funny you say that, i feel that’s where a large amount of the strength of the trauma staff is. Since it’s AOE is not affected by how difficult enemies are to cleave, i think it’s a really great option for havoc. Where I was starting to lose the ability to cleave trauma never faltered, and while it wasn’t necessarily murdering everything, it was providing much needed CC.
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There are many parts of talent tree that suck like vet purples, and 2 out of 3 branches of zealot, and psyker blitz(there is only one real choice - bb, the others either suck or both suck and prevent people from getting psykinetic’s aura), and pretty much the entire ogryn skill tree.
But that’s still better than the absurdly broken op mess that vet had before skilltree.
It would be better if the boring stat nodes are just tied to the blitz/ult(and their modifiers)/aura…etc. that gets chosen(or not). That way it has the skill tree stuff, but is less complicated for fatshark to comprehend when it comes to ‘balancing.’
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DT’s talents tree are complex and probably a lot more work to design than VT2’s simple system, and the benefits are very limited IMO… But I’m certain it’s not gonna change anytime soon 
Maybe in DT2, if that ever comes.
The devs made their bed and now they have to lie in it.
What I resent is that the overly elaborate talent trees might be the reason we’re not getting any other classes (or sub-classes). There’s a TON of different archetypes we could have but the best we’ll get are “reworks” of the existing classes.
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Very bad opinion post. The talent trees are a huge improvement to the game and create so many more build & gameplay opportunities you can never get from the old system. It’s content. You can make far more choices and all of those choices also matter in a way that I really enjoy.
Cookie-cutter builds? That’s fine, they’ll always exist no matter the system. I don’t see why that’s even relevant.
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the talent tree system is always gonna be at odds with the co-op gameplay simply because it’s a giant pile of tweeks that make synergy with each other impossible and can’t be coordinated with before a mission in the limited time alloted.
none of this matters though, all of the problems here are things that the communtiy demanded be added from previous games and darktide is, despite what most people want to believe, designed based on player feedback.
tide games just have some really clueless players at all levels of play. the bots are cooperating better than some console players…
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I do agree that the Class Overhaul has been a great thing for Darktide overall.
My only criticism surrounding the Class Overhaul comes from the standpoint that Fatshark handled post-Class Overhaul enemy/player and weapon rebalancing VERY sloppily… until the Grim Protocols update, at least.
The enemy changes that came with Grim Protocols are all 
The Secrets of the Machine God update also brought some amazing player/enemy balancing changes (e.g. Scab Shooter buffs) but those were quickly backtracked with a severe lack of any substantial reasoning.
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To add to this when questioned on why this feature didn’t continue into VT2, they responded that with the significantly increased amount of gear, the Loadout swap chest would cause an unacceptable increase in load times. It sucks but in terms of lesser of two evils, I’d say they picked correctly. Don’t expect it to ever come to Darktide (though obviously there are alternate solutions to the same issue that would be feasible).
Regarding OP’s topic I’d rather have skill trees than Havoc, no question.
Yeah this. People can always pick to be boring, picking what a streamer assured them is optimal, many usually do, but there are choices and alternatives and way more meaningful ways to build around weapons you like than before, it freshens things up immensely.
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This is kinda true and wrong at the same time.
It’s true because your shots to kill go way up and your ammo econ. suffers.
It’s wrong because no other gun is as ammo efficient or hits as hard so any other gun would scale the same way. You can also run weapon specialist and build around crits at which point you kinda get very similar performance out of PG again.
The solution is to get in melee and kill the hardend gunners that way.
Higher levels of havoc get significanly easier when you bring AoE damage. Hence why flamer, flamestaff (trauma too) and plasma are meta for the mode.
You do have a point though, that is way better for hardend gunners if you want to be able to shoot them.
I just don’t see that as enough of a reason to not bring plasma still. Chosing a different gun to get around PGs bad performance into hardend gunners means you don’t have PG for regular enemies which it deletes better than anything else.
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Regarding the actual topic.
It’s not so easy to say which system was / is objectively better than the other.
I am however very certain that havoc is a relatively bad choice to form ones opinion around this topic.
Havoc enforces a different and more strict meta.
I personally prefer the new trees as it made for more builds in general and allowed better fine-tuning of ones playstyle and builds.
All that being said, the current trees are not equal in strength, options, freedom and each individual tree has very clear “better than this” options.
I am therefore of the believe that with better balance, the new system would be more positive than the old one.
It’s just that the balance is not really where it could be rn.
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In general, I like the skill trees, but I can see why it’s dissapointing that they sacrificed careers for the trees. There is a loss of “class-fantasy” (if I can use that term) when skill trees replace sub-classes, but this is alleviated for me at least through using varied cosmetic get-ups.
I think that we are a little too powerful, but the issue is more than just player power. Before Auric Maelstrom existed, I loved old school Damnation. Shooters, particularly Stalkers, were diffuclt to handle, and the overall tempo of the game was significantly slower. Which is something I like!
The issue I have with the game currently, as I have previously discussed, is that Fatshark has doubled down on special spawn spam, so nerfing the player without addressing this issue would only make the game more frustrating to play.
I wish we could go back to the days when the game was more tactical; we were terrified of Shooters, and we didn’t have Trapper after Trapper, Hound after Hound after Hound, Mutant after Mutant after Mutant, Bomber after Bomber, and so on spawning endlessly.
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This right here’s EXACTLY what I mean when referring to “enemy/player balancing” and we’ve already spoken about this extensively on our Discord server.
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I mean I never stopped hating the Veteran talent tree since the first Class update, so I’m in favour of any and all changes to Talent Trees. Ideally by competent designers who understand the setting, character themes and what makes horde shooters fun.
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NANI? SAUCE?
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Bro this was from like a Q&A or similar from forever ago, like relatively early into VT2 from memory. I would love to find the post for you but don’t think that’s gonna happen. Fair enough if you don’t believe me but I’m like 95% sure I’m remembering this correctly. Lack of Loadout chest was talked about quite a lot early into VT2’s life.
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That’s probably why I haven’t heard about it! I got Vermintide 1 on the PS4 in 2016 and didn’t get Vermintide 2 on the PS4 until 2020. I bought my PC in 2021 and then got back into Vermintide 2 when it went on sale for free on Steam in 2022.
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Yeah not being able to swap loadout when joining a mission in progress is not a new issue. At least in VT2 if you join a mission in progress then fail it you all go back to the keep together so can restrategise from there. Also you might join people still in the keep in the first place.
That didn’t stop it being a pretty heavily talked about issue naturally.
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Bro, you don’t like pure RNG skills, 100 flavors of “trigger on elite kill” skills and my favorite: skills that don’t work if there is an enemy nearby (a.k.a 95% of Auric+ experience)? Sounds like a skill issue, bro.
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You just reminded me about how that was a much more social experience. It’s also how DRG does it.
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Talent tree is ALWAYS a mistake if you are a Sharpshooter Veteran Class, other than that patch 13 (talent tree update) is perfect.
Damn, I read that in my best Shiba Inu voice too. It hurts.
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