Are you satisfied with smoke grenades?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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We have smoke grenades for more than half a year that - correct me if im wrong - weren’t updated since they where added.
(update: according to Elodie - they were, but still not enough to be playable for many people)

At that time I saw ALOT of people complaining about smokes both in game and on forums because of how weak it was (and still is today, in my opinion) against enemies. And now… I can’t find anyone who can say that veteran got one unfinished/free slot for class tool ideas. I wasn’t a hater of it at that time, but one guy on forum pointed out it’s problems and I couldn’t help myself but admit that it has lots of flaws, and comparing to other classes felt more of a joke rather than actual class tool, that drove me to make a new thread where I proposed the idea of changing smoke grenades, providing some ideas to either tweak it or change to something more interesting and versatile. And while it didn’t get much attention, I still think that this topic is relevant, because of how bad this grenade slot still feels even today comparing to other classes.

So, what happened? We got used to it? Is it good now? People changed their opinion? Or we just forgot about it’s useless existence because we have bigger problems to deal with in our beloved game?

Before I start yapping down there about how this item looks dumb for me, I just want to ask you to leave your opinion about smoke grenade, be it detailed or not, because I am really curious how people react to it in-game nowadays.

I understand that its only purpouse is to provide you and your team a cover from long-range enemies vision on you, but the way smoke grenade does it is at least, not last, slow as kark. While you take it, drop it underneath you or into enemy, and wait for it to pop, you can get killed by 1 or 2 gunners who just locked their gun barrels at you in a matter of seconds.
I really like the idea that enemies lose you in smoke cloud, but when you trust it too much it betrays you. How? Well, while trappers, hounds and poxwalkers, which are huge pain in ass to deal with, can’t see you in smoke screen and it takes a while for them to find you there and attack, it doesnt save you from biggest damage dealers in game - snipers, flamethrowers and grenadiers. They always know where you are, but you never know where are they, because smoke you created closes your vision. So… what’s the point? Not only you dont get much of a breathing window you trying to build with tool given you by game, but also you can make a situation that gives your enemy an advantage against you by YOUR OWN TOOL (while no other class has anything that can make you suffer from using it except psyker, which has powerful abilities to stagger/kill hordes or do concentrated damage to certain enemy they pick themselves, giving your team actually something useful against enemy that doesnt depend on resources from map such as grenade piles).
And boy, dont you make me remember how my poor graphics card handles that smoke screen and how much annoyed people I encountered back then by just using it (I feel you now)

I just don’t understand - are players happy about it? Are FatShark satisfied with final result that is today’s smoke grenades? Were they satisfied even? Or they just don’t have a clue on how to improve its usefulness without changing its core idea?
Will we get something for smoke grenade, or it will leave an empty slot-promise to improve our class experience since Patch 13?

Honestly it doesnt need a full rework. It just needs extra buffs that shouldn’t hurt to code. I just feel like FS didn’t gave a crap making veteran skill tree when I remind myself that Zealot got same but better skills and other classes got a WAY better and more original tool that does greater job.

Why can’t we just get something to compensate it for 8 goddamn months? At least an answer about why not?

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I’m not sure what happened with Veteran development, but something definitely happened.

When Patch 13 dropped with 2.0 talent trees, the Veteran tree was a placeholder without Keystones because they’d built all the trees around specific weapons but then decided (probably rightly) that wasn’t great and dropped and rebuilt everything at the last minute, and so we got a 3.0 tree a month later that took 3-5 more points than every other class to even reach a keystone, and then a 4.0 tree to fix that. A lot of stuff feels like it wasn’t terribly well thought out in the Veteran tree, and substantial portions feel like they were envisioned for a tabletop turn based game.

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Smokes need a balance. Alongside a lot of vet.

Want me to add this to the Book?

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The game has smoke grenades?

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I would prefer smokes be a gimmick mechanic rather than a grenade slot for Vet.

They can be equipped by the whole team (think scanner slot) in a level we have to retreat. For example using them to block gunners LoS or something of the sort while we scamper to a valkyrie extract or used to mark a location for a bombing run.

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that’s one of many classes problems in general which are very controversial topics, shouldn’t be that specific, but… thanks for caring that much? idk what to say but just very grateful to see a hand of help on shining some light on this topic, because for me personally as veteran main overall class feels like an unfinished project full of generic ideas when you compare to others

(yeah, generic soldier gets generic crap)

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The Book’s one job is to collect the ‘minor’ issues into one singular reference document. Plus it has a section about balance.

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oh, well then, i guess yes, it would be great!
edit: afterall its not only me so it should be there actually, now that i think about it…

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I really want something more interesting like Zealot’s throwing knife rather than gimmicky meme grenade.

Something like a sub pistol with limited ammo for quick firing so it can dispatch specialist quickly which can really help alleviate weapon with slow switching speed or low range weapon.

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I don’t like them because they subject everyone to a grey, dull hell instead of whatever map environments the team is currently in. I suggested a movement speed buff whenever the team leaves the cloud to spice it up a bit but others have suggested giving it the ability to override pox smoke or neutralize fire bombs. I’m not satisfied with them and I think FatShark could’ve done something better, something cooler, but they clearly wanted Vet to be [The Grenades Guy]. Even a little flying servitor could’ve been cooler than smokes.

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11

Given that vet has a stealth build…if we’re committed to a ‘utility’ blitz I’d have gone with one that could synergize with stealth, maybe not breaking it. Perhaps a servo skull to mark targets, or deployable mines. Something that would be useful to the team instead of just 'maybe the enemy shoots through it maybe they don’t".

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I’ve never actually seen the smoke grenades used

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The real problem is krak and frag being so powerful without even running grenade regen. Smoke does next to nothing against most enemies, nothing to bosses and is actively irritating in the already visually cluttered landscape to be attempting to put up screens. On top of that, its as far away from the decent support you could be running for the crime of running such a bad blitz (survivalist).

I don’t even know why node cost wise you’d even be around there, the 10% melee damage and agile engagement/bleed do not cover for the uselessness of smokes. Outside of literally ‘waves of dogs’ smokes are just going to annoy people and be bad all the time unfortunately. This is even after figuring out the few interactions they have beyond dogs that are decent (trapper/flamer, sniper when he feels like obeying the cloud rules). They suck.

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I don’t necessarily hate the idea of having smokes, but as you point out, they’re too weak compared to the other 2.

Also I’ve been playing with this idea in my mind, but we could have a weapon in the place of smokes or other future blitz slots, say a huge sniper with 1 round that goes into cooldown for 1/1.5/2 min depending on how good it is, or just have it refill with grenades. We already have the precedent of “infinite grenades” with Ogryn rock. We could also have that for other classes.
Also the sniper could fit well with the right side archetype of going stealthy to reposition and put a big hole into something.

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I still vote for a 40k C4 equivalent, very low throw range that you can leave on the ground or stick to an enemy and detonate. Either way I’d like smokes to go away.

Doesn’t really matter because there’s some people who really like them, so we’ll probably never see them removed. Reworking their visuals would be a good start.

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My most played Vet build uses smoke, and while it one of the harder blitz to use correctly it complements my build properly. There is a lot of cases where you should use it in advance to smoke locations you will get to instead of throwing at your feet (eg: throw it in the doorway, ledge before you get there). If you use it a lot you’ll see.

The strength of the smoke is that you will not get targeted by enemies outside the smoke while inside. Fighting close to the edge makes flamers wander into melee range for you to slaughter for example.

My main issues with it is:

  • It basically requires grenade regen. Without demolition stockpile it isn’t nearly as effective, since you do want to use multiple of them at once in several situation.
  • Base duration is… kinda rough, but Grenade Tinkerer is too costly.
  • Impairs ally vision.

What I would like to see is an increase of base duration by 100% to 30 sec and changing Grenade Tinkerer buff to something else (Regen toughness like Dome? 10% damage boost? TDR?). That would probably make it a lot better.

If anyone tries learning how to use the thing, I advise running it with Infiltrate and 0 TDR talents taken on the tree. You will very quickly learn how to use it so you never-ever get shot by enemies.

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I think everyone just stopped caring, mostly. We all know smokes are mediocre, and even the most irate gamers will stop beating a dead horse eventually. It sucks to me that Veteran has what is essentially a dud choice when the rest of the classes’ blitzes have their own powerful uses and cover their own unique situations.

I’d honestly replace it with a flashbang - throw it, it detonates immediately, and any ranged enemy looking at you gets enough suppression to stop shooting and dive to the floor.

It’s still entirely reasonable for guardsmen to carry flash grenades, IMO, and it wouldn’t intrude on Zealot’s stunbombs either, because it’s designed to deal with ranged enemies, not melee enemies - which is extra cool, because both classes get access to a tool that makes them even more powerful at what they already do!

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Smokes have received buffs several times. From what I remember its duration was increased, they added stagger on explosion, and fixed / increased its effectiveness against a number of enemies (ranged in particular).

It continues to be a strong nade that people just don’t know how to use right. It’s basically an on-demand shield against ranged, taunts many ranged specials to get closer out of whatever cover or worse position they’re in, and it’s a direct counter to doggos and trappers. It’s also very light on talents since you don’t even need most of the usual nade boosters on account of its duration, no of uses and how situational it is.

As long as you treat it as something that significantly reduces not eliminates ranged, and still dodge and reposition accordingly, it’s more than safe enough.

I recently made a doomgirl build with the Ironhelm shotty & Weapons Specialist and tried it with kraks and smokes both, and the smoke version was just obviously 20x better considering you have no other way to deal with the ranged.

Imo all vet nades are in a very good place.

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It’s pretty useless if you can handle ranged enemy just fine in the first place though and they’re not really that much of a threat.

Although, maybe peeps that constantly complain about dying to shooter probably could make use of it I guess. Like some Psyker that keep spouting about how the game is literally unplayable without dome shield.

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Its as you say.
If they worked 100% of the time as they should, they would essentially be a psyker dome.
If they removed fire from the ground like they do in C

They would be an actual choice compared to frag and krak.
As they are now however, they are a gimmick that is not dependable to do its ONE job

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