A Proposal to Nerf the Power Sword and the Plasma Gun, and Buff the Veteran Auras

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Given how the power sword and plasma gun combo is still overwelmingly popular in higher difficulty games, specifically auric missions, I would like to propose to nerf these two weapons to give other weapons a better chance.

Power sword: Simply nerf Power Cycler, since this blessing is what makes the power swords popular to begin with. You can see every power sword user has this blessing on damnation. Nerfing it does not only make it fair for the other weapons, but also the other blessings for the power swords.
Here is how I would change the blessing: Charge the weapon extra times to increase energized hits, max 3 times. So instead of charging the sword once and effortlessly chain 3 energized hits, the player will have to use the special action 3 times to perform the same chain attacks.
This is due to the fact that a power sword with Power Cycler is good at both horde clearing and anti-armor, while having a decent mobility. 3 Energized hits can easily take down a crusher with in 2 seconds, which is unfair to other weapons and classes. By making the charging process longer, the power sword can still have its anti-armor ability, but at a higher risk and cost.

Plasma Gun: the only thing that needs to be nerved for the plamsa gun is the high cost efficient primary action (hip fire). While its ability to cleave through a large amount of enemies should stay, I think the overall effectiveness of the primary action is overpowered. The issue is the same with the power sword, it’s effective against both armored and lesser enemies. The hip fring of the plasma rifle does not only overshadow the other veteran weapons, but also render the special and secondary actions of this weapon useless. The auto-vent when the heat is at 100% makes the special action (and even basic reloading) very rarely used, and its ability to kill a crusher within a few shots makes the special action unnecessary. And its ammo and magazine size make this the plasma gun completely outperform the bolter in every metrics.
Here is how I think it should be change: remove the auto-vent, so the player has to do heat management like the psykers do. It can only effectively damage armored targets by using its secondary action (charging up), similar to the Helbore rifles.
After this change, the player will have to use the secondary and special actions more often instead of left clicking all day long.

Now we’re done talking about the nerves, I think it’s also fair to talk about the buffs. Like many people have discussed, nerfing the survivalist aura was completely out of place. I understand that before the nerf, the survivalist aura completely outshined the other 2 auras that the veterans had, but the problem was not that this aura was too strong, but rather the other 2 too weak. Nerfing the survivalist aura really weakened the entire veteran class by a mile. The reason why Survivalist was overwhelmingly popular, is because having extra ammo is really essential for the veteran class, which is meant to be the shooter class. So instead of nerfing the only one that gives the players more ammo, I think all 3 auras should be centered around having extra ammo. And it also would make sense that the new auras are stronger than the basic aura. The other 2 auras are still weaker than the basic scavenger IMO. Here is how I would change the 3 auras:
Survivalist: decrease the cooldown to 2 seconds.
Middle aura: whenever any of the players in coherency uses an ability (executioner stance, psykic shield, shroudfield etc.), regenerates 5% ammo for everyone in that coherency. 10 seconds cooldown.
Right aura: Whenever a player loots an ammo box (either small or large one), other players in coherency also gain 25% of the loot. (for example, when a player loots a large ammo pack that replenishes 50% ammo, other players in proximity will gain 12.5% of their own ammo. )
And yes, these 3 auras can stack on each other, since having 3 veterans in a strike team is more ammo demanding.
As for the auras of the other 3 classes, I think it should be another thread on its own.

Please consider my advice, FatShark devs, and thank you!

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I respect your opinion, but a weapon has to be nerfed when overpowered… not just when popular or “to give others weapons a better chance”

Honestly I think power sword and plasma gun are balanced, of course imho

But the main point is that there are tons of weapons that should be buffed… this is the right way to give them a chance

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Booooo. Downvoted.
Powersword nerf? What? It’s a mid weapon. People use it because it’s exclusive to Veteran, like the Shovel. It’s iconic and class locked. Not OP.

Didn’t even read the rest of the thread. If your opinion is “Nerf -mid level item-” you’re wrong off the bat.

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Stopped reading after “power sword has decent mobility”

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The reason why they are overpowered, is not because they are popular. It’s because they are versatile and effective against every type of enemies.
Take the plasma gun for example, every other ranged weapon has some downsides, the lasguns and autoguns are bad against crushers and bulwarks, sometimes even maulers; the bolter is good against the armored enemies, but has small magazines and takes longer to reload, and its recoil makes it slower to clear out gunners and specialists. The plasma gun, however, does better against gunners and other shooters than autoguns, and better against crushers and bulwarks than the bolter.
Same with the power swords. It’s good at both horde clearing and anti-armor as I pointed out. Whereas heavy swords are good at horde clearing but absolutely bad against armored enemies, or the thunderhammers are good against crushers but not mobs. The funny thing is that the power sword with power cycling clears mobs faster than the heavy sword, and kills a crusher faster than a thunderhammer.
There can be versatile weapons that are viable in all cases, but not excelling in any of those cases. But these weapons not only can handle all the cases, but handle them better than those weapons that are meant to be specialized for those cases.
How about I take a step back. Maybe I’ve been using the other weapons wrong, maybe the other weapons do need a buff. But even if the other weapons were buffed, my point still stands. Because the problems I mentioned are not just the weapons are imbalanced, but rather specific features that are imbalanced for these weapons themselves. How is the plasma gun’s primary action balanced against its secondary and special actions? Maybe we don’t need to give the other weapons a chance, but the secondary and special actions. The heat mechanic is almost pointless when the primary action auto vents down to 80%. Maybe you need to use the secondary action for better damage against armor, or maybe you need to manually vent the heat.

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How about I put it as “Power Cylcer is overpowered” instead of the weapon itself being overpowered? You could argue that the power sword is iconic hence why it’s popular. I’d like to hear how power cycler is iconic. I think the weapon is fine without the power cycling shenanigans.

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Damn, you made it further than I then. Power sword + Plasma is the ultimate shtter crutch on auric mael from what I see. Rarely do I see a vet with that combo perform well without being babysat for the entire duration. Not to mention them hoovering up ammo like it’s no business, wasting plasma shots on trashmobs. Don’t get me started on 99% of power sword users not knowing how to melee properly.

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I’ve never really tried plasma so I don’t have good knowledge on it, so I thought maybe it was worth a read. But I do know all about the power swords, what they are and what they aren’t… so yeah.

They only function as a crutch when everything is going great. The moment something goes wrong, you’re 2000 times better off with a different weapon. Doesn’t mean power swords are the worst thing in the game, but they’re certainly not the best.

And no, they do not have decent mobility lol

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Great for heavy metal modifiers on auric mael but otherwise meh. If you want to be self suffcient with it you need to manage the long reload times, heat, as well as positioning, not to mention your ammo. It’s great for damage but something like a columnus or revolver does the same job with far less issues.

Exactly. Not to mention the massive stamina drain for block pushes or the laughable dodge count/range lol

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Yeah I mostly do revolver whenever I feel the need to Vet. Sometimes Colum.
My favorite pet is Helbore, but I don’t think there’s really a good build (that I would like) since the rework. And there’s still no reason for them to have insane swap time.

Used to like slug shotty too, but again… rework. No reason for it to exist when revolver exists.

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I think most people gravitate towards plasma because of the near infinite punchthrough. You can delete an entire stacked horde of 10-20 gunners with a single shot. Which is monkey brain dopamine neuron activation. But those stacked packs would have died anyway and pose little to no danger most of the time. In the actually dangerous situations, let’s say an open field with a ton of gunners and elites spread far out plasma is just a liability, due to the firerate and ammo economy. Any infantry/autogun outperforms it in those cases by a mile.

Man don’t get me started on shotguns. They’re so fun but so bad ammo and utility wise compared to the alternatives.

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Honestly I would’ve respected the premise of this thread a lot more if you’d kept it simple and asked for a Survivalist buff. I’ve never been a huge fan of Power Sword but even with Power Cycler the weapon is janky without investing heavily into the bottom right side of Vet’s tree. What I mean by janky is that it’s slow enough to cause people problems unless it’s the only melee weapon the user really plays with and they’re used to the downside. I think it’s in an alright spot given that. And I don’t agree that Plasma Gun is good at everything. It is strong enough to kill pretty much anything with ease but it sucks at handling spread out targets like in rooms full of ranged enemies and specials. More often than not, I can’t trust random pubs to handle that kind of situation, so I don’t even bother running plasma most of the time. To me it’s best thought of as a Bulwark / Crusher buster meant to be complimented with a horde clear melee weapon.

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Wow - one of the worst suggestions I‘ve read here in a long time.

The activation mechanic sucks. Power cycler is popular because it allows to use the activation button less often.

That said both weapons have enough downsides - the power sword if anything could use a buff in form of the return of the two powered strikes without blessing to get less dependant on pc. It certainly shouldn’t be nerfed…

Plasma is in a good place. It’s downsides such as terrible ammo economy, wonky delay on trigger pull, low rate of fire, slow reload, ability to kill yourself and lack of ads are enough to balance it‘s lore accurate firepower.

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Just to be the devil advocate. The power sword has indeed pretty decent mobility if you compare it to all the weapons in the game.
Just compared to the other veteran melee options it’s lacking.
Anyway I agree that both weapons right now are fine, no need of nerfs or buffs.

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I think the missing factor here is that there’s two power sword marks with an absolutely gigantic difference in mobility. The new one is the heavy duty version and makes you slow as hell and your dodges bad and you start slowwalking when activating it. The old one is pretty lightweight and has good mobility stats

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Lets buff the game before we nerf the weapons.

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Whaaat
Whaaat1246×1070 42.8 KB

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Honestly, no.
PS is clearly OP, so is the plasma gun.

I would also like to point that the revolver zorona is also OP.
BUT, and this is here the problem with the OP proposal, when you look at revolver you can see that it is not OP on other classes. So, this means that the power comes from the veteran talent tree.
Off course, this is just about plasma gun I was talking.

PS is simply OP cause you can kill anything with it, from the poxwalker to the crusher. This weapon is really powerful.
But true, the mobility with it is not really good. However, once you have learnt to use it, you don’t really need mobility.

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I respect your opinion but still disagree

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what are you confused about? I’m saying there is no “powersword mobility” because both powersword marks are on opposite sides of the spectrum of mobility. One has trash mobility but twoshots maulers and crushers, the other doesn’t have as much stopping power but lets you move way more.