Hey Warm Gun, thank you for making this video, it explains Ironbreaker's basics quite clearly and makes it easy to understand as a newer player that's looking for a good build. As a player that has "enough" hours in Vermintide 2, especially as an Ironbreaker, I wanted to share a build that I use on Ironbreaker for those Ironbreakers that want a shielded weapon because in the video there were no builds for shield enjoyers. Hope you guys enjoy my build :). I'll explain every choice I made in very thorough detail, so I will make a TLDR version at the bottom of this comment if you just want the build and not the specifics. *_Build for: Ironbreaker Bardin_* *Talents:* 1-3-3-2-3-3 *Level 5 - Rock Breaker:* [Staggering enemies with a melee attack gives you Temp HP based on the stagger strength.] If you're using a shield weapon, this is the best talent for you to constantly generate very high amounts of temp hp by doing H1 (Shield Bash) attacks into block cancel. If you have enough stamina (preferably over half), you can incorporate pushes alongside the H1 attacks for extra cc, to make sure no enemy attacks get through your defence. It also synergizes very well with light attack hammer swipes (Light 1-2-3 spam), but it opens your defence up, so try not to use light attacks. A good shield bash into a horde will give you 15-20 temp HP with this talent. *Level 10 - Rune-Etched Shield:* [Blocking an attack gives Bardin and nearby teammates %2 power increase for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 5] I use Rune-Etched Shield over Blood of Grimnir [%5 power increase for each nearby ally] for two reasons: One: Tanking 4 attacks with your shield so 4 stacks of Rune-Etched Shield for %8 Power Increase + Opportunist + Enhanced Power (%7.5 Power Increase) makes you able to stagger Chaos Warriors doing light attacks with any attack on Legend/Cataclysm. Two: It helps immensely when you're alone and you're just trying to survive. It doesn't rely on teammates being alive so it's always working. Since this build is consistent with it's stagger breakpoints, this just helps you deal increased damage and reach one less hit kills on some elites, which helps a lot. If your teammates are alive, it gives all of your teammates a steady %10 increase in power, which is good for overall DPS and boss killing power. Two: It is always consistent, and it buffs your damage dealers. In Vermintide 2, things always has a chance to go wrong. You may be separated from your team in an instant. Rune-Etched shield will help you survive without any help from your teammates, if need be, by making you reach that crucial push breakpoint for stormvermin. If you are playing tightly and everything is going smoothly, that extra power you give to your teammates can help them reach a stagger breakpoint for a crucial stagger, or a damage breakpoint to kill an enemy in one less hit. Also increases your team's total boss damage, if you are the one holding the boss with your shield. *Level 15 - Enhanced Power:* [Increases total hero power by 7.5%. This is calculated before other buffs are applied.] Some people like going Bulwark instead of Enhanced Power, so I'll try my best to explain why it's strictly better than Bulwark. Enhanced Power simply gives you a %7.5 percent increase in total hero power (Yeah I know, in game text says %7, Fatshark is lying to you lol). It doesn't sound like it's good at all, but hear me out. %7.5 percent increase on power is an increase to your melee damage, range damage (no other level 15 talent gives you extra range damage), stagger and cleave. That power applies on every single attack you do, on every single enemy you hit. First of all, we use this extra power to reach crucial stagger breakpoints, and for more damage on our signature DPS combo with Shield and Hammer. So it's going to increase your first hit damage like Smiter does. Smiter's damage progression based on stagger levels look like this: _%20_ (Unstaggered - On the first enemy hit) - _%0_ (Unstaggered - On cleaving attacks for the second, third, ... enemy that got hit by the same attack) / _%20_ (Stagger 1) / _%40_ (Stagger 2) Enhanced Power's damage progression based on stagger levels look like this: _%7.5_ (Unstaggered) / _%29_ (Stagger 1) / _%50.5_ (Stagger 2) Bulwark's damage progression based on stagger levels look like this: _%0_ (Unstaggered) / _%20_ (Stagger 1) + %10 Damage Increase Bonus / _%40_ (Stagger 2) + %10 Damage Increase Bonus With Enhanced Power as Bardin, you are doing almost exactly the same amount of damage you'll be doing to enemies in Stagger 1, and more damage to enemies in Stagger 2 (Which you'll be putting enemies in often). Bulwark isn't pulling it's weight here, as it doesn't help you do extra damage to bosses (can't stagger with melee), it doesn't make you do higher melee damage (compared to Enhanced Power), it doesn't make you reach some handgun breakpoints, it doesn't you can't reach some crucial stagger breakpoints. The only thing it helps you with is Elite DPS, in which just a %10 increase probably isn't enough for most of your team to reach a damage breakpoint so you'll end up doing the same amount of hits on an Elite to kill it. (Only elite with enough HP to make Bulwark worthwhile is chaos warriors, even in that case you want the Enhanced Power anyways if you want to kill chaos warriosr faster. *Level 20 - Gromril Curse:* [When Gromril Armour is removed, knock all nearby enemies back.] This talent is the reason Ironbreaker is so, so, SO incredibly strong as a defensive class and gives the players with lower skill levels a chance at higher difficulties. This talent basically gives you a 20 second remove your mistake passive. Every 20 seconds when your passive that negates damage from one hit activates (Gromril Armour), it also comes with a staggering bomb attached to you. If anything does damage to you while your passive is up the damage is negated and every enemy around you is pushed back and staggered like it was hit with a shout ultimate. It can save you from tight situations, can give you time and space to recover your stamina/get out of a stuck position-corner. Gromril Curse even pushes off and staggers all bosses and specials like Hook Rat, Assassin, Leech. So you become the only class in the game that can save themselves from specials without outside help. Fun, isn't it? It's probably the strongest talent in the game. *Level 25 - Miner's Rhythm:* [%40 to stamina recovery after a charged attack.] This talent gives %40 to stamina recovery after you land a charged attack (Heavy Attack). Since you will be shield bashing often, this talent combined with %30 stamina recovery can give you a lot of stamina to play around with. You can do a push into enemies, do a H1 (Shield Slam) and hold right click to regain 1-2 stamina shields until anything has recovered to hit you back. It's a very powerful talent. If you learn to manage it without taking damage, you won't run out of stamina. *Level 30 - Booming Taunt:* [%50 larger radius on ultimate, 15 seconds of ultimate instead of 10 seconds] Honestly, level 30 talents for Ironbreaker is up for personal preference. You can go for Drengbarazi Oath to give your teammates a big boost in DPS, stagger and cleave, while giving yourself an easier time to stagger enemies with %20 increased power. It's a very solid choice. It lasts 10 seconds, and makes your DPS hungry teammates (looking at you, Bounty Hunter/Grail Knight) very, very happy. You can go for Oi Wazzok! if your team is very squishy or they are newer players, so you can take the boss' aggro on you consistently. I don't use this talent often because other talents are more effective/valuable. But this talent is extremely good if you have a Shade on the team (Boss doesn't turn back to attack Shade for 10 seconds) so she can destroy the boss by stabbing his back reliably, or if you're playing Chaos Wastes (Helps you alleviate some boss pressure and avoid unnecessary hits on the teammates, because your team most likely doesn't have enough dps to finish off the bost very fast at the beginning of the game. Also helps you stagger Relentless bosses, which are immune to stagger with any attack-ultimate except Oi Wazzok!) Now for my favourite Booming Taunt. That extra radius will make your shout reach and save the elf that tried to rush forward without the team and got hooked-assassinated-leeched, or helps you remove a larger chunk of aggression from your teammates so they can do damage more reliably to the enemies you pulled / helps the teammates get out of a very sticky situation they normally would die in. Those extra 5 seconds on your ultimate is life-saving if you're out of stamina and trying to regenerate stamina shields and may be the difference between dying or clutching. Your teammates will have an extra 5 seconds to work with less aggression on them to do whatever's needed to be done at that moment. I really enjoy Booming Taunt and run it consistently for a lot of QP matches. I go for Drengbarazi Oath if I know the skill level of my team and they know what they're doing. In the end, it's up to preference.
*Equipment:* *Melee Weapon:* Shield and Hammer Properties: %10 Power vs Skaven %30 Block Cost Reduction Trait: Opportunist BCR is always good to negate a big chunk of stamina damage that's done to your block when it's hit. Imagine this: If an enemy hits you with an attack that'd normally take away 4 stamina shields but you have %60 BCR in total, that attack is only going to do 1.6 stamina shields of damage. This property is extremely strong. It'll help you revive fallen teammates because you can block more attacks, it can help you block several more attacks during combat than you normally would, it'll keep you from completely being out of stamina so you won't get the long stamina regeneration phase and stun etc. Basically it's one of the best properties in the game and most of the time you should go for %60 BCR in total. (NOTE: BCR is always superior to +Stamina starting from 3 full stamina shields. If you have 2 stamina shields, you can go for +Stamina combined with BCR, it's never worth to take +Stamina alone by itself.) %10 skaven is for a very special breakpoint we are trying to reach. This breakpoint is being able to do a push to put a Plague Monk out of their chain attack animation, which is one of the most annoying and dangerous attacks in the game. (NOTE: All of these stagger breakpoints are for Legend/Cataclysm difficulties. Anything under these it's easier to stagger enemies so you won't need this much power.) To reach this breakpoint you need a Shielded Weapon + Opportunist + %25 Power vs Skaven/Berserkers in total. In my build, we are reaching this with: %20 Skaven from Melee Weapon + Charm + %7.5 Enhanced Power + Opportunist When you have these breakpoint, you can bully plague monks into oblivion, it's so much fun :D. Opportunist gives you %50 stagger power with every single attack you do to an enemy that is targeting you. It is an absurdly powerful trait with shield weapons and is an absolute must. It helps us reach a lot of important stagger breakpoints with all of our attacks. Tips for combat: Your main DPS Combo: Push Attack into Light Attack (Light 3) and repeat. Both attacks do good damage and also armor damage. Light 3 also has %10 extra crit chance. You use this combo to chew through hordes and elites. It also permanently staggers chaos warriors once you start to stagger them. This consumes a lot of stamina, so stop when half of your stamina is gone, and use a stagger/stamina recovery combo. Heavy Stagger Combo: Push into Shield Bash (Heavy 1) and repeat. This gives you a really good amount of Temp HP, also staggers every enemy in front of you so you can CC(crowd control) them for your squishy backline/melee DPS to kill. No enemy can attack you back, unless it's a chaos warrior overhead attack. This recovers stamina slowly because it's consuming a shield for pushing itself but it still recovers around 1-2 shields if done correctly. Very Low Stamina / Out of Stamina Combo: Shield Bash (Heavy 1) into Block Cancel and repeat. You use block canceling (pressing right click once to reset attack patterns) to do a Heavy 1 attack again. This is your best Temp HP gaining move, but it's very risky to attempt without your passive being up, since it comes out very slow compared to pushes. This helps you regen stamina very fast. Also it staggers practically everything short of a CW overhead, so it's very strong. Trash attacks may slip through the slow animation on Heavy 1 attacks. be careful. Low Density Horde Temp HP Gain Combo: Heavy 1 into Heavy 2 and repeat. Heavy 2 has great damage so if there's less than 10 trash enemies in front of you use this combo to kill them faster and get a bunch of hp in progress. Heavy 2 gets stuck in dense hordes, so I don't recommend using it on a horde larger than 10 enemies. *Range Weapon:* Handgun / Trollhammer Torpedo (Depending on your playstyle or the current team comp, you can go with either of these choices.) Handgun Properties: %10 Power vs Chaos %10 Power vs Infantry Trait: Conservative Shooter %10 Power vs Chaos + %10 Power vs Infantry + %10 Power vs Skaven + Enhanced Power makes you able to OSBS (One Shot Body Shot) all specials with your handgun on Cataclysm which is incredibly powerful. You don't need any optimization on Legend and lower difficulties. Conservative Shooter [Headshots give you one ammo back] gives your ammo back consistently if you hit headshots. Trollhammer Properties: %10 Power vs Chaos %10 Power vs Armoured Trait: Conservative Shooter %10 Power vs Chaos + %10 Power vs Armoured + %10 Power vs Skaven makes you able to OSBS all elites and specials (including chaos warriors). It also deals extra damage around the target (great for chaos patrols) Conservative Shooter does give you ammo back if you can hit their heads with the bomb. If you have good aim and practice regularly it's easy to keep your ammo count up. You can noscope while frontlining to kill an important special like hookrat. Handgun has impressive noscoping accuracy.
*Necklace:* Properties: %20 Health %30 Block Cost Reduction Trait: Barkskin / Natural Bond %20 Health gives you overall durability and helps you survive better than %10 Damage Reduction vs Race properties. More health = Always nice. %30 BCR for reasons explained in Melee Weapon section. We are trying to get %60 BCR total. For the trait, you can choose Barkskin [Taking damage reduces the subsequent damage by %40] for overall Damage Reduction. It's the best choice in Cataclysm, since subsequent damage is frequent in Cataclysm. Also gives you extra time to bleed out by protecting you from hits even when you're downed so your teammates have more time to rescue you. Natural Bond [Regen 1 Full HP every 5 seconds but get Temp HP from healing items] is for when you're playing Legend or lower difficulties, when you're comfortable enough with IB that you do not take much damage even in Cataclysm anymore or when you have a premade team. NB regens very slowly, but if you only take chip damage every 30 seconds or so, it'll keep your Full HP at comfortable levels so you won't use up any healing items. It's also worth taking if you're doing a Cataclysm deed with Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger modifier (Elites have 2x HP and 2x Damage) it can protect you from dying in one hit from an overhead attack, since the 1 HP that's kept in reserve will heal you the moment you were struck for 1 HP, so you'll live with 1 HP. This can trigger randomly if you were to get hit the exact frame you got healed by Natural Bond even without your HP not being full but that's rare. *Charm:* Properties: %10 Power vs Skaven %5 Attack Speed Trait: Proxy %10 Power vs Skaven to reach breakpoints mentioned above. %5 Attack Speed for faster animations/attacks on all of your weapons. It is always nice to have extra Attack Speed. Proxy [Potion effects get shared with the nearest ally] will increase the efficiency of the potion you drink by giving it to the nearest teammate. For Proxy I use this rule: Am I playing a damage dealer that uses the time under potions effects to deal immense damage on important enemies (Bosses / Monsters / Patrols)? If yes: Go Decanter [%50 increased potion duration] If no: Go Proxy for value *Trinket:* Properties: %30 Stamina Recovery %5 Movement Speed (Go for %33 Curse Resistance here if you don't feel comfortable doing full book runs without that extra HP) Trait: Explosive Ordnance %30 Stamina Recovery is probably the strongest property in the game. Getting your stamina back is so important in a close quarters melee fighting horde game; even more important on a class that holds the frontline. This property is a must for every character, for every class. Use it, it's so good. %5 Movement Speed: Crit Chance is better for overall DPS, but since I don't have Swift Slaying to proc with crits and I don't need to do a lot of damage by myself, I like to use the mobility you get from having a little more movement speed. It helps for repositioning, getting to frontlife faster, getting to downed teammates faster etc. It's very little, but every bit counts. Explosive Ordnance [%50 more explosion radius with bombs] is good with Trollhammer to get more value out of every bomb, since every trinket trait that affects bombs also affects Trollhammer shots. You can also go for Grenadier [%25 chance to not consume bombs] for extra sustain on Trollhammer, or you can go Shrapnel [%20 increased damage taken on hit enemy with bombs] for Boss damage/Patrol damage, but I found out the Explosive Ordnance works the best overall in all situations. Thank you for reading this build, this took me like 2 hours to write :D. Let me know if you have questions/suggestions in comments. I'll also include some useful tips for general Ironbreaker gameplay here. --> If you are using Shield and Hammer, doing a Push Attack and repeat can give you increased movement speed (These moves are called movetechs) but it drains stamina very fast. Use it if you're completely safe or when you're trying to reach something absolutely crucial to reach (Like a leach about to suck a teammate). --> Never panic when you're stuck in a corner. If you keep your calm, you can get through almost any situation as an Ironbreaker. --> Under your ultimate effect you'll get %100 BCR. Use it if you run out of stamina and just block for a while until you are back to a comfortable amount of stamina. --> Your passive can save people from being grabbed by a Chaos Spawn. Go close to it and if you have a friend tell them to friendly fire you to save the person if you have no other ways to stagger a boss at the moment. --> With a lot of Chaos Warriors, circling them and good movement is crucial. You can stagger anything except heavy attacks so keep an eye out of them and keep bashing-pushing them to CC them. --> Don't be afraid to use your Trollhammer to finish off a wounded monster so your team has a chance to breathe and regroup. It's a good idea to use a Trollhammer bomb to get the attention of the boss away from your squishy DPS classes. --> Remember, you're the frontline between enemy and your teammates. Always try to be the guy to face off the enemy first so your backline is protected and can pick off important targets. *TLDR Build* Talents: 1-3-3-2-3-3 Melee: Shield and Hammer / %30 Block Cost Reduction - %10 Skaven / Opportunist Ranged: Handgun / %10 Chaos - %10 Infantry / Conservative Shooter ----- Trollhammer / %10 Chaos - %10 Armoured / Conservative Shooter Necklace: %20 Health - %30 Block Cost Reduction / Barkskin - Natural Bond Charm: %10 Skaven - %5 Attack Speed / Proxy Trinket: %30 Stamina Recovery - %5 Movement Speed (%33 Curse resistance if you're taking grims) Enjoy slaying the rats 🐀! Give a like if you found this helpful please
Doesn't matter that you are or aren't the best player at this game. You are sharing your knowledge and you thoughts, and that's the most honorable thing you can do to keep this game alive. So thank you for this video mate ! 😘
Few things to note: Handgun is also a good secondary choice for special sniping. Maybe even better, considering I can 1 hit bodyshot specials with it from farther distance. Bulwark is better for shields, since its low damage and infinite cleave (IIRC). your best bet is either smiter or enhanced power for other weapons. Guaranteed stagger or more damage in general. Dawi defiance is the weakest option there, even for shields. Rolling mountain will be the better bet, but for shields you should probably use miners rhythm. And Oi wazzok. Where to begin..its bad. Kinda. It doesn't keep aggro on you, any good damage or ults that stagger monsters will take it off of you. I've even popped it, and before my ult was finished a bile troll that was hit by it fucked off and attacked a witch hunter captain. But. It staggers monsters and has potential to ledge them, so that's its biggest feature. Its important to remember that stagger part because that can be useful, if situational.
I remember playing iron breaker on legend and being the last person alive on the final streaches of the beastmen mission, and my coghammer was less of a weapon and more of a paddel with how much fucking beastmen i had to plow through, like i had to just outlive the hoard till i disrupted the ritual
Great guide my man. One thing you didn’t mention about gromril curse tho. If you are pounced by a assain the knock back will save you! Also deliberately getting hit for revives Incredibly useful and yet another reason to use it
1H hammer is good as a shield substitute, as its 0.5 stamina less than actual shields with some benefit of larger attack range and power. with +4 stamina, +30% block range, +30% block cost reduction, +30% stamina regen you can push through your way on most hordes while also having enough stamina to block a overhead or two. dawi defense is extremely nice here since when you get surrounded, you get stunlocked when blocking and wifh only 10~30 health damaged you get 7.5 shield back to tank more or push the horde to oblivion
If you're not running a shield, take smiter. Rolling Mountain is amazing when you run the great hammer or the cog hammer with drengbarazi oath, ult at every horde and keep swinging. And forget the Trollhammer. If you want to shred monsters, get the handgun. With that build the Ironbreaker becomes a one man army. You don't need a team with this. The handgun allows you to snipe specials at mid range pretty effectively, disablers just get thrown off by Gromril Curse and Monsters melt before you if you yell at them and then keep fanning the hammer in their face. I once played ironbreaker on the chaos wastes on legend, when we reached the citadel, my handgun was still white. I did not upgrade it. At all. By the end of the run I had over 10k monster damage dealt. Around 3k more than the next best.
Are you referring to the actual handgun or the Masterwork Pistol? You mentioned "fanning the hammer" and I guess the Masterwork Pistol sorta has a hammer fanning function to it.
I really enjoy shielded weapons in a coordinated group, but in a pub setting its really sad. And the point about trollhammer is accurate too, pubs tend to not care about special sniping and it often becomes a detriment to bring it, as great as the weapon is.
The irony of this coming up in my feed like, an hour after having a debate with a guy who feverishly (and I mean *feverishly* ) claimed that Ironbreakers singehandedly make the game worse by existing, and that the class actually makes the player worse at the game somehow. It was insane.
Ironbreakers and Foot Knights are either so good they dont even need a team, or so bad they might aswell not be there. If I hadnt played mostly with the former, I would agree with that guy
The best bardin players I have played with in the higher difficulties...onslaught cata 3 use axe and shield and the troll hammer or flame thrower. And they get almost all of the green circles and clutch. I prefer shield and hammer and handgun or torpedo. But these dudes make them work.
I know video is 1y old but for the point about dual hammer strenght over Cog isn't just speed. It's number and longer effective dodge and access to move tech to run faster. The main sell point for Cog is it's heavy atk dmg who melt boss and CW. So, If you choose torpedo, 1h hammer, dual hammer are good to compensate the lack of mobility to better deal with special and horde clearing (don't wast torpedo on horde plz). If you go with other ranged choice, then Cog/2h Hammer are better choice thx to the amazing armor piercing they give to deal with elite
It’s the most op career in the game. With the dual hammer and torpedo build. YOU CAN’T DIE! Literally after playing hours of waystalker then went back to IB, I’ve felt godly lol.
I dislike Bulwark, Oath or any of the team buffing talents in a random lobby. Chances are the 10-20% buff won't hit a breakpoint and end up being effectively wasted. I believe I contribute more to the success of the run if I pick things that make me more self sufficient and well rounded - eg: handgun over trollhammer (although as a fellow bad shot I'll try crossbow more), so if nobody is special sniping I can take over that, or longer duration on my F so I have better chances of surviving a bad situation and prevent a wipe.
Great video! I'm definitely going to try this build out next time I hop on ironbreaker. So far I've ran a pure block/defense build with shield n hammer and trying to push and tank as much as possible, even if it isn't as good overall it keeps me alive longer and that is usually good enough for champion and legend Also, do you have any plans on making a Ranger Veteran video? I'm not sure how meta it is but that's my favorite Bardin career
What do you think about "Off Balance" trait instead of "Swift Slaying"? Off Balance: If players block an attack with this Trait on their weapon, then the enemy who attacked them will take an additional 20% damage for five seconds. There is no limit to how many enemies the player can do this to, so they can continuously do this to a large group of enemies while their friends work to bring them down.
I like running Great Axe with Vengeance. It's so much fun to become pseudo-Slayer to fight patrols, monsters and bosses Sure, the Trollhammer is efficient, but it's a boring AF problem solver I also rather run Handgun instead of Crossbow. Easier breakpoints for bodyshots and hitscans work better for immediate on-damand deletion
It's amazing at melting hordes of trash. If you're running a team that's heavy hitters and snipers it's amazing having barding just delete all the trash so you can freely take out everything else. Only problem is that you can't see a god damn thing through it most of the time like the battle wizard 😂
As someone who's got about 500 hours in Ironbreaker, this is an awesome vid for beginners, but has some slightly uninformed choices - in terms of talents. Bulwark is mathematically less damage than smiter and enhanced power both for coghammer and for 2hammer. Dawi defiance (25) is the worst of the 3 options for that row. you get free stam from ulti, and with your built in tankiness, you should be MORE aggressive and let your tankiness work for you, not be MORE defensive and not make use of your tankiness (IMO). I'm a big fan of rolling mountain, but i've seen miners rhythm be effective with shield builds, as you're spamming the CC heavy shieldbash into push attacks to control for your team.
Bulwark is more damage in terms opposed to smiter tho, because bulwark bolsters your teammates dmg too, so you’re getting more benefit overall? It’s a slight reduction to your own dmg, but a huge boost to the teams dmg.
1:20 you lost most important aspect.Dodge count,cog has 2,dual hammer 3 but when you attack with cog you receive %90 amount of dodge distance instead of %110 amount of dodge distance and you lose out on move tech
I forgot to mention the Handgun in the video as another option for special sniping in the video. Absolutely run it if you're good with it! I prefer the Crossbow with crit chance because I'm bad at aiming, so the faster reload and extra ammo is worth it for me. Also here's the two builds on Ranald's: Trollhammer Torpedo: www.ranalds.gift/build/NUSelF3b6Kp2KjBvSIko/view Crossbow: www.ranalds.gift/build/ej0T7rHOgTE58TKHbXTe/view
There's definitely exceptions to what I said. For example if you ult a chaos patrol then you probably want hold block or you're gonna get clapped, same with dragging a horde to a better spot. I just think people get it in their heads that every time you ult as IB you should just sit there and block, I see it on Cata, and in most normal horde situations it just lowers the dps of the party when the IB could be smacking some rats around