I love the arbites class, been asking for it since launch. Love his giant shotguns and commanding presence. It’s so much fun to tank a bunch of ranged fire just to kill 100 dudes with my brick of a shotgun. I feel he’s so great bc his tree doesn’t have as much node tax like vet or zealot has and a lot of his skills have excellent synergies with one another AND with existing and new weapons and their blessings. I feel like he has a better executioners stance than the vet. Vet especially needs to be brought up to Arbites level because right now there’s only one decent way to play him. I feel moving his skills around and buffing a bunch of them like ex stance, smoke grenades, infiltrate etc. Having his grenade talents up higher on the tree and tightening the whole tree to be able to have the same build diversity as arbites. Thats why the arbites is so much fun, he has SO MANY builds and they’re all fun. I feel VET and ZEALOT but need that same love. I don’t want arbites to be nerfed into oblivion (maybe aside from the shock maul a bleed dog explosion) but I feel like fatshark has been going in the right direction with class balance when the Ogryn got his buff. Give vet some more exclusive weapons to make me and others wanna play him again. Maybe him so more bonuses to fire rate and mag size
TLDR
-Vet needs a tree tidying, less node tax for build diversity
-buff Ex stance and infiltrate
-buff smokes
-Zealot could use some skill tree tidying too
-I feel Ogryn and psyker are up to par in their own way
-VET should be a better ranged class than the arbites
I think the balance problem is less inherent in the Vet itself and more in how the npc spawn behaviour has developed.
If mainly ranged gameplay was a thing and sprinting from one cover to another bringing your firepower to bear was actually a way to contribute to the team, then Vet would propably be pretty strong.
Right now, where on higher difficulty there is always some melee trash spawning right at your back and the only thing ranged is good for is instaswep to gun, delete a sniper, instaswep to continue melee is the basic gameplay loop for all five classes vet has a serious identity problem.
That’s why the only vet build I currently see on higher difficulties seems to be sabre+revolver (or Plasma)+Shout…
I really liked it, when ranged combat mattered and prolonged firefights were a thing
Remember that vet’s “unique” passive is peaking from cover like in a tactical shooter? I tried using it for the lulz and got instantly gunned down in that one pixel that was exposed to gunners.
Who cares when you can slide on your butt all day and have nearly permanent gold toughness.
I see your point but I think making every class fun to play is kind of the point of a videogame. The game is already challenging for most players. The other classes need to be fun and have varied builds and fit each persons play style that doesn’t just lock you into a certain play style
Sometimes people need to differentiate between ‘fun’ and ‘overpowered.’
But well, can’t really stop people from thinking that way since it’s just simple psychology of winning = fun, losing = unfun, I guess.
And yes, the game is challenging that’s why there are different difficulty levels to choose from, so you can pick the one that feels most comfortable for you. The game doesn’t force anyone to complete Havoc 40.
Also, I’m not saying I’m against varied builds. I’m just against power creep in general.
I’ve just met like 15 gunners, other range mobs and reapers on the bridge at Chasm Logistratum Havoc. Of course, there were trash hordes, but, man, a good vet just shooting things could make it much easier to pass. If your team doesn’t have normal long range weapons, it gets really messy, you feel so useless on zealot with flammer and pathetic knives
I play havoc and auric maelstrom only so I don’t feel the sentiment of the game not being fun when I lose. I still feel other classes need to be brought up in their own special way. It’s the most fun me and my friends have had since launch. We were launch players and big tabletop heads. We all wanted an arbites and we got it. I don’t want the fun taken away from the class which is another reason to buff the other ones. Vet especially.
Man, I don’t want another game where you’re a team of super heroes. I liked the convict origin, I like the idea of being the unluckiest group pitted against a hell they have no right surviving. The way the Tide franchise captures that atmosphere is one of its unique draws.
Sure when you get really good with your kit and play well with your team you do start to feel pretty super in previous Tides, but damn it it felt earned, you weren’t a super hero out the box. Things have already headed in this bland power fantasy direction for so long it’s probably pointless to try to fight it at this point, but I want to feel like my back is up against the wall because I’m working around inherent limitations, not just because the game threw a ridiculous spawn spike at me and my team was AFK.
TL;DR fun is subjective, more power is not fun for everyone, quite the opposite for some of us. I want Vet and Zealot to have better build diversity but overall player power needs to go down to ever recapture the reasons I fell in love with this series.
For good or ill, it’s clear that arbitrator represents what will inevitably become the new standard. Fatshark is not about to nerf a DLC class they just released. So if the skill trees of other classes are lacking by comparison - and let’s be honest, by that standard they are - then you should expect Fatshark to bring them up to pace with the arbiter (and ogryn).
On a sidenote, I’ll actually give Fatshark credit for designing a skill tree with a minimal amount of dead nodes; a testament to the fact that the skill trees should have never been trees to begin with. Arbitrator is a reasonably well designed class in a vacuum, but I can’t say I’m enjoying the game more given how obviously power crept it is. Auric has become entirely trivial to play, and that’s not healthy for the game. Or fun, for that matter.
