Your enjoyment of the game doesn’t entirely rely on your opinion that Plasma is overtuned, so why would waiting for both be an issue?
I would honestly prefer we nerf the Health/durability of specialists over making specific builds or weapons overpowered to compensate.
But it does? Having people with overtuned weapons in a match turns the game into a snoozefest for me.
Next, you’ll say I should just leave the lobby every time someone with an overtuned weapon joins, or that I should just play the game solo instead.
But whatever it seems like we’ve reached the end of this argument anyway.
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No, I would call your assessment of your games disingenuous.
Which part of the post are you referring to?
I sympathize with your concerns. As you say, I also think the class identity has been in the dirt since the talent trees were introduced.
I never see Veteran Sharpshooters anymore, and I first and foremost consider this class to be a sharpshooter, despite how cool a Squad Leader and Commando are.
What I’ve learned about talent trees is that it doesn’t make sense to create three different paths straight from the top of the trees. I get the idea that for Veterans the left tree would be ranged, the right would be melee, and the middle would be support which both of the others could dip into to pick up some supportive talents. But the game expects us to do both ranged and melee combat, so it becomes extremely taxing to pick up a few melee talents by going back and forth between the left and right paths when you’re primarily trying to stay on the left path to make your ranged build (or vice versa).
The Veteran Sharpshooter is meant to tunnel-vision while aiming down sights, but has no capability to make himself a less desirable target from melee enemies while doing so, and is entirely dependent on having teammates peel any threats that enters his melee range. In a game that constantly spawns enemies around you, this makes it so the Sharpshooter is often forced to stop doing his role of sniping high-priority targets just to fend against melee threats. Some agency needs to be shifted over to the Sharpshooter so he can take care himself for a while before needing help from teammates, and so other classes don’t need to babysit the Sharpshooter so much. Even an Ogryn marksman can at least dodge into melee threats to knock them over while he snipes targets down range, or just soak a few hits due to his high DR and toughness regen while bracing.
Sharpshooter weapons tend to be lasguns, which have a high skill floor, and right now the effort isn’t worth it. Land a body-shot, and you’ll do a lot less damage. You need to land weakspot hits, and that’s a tall order unless you have really good aim.
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The problem with it is that it is more so a melee specialist keystone than a weapons specialist. The weapon buffs provided from that keystone are pathetically negligible compared to the melee buffs.
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This makes no sense, you don’t know what you are talking about. Every single Veteran build takes every damage node already. There’s zero sacrifices to be made, because most options are terrible, so every Vet build follows the same path with very minor differences. This class’s build variety relies on two keystones and 3 nodes.
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Weapon spec is incredibly clunky to use. Feels like it supposed to give ‘wannbe Saltspyre’ playstyle where you melee everything then occasionally pop out the pistol, shoot, kill, and go to melee again but…
It just doesn’t work. I mean, it doesn’t work if you’re actually doing vet’s work at killing elites and shooters(Since they are never alone) instead of getting dirty with trash mobs
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I’ll correct you a bit, You need to land weakspot CRITS.
I actually really like Weapon Specialist, and for the longest time felt this way about it. And while sure, a lot of builds at most would want just Always Prepared/Always Prepared + On Your Toes, I actually have a real fun build for the Boltgun that uses Always Prepared + Fleeting Fire.
Main thing to realize is that Always Prepared always rounds up (so it always loads at least one bullet), so you can stack it with Tactical Reload in the same tree along with Fleeting Fire, and both with ALWAYS trigger together thanks to everything working in synergy. This combo can be used with any automatic weapon and feel good, but most don’t need that level of reload speed amp. But Boltgun is the one weapon that it feels incredible with. Sure, it isn’t SUPER needed/there’s many other ways to enjoy that level of bonus, but I found enjoyment in it since you only need one melee kill to get the full effect, and can always get more to make the next Boltgun shot hurt a LOT.
Obviously it’s mostly a for fun Auric idea, but it’s rather entertaining at least to me. Most of my builds with it tend to just use Weapon Specialist by itself though, or us Always Prepared + On Your Toes just for bursts of toughness regen (mainly for the revolver set ups). It does well though if you work with it!
This being the main build btw, one can sub out the knife for a DS or some other weapon, I just have the knife for variety and to lean in to reciprocity crit hits resulting in everything melting from Flesh Tearer, while encouraging swapping to the boltgun against heavily armored/far off targets.
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Always find this mentality strange. Sitting here being like ‘veterans can only ever shoot at gunman’ when everyone has a ranged weapon, Psykers exist and give the entire team CDR while also often not costing any ammo, and Vet’s have some of the highest free melee modifiers in the game.
Sure, YOU can like pot shoting far off specials for days as your only contribution to the team, but many (such as myself) are happy letting the Psykers melt targets as well. Elites and Specialist come in all varieties you know, slashing through a group of ragers and maulers fills your CA just as effectively as gunning down a raft of gunners. Veterans are about adaptability, always being prepared for the exact role the team needs them to fill. You don’t need to glue your melee weapon to your hip and your gun to your hands, you can actually, shocker, swap between both as the situation allows.
Weapon Specialist does very well if you enjoy that type of playstyle as well, as it not only makes the first shot out of your gun super effective, but it gives you an fire rate buff based on the number of stacks you had. So if you’re using something like a boltgun or even an Infantry Autogun/Infantry Lasgun, you can just dump shots down range and wipe out entire groups in seconds, then go back with your increased attack speed and dodge distance into smacking down the wave. One can even do the ‘one shot one kill’ build as well, just use the CA in that column (infiltrate), activate it after getting a few melee kills, line up your next shot after a re-position, kill it, suppress everything around you, and go back to clearing out everything with your melee.
I feel it’s individuals like yourself that perfectly describe why so many Vets are so up in arms about Plasma gun possibly getting touched. Despite playing Veteran, none of them ever embody what the veteran actually is, a combat specialist that does whatever they need to to be victorious. They sit on their ranged weapon like it’s the only thing they ever learned how to use and only melee when they are flaming their team mates for ‘letting’ melee enemies get on to them, when literally half of their tree is dedicated to letting them melee better than most other characters. People really look at Desperado + 15% melee damage for free + buffed Serrated Blade (2 bleed on hit) + Close Quarters Killzone and just go ‘I’m just gonna ignore that’.
Like just equip a revolver + powersword with 25% increased attack speed and basically a guaranteed crit every shot and tell me I can’t let my Psyker clear out the backline with tier Perilous Combustion and/or Assail while I trip over everything that dares try and walk past the hail of Warp magic. (one can do such with a knife or any other melee weapon too, I have Heavy Sword builds that make it work at this point, the above is just the ‘most effective’ combo of the bunch for obvious reasons).
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This is my go-to bottom tree ability for most of my vet builds, but I’m one of the weirdos that likes to jump into melee with my ranged weapon. It feels so good to chop a few dudes down up close then switch to lasgun to one-shot the pesky gunner/special outside of melee range between the up close trash then switch back again- filling up your toughness and giving your next couple of chops some spice.
If you’re not keen to play that way then the skill would probably seem pretty unremarkable or even antithetical to the veteran class.
Edit: Your follow-up post puts it way better than me lol! Veterans are thematically about adapting on the spot.
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Yeah, for sure. It just feels so good to me, but yeah, went into it above when responding to the other guy but many vets don’t really understand that being a ‘weapons expert’ in Darktide includes melee weapons. So a ‘veteran’ is good at everything, not just holding a gun in their hand. If they where only good with the gun, then they’d be dead already XD like the rest of there platoon.
But yeah, of all the vet builds I have (I do run around with the ‘gun ones’ and many a Focus Target too, I like variety), the weapon specialist ones always just feel the most dynamic, I adore it. I’m actually encourage and heavily incentivized to take varied types of engagements, and it feels awesome. Melee stuff, swap weapons, gun down the back line, swap back, get an ‘adrenaline rush’ and just plow through the remainder of the melee enemies, rinse repeat. It’s an exhilarating playstyle, and one very heavily effective and usable.
As I said above ‘Psykers exist, Veterans aren’t required to just shoot everything for every team, they can hit things too, and are DAM good at it’.
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Melee will always be a part of the game? I’m not really sure what your point is. That Veteran build you posted is, interesting to say the least.
Despite playing Veteran, none of them ever embody what the veteran actually is, a combat specialist that does whatever they need to to be victorious.
This is an opinion, and not one that I share. It’s also just a strange thing to say, adapting is part of the game. Anyone who doesn’t do those things you said isn’t a very good player and not really part of the conversation here. Veteran’s identity before skill trees was that of a ranged class. The only identity he has now is that he is Zealot, but worse, and with one standout ranged weapon.
Obviously Veterans will always have to engage in the melee aspect of the game, I’m not arguing against that. Him being a ranged focus class wouldn’t take away from that anyway.
There is no reason for Veteran to essentially just function as a worse Zealot which is what you want it to be from what I can gather.
My point about the keystones is that Veteran’s are complicated for no reason. Zealot has one where they build stacks literally just by moving. I wasn’t really commenting on the power level or “feel” that someone thinks each one has.
Zealot keystone: “Move”
Veteran keystone: Stab 10 enemies, then hold your melee while you wait for an opportune time to swap so as not to burn your stacks for no reason. Now once you swap, shoot one enemy. Now once you’ve shot, swap back to your melee. Repeat.
Like just equip a revolver + powersword
No thank you, those are quite possibly the most boring weapons to use in the entire game because of how binary they are. A universe where laser weapons and other oddities are normal, and your suggestion for a member of a technologically advanced faction, is to just use a revolver. That’s not to mention the power sword’s horrendous mobility that WILL get you killed on high difficulty if you ever end up in a clutch scenario.
tell me I can’t let my Psyker clear out the backline with tier Perilous Combustion and/or Assail
No one needs to let anyone do anything? There is enough to do in the higher difficulties where that’s not even really a thought. The existence of a backline is a distant memory as well, these days the game just drops enemies in blobs with the occasional special at an off angle. And even that’s rare, most of the time trappers, bombers, and snipers all run in the same conga line with the trash mobs.
People really look at Desperado + 15% melee damage for free + buffed Serrated Blade (2 bleed on hit)
Every good Veteran build takes Desperado every single time, not sure what your point is there. Close Quarters Killzone with +15% close damage for 10 seconds, after using your ability is really not as good as you make it sound. You could instead just take Superiority Complex, 15% damage against Elites (an enemy type that actually matters) which is always active instead. And it almost sounds like you’re trolling when you suggest taking Serrated Blade, there is 0 reason to ever be on that part of the skill tree. Serrated Blade is laughable when you can just take Flesh Tearer on your knife. Then you could take Reciprocity to be critting more and spamming more bleed stacks. Bleed is good when you have a lot of it, but applying it 2 stacks at a time? In melee range? It’s a waste of a talent point, and the other talent points you’re burning to reach it.
You would still spend a lot of time “hitting things” as you put it after a Veteran rework. You can hit things now, but you can’t do it as well as a Zealot can.
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Just play as you normally would and you’ll start to get into a natural rhythm of weapon-swapping (obviously it depends on your weapon choices, it will work better with some than others just like every other keystone). I had the mindset going into it as well that I was wasting its potential by not perfectly timing my max-stacks at first, but you’ll quickly realize (especially in hi-intensity missions) that even low stacks will make all the difference, and eventually you’ll start getting more and more instances of high stack triggers.
I play it more like killing a couple melee trash, shooting ranged supporters (or if none, just some of the melee trash is fine too), then going back to meleeing the trash regardless of whatever the stack is at, couldn’t really care less about that part.
(I play at Auric Maelstrom / Havoc 25-30 levels of difficulty as baseline if it helps put it context).
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I had the mindset going into it as well that I was wasting its potential by not perfectly timing my max-stacks at first, but you’ll quickly realize (especially in hi-intensity missions) that even low stacks will make all the difference
Or, they can design the keystone to not incorporate something as basic as swapping weapons in suck a gimmicky fashion. I don’t care about making it work in its existing form, I think its out of place compared to the other classes.
I don’t find it gimmicky at all now that I’ve gotten experience with it, and the toughness on weapon swap is literally game saving- if you made it so it only triggered on weapon usage it would weaken that quite a bit.
I guess your perspective is, “making it work in its existing form”, mine would be, “learning it in its existing form”, and though subtle, that might mean they’re doing a good job of catering to a variety of play-styles.
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Thanks. You’ve put things out of my tongue.
Yeah, this is a good thing that I forgot to point out. I feel most get hung up on ‘needing ten melee kills’ before they swap back, and that indeed makes it feel clunky if you go that far.
But it’s important to note that after just 1 kill, every effect of the ranged bonus is active at it’s max potential besides fire rate and auto reload. +33% crit chance, and any of the other nodes you might have picked (20% toughness/reload speed, stamina if one wanted that). And same goes in the reverse direction but for every effect, one kill on a simple groaner and you got 10 seconds of super boosted attack speed and a moderately noticeable dodge distance buff.
So the point is simply hot swapping at all convenient opportunities and doing what you need to in the moment and getting boosted for your ENTIRE KIT as you do so. Can only slice the head off 1 groaner before you need to shoot? that’s fine, have to take a couple second gunning a line down before going back to melee? the buff is waiting for you when you get there. It takes some actual learning for sure (which I know many are allergic to I get it), but it’s the only keystone on vet that makes me feel like I’m actually ‘generally good at everything’. Verses the other two which one doesn’t even constitute a buff in my eyes (Marksmans Focus) and the other is on every OTHER build I use but that’s just because, as stated, not every weapon/talent combo uses Weapon Specialist well, so just having some extra damage sometimes is nice (Focus Target!).
I mostly just think people hate on Weapon Specialist because the other two keystones aren’t really that interesting, feel people wouldn’t want to dog on it so much if people actually felt like there was an alternative worth a dang for them, verses the only interesting keystone being for the melee hybrid Veteran junkies xD (of which I am one).
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