The game doesn’t actually play like this on the highest difficulties. If you’re bringing a build that can’t deal with either Maniacs or Flak quickly, it’s a bad build. And since no melee weapon dispatches specialists as fast as ranged weapons, if your ranged weapon cannot do this, it’s a bad ranged weapon. It’s black and white. That’s how this game is.
Carapace and Unyielding are the target types that can require some specialization. The Bolter inarguably handles Carapace the best and gives up virtually nothing to do so. Having at least one Bolter on a team is always beneficial without exception. Is it a requirement? No. But it’s always beneficial.
Lots of things handle Unyielding, but with the Auric monstrous specialists condition, the Thunder Hammer really starts to shine.
You can always pay attention to the second weapon you will use to take care of such enemies.
However, what you describe is the main reason why lot of weapons are not real alternatives. Cause, off course, you can use them in malice and they look good, but at a high int damnation, it is like using a wood stick to fight hordes…
Having one bolter in your team, especially a skilled one, can make easy a run. Bolter is simply too strong.
Crucian Roulette stopped being relevant post nerf. You can get more DPS out of Surgical and/or Headhunter.
Also, NO, just, NO, on opening salvo for the Mk3. It’s currently the best blessing you can get on it simply because you can get it to proc on every burst if you’re not mag dumping with it like it’s an automatic. It yields you a consistent buff to your dmg, stagger, AND cleave.
Bolter needs literally only one nerf. Remove shattering impact.
I noticed this and pacing my shots just a hair proved super valuable, the reset is quite short. Especially for 30+ meter work where you want to pace your shots.
I like the headhunter autoguns. I find it’s actually quite easy to line up headshots with them and they have a nice enhanced zoom for long-range shooting. They’re not my main weapon focus as a Vet (that would be lasguns and plasma rifles) but they make for a fun change in gameplay.
For that matter, a laspistol with high Stopping Power will stagger Pox Hounds so hard that they actually get knocked back several metres with each shot.
I wouldn’t put it above the lasguns and it doesn’t have a 40k gimmick to it, but the time to kill elite/specials on body shots to ammo efficiency is good enough for bad vet players like myself.
Not a fan of the other two. The semi-auto one I wish sounded punchier like a .308 rifle, but autoguns are mundane weapons, they only exist to fill a slot until a cooler 40k gun drops.
Agripina 9 and Vraks 3 are one of my favorite weapons now.
Yes, they don’t really work vs cara, but they can dispatch usually dispatch bruisers and shooters in 1 burst (a crit or hs is welcome).
They can burn down everything else real fast, they don’t waste ammo, and they are relatively user friendly (vraks 3 has the best iron sights imho).
Of course you need to pair it with a melee that can deal with cara (for d5).
It is, yes. But pinning fire is a +power blessing that doesn’t necessarily bring the bolter brand new efficiencies like Shattering Impact does. I haven’t tested it yet but I suspect just pinning fire alone doesn’t serve the bolter well against crushers. If the bolter had a harder time against carapace, for example, that would give more breathing room for the thunder hammer and plasman gun to do their role.
Weapon sound mod, allows you to set sounds for each individual weapon. I just gave the revolver or rumbler sounds to most autoguns, not quite there, but they sound like actual firearms with these, lol.
Alright, I’m gonna need one of you pro-vraks-III guys to show me a vid of how it’s done, because I’ve just tried one for a few runs at vanilla T5 and I’m clearly not getting it. There’s just no situation where it seems to be anything but a clumsy liability.
Because it is. I can show you footage of me dominating the scoreboard with any number of weapons, headhunters included, and I’m sure these guys praising the headhunters can do the same.
The problem is that I can then show you footage of me playing with the boltgun, autopistol or heavy braced autogun that would put any Headhunter footage to shame, and I’m sure these guys praising the headhunters can do the same.
This is why I made the stipulation of player skill being taken out of the equation.
A ranged weapon can’t be weak against Maniacs and be good.
Good, then please do it. I don’t care if it’s not a top-tier performer or if it has weaknesses against one specific enemy type, I just want to know what I’m doing wrong.
I actually do want to like it, really. It feels chunky. In a good way. But it also feels slow and clumsy and wasteful.
Sure. I’m at work and will probably lag to the moon, but I’ll whip something together.
Edit: I only got a few minutes of gameplay on Hi STG Damnation before I lagged out. This has been uploading and “processing” for well over 3 hours now; it may never finish. I can throw something together at home in the future.
Can you show us what build you’re using on it? Also, vet, zealot, or psyker?
Finally, I don’t think this is what you’re doing, but for the sake of clarity I just want to say: There’s a reason why I called it a top 10 and not a top 5 weapon. If you’re used to stuff like powerswords, bolters/plasma, flamer, autopistol, illsi, bm axes, etc. don’t expect it to perform at parity with these monsters. It just won’t, it’s perfectly balanced IMO, but it just won’t match stuff like what I noted.
300k - 400k damages per game in normal damnation…
When you see a skilled player with a bolter, you literally can’t play… until he dies… and then everybody wipes cause it was boring.
There are weapons that allow you to deal huge damages… the problem is when they are so strong than they don’t really let a space to other weapons. Several enter in this category.
But Boltgun is above everything else… and is too powerful.
