A Veteran Tree Analysis (and why it feels bad to build) + Skill Tree Rework

[kahniji]

So to the point, even without a comprehensive analysis on pitting the effectiveness of the vets skills, tree pathing, or power with the other classes or to its previous incarnation there are some pretty obvious issues with investment costs.
These categorized comparisons will be displayed as (## - ## - ##) with each number set representing their corresponding skill tree archetype of Left - Middle - Right.

An Overview

• Psyker Tree: 20 Passives, 18 Operator modifiers, 10 Ability modifiers, 14 Keystone modifiers,
  6 Blitz modifiers
• Ogryn Tree: 31 Passives, 19 Operator modifiers, 10 Ability modifiers, 9 Keystone modifiers
• Zealot Tree: 35 Passives, 16 Operator modifiers, 7 Ability modifiers, 8 Keystone modifiers
• Veteran Tree: 42 Passives, 20 Operator modifiers, 10 Ability modifiers, 12 Keystone modifiers

Notes: So right off the bat you can see the veteran has more nodes overall both matching or exceeding the previous largest amounts. Now this doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing if the tree is managed well, i’m not gonna start exactly complaining about having more to choose from.
It’s just that when we begin to go over how the tree is pathed it becomes painfully obvious something feels wrong.

Build Pathing
Here is a comparative view of the minimum skill investment without ANY deviation to reach the bottom of each class tree category with the keystone.

• Psyker Tree: 21 - 18 - 19
• Zealot Tree: 20 - 19 - 18
• Ogryn Tree: 20 - 20 - 20
• Veteran Tree: 21 - 22 - 22
• Old Vet Tree: 20 - 20 - 20

Here is a comparative view of the minimum skill investment with a FULLY INVESTED KEYSTONE

• Psyker Tree : 21 - 19 - 20
• Zealot Tree: 20 - 20 - 19
• Ogryn Tree : 21 - 21 - 21
• Veteran Tree: 23 - 24 - 25

Notes: So we are dealing with about a 3-4pt deficit if you want to really invest into keystones. The Weapon specialist tree is especially egregious having a 5 cost investment branch albeit an optional one.

Here is a comparative view of the minimum amount of PASSIVE NODES (non Blitz/Aura/Ability/Keystone) each pathway has to take to reach their respective keystone

• Psyker Tree : 13 - 12 -13
• Zealot Tree: 13 - 14 - 13
• Ogryn Tree : 14 - 14 - 14
• Veteran Tree: 16 - 17 - 16

Here is a comparative breakdown of the minimum amount of PASSIVE NODES needed to progress to each major node at each stage of the tree.

• Psyker Tree : 3 - 3 - 3 | 3 - 3 -3 | 2 - 2 - 2 | 5 - 4 - 5
• Zealot Tree: 4 - 4 - 4 | 4 - 4 - 4 | 1 -1 - 1 | 4 - 4 - 4
• Ogryn Tree : 3 - 3 - 3 | 2 - 2 - 2 | 3 - 3 - 3 | 6 - 6 - 6
• Veteran Tree: 4 - 4 - 4 | 2 - 2 - 2 | 2 - 2 - 2 | 8 - 9 - 8

Notes: If it wasn’t obvious enough this 2-3 extra points is from the dumb 8 - 9 length paths at the end of the tree. On average without counting the veteran, a single path of passives has about 13 points while the vet can goes as high as 17 passive nodes on a direct path.
HORIZONTAL BRANCHING
The Veteran Tree runs a horizontal branches on each level which basically compounds the issue if you want to stray off your main path. Now this same pathing is also in the zealot tree, and has been fine as far as i can tell, but only works for the zealot because they have the fewest Major Node branches out of all the other classes while the veteran has one of, if not the most due to other trees having lockouts.
THE PASSIVE TAX PROBLEM
Because of the horizontal branching it is inevitable you will have to go down a few extra nodes to acquire something that is essential to your build, the additional issue is that each step in the tree requires you to invest at least 2 points to reach the next major node. Two points the vet just doesn’t have in its current iteration, which means if the passives you need is not in the same section as your current tree that can easily add an extra 1-4 points of “passive tax,” which in turn means you always end up with that awful feeling of just a few points to short.

So that’s about it, its not just about one or two extra passives it’s a multitude of issues that basically compound to make build diversity a nightmare.
Overall with the way the current vet tree has been balanced it basically needs about 3-4 less nodes in each tree and a change to how the power is distributed in Weapons specialist in the least. I would honestly try not to look at each individual node too critically right now due to the veteran basically needing to “trim the fat,” in order to have a better idea of what a balanced build may look like.

but ill do it anyway cause it’s fun, so here’s my absolute trash take on a veteran tree re-balance.

[Kvidar]

Veteran Build Diversity

There are a few assumptions I’m going to preface this post with: -all talents across all classes are of rough equivalent value. (This is not a thread to talk about any specific talent or talent combination being OP or underpowered or bugged.) For the purposes of this table “Passive tax” refers to the number of passive nodes between each section. Choice tax refers to the number of lateral points that are necessary because you want to “change” from left/middle/right to a different side of the t…

[Kvidar]

I agree with the overall sentiment, I like my numbers because I’m selfish/biased and that’s how it makes sense in my brain, but we’re on the same page.

[mauroleon]

lol there is no way they will do something similar. not even op just too good and they want vets suffering

[dragomusic]

I believe that they are stuck in this stupid mindset of “Oh Veteran is a professional soldier archetype, so its thematically fitting that their tree is more rigid with less deviations!” that sounds good on paper but feels absolutely awful to play with. I really hope after this recent tree rework they’ve realized that it doesn’t correlate well to an actual fun gameplay experience.

I also really like your grenade ideas, and love giving vet blitz modifiers, except for the Krak mod “can opener.” Kraks already one shot everything with 95% of builds so that buff is almost entirely useless except for bosses. I would probably have something like it has a larger damage radius (not epicenter, so it has a larger radius on the stagger and slight chip damage but not the huge damage) and anything that gets hit by that has rending/brittleness applied to it. Would also help it be discount frags if you really need to stagger an enemy group closing in on you.

[Spaceman]

Another good post analyzing why Vet is so frustrating to build now. No matter how you slice it there are too many nodes on the Vet tree and the paths are too restrictive.

It concerns me that the tree that got the first rework was put into this far more limiting state. Has the dev team decided this style is better for balance and will change other trees to follow suit down the line?

[just.dont]

@dragomusic

I believe that they are stuck in this stupid mindset of “Oh Veteran is a professional soldier archetype, so its thematically fitting that their tree is more rigid with less deviations!” that sounds good on paper but feels absolutely awful to play with.

I sincerely doubt it was the intention. Most likely they just added nodes with the primary focus on “don’t make any strong individual nodes so that people won’t be chasing them”. And so they ended up with way too many nodes and nobody cared enough to count.

[kahniji]

Your opportunity cost breakdown metric is a really interesting way to view balance. I think it could be fine tuned further if you added in factors that represent the vectors of travel at each step, since depending on which side of a skill tree you start on there’s a difference in opportunity cost that needs to be accounted for. Though the difference with just the average cost overview really shows how poorly this whole tree was thought out. They do be good numbers tho.

[kahniji]

I thought about an increase in radii, does make sense gameplay wise, does not flavor wise. Considering the main identity of the grenade is verbatim “the focused detonation lacks a blast radius, therefore making them impractical for use against enemy infantry.” put me off of idea in risk of committing anti lore sacrilege.
But actually though.
Like you said the extra damage really only effects bosses which made the grenade effect on the current node redundant for anything but bosses, so i decided to lean into it and basically rip off vermintide2.

[Zanzi]

Just gave this a quick glance over, I’m surprised FS didn’t do something more like this with more lockouts on certain nodes so you build in a certain way.

Really good tree idea.

Personally I believe the primary keystone should be more middle of the road, with specialist additions to the keystones being more at the bottom, if you want to specialise by going down a certain route. Anyway that’s just my take, good stuff.