I mean it stores partial values so if anything changing the rounding just make it as good as it seems on paper, pre patch 13 it was better than it seems on paper in a lot of cases.
What DOES make it worse than it seems on paper is using reserve ammo rather than total for the calculation. Honestly plasma may single handedly be what is holding them back from changing that but if they keep the cooldown as it is I think it’s pretty safe for them to fix that now.
I mean, I would also be fine with something like huntsmen from VT2. Give ammo back on crits/weakpoint hits. Maybe leave the cool down, maybe have the cool down reset if you do a crit/weakpoint kill. Maybe have aura nodes like the blitzes to augment it so you can only choose one (crits or weak points) so you pick the appropriate node for the weapon type you’re using but not both. Something that rewards skill and scales with difficulty with more enemies and more ammo scarcity… compared to rewards delaying kills.
Or just remove the aura entirely for something else. Just change ammo economy base. Give more nodes for vet that increase reserve ammo and/or magazine size so when they pick up ammo it gives them more if they’re ranged vet. Move up the 25% more ammo perk probably.
Not the biggest fan of weak spot or crit hits/kills as an ammo restore trigger. There are a few guns like brauto that aren’t really built for either, then guns like auto pistol where you could at least force crits with cavalcade but in turn you warp the blessing meta even more towards crits.
Genuinely at this point I think the best solution is survivalist is made a passive specifically for Vet, cooldown removed but it only works for him and in turn only procs off Vet’s own elite/special kills. I’m sure there are a few who would even have an issue with that since not benefiting off team kills is still effectively a nerf even for specifically Vet sustain compared to pre PoR survivalist but it seems like the most agreeable middle ground that as far as I’ve seen most from both sides could be content with.
Honestly I think the easiest is to just remove the aura entirely. Make some enemies drop ammo on kill. Reduce the amount of ammo the ammo pick ups give, and picking up ammo restores ammo to the entire squad (Staff psykers suddenly have a reason to pickup ammo to help people with).
No more arguing about stealing ammo, no more doing math to see who needs it more, no more pinging and seeing people are split up and whether to wait for someone to come to you and pick it up or to just pick it up yourself.
Glad you brought that up, that explains why the kantrael shotgun and revolver felt so rough
I think that in order to do that you’d need to do a rebalance of weapons.
Honestly I don’t think they should have done a rebalance of the talents until they do a balance pass on weapons.
Playing a bit more it seems like this change might have came about as a way to address the Plasma Gun without reducing its power, but it hit literally every other build as well.
It hit every other build way worse. If anything it made plasma gun a top tier weapon even more now.
As far as cooldowns and timers I think far too many Darktide abilities and talents in general rely on stack timers and hard cooldowns as a limiting factor.
I know this is mostly focused on the aura nerf but so many abilities are timer based and requires balancing multiple states and stacks just to get the most out of them.
I feel like we are also retreading the same balancing problems we had with Psyker stacks either having dumb cooldowns associated with them or a stack time that barely lets you keep uptime on it. Past a certain point balancing all the timers is just noise.
Obviously, FS watched people still trying to make Bolter work on Vet, a carnal sin that can not be forgiven, so they nerfed the coolest gun in the game again to see if people would finally give up on it. (jk. Well. Kind of.)
If they wanted to just nerf the PG, all they had to do is reduce the total ammo amount and/or play with the switch animation.
PG and Zarona are still top dogs in Vets arsenal. The instant switch, decent ammo economy, cleave, comfortable breakpoints, and oversized bullets do their thing.
All the change achieved was kicking the already beat up shins of other guns.
Overrewarding optimal play is a good way to make the game unbalanceable for even good players. Huntsman is the perfect example. Compared to other careers he is kind of meh in Cata, until you meet someone who nails headshots and suddenly you trawl through the map having nothing to do but talking umgak.
If FS really wants to get rid of ammo generation, they need to adjust the total ammo pool of most guns. As long as some are way more efficient than others, there will be a huge incentive to abandon the ones that chew through bullets. Sounds like a crapton of work to me. (They also could put the ammo generation into ES, which would make melee Vet unable to pick it and range Vet able to run a different gun pool compared to VoC and Infiltrate. That wouldn’t change that PG and a tiny amount of other guns are the perfect fit for melee Vet, but would keep a larger variety alive for range focused playstyles.)
Survivalist already affected plasmagun the least out of all guns, so I doubt they were targeting plasma of all things with the Survivalist nerf.
BRIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG IIIIITTTTTT OOOOOOOONNNNN!!! * DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA *
Sorry, I just had to… hrmmm!
Back to the topic! 
I just want “EAT THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!” Veteran.
(Loyalist Gunner)
I remember them doing this with Blood fletcher on shade.
It kills a lot of builds, but you are going to have to live with it.
The Aura was absolutely overtuned.
IMO what they should have done is just delay the ammo to every third elite/special kill, rather than every 5 seconds.
Oh I really like that idea. Still rewards killing packs of enemies efficiently. Although IG it might really hurt on lower difficulties…
I don’t know how much FS considers lower difficulties when balancing. I believe a majority of people ar one point played on Heresy not Damnation, but I’m not sure how true that is.
This balances itself with difficulty.
Fewer enemies with fewer hp means less ammunition used.
Agreed on doing it every 3rd special/elite. But also a lot of guns need to rebalanced around it.
I’ve shelved Vet now. If anything I guess it has encouraged me to play Zealot again with Cat mk3 knife, good single target damage, bad in horde but new found appreciation and fun of using knife heavy speedhack as infinite stamina. Just to avoid hassle of competing for ammo grabs, now I can ignore ammo pickups and only take leftovers.
Currently the cost is RSI on my hand.
You could set up a psyker with a voidstrike staff with surge/crit build and an scavenger veteran. When CD is ready, have the psyker get one good cleave on a pack of gunners/shotgunners/dogs
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