Allow selecting any blitz/ability/aura/keystone

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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So I had that nasty idea for some time, haunting even in dreams:

What if instead of having 1/2 entries/exits to/from blitz/ability/aura/keystone they would be merged in middle into a horizontal list (carousel or however it’s called) allowing us to select whichever we want?

It’d give us some flexibility, e.g. currently I can’t take Assail and Psykinetic Aura (not to discuss if it is or is not balanced), which is a reason many people skip Assail (or something else) - they are forced or “encouraged” by much better talents (or just more suitable to their playstyle) to select the “notables”. Also - not sure if it’s still an issue, as I wasn’t following much discussion over Darktide recently (also many of them were just about havoc) - but in the past there were many complaints about height/width of the tree, that there we don’t have as many points to experiment. Even currently given more bridges and squishing the trees little bit, we have to spend few extra (unwanted) points going from left to right and/or going through talents that don’t matter much to us.

It’d give flexibility also to Fatshark - if we are ever to get more subclasses (subcareers?) right now that means another branch, meaning thinking about place in the tree (on the edge or middle right/left?), buuuut placing in the middle will break some builds. On the edge means longer road to another edge and again thinking about squishing the tree/making more bridges. Instead Fatshark could make even one notable without thinking about whole tree and call it a day.

Of course I’m biased and don’t see many difficulties/issues, but I guess some (maybe even Games Workshop?) will complain that it’ll be even less lore accurate (pls don’t bite, I’m not much into any of Warhammer universes) and subclasses will lose even more of their identities but from gameplay perspective, I’d say that pros outweight this? I mean if you want to roleplay and go fully lore accurate you will still have an option (maybe even easier to accomplish, so might be win-win?).

Also probably balancing might be kinda bigger issue (if it wasn’t already) as some talents were designed (again not to discuss if poorly or well) without thinking about interaction with another as it wasn’t possible in the past. Now changing one thing, changes only limited number of interactions, so e.g. nerfing/breaking one meta build doesn’t necessarily nerf/break many other ones. With increased number of interactions it’s easier to harm more people or not predict making specific build more op (fun not allowed), but, hey, we are testing changes, right?

In general - there are always going to be meta builds (I don’t believe in achieving perfect balance lol) but I think this change would make that there will be more variation in builds, flattening op-ness - even if there will be “the best” build it won’t be as big outlier as it currently can be, making it only viable option.
Basically closing little bit skill issue gap between builds and allowing some adjustments in playstyle. Weren’t you sometimes thinking when looking at someone’s build: “Looks fun, but I don’t like playing with X, I’d love having Y, but can’t without making whole different build”?

Welp, longer rant than intended. During my short research I haven’t found any discussion about this, so I hope nobody will yell at me: “It’s been discussed 100 times, here you have 20 of them. Topic closed”. :smiley:

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I am always thinking about improving the skill trees and that would solve quite a lot of my problems. Good take!

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I think giving people more opportunity cost and choices to make via meaningful tradeoffs is interesting. What reason would anyone ever have to pick not survivalist if it didn’t come at the benefit of getting to other talents more easily? Why would anyone ever pick any Ogryn aura except the 10% melee damage one, given free choice?

I would even go as far as to say if they went into the opposite direction, it would make the talents more interesting. For an example, what if non-survivalist auras had powerful thematic talents locked behind them? Now you’re deciding between getting the better aura and getting a less powerful aura but with a stronger other talent behind it. I think that sort of design would be more meaningful. I want the choices made to be relevant, not just an abstract form of stat distribution.

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I’d like some Blitz freedom but I agree that the associated costs and neighboring nodes are the entire shlep of the current system. But if I stare longingly at the Zealot tree, in addition to being far inferior to throwing knives the nodes around fire/stun are absolutely terrible. There is literally no case I would ever run them atm. Why not just make the blitz a free choice? Smokes are similar, quite meme-y in the extreme and cutting you out of extra nodes if you want to go back and use ammo aura.

As for whether it’d be too strong with Assails. Well, if Psyk Aura caught a much needed nerf I don’t think anyone would care. I don’t even think they’re that good atm except for malefic stacking, but whatever they do cleave and clear trash shooters fast and count as warp kills.

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I mean, I can accept leaving auras as it is, as some sort of trade off, maybe even keystones, but still think atleast abilities and blitzes could be freely selectable.

Also I’d say it would be weird to make strong aura/something else and the rest weaker to compensate. I think it would be hard to balance and could even more force going one path with little to no variation between builds. I get what you mean, but feels like complete opposite of what I want to see - right now if I want to go for specific aura or, especially, keystone most of time you have to fully commit to that with little area for adjustments, which kills many ideas for builds.
Nevertheless interesting concept, but maybe there was a room to add some big talents changing gameplay like notable passives in Path of Exile? Like you have 1 health, but 100% more toughness and hits can’t go through it (CI from PoE) or all hits apply burning but less direct damage? I know sounds kinda op, these are only examples, so you get the gist. Then I could justify having to spend more points to get to that - currently blitz/aura/ability doesn’t necessarily do that for me. And probably that should be the role of keystones, but 1. they are at the end of tree, meaning it’s sometimes not possible to get to them without forcing yourself to go through a lot unnecessary/unwanted talents, 2. most of them are not that game-changing or sometimes not even worth getting instead of couple extra “small” talents.

We still have limited number of points and I don’t think we should increase number of them, just give little bit more freedom - even only abilities/blitzes would make big difference.
Also my view comes mostly from Psyker and probably that would be the biggest beneficient, as I’d say he has also the biggest potential in terms of diverse builds (could be wrong tho), not meaning the rest would gain nothing.

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or just came to my mind: what if specific talents/auras/keystones would have different cost? E.g. you can choose any aura, but Survivalist costs 2 points instead of 1 as the rest of Veteran’s auras?

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Assail + Psyk probably wouldn’t be that much better if any. It was just to show that some parts can be impossible to get, not only because we have to spend more points to get to that (which is fine and needed to some degree) but mainly because I’m forced to get some more or less playstyle changing node which feels terrible to me or doesn’t fit playstyle I have in mind for that specific build.
Of course I don’t have to like everything but I don’t like the idea that it completely locks me from experimenting and trying many more different builds. If I have to go through talent I don’t need, to get something I really want - that’s okay, can’t totally avoid that. But if have go to through some notable talent like blitz/ability and locking myself from getting different talent (whether small or notable), then it’s a no-no for me.

In short I’d like to see build-crafting more of wise managing your skill points rather than forcing yourself through some major parts/completely leaving your build idea.

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Can you expand on this a bit? For stuns anyway, I think the nodes around fire grenade are pretty self explanatory.

Vicious offering is weapon dependent but pretty good on the weapons it works well on. Bleed for the Emperor is pretty great survivability on Martyr builds. I feel like that path is one EWEW buff away from being really solid. It also paths efficiently into duelist, until death, and benediction, though I’ll admit that’s not super relevant when I’m usually forcing both until death and TWBS into most builds.

Like I kinda get what you mean I just don’t think it’s that far off being a competitive path, so would be curious to hear you explain your reasoning more.

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Enduring Faith + Good Balance is like a better Iron Will on marty by far, you take like el zilcho damage (you can drop crusher overheads down to like 50 damage). Bleed for the Emperor is so weak vs that. EWEW is beyond awful, Disdain does nothing, coherency regen may as well not exist, voice of terra is a terribly nerfed version of out for blood, bleed for the emperor is a far worse way of blocking damage than what I mentioned useful only for being active all the time. And then you have the grenades which suck.

Incoming Wind is one of the game’s top 5 toughness restores, and feeds into the best damage source they have (duelist) on the same active condition. Basically the only thing here resembling a sunk node is the backstab one, which is still far less than the 3 wasted nodes and awful blitz you get going anywhere else…

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I’m iffy on Good Balance but otherwise following the rest, all up to stun grenade is awful???

Definitely gonna need you to explain that one. How on earth are stuns bad? They seem like an exceptional panic button/revive aid/stop bad situation before it escalates tool.

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but Zealot is the lol teamwork class, running a smite esque blitz (that still doesn’t work on mutants after 2 years) is not running the abundance of nodes that make your buddies’ contribution next to irrelevant. and you get stuck with the weaker forms of toughness regen not diving down to incoming wind, which is the worst problem of all. the other regen sources are defective vs how powerful that is by itself.

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I mean it’s not really smite like since you get to act while it’s stunning things. It’s not team reliant to be effective.

Your complaints seem to boil down to the surrounding nodes not the blitz itself (besides the mutant point), which is fine and understandable just not really what was implied when you originally said the grenades “suck”.

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I do think its a weak grenade because of how it works. Stunning is not inherently strong, and made worse when enemies ignore it totally (mutant). Its also possible for other players to knock stunned enemies into fall down stagger so they stop being stunned, made even better by their stagger reset bugs. Sometimes an odd shaped rock covers the explosion and enemies are completely unaffected by it (like the frag bomb). They are kinda weak without being buggy, because there’s usually tons more enemies than you can concievably stun.

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I’m not seeing that as a good thing for the balance of the game tbh, the tree should be a constraint, it’s what balance each archetype, should some of the part of the tree be revamped due to issues that they causes, sure, but I’m against picking out the Blitz, cause at that point, people will want to free the aura, ability and keystones, and what next, we delete the tree and just let you pick each talent node freely ?

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I think the blitz is far less determining than an aura or ult. Especially the 7/12 grenades, there’s never more than 5 restocks per game. So its entirely possible to play with almost no blitz (every time I attempt fire/stuns and cue with a nuke ogryn).

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Welp, yes, that’s essentially what I’d love to see.
I just like the idea of mixing different archetypes, I’d argue it would give Fatshark an option to do asymetric branches and move more “powerful” and archetype defining nodes lower.
Or as I said in earlier comment, put bigger - “notable” talent let’s say after auras, locked to one archetype, so you couldn’t choose more than one, but it wouldn’t block different talents lower/on the side.

Sure, the tree would rely more on its shape, some parts of one branch could be longer/shorter than other and then balancing many more interactions between talents. But I’d like the idea of hard/strict constraint/identity definition in class, and loose in archetypes, where I’m only limited by number of skill points and placement of the talents on the tree, rather than by blitz, aura, etc., that I don’t have to like.

Edit:
Regarding keystones. I’m still not sure how to feel about them. They are kinda tied to specific archetype but beside Ogryn’s and maybe Veteran’s Weapon Specialist and Psyker’s Empowered Psionics, I don’t really see that. So on one hand, I don’t mind much leaving them as they are, on the other hand it could be fun to toy with and see what can be done.
They are in weird spot for me, where some affect playstyle and/or resource management and others are just small addition of stats and don’t change much if they are active or not.

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