This is a perfectly valid stance to have. Because its preference and I can’t tell you what to like. I haven’t found a good feeling usecase for Marksman’s Focus. I big dig Focus Target and Weapon Specialist.
I’d like to hear your specific complaints on that point. most of my patch 13 builds transitioned well and patch 13 was when vet got interesting for me instead of just lmao executioners invulnerable mag dump.
I agree with this. I’m always shy like 2 points for any build. I also really hate that agile engagement is just burried in the tree in such a way i can never get it. Survivalist is still just so much better than the other auras for a lot of weapons too so I just can’t take serrated blade or agile engagements in like 90% of my builds. I used to take them in half my ranged builds since they were fairly high up the tree to grab. Now they’re just inaccessibly tied to not taking the best aura.
Patch 13 for me was when Melee Veteran became one of the most viable ways to play (for me) and I made my bayonet build at that point. Before that, I was a big fan of the ammo boost we had, which combined with Exe Stance and Sustained Fire, made things like Plasma and Bolter much more enjoyable for me. I also feel like my las builds now are either tailored towards rending builds, which we never had before, or this weirdly hyper focused headshot playstyle. And strangely, I find neither of these more fun than the old …
Say what you will about old Vet, it let us play a silly immortal las guardsman very well.
I would say that for me personally, I’m not finding anything post-13 thats increased my enjoyment of Veteran, despite the plasma being massively overtuned.
I think rending builds are gross and ruin the 40k aesthetic by letting me kill crushers with autopistols.
I think the lasgun headshot focus makes sense and always kinda has been sharpshooter’s role. But I think he’s way too squishy. Which is probably because the PRIMARY TOUGHNESS AND DR node has been bugged for 3 patches…FAT SHARK
As i understand the text it takes 10 seconds to build the Focus Target charges. One charge every 2 seconds. Each time you “Tag” something you loose your built charges. Which means if you want the full bonus you cannot tag anything for 10 seconds. 16 seconds if you build to 8 charges.
And since subsequent Focus Target skills bestow boni based on charges on the target at the time of their death, you again want to wait for maximum charges.
This means if you tag after 2 or 4 seconds you will only apply 1 to 2 charges to the tagged object. Which means 1,5-3% extra damage boost to allies in coherency and/or, provided you had the skill points to spent at all, 5-10% Toughness regen. That seems to be rather poor for how much Skillpoints you have to invest to get there, so clearly that is not how its meant to be used.
That tone is a little uncalled for, don’t you think? There is no reason to be rude. Especially, considering you go on to admit that you agree that people are struggling to come to terms with this change.
I don’t. It isn’t a matter of being squishy. This entire thread is about wanting to understand how the keystones are meant to work in the game, given that their mechanics are, at least based on how I experience the game, the opposite of what is going on in the game.
As Veteran i have always been the one at the back, because usually i would get in position and then “snipe” the specials and shooters as my team did their thing… and then i would have to motor to catch up to them. Which also included that i would Tag what i couldn’t kill, to appraise the team of dangers i see coming.
I very much played my Veteran as Shepard and with the way Volley Fire and now Executioner’s Stance worked, i believe that is how at least that side of the mission is supposed to work. Which includes the Marksman Focus. But when you play Damnation you can no longer play this static type of gameplay. You might be able to do it with Stealth, but Stealth is on the other side of the Tree.
I am expected to spend a lot of Talent Points to get down to Marksman Focus and skill into that, for me to eshew the charges and be like “just don’t mind them, if they happen they happen”. In that case i can just build a Frankenstein build and just ignore the Keystones.
And i am requesting clarification by a Developer to tell me how i am meant to use these Keystones. How i am meant to use them in the game. Not in the Psykhanium or on paper. I get how they work in theory. But when i try to make them work in the actual game, i simply notice that its the antithesis to how i experience the game. So i do hope a Developer will actually show me or tell me how i am supposed to use them. How they are supposed to work.
Asking for clarification from the person that made this is not hystrionics.
I very much hope the irony of this is not lost on you, by you coming in here extra hot and spicy, when the entire thread is me asking for the Developers to tell us how they are supposed to be used so I can learn how to use them.
Because i tried making them work, and i cannot. And thus i have to conclude that i am missing something vital here. And thus i am asking to have it explained to me.
That is not histrionics or me being resistant to learning how to use them. This is me asking how to use them, from the people that made them, and thus should know how they are meant to be used.
As i said… i can play as a knock-off Zealot just fine. There is no problem going in melee with my Veteran and wipping out the Plasma Gun or Revolver mid fight. But that doesn’t help me understand how the other two Keystones are supposed to work. Especially considering they are the opposite of how i experience the game these days.
As i also said, i don’t need another Zealot. Melee Veteran is not something i am interested in. I have a Zealot for that.
They’ve made it perfectly clear at this point. They want players to choose from one of three preset playstyles; Headshots, support, or melee, and they don’t want any significant deviation from these.
Not only have they literally said they think the 3 paths are “suitably rigid”, we now have two iterations of the skill tree that reinforce that statement.
Redirect fire modifier is getting filled and updates its duration when tagged enemies are dying, you don’t even have to kill them yourself.
Usually you will fill your redirect fire at the start of the encounter with max stacks, and then any tagged kill will just refresh duration of those max stacks and fill it with more if its not max. so you will have 12% (if you use 8 stacks which is recomended) damage increase to you an your team most of the time.
Only time you want to wait for max stacks during a fight is to tag boss, otherwise just tag everything you trying to kill and dont bother about the stacks amount.
Most of the time you will have 2 stacks available for tag, which is 8%, because of this:
About marksman focus.
I think it works best with rapid fire and high crit chance guns.
Just use camouflage modifire and don’t be afraid to loose stacks, you can gain them prety fast anyways, especialy from horde and shooters. Any(not sure) autogun can oneshot them in the head with the couple of stacks.
And you don’t lose Stacks for 3 sec after any headshot kills, so you will naturally have ability to move without losing any stacks if you good and accurate.
However, i think precision weapons will make more use out of focus target, than marksman focus.
They heavily depend on breakpoints, so you’ll have to figure out which keystone is best for it on your gun.
I personally wish that marksman focus had better bonus, it’s kind of overshadowed by focus target atm
Actually I think you are right. I misread your tone and frankly reacted to you flippantly. Which was uncalled for.
I did not read this as an earnest request in the context of your post or the rest of this forums’ continued rage over vet changes. Which was partly my error. In this sense there are lot of us who are happy to explain though I actually agree with you that we deserve a better explanation of how these things work.
Generally speaking, I think there’s too much assumption on both sides that you will either only want to ping at max stacks (thus pinging insufficiently) or only ping at minimum stacks because you just don’t have time with all the mess going on. In reality you will pretty much always hit 2-3 stacks if you’re very busily pinging and you should always take Redirect Fire as its stacks are additive and give you a nice damage boost alongside your team. Uptime on this ability is great and very consistent. You are always getting 8-12% damage + a minimum of 7.5% damage assuming you initiated the latest fight with a full 5-8 stacks or close to it and added to the top of the pile. The cumulative effect of this is realistically a minimum of 15.5% damage and usually quite a bit more just for pinging targets as you normally would. I take all 4 keystone talents in my vet build because the uptime is so high and consistent throughout any fight.
As to the weapon swap keystone I think its quite good but so far my best built only uses Weapon Specialist and Always Prepared. I would take fleeting fire but I am cursed with insufficient points. (once again). The main advantage of this keystone is setup is always having a bit of ammo in your kit to blast something nearby and having massive improvements to melee on a dime. I do have to adjust my habits around swapping a bit to try and maintain uptime but unlike our local legendary hero (this isn’t sarcasm, he’s good) @Nish I find it engaging instead of taxing.
I have a feeling that your point about just getting 2 more points (or cutting 2 points of bad nodes out) would instantly make both the build diversity problem and the low power problem instantly disappear.
What is actually kinda weird about this is that it’s basically only a problem with Vet keystones. Maybe Disrupt Destiny is close in this regard, but no other Keystone just feels “bad”. Maybe they have too little impact, or only give bonuses to certain playstyles/weapons (Ogryn Lucky Bullet and Heavy Hitter come to mind) but none of them make people go: “Eww I don’t like doing this”.
PS: Everyone thinking Focus Target! is bad is not getting it, it’s really good. The only problem is the very high point cost to grab it and the 2 good modifiers.
I actually hate crit builds in actuality and conceptually and I find playing them unpleasant so I don’t enjoy Blazing Piety at all. I hate using it. I hate that it enables ult spam. I find it super nasty. I am decidedly in the minority I realize but it just is so unpleasant to me. I haven’t really enjoyed much of the psyker tree either. Nothing about his keystones get me going for a lot of the same reasons. I find ogryn fun all around. I also don’t like using shroudfield at all.
I’m just not much of a complainer as long as at least like one thing works for me and I usually put my focus on balance around weapons and ascertaining how to best move the needle on balance rather than full reworks where available. The exception being the powersword work I did in like…patch 11 (which was ignored) and my fabulous Heavy Chainsword poll which was also ignored.
On that note, I actually playing Bolter Vet and having tons of fun. It’s finally usable again thanks to Focus Target! and I’m somehow happy about it even tho I was never a Bolter guy.
I actually feel like bolter and plasma are more fun to play with focus target beyond just the damage buff. I can still apply damage and direct attention through priority pings while i stand around reloading.
I don’t think it’s fair to label folks who have concerns about the game or the build design as “complainers.”
They are passionate, and there is definitely a lot of strange stuff going on with the Veterans skill trees as compared to my Psyker and Ogryn.
So strange that the Veteran’s keystones contribute nothing to my support build and would be detrimental to how I play: spam shout (CDR), endless ammo (crit las, to not hog ammo from team), a lot of grenades, rapid revive, and so on.
My Veteran is not helped by the keystones
I may not always be first in damage, but I am always top in team score and coherency.
Mission failure, is substantially higher in Maelstrom when no one is playing support.
As a result, my Psyker plays Void/Dome, my Ogryn has Rush, Shield, and Kickback, and my Veteran goes full support.
