Sometimes I feel like a minority in using the unique weapons each class gets. I like playing Veteran for the Plasma gun, Zealot for the Thunder Hammer, Psyker for… well, everything about them is unique. Psyker and Ogryn don’t really have issues with needing unique weapons that are good.
However, the stealth zealot build just doesn’t make sense to me… at all. Ever since the bleed build for Zealot became a thing, it just felt more like the preacher that goes through the pain while swinging a massive weapon became the sneaky stabby type. Can you play both playstyles? Of course, that’s not my point though. I feel more effective using a tiny blade and a machine pistol than I would a flamer and thunder hammer. This feels less warhammery to me and more I’m some random dude with a shank.
Veteran’s been fine overall other than the keystones being garbage, but the Plasma gun just doesn’t feel great. It lacks the impact it should use when a lasgun or a machine gun does the DPS it deals but also has the opportunity to kill chaff as well. Plasma gun can cleave through hordes yes, but like the power sword, you don’t really feel like you’re contributing as much in comparison. All the weapons in game that require a charge before attacking feel lackluster to use, especially with the self stun they give. I’ve spent less time with the veteran, so I imagine someone will tell me otherwise, but I wanted to say my piece.
Despite having the inflated HP pools over Vermintide, bosses are a joke and weapons designed to be single target damage dealers just have no place in Darktide. Why would I care about being able to only kill monstrosities quickly when someone with a machinegun unloads a full mag into their weakspot and deals half their HP in damage on Damnation. The game feels more centered around horde clearing than meaningfully picking key targets. The key targets (being elites) being never ending on the higher difficulties make them as numerous as the hordes we face, thus the bog standard weapons that aren’t iconic Warhammer weapons stand out above the rest.
A weapon designed to be useful for 10% of the mission where you’re still in the 90% makes me not want to use it. I once before suggested that the Thunder hammer have a heavy overhead so you could more easily focus the attack where you want it, then the Crusher came out and had the changes I wanted for the Thunder Hammer. I’m not really sure what else could help the weapons that need to be charged. All I can think of is if you keep the self stun, then maybe don’t make someone press the charge button every time. And if you don’t keep the self stun then that’s fine if you can animation cancel out of it (while still having the charge button.) If anyone has any suggestions for how to make the plasma gun feel like a pick (or if I’m wrong about it) I’d like to hear it too.