Messed a little with it and it’s crazy how much worse he is compared to others. Apparently they will tweak the skill tree so you can be more flexible with builds but idk if it will be enough.
What do you think should be done with vet? Even if obvious overperforming abilities like psyker knives will get nerfed soon veteran still can hardly compete
Vet is godly
Try Recon Laser VIIa / Catachan Mark IV sword, stealth with lots of Krak grenades and grenade regen and Duck and Dive talent
This requires you to be able to melee of course
I think he still top tier with mk xii. Krag granade and left wing of the tree and he is superb. His middle and right wing are very niche imo, so vet doesnt have too much customization options. Buff and remake those and he will be fine.
He is still really good but his tree is straight bunk. Why isn’t ammo on the center? Why are the two auras competing with ammo so bad? Why is there more toughness nodes on ogryn on top of his built in DMGR? Ogryn kept his +100% HP +1 wound vs everyone else but Veteran’s toughness was cut down to 50% more than everyone else’s without enough in his tree. Each Toughness node on Vet should be worth 25, imo.
This requires you to be able to melee of course
I would then play as an ogryn or a zealot. This is their role and should not be taken away from them.
The Veteran is a ranged class who has the largest pool of ranged weapons in the game (which was unfortunately forgotten in the patch).
Our role is to clear rooms full of shooters, saving the team from fire.
But in his current state he cannot do this, need rework
Veteran is stil very good
This is just the Power Sword story all over again, tears because went from S+++ to S++
Maybe ammo’s a bit too stingy (on none lasgun)
Vet is still the strongest and most boring class.
Sorry, but what difficulty are you playing on? Do you play with bots or friends?
“Just play the one ranged weapon type that isn’t terrible on the class whose whole thing is supposed to be that they’re good at ranged play”.
I’m not disagreeing with you, vet can be competitive with specific builds. The issue is that it’s specific builds that a ton of vet players really don’t like. Vet is generally weaker than before, but the complaints mostly aren’t about that, they’re about the nuking of people’s favourite playstyles.
It’s nutty to me how they can go all “we think weapon-specific talents felt bad” while simultaneously releasing a tree that practically forces you to use some flavour of lasgun if you want to play ranged.
Like, their brainstorming sessions obviously came up with “lasgun sharpshooter” as one of the roles/power-fantasies they wanted to enable. Unfortunately, their “real accurate” guesses either didn’t consider, or deliberately ignored, the apparently huge portion of the vet playerbase that don’t actually want to do that, they want to use one of the 15 non-lasgun options in a way that doesn’t primarily involve standing way back and plinking heads all day.
I only need Camo Expert back. I dont need to be op like the other classes. I only want to have fun but they patched that out of the vet too.
Only played a couple of rounds with Vet so far, with Krak grenades, Scavenger and Shout of Command(?) paired with Kantrael Mk XII Lasgun/Power Sword or Vraks Mk III Headhunter/Devils Claw (Mk unknown).
What I’ve been finding as I try new veteran builds is that it is never worth it to pick up the final talent from a tree. You lose far too much chasing one of those compared to picking up utilities and bonuses from elsewhere in the tree. Once you accept that as the case it becomes far easier to make enjoyable builds.
My general list of needed changes in the short term (not in any particular order):
In a deeper dive with more long term focus I would say the veteran tree needs to be completely redesigned. The class would really benefit from a tree that converges to a single node, and then blooms out into a wide shallow root base. Each root could generally cover an aspect of play, and the intention would be for players to spec into multiple roots and tie the elements they want together to support the role/playstyle they are trying to create. Some root examples could be survivability, accuracy, melee, reloading and ammo regen, elites and specials, monstrosities, team buffs, and grenades. This fits well with the veteran theming of versatility, and doesn’t trap the devs into creating nodes that are too niche.
I’ll stop there, I can really ramble on about this and other alternate ideas for the class.
Granted, if every class is good, “being the worst” of the good ones doesn’t mean much.
Right now you can get a total facemelter build on any class going, Veteran included.
Matches have gotten so easy, I see PUGs rush through Auric T5 Damnation missions like it’s a birthday party for The God Emperor.
Ye, the 2 consecutive basic nodes (which weren’t present in the preview trees) are annoying; some of the talents in those final branches should just be 3-wide choices – that way, you can still take advantage of the additional passives to compensate for not having a keystone, but you don’t have to – OR add a traversal point later in the branch so you could possibly get 2 of those red nodes, as an option to compensate for not getting keystones.
The red nodes themselves seem pretty good, but the cost to get there is prohibitive. It costs 11 points once you have your combat ability to unlock 1 of them. I haven’t counted recently, but a fully upgraded Warp Charges (which has 4 upgrades, IIRC) doesn’t even cost that much.
I don’t know how balanced it would be, but I would love to see something where ammo pickups grant a percentage of their normal value to allies (with no reduction to what the collecting player receives); so you grab a small box, and someone with a Rumbler might get 1 ammo, someone else with a Lasgun might get 20 or something. Pick up a bag, rumbler might get 4 ammo, Lasgun might get ~80.
I think allowing it to be a staple of Veteran survivability is why it’s relegated to the bottom of the tree - it counters burst damage to your toughness, it counters chip damage to your toughness, and it does both well. And viewing it in terms of the cost from the base of the tree is a bit unreasonable IMO - while levelling, it’s going to cost 15 but when it comes to end-game builds, I think it’s fairer to measure relative to the location of Combat Abilities (which is still expensive at 7 - 8 points, which is about as much as it costs to get upgraded keystones)
I wouldn’t imagine moving it to the top of the tree, but maybe towards the top of its root. Roughly as deep as Exhilarating Takedown is in the marksman tree. Though again, removing some of the filler nodes would alleviate that anyways.
That node needs a damn rework, it is so feast or famine type of stuff entirely reliant on you actually killing elites. Assail and crack Zealot doesn’t help in this regard. There are only a few other similar talents on other trees, and they aren’t quite as impactful.
Tying up 90%+ of Vet’s survivability in that one powerful and situational node (if you aren’t running a precision weapon) was a huge mistake.
I feel like a lot of Darktide’s balance issues relate to tying up 90% of some thing’s effectiveness in very specific configurations 
Could have something like the Essence Harvest talent (toughness on Warp Charge, non-stacking), triggered by weakspot hits with some additional benefit for elite headshots, although that would overlap with Exhilarating Takedown weakspot kill.
Toughness regen over time after X weakspot hits? 
Yeah, how about we do something that isn’t weak spot related? Just look at any damn tree and there are at least 3 super easy and reliant toughness perks scattered there.
Looking at Psyker you gain toughness whatever you do
Right at the start with basically no cost. With psyker having a warpkill node that gives 15% damn toughness I don’t get why Vet doesn’t have a standard 5% on ranged kill.
At least Out for Blood must go where Vanguard is (Right of Starting node). I could go on, but how big of a mess the Vet tree is another topic.
I get it is powerful but a condition makes you into a kill-chasing maniac if you want to play engage. The same goes for Tactical Awareness where “helpful” allies can be absolutely infuriating.
It’s like FS has learned nothing from the whole thing with stealing BB kills…
Hmm… toughness when you shoot, toughness when you reload!
(these are not serious suggestions, I’d hate to micromanage regen by reloading, especially with Plasma Gun/Bolter)
Could you tie it into suppression? I think every gun can easily suppress targets, it doesn’t require you to compete with the team as much. An unconditional toughness thing would be a bit dull,even if it would be quite potent. It may also give things like Terrifying Barrage a niche use, for some extra survivability
Kind of my point is that you have to give Sharpshooter something that you always do and want to push towards it. Elite removal isn’t good because there is too much competition there.
Zealot DR on crit? Good, you always do that.
Psyker toughness on whatever you do? Good, you always do that.
Ogryn Tougness on heavies (1 or 3+ targets)? Good, you always do that.
I mean really, if you look at any other class there are so many sources of Toughness with conditions that you do anyway all the time.