This topic is not a debate about the latest nerf of Veteran’s ammo aura and whether it’s good or bad for the game, but the post is indirectly related to it via the frequent comparison of two games where often people in said debate refer to Vermintide 2 in one way or another.
I’m a huge Vermintide 2 fan and played it for several years for a total of 4040 hours. In comparison I played Darktide for significantly less - about 450 hours - but still enough to regularly go for and complete Auric Damnation and Maelstorm missions. And, considering the games are quite similar in many aspects, I formed an opinion about its ranged gunplay by comparing it to Vermintide’s. And here’s what I have to say.
It’s going to be a very long post where in text form I try to give proper arguments as to why I think Darktide, at least nowadays, is more restricting in terms of ranged-focused combat. And I try to directly and objectively compare the games only considering this topic, and not any other parts of the games like which game is better, feels more fun, etc., which are subjective. I’m very interested to see what people think on this topic, but if you want to join the discussion, I ask you to please read the whole thing before participating.
And at the end of the post I’ll leave a link to a collection of Vermintide mission gameplays, I specifically recorded for this post to show exactly what I talk about. They were recorded on Legendary (the average player, highest non dlc difficulty) with a deliberate special condition of no ammo pick ups on the maps and no bots/players to help. There I still manage to play 70% of the game with ranged weapons on a total of 9 (out of 20) hero careers. That is if someone wants to actually see what I’m talking about later in the post.
Whether someone dislikes the recent Veteran change and says things like “I’m not okay with the Veteran nerf and if you have something against rapid and constant shooting style, go play something like Vermintide” or, on the opposite, enjoys it and says “I don’t like how easy and spamable the shooting has become with a veteran in the team, I’m so glad the game is now more balanced as people will finally learn how to use melee properly just like in Vermintide” I get a little annoyed either way.
In no way do I think that Vermintide 2 as a whole is much more heavily focused on ranged combat than Darktide. Nor do I say that you can’t use certain builds and weapons in Darktide to play much more aggressive in terms of dealing with most enemies by ranged weapons. But to say that you can or need to shoot more in Darktide than in Vermintide is just wrong in my opinion. I’d say that overall they are pretty equal at best, but in some cases I find Vermintide to actually allow you to shoot even more freely than Darktide, depending on the build of your chosen career.
I think there are multiple reasons to why many Darktide players think differently than this.
First of all, yes, the melee combat is the base of both games, and since Darktide on release positioned itself as a more ranged-focused game with the 40k universe weapons and the trailers where you saw much more of the gunplay in comparison to Vermintide, most people would justifiably assume that it’s more about shooting right from the get go.
And at the release Darktide might have been, in a way. Before all the talent trees updates and multiple buffs to classes, before the toughness and gunners changes, multiple various direct and indirect changes to ranged weapons that is. For the longest time the biggest threat and high priority targets were the ranged enemies while the Veteran remained the strongest and most playable class.
Most of the Vermintide’s enemies don’t directly shoot you in big swarms from afar and from around every corner like they can in Darktide, and so subconsciously you might be less motivated to immediately shoot enemies in return instead of just walking to them and killing them in close combat. However, that doesn’t mean that in Vermintide you can’t shoot them if you want.
And here where I think I get to the main argument.
The need to shoot and the ability to shoot are different things, obviously. But in many, many cases Vermintide via certain core mechanics and character perks, talents, weapon traits and their synergies not just allows you to freely consume ammo without drawbacks, but even encourages it in many cases.
This is absolutely the opposite of the Darktide’s route, where (unless you play staff Psyker) every single shot that you make you need to calculate and never take for granted or be careless with to try not to be a detriment to the team.
And that is because of now the infamous “ammo economy” shared across teammates and occasional “ammo hogging” encounters which both honestly aren’t even remotely a thing in Vermintide 2 in my experience.
For starters, one of the base mechanics of Vermintide 2 is that every single map at least at some point has an ammo crate with infinite amount of restorable ammunition for the entire team that they can use simultaneously over and over again. Most of the time it is placed in the same predetermined places just before or during some kind of a long or dangerous encounter. But rarely it also happens to appear in random places of the mission for the whole team to regain resources.
Just that is enough to enormously reduce the tension between the teammates during missions and greatly offset negative impacts of certain “ammo hoggers” in public games.
The fact that the positions for most of these crates are predetermined and guaranteed (just like for medicaes in Darktide) allows you and your team to approximately plan the amount of ammunition you can risk to spend in bigger quantities during fights while going through certain parts of missions, because you can always be sure that just a little further you and all of your allies can refill freely.
Absolutely opposite of the feeling you get in Darktide when before you decide to shoot anything, you immediately subconsciously wonder whether the next giant crate you find will have 2 big and 1 small ammo bags, or will be completely empty.
And most of the time because of this exact uncertainty you’re just better off finding alternatives and not risk spending more ammo in fights than you absolutely need to. Which in terms of balance and interest may be preferable to some players, but since here I talk specifically about the ability to shoot more often and in a way carelessly, I have to give a big point to Vermintide here.
Of course, ammo pick ups spawn in Vermintide not only as giant and guaranteed but rare refill stations, but as separate one-per-person ammo bags aswell. Unlike in Darktide, they do spawn much less frequently, but to compensate, they always restore the whole ammo count for the person who picked it up, no matter how much or little ammo they had beforehand.
I can’t say if this is the better/worse/equal alternative to the way the little ammo drops work in Darktide, but in Vermintide with the addition of guaranteed giant infinite crates these little in-betweens bags of 100% refill per player hit just the right spot for the team to always find more than enough ammo to keep for emergencies.
Ammo pick ups are great but now we can get to the topic of certain characters being able to selfsustain their whole ammo capacity for the entire run even without taking a single ammo bag during the entire mission.
As I said before, not every class can do this, but from what I gathered at least 10 of the overall 20 hero careers can produce themselves (in rare cases even for their teammates) enough resources in terms of ammo or health (for magic) so frequently and in such amounts that they literally can shoot for at least 70% of the time playing while not running out. And that is WITHOUT refilling from the drops, spawned on mission.
Even if you’re playing a character that doesn’t have these selfsustain tools for ranged weapons, chances are that you are very likely to play with atleast someone who does and that can already let you and others spend their own ammo much more confidently, knowing that there’s 1 less person to grab the bags.
And often times there are 2 and more of such heroes with such builds because all of them are quite popular in terms of global pick rates. In that case its pretty similar to Darktide when if you get paired with 1-2 staff psyker and the same effect also becomes quite noticeable.
However the amount and significance of the effects of these ammo producing talents, traits and perks can never even remotely be considered the same as the ones in Darktide. And that is probably the most baffling part about the whole game experience for me.
Before looking at Vermintides ammo related abilities, let’s again check the Darktide ones.
If not counting various “grenade” type regeneration abilities (like Rocks, throwable Knives, Veteran’s specific grenade regenerating node), in Darktide out of the giant amount of every single little perk, node, trait and so on we only have 3 things to make the ammo wasting of weapons just a little bit better. (Please correct me if I’m wrong)
That is Shock Trooper, Burst Limiter Override (Lucky Bullet) and Survivalist.
2 of them only allow you to have a random chance to not consume the bullet during a shot which really doesn’t do much besides just keeping the inevitable expiration a bit further. (For Ogryn it makes little difference overall because the chance is quite small even after the recent buff and for Vet’s lasguns it doesn’t do much purely because they still do too little damage overall even if you get your crit chance high enough, so you still have to shoot a lot and therefore waste a lot)
And only one - the Veteran’s aura - (which some players seem to want even be removed from the game, because, as they say, it is so different from the other auras and doesn’t seem to fit in comparison) allows you to actually actively and somewhat consistently gain at least some ammo during the whole mission besides picking up randomly placed limited team-shared ammo boxes.
Again, I’m in no way arguing if that’s good or not in terms of balance, design or fun. But for the topic of how much more restricted in terms of being able to constantly shoot most things on sight, undeniably, the variation of abilities in terms of self sustaining ammo is nowhere, nowhere near Vermintide’s abilities.
The only exception being, again, staff Psyker, which in comparison to other Darktide classes is extremely self sufficient and independent.
(As a side note: I think that in terms of constant ranged spamming ability Psyker is not only better than most Siennas careers, he’s better in comparison to all the ranged type careers in Vermintide. Which, considering that I find every Vermintide ranged class much better in terms of sustainability to the Darktide ones, says A LOT about the giant gap between the ranged sustainability of Psykers and other Darktide classes)
Now let’s (as briefly as I’ll manage) finally go over the main ranged talents, traits, perks that sometimes can really compete with the melee route in Vermintide. (Not naming the perks, just describing what they do)
Waystalker. Ammo capacity increased by 100% compared to her other careers due to her passive ability. Her talent lets her immediately restore 30% of whole ammunition count PER one special/elite killed by her ultimate ability.
Her ultimate ability itself is a 3 auto seeking high damage magic arrows that one-shot most of the specials and elites on most regular difficulties. Even if one doesn’t do it, then 3 arrows aimed at one elite enemy will surely do the work for at least 30% guaranteed ammo count back.
With the right setup on difficulties like Legend (as in heresy), Cataclysm (as in damnation) and various deeds (missions with modifiers), she gets at least 30% and more often than not 60% and 90% of her total ammo count immediately by activating her ult. That’s not mentioning the weapon traits like Conservative shooter that doesn’t waste ammo on a headshot, with which she can sufficiently kill said elites and specials with enough accuracy and still regain any lost ammo once every 1-2 minutes with the ultimate ability.
Bounty Hunter. His ammo capacity is increased by 50%. His passive ability makes him do a guaranteed critical ranged shot every 10 seconds. (With one talent - every 6 seconds. With another - still only every 10, but not consuming ammunition for that crit shot, as in not even needing to reload after that).
And the weapon trait - Makes any critical ranged hit (guaranteed or random) immediately restore 5% of the total ammo count. Last but not least he also has a talent that restores 20% of the entire ammo count after killing an elite with melee weapon if your ammo count was at 0, but that’s not necessary.
With the crit every 6 seconds that restores more ammo than he uses on the said crit, he can either literally spam certain weapons (considering that random crits happen and refill him aswell) into enemies non stop and only run out of it after a considerable amount of time. Or… just never run out at all if he hesitates at least for a couple of seconds to wait for another guaranteed critical shot.
His ultimate ability is a one shot highly precise pistol with very high damage that with a talent can be immediately restored back to 60% of it’s cooldown after hitting any headshot with it.
Ranged Veteran. Ammo capacity increased by 50%. He doesn’t have that many self sustain talents, but the ones he has are enough to supply your entire team. His passive ability drops a 10% ammo count bag under his feet for anyone to pick up for every single special killed by any means by any player. That’s without any cooldown. With a talent this number can be increased to 30%. Again, for anyone to immediately restore 30% of the entire ammunition per special killed.
Pair that with any other ammo hungry teammate and you two are still good to shoot plenty, but you can of course play like that in a party of other ranged careers which really can make a whole mission almost purely ranged for everyone. He also has a talent that lets him use a bomb for free any time after he uses his ultimate ability (which in it self is his personal invisibility cloud that also greatly increases his ranged damage during its uptime) And of course like any other character he can have a trait like either refund 1 ammo per headshot or 5% ammo per critical shot.
Huntsman. Ammo capacity increased by 50%. His passive ability is basically Conservative shooter trait: 1 ammo regained by getting a headshot. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t put on the actual trait and now he can gain 2 ammo per headshot, basically gaining +1 ammo, instead of spending it for every headshot (target doesn’t need to die, only shot in the head)
His two other talents - restore 10% of the ammo capacity per special killed and every third shot doesn’t waste ammo. So even if you don’t hit all the headshot you still have means to recover in the meantime by killing specials.
His ultimate ability also gives him an invisibility and increased ranged power like for Ranger veteran. However the ultimate also allows him to not waste any ammo on any shot while it’s active (for 6 seconds normally or 10 with another talent). Upon depletion of the whole ammo count if he uses his ultimate ability, he immediately restores 1 ammo on the spot and and then can go for spamming heads not worrying about missing as it’s free.
That easily allows him to restore ammo back to the normal amount (example: if during his ultimate he headshots a special enemy with a bow that has 30 arrows total, with said talents and traits he’ll immediately gain 5 arrows. If he headshot a regular enemy, he’ll get 2 arrows. That way he also can almost fully refill himself if he uses his ability during dense hordes and just range spams at their head level).
All of Siennas Careers.
I’ll sum her up as a psyker that either waits for the heat (peril) to go down naturally or that damages herself little by little if she vents her heat by pressing reload button, but on the upside has various ways to easily gain the temporary health in close combat to continue venting on the spot.
However there are tools to manage heat even without venting.
Battle wizard has a passive ability that automatically and safely vents her if she doesn’t participate in ranged combat for at least 6 seconds. But a talent can make that 3 seconds. So she can become pretty spamable with only occasional short melee pauses between casting spells. Another talent makes the enemies that are lit on fire by her burn to their death. Basically, constant passive and pretty noticeable infinitely lasting ranged damage on any enemy she set ablaze.
Pyromancer has her overall heat capacity increased by 50% and a talent that allows her to waste 80% less health on venting if no enemies are in close combat range and has double the heat capacity compared to other witch classes. Another talent lets her spam the staves without gaining any heat for 12 seconds after killing a special enemy and the same goes for her ultimate ability talent that also greatly increases the spell casting speed and prevents her from exploding at max heat for 12 seconds. The ultimate ability is an auto seeking ranged skull shaped projectile (works similar to Waystalker’s magic arrows, buy has higher damage and can stagger monsters)
Her passive ability makes her overall crit chance higher the higher her heat level is up to 30% additional crit chance.
One of the best traits you can put on her is the one that makes critical ranged attacks not increase her heat level.
Unchained is the least ranged class out of Sienna ones but you can still make her work. She has a similar talent to pyromancer to reduce the amount of health she loses by venting heat by half no matter how many enemies are around her. She has highest amount of health out of all of them and can restore it easily not just in close combat but by using her ultimate ability that immediately cools her down and gets her and her teammates nearby 30 temporary health.
From now on the next best ranged classes are all paid dlc careers which I’m not sure if I should or even need to describe here considering all the other stuff that I already wrote, but I’ll just briefly show what they can do in the video.
And I haven’t even touched weapons with infinite charges like Moonfire bow that passively regains it’s ammo, Throwable (and infinitely recallable back by reloading) axes and javelins, Heat based weapons for Bardin and so on.
Again, all of that was not to compare the games by which one is better or worse, or more fun overall. But objectively the pure amount of abilities and their combinations that allow you to just constantly spam ranged weapons in Vermintide is astonishing compared to Darktide.
Darktide in turn is, strangely enough, still considered to be the more ranged focused game by the masses despite me lately noticing more and more players on forums or reddit posts give advices to each other about how they shouldn’t waste their precious ammo on anything that can be handled in close combat if they want to keep their bullets for something important. While in Vermintide you’re absolutely free to do that on half the classes and no one will say a word, because you’ll not only not waste it, but can probably even gain some more in the process.
After the numerous rebalances in Darktide like changes to ranged enemies, changes to the ways you can cover yourself from their attacks like with psyonic shields, and toughness replenishment ultimates from veteran and zealot, to overall increased mobility and tankiness from new perks and talents, the addition of invisibility and new restorable smoke grenades - all of that on top of being so much depended on sharing limited little ammo boxes scattered around randomly all over the place…
It REALLY makes the best option seem to be either using all these new powerful tools to safely cut the distance between enemies and just kill them in melee without using any resources and not worrying about looking for random ammo boxes later (which also comes at risk of spending valuable time seeking out for it and then not even finding anything at all while a new group of enemies has already spawned)
Or just pick Psyker and spam various unlimited ranged attacks with staves and occasional switch to assail, smite or headburst with no downsides for anyone (unless you accidentally overheat of course, which should not be the norm for experienced players).
So all I wanted was for people to look at Vermintide 2, at least if comparing it to Darktide, as not just a melee slaughter with the occasional shooting here and there. It can be a melee slaughter, depending on how you play for sure, especially considering that 3 of the 20 hero careers are purely melee characters that simply can not even choose any ranged weapons at all (except for Slayer but that’s only due to his throwable axes, because he deserves it like a little Kratos he is).
But even if it can be played with mostly melee in certain cases, doesn’t mean that it can’t be played with mostly ranged weapons in other cases. Because I’d say that Darktide right now is even more melee oriented because of the fact that you seemingly can shoot a lot, but not as freely (or more so - often discouraged to).
This is my take on the overall state of ranged play in Darktide compared to Vermintide 2. I’d like to know what you think, whether you agree with me and, if not, why.
