Enemies

Enemies are all hostile creatures encountered by the Heroes in Vermintide 2. Enemies can vary greatly in size, strength, durabilty, but also in their attack patterns and behaviour. On top of this, some enemies have unique abilities, which increases their threat level greatly. In order for the player to survive, it is vital to know what enemy you face and which tactics to use accordingly.

Enemies in  Vermintide 2 have a couple of stats which determines their toughness, which are explained below. Furthermore, there are a number of ways to categorize the enemies in Vermintide 2. Firstly, all base game enemies belong to one of two enemy factions: The Rotblood Tribe and the Skaven. A third faction is added with the Winds of Magic DLC: The Beastmen. A more detailed divisions is shown below, as well as information on the different armour classes.

Hit Points
Enemies have set hit points based on the game difficulty. Every enemy has their own hit point value, which can be found on their individual page.

Weak Spots
Many enemies have weak spots that gives the player a damage multiplier when struck. Most often this is the head.

Stagger resistance
Enemies have a stagger resistance stat based on the game difficulty. This value determines whether an enemy is staggered when hit by a certain attack. Stronger enemies generally have a higher stagger resistance.

Mass
Enemies have a mass stat based on the game difficulty. Mass determines the amount of bodies a weapon is able to cleave before stopping in its swing.

Shields
Some units carry shields, which allows them to block damage coming from any angle (just like the player is able to block damage from behind). These enemies can be forced to lower their shield by continued attacks, or by a number of pushes. Some weapons are also capable of either breaking shields or bypassing them entirely, such as Saltzpyre's Flail.

Types
Enemy type is determined by the general behaviour of an enemy, as well as its damage output and threat level. Every type has his own page with a list of every enemy in them and strategies on how to deal with a specific type of enemy.

Infantry
The weakest type of enemies, Infantry are seen as the grunts of all the enemy factions. Individually they are easily slain by the Heroes, but they can form a threat when attacking in hordes. Some infantry units, namely Clanrats and Bulwarks, may have shields, but overall they all act the same. Infantry units run up to you and try to kill you with their respective weapons.

Elites
The term 'Elite' refers to enemies who can be pinged but are not technically Specials. They are harder to kill and hit harder than regular Infantry units. Elites might be armoured, such as Stormvermin and Chaos Warriors, while others like the Plague Monk and Savage mainly deal high damage. Elites can also form patrols that roam the map and can be extremely dangerous.

Specials
Special enemies have a variety of unique abilities, such as the Packmaster's ability to snatch a hero and drag them away, or the Globadier's ability to throw gas bombs at the party. The details of each Special's abilities are too many to list here and are detailed on their individual pages.

Monsters
The large, powerful enemies found in the game are called Monsters. These enemies spawn randomly or sometimes as a scripted event. Monsters have an enormous health pool, hit hard and can even fling players across the map. It usually takes a full party to take one of these enemies, and even then, beginning players can expect casualties. When a talent says it activates when a Boss dies, Monsters are included in this.

Bosses
Bosses are enemies that appear during scripted events, usually found at the end of special Boss Missions. They are difficult to take down and have a variety of unique abilities.

Armour Classes
The armour class of an enemy determines its resilience to certain damage, as well as which 'Power vs'-weapon property works against this enemy. There are four armour types in the game.

Unarmoured
Unarmoured enemies wear no or little armour, making all parts of their bodies susceptible to all attacks. The head can still be hit for bonus damage. Among others, all Infantry enemies have this class.

Power vs Infantry does bonus damage to Unarmoured enemies.

Armoured
Armour deflects blows and negates damage, so it is best to avoid striking it. When an attack is completely deflected by armor, a small red skaven-shield shortly shows up below the cursor of the player, indicating no damage is done. All Armoured units are still vulnerable for head-shots, so you should always aim to hit the head with both ranged and melee. Though there are ways to penetrate armour, keep in mind that it always negates a part of the damage done. The following methods allow heroes to bypass armour to different extends, depending on the weapon used:
 * Critical hits
 * Charged Attacks and
 * Using a Strength potion
 * Weapons with the Armour Piercing characteristic
 * Weapons with the Shield Breaking or Ignore Shields characteristic

Fully Armoured
Also called "super armoured", Fully Armoured is a sub-class of the Armoured class. Only the Chaos Warrior and two bosses (Gatekeeper Naglfahr and Bödvarr Ribspreader) are Fully Armoured. The main difference is that their armour negates more damage from attack that should bypass it (listed above). This means that aiming for weak points becomes even more critical for dealing damage.

Power vs Armoured does bonus damage to Armoured enemies.

Berserker
Berserkers are a sub-group of Elites consisting of the Plague Monk and Savage. They have their own armour class, which makes them more resilient against stagger.

Power vs Berserkers does bonus damage to Berserker enemies.

Resistant
Enemies with this armour class have a natural defense against damage and have high stagger resistance: only certain Hero abilities and bombs can stagger them. All Monsters have this armour class.

Power vs Monsters does bonus damage to Resistant enemies.

Unused Enemies
Some enemy names and models are found in the data, but are unused thus far. These include a Chaos Zombie with a lying, bloated corpse-like body, a Plague Sorcerer, Tentacle Sorcerer (which looks exactly like the Lifeleech) and Chaos Tentacle with a simple blob as body. Additionally, there is a Stormvermin Champion model, looking exactly like Chieftain Krench, one of the bosses of Vermintide 1. It is unknown whether or not these enemies will be added at a later date.