Fatshark, buffs before nerfs (Vet Edition)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Close and Kill - garbage aura that doesn’t synergize with Vet’s playstyle/current game balance. Talents for movespeed are useless on Vet, because he’s not that good at surviving after diving headfirst into enemies. Rework it into something that buffs heavy and/or light attacks for the team.

Marksman Focus - this aura doesn’t work well in the current balance of the game where GOOD players will ALWAYS move around/kite enemies. Especially since you keep adding spawns that teleport enemies in the flank. Not to mention if you’re the only person left alive, this aura is more of a hindrance than help. Every time I get this aura to play around with, I regret it at least once per mission.

Agile Engagement - literary buffs ONE swing of Power Sword due to time restriction (5 seconds to kill an enemy, switch weapons, charge special and charge one heavy attack). Only good for Meatgrinder showcases. When you fight actual enemies that spawn all around you in the unpredictable ways and you have to constantly dodge, you don’t have the time to line up these hits. So most of the time, you’re wasting the effect without doing anything with it.

Covering Fire - no need for this talent in the game when you have Voice of Command OR even stuff like Born Leader which can restore the same amount on using stealth near teammates or hitting headshots with Exhilarating Takedown. It should be reworked into something else entirely, because I’ll keep saying that it’s ONE OF THE WORST TALENTS IN THE GAME ACROSS ALL 4 CLASSES.

Competitive Urge - change into something else, it’s awful. Random buff that will never work when you need it to, and when it does, you or your teammates don’t feel it doing anything. Have anyone in the history of Darktide EVER had someone on their team say, “Wow, if it wasn’t for Competitive Urge we’d be totally cooked here”. I highly doubt it.

The Bigger They Are - no need to use it, even when running Plasma or Bolter. People use the enemy highlight ultimate to see smaller targets more clearly, Ogryn enemies are already easy to see. Not to mention that 90% of the time you can’t prolong the duration, compared to the shooters highlight talent which allows to keep the effects of Executioner’s Stance sometimes for close to a whole minute. Not to mention the lengthy reload of the above mentioned weapons will always reset the duration of the ultimate, even if you take talents for speeding up the reload. Isn’t it kinda stupid that the talent that prolongs the ultimate for killing shooters is better on Bolter and Plasma?

Kill Zone - trash talent for auric difficulty. There are ALWAYS enemies near you when you play at the highest level. And when you get the effect, it’s only 15% extra damage that’s not gonna do anything for most weapons. Only good for Meatgrinder, in the field it’s absolutely useless. This talent was designed for the early version of the game when less enemies spawned. When you’re playing any of the final horde events, you basically have 1 talent less with points invested into Kill Zone.

Catch a Breath - same as the above, but slightly more useful. Redundant talent with options like Exhilarating Takedown, Confirmed Kill and even Target Down (restore stamina and toughness based on the applied stacks of Focus Them, very underrated talent). Absolutely useless for Voice of Command and Stealth users.

Out For Blood - even after you buffed it, nobody is using it. People stick to the middle or left side of the skill tree. Even if you buff the values once again, nothing’s gonna change. Rework it into something else that compliments melee-centric playstyle that you keep pushing on the Vet.

ALL OF THE NODES of Weapon’s Specialist aura - not worth going for them, there’re so much better talents in the skill tree. Getting +25% ammo, 10% rending and 50% reduced toughness damage reduction is INFINITELY more worth it than any of the Weapon’s Specialist nodes. The only talent that is somewhat worth using is the one that loads up to 2 ammo in your unequipped weapon. The aura itself is good though.

Redirect Fire - redundant talent, once again. Not worth it going all the way down for it when there are much better talents. 15% with a need of an uptime not gonna change the course of the battle. Rework into something else entirely.

SPECIAL MENTION

Smoke Grenades - yeah. Not much to say here. Krak grenades (bosses, Crushers and Bulwarks) or Frag Grenades (every other enemy in the game) are 200x times better. Useless on night missions, useless on fog missions, useless on Gas missions. Obscures your teammates’ visions on every other type of the missions. Taking smokes into the mission without using Executioner’s Stance talent that highlights specials through the cloud = throwing the game.

Sometimes Gunners and specials will still keep shooting through the smoke and hit your teammates. People who say these are “underrated” are the same people who think Power Sword is overpowered because they killed 5 poxwalkers with a charged swing or stacked 5 Crushers on the same spot in the meatgrinder to kill them with Sunder.

8 Likes
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I’ve consistently maintained that Vet needs another rework of his talents. Too much of it seems to be balanced around Malice enemy levels.

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Yeah, Mid and Right side is fine apart from a few exceptions (WS subnodes, and Competitive Urge for example), but left side including Exa Stance and Marksman’s focus is just terrible. There is basically no good node on the left between Shredder nade and Exa stance.

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One thing i wish is that the talent for executioners stance that highlights specials for your teammates wasnt tied to that ability. I wish it was just its own talent that could be used independently regardless of which ult you take

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@ForumWarrior

The problem is that would make Executioner’s Stance even weaker in the current meta. Voice of Command and Stealth are so much more useful and versatile. Highlight talent for teammates is actually top tier for night missions.

A good compromise would be adding a new talent node that allows to highlight multiple enemies with your normal mark.

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@Nish

Get Back in the Fight is decent (the one that restores stamina when enemies break your tougness). It’s good for melee-centric playstyle, the problem is it’s in the wrong side of the skill tree and the effect is good but not great. It “rewards” players for being hit, so if your team is doing exceptionally well you might never even proc it. Stun and Slow Immunity are really crucial for final events when you carry power cells, for example. The problem is that this talent is kinda redundant with Voice of Command and Stealth. Still much better than the other options, it’s good for restoring stamina when you take the talent node that spends stamina on crit.

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Executioner’s Stance is just a bad overall.

You can compare it to Scrier’s gaze on Psyker and see how incredibly weak it is.

It’s ok and can save you from dying, but it’s basically the weakest version of “cannot be stunned” in game. So yeah I wouldn’t call that useless, but comparitively it’s not that strong.

On melee builds you don’t need that so much since you have VoC or Stealth to rely on if you are caught off-guard.

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Disagreed, its very powerful for the builds it was intended for.
Running a 80% left side tree with helbore im able to win maelstrom/auric 5 missions most of the times without any problems. And only struggle when the team doesnt have a proper horde cleaner.
The highlight of priority targets is extremely good at staying focused on what’s important and improves your aim via contrasting the enemy.

Obviously if your aim isnt the best, then ofc executioner’s Stance would be a very bad pick. But then you sholdnt go with the left side in the first place.

I’d go as far as to say its better then Scrier’s gaze. Scrier’s gaze is not sustainable and you can only clean up a limited amount of enemies with it. Meanwhile executioner’s stance lasts as long as you’re getting kills. You can kill hundreds of ranged enemies and still have it on.
Basically if your aim is good enough and there are enough enemies, you could theoretically have the stance on for 90% of the gametime.

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I am a 2700 hour vet-main, and I totally agree with these ideas. Vet talents are actually poorly designed, most of them are bad. Vet is extremely strong only because several over power talents and weapons.

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Scrier’s gaze grants you about the same damage bonus (altough it’s a rolling damage boost), but instead of a weakspot, it’s finesse damage which is better, on top of that +20% crit chance, 20% DR, +20% MS makes you regenerate toughness (thanks to another node that grants you toughness on peril gain) and it grants these bonuses to melee weapons too and allows you to freely switch around. It last for about 25 sec with a 15 sec base cd (since it counts down even in the winddown period) that is further reduced if you take CDR to about 10 sec or less if there are elites to kill.

It is no contest really.

Same with Disrupt Destiny which is just a better Markman’s focus that also boost melee too, although I’m aware that very few people like DD apart from myself.

I found more fun running helbore on the right side since the melee nodes give bonuses to the special and the damage (granted by exa) isn’t really needed, while having a ult that actually save you is very good.

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I’m a level 450 Vet (according to True Level) myself, though I play all classes. All of them are in triple digits.

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And back to Executioner’s Stance. It is the WORST combat ability in the game. I’m not saying it’s not strong, actually it’s too strong combined with a plasma. However, it can hardly work with rifles.

This is bad: heavy weapons like plasma are already strong enough, what’ the point of giving a combat ability continuing buff them? While ALL the rifles are weak, they are the ones that really need a certain build to buff and to play.

3 Likes
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Even with all these buffs from SG, and if i could get SG on vet i’d still pick ES over it. The target highlight is just too good and if your aim is good enough you dont really need the damage/toughness boosts SG provides.

I tried going with melee only helbore run back when the blessings were bugged. And it was extremely fun so i cant really blame you.

But i still stand by the executioner’s stance as a viable and powerful skill.

Now this i agree with. I also use DD and love it. The movement penalty from marksman’s focus needs to go.

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My vet is lv1500+, zealot lv1200+, bigman 700+. The more time I spent on other characters, the better I understand how bad vet tree is.

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Vet, as a class, seems to be intended for the left tree to be glass-cannon ranged attacks, right tree agile stealth melee, and center support.

Left tree is the problem tbh - whoever designed it seems to have been afraid of straightforward buffs to ranged attacks.

If I had control, I’d make it simple. Build the talents around threat reduction, make him less vulnerable to being flanked by random poxwalkers, and reward massively finesse and headshot chains to encourage stuff like infantry lasguns.

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yeah, i can stand by that.
Especially this : “make him less vulnerable to being flanked by random poxwalkers”
Maybe some talent like a danger sense where you can see on a hud when enemies are near you BEFORE they try to take a swing at you.

or like a small minimap/radar that shows every enemy in a small area around you in the form of small red dots on a small green device in the corner of the screen. Maybe available during executioner’s stance.

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Agile Engagement is a nice talent, but it’s not suitable for power sword, so try a battle axe, or a chainsaw axe
Here’s my build, and for you to check it out, it’s great for melee, and that’s where that talent shines.

The Power Sword is a good self-defense weapon for ranged veterans, and good for melee combat, but not smooth enough. The right Talent Tree veteran who specializes in melee should use other weapons that do not need to be charged.

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come on now the smoke granade is amazing at trolling your teammates to be blinded from any kind of overview and to get someone trapped or pounched by a dog they didn’t see

2 Likes
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Sorry, but this build is a mess.

  • 2 slow weapons in both slots.
  • Close and Kill on a Plasma Gun Vet who’s supposed to stay in the back and shoot from afar.
  • Throwing frag grenade into a crowd of shooters will achieve better results than using smoke. You don’t even use Grenade Tinkerer so you could block them off for a long time.
  • Agile Engagement in this build. Are you telling me you’re constantly switching weapons to get the value from this talent? The funny thing is, charging just ONE heavy overhead of this chainaxe to the full will probably expire the talent’s effect before you get the damage hits from sawing into an enemy.
  • A melee weapon with basically has no cleave/aoe meant for bigger targets built like a light attack spam weapon. At least use the other chainaxe if you want to use it for horde clear.
  • Stacking 2 health on Vet in a voice of command build when Vet’s toughness scales better.
  • Stamina curio on Vet. Just use Duck and Dive talent, it’s better for stamina management in melee builds, it’s not worth to waste a curio slot on stamina unless you’re running a crit ranged build.
  • Always Prepared restores 2-normal shots worth of Plasma Gun if you kill 10 enemies in melee, you’re better off just reloading after using Voice of Command. This talent is only good on revolver and sniper shotgun.
  • On Your Toes is a wasted skill point when you restore all of your toughness with Stealth or Voice of Command.
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At release, many people complained about threat reduction talent node in the old skill tree system. They said that vets who use this talent are a liability to their team, because this node brought more heat to their teammates.

That’s probably the reason why they only introduced it as a part of Stealth kit, when ranged marksman needs it the most. Even though I mostly used toughness reduction talent from the same row back then, I don’t think the old threat passive is EVER coming back.