Hey and welcome! I have over 2k hours in DT since release, maining mostly psykers and exclusively on T5+ (Damnation Auric & Maelstrom). I also feel like I know quite a bit about all classes and weapons since I tend to experiment a lot. But ofc, only you know yourself and how you play.
Your build and weapon perks & blessings are vitally important, since they absolutely must be designed hand-in-hand. We don’t know what build you’re using here so that’s a lot of missing info.
But with that in mind, I’ll just list the stuff I think is going on here.
Over a year ago, Heresy (T4) was a lot harder than T5 both because ppl did the trolly penances there and bc it was the first stepping stone up for Malice players. From T3 > T4 you get more enemies and their hp & dmg (iirc) increases by 50%, but from T4 > T5 it’s only +30% hp & dmg. Odds are you’ll find regular and especially low-intensity T5’s a lot easier than T4 on account of the smaller gap in difficulty and much better quality players, plus ofc the rewards are way better.
Zellies imo are harder to play than oggies, or even vets depending on builds. You need a pretty good grasp of the basics like dodging, positioning, etc. That’s especially true for non-meta weapons like the ones you’re using.
TacAxe is an advanced weapon. Something like Antax Combat Axe with Brutal Momentum for example is similar, but with its much higher dmg & cleave and simpler moveset it’s way way easier to make better use out of.
Shotguns likewise are advanced weapons, and specifically Kantrael. There’s a lot of reasons for it and tricks I won’t bother explaining here, but for example its non-special rounds have a short effective range. I only glanced at your vid but you were often shooting enemies way outside that range and not even using special, which does poor dmg and is bad for ammo economy. Kantrael can be super strong, but you have to really know how it works and play around that.
I made what I felt was a similar build (above) that would be a lot stronger and easier to play in practice. It has the same blitz & ult, very similar weapons with similar playstyles which synergize well with the talents. The perks & blessings on the weapons & curios aren’t compulsory ofc, but I can promise they work. For the shotgun, Scattershot is also a great option for a blessing since you have Blazing Piety already and Agripinaa gets almost 2x extra dmg on crits & weakspots compared to Kantrael & Lawbringer. If you have Man-Stopper, I’d easily say the best set of blessings here would be Scattershot & Man-Stopper, but it’s a T2-exclusive blessing so really hard to get at lvl 30.
I also made a second build (above) with the same basic idea but closer to what I would play. You should try the first one first ofc, the second one is trickier to play. To list a few of the reasons and tricks behind the second build:
It’s more well-rounded and less wasteful with talents
Blades of Faith blitz is basically like a revolver-on-demand, letting you 1-2 shot most things up to mid range. It recharges on specialist+ melee kills so making a habit of leading with a knife before you hit with your axe kills them fast & recharges the knife both. BoF’s weakness is hitting moving targets, but weapons with a lot of stagger like the BAG or shotguns stop them in their tracks, so you can fire a short burst followed by a knife to finish most anything off in pretty long ranges. Always get headshots if you can.
The BAG is a fantastic assault weapon with tons of ammo and can easily stop groups of ragers, specials etc. in their tracks and tear them apart. Unbraced its first few shots are really accurate, so you can 1-2 tap even snipers with a few bursts etc. But it also doesn’t depend on headshots or ADS the way for example Columnus Infantry does and actually is better unbraced. Since this means you can sprint & slide & dodge all you like while firing with minimal aim, it’s a lot easier to use effectively than most weapons.
Also remember that the ult FoF has a hidden buff where for 5s after using it all armor is downgraded for dmg (doesn’t affect perks, just the dmg tables), so carapace becomes flak, flak becomes unarmored for you. You can easily magdump a few crushers down with the BAG just by tapping FoF.
To summarize: BAG & BoF both have their weaknesses, but together they complement each other perfectly and leave you with very few things you don’t have a tool for. Between them and using your ult for heavies, you can handle anything.
The Duellist talent is just fantastic for anything that goes for weakspots or crits or blessings like Brutal Momentum, and really makes a huuuuuge difference in melee. Imo it’s a must for any such build that can afford to put a talent into it.
I can’t really give you any hints except to play and have fun. There isn’t much to win in Darktide, and like MOBAs, the game works best when played casually.
Personally, I only use Quorin as a “discount Zealot” in Auric Maelstrom, with XIV Revolver and Knife, and it works well for me.
I’ve tried all of the classes and builds, but since starting this melee Veteran run, I can’t imagine myself playing any other build.
It’s very zoomy and fast, and you’re constantly engaging all enemies in melee, slide-running towards snipers and gunners, and cutting their throats as you run to the next objective, occasionally pulling your big iron to blast a Monstrosity or trapper in the face if you’re unsure about your dodging, but 95% of my time during a match is spent carving my initials into the faces of the heretics.
Personally, I believe that getting better is simply a matter of playing and improving your reflexes. Even when you become better the A.I. Director can go crazy at times and want your squad dead or you make a mistake, such as falling off the ledge. This happens.
gotta keep the youtube spammers from thinking they’ll be able to get their views spammin’. otherwise you get some dude posting eight times a week with their “sick” VT runs where they’re just abusing corner huddles while asmatically mumbling to themselves to “build a following”.
Alright, dude, you are acting really snarky and patronizing. Please scroll past these kind of posts the next time you visit the boards if you have nothing to contribute.
You are behaving like a smark while the original poster @99punk was merely trying to get some feedback and asked for help.
Imagine if this was his first time posting, and your response was the first he saw @Ol_Jakal ?
How can YOU claim to be an advocate against “this community’s toxicity” and yet be the most significant perpetrator of it? Can you not the see the irony? You’ve officially failed to uphold your ideals.
The OP isn’t trying to spam their YouTube video for views, they’re just trying to show off their gameplay and ask us for advice. How can you spit on them when they ask you for help? You should be ashamed.
i gave him good advice, everyone else gave him “dodge more, reject teamwork” which runs most people into a brick wall because learning where to dodge is more important and harder to explain than when to dodge so most people start dodging more and end up wasting movement.
the last guy that posted a video didn’t post a youtube link, he didn’t have to do that. assume they want views if they’re posting a vid with splashpage, cuz they clearly want it to get shared around.
What gives you the right to dictate what the OP’s intentions were? They might just enjoy making YouTube videos of them playing Darktide but we for sure know that they wanted advice. Imagine walking into therapy (it doesn’t matter what for) and then your therapist just looks you straight in the eyes while they say “you’re not worth my time” before resuming the therapy. Would you feel good if that happened to you? A decent “advocate against toxicity” would apologise.
You mentioned coordinating as a team, but then you gave an elbow to the people you have been randomly paired with who I have no issues with myself (randos).
All weapons are usable in Auric Malestrom.
I use a XIV Revolver and boot knife as a melee veteran, for example, and I can easily solo a group of Crushers and Maulers by applying bleeds to each one of them and letting them die as I move on to the next pack.
Before going the melee route I played Quorin as a “Recon Vld Krieg commander”, primarily as a “support role” with unlimited ammunition to supply my team with ammunition. That worked well too even so the melee build definately is leagues stronger than the “Krieg commander”.
Although I get your point regarding the importance of teamwork, the game actually functions best when players are independent; everyone can essentially clutch.
To make a comparison: playing Dota 2 with randoms is not the same as in Darktide because in Dota 2 I really need to utilize pings, check what items my team is buying and correlate the items I am purchasing with the enemy’s.
EI must alert my teammates of ganking or my intention to use Solar Guardian, Dawnbreakers (my main) ultimate, on them during a teamfight in order to keep my team standing still inside of the AOE heal and for them to keep the enemy carry there as well for the landing stun.
All of this communication must take place without the use of voice since most don’t use headsets in low MMR/unranked, but in Dota 2, you must find a way to relay this information to your team; in Darktide, this is not necessary.
Both games require personal responsibility and a reactive mindset because you will not often play matches with the same players, making it impossible to build connections based on knowledge of how your team plays the game.
Its actually not a tactical axe, its a rashad combat axe and I would advise building a good one yourself. While a tactical axe is good to a point it doesn’t do nearly enough damage to heavies and that is very important on higher difficulties. I am using a mod to put a skin over the weapon, in some videos it looks like a tactical axe in others it looks like something different but the mod is why it looks like a tactical axe even though it isn’t. In terms of swinging and blocking its really all situational but for the most part I block and push as much as I do because you never know if there is an enemy behind you. On this note, you don’t need to be facing an enemy to block. If an enemy hits you directly from behind while you are blocking, you will block the attack.
Something else I didn’t mention that is KEY when it comes to playing harder difficulties is KNOWING WHEN TO FALL BACK. I cannot tell you how many times I notice a situation about to go from 1 to 1000 in the next 15 seconds and usually the only ones who know when to fall back are the ones with hundreds of hours in the game. Don’t ever be ashamed to fall back or reposition yourself, even it means running away from enemies. Reality is, if you are smart and position yourself correctly you will avoid 90% of the damage most people have issues with. Creating choke points/funnel points is a MUST in some situations especially if the AI director is gracing you with spawns for 2 minutes straight. A lot of time the best place to fight enemies is directly beside a wall, a box, or some type of door/choke point. If you are fighting enemies directly out in the open you will take tons of unnecessary damage, every game.
With all this being said, a lot of what you will learn comes from experience. Its the same idea as a person with book smarts will never be able to outperform a person with real life experience because as much as reading helpful information provides you with insight, there is absolutely no replacing experience and repetition.
man, you guys hate the tac. axe. it’s true it places a lot of demand for skill on the user and is inideal for the bigger enemies it’s still a viable weapon and good for clearing out loads of elites that aren’t ogryns or maulers in short order. you can just leave dealing with the big guys to that universal vet with infinite krak grenades that shows up in every pub and hoovers all the ammo to cover their terrible aim.
So you purposefully choosing a worse weapon and then expecting your team to cover it’s shortcomings?
This type of thinking is what makes a bad player.
Seeing only themselves and refusing to work WITH the team, instead of against it.
Its a coop game dude, go play something else if you ar not about it.
Or maybe allow people to play how they want. If you dont like pub teams choosing weapons they like or want to try you should probably stick to pre-mades where you can stay on meta and take the easy win. There is no shame in choosing the easy path
First I want to thank you for such a detailed explanation, I believe that as a player with over 2k hours you have tried all possibilities. The builds you made are very interesting and I can’t wait to try them, however second build, I have to be honest I’ve never used Blades of Faith and I don’t know how I would do with them. But it’s worth a try. To me they seem complicated especially when there is a large amount of different enemies in one place because they require precision. It’s routine for you if you’ve been playing with them from the beginning, but for me, the variant with Immolation Grenade is somehow safer.
Since English is not my native language, I didn’t understand you very well here, especially these abbreviations like for example BAG I don’t know what it means.
Wonderful explanations of these two weapons that no one has given me as detailed as you, so thank you for that. I’m glad you like them too. So, in your opinion, the effectiveness of the shotgun is limited, so you should wait for the right moment for it to have its full power. Okay, tell me what you think about the Full Bore blessing and whether it can improve the shotgun’s effectiveness? I see that you didn’t put it in any build.
Thank you very much for your reply. There are some really wonderful people on this forum. The knife veteran is definitely a great build, I’ve already tried it and it’s absolutely insane, fast and powerful. If you have a video I’d love to see you shredding heretics. Keep it up my good man and thank you for your response
