The vigilant (the guns formerly known as headhunter) autoguns are in a weird place for me. I feel like they do enough damage, they have a familiar feel that’s similar to real guns I’ve shot, and they have a really fun loop that encourages measured aggression… and yet… they feel like great guns in the wrong game. I feel like I’m punishing my team for taking them, because while they do everything right, this game is just too enemy dense for me to effectively contribute with them. Sure, I can headshot one enemy and probably kill everything short of maulers in one or two volleys in a second or two, but that’s competing with guns like the revolver which headshots three enemies in a row per shot as fast as I can aim and shoot. Bolter will kill anything in a radius around its impact. The rest of the autoguns mow down hordes and elites. The plasma gun cuts a line through enemy formations. And don’t get me started on the staves, which are weapons of mass destruction… and here I am, plinking away at the enemies one at a time. Sure, the ttk for a single enemy is alright, but overall, I’m dragging the team down because I cant kill hordes fast enough, and dont do enough damage to the real threats. At best, I can screen out trappers, assuming I’m not overwhelmed by hordes.
Which brings me to the hellbores. I keep wanting to love them, but I still always come to the same conclusion: they just dont kill enough, nor fast enough. The charged shots still need a damage buff and significantly more cleave to even come close to competing with other guns, and the uncharged shots need to just kill groaners and poxers outright with a center mass shot. Plus, the lack of optics is brutal. They have a terrible sight picture, second only to the bolters. I would really like to see the hellbores on par with at least the infantry autoguns or infantry lasguns, the latter of which seem to be in a surprisingly good place right now. That the bayonet on the hellbores is the best part of using hellbores seems totally wrong… that said, I do so love the spike charge of the mk2.
Helbore was fine… but now, I am not sure but long time I did not play with them
Problem is that a lot of weapons are so powerful now… that several look like weak.
But, about headhunters, you’re absolutely right. I have the same feeling. And I have never seen in all my games any player that have impressed me with them.
I have seen players that impressed me with IAG before patch 13 (so when they were bad), but a headhunter? never.
And when I took it, it was a disaster. I could not kill things enough fast.
they just kinda feel… bad? then again it’s not like there are weapons with engaging gunplay in this game
i dont really see a point of a burst weapon anyway, like, if i wanted to burst fire i would just press the trigger for longer
the single shot mark ghosthits a lot and suffers from fat ironsights
double shot mark is straight up dogshit
main problem with helbores is the 10 year long pullout time, idk how this still wasnt changed, why does your character need to pull the switch every time?
also doesnt help that the ironsights are atrocious, probably a relic of the scrapped weapon customization
Headhunter Mk3 was extremely strong for a short time. I mean “kill a monstrosity in 1.5 mags” strong.
This weapon family is not as useful today because it is only great at killing shooters, and shooters are not as menacing as they used to be. Today’s #1 hazard is melee elite spam, and headhunters/vigilants are not good at dealing with that kind of threat. They have poor maniac damage, poor armor damage, no cleave to speak of. Not to mention their relatively slow rate of fire makes every missed shot hurt their already not so great TTK.
I think the idea of continuous headshots is one that is implausible in DarkTide?
Be that critical multiplier on the gun, or that whole left hand side of the Vet tree.
Too many moving targets. Too much time where you have to switch to melee unless you’ve hosed the horde. I mean clearly you can land some in succession, but I’m not sure the time to line up a shot vs just regular shots to upper torso is worth it? Esp. with the higher skill ceiling that’s involved: does that ever pay you back?
The problem is also headshots registered as body shots cause you aimed a little too down.
I can land headshot pretty easily with the revolver (this make this gun far above the others)
For marksman keystone, I must admit that I cannot play with it. So when I try to land a weakspot hit it is not for this keystone, but cause the gun has a strong damage when landing a weakspot. Such weapon has always also good critic damages.
So you can also try to mitigate that with critic rate bonus (perk, talents).
But let’s be honest. Brauto don’t require you to aim the head, IAG are a lot better if you aim the head, but they are so fast that it is usually hard. Headhunters are really the guns done for this.
However, they don’t cleave like a revolver and have not a rate of fire like IAG or brauto. The result is something you don’t want to pick.
IAGs are a bit like every gun from cs1. 6
You aim upper centre of mass, and fire. The recoil takes care of things.
Basically means you’re guaranteed hits with each round, terminating in a head shot.
Starting at the head and managing recoil is a lot harder!
But also in DT… enemies sway and lurch. It’s just easier to get 3 body shots from a high rpm gun than bother to ensure you get one hs from a low rpm gun.
I’ve seen some impressive damages with Hellbores, but I’ve never seen them compete with my voidstrike build or my girlfriend’s colum- excuse me, vraks builds. At their absolute best, I’ve seen them do about 2/3 the damage and kills, and that was an absolutely amazing player putting a lot of work into making a very meh gun work well. If it was on par with other weapons in the game, that player would have absolutely outplayed us both. The vigilant/headhunter autoguns are a little worse, but you can at least let the recoil of the double shot walk the second shot into the head, which kinda gives you free weakspot hits. With more cleave and damage on the charged shots, and more damage on the uncharged shots to at least hit the groaner breakpoint with the hellbores, I think they would be a good high-skill option in aurics.
Just dont mess with the bayonets. The bayonets are perfection.
Maybe you’re simply not compatible with the helbore. I myself am not compatible with the psyker warp sword. Some weapons are simply not made for some people.
Also ask yourself this, is helbore too weak or are the other guns simply too powerful? Because to me, a helbore main the gun feels just fine
The helbore is in a perfect place IMO, they’re not OP nor weak, just perfectly balanced.
The headhunter guns on the other hand i agree, they’re awful.
If you’re unequipping your helbore then you’re not using it correctly. The only times you should EVER equip your melee is when there is an out of control horde (and dont have any shredder nades), a monster attacking you in melee range or when you need to push away a poxburster. Which should account to about 5% of the entire game length.
Helbore beats plasma gun in the area it was meant to be used, ranged superiority and versatility.
While the plasma gun will win in a chokepoint and against big ugly bastards.
Also, helbore has far better ammo efficiency, while you’d be struggling for ammo and looking for pickups in the first 3 minutes of trying to do what the helbore does. I could technically win an entire match without picking up any ammo whatsoever. And in a normal scenario would only need to pick up 1 big bag of ammo.
I did play with plasma gun several months ago, while it was very nice, i wouldnt say it does “virtually everything better”
This isnt about what is most powerful, its about what’s balanced well. And helbore is balanced very well. If you need it to be buffed to win a match without being carried, then you simply need to git gud scrub.
I’m not concerned about power, I’m concerned about fun. The Helbore isn’t fun to use if you can only do one playstyle with it. It’s a grossly ineffective weapon for any playstyle except “stand way behind your team and never engage in melee” and that’s just not good until we have more niches filled by other weapons.
If Infantry Lasguns were actually more versatile and fun to use, I’d be completely fine with leaving Helbore where it is.
Regardless, Power Spears would almost completely replace Helbore’s niche and they should be implemented to give us more build variety.
You’re treating my argument like I’m asking for them to equip like an Infantry Lasgun. A 25% equip time reduction would be perfectly fine and make it that little bit more fun to use while keeping its equip time still relatively long.
The exact same thing can be said for most weapons.
And the helbore is the most versatile ranged weapon in the game. Every single other ranged weapon has either 1 or 2 things they can do. Helbore has 4, normal shot, charged shot, bayonet attack and bayonet charge.
The bayonet is so good you can actually win a game using only that and the right side talent tree (tried it) Sure its pretty boring but it is possible. Show me another ranged weapon in the game that can do that.
You can also go with the right side tree with it and use the melee and ranged half/half thanks to the agile engagement talent. Personally i havent tried it yet though because im too irritated that WS key doesnt work on it.
If you want more playstyles for helbore, beg fatshark to rework weapon specialist keystone so that it triggers on melee attack and shot/aiming instead of weapon swapping. I will back you up 110%.
There already is a talent for that, its literally the first talent you can take in vet skill tree.
And as i said before you shouldnt need it in the first place. Personally i’ve never felt the pullout time is too long.
No, I mean that’s the equip speed that the Helbore should have by DEFAULT.
25% less equip time wouldn’t break the Helbore, just make it that little bit more effective for sniping specialists in the distance while actually engaging in this game’s fun melee.
I dont understand why but for some reason im reluctant to let that go.
So how about going half way? Keep the helbore 1 and 2 as is, but reduce the helbore 3 pull out time by like 50% considering its bayonet is total garbage.
Actually you can consider my opinion on the pull out timer null as i fear i might be biased in a strange way.
I personally feel that clunk as a balancing factor is usually a poor way to do it in most ways it is implemented as it just makes the weapon feel bad to use, which is also extremely hard to quantify.
If this will make people shut up about hellbore not being good enough sure, fine. At this point I’ll take it for the break from god awful hellbore takes.
I generally hate this term, but the words that comes to mind over and over reading this is “get lost tourist”.
Not everything in the game has to be for you. It’s a good gun if you don’t like it there’s plenty of other guns you may enjoy.
I’m so incredibly sick of people playing a handful of games with something from time to time and deciding it’s not good enough so they just have to make a forum post about it.
You are so unbelievably cooked if you think hellbore is somehow worse than inf las. Inf las is worse laspistol in effect and hellbore has basically every advantage other than draw time over it.
The fact you’re shooting trash mobs centre mass with your high powered single target killing rifle at all really should tell everyone in this thread everything they need to know about how trustworthy your opinion on this game is.
God Emperor thank you, amazing what can be achieved when you actually make an effort to learn instead of immediately complaining online when you don’t perform well with something.
Regarding headhunters yeah they’re pretty strongly outclassed at this point, though the flak mod is good, as someone pointed out further above, if shooters and ranged elites were made more threatening people would use it more. I originally picked it up forever ago on Zealot when shotgunners were terrifying and it was a fantastic answer to them. So yeah agreed they need something.
