Adjustment of “Voice of Command” and “Tactical Awareness"

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

i don’t have any data, so this is just a feeling, but probably more than 80% of veterans use the “Voice Of Command” node. and they always use the node “Duty and Honour”.
One of the reasons is that the other abilities are difficult to use or weak, but I think the effect is simply too strong.
The cooldown of “Voice of Command” is 30 seconds, but the effect is 15 seconds, so there is only 15 seconds of waiting time.
especially when combined with “Tactical Awareness,” it has a cooldown of 6 seconds per specialist, so you can spam with almost no waiting time just to kill two specialists. (+curios)

most people spam “Voice Of Command” simply to increase their own survivability. I think the concept of this ability is to inspire the entire teammates to raise their voice and power.

the remedy is.
“Voice Of Command”.
・Increased base cooldown (45 seconds)
・Increase the coherency range of the effect (so that it can be applied to allies a little further away)
・temporarily increase damage as well as toughness (increased stamina would be interesting)

“Tactical Awareness”.
・shorten the cooldown by % based on the number of seconds the ability is on cooldown, instead of 6 seconds.
or
・keep the effect at 6 seconds, but add a cooldown like “Survivarist”.

What do you guys think?

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I think it’s “overpowered”, and I have it on every one of my veteran non-penance-seeking builds. I use OP cautiously, because really it’s just the best of the equivalent options by a country mile.

That said, a lot of veteran options are very “meh”, and given the classes’ iconic stature in WH40k lore, you’re going to hear a lot of objections on the forums to any detrimental changes…

Be prepared!

3

No. Voice of Command is the only good combat ability because of how half-assed the veteran rework was at the launch of patch 13. It’s still currently the only option worth taking and it’s not overpowered.

Furthermore, adding an extra 15 seconds won’t make players take another ability because the others are still ašs. They’ll just stick with it or just not play veteran. The answer isn’t to nerf or impede, but to instead give some other viable options which don’t suck.

4

I like the stealth ability sometimes when solo, lets me sit there and do auspex stuff when my rando team has 0 intention of backing me up.

As for VoC being OP? Maybe a tiny bit overtuned, but I don’t think it warrants an entire nerfbat. Maybe a nerfstick.

5

I think it’s a bit tricky. I’m inclined to think VoC + D&H + tactical awareness is indeed a bit overtuned, but I think there is quite a lot of nuance and caveats that need to be added to that statement.

Firstly base VoC is ok but really nothing amazing. Honestly I might go so far as to say it’d be downright bad with any amount longer cooldown. I’ll admit I’ve never run it without D&H so maybe I’m incorrect on how it works at base but from the description it’s literally just a self toughness heal and AoE stagger. I think that’s debatably worse than base infiltrate, unquestionably so if VoC had its cooldown increased to 45 seconds. I think you recognise this too since you suggest some buffs to go along with your suggested nerfs.

Duty and honour definitely gives a strong effect. And the uptime combined with tactical awareness is basically 100%. You really are best to just spam it off cooldown at that point to keep everyone stocked with overshield, and I do think skill expression with combat abilities should be encouraged. For VoC + D&H it would be more interesting to use if you genuinely needed to think more about when to pop it. Not sure a cooldown increase is required, that would depend on any changes to tactical awareness, which I’ll get into shortly.

Regarding this:

Since it works on coherency range there is already the Charismatic talent right next to good ole Confirmed Kill to increase the range by 50%. I actually think the current range is pretty perfect to make charismatic desirable without feeling mandatory.

Tactical Awareness is generally just kinda cursed even looking at it on its own. Giving a flat cooldown reduction is such a weird choice, giving it effectiveness that scales extra well with low cooldown ults. I’d guess they wanted to further differentiate it from bruiser and psykinetic but it seems like it’s just being different for the sake of it. It should just be like 10% CDR on special kill, 15% if we’re being generous. At 10% I would leave VoC cooldown as is. At 15% having D&H node increase cooldown by 33% (30->40 second cooldown) would be appropriate.

Now the other major thing here I think is the wider context of Vet tree and exercising some diplomacy in how Vet is handled. I personally would not advocate for VoC/Tactical awareness adjustments/nerfs unless they’re packaged with impactful Exe stance/left tree/right tree buffs, ideally weapon specialist QoL buffs too. I think a good portion of the Vet community is still understandably wary of FS Vet balance after the patch 13 changes and the long state of instability Vet experienced in the aftermath.

VoC Vet can make for a very strong support build that drastically reduces the difficulty of a run. I don’t think anyone would argue that isn’t a really strong build. However currently if you want to build around the other trees you’re often playing something that is at worst outright mediocre, or at best pigeonholes your good weapon loadout options to a significant degree. I don’t want Vet mains to feel like they’re getting their shins kicked after so many legitimate concerns have been raised over keystone design, left tree weapon inflexibility, or right tree… general lacklustre options.

Hence again to wrap up. TL;DR I support some nerfs as outlined earlier in this post, but only after/packaged with some reasonable upward adjustments for elements of the tree that have been talked to death at this point

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6

I agree that VoC only seems overtuned because the other options are trash. Gold toughness really is obnoxiously strong, though.

Changing the other abilities:

Executioner’s Stance

  • Move Relentless add-on (Reset timer on highlighted enemy kill) to base
  • Instantly reloads your weapon on activation, and increases reload speed by 50% for the duration of the ability
  • No longer deactivates when switching to melee
  • Replace The Bigger They Are… with a new node: Unstoppable Barrage
    • New node effects: Getting a headshot while Executioner’s Stance is active pauses duration for 0.5 seconds.
      • My intent here is to have an add-on that allows for dedicated bossing Executioner’s Stance builds, by allowing the ability to stay on for a lot longer than 5 seconds… as long as you can aim.

Infiltrate

  • Surprise Attack add-on moved to base
    • This is supposed to be a more drawn-out version of Zealot’s Shroudfield anyways, with a lot less burst damage. At base though, it doesn’t really have any notable effects.
  • New effect: You gain 15% attack speed for the weapon you have equipped for 5 seconds after leaving Stealth.
    • This makes it slightly more interesting - do you choose to move into melee range and start chopping, or are you using it to retreat? Either way, if you want to abuse the effect of this buff to the fullest, you’ll have to commit to the weapon of your choice, and fits well with the theme of the right side of the tree (constant switching between melee/gun).
  • Overwatch no longer increases cooldown
    • It feels like a downside just for the sake of a downside. It’s already an eh choice to add another charge to Stealth, since you don’t really need it, but the cooldown penalty just kills it completely. Redoubled Zeal doesn’t increase cooldown.
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