I’m kinda done with people that jumped on Veteran and tried it that this is ok. I’m done with it. No truely. I haven’t seen anyone that mains Vet going they are absolutely fine. None.
MF objectively requires more busywork than even blessings, they aren’t build-enabling like other Keystones in the slightest. They are the only damn keystones that go against the natural flow of play.
I took enough time in several threads going over why they feel bad, how they compare to other stuff etc. I’m not going to do it again.
Simply because all the keystones are superbad and straight away a downgrade to the already bad veteran tree, while with the rework also a lot of nodes got nerfed to the ground.
Imagine if Psyker’s warp charges would decay if he moves…
Imagine if Zealot’s fury crit chance would depend on how long you wait after the 25 kills were done…
Imagine if Ogryn’s Feel no Pain would only work in a way that you get damage reduction for only melee if you had range kill and get range dmg reduction for melee kills…
Obviously they would be supertrash, just how trash are the vet keystones.
None of them have 100%, hell not even 30% uptime on high difficulties, because A, you have to move around, B, you have way too many enemies to be tagged and C, you cannot expect to swap between melee and range every 5s.
Now count in the fact that you have to spend the most points to reach the keystones out of any classes and many times you have to pick superbad talents to reach them.
Also, veteran has already the worse aura and blitz options, as in you either pick krak + survivalist or you are totally useless and better have a bot in the team, as that one would at least give ammo for the team, which is now the sole purpose of the veteran, a walking ammo box.
I was seriously finding it impossible to spec into Weapons Specialist and get keystone modifiers too, as well as putting a point into an ability. It can’t have been properly tested.
Oh noo! I got to do special attack betwen each attack! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I only got to use fully charged heavy attacks! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I cant block and sprint, and do stuff! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Am i have to use special attack only??? Oh noo! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I got to reload my gun every 10% of the mag! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I got to keep my stamina at 0%! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I only got to use my gun in mele range! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I got to reload every 6 seconds! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
Oh noo! I got to sprint until 20 stacks between every 8 seconds! Not natural! Punishing! Forcing!
I got to hit the heads on ranged class??? Oh noooooooooooo!!!
IDK man… I feel like it’s the same situation we had in patch 13. The vet has a few working stuff, but it’s generally weak. The main difference is that PS and Plasma aren’t meme-tier.
Basically, all builds/concepts I was using got a lot weaker, and new stuff isn’t great either.
Tag Keystone Vet is about as strong as the previous Cheerleader Vet giving up some of the power for more team boost, but you can’t run Grenadier with it, and the Grenadier version is just bad now.
The only new stuff there is that the Tag enables running Bolter for once since patch 13 hit, and that build doesn’t even come close to what other classes can offer.
Edit: I also feel like the reaction is also the same as with the patch 13 Vet. A load of non-vet mains trying to convince everyone that it’s alright because reason XY.
Ok breakpoints is pretty much what I was guessing but good to have it confirmed. Wouldn’t you want to run Exe anyway to circumvent a heap of the draw time?
Shout makes you stay alive. Draw time is something you have to basically live with.
It also does some other stuff, but it’s basically a melee-heavy build where you can burn bosses and flex into special control if your team is heavy on Zealots/Ogryns or go full melee when there are a lot of psykers.
Edit: Shout also helps with burning bosses. You shout at it and it’s an easy unload to the head.
God… Just why? WHY DID THEY DO THIS?? This is the ONLY class I have to comb through with a magnifying glass and a spread sheet… And it was my very favorite class Christ. What a mess.
Deciphering and navigating the skill tree should not be more challenging than the game itself.
People naturally want max stacks on these things as much as possible. That’s just what happens when you scale the potency of the feature with the number of stacks you have.
Unfortunately, that conflicts with what I suspect is the design intent (@Mayson) whereby you’re apparently supposed to just play the game without thinking about them too much, and treat the buffs from the less-than-maximised stacks as something that make your base capabilities stronger rather than something that has to be maxed at all times.
Double-unfortunately, the keystones for vet are ludicrously expensive to get to and kit out and using them locks you out of a bunch of other useful non-keystone nodes, which further emphases that need to maximise your return on investment.
So we’ve got game features that’re (probably) intended to feel almost passive, but are constructed such that players’ natural inclination is to treat them as ongoing objectives that must be focused on.
That’s where the “unnatural” sentiment comes from. Yes, this sort of thing does exist outside of the vet, but vet is the topic of discussion here.
I think there are some issues with the keystones themselves but this part is key. It’s the context of what you often give up to get them that makes the stack management aspect hurt more and makes you want to milk max value out of them even when the net result is taking attention cost from more important things.
You know what is the funnies thing in this whole situation? It’s not that hard to max out the stacks on both marksman’s focus and weapon spec when you actually go and play the damn game and not sit here on the forums.
And as said previously, i agree that vet tree needs to have a bit more fat trimmed and new keystones need to be streamlined (like seriously 6 nodes in weapon spec wtf), but overall they are fine.
Do “this” to gain this “buff”. Stop “that”, “wait” then can do “this”. Simple to do, but you’re adjusting to what the keystone requires in playstyle than your own playstyle. 1st keystone wants you to play like camo and turret makes you vulnerable to not keep up with team. 3rd keystone wants you play closer to melee otherwise no real benefit when Vet is already squishy, not consistently useful.
If look at Zealot crit builds and keystone Blazing Piety where you keep killing, the stacks are kept at max and you’re shredding horde with crit hits all the time, very easy to keep the buff constantly without any downtime. That’s the kind of thing Vet needs, killing to keep stacks capped without “waiting”. This zealot ability is even stronger because the stacks are kept up if team mates also get kills, not just your own. Constant uptime in horde guaranteed.
Focus target is most useful keystone of 3 (If decided to use any of the new keystone)
But it’s that wait time and no stack rewards for chaining kills like zealot.
Now if they simply replace this keystone modifier with say “If target dies within X secs, then gives X focus stacks” it give Vet the power like zealot to gain reward and damage to chaining immediately target to target without “waiting”
Right? There are 10 stacks for the ranged buff but anything above 3 stacks is just nice to have RoF buffs, because apparently that +33% crit chance per stack wasnt a typo and the director is going to sneak about as many poxwalkers behind you anyway, meanwhile you just need to shoot one guy to get the full melee buff primed.
People complain about forced actions like you cant survive melee without 100% uptime because clearly melee is impossible without it. 10s of fury is more than enough time to get a horde into a manageable state, and more than enough time for the game to throw another specialist or elite blob at you to force you to swap weapons ‘naturally’ anyway.
First, you have to either have your gun out when engaging (keeping the melee buff in your pocket) which doesn’t feel great, or you have to shoot something while engaging which is actually bad practice against enemies not yet alerted.
Second, it forces you to shoot stuff on a 10-second timer, which takes up mental space and goes against the flow of hybrid combat more than I initially (before it got released) thought.
There is also the problem that right-side melee Vet is particularly weak compared to what it was in patch 14 which was about on par with Zealot (even a little better in MS Mealstrom due to 2 Kraks blowing up a Weakened Monstrousity). Now it’s just very meh.
On a serious note, there is another thing to the Veteran keystones you didn’t mention.
They’re somewhat ineffective and don’t make much of a difference, aside from the quick swap playstyle one on the right side (but let’s be honest, who plays like that?).
They try to shoehorn you into a niche, but if you do play for that niche you’re still not going to do all that well because these niches aren’t really good. And to top that off, they bring not much of a benefit to your usual playstyle.
Vermintide 2 in space Darktide doesn’t lend itself well to standing still and the extra damage for marking targets just gathers way too slow to be useful.
Compare with the other keystones: Psyker’s keystones enhance one aspect of the Psyker that is already present and going to be used in combat. They don’t force you into one specific role, they expand something that you were already going to do anyway.
The same is true for the Ogryn and the Zealot.
Yes, Zealot has some criteria to their keystones, but they work off something you do all the time, too. You run around a lot and you kill crowds in a certain areal.
TL;DR: The Vet keystones are too restrictive compared to the other archetypes.
Christ. What a mess.
