I would like to understand some game design choices made by Fatshark for Warhammer 40k Darktide.
Why is the Knife stronger than the Eviscerator?
Why is the Rapier stronger than the Thunder Hammer?
Why is the Revolver stronger than the Boltgun?
And, in general, why are small and fast weapons stronger than large and slow ones?
This seems to go against common sense. I would like to understand.
Thank you.
This one is just not true.
to answer the rest its because they were made when the game was very different
Play it with the right build and it annihilates bosses and other hard targets with a powered heavy.
But yeah, while it got some buffs its lights and regular heavies still feel weak.
Thunderhammer still has some unquestionably bad ADM without the empowered attack. Like 50% on maniac. Its pretty slow and the damage is just not there. It feels way too dated and the special design of ‘oo shiny button and then recoil move/animation lock’ is just garbage and does not fit anymore with current pacing.
Eviscerator got a lot better from the buffs, but its still just terrible vs using the relic blade. The damage is comparable to never pressing the power button on that thing and you bury it when you do. Very questionable design to make the relic blade better at hordes and better at single target elimination. What is left for the Evis? Boss damage stacking with FoTF weakspot rev’d hits on Mk15 only?
this wasn’t the case troughout the whole darktide eras, balance was adapted for console release where hordes got replaced with armor spam, and they adapted the weapons so that everything could pen armor easely, and futherly messed up with the talent trees update which they clearly couldn’t handle
other than that there is much worse to address, like the insistence of keeping old power weapons in a state of gameplay that favor keeping them unpowered
chain weapons are still meh, they should just copy paste some of the SM2 mechanics where they got them right, they prob need their own rework aswell, with the armor spam nowadays they deserve at least some fake cleave (meaning they hit the enemies but don’t do damage past x number)
duelling sword is just a fluke, few psykers were going ham with it back when it was a psyker only weapon, and now that is out for the other classes it puts every other melee to shame
Less of a fluke and more of many Psyker players don’t/can’t melee. It was already doing absurd amounts of damage and then buffed because Psykers were having trouble with it, and then released to the other classes which have to actually melee from time to time.
There is maybe one niche.
With a build that maximizes critical hit chances, and the right combination of blessings, it can mow down a horde.
But then a grenade can do that too. 
A very astute observation.
Empowering the Thunder Hammer and revving up the Eviscerator are dangerous moves. I use them sparingly because the game punishes you the moment you miss a beat. And I would be fine with that if I got something meaningful in return. But to my chagrin, regular attacks are just safer and more effective.
Both the THam and Evis are perfect examples of a pre #13 world where despite their flaws, they could still be used for funsies (ed: pre hyper-density).
The Evis (15) could still be good with crit farming perfect strike but once that was capped it wen the day of the dodo and the relic blade put them both in the ground.
Honestly they should have just removed or greatly reduce the powered stun and sticky chain revved locks and called it a day, uncapping targets helped the evis but still…
they are old gameplay mechanics remnant of when the game only had a few elites coming at you at one time
rev attacks used to lock you in untill the end of the animation leaving you to get stomped at will, now they changed it so that you can mistakenly tap away at the cost of all your damage
That was a highly requested feature though.
It makes sense on the activated special, not really the shorter duration rev attacks that just stagger and hold an elite sometimes. You can get Mk4 lights in between a chaos spawn’s multi hit combo, but now you end up canceling like half of them its pretty annoying.
Either way the activated special is so dated and really hurts these weapons because for some reason you can’t just kill crushers with a reasonable number of strikedown lights. You can’t even damage carapace with the chainsword lights that are mostly single target moves…
Everyone’s forgotten about the power shovels already.
Perfect strike x rotten armor was a good time. Forced it upon myself just to not use relic blade for a while and enjoyed. But, as soon as i picked up the relic blade again, I wondered why I ever put it down. It’s just so much better if you don’t mind special activation management.
Because Fatshark made major changes to the combat design, chain-type weapons such as the Evis and others like the TH have become outdated, unable to cope with the current swarms of enemies and Carapace
How on earth is the revolver stronger than the bolter? Where are you getting this from?
This used to be the case for a while, the revolver could one shot crushers and maulers with a crit and just deleted everything in one shot while the bolter needed 5 seconds to pull out and a full mag dump just to kill a crusher.
When did the revolver do 3600 damage per shot lmao
Pretty sure you can still do this with the revolver even after the handcannon nerf and you don’t even need marksman focus
Also before the big plasma buff which made it as strong as it is right now with all the nerf threads about it, we used to have revolver nerf threads because it was a pocket plasma gun
