Feedback (mostly) on "Duty and Honor", "Disrupt Destiny" and "Heavy Hitter"

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Having played quite a while since patch 13, I have a few thoughts I’d like to share, I’ll list them by classes.

  • Some background info:
    I do almost exclusively non-auric T5 solo quick play , and all 4 classes evenly.
    My opinions on balance and difficulty are all based on non-auric T5.
Screenshot of my characters

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About Veteran

Since it’s about to be reworked so I won’t get too deep into it, but I do think Vet’s toughness regen talents should be relocated on the talent tree.

  1. Ability “Duty and Honor”
    It’s too powerful both in its coverage (15s/30s cd, 50% of the time) and the toughness (+100)
    Veteran, Zealot and Ogryn can all get very high TDR, effectively making it a (not) short-time invulnerability.
    Comparing to survival-related talents from other classes, I don’t think it’s intended to be this powerful.

  2. Vraks MK VII Headhunter (the semi-auto sniper rifle)
    IMO the dmg on maniac is a bit low.
    Good against stationary ones like gunners, but not against moving specials. In real game it takes about 3-4 body shots to kill a trapper, and too many to kill a flamer.
    It’s also very bad against Dreg rager, eventually making it hard to rely on in a chaos situation.

About Psyker

I like smite after patch 14, though it still feels cheesy, so I started playing with gun psyker builds (dueling sword + Columnus Mk V)

  1. Ability “Scrier’s Gaze” & Keystone “Disrupt Destiny”
    I put these two together because I think these 2 have very strong synergy, especially as a gun psyker.
    But I really don’t like the concept of “Disrupt Destiny”.
    As a 4-player co-op survival game, deciding what action/enemy to prioritize is basically name of the game. However this keystone requires you to go out of your way to kill some randomly tagged enemy, you either break the team formation to earn/keep your stack, or try to ignore the tag (which is also very distracting)
    In real game, even with talent to extend duration to 30 seconds, you still have to actively hunt the tagged enemy to keep the buff on, even in Hi-Intensity games. And once you lost the buff, you’ll have to start from 0, it takes a long time and the process is very unreliable since you have to kill it yourself,
    The real problem is imo gun psyker really don’t have other good keystone to choose.
    I suggest a rework on “Disrupt Destiny”, either the mechanism or the duration.

P.S.: Although with 15 stacks of buff and Scrier’s Gaze on, it does feel like the most powerful build in terms of dmg out of all classes.

About Ogryn

I tried a lot of stuff on Ogryn and don’t really have too strong opinions, but personally I don’t get enough fun builds out of this class (maybe because I’m not into gunlugger)

  1. Keystone “Heavy Hitter”
    imo it’s decent but not good enough vs “Feel No Pain”
    I tried build a heavy-melee focused build, and found “Feel no Pain” still works much better in actual games.
    The attack dmg buff feels inconsequential especially compares to a Thrust Blessing with longer charge time, and the Attack speed doesn’t seem that useful. While stacking TDR does make a lot of difference against scattered shooters and gunners, and “Pained Outburst” basically makes you immune to hounds.

  2. Ability “Point-Blank Barrage”
    I tried gunlugger build and eventually felt the 10s / 80s ult is not as impactful as I expected.
    Maybe the cooldown is too long? Just my opinion

  3. Blessing “Adhesive Charge”
    I’m not sure it’s patch 13 or 14, but currently if the grenade stick on a bulwark’s shield, it triggers a block instead of a dmg+knockdown, since the behavior was different before, I assume this isn’t intended?
    or if it is (which is weird), how about making it not stick to bulwark’s shield so I can still launch the grenade to a bulwark’s foot and knock him down the old way?

About Zealot

I only played assassin builds with little variations (throwing knife + shroud with different weapons)
I don’t really have much to say right now since I think assassin builds are in a good place, not as hands-off as some cheesy builds, but still very powerful in terms of dmg output and mobility.

Some unrelated rambling

I noticed 2 things after patch 13:

  1. Each game is getting shorter
    Prior to Patch 13, an average T5 game takes about 30-35 mins, now it’s about 20-25 mins.
    I think it’s a good thing, but I also hope for easier weekly contracts (like 4-6 missions instead of 8)

  2. A lot more new players
    For example for every 2-3 games, I’ll have a teammate whose first reaction against a Bulwark is to dump a whole mag on his shield.
    Not a bad thing, it’s just might take some time getting used to, for both new players and others.
    Although for Fatshark, I guess they’ll have to be more careful with balancing stuff, since a lot of player might treat this as the norm, while people like me might consider a few things “cheesy” or “overpowered”

Something added:
11.2 - on blessing “Adhesive Charge”

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Imo it just needs a healthy cool down reduction smack, and maybe a drop to 75 temp toughness? 50 temporary toughness felt horrible and a waste of an ult.

While the most recent patches have made recon lasguns strong enough that they can get over their low maniac damage, the fact that the Headhunter rifles, which are meant to be precision weapkos for high priority target sniping have abysmal damage against almost all the specialists is absurd and needs to have changed 2 patches ago.

How much have you played Ogryn after patch 13? I feel like your 2 opinions here are really wrong…

Heavy Hitter is amazing and works wonders on the Ogryn’s best melee weapons, especially now that the Mark IIIb club is king. The extra damage and attack speed means you’ll be mulching hordes and single targets alike, and if you want more durability there is a toughness regen talent as well. It’s not great with the Cleavers, but with the Shovel and Clubs it’s almost an auto pick for me.

Point Blank Barrage is amazing, especially on the Ripper Guns and Rumblr, but the Keystone Burst Limiter Overide is absymal amd absolutely no build should take it. A buffed ripper can shred just about anything, and a buffed Rumblr has some of the highest boss TTK in the game. You just have to take a hybrid melee luggger build, not go full lugger.

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Really can’t agree about Orgyn. Melee Orgyns are mostly undying anyway, it’s topmost toughness regen nodes that makes them tick, not keystone ability. Feel No Pain is a waste in most situations. A perk for “being immune to dogs” is hardly a dealbreaker to more damage.

DPS output of heavy hitter build is very notably higher. Each perk might not mean much, but everything (+damage, +attack speed, etc) combined is a lot.

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How much have you played Ogryn after patch 13? I feel like your 2 opinions here are really wrong…

About 10-14 (successful) mission per week I think… not that much I admit. Like I said I didn’t get enough (in terms of variety) fun builds out of this class

Heavy Hitter is amazing and works wonders on the Ogryn’s best melee weapons, especially now that the Mark IIIb club is king. The extra damage and attack speed means you’ll be mulching hordes and single targets alike, and if you want more durability there is a toughness regen talent as well. It’s not great with the Cleavers, but with the Shovel and Clubs it’s almost an auto pick for me.

Oh… so it’s about clubs and shovels, I see.
Mark IIIb is very good, I particularly like its slapping, but I eventually gave up on it due to its swing pattern. Its heavy swing (especailly H1) can easily stuck on a mauler’s head, which is quite annoying to me when dealing with mobs + maulers hordes. And its Light 1-2 are both horizontal sweeping, which may potentially get in the way when dealing hordes mixing with Bulwarks (or just a knocked down mauler)

Currently I’m using Mk IV Cleaver, I like its L1-L2 quick stabbing, very useful taking out single high-priority targets, and the L3-H2 loop can reliably deal with hordes.
I ignored shovel because I think its dmg profile is similar to cleavers, while still having the light swing problem of a club.
But in the end weapon choice is a personal thing, I’ll see if I can get used to clubs again (prior to patch 13, I mostly play with power mauls)

Point Blank Barrage is amazing, especially on the Ripper Guns and Rumblr, but the Keystone Burst Limiter Overide is absymal amd absolutely no build should take it. A buffed ripper can shred just about anything, and a buffed Rumblr has some of the highest boss TTK in the game. You just have to take a hybrid melee luggger build, not go full lugger.

Yeah the lucky bullet thing really doesn’t help much…
As for the PBB ult, I personally think it’s OK-ish on its own but the cooldown is too long, and the weapons that synergizes most with it (Ripper and Stubber, imo) are kind of lacking when they don’t have PBB on (which is why I think the problem is CD)

For example, a single salvo of Ripper primary fire can’t kill or stagger gunners/maulers at mid range, while you can brace it and go brrrr on a whole gunner + shooter squad, but when they are scattered and behind cover, at best you are just providing suppression.

However with Kickback or Rumber you can reliably knock down 1~several, even from behind cover (since they still have a little hitbox there)
PBB with boss killing Rumber sounds nice though, it should come very handy in maelstorm missions (Nurgle’s blessing / Special bosses). Currently Rumbler with Adhesive Charge can reliably knock back chaos spawns and plague ogryns, that’s pretty much good enough for me on random T5.

Seems a lot of opinions eventually come down to weapon choices.
Personally I think it’s hard to argue which weapon is objectively better because we all get bored and switch gears in the end… so maybe if a talent works for certain weapons, it is working as intended? Hmm… that’s a hard question.

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Really can’t agree about Orgyn. Melee Orgyns are mostly undying anyway, it’s topmost toughness regen nodes that makes them tick, not keystone ability. Feel No Pain is a waste in most situations. A perk for “being immune to dogs” is hardly a dealbreaker to more damage.

In my own expierence, with or without dmg buff ogryn dominates horde fights anyway. The only things in a horde that matters to an ogryn are things with high DPS (ragers) or ignores DR (maulers/crushers), or disablers. It’s hard to say how much flat heavy atk dmg buff helps with these (there’s still bleed dmg even when you are not hitting things), and I usually pack a cleaver instead of club/shovel, so the 10% atk spd doesn’t help much either.

While outside horde fights, I found gunners (including reapers) to be most dangerous, very high DPS and often hard to clear out (sometimes scattered, sometimes in cover), It’s particularly problematic when there’s not a horde around to give you toughness regen and bleed DR, so I prioritize TDR more than dmg buffs.

P.S.: I think currently ogryn’s survivability is likely exaggerated due to the Veteran’s 100 extra toughness + 50% time coverage ult.

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You also can’t take the far left bottom Keystone thing, because it doesn’t reduce the Cooldown of Scrier’s Gaze.

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The most recent balance pass absolutely turbo charged the Mark IIIb. Its sweeping attacks are meant for mixed hordes with stuff like Maulers and elites in them, and with the extra attack sleed it got and if you throw the Heavy Hitter tree on it, you’ll knock elites over, bleed them, and swing fast enough to not get hit by anything else. The optimal clear pattern is heavy 1 into light 2 repeated, although if you get full heavy hitter stacks light attack spam will mulch hordes.

Mk 4 Cleaver is one of my favorite Ogryn weapons since it’s moveset change, and like I mentioned before heavy hitter isn’t really impactful on it.

Shovel is the mid ground between Cleavers and Clubs. It has good horde clear and good single target, but not amazing in either. There’s a case that now the 3b club is just a better version of that but that’s a different discussion. If you don’t like that the single target attack pattern is overhead heavy, horizontal light repeating you can instead use the special punch action after each vertical heavy. This will stagger even the largest enemies on weakspot hits, is a vertical uppercut, and resets your attack chain so you can keep doing the vertical heavies.

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree here. Firstly for the cooldown, there is a talent in the Ogryn’s bottom middle tree that reduces your cooldown timer on elite or specialist kill from anyone in coherency (or works similar to this, I can post a picture of it later if you like) that when I’m playing hybrid lugger consistently makes the cooldown more lik 30 or 40 seconds which is far more reasonable. As for the weapons? The MK 6 Ripper Gun, as well as the Achyls and Krourk stubbers suck right now. The Mk 2 (which I use) and MK 5 rippers (MK 5 has tighter spread for more long range use, MK 2 has higher spread, lower fire rate and higher damage) are all very strong even without the ult, and are absolutely amazing with it.

My Ogryn build for Monstrous Specialists is a hybrid lugger with PBB rumbler and a Heavy Hitter shovel. I will say if you run PBB with a Rumbler, it is not worth taking any of the upgrades for it, besides maybe the first one if you want the toughness regen. The main thing PBB does with the Rumbler is the reload speed which makes it your get out of jail free card. There a boss that’s too close and putting to much pressure on your team? A rager swarm right on top of you? A mixed elite horde about to ruin your day? Activate your ult and rain hellfire down and save your team.

I agree. I feel that Ogryn builds are still less tree centered and more weapon centered for how you play. A Hybrid lugger build is going to feel a lot different if you have a cleaver and a ripper gun or a shovel and a Rumbler, but the skill tree will probably look relatively the same. I do think part of this staleness is that Lucky Bullet is probably the worst keystone in the game, so you end up always taking either heavy hitter or feel no pain, but I know there are some Ogryn builds that don’t even take keystones and just load up on talents at the top of the tree.

All in all, really the biggest things I want for Ogryn is for Burst Limiter Overide (lucky bullet) to receive some significant changes, and for the MK 6 Ripper Gun and Achyles and Krourk Stubbers to be buffed.

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