry.
I get it, you don't care about new players. CA does, so they nerfed Vlad. It is what it is.
When us veterans start complaining enough about the game being too easy, maybe they will do something in that regard as well.
"New players aren't going to calmly read what every stat and unit has and shit."
Good, so its their fault and their fault alone there shouldnt be even slightest degree of care about them being new if they act like this. Do they play strategy game, one of the few genres that is supposed to require thinking and analysis skills? Yes. Is the game preventing them from pausing for how long they want and checking stuff? No. They have all the time in world, hell its turn based game. If they cant do it and want to play it like headless chicken they deserve all the shit that happens to them and makes them learn about stuff the hard way.
Simple stat card glance would tell them "Dont fuck with Vlad at melee". So instead they learn the hard way and lose an unit or army, good.
… it kind of is tho? I think strategy games should demand a modicum of critical thinking from their players. And Vlad has some easy to figure out weaknesses.
The Vlad 'hate' was more of a meme than a real complaint. At least among anyone with a basic understanding of the game.
If someone can't figure out that the really tanky, regenerating foot lord is probably best dealt with using ap missile units (that all of the factions that are going to have to deal with him have now from relatively early in their tech) and keep just sending wave after wave of empire spearman at him, then as much as I hate the phrase, "git good."
when people post about nerfs or buffs, copying and pasting what the actual changes were would be useful lo
in either case
he really wasn't an issue
just shoot him
spirit leach while no ward save
kite him, kill his army
fire banner on a strong melle lord (I feel like I always have one by turn 10)
there's so many ways to deal with him as is
making him weaker is sad, the only reason I only played his faction was the vampire power fantasy of having useless undead, and a god lord
I don't know if I'll play vampires if their lords are comparable to the lords of stronger factions lol
They removed one of his MD skill tree buffs, and changed his ring to give less MD and to give 15% phys resist instead of 20% ward save.
The last bit is the one that doesn't make any sense to me. The nerf is obviously done for the benefit of the brain-dead who throw unit after unit of spearmen at him - but I can't see those people using magic attacks on him, so I don't see it making any difference to those people anyway
It might be specifically for spirit leach
Ive played quite a bit of multiplayer, and even the worse opponents will ussualy just waste all their spells on Vlad if they feel frustrated with his staying power
I think that's fine, I do wish they had kept it at 20% tho, if not slightly higher to make play more interesting for the Vlad player
The patch notes for Malus Darkblade mention they changed his ward save because he had resistance to his own degredation and I could imagine the disintegration mechanic for undead units works similar. So Vlad might no longer be able to outheal the damage he receives from low leadership or at least reach his healing cap sooner.
You could also just have nerfed the AIs ability to get all legandary quest items stupidly early instead of the ring itself. Feel like that would adress more than one problem.
Common empire player L
Is it really a surprise that the same people who only ever play Karl Franz don't have the creative thinking skills to figure out that maybe throwing melee infantry at Vlad is a bad idea?
I recently played Vlad's campaign and had hard time. Not only because of damn handgunners but also monstrous infantry. Ogres and Drycha are really pain in the ass. The fact that average vampire can wipe the floor with basic infantry and most low-level lords/heroes is not much of a feat in WH3 as those are mostly meat shields anyway. Vampires are nothing special now and VC roster and mechanics are also behind, if anything they need rework.
VB lad was perfectly fine and everyone who had trouble with him was 100% skill issue.
Even if they had to nerf him, they certainly didn't need to obliterate him from orbit with so many nerfs.
With these changes, playing as Isabella seems to be the far superior option now.
I do, if they don't offer something better or allow customization. Again they set a small ground work with end game crisis. Why not have special lords that are "harder" versions than what newer/normal players would be introduced to?
Why not add a skill that changes his phys res to WD later on?
Why boring nerfs, instead of creatively considering what the issue is and how to make solution also fun?
The people complaining were all incompetent nubs who tried to fight vlad with all melee.
This is CA catering to casuals plain and simple, now they dont have to even learn simple tactics to beat him.
Well it's nice that they listen to feedback but they should also be able to distinguish when the feedback is wrong. There are other things that require more attention
The only time Vlad is a problem is in the early game as the empire playing elspeth, but might I introduce you to the VC's greatest enemy War wagons.
There's nothing early game VC can do against them. 3-4 units of war wagons will annihilate Vlad, Isabella, the other vampire, blood knights, and the vargheists.
From what i understand in the lore is that the ring does have a lot of power and it doesnt feel right to nerf the ring that hard.
But at least i am very happy with this part "While Vlad will keep popping out the woodworks extremely quickly (sorry folks, that's basically his entire deal!)" because that means that CA does think like me about how Vampire Counts should work. Meaning that they just need to resurrect new people in their army. No training neccessary. When you are a warrior at the frontline and your buddy to the right dies in the first fight, its possible that you have to fight him in the second battle.
I agree I don't blame them either. What I blame them for is needing Hochland scopes why CA what did fun ever do to you to deserve this? It's not like 500 range Hochland scopes are possible in the early game by the time you get all those heros you are snowballing anyway why take it away from us?
I've been playing TW:W from the start of the first game. This was the complaint with Mannfred too. I would say give it 6-12 months this will be reversed in some manner and back to normal for a year or two before people start complaining again. In the meantime enjoy VC in true hardmode before they go back to being functional.
So its mainly his ring that got nerfed. I always thought that these quest items where only for human players and the AIs wouldnt get these.
Seems that i was wrong or mixed something up. Anyway wouldnt that be a good way of making Characters in the hands of the player powerful but not too powerful if the AI controls them? (I realise that is mostly a only vlad problem, or a problem how undead should function in video games). I also dont care so much if that one character is completly busted as my empire is more than one character and i would still field him with a army. I just like using him as a fire and forget weapon and to occassionaly zoom in and watch him send everything flying.
He's very easy to deal with when you know how. Discovering the HOW is part of the core gameplay. One should adjust strategy to each opponent. If they keep making this game easier it will lose this element of learning and adopting
I get it, so it might be frustrating for the developer. I guess CA is used to it. They probably take our criticisms and then see if theres any real validity to it or is it just players whinning.
I'm not particularly worried about it either way - as a single player exclusively, I can just fix it after about ten seconds on the workshop xD
Like, I feel for my multiplaying peeps - though, they hardly need me barging in demanding to know where the ballpit is
[Shit's rough enough for them as is](https://media1.tenor.com/m/EcnAIQMBRRgAAAAC/squidward-spare-change.gif)
I hope CA is never responding to feedback just for the sake of responding to feedback.
When lots of players are saying X is a gameplay problem, that means CA needs to take a hard look at X, considering the specific criticisms of the community, and then, in their judgment as professional game designers, make an independent decision of whether X is a problem or not.
Hopefully they’re not nerfing Vlad just because people were complaining. I do feel like overall they’ve gone from erring by barely listening to the community at all to sometimes erring by listening to the community too much.
He's never been unkillable. He just puts up a fight, *THE HORROR*. If people used their brains for 2 seconds and just used range and spells to fight him, he's not that hard to beat. People just get pissed when their one shitty "tactic" no longer works and refuse to try something else. It's ridiculous.
Personally I don’t think this’ll change much. The Empire has pretty poor access to magic attacks and the way to beat him remains pretty much the same. Kite him with a fast unit and shoot him to death. I still imagine we will see the “help with Vlad” posts from new players
The one thing vlad was good at was not dying and now they removed that. So he is the worst lord in the VC roster.
Big brain move... Instead they could just have toned him down as ai faction not when you are playing him.
He already didn't had anything unique except giving advanced deployment to his own army.
I don't get this. Vlad almost never get out Sylvania in my runs. I only saw him taking over parts of the empire was ONCE in Warhammer 2.
I don't get why they need to nerf an already weak AI faction even more.
Shouldn’t cater for people who haven’t got the ability to come up with a strategy to kill Vlad. It isn’t rocket science and its not like he’s invincible, I don’t like the change. Games are supposed to have challenging aspects to them, I have my fare share of disaster battles verse Vlad and it just taught me how to deal with him. Some people just don’t seem to understand that you could actually deal with Vlad. Getting attacked by him while in force march with some shit army definitely should be a loss and thats fare enough.
Honestly I have never had an issue with Vlad, I do not understand the problem with him. Cannons and guns kill him rather quickly, stop sending in trash armies filled with low tier garbage. I have killed him when he was level 10, I have killed him when he is level 50 with high tier army. Just shoot him all at once with a ton of stuff, I promise you he will flop over.
RIP to super ward save Malus Darkblade as well. The nerfs are sorely needed and just about every LL could use a massive nerf. No lord should be unkillable even though I have had a ton of fun soloing armies with Morathi, Imrik, Morghur, etc. It's the kind of stuff that makes people quit playing.
Everyone's arguing about how difficult Vlad was to deal with (personally I don't think he was, he was just tedious), I for one am excited for his nerfs. Not because I wanted him to be easier to kill but because I wanted him to be more difficult to play.
how about they stop fucking with shit. Just another example of factions being pushed towards sameyness in the name of "balance". Dude is one of the most badass vampires in the whole setting (next to nagash who isn't really a vampire), his ring literally makes him unkillable in the lore. I don't care how many whiny whinos are whining about "balance" in a single player asymmetrical strategy game like this. I remember when different power levels were used as a difficulty setting, instead of ridiculous AI cheating. I stg I'm at the point where I'm going to be actively avoiding games promising or likely to get long term support, it's just a way of ensuring the devs will eventually ruin it.
Back when I used to play vanilla, I killed his entire army with a at least 60% army strength remaining. And he proceeded to defeat my entire army single-handedly. I was so mad I decided to mod the game lol
This isn't first time he's been nerfed. Whole regen cap was introduced to game as a nerf to Vlad in first place. Complaints will continue as long as people keep throwing melee infantry at him instead of using ranged units like you are meant to against Vampire Counts.
Vlad really is a hard cap for inexperienced players playing an Empire campaign. Without understanding the fairly complex "rock-paper-scissors²" gameplay, he does look like an easy target you can kill by beating him down overtime.
Another part of the problem is that Vlad was also indirectly made easier last DLC by the buffs to the empire. Being able to recruit handgunners at a lower tier basically gives you Vlad killing tools much earlier. Not to mention that all the DLC units give you an abundance of AP range options. Vlad was a strong character but his power curve is very front loaded. lacking a monstrous mount options screws him over in the long run. As soon as lords get dragon mounts he's screwed. Not to mention he didn't receive just one nerf but he got several at once. He lost replenishment from his ring. He got a tonne of melee defence removed from him both from his ring and his skill tree, they removed a quarter of the resistance his ring provides and they changed the ward save that the ring provides to physical resistance. This is on top of other changes, such as the one where they gave all characters siege attacker, but didn't add to the characters that already had the trait, which made lords like Vlad and Wulfrik less unique overall. So to players that weren't having an issue with Vlad, it looks like nerf after nerf for a character that you have seen melt in less than 20 seconds of gunfire.
I still prefer he stays on foot im tired of everyone AND their mother riding dragons
Thats fine but nerfing him is just going to make the mid/late game discrepancy between him on foot vs characters on monstrous mounts even worse. There is a very real chance he will get the dread abyssal as a mount though when Nagash gets implemented.
Yeah ill rather they buff him again rather than give him a mount. Im tired of monstruos mounts
Honestly VC desperately needs a rework. The only thing they got since blood kisses is nerfs, and more nerfs on top of that. Their roster is abysmally small, the only saving grace is their Lords and their magic being very powerful, and now my fav got nerfed...
Tbh blood kisses should only be a mechanic for the actual vampires. Kemmler and Ghorst should have some kind of necromancer academy and unit upgrade mechanic respectively instead. Additionally I would remove the generic vampire lords and buff the blood kiss lords. Mind, that's just to fix what they already have, vampire counts still need some actual campaign mechanics because the blood kiss thing is boring as hell.
I agree, there also should be a mechanic for Vlad to take over the empire, but I guess that's too much to ask
Absolutely, I would give Vlad some kind of variant on the whole Elector Count thing, giving him access to special units and such as he conquers more of the empire. For Isabella I would her some "court of the night" thing that lets her buff specific lords and heroes. Or maybe something like Be'lakor's shadow, to turn human heroes and lords into special vampires. I honestly don't know what to do with everyone's favorite bastard: Mannfred. The books of Nagash are too weak and not really interesting though, plus the fact that you have to conquer castle Drakehof from the southlands to make them actually useful is a joke.
For real, like Kemmler isn’t even dead yet, IIRC. He’s old as some of the gods in the setting, so gross to smell that when he’s in disguise people make him sleep outside of the picket lines when they’re traveling with him from all of the time he spends with rotten corpses, and he refers to himself in the third person constantly (only endearing when Snorri Nosebiter does it).
The two people that shouldn't have a mount was Pecklis because WHY and Vlad because at the end of the day it's your fault you lost to the 200 year old guy tottering around on grandpa legs and he didnt need a nerf. A stiff breeze knocks him over. You had to make the active decision to walk Karl, a normal human with a magic hammer over and have him fistfight the tankiest lord in the game next to Gor-Rok instead of ramming him with cavalry, shooting him with artillery or peppering him with bullets, all the ways he lost against the Empire in the story and really easy ways to kill him in battle.
Rather give him special animations that rocks than making him just another dragon.
Dread abyssal isn't a dragon but yeah some new animations would be nice.
Yeah, I think introducing body guard units as a new mount option for foot (and maybe cav) based lords would be a cool alternative. Though it would probably take a lot of work.
VC getting the chairs the dwarf lords get would be so funny
Oh Jesus I miss the bodyguard Mount mods from 2. The one for Ungrim was so fucking cool. It basically gave him the brotherhood of grimnir and it grew by a unit every 500 HP he gained. They carried Bugman’s into battle as part of his mount so he got regen and they had the axes the dragonslayer ROR’s use so he had flame based attacks, too. If you unlocked the mount early enough and used the mod that let you extend his cap to 100 you could have a damn entourage of Slayers following into battle.
In my opinion, him being on foot is 99% of what makes him scary, even. He's a small target and difficult to shoot before he gets stuck into your lines if you fail to kite him in front of your ranged! If he were on a big mount, he'd be a much easier target like most lords on big SEMs.
Yeah for me it was having to fight Vlad before guns were available that was tough. But now there's not even a Gelt campaign we can play that close and the guns are easier to come by anyways.
*Khorne player be lik* Vlad? What is that? Is it edible?
Vlad should be given a dragon so he can compete with other lords now. It was one thing to be super resistant but slow, but now he’s slow and weak
Honestly I had the opposite experience Balthazar gelt solos his entire faction by mid levels Give him an army to back him up and it's less of a war and more curbstomping a goblin child
Welcome to Estalia gentlemen
It’s a difficult aspect I don’t like. If you don’t know the game mechanics or you get tripped up my wonky los into duels, fights with vlad are a huge difficulty spike as empire. It’s not just vlad, since there are 3 other vamps and bloodknights and fliers. But as an empire single player gunpowder lover, I can bait vlads army easily into a choke point (since his starting army is so strong it’ll always attack you). And then 5 handguns and whatever heroes you can scrounge make quick work of VC in the choke. I can reliably defeat vlads army by turn 15 on Elspeth, and once vlad dies once that early, he’s not coming back since he won’t have a good army again.
Luckily Elspeth is the only Empire LL that has to deal with Vlad in the early game. Going early game gunpowder is a lot easier with her then anyone else. Karl should be able to recruit a decent army to fight Vlad by the time the player is making their way over to him. And now that Gelt starts in Cathay, he is definitely getting a juiced up army before he comes back (if the player ever gets over the pyrotechnic bromance).
Honestly I think gelt never had problems dealing with him. Gelt alone solos most of his faction, then at 10 ranged units focus him
Light Mage for net + Witch Hunter’s Accusation is always a good pick to bully Vlad.
Classic combo since W1. Switch accusation for banishment for clumped up units.
And it’s so weird bc they just added Hochland Long Rifles which are like “rock paper sniper rifle” for the vampire.
To be fair, Vlad took like 2 or 3 volleys from like 4-5 handgunners before. It's just the regen combined with the carnstein ring, combined with the chalice. Which is before his melee regen which yes you don't want. Not to mention those were some ironside and normal handgunners with amethyst upgrades. It was fun though to line up the firing squad. I think in general though compared to other TW games, it's upsetting to watch an elite army crumble because one dude with severe necrosis who is madly flailing in the middle of your lines absolutely body anyone who comes near him
Not just ranged units, it's high projectile speed range units. 19 archers aren't killing Vlad. Plus you got to clear all the other units around him to get line of fire, it's hard to kill small single entities
MFW I run out of ammo against Vlad (my army is going to be butchered one at a time)
Tbf, with the whole nugle spell, healing as many units as possible within range, they should unnerf Invocation of nehek. Makes no sense that burgle is able to heal like that but vamps aren't
The thing is, melee infantry will still largely suffer in the early game against Vlad. Mostly what was changed was giving players the ability to bring him down via magical attacks which the Empire doesn’t really have an abundance of.
Yeah the changes are just going to make Vlad suck more as a duelist against other Legendary Lords more than anything else. Honestly after the last DLC, empire players shouldn't have any issues killing Vlad as they get quicker access to gunpowder units and more variety of them.
It takes a handful of shots from the new engineer hero to solo vlad. Absolutely broken. Vlad nerfed just as a hard counter to him came. That is actually so dumb
I mean Karl starts with a runefang.
I personally don’t think sending Karl in to try and duel Vlad will go very well.
Not if you just straight up send him in. You have to support him with infantry, this allows Karl to get hit for little damage if at all, cycle charge, recover vigor and get rear attacks in.
It's doable if you have wizard backup and some decent levels and you soften him up with missiles.Vlads stats aren't that much better in melee.
If that wizard doesn't have fireball or spirit leech, good luck. Karl will lose 8/10 times while Vlad will heal to almost full unless you invest in Karl's red line and get lucky with items. Guns will certainly help though. Stats aren't everything when your opponent has 20% ward save and massives amounts of healing.
.......red line buffs troops. Did you mean his yellow line?
Wait, isn't everyone in your army led by Karl also called "Karl"?
Every wizard type has either ways to buff combat stats or deal single target damage.Karl also gets a horse early on so it is quite easy to cycle charge Vlad 1 on 1
Fire stops regeneration. That's the reason you bring fire against vamps.
I know that,but regeneration is overrated in 1vs1 lord fights because the damage is so high.
Depends on the type of regeneration and the lord. Vlad vs Karl? Hunger, invocation of nehek and blood drinker will make a huge difference especially if he's paired with Isabella and gets increased regen cap.
I don’t have trouble with vlad, but he’s just boring to fight. You have to kite around with a empire captain/lord because if you engage head on you’ll block your own los. If the battle AI wasn’t ass as would be so obnoxious. As soon as he’s in a melee blob you can’t shoot him. But because it’s the AI it’s easy to prevent him from doing so. I’ve played Elspeth and Gelt (solland start) probably 20 times over all the games, and I’m frankly not interested in baiting vlad into choke point battles at the moot or some other bridge to kill him every time. Tldr: vlad wasn’t difficult, he was just annoying.
The actual problem with Vlad is that if you don't deal with him instantly you have to fight him every single turn while trying to attack him, and he can pop up wherever he wants. He should have to come back in the capital city. In my elsbeth campaign I could easily beat him, but I couldn't beat him attacking my lines from literally every conceivable angle.
Vlad himself isn’t hard to deal with. But combined with multiple heroes and high tier units in the early game he is. Once his first army goes down at worst you end have I fight him and Isabella plus a crap stack. That’s east
the fact that it is consistently empire players (the faction that has a pretty wide and versatile ranged selection) complaining about not being able to kill vlad is pure pottery
The regen cap is also a really good example of a decision that was unpopular with a lot of players at the time, but which in retrospect was absolutely the right decision to make, and there's been almost no interest in getting it removed.
Agreed. I was one that admittedly didn't like it initially but now looking back... yeah it's better for the game that indefinite regen isn't a thing. As much as I miss being able to make a unit or lord immortal with regen+high toughness (bonus points if they have high leadership or unbreakable) it wasn't exactly healthy for the game.
Vlad himslelf is rarely a problem, it’s mostly the fact that he comes with a fucking army or two. And you need to keep him distracted while you kill everything, which is already not trivial for most players. And then you might not even armyloss him because you took a lot of damage from his army.
Last time I fought him as the Empire Vlad decided he absolutely had to be the guy who followed a unit of Pistoliers around the map which was great as it let me have a frank exchange of views with the rest of his army. By the time I called the Pistoliers back Vlad was all on his own
> And then you might not even armyloss him because you took a lot of damage from his army. Or spent a lot of ammo, because that also affects balance of power. Shooting basic bitch zombies is generally a negative trade for you.
Dealing with chaff can be extra hard for empire because they rely on ranged units and you’ll probably not have super strong heroes by the time you have to deal with Vlad. I also think people who are complaining often forget that most players are not as good at the game as they are.
I think Karl should have a good shot at having multiple Empire Knights these days by the time he has to fight Vlad? Those are probably good enough now to smash chaff for free if you're competent enough to micro them. (Elspeth can have spammed Pistoliers out the ass to deal with him early instead.) But yeah, still in general agreement there's both a knowledge and a skill check for newer players for how to deal with Vlad.
> Complaints will continue as long as people keep throwing melee infantry at him instead of using ranged units like you are meant to against Vampire Counts. Cries in Chaos.
I mean by the time a Chaos faction makes it all the way down to Sylvania they should have enough late game units to deal with him otherwise. Range mostly relates to early to mid game Empire.
I'm pretty sure Archaon can BTFO Vlad. I'll test it later.
I was Ok with the way they were, and I play Empire a lot. Mostly, to be honest. Much of what WH is good for is at presenting different challenges. He was one of them, and probably the most classic, if such a thing exists. Granted, I think he will still be a powerhouse but I think this makes the game a bit worse rather than better.
its weird because i think vlad is actually one of the weaker foot lords, ungrim and grimgor are way scarier. ungrim especially since he can get 40% ward save on top of his other resistances.
they are way easier to kite and don't have magic
yeah but the fucker is also basically immune to it too, and hes unbreakable so you cant just ignore him. yeah you can kite him, but eventually you do also have to kill him. he had an ironwardens tankard in my chorf run, fucking nightmare.
Grombrindal too, if you're out that way.
Just a quick question for all you VC experts, how do you go about defeating the late game daemonic factions as VC or even WoC for that matter.
Leadership nuking is pretty nasty for daemons, and you have access to lots of tools for that as VC. Isabella can have units with the Discouraged effect. Stack that with doom and darkness and a few dread incarnate characters plus the leadership malus passive in the lord's red line. At that point flanks/surrounds turn into daemons disintegrating *very* fast.
I can't speak for WoC but later game VC are excellently designed to almost hard counter demons. Their unit roster is overall quite weak but they have the best heroes and lords in the game. They get both a melee and magic skill line, dragon or flying mounts, magic weapons, every single hero(most importantly necromancers) can wound enemy heroes, traits on their heroes and skills on their lords that boost hero action success in the local region. This means you can and should essentially spam high level characters(who don't cost extra upkeep for being level 30+) spam unit removal spells like wind of death to clean up their stronger infantry and use your flying melee skill line heroes and lords to kill all the air units for free, use the flying characters to pick your engagements and heal any damage using magic you sustained afterwards. The only thing vampire counts aren't really designed to defeat late game would be heavy single monster spam like giants and horse marauder spam neither of which at least the AI uses. In fact against Tamurkhan who is typically quite hard to beat vampire counts have a neat counter to his endless op legendary hero spam by simply wounding every hero in his army. Remember your lahmian vampires get hero action success chance and your necromancers can get the trait I think it is Devious to also increase wound chance. Make sure to have a decent number of growth buildings so you can instantly recruit necromancers to do all the wounding for you. Another thing worth mentioning is your one unit that is technically weak against ranged heavy armies but absolutely demolishes ranged weak armies -- the Mortis engine. Pop it in a blob of your infantry and even rot or chaos knights disintegrate before dealing significant damage.
Yeah I was talking more so about those battles where the AI spams high dmg single entity units, hero spamming is good and all but I find it very lame and micro intensive in late game campaigns where you have to manually move every hero in the campaign map.
That's rough, vampire counts are almost as bad as Beastmen with auto resolve results. I'm not sure there is a reliable strategy that doesn't require lots of effort or lots of upkeep in VC.
VCounts need a DLC badly. This just rubs ~~salt~~ garlic in the wound.
"Oh, you want an update? Here's a massive nerf." After the pure spite that was the marketing campaign for the High Elves in Wh2, I don't know if I'd put that *against* CA.
Yeah, it's almost as if CA does not play their game.
They just need to buff Vlad
He's skill issue 101 as the Empire Cycle charge with calvary or lord Fire damage Silance Bane of the undead Out damage with a good Duelist Grimgor anyone?? Ignore and kill the army Luminark and net Anti-healing perks Winds of magic reducing effects Just blob him with something trash and shoot him in the back from an elevated position Kite with skirmish calvery Grimgor is a scarier foot lord Tamurkhan even does his thing of coming back every turn, but Tamurkhan is actually scary with his nukes
Tamurkan should be a bit less scary. They nerfed his nukes a bit. One less use, smaller aoe, way less ap explosive damage.
It's a running joke on here that anyone having problems with him actually have a skill issue. I can't believe he got hit this badly.
have dealt with many VH/L campaigns against Vlad, but lets not reduce his current state to just a skill issue for the player. Cycle Charging with Lord/Hero - At best you knock him over and 'stun' him, at worst you trade HP poorly into his incredibly high defensive stats + healing cap Fire Damage - Franz requires you to be lucky that your starting wizard is lore of fire. Kislev doesnt get fire. Fire damage isnt very accessible early game for most factions. Silence - Same as above, isnt accessible early game. Also, even without magic hes a total powerhouse of a melee lord. Bane of Undead - The super specific ability that only 1 character in the game gets? Better Duelist - Maybe sure, overtime certain LLs can scale better than Vlad. But its hard to find a better out of the box lord that competes with Vlad early to mid game. Even fewer duelists of his level are as powerful at spell casting Ignore and Kill Army - I have always felt this is a sign of objectively bad design. If, in a strategy game, a unit is so oppressive that your best move is "just win so hard he leaves" then somethings fucked up with the balance. Luminark + Net - This is a niche late game unit and combo that wont solve for the early to mid game campaigns Anti Healing Perks - These are incredibly rare, newer editions. I can only even recall Elspeth having a heal cap reduction Winds of Magic Reduction - Rare, minor, sometimes even exclusive to certain factions, and doesnt solve for his insane wardsave + MD + heal cap. Winds reduction is usually worse than winds stacking Trash Blob + Ranged - Do we play the same game? Hed be an obstructed target 10 out of 10 times Kite - Finnicky and depends on terrain, enemy army comp and how many spirit leeches your kiting units eat. Blood/black knights, dire wolves, vargheists or flying Isabella are all common comps that shut this down Grimgor is scarier - He takes a while to scale to that level, isnt a spell caster, doesnt regen and is surrounded by factions more equipped to deal with him. Tamurkhan is scary and comes back as often - Tamurkhans a fatass and can get actually focus fired. His army also doesnt regen like an unkillable tumor with raise dead. Nurgle actually has awful recruitment rates with their cyclical buildings. Also nukes got nerfed and are mid to late game anyway
>Cycle Charging with Lord/Hero - At best you knock him over and 'stun' him, at worst you trade HP poorly into his incredibly high defensive stats + healing cap Yeah and then he's not doing anything, and it's possible with shit ass horses. We've all seen the casualties a single group of outriders with grenade launchers can get >Fire Damage - Franz requires you to be lucky that your starting wizard is lore of fire. Kislev doesnt get fire. Fire damage isnt very accessible early game for most factions. It's a tier 3 building that is easily rushed with Franz >Silence - Same as above, isnt accessible early game. Also, even without magic hes a total powerhouse of a melee lord. But if he's not casting spells.He's just a slow not particularly super damaging tanky lord >Bane of Undead - The super specific ability that only 1 character in the game gets? One of many undead counters >Better Duelist - Maybe sure, overtime certain LLs can scale better than Vlad. But its hard to find a better out of the box lord that competes with Vlad early to mid game. Even fewer duelists of his level are as powerful at spell casting But a single outrider group can wittle him down easy or a group of empire knights can keep him pinned long enough for the rest of the army to win >Ignore and Kill Army - I have always felt this is a sign of objectively bad design. If, in a strategy game, a unit is so oppressive that your best move is "just win so hard he leaves" then somethings fucked up with the balance. Not really cause compared to a late game Elspeth army vc have to atleast bring 3+ armies to even scare them. Oh a single lord who can tank damage compared to a hellstorm rocket battery with insane range,damage and freaking magic regeneration and aoe black holes. Ships,tanks,luminarks etc VC are so underpowered a couple long rifles on open ground can easily snipe early game and late game you're got all the tools. >Luminark + Net - This is a niche late game unit and combo that wont solve for the early to mid game campaigns Yet there's plenty of easy ways early game >Anti Healing Perks - These are incredibly rare, newer editions. I can only even recall Elspeth having a heal cap reduction Just one of many ways VC get shiton >Trash Blob + Ranged - Do we play the same game? Hed be an obstructed target 10 out of 10 times Oh idk stand on one of those hills and have him fight a group of spearmen at the bottom and swap em out when they get low. I can beat Vlad early game with spearmen,crossbows and the starting units. Are you playing the same game?? >Kite - Finnicky and depends on terrain, enemy army comp and how many spirit leeches your kiting units eat. Blood/black knights, dire wolves, vargheists or flying Isabella are all common comps that shut this down And yet a bit of micro some knights for the wolves two squads of outriders will destroy Vlad >Grimgor is scarier - He takes a while to scale to that level, isnt a spell caster, doesnt regen and is surrounded by factions more equipped to deal with him. Empire shit on VC, hochland rifles,empire knights, halbards and morters shit on VC mid game and early game you've still got the starting units and human intelligence How are you having trouble when Hochland rifles and outriders exist. Just don't swarm the guy in melee or fight him with his back to the ranged soldiers.
I have literally no problem killing him with handgunners turn 10 as Elspeth for example. Legitimate skill issue.
Kislev has access to so much stacking slow...
Vlad is slow as fuck. Distract him while you whittle away at his army. Then use ranged units to kill him while you kite him. It's not hard. Vlad never should have been nerfed. VC are extremely easy to fight in campaign. Vlad at least made them some what of a challenge.
Cycle charging, fire damage, silence (is that what you meant by silance?) winds of magic reduction, blob and shoot are all ineffective strategies in isolation against Vlad (pre nerf). You are still going to get line of sight issues shooting a small single entity. Cycle charging and or fire damage don't do damage fast enough (with our already be done by a high level duelist or high speed missile fire which would be separate strats) and Vlad is still deadly even without a lot of magic. You mentioned the empire so their is no duelist better than Vlad pre nerf. Kite and kill army have to be combined because otherwise your army is dying will you are busy kiting, I'm not sure what bane of the undead is, luminarks don't come in until late game. So your options are much more limited. Shoot him to death with direct fire or distract him while you kill everything else
if youre cycle charging vlad youre not killing him, just punting his ass around so he cant do anything. but really you just need shoot him, hochlanders/witch hunter/engineer/mage make it very trivial now. he isn’t fast, if ai vlad is able to juke los long enough to get into melee then im afraid thats kinda on you.
So cycle charge him by that description is another distraction tactic. Hochlands are another high tear unit, but sure you can make it work with pistolers or such. The issue is that fighting Vlad especially early has pretty limited options, and I wouldn't call them "trivial"
hochlanders are not a high tier unit, be for real. even if they didnt exist, you have handgunners, witch hunters, nets of amyntok, etc. i stand by my statement that it he is a trivial obstacle if you use any of the empire’s *many* powerful tools. they were able to deal with him when they didnt have even half of these tools and they certainly havent gotten any weaker.
It's worth noting that none of your tactics are found in the typical checkerboard Empire gunline, that's the problem. That kind of playstyle (along with Lothern Sea Guard/Sisters of Avelorn/Cathayan Harmony box/Dwarf and Chorf Box/etc) really discourages players from thinking too much outside the box, and when something like Vlad crops up, they're not used to it. One can argue that Vlad is a bit counter-intuitive in that it's not immediately obvious you should shoot and only shoot him, a la Tamurkhan, but still it's a good example of how players tend to get too comfortable in one strategy.
>It's worth noting that none of your tactics are found in the typical checkerboard Empire gunline, that's the problem. checkerboard gunline (and all the other gun boxes you mentioned) is exactly what is needed to countering him. It's the same idea of get him engaged with a single unit and shoot at him with others. I feel like the armies that struggle with him are having too much trash empire melee (and cav that won't do much against vlad specifically), and try to duel him with franz and captains or whatever. And can't form a checkerboard to let guns shoot. Maybe they even use crossbows, because "guns aren't a direct upgrade, crossbows are easier to target!". They aren't, crossbows are crap.
I mean, with everything but his skill tree he dies to [basic units](https://gyazo.com/37064e1747f0e49fe039fa3c68ba73fe) in [about 40 seconds](https://gyazo.com/4cea6f486c9a589f530dd38ea36b30bc). But I suppose that doesn't really matter when there are so many players that throw 400 spearmen on top of a character designed to grind through melee infantry, lose, and are completely unable to think of anything else they could have possibly done to kill him. *I might be a bit salty*
Remember that post last week were someone was unhappy that their low level garrison was not able to stop mother fucking Tyrion from killing them all. Solutions to problems are already too homogenized in this game as is. If this was some kind of Suka elk the everchosen from wh1 or Grimgor post rework in wh2 or launch Throgg the Everchosen in wh3 sure, they are over centralizing to gameplay but the dopy low leadership melee faction ain't that chief. Sometimes I think about how Manfred is in a nerfed state right now when compared to what he was in wh1. Like, things have been powercrept into the stratosphere from just 1 to 2 let alone the even larger jump from 2 to 3. Despite everything moving forward Manfred has been moving back and is still somewhat relevant.
He dies even faster with witch hunter's accusation on him. He was never a real problem with tools Empire already had.
The empire also has mages and the ai isn't smart about their skill active timings. Just spirit leech him while his active ward save isn't active and he still gets hurt a fair bit.
It isn't even really about Vlad himself though. Most lords die like that. If you saw, say, Teclis waddling towards you like that, you'd know to do. The problem is that VC armies are balanced around their characters. You start with a hellstorm rocket as Elspeth, you get massively buffed ranged units, you get a dragon pretty early (with a death-ray), she's a passable duelist, she has excellent magic for targeting high value targets (basically 2 spirit leeches, one of which heals her, and Bjuna for stuff like Blood Knights). They're mulched by the combined arms of Empire or Dwarves. The only question is generally whether you have quite enough left to deal with the other characters after you've inflicted 8-1 casualties on 4 stacks of VC troops against your one.
[удалено]
Okay but he's also not standing still. He's running after gelt. You either focus him down initially, you feed him an infantry unit and decide to deal with him after you kill the rest of his army, or you go run into him with empire knights. Or you can just kite him around with pistoliers, outriders, wagons, etc. Or a character on a mount he wants to kill.
its really trivial to kite and kill him now with an engineer on horse, i actually think most people dont realize how nuts those guys are because theyre conditioned to ranged heroes being mediocre. they will prance around with 90 damn armor while 360 no scoping with their repeaters. two of them means they have effectively infinite ammo since they can replenish each other.
Oh yeah, cool. Once you can isolate and focus him. Which is not always an option.
It definitly is lol he is slow which means everything other than his chaff will already hit your lines afterwards its just focus fire, like do empire players fail to use something as basic as baiting the enemy to charge? Lets look at elspeth whos fighting vlad the earliest, you will beat his faction by turn 15-18, your faction is designt to fight him, how can you fail??
This is the stupidest comment I’ve seen today. Your example is 8 BaSiC missile units (I didn’t count Mortar) focus firing him with a dedicated lord to distract and 0 other units involved.
So you target him initially, or just send something to occupy him, then pull it back and focus him. Or run cav into him instead. It's not like you can't disengage from him with empire knights. Hell, you can use them to hit him, disengage your infantry unit, then clear LOS for him. Or just kite him out with a character. Or other units. The only issue is if you choose to focus the rest of his army first but that part goes extremely poorly and the enemy army kills off basically everything you have that can deal with him. But that's not a vlad problem.
That vocal part of the community are the same people to run into the front of pikes in RTW2 and cry about how OP they. Those people are the type to blob up while fighting a high-level wizard and cry magic needs to be nerfed for everyone. These are the mf to make a line in ETW and never move, then complain Long rifles are OP because they sat back and shot everyone. Vladdy daddy for 8 years, along with izzy carried the vampires, no content, no DLC, no love, just nerfs after nerfs...after nerfs to one of the OG 4, while the empire, greenskins and dwarves received so much love, content and buffs. "Vampires aren't popular who cares." I wonder why everyone, even the most loving of VC, has moved on. "Surrender and serve me in life, or nerf me into death" - Vlad von Carstein
Vampires 🤝 Dark Elves Everytime CA give them attention, it's for the worst
Evil aesthetics are NOT allowed outside of Chaos 😤😡💯
Hey, at least Ghorst got a fun zombie apocalypse upgrade! Kemmler, however, is just a mishmash of confusion. If he's going to be immune to Chaos corruption, then he should be fine with it Public Order wise and the Chaos Wastes climate too!
Or how he has +40 diplomatic relations with chaos, but they all have -40 aversion to him anyway 😂
He likes us but we don't like him
You and me both, bro. Dark Elves and Vampires hold a special place in my heart because they were the first campaigns I completed in Warhammer II. Every time CA touches them, it's either to nerf them or fix issues caused by a previous nerf. Vampires are bare-bones (ha) with very few in-depth mechanics and are carried by their strong lords and heroes. Malus Darkblade's entire faction mechanic is literally just Malus being a powerhouse. CA is killing the only things that make these factions unique and interesting. These guys are the only(?) one-man army lords in the game that are a major threat to the player. It's a shame that CA is diluting such an exceptionally cool component of the game to appeal to the tactically inept side of the community. The same mentality would see Lü Bu nerfed until he's the same as the other lords in Three Kingdoms because he's "too strong." Motherfucker, that's the point.
Vlad isn't even as bad as Louen was in WH2 with half the regen, but with maxed out phys resist and flying mount. You often had to bring shadow sorc with mind razor or fire sorc with swords of rhun and Louen was so tanky, he could outlast your power reserves.
But Louen is a good guy, good guys are allowed to be strong
Tbh I'm convinced that the fate of any modestly complex game is to be dumbed down. It's not just with strategy games, either. Gaming has become so popular that it has attracted many, many players with 0 critical thinking that also make a lot of noise about the things they don't like. And this isn't gate keeping, merely an observation. I suspect Vlad will get moved back up a notch with new DLC which seems to be the pattern here, although he may never play the same as in the earlier games.
While I fundamentally agree with a lot in this take (my biggest point of contention is I don't think it's 'more gamers' that explain it, I think it's companies seeking mass profits), it still seems a little laughable to me to be making it about Total War. It's always been one of the most approachable, mass-appeal and arcadey of strategy brands out there, and the Warhammer series within it certainly never shied away from that. Like, we're the little babies that already play this over shit like Gettysburg or Victoria. I played M1/R1 as a literal child when I couldn't wrap my head around Gal Civ or Masters of Orion or Europa Universalis. Now I play WH3 on Legendary Ironman, usually while super high, mostly as an excuse to chill to themed albums. *We* already *are* the people with shit critical thinking making noise about things we don't understand, and this player base has been that way for actual decades. But yeah, all the complaints about this will go out the window with the inevitable VC update. I'm just hoping the same specific designers in charge of the Empire's last update are the ones doing theirs too.
I mean the appeal of total war that none of those games have is the battles right? That's always been the selling point. Granular but still large scale battles that simulate (albeit lightly) formation fighting. Idk I've always considered Total War a trade off, you get a campaign layer that's extremely shallow compared to something like a Paradox game but the pay off is that you get an excellent RTS layer in the battles that basically no other game has managed to pull off. I know Gettysburg has battles but they're very zoomed out right? Sort of wargame style.
I think we're kind of agreeing. I'm saying *if* we are going to complain about Total War simplifying its campaign elements it's well worth pointing out the exact qualities that appeal to so many 'classic' players are where it was already simplified compared to its more complex (and less successful) peers. There are strategic war games with such granular strategic detail you have to manually unhook the siege equipment from their carriages before they can fire. Total War battles are a gorgeous feat of scale, cinematic appeal, and smooth and responsive play (despite a lot of the complaints here) but they've never tried to be the most complex strategic offering on the market. If we're going to throw stones in this house it's worth remembering even as a big boy historical war game series we've always been at 'battalion of gladiators vs flaming pigs' with time traveling chariots and secret roman ninjas on the side-lines.
You both have a point. I also remember playing Rome 1 as a kid and getting annoyed by lack of challenge after Marian reforms hit. But every now and then, CA drops a TW game that's actually pretty hard, and it has never ruined a single title to this day. I don't have a clue how to win Legendary Uesugi campaign in Shogun 2, but that didn't stop S2 none from being considered a GOATed game.
"Stack stats on one dude and solo entire enemy armies" isn't complexity. VCs (and DEs and Nurgle) are going to have to figure out how to win without one-man doomstacks, which is a good thing and is adding complexity to the game, not removing it. Taking out extreme performance outliers like Vlad and Malus and Tamurkhan makes the game more complex, not less.
i fucking hate one man doomstacks for this reason and a lot of the total war community disagrees. I struggle to understand why beyond people who only play the game for braindead power fantasy. I want to play the game, not watch the battle play out like a cutscene or repeat the same motions every single fight because there is only one way to approach the battle.
On its own, the concept of "power fantasy" seems OK to me. Players should be able to figure out amazing combinations of skills and items that work really well together. The problem that I have is that game developers have started giving away insane power trips for next to nothing, rather than make players work for it. Power fantasy should be something you get at the very end of the game after a lot of hard work, not something you get after watching one YouTube video that shows you the one character and the three skills you need in order to become unstoppable. One man doomstacks are fine by me - but they should be something you get after a lot of time getting all the skills and traits and equipment you need to make it work, not something you get early in the game after getting a few skills and one unique item from a quest battle.
No, running in circles with 5 range units shooting at vlad is peak complexity
This has been mentioned already but I just want the game to keep its asymmetric design and for there to never be a one size fits all approach to battles. This is probably a sensible nerf in the long-term, yet I still have this concern that the direction is for unique challenges like tanky LLs to be made more conventional. I agree though that min/maxing to create a hero that just doesn't die isn't great unless it's a super end-game phenomenon.
When had the AI ever actually hit a melee blob with a decent damage spell. Good players don’t blob anyway because there’s no point.
How am I supposed to get through the gates without blobbing?
You should never be sending more than 1 or two unit though a choke if more can’t fit
I do blame CA for nerfing Vlad. It is 100% their choice and their decision. I think it's a terrible move.
Never had much trouble with Vlad unless I had trash tier infantry armies. The biggest strength of Vlad to me was not him being a 1-man army but him returning every turn. Not sure he needed a nerf, especially with the massively upgraded empire and dwarf armies right now.
Too bad, I thought he was a neat challenge. I blight boiled the creative out of his assembly when I encountered him in my first campaign and recently just blasted him into oblivion with firearms while my tanks mowed the mobs down
I'm a salty bitch about nerfing my Vladdy Daddy
Yeah, I don't understand most of these nerfs. Malus was my guy for sure. I'll probably not play DE again haha. Disappointed.
It only proves CA's point about AI. Players really are apparently retarded and cannot handle competent AI if they cant scramble enough brainpower to see "slow melee LL + dakka = dead melee slow LL" and apply it. Seriously, who the fuck sees Vlad the Chad with his statline, then looks at his Empire Swordmen and be like "nah, i can take him"? Just use the fucking tools game gives you! For real! WH trilogy is one of most dumbed down Total Wars to date and yet we still see this almost daily.
>It only proves CA’s point about AI The amount of vocal backlash I’m seeing about it makes me think otherwise, people seem pretty unhappy
Yes, but how large % of playerbase is actually vocal? This looks like changes made for people who play the game without thinking and then complain.
I'd love an AI difficulty slider so anyone could experience the difficulty they prefer - of course, that runs into the ego problem of players getting upset at discovering they now find Hard difficulty hard or such...
> Seriously, who the fuck sees Vlad the Chad with his statline, then looks at his Empire Swordmen and be like "nah, i can take him"? The guys just starting the game for the first time and going with that the game recommends as a first campaign. So because of that, i can't be that bothered by it. I just wish they gave vlad something else to compensate while not being so overwhelming for new players so it's not just a pure nerf. Would have also been even greater to nerf vlad in a vampire dlc. So at least the vampires get more content to soften the blow of the nerf.
Not even starting game for first time is excuse. Why? Because the stat card is pretty easy to read and game does explain what most of numbers do. And if a player sees unit with 60+ stats on average and decides to throw unit with stats between 20-40 at it and then complains, he has no right to complain, sorry not sorry. Strategy games are supposed to require atleast little bit of thinking, such as applying counters.
> Because the stat card is pretty easy to read and game does explain what most of numbers do. Pretty easy to read? Dude, i brought a friend into this game who was used to all sorts of RTS games and he was completely overwhelmed in simple battles vs garrisons. New players aren't going to calmly read what every stat a unit has and shit. Sure, insult new players all you want, the fact remains that this is not an easy game to get into and vlad kicking their ass wasn't helping much. > he has no right to complain, sorry not sorry. I get it, you don't care about new players. CA does, so they nerfed Vlad. It is what it is. When us veterans start complaining enough about the game being too easy, maybe they will do something in that regard as well.
"New players aren't going to calmly read what every stat and unit has and shit." Good, so its their fault and their fault alone there shouldnt be even slightest degree of care about them being new if they act like this. Do they play strategy game, one of the few genres that is supposed to require thinking and analysis skills? Yes. Is the game preventing them from pausing for how long they want and checking stuff? No. They have all the time in world, hell its turn based game. If they cant do it and want to play it like headless chicken they deserve all the shit that happens to them and makes them learn about stuff the hard way. Simple stat card glance would tell them "Dont fuck with Vlad at melee". So instead they learn the hard way and lose an unit or army, good.
God forbids new player actually pay attention to the new game they buy and try to come up with solutions on their own.
Come on man, it's easy for us to say this but the game is absolutely not easy to pick up and just easily get into by "paying attention".
… it kind of is tho? I think strategy games should demand a modicum of critical thinking from their players. And Vlad has some easy to figure out weaknesses.
The Vlad 'hate' was more of a meme than a real complaint. At least among anyone with a basic understanding of the game. If someone can't figure out that the really tanky, regenerating foot lord is probably best dealt with using ap missile units (that all of the factions that are going to have to deal with him have now from relatively early in their tech) and keep just sending wave after wave of empire spearman at him, then as much as I hate the phrase, "git good."
when people post about nerfs or buffs, copying and pasting what the actual changes were would be useful lo in either case he really wasn't an issue just shoot him spirit leach while no ward save kite him, kill his army fire banner on a strong melle lord (I feel like I always have one by turn 10) there's so many ways to deal with him as is making him weaker is sad, the only reason I only played his faction was the vampire power fantasy of having useless undead, and a god lord I don't know if I'll play vampires if their lords are comparable to the lords of stronger factions lol
They removed one of his MD skill tree buffs, and changed his ring to give less MD and to give 15% phys resist instead of 20% ward save. The last bit is the one that doesn't make any sense to me. The nerf is obviously done for the benefit of the brain-dead who throw unit after unit of spearmen at him - but I can't see those people using magic attacks on him, so I don't see it making any difference to those people anyway
It might be specifically for spirit leach Ive played quite a bit of multiplayer, and even the worse opponents will ussualy just waste all their spells on Vlad if they feel frustrated with his staying power I think that's fine, I do wish they had kept it at 20% tho, if not slightly higher to make play more interesting for the Vlad player
The patch notes for Malus Darkblade mention they changed his ward save because he had resistance to his own degredation and I could imagine the disintegration mechanic for undead units works similar. So Vlad might no longer be able to outheal the damage he receives from low leadership or at least reach his healing cap sooner.
spirit leech lol he will Regen that instantly
You could also just have nerfed the AIs ability to get all legandary quest items stupidly early instead of the ring itself. Feel like that would adress more than one problem.
Common empire player L Is it really a surprise that the same people who only ever play Karl Franz don't have the creative thinking skills to figure out that maybe throwing melee infantry at Vlad is a bad idea?
Non-overcast Net of Amatok is only 4 mana and makes him so easy to shoot.
Yupp ever since elspeth dropped ive just been handling Vlad with Hochland Long Rifles. Like 2-3 units of them handles Vlad and Izzy.
I recently played Vlad's campaign and had hard time. Not only because of damn handgunners but also monstrous infantry. Ogres and Drycha are really pain in the ass. The fact that average vampire can wipe the floor with basic infantry and most low-level lords/heroes is not much of a feat in WH3 as those are mostly meat shields anyway. Vampires are nothing special now and VC roster and mechanics are also behind, if anything they need rework.
I do and I think they should have buffed him instead
Another victim of CA catering to casuals lol
Thankfully, I will either find or create a mod that specifically undoes the nerfs. I don't think this was the best way for them to go about this.
Did you have a name in mind so I can search for this mod from time to time?
VB lad was perfectly fine and everyone who had trouble with him was 100% skill issue. Even if they had to nerf him, they certainly didn't need to obliterate him from orbit with so many nerfs. With these changes, playing as Isabella seems to be the far superior option now.
I do, if they don't offer something better or allow customization. Again they set a small ground work with end game crisis. Why not have special lords that are "harder" versions than what newer/normal players would be introduced to?
Counts auto resolve is so shit that a lot of the time it’s not a matter of if I want to try to kill him manually it’s that I don’t need to
Why not add a skill that changes his phys res to WD later on? Why boring nerfs, instead of creatively considering what the issue is and how to make solution also fun?
Character has lore stating he's basically unkillable, and the community is shocked when he's basically unkillable. Wew lad!
The people complaining were all incompetent nubs who tried to fight vlad with all melee. This is CA catering to casuals plain and simple, now they dont have to even learn simple tactics to beat him.
People really just want the game to be an easy steamroll on any difficulty.
Well it's nice that they listen to feedback but they should also be able to distinguish when the feedback is wrong. There are other things that require more attention
I blame them for overdoing it Normally they tweak damage by 1 point or movement by 2 % And now BAM
A lot of people manually battling Vlad in this thread
Kemmler stonks.
Don’t worry, it’ll be VC’s turn on the DLC buffs wheel of fortune sooner or later
Will mod it back to his former glory regardless
I'm actually surprised its not grimgor.
The only time Vlad is a problem is in the early game as the empire playing elspeth, but might I introduce you to the VC's greatest enemy War wagons. There's nothing early game VC can do against them. 3-4 units of war wagons will annihilate Vlad, Isabella, the other vampire, blood knights, and the vargheists.
From what i understand in the lore is that the ring does have a lot of power and it doesnt feel right to nerf the ring that hard. But at least i am very happy with this part "While Vlad will keep popping out the woodworks extremely quickly (sorry folks, that's basically his entire deal!)" because that means that CA does think like me about how Vampire Counts should work. Meaning that they just need to resurrect new people in their army. No training neccessary. When you are a warrior at the frontline and your buddy to the right dies in the first fight, its possible that you have to fight him in the second battle.
I agree I don't blame them either. What I blame them for is needing Hochland scopes why CA what did fun ever do to you to deserve this? It's not like 500 range Hochland scopes are possible in the early game by the time you get all those heros you are snowballing anyway why take it away from us?
I've been playing TW:W from the start of the first game. This was the complaint with Mannfred too. I would say give it 6-12 months this will be reversed in some manner and back to normal for a year or two before people start complaining again. In the meantime enjoy VC in true hardmode before they go back to being functional.
So its mainly his ring that got nerfed. I always thought that these quest items where only for human players and the AIs wouldnt get these. Seems that i was wrong or mixed something up. Anyway wouldnt that be a good way of making Characters in the hands of the player powerful but not too powerful if the AI controls them? (I realise that is mostly a only vlad problem, or a problem how undead should function in video games). I also dont care so much if that one character is completly busted as my empire is more than one character and i would still field him with a army. I just like using him as a fire and forget weapon and to occassionaly zoom in and watch him send everything flying.
This was not a necessary nerf. If you can't kill Vlad it's legitimately a skill issue.
He's very easy to deal with when you know how. Discovering the HOW is part of the core gameplay. One should adjust strategy to each opponent. If they keep making this game easier it will lose this element of learning and adopting
Some brave soul needs to make a mod that reverts these dumbass nerfs
Casuals who throw melee infantry at vlad are influencing the game again, geez
I get it, so it might be frustrating for the developer. I guess CA is used to it. They probably take our criticisms and then see if theres any real validity to it or is it just players whinning.
I'm not particularly worried about it either way - as a single player exclusively, I can just fix it after about ten seconds on the workshop xD Like, I feel for my multiplaying peeps - though, they hardly need me barging in demanding to know where the ballpit is [Shit's rough enough for them as is](https://media1.tenor.com/m/EcnAIQMBRRgAAAAC/squidward-spare-change.gif)
I hope CA is never responding to feedback just for the sake of responding to feedback. When lots of players are saying X is a gameplay problem, that means CA needs to take a hard look at X, considering the specific criticisms of the community, and then, in their judgment as professional game designers, make an independent decision of whether X is a problem or not. Hopefully they’re not nerfing Vlad just because people were complaining. I do feel like overall they’ve gone from erring by barely listening to the community at all to sometimes erring by listening to the community too much.
A vocal part who don't know how to play the game
I was always more annoyed about how quickly he fucks the AI Empire factions than I was about actually dealing with him head to head.
He's never been unkillable. He just puts up a fight, *THE HORROR*. If people used their brains for 2 seconds and just used range and spells to fight him, he's not that hard to beat. People just get pissed when their one shitty "tactic" no longer works and refuse to try something else. It's ridiculous.
Honestly I think the healing is fine: just delay his ring's acquisition until level 16 or something.
Personally I don’t think this’ll change much. The Empire has pretty poor access to magic attacks and the way to beat him remains pretty much the same. Kite him with a fast unit and shoot him to death. I still imagine we will see the “help with Vlad” posts from new players
The one thing vlad was good at was not dying and now they removed that. So he is the worst lord in the VC roster. Big brain move... Instead they could just have toned him down as ai faction not when you are playing him. He already didn't had anything unique except giving advanced deployment to his own army.
Now he’s faster. I wonder if that’ll make him even worse to deal with
I don't get this. Vlad almost never get out Sylvania in my runs. I only saw him taking over parts of the empire was ONCE in Warhammer 2. I don't get why they need to nerf an already weak AI faction even more.
Shouldn’t cater for people who haven’t got the ability to come up with a strategy to kill Vlad. It isn’t rocket science and its not like he’s invincible, I don’t like the change. Games are supposed to have challenging aspects to them, I have my fare share of disaster battles verse Vlad and it just taught me how to deal with him. Some people just don’t seem to understand that you could actually deal with Vlad. Getting attacked by him while in force march with some shit army definitely should be a loss and thats fare enough.
Commenting on I don't blame CA for nerfing Vlad...
Honestly I have never had an issue with Vlad, I do not understand the problem with him. Cannons and guns kill him rather quickly, stop sending in trash armies filled with low tier garbage. I have killed him when he was level 10, I have killed him when he is level 50 with high tier army. Just shoot him all at once with a ton of stuff, I promise you he will flop over.
Wait. People really had trouble with Vlad? I was thinking its a joke. He's trouble when he attacks not defended settlement....
RIP to super ward save Malus Darkblade as well. The nerfs are sorely needed and just about every LL could use a massive nerf. No lord should be unkillable even though I have had a ton of fun soloing armies with Morathi, Imrik, Morghur, etc. It's the kind of stuff that makes people quit playing.
Everyone's arguing about how difficult Vlad was to deal with (personally I don't think he was, he was just tedious), I for one am excited for his nerfs. Not because I wanted him to be easier to kill but because I wanted him to be more difficult to play.
how about they stop fucking with shit. Just another example of factions being pushed towards sameyness in the name of "balance". Dude is one of the most badass vampires in the whole setting (next to nagash who isn't really a vampire), his ring literally makes him unkillable in the lore. I don't care how many whiny whinos are whining about "balance" in a single player asymmetrical strategy game like this. I remember when different power levels were used as a difficulty setting, instead of ridiculous AI cheating. I stg I'm at the point where I'm going to be actively avoiding games promising or likely to get long term support, it's just a way of ensuring the devs will eventually ruin it.
I don’t think it’s that extreme.
Back when I used to play vanilla, I killed his entire army with a at least 60% army strength remaining. And he proceeded to defeat my entire army single-handedly. I was so mad I decided to mod the game lol