YMMV / Vermintide II

• Abridged Arena Array: 'Against the Grain' and 'Righteous Stand' are both favored for being straightforward linear romps where even the most directionally-challenged player is unlikely to get lost. The former is loved for loot-farming since all of the tomes and grimoires are easily-accessible and the latter is favored for XP-farming because it's quick, direct, and relatively forgiving.
• Anticlimax Boss: The Warlord of Clan Fester, Skarrik Spinemanglr, is universally agreed to be pathetically easy. His attacks are predictable, he lacks any ranged options, he's easy to stagger, he can't cover ground as effectively as other bosses, and his health is the lowest of the bosses by a good margin (and he doesn't have super-armor like Bodvarr or the ability to teleport like the sorcerers). It's common for him to die in under ten seconds even on Legend. Admittedly it's justified by the context: Warlords are "merely" particularly large, strong, and experienced Skaven, not superhumans. Thus it makes sense that even with his Clanrats and Stormvermin backing him up, Skarrik falls well short of Chaos Sorcerer Lords (Halescourge and Nurgloth), Chaos Champions (Bodvarr and Naglfahr), or a Grey Seer riding a Stormfiend (Rasknitt).
• Broken Base:
  • The scrapping of the "Road Map" once it became clear that Fat Shark didn't have the resources needed to create the promised features and instead should focus on what they already have. To this very day, debates rage wildly over whether or not Fat Shark made the right choice, or if they essentially conned their playerbase. Giving up on dedicated servers in particular (when the game host crashing quitting forces a restart of literally the entire mission) was particularly troubling.
  • The radical gameplay overhauls introduced with Patch 2.0 rubbed a lot of players the wrong way, with how cleave, dodge, critical, and stagger mechanics were reworked and pretty much ruining the previous meta entirely. As if it's not bad enough, many were unhappy with how FatShark, instead of fixing the actual issues proposed by the fanbase, seemed dead-set on shoehorning in the Weaves, an endurance mode with separate progression and gear being reset each season, similar to Diablo 3's Rifts, only less compelling. To say that many players were more upset about the new patch than the actual End Times itself is a severe understatement. To this day, the debate still rages on between the camp that embraces the new gameplay changes wholeheartedly, and the They Changed It, Now It Sucks! crowd, with the former reasoning that the meta pre-2.0 created a Complacent Gaming Syndrome that desperately needed to change, while the latter argued that the state of the game was perfectly-balanced the way it was.
  • On the topic of throwing axes (see Good Bad Bugs below), the decision to patch out the glitch that allowed them to be used in place of explosive barrels didn't sit well with quite a sizable portion of the playerbase, who were already incensed by the changes made to combat post-Winds of Magic and were unhappy that one of the few genuinely fun things about the new patch got taken away from them.
  • Kerillian in general. The playerbase is often split vertically on whether they like or absolutely loathe the elf for a multitude of reasons. Since launch, the three builds of Kerillian were quite popular among elf mains for her self-heal and ammo regeneration (Waystalker), good survivability and crowd management (Handmaiden), or just obscene elite/monster damage (Shade), thus attracting large crowds of less-skilled players trying to emulate the skilled users. These players typically sour the experience of others by playing "selfishly", often diving into crowds or charging at monsters to try and get the most kills, only to die unceremoniously and leave the group one member short (likely resulting in a total party kill afterwards). Her defenders like her because of those same reasons, as a high-skill Kerillian is almost vital in any situation due to her possessing the greatest DPS capability among the group, and a competent elf main could carry the team far if they know what they're doing.
• Contested Sequel: The game received praise for better progression, more enemy variety with the introduction of Chaos (and new Skaven units), and expanding upon the class system. Its first wave of DLC (from March 2018 to March 2020), however, was massively controversial. After the first two DLCs (Shadows Over Bögenhafen and Back to Ubersreik) were considered underwhelming, the first major update to the game in Winds of Magic had high expectations going in - but the general consensus is that, not only was Winds of Magic absolutely dreadful on its own merits,^note Almost nobody liked any of the new additions that came with it other than the new weapons. together with the 2.0 Patch that accompanied it it actually ruined the game. The DLC has a 31% positive review score on Steam and the overall score for the main game itself also dropped considerably, while the active player numbers at the time of its release plummeted. The Curse of Drachenfels DLC at the end of the wave (which had similar content to Bögenhafen but was free, and also coincided with fixes to the Weaves mode) was welcome but did almost nothing to mitigate this. However, player count jumped back up (higher than pre-Winds levels) with the release of the Chaos Wastes DLC, which was itself preceded by further balance changes to Winds of Magic's own additions.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Chaos Warriors are just nasty. They're massive and thickly-armoured, so body blows are out of the question, and hitting their tiny heads is quite difficult. And if one of them hits you with their massive axe (which is likely, since he has huge, sweeping attack arcs), it'll take off a nauseatingly-high amount of your health. This is more of a question of builds though; a team with lots of anti-armor specialists will have little trouble with them, as aside from raw durability they have little going for them with slow attacks and speed.
  • To an extent Plague Monks and Chaos Savages qualify. They have a bit more health than their kin, normal attacks don't interrupt their attack pattern and trying will probably get you killed if there's more than one, forcing you to weather the storm for an opening to attack them or hope your teammates kill them while you defend yourself.
  • Blightstormers can be infuriating to deal with on higher difficulties. Not only do the vortexes they conjure disorient and toss you into random places, sometimes off of ledges or into an enemy mob, they also stagger you heavily for a few seconds after you're ejected, effectively making you unable to dodge, and on Champion and up also deal disturbing amounts of damage with each tic. They make this even more unbearable by hiding behind massive hordes of enemies or in hard-to-spot locations, coupled with their Teleport Spam, which makes it hard to tag them, and even harder to kill them before they do the same to you. If a monster spawns on these difficulties along with a horde, and a Blightstormer feels like joining in (some times more than one), be prepared for a very crushing wipe.
  • The Beastmen in general were considered disproportionately difficult on release for their absurdly tanky health, high damage, massive spawn numbers bordering on Zerg Rush, almost-nonexistent staggering, generous stagger cancel, high mass making them harder to cleave, ability to hit through blocks, and their propensity for appearing at inopportune moments. Even the basic Ungors had unexpectedly high attack-range with their spears. On lower difficulties they weren't as much of a threat, but players despised them on Legend and Cataclysm, especially if they were accompanied by Wargors (which there will be, many at once), as the standards they place constantly heal and buff other Beastmen, while the huge mobs in front will just body-block it while rapidly pushing players back into a chokepoint where they will get overwhelmed and die. As if it's not bad enough, completing Dark Omens will add the Beastmen units to the standard spawning list, thus letting them appear in previous maps, even though they weren't designed for Beastmen combat in mind.^note The Beastmen were ostensibly designed for open-map combat with lots of legroom for dodging and kiting, as evident by how the Bestigor and the Standard Bearer work. Older maps, on the other hand, are full of tight corridors and chokepoints, therefore turning the act of cleaving fruitlessly through the dense hordes just to stay alive into an exercise of futility and frustration Subsequent patches have fixed them, first by nerfing basic Ungors and Gors to be merely on par with Clanrats and Marauders respectively (in terms of health, damage, hitboxes, and cleave resistance), second by reducing the spawn rates of Wargors to make them much less common, and third by only making Beastmen spawn on outdoors maps.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • Vermintide got good reviews (78/100 on Metacritic) and sold over 2 million copies. Vermintide 2 got better reviews (82/100 on Metacritic) and outdid the first game's revenue (including DLC packs) in its first two weeks on sale. On a gameplay level it's an objective improvement in pretty much every way - combat is faster and smoother, the enemy variety is more than doubled by the addition of the Rotbloods and new Skaven types, there are over twice as many weapons to play with, the characters are actually differentiated from each other in ways other than appearance and weapon selection, and the 15 career skill trees and active abilities add a lot of variety.
  • The DLC released during the second season (Chaos Wastes and the premium careers) is generally agreed to be a win after the contentious first few DLCs, especially Winds of Magic. Not only are the maps well-designed and big enough to more than double the area of the base game (Chaos Wastes alone is already on par with it), but the new Roguelite game mode adds a lot of replay value. The new careers and weapons have also been well-received. This DLC also moves the metaplot forward after the first few had mostly been unrelated side adventures. As a bonus, Chaos Wastes makes Wind's new enemies free to fight while (mostly) fixing their balance.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The game itself is often called "Ratclick" because the main gameplay is... well, clicking on rats.
  • A Ranger Veteran build based around using the Grudgeraker is popularly known as the "Doomguy" build because it has the player weave in and out to enemies for maximum effectiveness with their double-barreled Grudgeraker shotgun, just like the use of the super shotgun of Doom II.
  • Sienna's (vague) middle-age, teasing persona, finding burning rats to be endlessly fun and occasionally outright referring to herself as "Auntie Sienna" when she uses Burning Head has lead to many fans referring to her as "Fire Auntie".
  • The pig atop Saltzpyre's head for the "Stolen Swine" headwear is popularly known as "(Holy) Pigmar".
  • Saltzpyre had also gained the nickname of "Sigmar Male", which is a play on his religion and the "Sigma male'' meme after it became popular in mainstream contexts. That Saltzpyre later became a Warrior Priest of Sigmar further fans the fire.
  • "Feetmaiden" for Kerillian's Alarielle the Radiant-themed Handmaiden costume, due to her going bare-footed while wearing it. The amusement of her "dainty elf feet" being exposed to the elements was quite considerable. Joking about Kruber being attracted to this using his Foot(Feet) Knight class or applying said title to foot fetishists is about as likely.
• Fanon: It's fairly common in the fandom to assume this game takes place in the Alternate Universe of Total War: Warhammer rather than the one of the tabletop, mainly because the Total War: Warhammer games allow the forces of Order to defeat Chaos and avert the End Times, which otherwise render the Vermintide games All for Nothing. The Skaven diplomat can mention Saltzpyre by name, Clan Fester was added as an NPC faction in the Doomsayers update for Total War: Warhammer II, and the Red Moon Inn can be built as a special Landmark in the settlement of Ubersreik (adding a hero of each of the protagonist's classes to that city's garrison), so there's some official support for this on Creative Assembly's part.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In the beta, Kruber's Huntsman special ability. Its main purpose is to turn him invisible so he can set up an ambush. However, it also gave him a 5x raw damage bonus as well as 100% critical hit chance and armor-piercing for the entire duration of the ability. This was a game-breaker in its own right, but when combined with a melee weapon with a wide swing arc and a rotary handgun or blunderbuss it effectively turned into a 'Press F to Kill Everything' button that let him slaughter whole packs of Stormvermin and Chaos Warriors in one swing or shoot down a boss by himself in less than a second. This was almost immediately nerfed, with the damage multiplier being reduced from 5 to 1.5, then nerfed again to only apply to ranged damage.
  • Kerillian's Shade class due to its talents synergizing so well with its fast-recharging active ability Infiltrate, allowing her to inflict extreme damage at will. Patrols and monsters become a complete joke with a competent Shade on the team. Multiple nerfs, in particular to the Cloak of Mists talent, have only mildly balanced things. She remains the only class that community tournaments (e.g. Onslaught) will flat-out ban.
  • To lesser extent, a high-level Waystalker and mid-level Bounty Hunter both have effectively infinite ammunition with good play and the right bonuses, since the Waystalker gets a talent that gives her ammunition when she uses her special ability and the Bounty Hunter gets one that makes shots affected by his fast-charging reset-heavy passive not cost ammunition. Combined with a Legendary weapon ability that returns ammunition on a headshot and neither of them will ever run out unless they resort to A-Team Firing. Now combine this with their talents that massively enhance their ranged weapon damage.
    • In general, some players believe most of the ranged classes (aside from the Ranger Veteran, given it is far less capable of shooting freely without running out of ammunition) trivialize the game even on the hardest difficulties.
  • Another significant bug that was fixed also caused Kruber's Huntsman special ability to make him have no reload time, allowing him to fire a handgun at a speed like it was an automatic firearm.
  • The Natural Bond trait found on Exotic or Veteran-tier necklaces is incredibly powerful at any level above Recruit. It gives the character a slow natural regeneration (1 HP every 5 seconds) in exchange for healing items only providing temporary HP instead of actual healing (although they still clear wounds). Considering one of the biggest challenges of higher difficulty levels is the rarity of healing items, the benefit drastically outweighs the tradeoff.
    • With the temporary HP on cleave nerf introduced by Patch 2.0, it has since noticeably fallen out of favor with Champion+ players, who would typically pick Barkskin or Boon of Shallya instead, to make the most of the smaller healing amounts.
  • In the Chaos Wastes, there are certain potions and boons that can utterly snap a level in two, and are considered far more desirable than others by players:
    • The Potion of Infinite Bombs. For 10 seconds, the drinker can throw bombs infinitely allowing them to melt hordes, patrols and bosses alike. It's even more broken when combined with certain boons and classes, with special mention going to a boon that grants a player the effect of a potion they're carrying half the time they activate their class ability. Combine this with a class with a short ability charge rate, like a Handmaiden Kerillian, and that player becomes a mobile artillery piece. And then slap an increased bomb blast radius boon or a boon that makes the player throw two bombs instead of one, and you effectively become the Patron God of Grenade Spam.
    • The Potion of Life Steal, as the name implies, steals the health of killed enemies and adds it to your own health tally. While it doesn't clear wounds, it's stupidly potent, healing massive amounts of health with just a few Skavenslaves killed. If a player is low on health, they only need to wait for a horde, drink the potion, and fire away to be back at full health in moments, saving valuable healing items.
    • Vaul's Anvil will automatically block any attack that hits the player as long as they have their melee weapon out, only having to recharge if the player's block is broken at any point. This effectively means that a player can swing at a horde as much as they please without having to worry about defending themselves as long as they can avoid having their block broken. For weaker classes, it buys valuable peace of mind when in melee. For tankier classes, a horde battle becomes a battle of attrition in their favour. The Witch Hunter Captain (who it bears reminding has a passive that allows stamina-free blocks against light attacks coming from the front) benefits massively from Vaul's Anvil, becoming almost invincible against most hordes and able to revive allies in all but the most dire of situations.
    • Taal's Twinned Arrow adds an extra projectile to any ranged attacks without consuming any extra ammo. This effectively provides a permanent double damage upgrade to the ranged attacks of the player lucky enough to get it. Cue a javelin-wielding Kerillian one-shotting almost everything or a Crank Gun-wielding Bardin taking a monster from full health to nothing in seconds.
    • Manann's Tempest causes lightning to shoot out from the point of impact of a critical hit (melee and ranged), striking up to five extra enemies around the poor sap who took the initial blow. If a class can reliably land critical hits, then this can either inflict vital extra damage on a monster or elite, or help thin out hordes even more quickly. And if a class can land blows rapidly as well? Well, expect to see lightning spewing everywhere when a horde comes to call. It is equally powerful on both melee and ranged classes and is a ridiculous force multiplier no matter the build.
  • As soon as it came out, Kerillian's Sister of the Thorn class broke the game balance in two. She had two massive nerfs within as many months of release, and the game's official forum and subreddit are still inundated with demands to nerf her further because a good Sister can make it hard for others to actually play the game before she kills everything.
    • Although supposedly designed as a support class, a Sister of the Thorn's damage output can be frightening when kitted to proc bleed, which causes heavy Damage Over Time, especially when Radiant is off cooldown and Thornwake is modified with the Bloodrazor Thicket talent. Just chug a potion of Concentration and go to town on the nearest monster with your ultimate spam and it will be dead in no time, or better yet, a cluster of heavy-hitting enemies like Stormvermin or beastmen, who really like to huddle together into a deathball that your party would normally have trouble dealing with. Even if you don't feel like using Thornwake to deal damage, it can still serve a good supporting purpose by blocking warpfire and ratling gun shots while it's up, and it can be modified to explode upon expiring, causing enemies hit to take more damage for a short while.
    • Special and Elite enemies are also turned into a laughing stock with the Deepwood Staff's Curse of Anraheir, which suspends them helplessly in the air while your teammate can freely plink away at them, or take advantage of the breathing room to thin out the trash mobs. An ally being pinned by a Gutter Runner or Packmaster? Just use the alternate fire to pluck them right off of your friend like a ragdoll. The best thing about Deepwood Staves is that they work on everything short of monsters and Lords, and at practically infinite range to boot, meaning a Chaos patrol can be made short work of by an experienced player. It really says something when Convocation of Decay, long agreed upon to be That One Level on Legend+, is made practically trivial by the Kerillian player just plucking specials and Chaos Warriors up to relieve pressure off their team, giving them breathing room that they would not get otherwise.
    • Her Briarwood Javelins hit like a truck when thrown, and come with a melee attack that is surprisingly damaging and long-ranged, more so most of the other characters' dedicated melee weapons (it can tear a boss to shreds on Legend in seconds with Radiant Inheritance active). Which wouldn't be that big of a deal, except that the javelins also have infinite ammo by default, and recharge nigh-instantly, negating the main disadvantage of ranged weapons.
• Game-Breaking Bug: An occasional glitch on some maps sees Ratling Gunners spawn and shoot at the player...through walls. This will probably mean the players are going to be mowed down like it's World War I.
  • The classical "falling-through-the-world" bug common to 3D games can occur. If this person had a grimoire and/or tome, those are totally gone too.
  • Latency issues can cause players to get struck by the likes of, say, Chaos Warriors' highly-damaging overhead downward swing attack when they are pretty sure they dodged to the side of it long before it landed.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Kruber will admonish Saltzpyre for not keeping his guard up while sword fighting. Saltzpyre's default class, Witch Hunter Captain, has the only stamina free blocking ability in the game, allowing him to block and parry enemies' strikes perfectly. And for further salt in the wound, it's specifically mentioned as being due to Saltzpyre's exemplary swordsmanship.
• Goddamn Bats: A few.
  • Skavenslaves and Plague Cultists exist to be this. They come in huge numbers and don't do much damage, but can wear a player down or keep them in place for bigger threats to come clobber them. There's always one behind you ready to hit you and slow you down or spoil your aim at a vital moment.
  • Stormvermin are likewise not much of a threat to a prepared group, but both varieties are irritating. Both are armored, requiring headshots or armor-piercing attacks to effectively damage. The ones with polearms hit surprisingly hard and spawn in great numbers on higher difficulties, sometimes appearing in organized patrols of 8-12 that someone will inevitably pull aggro from. The ones with shields can't have their shields broken like their lesser kin and can take a while for an uncoordinated group to kill since they have to be staggered or flanked before you can hurt them.
  • Blightstormers are the most irritating enemies in the game, due to their ability to cast their blightstorm spell through walls, making it incredibly difficult to draw a bead on them and kill them to end the spell. This was unintended and FatShark attempted to fix this in patch 3.3, although they noted that Blightstormers can still summon a storm when you're not looking and then teleport away, creating the appearance of a no-LOS cast.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The wheat fields in the beginning of Against the Grain was famous in the closed beta for making it nigh impossible for the shorter Bardin to see anything without jumping. Annoying for the Bardin, inherently amusing for everyone else. "Would you like me to find a box, lumberfoot?"
  • Huntsman Kruber once had a hilarious bug (now sadly patched) where you could stack reload speed and cooldown buffs, chug a Potion of Concentration, and temporarily turn a 15th century matchlock into an AK-47. Eat lead, ratmen!
  • Players can cancel their momentum for any of the dashing-along-the-ground abilities by pressing block as they charge, allowing them to benefit from their abilities without being an utter Leeroy. Using said abilities while reviving an ally also does not interrupt the reviving (though this may mean your newly-revived ally is now entirely surrounded).
  • For about a week since the official release of Winds of Magic (two for those who pre-purchased the DLC), Bardin's new throwing axes count as explosive barrels for whatever reason, and could be tossed where relevant to instantly bypass the need for one. This trivializes the process of getting certain grimoires, and makes a complete mockery of Barrels of Fun and Demolitionist, the two speedrun challenges included in the Back to Ubersreik DLC. FatShark patched it out within a week.
  • As polarizing as it was, Winds of Magic wasn't without its upsides, though clearly unintentional. After the DLC dropped, a bug was found where players could easily cheese the finale of Convocation of Decay, which had graduated to That One Level status by then, simply by having one player jumping down to the ritual circle and die. The rest of the gang can simply camp on the ridge overlooking the site as the progression bar fills on its own and ride out the ball-busting finale without breaking a sweat. The bug stood for almost a year, until it was finally squashed with the release of Season 3, though much to the chagrin of players, who will now have to do the level manually in order to achieve that Last Lousy Point before they can unlock certain completion challenges.
  • As a Warrior Priest of Sigmar, Saltzpyre's "Incorruptible" trait (innate 100% Curse Resistance) interacts in an unexpected way with resistance imparted from trinkets. By taking both and thus increasing Saltzpyre's Curse Resistance over 100%, it actually wraps around the integer and boosts your maximum HP up beyond the normal Cap when the party acquires grimoires. This appears to have been an early bug from Warrior Priest's initial release that FatShark have deliberately left unpatched.
• Ho Yay: Saltzpyre and Kruber. While they've always been particularly friendly with each other since Vermintide 1, the new dialogue in 2 implies Saltzpyre cares a great deal about his fellow Empire military man, often offering to mentor or recommend him to the Order or ask about his wellbeing, origins, etc... Likewise, Kruber also seems much more respectful of the Witch Hunter, perhaps moreso than anyone else. Their increased camaraderie and bond prompted no end of questions from Kerillian, much to Kruber's annoyance.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • On release, Kerillian's Handmaiden career, due to its original Passive (uninterruptible revives) being made pointless by the "Block Revive" tactic present in the game. It was often considered the worst career in the game at the time. Subsequent buffs fixed it (e.g. its passive was changed to increased dodge distance and stamina regeneration, while the revive buff was changed to a passive perk that also lets her revive the target in half the time and restores 20 health while doing so), as did new weapons (the Handmaiden-exclusive Spear and Shield weapon basically makes her invulnerable when coupled with her dodging and blocking buff talents, while the Moonfire Bow and Javelin both render her lack of ammo regeneration a moot point), and it's now considered solidly mid-tier.
  • Sienna's Battle Wizard career takes the ignominious title for the height of unpopularity for its ability being awkward to use and its main passive effect being even less likely to work for you... except for Cataclysm and Chaos Wastes runs, where a Battle Wizard with a firesword and coruscation/beam staff has comical damage output and remains effective against practically all kinds of enemies, while also gaining up to 30% damage reduction on her talents alone and high Temporary HP gain from the firesword, subverting Glass Cannon. She's widely considered the best character in the game and a borderline Game-Breaker in these circumstances.
  • Kruber's Huntsman career has become this as time has gone on, due to being objectively inferior at its own niche to Kerillian's Shade, and forcing the team to skimp on the far more useful Mercenary or Grail Knight.
  • Depending on who you ask, Bardin's Outcast Engineer is either Difficult, but Awesome, Awesome, but Impractical, or just useless. The Outcast Engineer's gatling is undeniably a riot to use, a powerful horde clearer that also melts bosses' HP in no time at all. However the Engineer's ability to take damage in return is woeful. He has no options to provide team-wide buffs at a difficult time or buy himself some space if he gets surrounded, he is purely a damage dealer; and what's worse, using the gatling against hordes deprives your teammates of the crucial chance to gain Temporary HP (making them all more frail overall); while firing the gatling Bardin is vulnerable because he moves and turns as slow as molasses and the player naturally suffers from tunnel vision^note  you can't exactly quickly turn and peek behind you because the gun needs to whirr back up when you stop, and using the gun forces one to focus on the targets in front of you anyway. Not helping is the Engineer's immediate competitor is the Ranger Veteran career, who has many of the Outcast Engineer's strengths with none of his shortcomings; the Ranger Veteran can support his teammates and clear out of bad spots easily thanks to his Smoke Out while sniping specials, and match or even exceed the Engineer's damage output against big monsters and bosses with the right build. Basically, Outcast Engineer has a high skill floor and if you do master him then the payoff simply isn't there. Career tier lists almost consistently put the Outcast Engineer at the bottom.
• Memetic Mutation
  • State is trusted.^note A debug message that pops up to indicate a lobby is not running unapproved mods. Will often be used whenever anything that sounds like a conspiracy theory is mentioned.
  • "Shelf the elf." "Buff the elf."^note Kerillian has proven very difficult to balance resulting in her being either overpowered or underpowered at all points since closed beta.
  • Burblespue Halescourge's name.^note Due to his mouthful of a name most people will intentionally misspell Bubbleskirt Failpurge's name every time they type it.
    • It's since become an Ascended Meme, as even the dev team spells his name differently in every sentence in official patch notes. In the Chaos Wastes, Bardin may reminisce on fighting Blunderstoat Habitat. A narration from Grail Knight Kruber for the Halescourge level has Kruber says can't remember Halescourge's name and expresses that he's pretty sure Lohner makes them up anyway.
  • Similarly, almost nobody ever call Fort Brachsenbrücke by its proper name anymore. They'd rather use "easier" to read nicknames like BaconBrunch or BaconBurger. Even FatShark themselves got in on it, too, with every patchnote related to the level having a different misspelling of its name like poor Halescourge up above.
  • After listening to Mercenary Kruber's Morale Boost ability, no one calls our heroes "the heroes" anymore. They're "...The bloody Ubersreik Five!..." now. (Or four, doesn't matter)
  • One of the voicelines played by Saltzpyre's Bounty Hunter class' ability, Locked and Loaded, "War funding!" is popularly misheard as "Dwarf hunting!". This is compounded by the likelihood of uncoordinated teams seeing Saltzpyre accidentally shooting a Slayer Bardin leaping toward their mutual target from both of them using their abilities at the same time.
  • Steam tank driver Saltzpyre.^note A meme spawning from one of Saltzpyre's quotes in the seasonal map A Quiet Drink, where he laments his career choice out loud when intoxicated and reveals that he has always been wanting to be a steam tank driver instead. Cue the massive outcry for such a class to be released after the first post-launch career, Kruber's Grail Knight, was introduced, which grew significantly in fervor especially after Kerillian has gained her Sister of the Thorn kit, making Saltzpyre the next in line
  • The Hoggars Bridge incident.^note If Kerillian, Kruber and Saltzpyre are all present on a map and Kerillian racks up several kills, it'll lead to Kerillian talking about her exploits at Hoggars Bridge. Players are prone to reference this conversation given how often it happens (Kerillian, Kruber and Saltzpyre is a very common combination), along with Saltzpyre's outraged contribution at the end
  • Kruber's bombastic "OOOIII!!!" shout as a Mercenary is arguably his most memorable voice line in the entire game, with it frequently being used in fan edits and memes related to him.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • A fully charged career skill is signaled by a soft "schwing!", which lets you know that it's now time to open up a can of whoopass on whatever's giving you grief.
  • If you're a ranged character, hearing the meaty "thunk!" headshot sound effect can be very cathartic, especially if the killfeed then pops up one or several Special or Elite kills. Waystalkers in particular can expect to hear a rapid series of these when unleashing a Trueflight Volley into a mob, as those arrows are guaranteed headshots.
• Never Live It Down: Lohner doesn't actually talk about pumpkins very much, but the popularity of one of his narrations for the Screaming Bell mission which has him say "Then you win a pumpkin, you lucky bleeder." ended up leading to additional writing where a variety of characters consider Lohner to be obsessed with pumpkins.
• Scenery Gorn: The new graphics engine makes for absolutely beautiful scenery - but that includes all the carnage wrought by the Skaven/Chaos alliance.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The gear re-rolling system. Nobody likes it, especially re-rolling properties. Due to its extreme reliance on RNG, re-rolling a piece of gear has a disturbingly high chance to give Dump Stats all around, or very low values on the off chance that the stats are desirable. Even re-rolling veteran gear is mind-numbing despite the values always coming out maximized, as the stats granted are still random. To further add insult to injury, the Athanor crafting system introduced with Winds of Magic perfectly solves every aspect of this issue, but it only applies to Weaves, the one mode almost nobody plays.
    • Despite the cheap cost of a single re-roll, the fact that you need to do this at least five dozen times per gear piece really adds up, which presents another problem, as re-rolling properties require blue and green dust, which could only be gotten by smelting gear of those rarities, which are quite uncommon by the time gear scores have stopped fluctuating enough to re-roll. It's not an uncommon sight for players to have venerable stockpiles of Amber dust, but no green or blue. Thankfully, an early patch gave players the option to convert surplus dust of higher quality to lower ones, allowing those with plenty of Amber dust to transmute them into blue and then green, but even then this is still very impractical in the long run.
  • The inability to vote for map restarts or changes have made many upset, to say the least. As it stands, the game will always bring players back to the Keep after a mission, regardless of success or failure, thus causing a lot of wasted time fiddling with menus just to get back into the action, whereas in the first game, there were clearly labeled options in the post-game screen to let the party decide on what to do next. This is not so much detrimental as annoying and time-wasting of a mechanic than anything.
  • Host migration. Due to the game's peer-to-peer connection model, the host of a match is regarded as the "server". Should the host leave, another player is selected to be server, and everyone else is given the option to rejoin, though doing so restarts the current map from the beginning and wipes all progress made. Not helping the matters is the rather long wait time each migration, so most players will just quit and find something else to do by themselves.
  • The way dialogue is triggered. A lot of conversations that are critical to understanding the characters and plot only play in Taal's Horn Keep if said characters are present. The problem with this is threefold. One, as in the missions, anything can interrupt Keep exchanges and cause the rest of the conversation to stop playing - including comments by Lohner, who may also chime in at any time with no warning, usually to say the same few lines amounting to "stop talking and start the mission." Two, the conversations always play in random order even though many were clearly written sequentially, so you may get two characters referencing a previous exchange that you haven't heard or hear the same exchange three times in a row while trying to get a new one. Three and most important: there are no bots in the Keep, so the only way to hear these dialogues is to have other players pick the correct character and class and then hang out in the lobby. As most players will understandably want to start the game as soon as possible, many before the lobby is even full, this leaves a pretty tiny window to hear anything. Fortunately the wiki has all of their Keep exchanges transcribed (but not all the in-mission ones).
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: In a sense. While the gameplay difficulty hasn't decreased by much, if anything it's been cranked up massively over the months since the release of Winds of Magic, various Skaven units have been hit with the Nerf bat and are thus much less of a threat compared to their original counterparts.
  • Nearly all Skaven infantry have lost their ability to shove players back, and are now content with simply charging up to them and stab them in the dongliz. This makes fighting them that much less annoying compared to the first title, as you're no longer continually staggered by that one Stormvermin you're trying to bang on the head, and no longer will you be pushed off of ledges while fending off a horde of rats.
  • On the topic of Stormvermins, their overall HP has been reduced to the point a solid charged attack could do them in very quickly, and a single bomb will decimate them even on Legend, whereas one in Vermintide 1 could take anywhere between two to four hits to drop. They also patrol in much lesser numbers now compared to before, though they make up for this by dealing more damage per hit and introducing shieldbearers.
  • Zig-zagged in the case of the Ratling Gunners, Gutter Runners, and Globadiers. While they're nowhere near as tough as they used to be, they now deal much more damage per attack, and Ratling Gunners received a hefty buff to their fire rate along with a greatly reduced spinning time.
  • The Chaos Wastes expansion is usually agreed to be easier than the base game, due to how broken the right combination of boons and miracles can make the heroes. The enemies get buffs too, and the heroes also have to deal with hazards not present in Reikland, but that hardly balances out how strong some of their boosts are. The fact that its release coincided with strong new classes and weapons added to this.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The Winds of Magic DLC trailer shows a human couple being forced to abandon their baby because he was born a Beastman; said baby was later saved by a Gor and inducted into a Beastman tribe. He grows up into a dangerous warrior in his own right and even keeps the necklace they left him with as a child. Years later, he confronts them during an attack and eventually kills and starts eating them. It really highlights the personal tragedy of this couple and their son and the general tragedy of being a Beastman.
    • The worst part? By the time of the deadly reunion, the necklace has been deliberately damaged. The Beastman grew up to hate his parents, likely for abandoning him!
  • Saltzpyre's whispers to himself in the Chaos Wastes DLC. The Witch Hunter had always been self-righteous and pompous, but those same traits gave him an unshakable faith that propelled the team ever forward. And while they mocked him, to a member they all respected his devotion and bravery. But after everything he's witnessed, he just sounds so broken and helpless. He's steadily losing hope and outright begs his god to give him a sign, anything, to get him through the night, as he simply can't bear to watch the land he's pledged his life to defend fall deeper and deeper into hell no matter what he does. In his slipping mental state he's even begun to suspect his comrades of plotting against him, after slowly growing closer to them throughout their previous adventures. His final line and a later Lohner's Chronicle post at least imply he'll find something to restore his faith. Sigmar knows he needs it.
  • Kerillian's state after becoming a Sister of the Thorn. The final result of the Citadel of Eternity, combined with the soul-changing process required to gain her new powers, had a very noticeable effect on her. Her new Keep dialogue is almost devoid of her smug and jokey demeanor; instead she's somber, among other things outright telling Kruber that there's no hope for the world, telling Sienna that Lileath doesn't answer her prayers as she once did, asking Bardin if she made a mistake in becoming what she is, and sincerely hoping she'll be able to remember her friends "if [she's] allowed." You can still see flashes of her usual personality in the new dialogue, such as when she throws out some usual banter with Bardin, reacts with amusement at Kruber's offer to beat up the High Elf Everqueen if it'll make her feel better, or sarcastically claims to an annoyed Saltzpyre that he's jealous of her new knowledge, but it's clear that whatever she saw at the Citadel of Eternity grounded her down and she's now fully fatalistic. A view that's quite justified if you know what's coming.^note Basically, the worst case scenario is that the Ubersreik Five all die pointlessly when the planet explodes, then have their souls consumed by Chaos, reincarnated, or consumed by Chaos and then reincarnated later. The best case scenario is that they are among the chosen few mortals who get a safe trip to the Mortal Realms, which Sigmar's pantheon secures from Chaos and rebuilds civilization in, and they potentially get to live the rest of their lives in Sigmar's golden and prosperous Age of Myth... while fully knowing that everything they tried to protect in the old world is gone (which, for someone as tied to the Weave as Kerillian is, would be unimaginably burdensome). As a bonus, even in this optimistic scenario all of Kerillian's companions will die in a relative blink of an eye to her (unless they're fortunate enough to become Soulbound as well), even Bardin and Grail Knight Kruber, because as a Sister she's now not only long-lived but biologically immortal.
    Kerillian: I'm... I'm sorry, Kruber. Truly. What I am now... it's like the best of what I used to be, and the worst. Does that make any sense to you?
    Kruber: I know you just apologised for something. Never heard that before. Might be there's hope for you yet.
    Kerillian: There's no hope for any of us. Not one branch. Not one leaf.
    • The above exchange hits especially hard if you're familiar with the Lohner's Chronicle posts leading up to her class reveal. One night she told the others a Wood Elf myth about the king and queen of the woods to soothe their worries, telling them the moral was that there's always hope. Lohner noted that while it did actually make them feel better (except for Saltzpyre, who had to excuse himself), Kerillian's own demeanor indicated she might not have believed herself. On another night, she left for Athel Loren out of the blue while telling no one except perhaps Sienna, leaving Kruber depressed by her absence, to the point Lohner had to take measures to stop him from following her. When she finally gets back after days if not weeks of absence, Kruber tries to strike up one of their usual conversations with his usual enthusiasm only for her to snap at him in an uncharacteristically vicious way (for reasons he can't understand), which he says genuinely hurts his feelings. Then after apologizing, she essentially confirms Lohner's speculation, that her story was only for the others' benefit and she has no hope about the future of either the group or the planet. That the same fatalism driving her despair also results in her being more open about her care for the others only slightly lessens the blow.
  • Sienna becoming a necromancer has caused a rift in the group that may never heal. Bardin, Kruber, and Kerillian still vouch for her, but none of them can deny that they're worried about what she's become. Saltzpyre, however, has every intention of killing her, has in fact already tried once, and the main thing stopping him from trying again is knowing that he'd have to get through the others first. What's worse is that he truly does not want to do it, and he sounds heartbroken that someone he'd come to respect and see as a friend has fallen so low.
• That One Boss:
  • Chaos Spawns can attack very quickly, and its attack patterns include a rapid series of three or four hits that can quickly drain your stamina, a slower swing that will either be blockable but knock players back a lot or similar-looking grab that can't be blocked and has them munch on a player which heals them before tossing them about unless interrupted from being hit by certain hero abilities or bombs. The Spawn's headshot location is also the rather small spot of its mouth which is further challenging to hit due to its erratic movement while it attacks and small downtime between attacks. It took several years for a patch to come and make it so Chaos Spawn more or less need to decide after grabbing a player if they want to use the more low-damage bite to regain health, or do its more high damaging slam attack when in the past they'd go back and forth between both, effectively healing itself while also doing absurd amounts of damage.
  • Like its Beastmen kin, the Minotaur is easily the most aggravating monster to fight, due to its difficult to telegraph animations, usual fixation on bumrushing a single player with deceptively long-reaching attacks that are hard to kite, and it being able to receive buffs and constant healing from nearby Beast banners.
  • Rasknitt and his pet Stormfiend are not hard to fight on Legend and Cataclysm as much as they are annoying. Essentially, you're forced to fight two bosses in one small arena, with one constantly raining high-damage lightning down on your head, and the other either ramming or hosing you down. And that's not getting into the constant spawning of fodder rats to poke at you from all directions, which come in much greater numbers compared to the waves that accompany the other bosses.
  • Nurgloth the Eternal. While the first half of his boss fight is relatively painless due to most of the threats coming from the add waves he spawn in to keep you busy, the larger threat he represents is the floor explosion mechanic that does considerable damage should you be caught in the highlighted rings on the ground. Then comes the second phase when Nurgloth reaches half health, where he will basically become a Lord-tier Minotaur that focuses almost entirely on one player for a short while, forcing them to keep their block up and retreat from him, all the while the adds will keep coming in non-stop and the floor mechanic further sows chaos in the tiny room where he is fought. This makes mistakes extremely punishing, as there usually won't be any breathing room to revive and rescue should somebody die, which they will, a lot.
  • A later update added Grudge Marked monsters to the Chaos Wastes. This means that random monsters in the wastes will have up to three modifiers applied to them to give them some kind of advantage and make them harder to kill. And some of these modifiers can turn any monster at all into That One Boss, leaving players praying that they don't show up or blend together:
    • Rampart: A monster with this modifier will No-Sell any ranged damage done to it, with only afterburn from a fire attack getting through. So Kerillian's arrows? Bardin's minigun and multiple bombs? Sienna's fire? Saltzpyre's super shot? Kruber's Huntsman ability? All useless. This deprives a lot of classes, such as the Bounty Hunter and Outcast Engineer, of their most useful tactics, forcing them to rely on comparatively-underpowered melee attacks. Someone playing an explicitly ranged class will likely spend most of their Pilgrims' Tokens improving their ranged attacks and picking buffs to improve their class' key skills, only for it to be completely invalidated by this trait.
    • Illusionist: At various intervals, the monster will create three copies of itself, each with lower health but just as much attack power and speed. If not dealt with quickly, this will end a run as players are overwhelmed by four monsters (cue nightmare scenarios like 4 Minotaurs or 4 Trolls vomiting on everything). Even tankier classes won't be of much use as they get flung away when they try to revive a downed teammate, and have to watch as they're pinned into a corner or helplessly tossed to and fro until their guard runs out. The fakes are individually weaker, but that doesn't matter when you won't get an opening to end them. And if you get rid of the monster's copies, they'll simply make more a few seconds later...
    • Shield-Shatter: You can't guard against the monster's attacks. It'll simply break straight through and slow your stamina regeneration on top of that. This lends itself poorly to surviving against the rapid attacks of a Chaos Spawn or Minotaur, where having to dodge all of its attacks is very difficult in ideal conditions, let alone during a horde event. Even tankier classes can be ripped apart like wet tissue paper.
    • Relentless: Much like Rampart, this modifier will completely prevent a number of classes' abilities, talents or bombs from staggering the monster which is a pretty big improvement for its chances, given the likes of a Foot Knight with a potion of Concentration could otherwise repeatedly stagger a monster until the team largely kills it or even just knock it off a ledge. This makes the other modifiers on them hurt even more since no matter how bad the other modifiers are, staggering the monster(s) and rendering them unable to attack the players could otherwise alleviate the issues caused by other attributes.
• That One Level:
  • Dark Omen, due to it being generally populated by Beastmen and full of long, narrow chokepoints that turn horde rushes into infuriating orgies, especially with Beast banners or worse, Minotaurs. Also beating it will add these annoying Beastmen into your other maps as well, potentially turning them all into That One Level.
  • Garden of Morr, mostly due to the pool of toxic chemicals at the end, which slows and damages you, and not the gigantic swarms of enemies bearing down on you.
  • Hunger in the Dark. Being an Escort Mission aside, the mine shafts are incredibly dark, tight and claustrophobic, which proves to be nightmarish when fighting special units and Beastmen. And to make things worse, one part of the level is essentially pitch-black, forcing you to stay within the minecart's aggravatingly-tiny cone of light to even be able to see further than your own nose. And Sigmar helps you if the game decides to throw a Beastmen horde or monster at you while you're at it. Heck, just fighting the rats alone here is annoying enough.
  • The Blightreaper, for similar reasons, though it gets much better after exiting the dark sewers.
  • Athel Yenlui got a lot of hate due to its combination of uneven terrain that blocks most movement-related career skills, thick foliage settings that hide dangerous special units like Blightstormers, and a ton of broken navmeshes that make it easy to get stuck, even for players.
  • Post-Winds of Magic, Convocation of Decay became the most hated map in the game by a mile, mainly for its end event alone. While it doesn't have the aforementioned Beastmen infesting the place, the final Hold the Line segment is cranked up to eleven with its special spawns and the sheer size of each fodder wave, up to and including several Chaos Warriors, Ratling/Warpfire rats, assassins, Packmasters, and Blightstormers ganging up on your party at the same time. And in such a small yet wide open arena, player life expectancy is usually measured in seconds, even on Champion. It's practically impossible to complete this level on Cataclysm without using an exploit, and even that was eventually patched out in Season 3. Short of extreme luck or incredibly tight team coordination, just getting through the finale in one piece is a lot harder than it ought to be.
  • Fort Brachsenbrücke is similarly hated on Legend and up due to the "throw everything under the sun at the players" nature of its end event, though unlike Convocation, the players are given a lot more legroom to wiggle about and avoid cheap shots from the enemy.
  • In the Chaos Wastes, some of the levels will be cursed by the Chaos Gods, which translates to a modifier across the entire level that stacks the odds against the players. Some curses are utterly dreaded by many, turning the stage into That One Level from their presence alone:
    • Blood Tornadoes, one of Khorne's curses, involves... well, tornadoes of blood being formed and moving across the level. Touching them hurts the victim and inflicts brief damage over time. There's very little warning when one will pop up, and while they don't throw the players around like a Blightstormer tornado would, there is absolutely no stopping them. They're absolutely relentless to boot, as a fresh one will spawn 5 seconds after the last one. What's worse is that enemies are completely unaffected by the tornadoes, meaning that hordes can just waltz right through them and finish you after the tornado shreds your health.
    • Skulls of Wrath has certain enemies drop skull tokens that, after a second or two, explode violently. If you're on a map with little room to move around (such as Holseher's Tower or the Pinnacle of Nightmares), it's very possible for a horde to box you in and force you to get hit by the explosion, which will ruin your health. As such, melee players have to be very careful that the enemy they just killed hasn't spawned a skull. The only consolation is that enemies can get hurt by the explosion, too... and set off an inescapable chain reaction of exploding skulls that can clear a whole wave and/or will kill you and your entire party. The computer teammates absolutely have no idea how to avoid these skulls, so anyone playing solo or without a full team will likely lose the computer teammates within a few fights.
    • Bolts of Change is one of Tzeentch's curses. Periodically, lightning bolts will fall from the sky which aren't difficult to avoid, but the danger comes if they hit an enemy, since it'll change that enemy into something else. Which translates to always turning an enemy into a special of some kind, such as a Ratling that shreds you at point-blank range, or a Gutter Runner that immediately pounces you. And woe betide you if multiple enemies get hit at once; it's not uncommon for a swarm consisting of a couple dozen Nurgle Cultists to get hit with the lightning and turn them all into Chaos Warriors.
    • Miasma of Pestilence is one of Nurgle's curses which covers the entire level in a poisonous mist that shrinks a player's maximum health more and more the longer they stand in it. The only way to cure it is to stand in the dome of a purifying torch that must be carried throughout the level. Not only does this deprive a player of their weapons in favour of the weaker torch, but every other player has to stick very close to the torch-holder at all times lest their health start getting drained, and the dome is quite small.
    • Baleful Empathy, one of Slaanesh's curses, causes any damage taken to be shared with all teammates standing nearby. Which means that a defensive player can still lose a huge amount of health through no fault of their own if standing too close to another. Which, in a game like this, is very much encouraged.
• That One Sidequest: Many of Okri's Challenges can be incredibly annoying to complete.
  • The three Vanquisher challenges for the Grail Knight career demand that you complete all three Acts of the game, sans Skittergate, on Legend or Cataclysm, without failing a single mission each time. Keep in mind, managing to clear a level at all on Legend demands not only your best, but that of your teammates as well, on top of worrying about the whimsically-capricious AI director, effectively making each level a Luck-Based Mission. Failing a single mission wipes your progress for that entire Act, although thankfully the other ones are not affected.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Drunken mechanic of A Quiet Drink can be good for a few goofs and gaffs at first, especially when playing with your friends and randomly seeing somebody tripping over their shoelaces and downing themselves every now and then, but on higher difficulties it's an extreme nuisance that can end a run fast if a hangover happens while a horde rush is going on. A Hungover player cannot use their ultimate ability, have their vision blur and wobbly until they can get another drink, and if they have drunk too many bottles of ale, which they needed to stave off the effects of hangover to begin with, will eventually down themselves without even needing to take damage from enemies, thus stretching the group's supply thin and placing them all in even more danger than they're already in. There's a reason why A Quiet Drink on Legend+ is considered to be That One Level.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Players will generally agree that the greatswords of Kruber and Saltzpyre are the worst melee weapons in the game. They thin the unarmored hordes well, but not well enough for how very poorly they deal with armored enemies, which are far more prominent in the second game and gunpowder weapons can't hope to kill off Chaos Warrior patrols as effectively as they can with Stormvermin. Kerillian's greatswords on the other hand, while pretty weak compared to some of her other options, are generally agreed to not fall into this trope on account of the heavy charged attack (a long range armor-piercing thrust), her better options for dealing with armor without melee, and the fact that she swings it faster than Kruber and Saltzpyre do, making its horde-clearing abilities more notable.
  • Kerillian's worst melee weapon type is definitely the one-handed axe. It has very little horde-clearing ability or range, which it supposedly makes up for by being good against armor. But pretty much all of her weapons are at least decent against armor, some being flat-out better than the one-handed axes (such as the two-handed axes/glaives), all while being capable horde-clearers. As a result the one-handed axe sees almost zero use.
  • Similarly, very few players will recommend Bardin or Saltzpyre's axe by itself as a melee weapon choice, due to it having no useful horde clear at all, with every single attack being largely single target. This is exacerbated by the fact that the two classes that could potentially choose to use such a weapon because they have two melee slots, Bardin's Slayer and Saltzpyre's Warrior Priest, either have a straight upgrade exclusive to them (Bardin's dual axes and Saltzpyre's hammer and blessed tome), but in Warrior Priest's case can't even use the axe to begin with. It can just barely find use when paired with a Grudge Raker, usually on a Ranger Veteran who can offset the latter's shallow ammo pool, using the grudge raker's powerful bash attack and horde-sweeping blasts to deal with hordes. That said, it's still a lot of work for not a lot of actual performance as an anti-armor weapon to begin with (once again, the two handed axe has both much better anti-armor performance and a powerful horde-sweeping heavy attack .
  • Sienna's crowbill once again, falls into the category of "melee weapon with an entire moveset of purely single target swings", while her smaller pool of melee weapons still has more reliable anti-elite weapons like the mace.
  • Nobody uses Kruber's blunderbusses. Their short range and dismal performance against armor make them useless for special and elite sniping compared to his repeaters and handguns, and their niche (horde clearing) is simply far better done with melee. Worse, it's simply not that effective against hordes compared to Bardin's or Saltzpyre's equivalent shotgun weapons due to it's one shot reload and Kruber's only ranged focus class relying on headshots to restore ammo, which only counts the center pellet of a blunderbuss's blast.
  • Saltzpyre's repeater pistol falls into the dual issues of being a weak peashooter of a weapon, with piss-poor armor damage and needing 3 or more shots to down most specials even at short range, while also having a much shallower ammo pool than one'd expect for such a spammy weapon, with only 40 shots in reserve, equal to Kruber's repeater handgun, a weapon that does more than double the damage per shot, and less than his own repeating crossbow's 45, making it unable to sustain the rate of fire it's playstyle demands.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Special attack, which is only available on a tiny handful of weapons and not mentioned anywhere in-game^note Weapons with special properties are now noted on the inventory screen following the major UI overhaul. (nor even bound to a key at all by default). As it stands, this mechanic is only applicable in six cases: Saltzpyre's rapier^note Which triggers a weak shot from an off-hand pistol., brace of pistols ^note Which performs a purely cosmetic gun twirl., Reckoner hammer^note Which makes Saltzpyre punch the enemy with the force of a shove attack., and bill hook^note Which triggers a quick yank attack., Kerillian's Waystalker bow passive^note Which toggles a zoom., and Kruber's Spear and Shield ^note Which triggers a quick forward stab while blocking..