You haven’t shut me down once, you just keep repeating the same “it’s unrealistic” argument and saying “melee makes more sense.”
Saying “nuh uh, I win” isn’t “shutting me down.”
No, I asked you if anyone here would want Combat Axe, if it doesn’t get any buff at all, to be nerfed if all other outliers were nerfed
And if so, point me 1
I’m not sure if clarifying that would be an issue with my overall statement
Nono, what I meant with “can’t” isn’t a “we can’t KNOW”, but rather “we can’t MENTION it every time we comment about melee balance becuase it would be annoying”
The list of universally agreed OP melees here by the regulars are:
- Duelling Sword
- Combat Blade
- Force Sword
- Force Greatsword
- Arbites Shock Maul
- Powersword
And melees in dubious state:
- Relic Blade
- Ogryn Shield
@anon41016878 showed Fatshark doing this perfectly, Fatshark buffed enemies to make outliers not as much of outlieirs, and it ended up with the opposite effect, which made weaker weapons feel even weaker
Nerfing the director will just make the already OP weapons feel even more OP
While yes the weaker ones would catch up to the standards, there’s still the issue of solving essentially what would demolish everything
So both kinda need to be done in a very close time frame / at the same time
It’s only fine when you guys do it and not the other side, thinking you speak on behalf of Fatshark’s designers and the rest of the playerbase in terms of what the game needs to be and what’s “the right way” to play Darktide. And even then “the reality is simple” is just an introductory saying, it’s not that deep.
The truth is, Hive Scum DLC is currently at mostly negative after the pickpocket change. That’s the “reality”.
if everything feels strong, then the baseline shifts
If every other “strong” weapon gets called OP for some reason or the other, it probably means most of them are not, which is completely true.
But at the same I time I don’t see many people play underpowered stuff that they want the game strive towards, even people who post their gameplay or screenshots on forums often play meta loadouts there.
The game survives not because every number is perfectly tuned, but because the experience remains engaging enough that people return
And it’s also the truth. This game was never balanced. The balancing right now is not “bad”, it’s just different. The game always had outliers and not well thought-out things about it, both on enemy and player side. People on the forums always complained about something being meta, be it flamer, bolter, revolver, knife or some other weapons.
once you have given people power, it’s much harder to take back.
so if balancing was done more sensible from the start, we wouldn’t have this situation with a few overperforming weapons, and players defending what they got used to as if they had a claim to certain power.
quite telling people buying it relying on the one trick pony, when a well played scum is still giving everyone else a run to keep up with the killfeed.
I couldn’t look in the mirror moaning about something like that getting adjusted and call me anything close to a “gamer”
even at honeymoon phase is ditched gun-scum after 5 or 6 matches for how “dirty” it felt, having rampage buffed I parked him like arbites for the time be.
like the predator quote “no sport” 
Actually shocking how this central argument has been pointed to like ten times across all these balance threads and there’s still not a single anti nerf poster that has addressed it directly. Always dancing around it or giving nonsense counter proposals (just tune down enemy spawns without nerfing anything guys, there are absolutely no foreseeable issues with that approach 
).
The amount of sidestepping this basic concept is getting genuinely embarrassing to witness. At this point I straight up refuse to engage with these people until they actually engage with what we’ve been saying.
This has been the funniest moment in the thread so far, for me 
Please, continue 
QFE.
It really has been brought up at least a dozen times, even though it should be painfully obvious to the “never nerf, only buff” crowd if they actually put a little thought into it.
you’re gonna have to cope harder than that, the comments are publicly visible.
anyone reading the full thread can see you making stuff up as you go while I just shut you down at every turn because you kept missing the details as if you’ve never held a gun irl.
Saying “nuh uh, I win” isn’t you getting away with pretending to not having been shut down at every turn. See anyone can play your little game.
if they put any thought into it, helldivers 2 would still only have 9 difficulties.
I personally think the outrage over the Pickpocket change isn’t just for the reason you mentioned. On our forums, many already agreed that Pickpocket was overtuned and would get nerfed eventually—on Heresy difficulty, the Veteran Sharpshooter can output damage almost for free with no real interaction using the needle gun, and below Heresy it’s even more overpowered, to the point it can ruin the gameplay experience for the other three players.
But Fatshark shouldn’t have nerfed it this way. Strictly speaking, this isn’t even a nerf—it completely destroyed the Sharpshooter build. A left-tree Sharpshooter has barely any melee capability at all, and the only way to trigger the nerfed Pickpocket is through the Haymaker blessing. There’s also the issue of poison DoT stealing elite kills.
If Fatshark really just wanted to balance the game, making Pickpocket only trigger at melee range would have been a good solution. But they didn’t do that.
Every Zealot build has ‘barely any ranged capability at all’ and has been that way since they nerfed Fury of the Faithful giving ranged attacks rending…
Once again, trying to claim “realism” as your only defense. “cope harder”
With respect - you posed many questions to me but failed to answer my questions to you and the Asia community. Which I will re-summarize in the following way:
- What does the HK ‘average player’ community want out of Havoc 40 that they couldn’t get out of Havoc 21 if the game were properly balanced?
- Why exactly should the average player be able to clear the hardest 4 player difficulty content in the game (Havoc 40)?
- Do you not see how this actually excludes an entire demographic from playing the baseline (intended) experience of the game as specified from the developers? That a 4 player co-op experience be challenging enough for 4 ‘pro’ players at havoc 40? You say ‘more’ players will get what they want but I see the opposite. A challenge that meets the expectations of an “average” player could easily be achieved at havoc 21 or havoc 30 if abused outliers were nerfed properly.
Unfortunately I see your statements here as reflecting a rather well traveled path…A long wreckage of previously defeated arguments that we have had already, in the west, over the last two years. Even the most ‘casual’ and ‘normal’ players among us have slowly moved to agreement that the outliers need to be nerfed for the good of the gameplay experience and its difficulty curve and long term player retention.
- Because it is the intended design
- Because it provides a place for top players to continue to play the actual game
- Because it provides more average players something to aspire to which drives personal development (which is FUN)
- Because there are 45 other difficulties weaker players already can find an appropriate play style and thus there is no restriction on them whatsoever besides their own skill level, only a restriction on the top players for content fitting their skill level.
Again - why is it that the average player-base should be able to routinely clear the final difficulty? What is wrong with them clearing a lower difficulty with a relatively high winrate? What need is there for the average player to occupy the whole difficulty curve?
There are numerous very good reasons for this. I have covered them at length in previous threads but I will restate it here. Lets assume we did not nerf the Plasma Gun. It has 100 cleave on light attacks, fast pull out time, ample ammo, and incredible power still. What precisely would we have to do to buff something like the Infantry Las Gun to make it on par? Is there anything we could do that wouldn’t completely eradicate the lore-anchored behavior of the weapon? The design space does not have sufficient room for a lasgun with enough buffs to make the difference.
options for ILG:
more damage
A veteran using this weapon can 2 shot headshot a havoc 40 reaper. Is 1 shot headshot enough damage? Would this even matter?
more cleave
lets give the lasgun 100 cleave too! Ok weird problem now. It has 100 cleave, how is this weapon meaningfully different and unique from a plasma gun now?
Anti-armor
Lets give the lasgun the ability to stack brittleness so it can penetrate carapace. wait…how is this different from a Lucius Lasgun or Plasma gun? is it evening meaningfully a different weapon now?
In everything - having weaknesses, drawbacks and suck-points is what makes gear interesting. Its where the flavor comes from.
What about the dueling sword 4 compared to other weapons, like the Thammer. The thammer is slow to act with, has large commitment per attack, and is generally midiocre unless empowered into single targets. Meanwhile the duelingsword has the same or better TTK into havoc 40 armored enemies while having significantly improved mobility through dodges and sprint speed and stamina.
If we were to buff every weapon to have the same general power of the dueling sword - look what happens:
Do you notice how all the weapons now look the same? There are criteron against which weapons can be judged as objectively better and objectively worse. The only way to make the thunderhammer compete with the dueling sword is to make its mobility, horde clear, and safety-of-use equal to the dueling sword 4. We’d need to give the thunder hammer much longer dodges, much faster attack speed, no self-stun, no charge up mechanic. We would erase the entire identity of the weapon. Everything that makes it interesting would die on the alter of “buffs are good”. We’d end up with skinswaps instead of weapon swaps. The game might as well have 1 weapon at that point. This is simply the reality.
With all respect intended; perhaps you missed it. But I specifically crowned the plasma gun in my proposed ideal state graph as ‘still the king’ there’s nothing wrong with a strong weapon in a PvE game. As long as:
- it is not so strong that it invalidates other choices
- It is not so strong that it makes other players not have fun when playing near that player
Notice in my above graphs that I never collapsed all differentiation between weapons.
There is still quite a bit of diversity in weapons here. There is a strongest, and a weakest. I merely shrank the distance between best and worst. Notice how constrained the plasma gun nerfs actually were. Yes plasma is worse, but its not that much worse. Would you really say you’re seriously considering taking anything else to min-max with? No. Plasma is still king isn’t it? Good, that was the goal. Plasma should be the strongest gun in the game.
As an aside PICKPOCKET was on the chopping block from day one according to most of the community. In fact its fair to say I underestimated how overpowered it is, but quickly saw how insane it was. Yet, was it not me who proposed an alternative that might satisfy both groups? This should show my personal dedication to satisfying different viewpoints.
This is the absolutely worst take. Marvel Rivals tried this, I will remind those unaware that I am literally one of the best players of Mr Fantastic in NA. Top 19 some seasons back. Everyone was so OP that players were constantly complaining that the game was a total mess of unreadability and missing individual player agency. Marvel Rivals recently put out two major balance passes massively nerfing character power across the board including an emergency balance pass.
There will always be conversation, it is natural and organic that a discussion should be had. However those of us who care about this game do not care if something is stronger. We care if something is radically overperforming. It is acceptable that weapons in this game have variability. It is acceptable that weapons should have a ‘strongest’ and a ‘weakest’ as long as the distance between these two things is not too great. I believe we can succeed.
Excellent point and something I also wonder in general. This is often handwaved as elitism, but there’s nothing wrong with having the spectrum of difficulties actually match the spectrum of player skill. That is what difficulties are meant to be, conceptually.
Penances could be moved down for completionists if it’s important to people.
Please excuse me as I use this as a jumping off point for a massive rant. None of the following is aimed at you.
There are two main approaches to difficulty levels that people are getting confused, probably gacha/rpg brain rot.
Approach 1: Difficulty is functionally just progression. As your gear/character stats improve you are expected to keep increasing difficulty levels to get better stuff. In this system difficulty levels are and should be designed to be accessible to all players with enough time investment.
Approach 2: Difficulty levels as accessibility and a way to modify the experience to the level of challenge desired. In this system you should NOT have a significant portion of your player base at the highest difficulty level. Ideally here there is a level that is enjoyable for everyone. You would expect the spread of players across difficulties to form a nice bell curve if you’ve balanced your difficulty levels well.
Note that in the second approach your highest difficulty should NOT be accessible to all, if it is your entire bell curve is skewed and your difficulty levels are poorly balanced.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Darktide falls into the second category of difficulty level design. That should be evident by the lack of character/gear progression between Auric and Havoc 40. Or the relative dearth of significant RPG elements generally (this ain’t no PoE, TBC I think that’s a good thing). For most their character will be kitted out and basically as strong as they can be before starting the Havoc climb, or at least certainly long before finishing it.
Hence people need to stop describing Havoc as something that should be accessible to all. That is reflective of your misunderstandings of difficulty level design. Realistically Havoc being accessible to all means a lot of the existing difficulty levels have become meaningless. Not a desirable place for the game to be in.
As an aside. This is a superb post:
The whole thing, not just the part I quoted. Once again laying out carefully and clearly the exact chain of logic that has led us to our beliefs about balance, even including some of the extensive data you collect.
It’s so impossible to argue against I look forward to the absolute word salad our never nerf contrarians will pull out to try to defend their botched approach to balance.
My previous reply actually addressed your questions, but due to poor phrasing on my part or AI translation issues, you might not have seen it clearly. Let me restate my points properly:
-
In the Hong Kong community, people run Havoc 40 for many reasons: some farm materials, some like that failing at 40 doesn’t drop their rank, and others just want a higher sense of power fantasy. Players here don’t really treat different Havoc tiers as distinct difficulty levels—and for good reason. The biggest difficulty spike in Havoc comes from the Fading Light of the Emperor modifier, which makes Havoc 30 the real difficulty threshold. Other tiers don’t differ nearly as much; depending on mods and spawns, Tier 22 can even feel harder than 23. To put it simply: the HK community just views Havoc 40 as a difficulty tier above Damnation.
-
Why shouldn’t people be able to clear the highest difficulty through proper teamplay? To clarify, I mean coordinated team builds—such as combining smoke grenades and shields. Let me use the Dueling Sword and Thunder Hammer as examples. First, a correction: the Thunder Hammer definitely has a higher single-target TTK than the Dueling Sword, but it requires hitting weak points from behind. In the HK community, the Thunder Hammer is considered on par with or even stronger than the Dueling Sword in Havoc, thanks to its boss-clearing capability.
On EU servers, I almost never see Thunder Hammers, Ripper Swords, or Power Swords because they have clear weaknesses. But they’re common on HK servers precisely because they excel in specific roles. That’s the point of teamplay: four players take on distinct roles, pick specialized builds and weapons to cover each other’s flaws, and support one another to clear the hardest content. Yes, the Thunder Hammer is terrible at horde clearing—but you can trust the Psyker in your team to handle that, while your hammer deletes the boss units the Psyker struggles with.
That’s how we view balance: weapons don’t need to be all-around strong. If a weapon excels at something, it deserves a spot in Havoc. Unfortunately, most weapons currently don’t have any meaningful strengths in high-tier Havoc.
- Your desired playstyle already exists within the current Havoc system. If four skilled players want a genuine challenge, they can simply choose not to use overtuned weapons. But the existence of some strong or “easy-mode” weapons gives more options to players—especially those with lower skill levels—and lets them experience more content. This is what we mean by agreeing to disagree and coexisting.
This has been answered like 8 times in this thread already and you’ve just ignored it every time. Meanwhile you are yet to answer why it is an issue for competent team players who are not mechanically top tier to settle and remain at a lower havoc level? What does that hurt other than their ego? Which it shouldn’t in the first place.
No more dodging questions to repeat the same 3 talking points endlessly. Answer the questions or stop wasting our time.
I believe that’s how the Tide games should be but I think VT2 and DT land inbetween the two approaches. Darktide in a sense is even worse than Vermintide 2 in this regard, which is impressive considering how terrible VT2’s hero power system is if you want to design difficulties like with Approach 2.
Vermintide 2 and Darktide both treat their difficulties as stepping stones for your progression in power while enticing the player with greater rewards for increased difficulty.
Summary: Unmodded Vermintide 2 at least has some optional difficulties with no added rewards on top of having a freely customizable modded realm
But at least in Vermintide 2 there was no reason to choose Cataclysm over Legend if you were primarily interested in equipment rewards for clearing those difficulties. There’s also twitch mode which gives you a slightly random but customizable difficulty increase with almost no additional reward. And Weaves was completely separated from Campaign. There’s nothing to be gained from playing Weaves that you could use for the other game modes other than a few portrait frames which people tend to care less for. So even on official realm Vermintide 2, there is at least still some difficulty levels that are simply “optional” in the sense that there’s less of a skinner box dynamic compared to the lower difficulties.
AND MODDED REALM EXISTS! PLAYERS CAN JUST MAKE THEIR OWN DIFFICULTIES WITH ZERO PROGRESSION INCENTIVES!
DARKTIDE on the other hand is even worse in this regard, the power you gain from leveling and upgrading equipment is extremely impactful (more than VT2!) and new players are starving to get materials, especially diamantine. In Darktide’s normal game mode, damnation would be the best place to farm plasteel & diamantine as those total rewards are the same between it and Auric. But… the game does not communicate this to the player, instead players see that Auric rewards even more experience and ordo dockets so naturally one would assume it also gives more materials. It does not.
And then there’s Havoc, very bad decision making if FS didn’t want players to treat it as a progressive game mode. It locks actual cosmetics that players desire behind Havoc 25 & grinding 50 or more Havoc games. It rewards players with useful materials they need while they’re still progressing their masteries and equipment sets, with the highest rank rewarding the most materials. It has zero player agency. And… as has been observed before, the general game balance has powercrept towards conforming around Havoc. That’s fùcking INSANE, is it not? Imagine Winds of Magic not having an athanor and Fatshark constantly powercreeping the entire game to conform to Weaves with every second content update. All of this happening while there’s zero alternative for players who want something else within said game.
PS. Fatshark used to be more communicative & cool about this.
Also let me know if I’m being redundant in any way, I’m a lil tired.
Also I just checked the Havoc dev blog.
When Fatshark introduced Havoc they explicitly described it as
and frequently used the word “progress” throughout the dev blog without ever mentioning how difficult it should be.
When writing who it’s for they said:
which IMO isn’t clear enough when they were consistently writing it as a progression game mode.
So… maybe that is the point of Havoc? Giving people a weekly challenge for them to do in their new progression system. Like @cuujm980 describing it as “a weekly challenge in a mobile game” in the other thread.
I don’t fùcking know anymore man this shiʈ sucks. I’m dooming over Darktide here. Does Fatshark even care about appealing to Vermintide players? Can’t we have some agency in how we want to play the game? I want to take a break from these thoughts.