Boltgun Needs QOL, Not Damage

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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A lot of the complaints around the Boltgun is that it needs more damage when that’s simply not true. Others are acknowledging the several other issues with the weapon, and I’d like to compile my thoughts on the weapon as well.

The Boltgun has a few strengths, to start things off:

  • Its base damage is actually quite high. Pinning Fire getting a functional 75% nerf does look awful in a vacuum, but the weapon doesn’t need that damage to perform well in terms of its DPS.

  • It has a unique explosive effect, and despite having a relatively low proc chance, it does 30 damage to all enemies it affects that causes a guaranteed stagger on almost anything.

  • It can still 100 - 0 the Plague Beast in a few seconds. It can chunk Plague Ogryns fairly easily, but it will struggle with the Chaos Spawn due to their small weakspot hitbox (which is on purpose).

  • ROF is satisfying and outputs exactly how you want it to, with a perfectly captured power fantasy of using a Boltgun (one that isn’t an Adeptus Astartes pattern).

But the Boltgun struggles in several ways, especially when we compare it to the Plasma Gun, its heavy weapon alternative (despite being exclusive to Veteran):

  • Boltgun has received little to no buffs since release, compared to the Plasma Gun that has gotten not only various damage buffs, but significant QOL that makes the weapon feel good.

  • Ammo economy has gotten significantly worse with the nerf to Scavenger. Its already extremely low ammo reserve makes it difficult to use often and quickly runs out of ammo.

  • Despite being expected of the weapon’s power, its stability makes it almost unusable in the majority of situations, and follow-up shots in ADS are extremely frustrating.

  • Its equip time is one of its worst features. While thematically interesting and gives the Boltgun that bulky immersion, the Plasma Gun has a quick equip that makes it feel great to use.

My suggestions for improving the Boltgun:

  • An approximate 65% buff to the weapon’s ammo reserve (15/140 reserve total).

  • I would say reduce its stability loss while ADS, but I think it would be cooler if it became a braced weapon instead to counteract its horrendous stability.

  • Significantly speed up equip time to match most other weapons in the game. I have to make a necessary callout for the Helbore lasgun having a horrendous equip time, too.

3 Likes
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The only thing I need from Bolter is faster equip time. I don’t care if FS is going to decrease the damage or whatever, but the equip time has to improve. The wep switching speed is so so critical when it comes to highest difficulty.

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Yeah no. Absolutely not.

The weapon doesn’t need to have more ammo or better QoL, it needs more impact.

  • Fix ADS bug.
  • Increase infected multiplier a lot. Give it at least 90%. Currently, it’s horrendous to kill dogs and try to shoot through poxies even with full auto.
  • Increase Cleave value a bit.
  • Increase Stagger a bit. Sometimes Bolter doesn’t even stagger flamers/trappers on bodyshot which is just dumb.
  • Increase base damage and reduce finesse to compensate, so it can reliably kill chaff on body shot.

On the topic of swap speed/equip time:

With Volley Fire/Executioner stance being optional on Vet, I really think the Vet tree needs a Node that gives Weapon Swap Time reduction. IDK why we don’t have that.

Also, bring back Sustained fire/Instant reload on Vet. It’s sorely missed.

11 Likes
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The weapon was OP… so that’s normal that it has not get a buff

True… if you don’t look at chests… in Auric it can happen sometimes, but it happens if you don’t pay attention to what you do.
If you play it not in auto, it should not happen.

You can snipe with a Bolter… sure the gun has a big recoil, but nothing that forbids you to assure a shot and hit the enemy.

That’s the counterpart of the power of boltgun. It can be managed.

No… it would give the boltgun a lot more ammo than shotguns and revolver.

Would make the boltgun too strong

Same

Boltgun is fine… people should try to adapt. I think that, actually, cause of surgical strike is really strong, you can pl;ay boltgun with surgical strike and shattering impact and one shot everything that is human size.
Against reaper and crusher you have to use more ammos than a revolver (1 or 2), but you have 5 times the number of ammo of what a revolver can have in its cylinder.
Someone made a build that can deal 1 million damages in Auric… if the weapon was easier to use with more ammos, I cannot imagine the result.

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That sound like you just turning it into a stronger version of braced autogun.

I believe FS will add different versions of boltgun later.
Maybe there will be a fast one, for people who don’t like, or can’t manage slow one.

I also believe, that they balancing stuff in relation to other classes capabilities as well.
Sometimes i got into a mission with a really good ogryn tank, and i feel like i am in the shooting range, only occasionally swaping to melee.

1 Like
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https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/146v7fa/datamined_upcoming_ranged_weapons_and_variants/

Quoted from the thread:
current one is probably medium pattern

Also, in the weapon customizatrion mod, we can see parts of a boltgun pistol

1 Like
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Was and isn’t anymore. Everything else greatly outpaces the weapon now, along with many other things that were considered good in previous iterations of the game. The Plasma Gun continued to get buffs post-13 despite being in a decent place. The Boltgun is in a decent place, but it’s not getting buffs.

It’s ironic that, for example, the Power Sword was widely lambasted as too strong, and it was, but it became D-tier going into Patch #13 because so many other weapons were massively buffed. Now it’s back to being really good because it had received the necessary buffs to be brought back up, without shutting down other options available.

This is now the case with the Bolter and Autopistol. No one really uses them anymore because they are not good weapons and their drawbacks are neither fun nor compensated for.

This is disingenuous. Pre-13 Scavenger was 4% ammo per kill, resulting in a return of 3.4 ammo per kill (4.8 for Veterans with 120 reserve).

With 1%, you are getting only .85 per kill (1.00 for Veterans with 100 reserve using Fully Loaded (it should be 106 at +25%, so this is actually an approximate +23.52% increase)).

The Bolter was consistent because ammo returns were consistent. Now there’s no consistency, and you will starve yourself or your team of ammo, even if you are being diligent about ammo pickups.

This is even more true now that the director is spawning dozens of elites at you at a time, especially with waves of Crushers and Bulwarks. Ammo returns have gone down significantly, and enemy spawns have increased exponentially. It’s not adding up.

Would there be other ways to compensate the weapon’s horrendous ammo economy? Absolutely, and I would welcome them, but it is currently, factually the worst ammo economy in the game. It would need to be heavily compensated for.

What is your point?

“You can because it’s not like you can’t” is not an argument, sorry.

The instability of the weapon is the weapon’s second biggest criticism, far behind how many people dislike its equip time. I don’t think it really needs its stability fixed, however, but ADS with the weapon is genuinely not fun. Bracing it is a thematically more interesting direction for the weapon.

And the counterpart of the power of the Plasma Gun is… what, exactly? Its reload time?

The Plasma Gun can shoot 43 times uncharged (3 ammo per uncharged shot) before you have to reload it. It can shoot 15 times fully charged (9 ammo per charged shot) before you have to reload it.

This is assuming you have a Plasma Gun with an ammo modifier of >70%.

That’s not adding up either.

I genuinely don’t think more damage is the solution. Even though I think general enemies surviving a direct bolt impact is immersion-breaking and frustrating in that regard, I tried to avoid using that as a point of criticism to address the weapon’s actual issues that aren’t being compensated.

You could give this weapon 300 more base damage raw and it would still feel bad to use because of everything else. I don’t want a weapon that can oneshot everything. If I want that, I would just use the Plasma Gun.

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Eh… It’s a weapon that shoots rocket-propelled explosive charge. I don’t want it to be easy to use, I want things to just turn into mush when I hit them.

Sure balance is needed in the game, but from “fun” perspective the last thing on the list is usability or ammo supply, what it needs is to feel great when you go full auto and blow away whatever is trying to get you… Which currently the weapon does not do.

Again I think ADS should be fixed, but that’s a bug. a very bad one.

To you? Maybe, but anyone else who actually like blowing thing up with bolter would take the base damage increase over the weapon being faster to ready or having a bit more ammo.

A bump in damage especially for infected won’t make you one-shot everything. Even a damage increase of 300 would make the weapon come anywhere close to what a plasma-charged shot can do.

I seriously feel misrepresented. I even said to reduce finesse to compensate so it’s currently good boss damage doesn’t skyrocket.

I’m not some crazy person who just wants it to oneshot an Ogryn or something, I want to unload the bolter into a group to blow them up, that’s the main fun of a Boltgun, and I’m more than willing to put up low draw times with that. That said Vet really, really, really should get Sustained Fire/Instant reload again.

It’s a bolter tread, but damn I just can’t let comment like these slide:

I’m sorry, what the Hel makes you think Plasma Gun was in a decent place in Patch 13? It has received no changes with patch 13 and was insanely weak. It was genuinely bottom-tier, and that was before the elite health buffs.

Plasma buff changes were well deserved.

  • Insanely long reload time which anyone who played Plasma extensively can be a very heavy drawback and something you have to keep in mind when building for Plasma and playing it.
  • Heat mechanic that limits your fire rate and deals toughness damage to you.
  • Charge time on shots including normal shots, that can even be varied with a blessing making usability harder (and more enjoyable for me at least).
  • Very limited ammo supply and worst ammo sustain from pickups and Scavenger in the game.
2 Likes
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This is not true. I used it extensively in place of a Plasma Gun. Same build and same purpose. I could blow through enemies effortlessly, but the problem is that I had a horrendously low amount of opportunities to do so because of its ammo reserve.

I had a relatively similar experience in regards to TTK and being a more supportive “anti-tank” sort of teammate. Where the Boltgun does not do 3600+ damage in a single shot, it compensates with being a rapid fire weapon by comparison.

However, I was almost always out of ammunition, and I had very few times where I felt comfortable using my ammo because I had to make sure my teammates had ammo as well. This is with Scavenger. This is with only shooting Ragers, Crushers, Specialists/(Shot)Gunners as necessary, or providing good amount of stagger support where it was necessary. This was being extremely mindful of how much ammo I had and how much I was using so I wasn’t at 0.

Perhaps you took my point too personally, and I’m sorry. I think your suggestion is actually valid, and I agree that it should have reduced finesse while approaching the weapon with raw clear. But like I said, I genuinely don’t think damage is the solution, nor is lack of it a reality or an issue to me. I think the weapon does a lot of damage, especially for the amount of CC it can (randomly) provide in a pinch.

I also agree that the current iteration of modifiers for Executioner’s Stance is just an arbitrary tax for things that were stripped from Volley Fire. +60% Toughness regained (or whatever a new value would be) and an instant reload should be offered instead, while refreshing duration on a priority kill should be built in like it used to.

Sorry, I misspoke. It was actually Patch #14 where it got buffed, but its biggest changes was its finesse (20% > 50%) and cleave (4.15 > 100). It had some raw damage buffed, but that’s not what made it good.

The weapon already felt good to use. All of its QOL (aside from the cleave change) was before Patch #13. It just became infinitely better post-13.

Its reload time is rarely ever an issue in fights. Good usage of the weapon and knowing where your breakpoints are means you can reload between fights. This is frankly a non-issue for the weapon.

The heat mechanic was nerfed a long time ago. It now consumes Toughness. Uncharged shots will no longer make you explode but auto-vent instead. You can tap-vent at >90% to go to 80%, and fully charge another shot before you hit your pop threshold. This has been a non-issue for a long time.

This variance is negligible and can also be altered. Of course I can’t say “just roll a better plasma gun” because that’s not fair with our crafting system.

You can’t do anything about a Boltgun’s equip time (unless you use Executioner’s Stance to equip), maximum ammo (unless you’re Vet), or stability (unless you’re Vet and invest in Deadshot or use Executioner’s Stance).

With 1% on a Plasma Gun, you’re getting ~1.2 to ~1.35 ammo returned per kill (~1.64 with +25% Ammo on Vet).

This is factually incorrect.

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Most of your argument is pretty dodgy, but I think this takes the cake. You are just arguing in bad faith at this point. I don’t think I need to go into why this is wrong and how it works, as I won’t take the time to reply to you any further.

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I am giving you literally quantifiable facts to counter your point, lol. You can do the math with Scavenger. It only draws ammo returns on kills with your reserve only. It does not account for the addition of your clip at maximum ammo.

In this case, my Plasma Gun is only generating 1.31 ammo per kill from Scavenger (it has 131 reserve). At max ammo it is 262 (131/131).

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Personally I think equip times were a mistake and they should just return to instant weapon swaps like in vermintide. If they want to make weapons feel bulky, then they can make their reload timers cumbersome.

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Dude, just stop. We both know it’s in bad faith. We both know what you are leaving out. You know what I wrote was right. Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t look good.

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What did I leave out? I literally don’t know until you tell me.

I can do more math otherwise.

Like I said, uncharged shots cost 3 ammo and charged shots cost 9.

At 262 ammo, I have approximately 87.3 uncharged shots on the Plasma Gun before I completely run out.

At 131 in clip, I have 43.6 uncharged shots to make before I have to reload. Knowing my breakpoints, this is effectively 44 kills I can make for the vast majority of targets in the game.

With charged shots, it’s 29.1 before I hit 0 with my total ammo, or 14.55 per clip.

This multiplies exponentially with cleave, but I am not going to regard that (44 x 100 theoretically, for example).

I can potentially get multiple elites at a time, which means I can get potentially anywhere from 1.31 to upwards of 6-7 on a single 3-ammo shot from the cleave. (Shotgunners and Gunners are particularly privy to lining up for this).

With the Boltgun, I am always limited to 15 shots with a total of 100 ammo. The Boltgun cannot reach most BPs like the Plasma Gun does, but they are intrinsically different weapons in this regard (the Plasma Gun being a marksman weapon and the Boltgun being a volley/rapid fire weapon).

The Boltgun has almost no potential to get multiple kills on a single round, and even if it manages 1 kill per 1 bolt, you’re still only making 0.85 ammo per kill. Theoretically this is more consistent, but the math will literally never add up across the game.

Ammo pickups on the Plasma Gun for a 131 reserve are 20/60 for small/big respectively. That’s 6.6/30 uncharged shots, or 2.2/6.6 charged shots.

For a boltgun that’s only 12, but it’s actually rounded down to 12 (12.75 from a small) whereas Plasma Gun’s returns on ammo pickups are rounded up. This may be an instance where it is explicitly giving that amount, as many things for the Boltgun are coded to specific amounts.

I don’t know the large pickup off the top of my head unfortunately.

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Here:

Just put those together. You are welcome.

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I did.

Accounting for everything else, this is still factually incorrect.

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The only weapon that comes close to having as bad returns from Scavenger and Ammo pickups per shot is the Kant shotgun and it’s still better.

You arguing that “it gets more ammo from pickups” than bolter, while absolutely disregarding the fact that Plasma uses 3 instead of 1 per shot is exactly a bad-faith argument. Bolter gets 12 shots, plasma gets 6-6.6 depending on ammo roll if we only consider normal shots.

What I wrote is only factually incorrect if you read in the worst interpretation possible which is… Bad faith. Hence I don’t actually think you are worth arguing with.

Here let me correct it: Very limited ammo supply (meaning shots) and worst ammo sustain from pickups and Scavenger in the game (considering shots, the only thing that actually matters).

Now off with you.

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You didn’t read the rest of my post, and you are contextualizing 2 numbers in a total vacuum.

12 is bigger than 20 when it’s 1:3. That’s cool. I already addressed that. Please read my posts.

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it also gets on average half the ammo back compared to every other gun in the game on top of using 3 ammo per shot, around 7.5% and 25% of total ammo return (from small and large ammo respectively) compared to the slightly under 15% and 50% every other gun gets.

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With a reserve of 131, I’m getting 20/60 ammo back. I have no idea if this changes between different ammo modifier percentages, but that’s still 15% (rounded up from 19.65) and 45.8% (rounded up to the closest possible decimal to 60 ammo, which is 59.998).

I don’t think that’s true, but I would have to see more numbers.