The special Grudge-Marked boss monsters inWarhammer: Vermintide 2add an entirely new layer of difficulty to your run. Understandably, the challenge of fighting a grudge-marked monster scales the higher your base difficulty, which can be apparent in a variety of ways. The bosses' increased HP and attack power - as well as the number of attributes they have - increase with higher difficulties.
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But all grudge-marked bosses have severely reduced knockback, meaning any sort of stagger you can achieve with your career ability is short-lived. While these monsters always require care in how they’re approached, some of the attributes of a grudge-marked boss make them far scarier than others.
13Shadow-Step
Grudge-Marked monsters with this trait take note from their Blightstormer fellows, teleporting at any moment to a different area of the map. A simple attribute in both conception and execution, Shadow-Step can be annoying if you’re overwhelmed by ratties.
Otherwise, it’s an easy attribute to deal with, especially with sharpshooters on the team. For this reason, it ranks last. Just be on the lookout for a backstab if you don’t dodge quickly enough.
12Invincible
Invincible might sound like a pretty overpowered attribute, but its catch makes it easy to handle. The grudge-marked monster is invincible temporarily, and blue streams of light shine all around them when the attribute is active.
The strategy for dealing with this trait solo is simple: keep your distance when they’re invincible, then hit them with your career abilities to get them crippled. Even combined with other attributes, the invincible trait isn’t the worst. The simplicity of this attribute keeps it next to last, though it can be difficult with a Relentless monster.
This grudge-marked monster is super powerful, but only for short periods of time. You can tell when the monster is dealing more damage whenever a fiery red light can be seen erupting from them. Mighty is easy to grasp and similarly simple to overcome, which is why it sits in eleventh place.
It’s mostly an issue for anyone the beast is aggroed on at the time, and the sight of its angry aura is decent enough indication for the target to flee while ranged specialists take care of it. Remember that the monster can also still be pushed and staggered, mitigating the damage to any one player’s HP.
10Regenerate
A boss monster with the regenerate attribute regains a small percentage of its total health every few seconds. This attribute isn’t as damning as most of the others. While it is consistent, the process of regeneration is fairly slow. On its own, it doesn’t heal the monster fast enough to nullify the constant attacks.
A monster with this attribute alone can be easily overpowered, but combined with high attack and defense, it can be difficult to down. Regenerate earns points for being a real challenge on higher difficulties, even if it can be counteracted with consistent damage.
9Illusionist
Illusionist puts some panic-inducing magical flair on grudge-marked monsters, allowing them to create multiple duplicates of themselves in an instant. These duplicates appear identical and spawn with full health, though their max health has been greatly reduced in later patches. The clones are still a huge pain to deal with though, and will not disappear until quite a bit of time has passed. Monsters with this trait give you little chance to wear down their HP.
What keeps Illusionist moderate in terms of difficulty is how easy it is to adapt to them, even if they’re awful combined with worse attributes. Rely on your ranged allies to take out the weak clones while the heavy attacker whittles away at the main boss.
Frenzy was added to the original list of grudge marks in the following update and is the only one where the effect is applied to the players. When encountering a monster with this attribute, dealing with so many melee hits will trigger “Infectious Frenzy”, which ups your attack power, but any damage you deal is dealt to you as well. While this attribute is incredibly annoying, potentially prolonging the battle, it’s mid-rank because there’s a very simple solution.
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Ranged attacks aren’t affected by Frenzy, so switching to a ranged weapon while this attribute is active is a good solution as long as the monster doesn’t have Rampart. In preparation for the moment a grudge-marked monster shows up with both of these attributes, try bringing along a heavy hitter like Grail Knight. The fewer strikes it takes to fell this sucker, the better.
This attribute is fairly self-explanatory in concept, allowing the monster to heal as much HP as it deals on an opponent. Predictably, the intensity of this effect scales with higher-difficulty bosses. While an HP-siphon might be one of the best in certain games, when used by enemies here, it really doesn’t up the challenge much. Its effect alone is minimal enough to keep it mid-rank.
The reason this attribute ranks higher than some of the others with little solo influence is because of how damning it is in combos. Consider for a minute, if you’re playing against an incredibly aggressive shield-shattering monster, and your entire team is consistently taking tons of damage. Even if you can survive the blows, being able to endure a monster that continually heals every time it hurts is practically impossible without effective aggro-baiting.
6Cursed Aura
Talk about an area-of-effect attack that can have you down for the count in seconds. A monster with Cursed Aura reduces the HP of anyone near it by 5%, and even worse, the effect stacks up to twenty times. This is especially damning for classes like Warrior Priest Victor or Slayer Bardin who rely solely on up-close melee damage.
For larger characters with slow movement speed, trying to avoid this effect with a Relentless monster can be incredibly tiresome. Cursed Aura remains in sixth for having fairly limited effect by itself and for having little synergy with other attributes. It’s also susceptible to ranged attacks and any stagger or knockback effects.
An incredibly challenging attribute on its own, this effectively nullifies any party member whose greatest assets are in range. Indeed, ranged damage has no effect on grudge-marked monsters with this trait, meaning some genuine strategy is involved in taking it down.
Ramparts can be staggered and pushed, so if you have a career class that’ll throttle this monster for melee specialists to lay into, use it. A Rampart with no attack buffs is a blessing, which takes away some of the danger of this attribute. Though immune to explosion damage, any attack that has damage over time is great for breaking down this foe.
4Crippling
If you’re going up against a monster with the Crippling trait, it would be in your best interest to turn and run away. Getting hit by this grudge-marked monster has heavy consequences, as it’ll severely lower your movement speed and dodge distance for a period of time. While the moment may be brief, being so handicapped can feel like a death sentence mid-battle, especially when your class requires you to be light on your feet.
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This attribute ranks so high for this very reason, endangering players without much stamina and only keeping them immobile with every hit. Keep your distance from this fellow, or else have a shield-heavy tank deal with it. This attribute loses points for being susceptible to ranged attacks, but watch out for a combo with the Rampart attribute.
