Fun thing is, its absolutely NOT a problem to fiddle around with weapons and releasing a patch.
They have knobs for all possible damage situations a weapon has.
Cleave, damage to 1…Xth target, damage to X armor …etc etc…
Instead these x=y value knobs are untouched for 6 months +
Absolutely NOONE would mind if for 2 weeks weapons that are unplayed would be buffed to test it out.
Well of course, but when has FS addressed any issue of any kind and magnitude in a timely manner? Whatever esoteric curse has FS by the balls seemingly wont allow it.
Haven’t used Chainswords in a while but they at least used to be a great option for hybrids. Mk XIIIg is fast, has a fantastic moveset for both cleaving and single-targets, and the special lets you really hurt armor & biggies in particular. It’s an all-in-one weapon doing everything you could ask for, but not really being great at any of it. Main problem ofc is the thing all chain weapons suffer from, what with the special forcing you to stand still in a meta where you’re always surrounded by a hundred mobs trying to get a hit in.
As for Helbores, I’m mostly with @Molonius there. It takes ages to swap, and also only drops 1 heavy at a time. Except the heavies come in packs and you’re always surrounded by a 100 of everything else while they do. AoE weapons will basically always have the upper hand in a game like this. But ofc it doesn’t help that the plasma is so overtuned: It swaps way faster, doesn’t need charging, doesn’t depend on long aim times and crits, and ofc cleaves and does AoE splash dmg on top.
As for the shotties… they’re in a weird place, but they kinda always have been. It’s just different now. Idk what I missed or how they shadow nerfed them back around Unlocked & Loaded, but it definitely set them back a lot.
Issue is back before they got nerfed they were ridiculously powerful, and in many builds just bonkers OP in skilled hands. But even then they were the unpopular choice for being arguably the most difficult ranged to build to and master. I mean jfc the entire meta around them was completely wrong for well over a year, bc the community had no idea how to use them (and bc the blessings to make them OP were T2-exclusive and super hard to get)! Even then we always had posts about shotties being bad, when really they were crazy strong.
Now since the nerf it’s even more problematic. Shotties are still definitely good - in highly specific builds and very skilled hands -, but far from OP. Which kinda means only shotty experts can even make them work on par with the other good weapons, with a way more effort than any of those others would take. But if you’re not an expert? Yeah, better not even touch em. I mean there are exceptions and some builds wouldn’t even be possible without shotties but ultimately that’s a novelty that doesn’t really matter in the endgame.
I do think they could use a buff, somewhere between where they were, and where they are now.
Edit: I think this whole topic just really shows the problem of how balance issues tend to spread & affect more than just one thing. For example if plasma & revolver weren’t so OP, there’d be a lot less pressure to keep increasing those spawns for adding difficulty. Which would have a double positive effect for making other weapons more viable.
Super based no-Keystone Vet builds are always appreciated!
I agree about revolver and PG.
My opinion is that shotguns are pretty incredibly balanced. They should balance boltgun, boltpistols and revolver around them, especially about ammos.
For me shotguns need a little boost about ammos. But the current number of shells that the gun can have (=the “clip”) is correct and should not be increased.
Boltpistols seems good and well balanced. As I did not test them intensively I can be wrong, but what I see in games convinced me that this is a good tool without being too strong.
Boltgun is a different story. The weapon is really good if you don’t consider the burst shots. Here the weapon can delete lot of things. The problem is that the gun has so many ammos, that you can, in auric, use it with autofire and steal all ammos of the map. I would reduce the ammos reserve of boltgun.
For revolver, I feel that a damage nerf would not be a bad option. I love revolver, but I still think it is too strong. I would nerf damages against carapace only.
For PG, my opinion is that the gun is fine for the charged shots part. It cleaves really too much on a light shot. If they reduce by a lot the cleave of light shots, the gun would be balanced. At least, that’s what I think actually.
EDIT
for shotgun you get:
Agripinaa 13 in clip 91 in reserve total = 104
Lawbringer 11 in clip 76 in reserve total = 87
Kantrael 9 in clip 61 in reserve total = 70
for revolver:
Zarona 5 in clip 52 in reserve total = 57
Agripinaa 5 in clip 82 in reserve total = 87
for Boltgun 15 in clip 100 in reserve total = 115
Considering the damages done Boltgun has really too many ammos compared to the combat shotguns.
Agree with all the buffs proposed. This games needs a ton of them.
I think that they’re SLIGHTLY underperforming overall, with the Agripinaa Combat Shotgun being the closest to “balanced” and the Zarona Combat Shotgun just being outright sh*t.
If you steal all of the Ammo pickups, of course you’re going to have excess. That’s the truth about ALL Weapons. Spearhead Bolters have JUST been rescued from the dumpster, man. I’d rather just leave Spearhead Bolters where they are and give Combat Shotguns a +30% Ammo buff.
I agree. Maybe also forcing the player to use Charged Attacks in order to penetrate Bulwarks’ Slab Shields would further encourage use of said Charged Attack over Uncharged Attack spam? Of course, these changes must be done surgically because the Plasma Gun isn’t as OP as people make it out to be.
Wait… oh, for f*ck’s sake! GamesLantern uses 100% Ammo Stats instead of 80%?! I’ve been using that site for my Darktide mathing for the last few days… everything’s been wrong!
Having the stat cap be 80% was a f*cking mental choice in the first place.
You can’t explain that.
Why couldn’t the 80% Stats just say “100%” and the 60% Stats just say “80%”?
I mean, don’t actually buff anything to from 80% to 100% and from 60% to 80%. The current format just makes no sense.
I have just logged with my zealot (to avoid the +25% ammos) and have looked at every gun. I have all of them with 80% ammos for shotguns and others have not an ammunition modifier.
Maybe we don’t talk about the same. I have not learnt the new names.
But, let’s say that I don’t claim that shotguns are fine. I just say that they are balanced in regard of the difficulty. But when you compare the shotgun to other options, like revolver or boltgun, there is currently no reason to pick a shotgun instead of the revolver or boltgun.
I ve said what I think about these two weapons. Boltgun in auto fire is a little insane, but bolter in single shot is totally fine. That’s why I think that boltgun should have less ammos.
And revolver is a little too much efficient against carapace. At least that’s my opinion.
I understand what you’re getting at, but there’s gotta be a different metric to measure shotguns by besides bolter and revolver 
I can’t think of anything, though
Personly I think bolter and revolver are fine.
They don’t need buff but also don’t need nerfs.
@ rest of Discussion;
Also there are more weapons to compare to but we also have to look at the purpose off the weapon.
A close range damage buff is in place for Shotguns. Ammo maybe a slight buff.
Some players just only want to burn true ammo without using Melee and I don’t believe shotguns should be spammed.
I cannot agree more.
Anything you hit with the Thunder Hammer that goes down should never get back up again.
Right now most enemies go down and get back up after a few seconds. This is extremely annoying as you have to keep track of what is dead and what isn’t.
Here is someone using a similar helbore build in havoc 40.
Most of the differences look like they’re compensating for havoc modifiers (or less obsessed with toughness and stamina). Talents in the comments. Helbore is the middle speed one with surgical and a cleave blessing. Modded sights.
Watched it awsome vid ! Almost no damage taken
(Cleave blessing is bugged and applies to your Melee also 
)
Bugged or maybe the only helbore blessing that is as hybrid as the weapon itself. Need more like that.
I feel like it was supposed to be the implication that as rejects we aren’t given pristine or prime gear, we’re handed scraps… but that point isn’t well delivered anywhere in the game lore.
The ideas never received much support but I want to argue in favour of weapon IMbalance. Personally I think that a bolter or plasma gun ought to be overall more powerful than a laspistol. I’d rather balance at the level of the entire loadout.
I’m not sure how this should be done (if it were to be) but one idea which has occurred to me is:
Assign weapons a “weight” characteristic. Then your loadout could either have a weight limit or you could scale certain attributes at the loadout level based on overall weight such as weapon switch speed or ammo reserve. You’d obviously want many weapons to be rebalanced so their weight was inline with their overall strength.
The only logical explanation is that it is another half-finished product of VT2 that they never ported over. As in “red weapons”. Theoretically that is how you would get 100%.
Likely this is either still yet to be implemented or was scrapped entirely, but they never bothered to change all the 80’s to 100’s because spaghetti code or some crap.
The 80% bars, in my theory, was a psychological tactic to try to discourage people from min-maxing since it’s impossible to get a ‘perfect’ item, combined with it being part of the retention tactics of the old item system where ‘perfection in context’ is possible but almost effectively impossible.