First Impressions on Arbite

[Revy]

So after a day or two of release I think I am finally ready to share my thoughts, and experiences with Auric and High Havoc as the new Arbite class.

First and foremost. Its fun, its a lot of fun and I think the general design is great, but I do have a few issues. The major issue is that what seems to be the best build is most certainly going into the no dog tank set up. It is a massive melee powerhouse that makes zealot feel kinda bad. The fact you can be SO SO SO tanky while functionally being able to 2-3 shot Crushers, Maulers, armored ragers, is pretty wild.

I think having a dedicated non-ogryn tank is a good thing however, and I wouldn’t change much about the tanky build it does its frontline role exceptionally well and most importantly, its fun and not particularly game breaking. HOWEVER, what the dog doing?

I really want to like the cyber mastiv and the builds centered around it seem “fine” but just “fine” I think the dog’s crowd control abilities are very useful, and certainly helpful when it comes to dealing with special targets, but as you push up in difficulty the dog’s kill time in dealing with special targets certainly becomes less impactful. On the bright side, the added enemy density makes things like Remote Detonation really start to shine.

I would really like to see either dog based equipment or a small talent tree for your furry friend just to specalize its role, either boosting its kill time of specials / elites or further improving its single target damage against large monsters, ect.

Nuncio Aquilla is also “fine” and will likely see a lot more play in Havoc than other game modes, but its not a particularly fun talent.

As far as the weapons go. Stellar, the mace and shield specifically the XI feel great and great to play with, the new shotgun is fantastic and the alt fires are both fun and engaging, and the pistol / shield combo is a very enjoyable weapon that I wish was just a liiiiiiittle bit better.

Utimately its a lot of fun and if you are on the fence, I would say go ahead and pick the abites up. I think it will have a comfortable role in the meta. I think it is going to likely perform pretty well, but I think its relative power level is “fine” and the fact it may be performing better than other careers (im looking at you Vet) is more of a weapon tuning / outdated talent issue with some of our previous careers.

TL;DR super enjoyable class, but unfortunate that (at least to me) the best and most enjoyable build loses the canine companion, which is kind of the selling point of the career.

UPDATE: The more I play with the dog build, the more I like it, but the dog itself isn’t doing the heavy lifting, its really just Castigator’s stance thats leading the charge, and only for its damage reduction. The other possibly BS talent is the functionally infinite sprint / sprint speed. My major issues here is that the build scales with difficulty, its not that fun prior and doesn’t really do anything special TILL you get to auric, and get to start pumping out juicy dog explosions, or get to pop castigator surrounded by 20 crushers and just ignore them.

[harlekein]

@Revy

Nuncio Aquilla is also “fine” and will likely see a lot more play in Havoc than other game modes, but its not a particularly fun talent.

I did the penances and I agree fully. Anything in the game that encourages you to stand still in one spot works against how you would normally play it.

It’s good for holdouts, but not much more. It also doesn’t feel like it’s something you’re doing as a player.

[Revy]

This game is also very anti holdout, every potential spot where you are supposed to make a “stand” has numerous options for enemies to enter or fire from, which historically has been one of the largest complaints of counterfire vets.

I just think as you stated that anything that requires you to group or be stationary is fairly lackluster outside of Havoc where forward movement is fairly slow.

[DanielWinnerYT]

For now only Castigator’s stance missing identity (is this a tanking skill on the other side of the tree or it’s a damage skill with a bit too long cooldown and need to pump it up?), doggo missing its jumps or getting teleported and some clunkiness of the shotpistol.
Other than that, class indeed seems just fine

[Revy]

Agreed, the increased dog damage subtalent also feels nearly worthless since it might use the entire stance duration running towards its target.

[Downer]

@Revy

The major issue is that what seems to be the best build is most certainly going into the no dog tank set up.

Don’t know about havoc, too sick to play it right now, but in aurics, my expirience was contrary to yours, dog showed itself best, tho tanky arbitrator was good too.

@Revy

able to 2-3 shot Crushers, Maulers, armored ragers, is pretty wild.

Depends on weapon.

About dog, i think it’s great, at least in auric, aside from smiting hordes, it is good against bosses, it is possible +30% damage talent from left tree and 20% from middle tree, brittleness on bite, it is so over for monsters even without bolter.

Also generally i see dog as free defence, multiple times i got hit from behind(on other classes) by some random poxwalker, who i didn’t see due to various reasons or hear behind my back, sometimes it killed me or broke toughness that lead to death, dog protects against that.

Also i use dog with talent against ranged, not against elites/specials, i want it to kill regular shooters, i am perfectly capable kill all elites and specials myself, but these pesky shooters, may hide themselves somewhere i can’t get them and so dog is big help against them. It also saves some ammo.

@Revy

small talent tree

I am not sure i want fully dog focused tree, it can only do so much, we already have left keystone and some talents on the tree, i think it’s enough. You can also run break the line with dog subtalent, i think it is only decent ultimate subtalent for dog, because castigator option is not good due longer CD and shorter duration.

@Revy

Nuncio Aquilla is also “fine”

Yeah, good but boring.

True about weapons, class specific weapons are great, love to play with all, also is it just me or shredder do more damage on arbites, even with no ranged talents? Crusher is still better on zealot, battle axe need more testing, carpal tunnel axe i didn’t use yet, regular shock maul do big damage, but i am not a fan of moveset, i prefer arbitrator exlusive one.

[Revy]

@Downer

Depends on weapon.

XI Shield and Maul, my highest hit recorded yesterday in the Auric training room was 2600 on a Crusher from a standard melee swing.

[Downer]

We have nothing in game like castigator, that would give almost total personal immunity to damage and i think it’s ok as some boost to damage. I wouldn’t change anything about it.

[Revy]

I think what people havent realized yet is how many buffs the tank arbite can stack. The bonuses to stagger and how easy it is to apply with hammerblow, and some of the talent options, keeps your stacks capped pretty much constantly, and you can combo a lot of things into your charge and drop stacks for a massive strength boost.

I did a solo hardmode twins yesterday and was able to just charge into the massive blobs of maulers / ragers and bonk them around like they were infested.

Meanwhile anything dog focused feels fine in a vaccum but with limited team buffs and no real niche, it just comes off as lacklaster. I’ll agree you can make its monstrosity damage pretty solid, but outside of Havoc, how threatening are bosses really? And again, other things still fill this role better.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the dog, its fun, but Im just on the fence about it.

[Gideon404]

What combos are you using on the XI? I’m finding the other one easier for some reason.

[Revy]

Bulwark Arbite - Arbites Build for Darktide

[MixedLetters]

Yeah, this talent in particular is kinda nutz, and basically enables you to infinitely keep any stagger based talent proc’d forever, which is rather insane:

Beyond that, I just finished typing out my main thoughts on a separate post, but to boil them down, effectively they feel like ‘potent stat sticks’, but not sure they feel like they have the ‘umph’ factor. They for sure are functionally immortal, but not sure how truly effective they are/they don’t feel ‘high impact’ compared to what the other classes are able to do to me. But we’ll see if my opinion changes the more I screw around with them for penances and such (this being my longer post about them below).

[Arbites] What you Want?

I actually use the second face there, thought it looked rather gruff, think it fits quite well! But for me, I think the main thing the Arbites need are all feeling based. The Arbites (at least to me) feel very low impact. Outside of the Shock Mines (which just turn off the game, smite but the Arbitrator gets to keep playing the game, what fun…), most of what they do is like, numerically strong but visibly lack luster. The speakers have insanely small range, and don’t visibly do anything to the …

[Revy]

yeah I may tweak the build, drop hammerbow and add on the bonus to shocked, see if I can double up on damage bonuses basically.

[Kitten]

The doglordx build on Aurics seems completely busted imo. To the point where I beat my friend’s Zealot damage, who usually does like 300-400k more than me on every class.

Not only does it make you wonder what Zealot is for, as you said, but also on Auric it does Vet’s job better at the same time (with the shotguns headshots and reload speed).

I cba playing Aurics until either nerfs or some change that will stop them zerging alone and killing everything.

Gonna try duo Havocs with my friend until nerfs or changes.

[Revy]

Whats the dog build in question, i’ve been mostly just playing the tank variety as its a ton of fun to CC and club things to death. I have yet to see any dog builds performing and the few I dabbled with while leveling seemed lackluster.

[Kitten]

Arbites Shock Maul or Crusher works.

And the Arbites Shotgun.

The reload speed in the left part would be a really good damage upgrade too. I might actually switch to that from Crit%.

[Revy]

yeah that looks identical to what I was running for a bit. Im sure it scales up well to higher difs but it felt a little lacklaster while leveling.

[Kitten]

I mean on Auric you can just walk through maps solo without stopping, it kills so quickly.

[Headhunter]

Try this one. Play it like dash zealot.

Stack 3x curios with CDR. “Break the line” every 10 secs. Combine with heavy attack.

Dog will electrocute 5 secs anything it attacks, send or wait for it go in first, then dive in. If need more electrocute time, fire remote detonation, 3 charges every 60 secs. Keeps the uptime for blessing High Voltage.

With full arbites teams and dogs currently, everything is electrocuted all the time for that blessing.

[Revy]

been trying it, yeah its pretty insane. Mostly just due to castigator being too broken, I think both builds are really good for seperate reasons.

Im also running a revolver, which is just plain fun.