Easy, minimal dev-time changes that would bring a lot more weapon and build variety

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I’m making this post because I’m increasingly frustrated with the weak state of many of Darktide’s weapons, blessing and talents, whose main if not only problem is their numerical values simply being far too low.

I understand that full-blown reworks, new weapons, gameplay system overhauls, performance fixes, etc require a fair bit of work and dev time, but there are so many blessings, talents and weapons that are 100% fine in terms of their functionality, but simply have too low a value numerically in terms of things like their damage, buff duration, armor damage modifiers, etc.

Is it not a simply matter of just increasing the number values on weaker weapons, blessings and talents? They wouldn’t need entirely new code to function, just go into the already existing formula that determines the buff they give you/damage they do and increase a few numbers to make them actually worthwhile using. This would bring a huge amount of weapon and build variety to Darktide without requiring any new content and only a very small amount of dev time.

Here’s a couple of examples to show what I’m talking about:

Take a swing: Increase the 3 second duration up to 6 seconds; this would make it far more pleasant and viable to use, 3 seconds is just way too short a duration and forces the player to constantly be shoving in order to benefit from the blessing.

Devastating strike: Increase the amount of cleave it gives you from 80% to something more like 150%, otherwise why would anyone ever take this blessing over one like wrath?

Decapitator: Enemy oneshot (100% hp) required for the buff changed to count on any single hit kill on an enemy above 85% hp. Currently as soon as enemies take even the slightest bit of chip damage you can’t stack the buff from them, a random bit of stray fire can put them down to 99% hp and now your blessing doesn’t work even if you do that full 99% hp in a single hit.

Vigilant autoguns: Give a significant increase to their armor damage modifiers. Currently these guns are absolutely terrible and barely ever used, giving them a buff to their damage into armor would give them a niche vs the other types of autoguns, where they would still have lower dps, magazine size, etc, but would excel at taking out hard targets like Crushers and Maulers.

Twin-linked heavy stubbers: Increase ammo reserves a lot, give small buffs to accuracy, armor damage modifiers and cleave. These are normally vehicle-mounted heavy weapons and yet they hit like wet noodles and use more ammo to kill most targets than weapons a quarter of their size, they should be able at least somewhat decent damage into armor and be able to blast through a few more lighter enemies before a shot is stopped.

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Agreed that purely numerical script changes would allow them to make more regular, smaller, incremental and iterative balancing changes. It wouldn’t take up much of their hotfix budget (which is being used to deliver shop cosmetics anyway), but there is someone(s) in the studio that insist on massive reworks or reinventing the wheel to make any change. Kinda feels like a “something new has more visibility than maintaining an existing system” mindset.

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‘Made small but necessary balance changes’ doesn’t look as good on a performance review as ‘massive overhauls for weapons’.

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It also requires someone to have an overall view of the state of all weapons and talents, which I am seriously doubting they have based on past behaviour.

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Vigilant Autoguns are good on Vet for auric, but they have low ammo capacity and low bodyshot damage. They don’t need more damage, you can oneshot every enemy up to Rager, even Scab Rager with a crit. The problem is that it requires very tunnel vision playstyle where you try to land headshots only, like Hellbore, so no matter the buffs it probably will never be a strong pick in a game with horde enemies spawn behind you and harass you while you ADS.

I play Graia and Agripina Vigilant’s on Vet, they’re decent enough in auric with Exe Stance.

In Havoc obviously trash, most enemies don’t even die to crit headshot and Exe Stance is underpowered in Havoc.

Agree with all other suggestions tho.

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I like a lot of those suggestions, a lot of blessings are still fairly pointless on many weapons, and their short uptime is often behind it.

I’m apprehensive about too many Twin-linked stubbers buffs. Due to their ammo count and autofire with very manageable recoil it can be very easy to turn them from “meh” to “this is so broken” tier.

I just don’t believe that ranged options in Darktide which allow you to dish out insane and sustained amount of damage at range are healthy for the gameplay. Especially in the base difficulties. This has been show again and again by the current state of staff psyker and Desperado Hive Scum, and the past states of vet (free reload on bolter, the old Survivalist talent which was basically an ammo printer) and PBB Ogryn with now nerfed burn stacks.

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May I bring to your attention the Vigilant Autogun’s completely pathetic Critical multiplier of 1.4 for the single shot mark and 1.3 for the burst-fire mark ? (this is unarmored, I haven’t calculated it for all armor types)

For a weapon type boasting Blessings such as Surgical and Headhunter, that’s some anti-synergy there if I’ve ever seen it. And I am never again using Deadshot with these until this is adjusted.

Compare that to Infantry autoguns with an unarmored critical multiplier of 2.2 on all marks ?

Body shot crits are just terrible with Vigilants and you can definitely feel it during missions.