Exec Stance Needs Work - Feels bad in Auric Damnation

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I rolled a godlevel Vraks7 and thought I would make a build going down the entire left side. (Except I took krak nades)

Definitely after 5 matches it feels vastly inferior to your typical plasma/melee/IAG/revolver builds.

I probably once, maybe twice per mission got the luxury of getting into a nice perch, and really got the bodycounts via ability/keystone.

I honestly don’t think its the talent tree/gun, but the map layouts and spawn patterns. Or maybe shout is still vastly superior.

Thoughts? I’m not alone either, as stealth/shout vets outnumber exec stance vets by an overwhelming margin.

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exe stance feels fun and effective to use on the not so sharpshooter weapons, like the Agripina braced autogun/infantry. Has blessings for the CQB brrr, and your vet talents for the far brrr. The guns can also penetrate, so you just bob and weave dodged while aiming for marked stuff.

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You’re doing it wrong. Exe stance is for aggressive plays, not static defense.

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It’s the gun. There’s no good reason to use the headhunter autos or braced autos atm because the IAGs just do significantly better.

I run both IAGs and lasgun 1a with exe stance, deadshot, marksmans focus builds and they perform quite comfortably. Though keep in mind…

With exe stance you have to just accept that taking a purely offensive ult will mean there are times where you get boned by situations where a defensive ult would have saved you.

That being said. I would argue that most of the guns in the game don’t synergize well enough with exe stance, and some other sharpshooter talent choices, to make them particularly valuable. So you have precious little reason to use exe stance with those guns and, comparatively, have even less reason to not use shout with them.

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Exe stance does in fact, suck.

You get an ult that can be cancelled if forced back to melee for a whole laundry list of issues, provides very few breakpoints for a very small selection of weapons, 2 dead talents choices to even pick it up, and a further point tax on modifier nodes that should be baseline like the shooters/ogryns being outlined (not that you can have both for some stupid reason).

Vs

All your toughness back and overshield on a fast button press which can save your life and others through the safety of the stagger and ability to tank: overheads, pox bursters, sniper shots all because you ultied.

Wall hacks are nice with plasma since you can shoot through them. That about all I’d use exe stance for. I think the safety you generate for your team is far better on every other gun.

As I’ve mentioned before:

Survivability = Higher aggression = higher damage

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Maybe I’ll take my Vraks7 and make a shout build, actually I’ll do that right now lol

Pic of Vraks7 too

Screenshot 2023-12-26 050521
Screenshot 2023-12-26 050521755×1089 79.7 KB

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Been having great fun with this build shown below.

Support’ish build that uses shovel for the insane stagger/pox burster baseball/mutie stops.

Vraks7 for elite deletion, krak nades for the obvious.

If you don’t want to go as heavy with the supporting as I did, take the melee damage nodes and ditch the leave noone behind and field improv.

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The old volley fire / exec stance with reload on ult + toughness on ult was working wonders :wink:

I cannot lie a finger on the current exec stance with marksman focus tree, it has decent dps and gives nice “offensive support” to the team, but railroads you into playing fast-firing weapons to chain headshots quickly and if you need to kite and clutch the game, they you will barely use it.
The tagging keystone, which I deemed utter trash at start due to convoluted stacking mechanics, is actually much better on heated games and makes clutching much, much easier. Not to mention the shout… Reginald was right here.
Anyway, I will follow this topic, as I am curious about the community’s opinion on this. I kind of agree with OP, the Exec stance is okayish for me, but does not feel awesome.

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I like Executioner’s Stance but I definitelly found it to be the weakest ability.

My main concern is that it requires way too many points to be actually useful. Base duration is too short and kind of forces you to take Relentless and Counter-Fire.
Better solution imo would be to make the base duration longer e.g. 15 sec and modify Relentless to extend the duration by e.g. 2 sec on highlighted enemy kill. That would make stand alone ability more useful with possibility to optionally extend the duration.

“The Bigger They Are…” is imo redundant ability modifier. In fact I believe Ogryn units are considered Elites so why making an exception for something that people very rarely spec into?

Enhanced Target Priority and Cross-Fire are fine.

Anyway the fact that the Executioner’s Stance is way too demanding without providing any form of defense makes it really hard to compete with other two options.

I’d like to create lasgun build with Executionare’s Stance, Deadshot and Focus target! and I found it kind of difficult due to all the sacrifices. Things like Fully-Loaded being mandatory travel node contributes to that as well.

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I mean, you nailed it. It’s a massive points sink )=

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Ogryn highlighting is actually really important for extensions for plasma and/or bolter and especially plasma.

Without it, ogryns aren’t highlighted for the damage increase nor do they extend the time. Reapers, crushers, and bulwarks are not highlighted elites nor are they counted as shooters for the other node.

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What I’m saying is that ogryn’s highlighting should be already part of the base ability because ogryns are elite enemies / priority target. Why is human-sized distinction needed?

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For the non plasma/revolver/bolter/HH weapons a vet has.

One can technically build around an aggressive columnus IAG build and just go ham on lesser ranged mobs with exec stance.

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Executioner stance is in a wierd place. Its either incredible or horribly underwhelming depending on how good your team is. Team is good → they kill things before you do so you don’t get the duration reset. Team is bad → you kill everything and keep it going for ages. Doesn’t help that veterans shout is incredible right now, either. So its pretty situational, and has some tough competition.

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Executioner stance no longer has an instant toughness refill or the ranged damage reduction that it used to… so… In that regard a lot has been lost.

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I’ve been playing with the Executioner’s Stance recently and honestly become quite frustrated. I like how the ability works but I absolutely hate how you need to compete over kills with your team mates in order to make the ability last longer. Also if there is even just one infested zombie bothering you, you need to deal with it and in most cases loose the ES. I feel like the ability works better in certain party compositions and requires other team mates to take care of your back while you’re shooting highlighted priority targets to extend the duration.

On top of that it requires you to spend 2 mandatory points into ability modifiers to make it useful even after already sacrificing so much survivability.

I sware if you could just extend the base duration to 15s (2 refreshes) and change the Relentless to extend duration to e.g. 1s for highlighted enemy kill, this alone would make is so much better.
All I really want is the freedom to pay attention to what is happening and react accordingly instead of playing some ****ing minigame to keep my ability up.

Also I know some people might disagree but I don’t like auto swap to the ranged weapon. What if I’m for example solving some horde situation and want to highlight dangerous enemies for myself or my team mates? I know it’s sharpshooter ability but I would still prefer for it to be more versatile and actually let me decide when to swap.

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I’d like to see them increase exec stance to a 6 second duration, that last second makes it feel so much different

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It’s quite the loss for sure but I thought about it and exe stance giving toughness back seems weird now, in a way.

If you want toughness, take shout. Then again, I’d love a selfish version of the toughness on ult so there’s that too.

What I miss way more is the reload on ult.

I swear, highlighting shooters and refreshing on highlighted kill should be basekit and toughness and reload on ult should replace those two talents.

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The biggest issue with Executioner’s Stance is that it lacks QOL that makes it a versatile offensive kit. It has a heavy module tax that requires you to invest in it to make it worthwhile, and I generally disagree with any game that removes functionality and reintroduces it as an unchanged modular effect.

FFXIV does this with new expansions, WoW has done/still does it, and while I don’t follow Destiny 2 at all, I’m certain it does something similar over the course of the game’s cycle.

But the greater issue is that it is a potent offensive ability with no defensive upsides. You lose it the moment you lose control of your character (knockbacks, etc.) or switch your weapons. It’s unfair when Ogryn has none of these issues, on top of the massive amount of Toughness regeneration they get with gunlugging.

Veteran operates solely on the premise that they must kill to survive. Thematically quaint, but it makes it feel awful to utilize. This is why Commanding Shout is so strong in the current meta. This is why you can get so much more mileage out of Infiltrate when utilized correctly. Both are extremely potent defensive options with the latter having good offensive utilization without just trying to turn you into a turret in an iteration of Darktide that doesn’t allow marksman gameplay.

And of course, the biggest outlier here is that it offers almost nothing to the team.

Instead of modulation that just lets you highlight specific targets, it should change behaviors slightly that benefits you as well as the team.

What if Enhanced Target Priority additionally gave +1.5% Toughness Replenishment per kill to you and your allies in coherency when they also kill highlighted targets? It stacks 10 times, meaning you can get +15% Toughness Replenishment, and lasts 10 seconds. It can also refresh your Stance from ally kills if you take Relentless.

What if Counter-Fire additionally increased suppression against highlighted enemies by +25% for you and your allies as well as an additional +20% damage against suppressed enemies? Pretty much only ranged type enemies can get suppressed at all, making this a viable offensive change with defensive functionality. This obviously coincides with Ogryn’s aura, making it +40% damage against suppressed enemies.

Like, these are just off the top of my head. They’re huge boons for modules, but I think they’re niche enough to prevent them from being overbearingly strong.

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You just summed up why I hate the ability. Perfectly.

Whenever I pop Exe Stance I have to dodge around while ignoring melee mobs on me sometimes so I can actually get value out of it.

I can turn around, and shoot them but if I run low on ammo the reload is going to potentially cost me the ability pop.

There are very few abilities you can fail to get value out of in this game, but Exe Stance is so personally punishing in comparison to literally anything other ability in the game.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I hate the part where I can feel resentful towards teammates for taking a killing blow from me. My team playing well can brick my ability.

Neat.