Veteran voice of command being the only actual havoc option for veteran because of how horrendously overpowered it is.
Heavy knockback
Team invulnerability
All with what can be a incredibly short cool down
Compared to
Dump aggro on your teammates
Killing elites and shooters slightly better
Vet as a class is gimped out of choice not even by overpowered options (voc is an obvious outlier) it’s just that a lot of their perks are completely useless and don’t gel with how darktide is designed to be played and the actual decent options are really only the ones you can pick
Compare that to pysker and zealot who are really strong and have a multitude of ways to be strong.
Then there is ogyrn the class designed for a game that isn’t just even real. Look fatshark haha funny abhuman gets treated poorly soo cool canon to the lore but uhhh seriously stop treating our big guy like complete and utter garbage.
Not in havoc. Ammo economy is too bad to run on veteran, you already need to play it like your bullets are made out of solid gold, imagine if they nerfed its ammo.
I guess you could call it OP if you are comparing it to like the vigilant auto guns or shredder pistol or whatever. But that’s more of a issue with most weapons being trash. If havoc is going to be the main end game mode then more weapons need to be viable in it.
Smite (Psyker)
This ability allows the player to paralyze all elites and mobs within sight with a single button press, halting the flow of the game and removing any sense of threat, which makes the game less enjoyable. Even with a cooldown, the ability itself is problematic and needs a major rework.
A simple fix would be to limit the paralysis effect to mobs only, making it completely ineffective against elites and specialists. However, a more drastic change could involve removing the paralysis effect entirely and instead making it deal damage to enemies.
Over Toughness (Voice of Command, Chorus)
This has been a topic of debate for a while. The very concept of “Over Toughness” is flawed, as it allows players to survive fatal attacks that should logically be lethal. Damage to health should be calculated based on the remaining percentage of toughness.
For Voice of Command and Chorus, the staggering effect should be limited to mobs and specialists only, and have no effect on elites or bosses. This is especially important because these abilities can currently cause bosses to fall to their deaths, which is neither fun nor fair (poor Ogryn…).
Tactical Awareness and Zealot’s CDR
These abilities allow for the spamming of powerful skills, which is a significant balance issue. The cooldown reduction (CDR) needs to be adjusted.
However, considering the current high-difficulty gameplay design, where numerous specialists and elites spawn rapidly, the developers may have intended for frequent ability usage to keep up with the pace of combat. Careful balancing is required to maintain this dynamic gameplay while preventing skill spam.
Duelling Sword
This weapon clearly needs a nerf. Its base damage and damage against armored targets should be reduced. However, since it is designed as a single-target weapon, it doesn’t need to be weakened too much.
Currently, the differences between its variants (Marks) are minimal, so a rebalancing could be considered to better distinguish them in terms of single-target damage, crowd control, or a balanced hybrid.
Boltgun
As an iconic weapon in the 40K universe, I love it too, but it undeniably has too much ammo. The total ammunition should be reduced, though its damage should remain unchanged.
Additionally, as someone pointed out, the hip-fire rate could be decreased. (After all, if a mere prisoner fired a Boltgun at that speed, their arm would be ripped off!)
trauma staff is a horror show to aim on many of the stairs and terrain that has weird collision.
combat shotguns have fallen off of the map and were never really that great to begin with, save for the kantrael having the ability to shoot through walls for a while there.
Ah yes, plasma gun has way too good of ammo economy on its primary fire when paired with its insane damage/cleave.
I don’t use boltgun in Havoc, but on regular Aurics, exe stance boltgun is one of the most ridiculous things in the game if built and used properly. However, if you buff stuff for Havoc (except the very clearly underperforming weapons like the aforementioned combat shotguns, autopistol etc), then “regular” gameplay becomes even more of a joke. It’s a slippery slope sadly and shows the core design issues of Havoc IMO.
Havoc does not matter. This is a game mode for a tiny part of the players…
Don’t think about havoc, that is a total failure, to balance things. Period.
Do you have any takes regarding Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude? It also stunlocks enemies and can even stagger monstrosities. Is there a way smite could be made more similar to chorus?
Smite also deals negligible damage, but it definitely is more spammable. Is your complaint about the stagger itself? That seems like a useful team support tool to me.
Nah I’ve got no beef with either Chorus or Smite, in my experience they don’t really deserve the flak they get. Just pointing out why merely stunlocking isn’t necessarily enough to make something ‘OP’.
Okay look, things should be balanced for the highest level of play because the lower levels will be blown through by experienced players either way. New players who don’t play havoc or auric maelstrom wont know what the meta is, so it doesn’t really matter too much if something is really over powered in standard damnation or something, new players wont know it is over powered and likely don’t have the skill to properly exploit it regardless. A experienced player will blow through that using the worst weapons in the game anyways, so what does it matter if its a bit easier for said experienced player?
The place where balance matters the most, high level meta players, is where those small balance differences actually matter, because those people will always use the most effective weapons and abilities, if all the other abilities/weapons aren’t even close to the same planet as said meta abilities/weapons then they will never be used, making the end game very stale and boring, driving away experienced players.
Honestly I think a lot of people complaining about how boring the game feels, are literally only complaining because they are forced to use one of the same handful of good weapons and abilities every time. You cant really mix up your playstyle especially when playing veteran particularly, but also on zealot and psyker. Each only has like 2-4 builds that are worth using and some slight minor variations that don’t really impact gameplay that much.
I would rather everything be viable in havoc, but maybe a few things are OP in standard damnation, then everything be balanced around like standard damnation at the cost of 95% of things being complete garbage at high levels.
Havoc is a big artificially driven difficulty. you cannot balance ANYTHING with this game mode. So many things don’t work at all in Havoc.
Before thinking to balance things on Havoc, they have to entirely delete Havoc concept and rebuild it.
Is it clear how I think havoc is just lost time by developers?
If they want to drive away their players, sure they should balance the entire game for the 1% players playing only havoc. Sure, the game will be a success after that…
But I propose you something…
That they change several values of weapons just for Havoc and only in this game mode. Like that you will be happy and they can make boltgun one shot monstrosities that I would not care of it as I don’t plan to play this… thing.
And in parallel, they can balance the game…
Again balance doesn’t matter that much in auric. I mean I run braced auto gun in auric damnation and pull massive numbers. You can just use whatever you find fun and do well with it.
Fact is havoc is supposed to be the main end game mode that is supposed to keep experienced players around to engage with the live service. That is clearly the intent. Is it perfect? No. does it need a lot of reworking in general? Yes. Is part of that reworking also rebalancing and making more weapons viable? Also yes.
Really the only big difference between havoc and intense auric maelstrom is the ammo pickups, and ultimately if they just removed the ammo pickup nerf then the topic that started this: bolter ammo. Could be basically fine and they could even lower it down to 15/80 again. Though I still think a new bolter for zealot would be a good idea.
Sooo for the context of bolter: Just remove the havoc ammo nerf, and then lower bolter ammo.
The havoc ammo nerf makes too big of a divide between guns viable in auric and guns viable in havoc. This needs to be rethought.
My post isnt only havoc. Its also concerning a lot of underperforming weapons in auric damnation. Yeah you can use basically anything you want in auric damnation and still win, doesnt mean certain things aren’t obviously worse for no good reason.
And yes as I said, havoc ammo nerf is too big, that’s really the main condition that defines what ranged weapons can and cant be used, especially on veteran. So that needs to be rethought, but that should probably go in the book of grudges not the balance discussion thread.
I really like the idea from Unlocked and loaded with blessings affecting other weapons/blitzes/effects. Like the granade upgrade on boltpistol, falter on shock mace and cleave on weakspot from the hellebore.
I feel like this^^ is a very cool way to make pistols, weapons that maybe lack power or identity or weapons that have a “sidearm” feel to it more interesting. With sidearm feel I mean pistols and smaller melee weapons like the dagger, tac axe and power mace.
These are just ideas that I am throwing out, not very well thought through:
Tac axe with a blessing that increases the crit rate of your shooting weapon, it is the crit axe after all
Give all pistols access to a modified version of the granade blessing(?)
Shredder autopistol having a blessing that makes you deal more dmg against suppressed enemies or enemies shot by it in melee.