I don't understand how most of you don't complain about ranged enemies

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Speaking with Damnation difficulty in mind. After a fun and bloody melee slaughterhouse that Vermintide is, playing Darktide’s higher difficulty levels is… not exactly the same. I feel like there is an overabundance of overpowered shooters in this game. I don’t die a lot but when I do it is mostly to ranged enemies and not as much because of my error - at least that is how I feel about it, maybe I actually do suck - as because of how hardcore they are. Dred and Scab riflemen have pinpoint accuracy and single hit from their burst firing weapons takes off 1/3 to half of my toughness, depending on what character I play, and groups of 10-20 of them are common; gunners and reapers are impossible to approach over long distances without Zealot’s ult because they will shot the grut out of me; snipers… I actually don’t mind snipers, I think they are fair as long as the game doesn’t decide to not give me proper warning before they take a shot.

My favourite career’s Skullbreaker, but every day I decide to play him or Preacher instead of Veteran I think to myself “goddamn, I will have to deal with grutting shooters again”. When playing as a Vet, they are usually not a problem - I almost always use decently accurate weapons and the anti-shooter ult feat, so I’m not locked in there with them but they are locked in there with me*. But when playing a flamy guy or the bulky boy, oh man…

I’ve played a lot of Vermintide and got used to dealing with most opposition by running at it screaming and hacking it to pieces. Darktide on the other hand requires me to often stay back and play some knockoff version of Call Of Duty; it’s not so bad when playing Veteran, because that career has proper tools to deal with enemy riflemen, but when playing any other career - one of which has almost zero accurate ranged weaponry and is a massive target and the other one whose strengths lie almost purely in melee department - it is pain and a very strong detriment of my pleasure from the game. You’d think that I would accept it after 800 hours in the game but nah, the frustration just keeps on growing. “Just hide and slide”, you say. Yeah, I know, it’s just that I hate it. I hate hiding, poking out to take some potshots and hiding back because the game does not support that kind of gameplay and it is not what I think Tide games should be about anyway, and I hate sliding because the game forces me to do this 24/h and it just feels karking stupid to only be alive because of my character sliding on their ass as they jump from one shooter to another.

So yeah, I don’t understand how most of you don’t find this objectionable enough to be worthy of complaining.

Vent over, gg if you’ve cared to read it and gg if you get the *reference.

Edit: that feel when you describe how you know how to deal with ranged shooters and are just effing annoyed by it and then half the replies are people telling you how to deal with ranged shooters.

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That’s the annoying move skill you need to develop to play melee effectively in this game (even then DPS falls well below ranged which would be fine if reserves were more a factor). Rebind slide somewhere comfy and do it all game because it is the longest protection from shooters of the 3 main ways of dodging bullets. Then you’ll start avoiding shooters altogether and rarely take a hit.

Now the hitstun from gunners, yes. That can’t really be avoided without stamina sprinting perpendicular to their fire line, which makes it very hard to close in on them. So stagger and kill them over all other shooters with yer gun. Slide and dodge constantly when shooters are up.

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It’s definitely a departure from V2 where you often wanted to take fights in big open spaces, for sure, but I think the idea is that you’re supposed to work together with your ranged classes so you can both do your jobs.

Like, don’t just run screaming into a room and then get mad when gunners and reapers cuck you, scope the room first and tag them so your vet/psyker can pick them off. They want these enemies dead as much as you do.

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I thought I made it clear I do that. It’s not inefficient, it’s just effing annoying.

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Honestly there are bigger fish to fry at this point in time. I personally don’t like some aspects of the ranged enemies. For example ranged enemies still seemingly ignoring melee and stuff like toughness stuns still making engagements feel really unfun.

I still think this topic is relevant even now despite some of these issues having been fixed by now.

But until then enjoy the slide spamming metagame.

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I agree that it feels kind of silly to be doing it all the time, but really you don’t have to do it all the time. Just when you’re about to get shot.

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Well yeah that’s huge to the design of the game. I just don’t find it anywhere near as bad as hit stuns.

Like fire grenade, I had a round earlier where I was kiting a massive mob on dreyko and got cornered by the ladder, started climbing it and a fire grenade landed below me, which somehow hit stunned me 6ft up the ladder into falling directly on the fire grenade and a group of enemies.

Or the dog hitstun that makes the mod unplayable annoyance, since you can easily get killed as a 530 HP Ogryn in the 2 seconds you can’t do anything while surrounded by enemies if a teammate graciously saves you from a dog.

Common shooters? I wish their threat level could be joined by the melee enemies tbh. Shotgunners feel way overnerfed at the minute too.

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lol, I read “fire grenade” and started a rant post about the dog packs’ chain stun. I really need to start reading the whole post before I go off.

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Nah they are called furr javelin.

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I think the strength and popularity of Veterans all comes down to the fact that a good one is usually the best answer to gunners. Especially on Damnation. Their kit is purpose built to fighting them. 75% toughness damage reduction and counter fire just lets you wipe out groups at a time.

Aside from Veterans, the next best thing is throwing enough Zealots at the problem to make it go away. Some of my smoothest games were 4 seperate Zealots charging into gunners.

I feel like Ogryn and Psyker don’t have great options against them, which means half the roster ends up struggling with them. Ogryn could use more toughness, a bit of ranged damage reduction maybe, and he shouldn’t have to risk losing all his toughness and a lot of health when charging into gunners. I don’t have a huge amount of experience with Psykers so I won’t comment on them further.

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Ogryns are super tanky already. Even way too tanky if we take into account how impactful the grenade-launcher or miniguns are right now. There is just a huge gap between the players knowing how to deal as an Ogryn, while others just play a meatshield.

Psyker has a bunch of possibilities against gunners. You could just brainburst all day long, it’ll just take some time. You could also use your ultimate for some stagger and time to close the gap. Maybe use your staff on range or a suspression-gun aswell. And in the worst case you can wield a Forcesword with deflector so you’re able to block bullets.

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Thank the emperor for that - it‘s 40k not fantasy. Ranged combat ought to be more important.

Shooters already have been nerfed - I‘m convinced they shouldn’t be nerfed any further.

Yes Ogryns have trouble as few cover options work for them - but shields, bulrushes, slides and stunners all help and there is a team to complement you.

Flamer‘s inherent and basically only weakness is it’s range - weakening ranged enemies so this weakness doesn’t matter anymore is not the way. And zealot can use most cover.

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I main zealot and i use a mark 9 heavy sword with a kantrael lasgun with weakpoint and stagger damage blessings you can literally just one tap shooters. You aren’t going to be running around with your melee weapon out and expect to survive if you charge into a room wide open with 30 shooters in it. You need to use cover and pick them off. I would love to charge into a room full of 30-40 shooters and kill them all with my melee weapon but you’re probably going to take insane damage or get downed instantly. You need to read the flow of combat properly and use your ranged options to minimize the amount of damage you take. Maybe this changes in the future of the game but for now you need to kill ranged shooters at the outset of every engagement.

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You need to work with mobility and suppression.

Try to get the whole group of shooters locked in melee by dodge sliding and poking them. Anyone outside range should be suppressed with a ranged weapon.

Put away your flamer, it’s not doing you any favors, use a fast pulling weapon so you can switch between melee & ranged.

Use cover, use +toughness curios, use +stamina curios for running, use zealot ult to heal toughness.

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Im with the op on this one and we did used to complain about it more , and ranged enemy have in general been nerfed in multiple patches, theyve had damage, rate of fire, range they will shoot and activate from and stuns all nerfered

and there still in my experience by far the most likely things to end a run.
I think its fine that ranged is more of a thing in DT and the ranged combat is handled well , and im not against ranged being a threat.

but we do seem to have ended up where melee enemies are trash tier no threat and ranged are all lethal , and im not sure thats a good thing.

and lots of people have listed things that do let you deal with them , mobility, supression, slide, ults these will all deal with a small group you get the drop on. but if you use these on that small back and it opens you up to further enemies, or they spawn out of a door or patrol in during the fight. the first thing you will know is that sidestep as a shotgunner zeroes out your shields with his first shot from long range.

the melee risk vs reward just isnt there, which is why the rejects so often resemble a CoD squad , and all big open rooms become a potential tedious clear of cover hugging spread out little terrors :wink:

i do think theres room to lower the 3X damage multiplier they get vs toughness, the activation ranges and the spread range on packs also we could use more control , make them dangerous because we mess up rather than just because 12 of them spawned out of that door and i was fighting at the time.

psykers could have an inbuilt deflection mechanic , narrow wedge to the front have the bless, return itto current width and block efficient buff.

zeal/oggie - often wonderd a if buff that makes ranged shots miss based on how many enemies they are in melee range of could work.

some of the melee damage enemies could do with a boost to maintain difficulty and vary the threat vectors

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Lowering it will make the game incredibly easy to go through, even if we’ve to deal with harder melee enemies.
Especially Vets will profit a lot from it with the dozens of toughness they sit on, while pushing for Zealot / Ogryns will become a no-issue.

No. Sacrifizing something else is atleast “ok” as a trade you’ve to take for such a strong defense.

Yeah it’s good that the combat is not just copy & paste from V2. The mix of both is a great thing and fits 40k very well.

But using range seems still too strong. We need more tweaks / limitations especially to bring melee enemies in a better spot. Otherwise this game might turn into “just another shooter” but with 40k-skin. To keep the balance between range and melee is important. It makes this game unique.

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I’ve done lvl5s on 3 of my 4 characters (ironically my least favourite is the sharp shooter).

Don’t give up on the Ogryn please! :slight_smile: I LOVE playing with an Ogryn when they play the role as the team rally point. Mainly club melee, likely the grenade launcher for clumped elites, definitely with Lynchpin. The smoothest lvl5 runs I go through are when the Ogryn steadily advances and the squad can all stay fairly close as that keeps the toughness recharging quickly.

I did Legendary V2 too. Melee is much easier in DT imo; rarely need a push like you did in V2, and the block-hit thing I bet most people don’t even know about in DT as you just don’t need it with dodge.

I don’t even mind the range characters in DT as there’s often somewhere to duck in to cover. But what does feel “cheap” are the number of spawns behind you. I get it’s a game and this is how they keep it challenging, but it’s slightly ridiculous to cut through a few hundred enemies, then a squad nonchantly wander in five seconds later like nothing has happened and get a free hit on you.

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I mean specials should come from everywhere, but yeah… it´s somewhat curious when they come from your own spawnpoint, which is visually protected by NPC´s.

The rest are mostly bugs. Disabler and poxwalker still spawn right behind doors without any audio-clue. The door and you´re getting trapped or lose half your life in the explosion.
Sometimes even dogs and mutants run straight up on you and yes you see them, but there is no noise.

Same with the patrols… they walk around, probably have a predefined pathing but are like ninjas. So far it happens if you push forward, that they´re suddenly behind you coming out of a door aswell to continue their pathing.
A lot of single-adds don´t make any sound aswell and you´ll only mention that they´re there once you got backstabbed.

All those audio-bugs just needs to be fixed. And patrols should become more of a threat, but should also have a clear audio-clue.

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well only if you do it badly , theres no reason why you cant shuffle difficulty from one area to another and maintain it. do you actually feel that those big open rooms where we have to play cover peek a bo to slowly clear them is particulaly fun and engaging gameplay? i dont.

dont think being able to turn the damage from a single attacker to peril by taking an action would be an isue you couldnt account for , i guess if you assume incompentance your right , but then nothing can work

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I eventually got used to how the ranged mobs function, found the ranged stagger and the ranged damage to be absolutely infuriating when i first started playing.

But there are still situations where my ogryn or zealot charge gets instantly interrupted by ranged fire and that can be quite frustrating and tends to lead to some shenanigans.