I think that’s where we reach a point where some things just don’t fit the current game. Melta weapons are dedicated tank-hunting tools that are short-ranged and awkward to employ within the 40k lore (where typical infantry Meltas are most effective at ranges even shorter than the flamer), and I’m not sure what purpose they really serve in a shooter game where the beefiest things you’re going to encounter aren’t even things the tabletop game considers proper monsters, but just big infantry.
As is, with stuff like Spawn and Orgyn as the toughest “monsters”, and the best armor anyone’s wearing is carapace (no power/terminator armored enemies), most anything you’d utilized a Meltagun against would be better addressed with a Plasma gun, unless the game is going to toss Traitor Leman Russ tanks, Chaos Marines, or Defilers at the Rejects. I think if they were introduced and tuned to feel “right” currently, they’d be great DPS for dealing with a Beast of Nurgle or burning down a Spawn, but with so much damage dropoff over distance, a slow fire rate, and clunky draw that they’d be useless for most of the rest of the game.
I’m sure you know I fully agree with your general point here, just gonna point out that reducing the self stun does also boost how it performs specifically in its niche by letting you chain kill elites faster and generally put out more single target DPS. I think in consideration of the massive increases in elite spam, this change was pretty necessary unless they had instead given it a way to kill multiple elites in one special attack. The main problem with it right now is breakpoints and being slowed down by requiring max or close to max charge heavies for too many enemies. Here’s hoping they address that rather than just increase horde clear rate.
Flashbacks to m1 → m2 over and over again. It got better combos later admittedly but can’t lie for optimal combo routes I’m not sure there’s a worse example of “interesting combos” than halberd.
I agree that the change to the self stun was good, even in keeping it on the specialist role. Also helps make it better than the more generalist chain weapons.
But yes T Hammers in general are on Life Support because FS is too scared to make them good.
The normalisation issue is being applied to crit as well. Prior to patch 13. The plasma gun had very little weakspot damage. Afterwards it has the same as most other weapons.
I really like it when different weapons are good at different things. The plasma gun doesn’t need good weakspot damage. It’s firing a superheated ball of plasma that vapourises anything it touches until it cools down. It’s a heavy weapon that should incentivise centre of mass shots to hit as many enemies as possible.
On the other hand the revolver is a perfect weakspot gun. It’s fast, snappy and has not much ammo in a magazine, so it rewards precision fire. Then they went and gave it an extra 100 damage so that you don’t even need to headshot in a lot of situations any more.
Weapons in this game excel when they are good at the thing they are good at, and bad at the thing they aren’t. The old pro VT2 players are probably always going to prefer fast responsive weapons that are generally useful over low mobility specialised options. Not every weapon needs to be good on every build, not every weapon needs to be able to solo a mission.
In other words, this game is more fun when the weapons are colourful and not different shades of beige.
Bolter too! To hell with “high finesse” why am I clicking heads with something that will paste the inside of whatever I can penetrate? Give it barely any headshot multiplier and just let the weapons have crazy high bodyshot and limbshot damage/penetration.
It’s funny that I did some missions and tested out the Boltgun recently and found this shortly after writing my thoughts on the weapon.
While I generally agree that unique aspects of a weapon are what really sets them apart, I think that setting arbitrary and intentional design flaws as a precedent for identity (like equip time) is a terrible way to approach this issue.
There are infinitely better ways to set apart weapons. The problem with the Bolter is not its damage, but its ease of use and horrendous ammo economy and existing reserve matched with its terrible stability.
The bolter has a unique effect where sometimes it procs an explosion on impact that does 30 damage to everything it hits, and guarantees a stagger on almost everything. I mention this in my thread specifically because I think it’s cool and you can really see this play out in hordes when enemies you don’t immediately turn into red mist and maggots are all knocked to the ground or away from you.
There needs to be more stuff like that. Slow equip times just don’t work in fast-paced games like the Tide series where you need to quickly react to different enemies and situations getting worse.
I don’t think the stability really needs to change, but I don’t think the Boltgun needs ADS. I think it would be better/cooler if it became a braced weapon instead, so you can more reliably volley bolts into enemies when you want to be more accurate.
It’s also the feel of where/when you get the drawbacks. Bolter currently feels bad because of its long, drawn out switch time, and then double sandwiched with it, a long, drawn out reload time, compared to ,say, revolver where all of its drawbacks only come into play after it has done everything it’s meant to.
Putting in such a strong drawback before a weapon does its thing is going to tank it’s usability regard of what else the weapon does. It’s also why I’m so against how the power sword was balanced by ‘normalising’ the activations, making the blessing that partially negates that drawback a perma-pick for the weapon.
Because you got to make them work by yourself, that’s why they are fun.
There are multiple ways to get around slow equip. The most common one, is by simply being good at dodging.
You can use frags to stagger everything around and buy time to equip.
Every ultimate is helping with equip in different ways as well.
What i personally like, is to use a knife alongside bolter.
That way i can fast enough engage specials in mid range without need to pull bolter every time.
Or i can always brake good amount of distance between me and enemies to have enaugh time to equip it.
It might be annoying to some players, but that is another question.
I personally like unwieldiness of bolter.
It plays really well into its power feel, While damage is lacking a bit.
Despite I agree with you, I mean every weapon must have its niche and its drawback… we should be sure positive and negative sides are balanced
For example, I agree that chainsaw weapons disable you, but the damage should be higher… because atm, if you see a bunch of big bad guys, it’s better you don’t use the rev attack: even if you pass the 'skill check", the damage is very low. High risk but not high reward
Or again, I’m ok with the Bolter as clunky but big damage gun… I’m agree with the small mag, long reload, high spread, high recoil etc etc… but the draw time really kills it. What’s the point of a weapon meant to deal with big enemies… if I can’t use it when there is an emergency because I’m surrounded by those big enemies? Enemies are a danger in messy situation… that Crusher who looks the wall while you proceed through the map, isn’t scary at all
Then, about the Hammer, is another speech because it should be totally reworked
You won’t be surprise I don’t agree with your vision of a Lore compliant game.
Bolter is strong, I play with it actually (shattering impact + surgical strike), mainly cause there are 15 explosive shells in a clip, while the revolver as 5 normal ammos at max.
I can one shot anything human size, it takes more shells against reapers / crushers but nothing outrageous when you have 3 times the ammos of a revolver.
Here I agree… TH is not really good. Excellent against one target, bad every time you met several enemies. Tip for FS, you encounter more situations where there are a lot of enemies than a situation where you have an enemy alone waiting you and your hammer (and in Auric, I would say that you are close to always surrounded).
But, the TH is described as Crowd control weapon. I would like that it turns more into crowd control than single target weapon.
I tried shock & awe, this blessing is good… but against any other weapon, the TH cannot really assume a role of crowd control (my opinion at least).
I would say that, with shock & awe, the result is just average for something that is part of its identity (the weapon is described like that). I would like a little buff of this blessing to make it good.
Here I agree.
But I would say that nerfs and buffs, have to be considered from a general balance between all weapons (not sure you agree with me here).
As you well know the ammount of ammo the bolter has in its magazine equals the same number of kills as a revolver on many targets and on many targets even less. I am not making a lore based claim on the bolter in the first place. I am saying the weapon is designed with drawbacks and those drawbacks should come with commensurate power benefits. Right now the revovler can bodyshot most low tier enemies even through an arm and the boltgun cannot despite the revolver having:
Quick draw
Quick ADS
Precision ADS
High re-fire rate
This isn’t a revolver thread. But on comparative balance the weapon with the worst draw time in a quick moving game like darktide should have the best power. The weapon with the fastest draw time should have lower power. This is just a balance arguement. Its that simple. You always bring up ammo but overlook the real enemy which is breakpoints, TTK and handling. These matter a lot. The revolver hits critical breakpoints for one bullet per target with a top-off reloading style and incredibly fast handling. In patch 14 before the latest rounds of buffs the revolver was in a much better place, not able to effectively kill half a crusher patrol in a single reload. Requiring actual headshots to get key kills. Etc. The nerfs I have asked for are so minor its actually baffling how much resistance I have gotten on that thing. But they make sense because the weapon is literally almost all upsides right now.
Unlike many here I have repeatedly and clearly articulated a vision for individual weapons and inter-weapon balance. I want lore relevant 40k weapons to be stronger than mundane weapons at the cost of usability, handling and skill floor. This is a natural balance that is already in the game except for weird outliers. But nothing says being “stronger” is always better. The revolver in patch 14 was maybe a bit overtuned as it was but it had a natural balancing point as the quick draw king of human scale specialist sniping. It is self evident that weapons should be considered in relation to one another and in relation to the lore and each should inform their position in the balance. Which is why I complain when some weapons are obviously out of line with a sensible disposition. I actually rarely ask for nerfs and often times I rarely ask for damage nerfs either. The combat axe actually remains OP according to all my testing but my only position on it remains reduced stagger to Crushers because the biggest issue it has is how easy it is to use against those targets.
In this game a weapon without flaws is a boring weapon that requires nothing of the player. Some players like that, fair enough. A weapon with flaws is interesting and creates dynamic gameplay. But every day players ask for those edges to be trimmed so that they can have their super powered weapon have no issues. Look at:
This is exactly the kind of idea that ruins a diverse arsenal with interesting mechanics and quirks. Rather than understanding that this local negative is actually a positive for the game as a whole, understanding that this is WHY the bolter is ALLOWED to have all the power it has without ruining the game and making it the only choice. Rather than understanding that this gives you, the player, opportunities to learn and express skills around positioning, making space, preperation, etc…this player is simply asking for the full auto two stage rocket launcher to instantly equip so he doesn’t have to worry about it. This idea, applied over and over, will kill all weapon diversity. This player is hardly alone in this opinion and I see it a lot. I am vehemently opposed to it.
And not to belabour the point forever, so forgive me for running on, but is it not the case that the biggest reason we see less bolters is not that its damage is much worse than before but because the veteran cannot instantly draw and reload it anymore? The balancing of the weapon naturally fell in line as soon as we stopped allowing it to ignore its own drawbacks. That was a good thing. But now the bolter is a bit too weak for the costs so I want to see improvements.
This is just wrong and misinformed. The chain weapon special attacks usually have excellent breakpoints on many targets and are the fastest way to kill many targets. For most of the chain weapons the problem is the rest of their attacks have been traditionally bad. When Rampage is fixed they WILL be bad again. Mark my words.
Boltgun would not be “the only option” even with a faster draw time. It would still have tons of negative sides and there would still be a lot of other weapons better in other situations. Then I repeat, you said its role is “big damage vs big targets”… but then, where a bunch of big guys appear, probably you won’t be able to use it
About Chainsaw weapons: the combo “rev attack + Zealot’s charge “trick” + crit + weak spot hit” still can’t kill a single Crusher nor a simple Mauler
Moreover it makes you super vulnerable and it’s very slow and uses your ult
Executioner’s Stance is the only way to “get around” a slow equip. I don’t know why this is being used as a counterpoint.
Creating an opportunity to “get around” a slow equip has costs, whether this is a grenade, in which case “getting around” a slow equip now has an economy to it; or shoving enemies and creating space, which has lost time associated with it.
And in a game where being efficient and being quick are both very important qualities at higher levels of difficulty, slow equips are nothing but an arbitrary and unfun way of compensating for a weapon’s strength—where neither the Helbore nor the Boltgun has anything worth compensating for in this regard.
Don’t really know what to say except that this is wrong. The Boltgun is the king of burst and practically has the effect of a mini grenade. The slow draw speed is something you have to play around. The Helbore can’t magdump its full damage capacity after being readied. The Bolter can.
You can use your team to help make space for the swap. You can pull back and dodge to equip it. You can use Ex stance. You can use grenades. You can push enemies back. You can run and reposition. You can position better in the first place. This is a skill you have to learn. It adds to the boltgun and means it requires thought and effort to get use out of a very powerful weapon. And once you can get over that hurdle it still is a very powerful weapon.
Stop trying to make every weapon easy and generic to use. It is frustrating especially for the people who actually put in the effort to get better and learn the weapons and their quircks and how to preform well with them.
If you don’t think chunking a huge portion of a bosses health, or killing/staggering a group of melee elites is absolutely amazing than idk how I can help you.
I have already acknowledged this as a strength of the Boltgun.
Plasma Gun does everything better right now without having a slow equip speed, however. Being a boss killer is nothing special. Zealot doesn’t have to take a Boltgun for that job because the Thunder Hammer is better if you want to be a boss/elite killer.
They should double down on the Bolter’s stagger/CC potential and volley/rapid fire design.
Why is that a problem? You don’t want to manage your resources and make decisions?
There is reactive gameplay and proactive. Mixing both is contributing into depth of gameplay.
For some reason you want to get rid of proactive part, and leave only reactive one.
Revolver is like that, just use it and leave bolter alone.
Not every weapon should fit your playstyle, but you can have multiple ones, to fit different weapons.
If you don’t want to, that’s your problem.
