@Fatshark: Dear Devs! A thesis on how to polish toughness into a straightforward and adaptive system for current and future classes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Hi, lets talk toughness… in a moment. First I’d like to address:

Darktide is fresh out of the oven right now and smells great, although it still needs more time to cook. It’s common knowledge at this point that due to delays in development the Beta should have lasted longer, but the Big Bosses felt pressured to hit the full release button. Regardless the Devs are currently hard at work patching holes and trying to keep the ship moving forwards. There is only so much they can do though, I imagine. Fatshark is not a massive team and has limited resources and people working on different things.
Player feedback is extremely important for helping them find and resolve issues with the game; whether it be performance problems, balancing weapon damage, fixing bugs, or balancing mechanics/talents/perks. Lucky for them they are getting that feedback here and elsewhere. A LOT of feedback. Unfortunately, most of the feedback, especially for game balance, is in small bits and pieces from people with drastically different takes. Having a wide variety of feedback is a double-edged sword as, while the Devs have tons of information to work with, much of it is simply not constructive. Many suggestions also don’t take practicality into consideration. A massive change can be good, but if it takes too much time only to turn out mediocre or worse then it’s a disaster in the office.
I’m making this post because even with its many issues, I love this game and I know the Devs love it too, despite the many frustrations and setbacks. I want to give detailed and useful suggestions that the Devs can actually work with that not only help, but also are easy and clean to incorporate and build off of.
Why am I focusing on toughness of all things considering how big this post is? Well that’s actually quite simple. I play a lot of games and enjoy making loadouts/builds that can push the game to its limits through a combination of well thought out stats mixed with learned skill and teamplay. Having and trying to replenish toughness on top of your scarce to refill healthbar is a simple (which I think is important in a game with a big learning curve like Darktide) and good way to combine attrition with aggression. The problem right now though is that the toughness system has a lot of wrinkles that need ironing out. I don’t think the wrinkles are hard to remove with the right amount of pragmatic finesse.

  • While not all of my proceeding recommendations are PERFECT fixes; I’m focusing on practical balance changes that players won’t find annoying/unfun or too casual to play with, while being easy to code/implement for the Devs and in the future will be cozy to work around as more classes are added. All numerical values are purely recommendations and can always be easily changed, which is the nice part about them really.

Let’s talk coherency and toughness regeneration.

People feel very… aggressive about this one if the “Coherency is anti-teamwork and toxic” post with nearly 200 comments is anything to go by. The two most practical things I’ve taken out of it are whether the current coherency range is fine or needs to be bigger and if players should have toughness regen while alone.

  • I’ve personally come to the conclusion that the current coherency range is fine, but could maybe be bigger by default for melee classes.

  • As for toughness regen; I think having a very small amount while alone makes sense. The coherency indicator says 1-4 already, so maybe being alone gives 1/4th of the optimal regen. It’s not enough to encourage lone wolf gameplay that can leave teammates feeling worried/abandoned, but it’s enough that being the last man standing doesn’t feel completely hopeless.

  • I also want to add here as a footnote that I’ve noticed many people who played Vermintide seem to have what I think is a misconception that the toughness system is way more forgiving than the temphealth system that game had and somehow forces a more passive playstyle. I would like to point out that the rats were not carrying firearms (rattling gunner doesn’t count he’s special and a special, heh). Coherency regen doesn’t really play a big role on most fights since it’s paused by damaging enemies, blocking melee attacks and taking damage. Most sources of in combat toughness replenishment are from talents and weapon blessings. Any downtime a team spends regenerating toughness is also spent simply walking to the next fight while grabbing loot along the way.

Why ranged enemies absolutely melt your toughness bar and feel oppressive right now and how to address the issue.

  • I don’t think ranged enemies do too much damage actually, and from other peoples feedback I’ve read, I think I’ve identified the real big issue that is causing the most woe. Enemy aim-tracking is too fast against sprinting/dodging players. Not to be confused with enemies overall accuracy which I think is fine as is and dangerous to nerf. I don’t think enemy tracking speed even needs more than a slight reduction. Just enough for well positioned player movement to avoid more, but not casually all, enemy fire. This change would also allow the melee classes charge abilities to get them into the fray less painfully. Mobility/stamina perks, blessings and talents may also see more use over raw unga-bunga stats as more skilled players pick up on evasive maneuvers.

An important note on how toughness is supposed to work differently between ranged and melee classes and enemies.

  • Melee classes are meant to be better at avoiding/mitigating enemy melee attacks through superior mobility, close range crowd control and damage reduction passives/talents that are active in melee combat. Ranged classes are meant to be better in weathering ranged combat through a combination of anti ranged weapon perks/talents, having strong long ranged AoE damage and/or crowd control in the case of the Psyker and having a larger toughness capacity for gunfights in the case of the Sharpshooter. Both sides of the group also feature toughness sustain talents that match their respective locations in the fight. A Sharpshooter has no toughness talents that help with melee fights, while a Skullbreaker has no talents that restore toughness in ranged combat as examples.

How to balance toughness sustain between ranged and melee classes.

An issue right now is that the veteran having a bigger toughness bar means they can also sustain far better than they should be able to in melee combat. The main cause of this is that the in-combat sources of toughness replenishment that all classes have access to give percentage values rather than static amounts. I can see 2 ways to fix this; change Sharpshooters toughness to 100 like the other classes and add a -50% ranged toughness damage reduction passive, or change global sources of toughness gain to give static values. While both ideas would achieve very similar results, I personally think the 2nd one is more practical for a few reasons:

  • Firstly, when new classes are inevitably added with different nuances and roles, having separate damage type resistance passives attached to every single class will start to feel bloated and be far more troublesome to code/bug-fix/rebalance than simply having different toughness amounts. The individual class options would also just feel less unique and curio stat choices would probably have no diversity as a result because people won’t get to see big numbers (heheh big number funny).

  • Secondly, having static values for toughness on kill and toughness replenishing blessings on weapons will makes sources of maximum toughness like curios or possible future talents options easier to balanced as increasing toughness won’t cause some classes to over sustain in situations they shouldn’t, while still increasing how much damage you can buffer at once. As for actual number changes I recommend changing the toughness weapon blessings to give 40%(ish) more toughness than they currently do, but remove the % part. So gaining 10% toughness on multiple melee hit would instead give a static 14 instead, as an example. Toughness on melee kill should be changed to give 5 on normal enemy kills and 15 on elite/specialist kills.

The issues of melee damage not being scary enough to ranged classes, the toughness melee bleedthrough mechanic meant to fix this being very controversially received (for fair reasons on both sides) and how to smoothly resolve both sides with surprisingly very little effort.

I’d like to clarify that the controversy I am currently taking about is that a large amount of the players do not like melee bleedthrough at all as a mechanic and think it should be removed. I completely agree with this. The other side of the argument is that melee combat would be far too easy and unpunishing, especially so for the ranged classes; mainly the Sharpshooter with it’s large toughness bar. As a fellow Vermintide2 enjoyer I would actually agree with this side of the argument too… IF no other changes were brought in to replace bleedthrough.

  • Spoilers, I am recommending an alternative. Who woulda guessed? In fact the above stated changes to toughness sustain would already greatly fix the problem of the Sharpshooter, along with other future high toughness classes from overperforming in melee range. That of course isn’t enough though as it doesn’t actually make enemies feel less forgiving in general.

  • Here is where things get ironically very simple. Replace bleedthrough with melee enemies deal 50%(ish) increased damage to toughness. Here’s the why: With the current bleedthrough system it is actually harder to run out of toughness in a pure melee fight since a lot of the damage… bleeds through your toughness. Most people don’t fully realize how scary getting your toughness bar broken in a large melee fight can be since it doesn’t happen that often without ranged enemies breaking the scenario or the player simply dying to bleedthrough first. When your toughness bar gets broken you get staggered… so you lose mobility… when someone is swinging a chainsword at your head… yeah. Simply taking more toughness damage from melee attacks would not only reduce how many mistakes in a row you can make before you start to hurt which is already similar to bleedthrough without the annoying issues, yet also adds that looming danger that the more skilled players want from the melee experience.

  • Edit: I was reminded that the Zealot’s 75% toughness resistance perk may trivialize the game without chip damage, but wouldn’t it make more sense to nerf the INSANE perk that quadruples how many hits you can take? Tone it back down to 50% like it was in early beta before they buffed it due to the addition of melee bleedthrough.

  • I want to also make a quick reminder here that we also want to think about how practical implementing something like this will be for the Devs to work with compared to the current system. Melee bleedthrough was already bugged when the mechanic was forced into the beta and also has to read different values depending on your current toughness percentage. People are also very unhappy with it right now and I imagine the Devs are working on ways to adjust it which will only be more work now and in the future and most of the people that just want it gone won’t even be happy with a “better” bleedthrough system, even if it actually is better. On the other hand, making players take more/less damage to specifically health/toughness from ranged/melee sources is already something they have diversified in the code and would be very easy for them to edit with little issue and wouldn’t be nearly as likely to break or need rebalancing in the future with new classes and talents added.

So why do I think that melee bleedthrough is an unsalvagable mechanic that needs to be replaced even though I don’t completely disagree with its purpose anyways?

So as mentioned in vaguer detail above I think it has far to many issues and would take to much investment by the Devs to really make most people satisfied with, but let me also get into some of what those big issues are, besides most people just saying it isn’t fun is already a red flag.

  • Melee bleedthrough compounds painfully bad with other sources of chip/bleedthrough damage such as explosives like poxwalkers, corruption buildup from enemies and wounds(downs), and worst of all grimoire missions. Taking bleedthrough damage from basic enemies feels like ass combined with these very common conditions. It also makes it very hard for the Devs to add other forms of challenges that affect the players healthbar since melee bleedthrough is already so oppressive.

  • INCONSISTENCY! The design of melee bleedthrough leads to some very different results from very similar combat situations. Taking 1% bleedthrough per 1% missing toughness from melee enemies can cause seriously confusing situations when combined with ranged damage. Let me make two examples here:

  • You have 100 toughness and both the gunman and melee enemies do 50 damage each. You get shot and are on 50 toughness after the first hit. You now get hit by a melee attack and have 25 toughness and are missing 25 health and then you get melee’d again so you have 12.5 toughness and are down 62.5 health. Now you get shot again and have 0 toughness and are missing 100 health and will get stunned after 4 hits because your toughness broke.

  • Now another situation is that you get hit by the melee enemy first and take no bleedthrough so you have 50 toughness. The ranged enemy proceeds to shoot you and your toughness breaks, but you lose 0 health and get stunned after 2 hits. Freaking what? That’s so confusing! How are people supposed to understand, much less appreciate, a system like that?

  • I genuinely think this melee bleedthrough system or something similar could have worked in a different and far more melee focused game, but that just isn’t Darktide. Enemies have tons of stinky guns and players get the fun guns. The game is fun and we love our guns, but this bleedthrough system just doesn’t fit with ranged attacks breaking it’s rhythm.

A basic rundown on how this would hopefully add diversity and personal choice to selecting which curios you want to run, instead of there just being a boring “best” one.

  • +Wounds is probably the only curio that won’t get affected by any of these changes as it’s simply the “Do or die and boii do I not want to lie to myself about the die part” option.
  • +Stamina may see more use if evading ranged attacks becomes more doable along with perhaps more blocking/shoving due to the potential threat of getting stunned if enemies break your toughness easier in melee range.
  • +Toughness will start being used again since it would actually prevent full melee damage now, however it would no longer affect how much toughness you gain from static sources of toughness sustain and therefor by used mostly if you have toughness talents you want to combo with it.
  • +Health will still be relevant as the toughness sustain/melee damage changes keep maximum toughness from overshadowing it along with simply having a buffer against things that can bypass/remove toughness like specialist enemies. It also increased your bleedout health which isn’t a commonly known thing and surprisingly useful.

Ending Note
This has been a fairly massive post all things considered and I am grateful for anyone who has taken the time to read it all the way through along with those who comment and bring in their own feedback and opinions on the topics discussed! I am also grateful for all the work a certain exhausted Dev team has been putting into one of my new favorite games!

Sincerely, an Obese Megalodon appreciator.

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I would welcome any of these changes. Toughness being a “damage resist bar” instead of the normal extra health that literally any other game has is needlessly overcomplicating a very simple concept. I also despise suppression and how much ranged attacks slow and stagger melee characters even when their toughness is active.

I don’t have an opinion on coherency given how worthless it is in most situations except to activate coherency-dependent buffs, but a little bit of regen when alone would be great. Thanks for the long and thought out post!

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Not sure if we are playing the same Game…
Melee is the #1 reason why my Veteran dies. My Zealot and my Ogryn are far tougher. Why? Because of the Feats.

Zealot is completely meant to be up close.
At 5 they get Feats like “Replenish 5% toughness per second while within 4 meters of any enemies.”
At 25 they get “When Until Death ends, you gain health based on the damage you dealt during Until Death. Melee damage dealt heals for twice the amount.” so even if they would die…they dont.
Or “After taking damage, you regain 25% of the damage taken over 5 seconds.” which is a 25% damage decrease with a step between.

And at 30 “Chastise the Wicked now has two charges.” so refilling toughness twice.
Zealot is a beast in Melee Combat.

Now my Ogryn:
Level 5: Replenish 20% Toughness on single/multiple hits.
Level 10: 50% Damage reduction against other Ogryn.
Level 20: +100% toughness replenishment while below 25% health
Level 30: Replenish 10% toughness per Bull Rush hit.
So again, many feats that increase toughness regen or help with surviving.

Now for the Veteran…
Level 5:
Replenish 10% toughness on ranged weak spot kill.
Replenish 25% toughness on elite kill and a further 25% toughness over time.
Replenish 5% toughness/second while more than 8 meters from enemies.
Aaaaaand thats it. There is nothing more that helps. Well there is “Camo Expert”, but that is a bit different.

So no, the bigger toughness bar on veteran is not the issue here. They have no way to replenish toughness in melee besides the “on kill” one that everyone has. Once the bar is down, it is down. If they manage to survive better, it is simply due to a skilled Player.

I agree though that the System is confusing and not really clear.

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As we’ve discussed elsewhere, I fundamentally disagree the current chip system feels bad. It feels pretty spot on to me as it is currently, quite forgiving even in some instances. Your suggestions seem like a lot of changes for the devs to implement that I struggle to see meaningfully improving the experience personally. However that is a game feel thing that is hard to argue either way on meaningfully.

So for now I will just present another issue your new system would need to tweak to make work. Current Zealot crit DR build would start taking 0 damage in a lot of instances wherein it currently at least has to deal with some chip damage. +50% melee damage to toughness would barely register a higher threat of having your toughness broken in the face of that much DR. You would be able to face tank multiple Ragers with little to no threat of repercussion and walk out of that conflict with 0 health damage.

Easy fix, just tune down the crit DR feat and balance is restored I hear you say. Well the problem with that, is the amount you would need to tune it down to keep melee enemies a threat would also now make Zealot MUCH squishier to stray las shots you eat while fighting groups in melee. The net result being that if you tune it correctly for melee enemies, you’ve now made Zealot significantly squishier to ranged fire, which is frankly something I don’t think he needs.

There are probably other issues it would introduce, but I’d rather speak from a place of experience, which is exclusively playing Zealot thus far.

I’m also pretty iffy about the suggested change to make a bunch of toughness generation a flat amount rather than %, but I really need to get a better feel for where toughness vs health curios are gonna sit in the meta to give a take I’d be confident on on that matter.

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But I… didn’t say Sharpshooter was BETTER than melee classes in melee combat. Just that it has too much melee potential with % melee restore sources.
The different changes in this post are meant to synergize together for game balance. If bleedthrough was taken out without changing global sustain options then it would become a problem. Sharpshooters gimmick is taking out enemy specialists/elites before they can get in range to threaten yourself and your team. Also really good at just thinning out enemy ranged units so that the only thing left is basic melee enemies.
Sharpshooter can get 290 toughness with just 2 toughness blessing curios(and 3 5% secondary perks). 5% toughness on kill is 14.5 per little weakling you gut, not including melee weapons with toughness gain blessings. The class that is good at everything, but melee, shouldn’t have forgiving amounts of sustain while trying to survive in melee range. Also like I mentioned in the original post; having globally accessible % based recovery could also be limiting for future class design.
Also on Sharpshooter I’ve had situations where I’ve gained over 100 toughness in 1 melee swing WITHOUT using the op lightning sword. This was on Heresy difficulty.

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Actually despite the size of my post it’s just a few number changes and remove a few % signs. The biggest amount of work would be removing the bleedthrough which wasn’t originally even in the early beta. Like i’ve repeated in the main post; practicality over ambition.

And done/editted.

If my suggestion to somewhat nerf enemy ranged tracking is introduced, then the ranged damage problem is solved by skilled positioning, movement and sidestepping. Also the slow immunity and 20% movement speed when hit talent that the zealot has would become very good for avoiding ranged damage and with the removal of melee bleedthrough you wouldn’t be FORCED to take the lifesteal during immunity passive talent anymore that is in the same level 20 column.

While the current melee bleedthrough system might feel fine with your specific setup, and it probably is since you seem to be enjoying going full heretic purging mode(aren’t we all), I am more worried about how it averages out between all of the current classes and the affect it will have on how Fatshark designs new ones. Also, you might have the strongest bias for pro chip damage of all the players in the game since Zealot is the ONLY class with a way to not be directly killed by it AND the only class that has a way to restore health. Just food for thought.

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but…you did

As you said just now:

This is simply a skilled Player then.

Yes, Numbers-Wise the Veteran generates more Toughness with Percentual. But that does not really matter. After the first hit which drops Toughness below 100%, they still take Health Damage from the Bleed-Through, just like all the others.
Yes, due to the increased Value, the percentual Bleed-Through ramps up slower, but thats it.
As i said, Veteran has literally no way to regenerate Toughness other than killing in Melee. The others have, in multiple ways as described above.

Lets say you regenerate 5% per Melee Kill.
A Veteran with 200 Toughness regenerates 10 Toughness per Kill
A Zealot or Ogryn with 100 Toughness regenerates 5 Toughness per Kill.
Now the Feats kick in…

Zealot regenerates an additional 5% per second, so they are already matching the regen of the Veteran now. Half of it is passive, so no kill required. They regenerate 25% Health back, so they only took 75% from the Bleed- Through.
Due to the incrased Pool of the Veteran, the percentual Value is different though. But once the Toughness is gone, the Zealot still has the 75% advantage, Veteran does not.
And even if they run out, a single press of a Button replenishes Toughness again. Twice.

Ogryn with 100 Toughness regenerates the same 5 per Kill. But at level 5 they receive the first 20% Boost to that, so each kill regenerates 25% or 25 Toughness.
They take 50% less Damage from Ogryns. Zealot still takes 75%, while Veteran takes 100%.
If Ogryn is below 25% Health, the Regeneration rises to 50%, right?
And at 30 they too can replenish Toughness with the press of a Button.
And now consider that Ogryn has a much higher Healthpool too AND an insane Toughness regen. Ranged Combat is their weakness, but hey, thats what they have a Shield for.

As i said, the system is confusing, so my math could be wrong. But it shows that all Classes have ways to regenerate a lot of Toughness or survive…except the Veteran. The only protection of the Veteran is to avoid Melee, the Toughness only helps surviving to get away. Compared to the others they are far behind when it comes to regeneration.

Thats just not true. They are good at it, but it is not their main Job. Especially at 4 or 5 there are so many of them, that it is everyones Job. The Sharpshooter is more like a Scout who can see them a bit sooner and through Walls. If you activate your ability in such a Mission, it is not uncommon that a whole Room starts to glow.

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I certainly might be biased by playing Zealot, but I’ve actually been running Thy Wrath be Swift (+20% move speed on hit) over holy revenant recently so you can’t accuse me of bias due to having access to in built healing :grin:

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No where in that quote you pulled did I say that the Sharpshooter was BETTER. I simply said they were too good at it for what they can already do. Also I want to point out that since my main post said that bleedthrough should be removed the Sharpshooter would need the changes to not become overpowered along with future classes with high toughness. Please read ALL of my balance recommendations that are supposed to work together before trying to say they don’t make sense.

The Emperor doesn’t want scouts he wants killers. Also it is the main job. You have a talent that gives massive toughness gains for killing elites, a talent that lets you Snipe them for more damage and a talent that gives reload speed on elite kills. An ability that highlights elites/specials, gives you a damage boost (along with increased accuracy/recoil I’ve noticed, but I don’t think it’s properly in the description) and gets an extended duration when you kill those targets. The player is incentivized to chain kill elites/specials by their very ability. Also many of the guns are good at killing elites/specials while being bad at killing hordes.

I’d like to add that all of my easiest/cleanest/smoothest Sharpshooter games have been when I focused on elites/specials and treated them as priority targets. I’ve had times with the toughness on elite kill talent where I didn’t even pay attention to melee enemies and stayed on full bars simply by gunning down gunners. This too was in Heresy difficulty. Trust me when I say Sharpshooter is an elite butcher. Also you normally prioritize specials over elites. Even if you can’t single handedly take out all the elites, you can single handedly kill all specials.

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Lul fair fair. Speed is king.

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I want to get to try it the way the tutorial explains it before anything, personally. It says it blocks all damage and I’m yet to have that experience, which imo is a very serious issue because it means things like venting the plasma guns overheat is too much of a cost, and undermines the two melee orientated classes due to being ground down from chip damage.
The poxwalkers already do chip damage with corruption anyway.

Might it make things overpowered? I don’t know, I haven’t had the chance to experience how the game says it should work to players.

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I just want to ask do you play zealot and sharpshooter?
Because have about 40 hours on zealot and now a level 8 sharpshooter so a few hours.
The zealots so good in melee and feels so good in melee because he just speeds though everything and CTW is a bad positioning get out of jail free card.
Sharpshooter in melee is still pretty good since I know how to move but when I’m getting shot up I can’t just charge in and force them into melee or charge away with extra toughness.
Sharpshooter can easily cleave down hordes with the weapons I currently got but he just feels extremely slow since I can’t just force or leave melee engagement on my terms like the zealot.

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Just Zealot thus far.

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I know the meta is powersword and bolter, but running a Catachan knife with some extra stamina easily solves that mobility issue and often makes my sharpshooter the most mobile of the group. Not just for getting in, out and dodging around in combat but also as just a utility thing for exploring, grabbing objectives and catching up to the group if i lag behind.

Plenty of times ive spend most of a mag taking down an elite and duck around a corner to find myself staring down a full squad of scabs with 10 shots left. Using the knifes mobility to close in and force them into melee rather than trying to reload under fire has got me though desperate moments like that with barely a hit through my toughness.

The only melee enemies that really cause me trouble are the armoured ogryns, though granted ragers need a bit of space to focus down and dogs are just dog to deal with by gun or blade. Otherwise most things don’t handle a crit to the cranium too well, good space management with infinite evasive manoeuvres keep me in the clear and I always have self-regenerating insurance grenades for if things do get dicey.

Idk if changes to toughness would massively change my approach to melee, but I can certainly attest to the fact that my sharpshooter currently gets very enthusiastic about more hands on headshots regardless of what their job description may be.

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Will need to try the knife when I level up more since zealot knife is also pretty great and I’m always rushing into melee anyway since my guns got crap ammo and damage and suppression just makes me want get stuck instead of taking lots of chip damage.
Hopefully that changes when I get some good full auto guns.
But still I don’t think it’s gonna be anywhere near as mobile as a zealot that has a evis or TH.

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Well…this is where it gets confusing. Gunner is not an Elite.
The three Ogryn, so Bulwark, Crusher and Reaper, as well as the Mauler are the Elite.
Hound, Trapper, Shotgunner, Gunner, Flamer, Mutant, Burster, Bomber and Sniper are Specialist.
So the Feat should not trigger when you kill a Gunner.

Personally, my best rounds were when i had a coordinated Group. When i could fully use my Camo Expert and just not get hit all the time. Still, in Melee my Veteran just sucks when compared to Ogryn and Zealot who can become basically immortal.

Instead of reworking the Values and how the Mechanics work, i would rather see things like the Necklace and Charm Traits from Vermintide 2. Ways to alter how your Toughness works to fit different Playstyles.

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Scab gunners and shotgunners are specialist?? The guy in yellow with the backpack and the lmg? Despite the fact that they spawn in packs with other mobs, have no sound cue on spawning, and are can spawn as part of the map? My understanding from previous games is that specialists spawn with a unique sound cue and never show up as part of ambient wandering enemies. Sniper is the only one who doesn’t seem to fit either category.

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Elites are tag-able enemies that aren’t specialists or monstrosities. Simple as that.

Vermintide jewelry system was limiting since you could only choose from 1 neckless or 1 charm perk. Curios aren’t great right now and I actually have another small post about them, but at least I can run some curse resist while still being able to choose other stats and stuff like stamina regen. Also the Devs actually didn’t like the +30% heals necklace perk I’m pretty sure. So I don’t think they would wanna fall back to the old system.
I think my ideas would also open up a bit more diversity in curio choices and stuff too. I have a curio section in the above post. I think with the combined changes I recommended the game could have more wiggle room to play around with stuff too like you want. There are things like restrictive game design and I think the current toughness system limits design options a bit as is. Hence why I made this big post based on my knowledge of game balance from being an absolute nerd.

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As a Zealot I dont actually mind the toughness damage bleedthrough as it adds to the complexity of gameplay and build crafting. What for me makes it frustrating is not the bleedthrough itself but the high tendancy of the game to spawn an enemy behind you, up on a ledge or vent/behind a door constantly. These guys come out of nowhere, have no sound queue (until they go for the hit) and chip away some toughness, leading to bleedthrough.

It happens so bloody often its not funny. You clear an area behind you and swing around to deal with the big horde the group is dealing with. bonk! some poxwalker spawned in the roof and fell out of a hole and is hitting you. So you stop, turn and kill him, then turn back to the horde. BONK! another one spawned in the roof and jumped down

Having the game CONSTANTLY cheap-shot you in the back, stopping toughness regen and taking some of it away is not a mechanic the player can counter

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Hard agree, toughness bleedthrough needs a bit of tweaking or an overhaul, unfortunately the devs have a lot on their plate as it is, with finishing the crafting system, wouldn’t be surprised if this system rework got shelved for a while.