It’s no secret that blessings and feats across every single class and weapon are a real mess in darktide.
So many of them are either absolutely critical or completely worthless. This situation actively hinders opportunities for interesting decisions while configuring your character.
This forum is full of specific examples, but I mostly want to look at the design goals here, as it helps to get these straight.
In my opinion, these are
a) Multiple balanced and viable options
(You need multiple valid options to allow for any decisions at all)
b) No singular option that is massively superior
(A single overbearing option devalues the rest, invalidating decisionmaking)
c) Almost no options that are not viable (a gimmick here and there is still okay, provided they’re interesting and impactful). Particularly in the case of blessings, valueless options feel extremely bad to roll, especially if paired with good stat allocation.
By applying these criteria to each individual choice, we can make steady progress towards interesting build decisions.
Weapon stats feel like they should be in this category, but they kinda aren’t. Ten points in ‘damage’ usually feels like it outclasses ten points in any other stat. It’s hard to tell if that’s actually true, because the interface makes it very difficult to tell the exact impact of the rolls. To be honest, when I’m comparing weapons, I want to compare the absolute values, not exactly where in the weapon’s random range each stat falls because it simply may not matter. 70% vs 10% is meaningless on some stats, but the interface makes it look enormous.
Essentially what I’m looking for is for the designers to communicate some of their own design goals, as precisely as possible. That way we can better provide feedback that aligns with the intended direction.
Honestly, the really big problem with the way the game is balanced is that the choices don’t boil down to play style so much as simply trying to squeeze the most power out of the item.
For example, my favorite weapon is the Voidstrike staff, which has an atrociously bad assortment of blessings to pick from. None of them actually allow you to tailor the staff to how you most like to use it, instead you simply have to try and figure out which of those blessings gives you the most power.
What you would want for blessings would be things like:
Projectile has a much larger explosion when it hits a solid object - So you can use the staff more like a 90s shooter rocket launcher and target the wall behind or floor underneath an enemy to splash them.
Staff gains an additional damage boost when fully charged - So you can adopt a playstyle around unleashing powerful attacks less frequently.
Projectiles don’t explode on piercing enemies, but have significant armor penetration - So you can turn your staff into a sniper weapon for taking down big targets rather than clear hordes.
Staff causes Soulblaze based on charge level - Because you can actually control charge level, so this is a meaningful gameplay alteration rather than just a random chance to do something.
Rending Shockwave - This one already exists for the Trauma staff. One of the few good Staff blessings.
Staff can no longer be charged but instead rapid fires uncharged blasts - Because some people might prefer machinegunning their enemies with a flurry of small explosions.
If the staff had blessings like that the balance debate would be entirely different, because it wouldn’t just be people trying to figure out what the best blessing is to maximize their damage, it would now be an actual choice of preference. Someone might say “I like my staff built up to cause huge explosions with bonus damage on a full charge” and then someone else might say “I like my staff to rapid fire armor piercing projectiles that don’t explode.” The debate becomes one similar to how people pick which staff they like best.
If the choices are all meh and don’t really add up to a meaningful playstyle modification of course people will only be interested in which one is numerically the most powerful.
Give people something that plays into how they like to fight and they will use it even if it isn’t strictly the most optimal choice.