These are more just frameworks, not a full rework. Veteran needs talent synergy that supports how the class actually plays, not triggers that feel bolted on or disrupt pacing. I feel the gameplay should compliment the players actions rather than forcing them to take actions like dodge to eek out bonuses.
Talent Triggers That Work Well
On Kill – Special, Elite, or close/long-range kills
Not Getting Hit Over Time – More reliable than dodge/avoidance-based mechanics
Coherency-Based – Encourages teamwork without punishing independence
On Ability Use – Clean, consistent, and intuitive
On Hit - Useful for stacking small de buffs on enemies, or small buffs on player/team.
Useful Talent Effects
Bonuses Against Specific Enemy Types – Ogryns, Elites, Specials, etc.
Defensive Options Beyond Toughness – e.g., damage reduction stacks or resistance to specific enemy attacks/aggro, suppression/stagger
Stacking Buffs – e.g., gain damage reduction every X seconds while not getting hit; lose stacks on hit.
Keystone Concepts
Left Tree – Automatic/Shotgun Weapon Focus:
Specialize in automatic lasguns, shotguns and automatic bullet-based weapons that hit many enemies.
Follow-up talents: reload speed, sustained fire or burst bonuses, recoil control, etc.
Favors stacking debuffs and bonuses for hitting many enemies. Maybe even more penetration of crowds
Ammo sustain perk. Bigger mags, more shot per shotgun shell, etc.
Bonuses for Charging Shots, ADS, Alt-Fire
Automatic weapons synergize well with single-target effective melee weapons, could be cool for certain effects.
Modifies the abilities to buff the team at taking down crowds
Right Tree – Precision/Hybrid Focus:
Geared toward slower semi-autos, and heavy-hitting weapons like Plasma, Hellbore, or Revolver, and maybe some of the slower automatic rifles
Split options: one for weakspot sniping and special killing; another for close-range hybrid play (e.g., melee grants ranged buffs, and vice versa).
Weakspot hits/kills for melee and ranged
Single-target ranged weapons pair well with crowd-control melee; could be cool for a talent where melee buffs help with hordes, and melee kills boost single-target damage.
Modifies abilities to buff the team vs specials/elites and monsters.
Center Tree – Support & Explosives:
Emphasize utility and team play.
Example: “On Elite/Special kill, allies restore a bit of health or clear corruption.”
Include grenade-focused talents, team ammo regen, or grenade cooldown reduction.
Could also house a defensive stacking mechanic or suppression utility.
Include more grenade effects that make enemies take more damage, slow enemies and allow for unique grenade effects based on the type of grenade.
Modifies the abilities to have more team survival bonuses.
I just gotta say that I HATE PURE RNG TALENTS which is most of the middle tree.
20% chance to throw an extra grenade? What, am I playing the Binding of Isaac or something? Should be replaced with something else completely.
Competetive urge? What’s competetive about it? A small chance to get a buff that is 100% based on luck and often kicks in too late. Make it so your weakspot hits/kills increase weakspot damage for your teammates and vice versa.
Demolition team? Brilliant design by making the skill useless on low difficulties and grossly overpowered on Auric/Havoc due to elite spam. Change it so when someone in the team picks up a grenade, everyone get at least one (yes, even Ogryn).
Also Marksman Focus is annoying and counter-intuitive: it has nothing to do with being a “marksman” (go focus target or no keystones for that), you have to use a high volume weapon and constantly shoot at trash enemies to keep the stacks. If you don’t have any stacks and a boss spawns, it is 100% useless. Bad design, should be removed and replaced with something else.
I didn’t go into detail about RNG talents, but I’m also not a fan. I think the double grenade would work better if it were on a cooldown timer. Once every X minutes, you throw a double grenade.
RNG has exactly one role in Darktide and that’s if whatever the effect is is SO spammable you’re basically guaranteed it to the point it acts as a pseudo-cooldown (see: psyker and auto-bb on targets combined with automatic weapons)
While I agree some of Vets talents are clunky, this is such an insane take I have no idea where you got it from. Dodging is something you constantly do at higher difficulties if you’re good at the game, both in ranged in melee.
Reciprocity is an amazing talent because it basically provides a near constant 15-25% crit chance. Same reason Duelist and Dance of Death on Zealot are so strong, is they have very good uptime anytime you’re fighting.
Last thing this game needs is stronger spammable aoe options.
Very strong spammable AoE options is one of the main reasons why huge blocks of armored elites are what end game Darktide is balanced around. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I would agree, but that’s a whole different ball of wax. In general, there’s a lot of weapons, blessings, talents and abilities that trivialize enemies. Grenades aren’t the main culprit, more a symptom of it. As is, when they do have the proverbial “clown cars of crushes” it’s been made necessary to have massive OP counters to those to get by.
I like the idea behind how grenades work. With a crowd clearing ranged weapon, you take armor breaking bombs. With a sniping weapon, you take crowd clearing bombs. With a stealth build, you take smoke grenades to enhance melee and area control.
I also like the idea of making having more grenade focused talents for a support build that augments the grenades.
I would agree with this, but on the other foot when you suddenly start buffing that as a main way to play than it would become a main culprit. Especially with:
I do as well, but there is a reason that shredders are generally considered to be the best (the other 2 are certainly not bad but not as good). And paired with grenade regen they kind of lose some of their identity, and suddenly have to be balanced around being spammable unlike the ones on Ogryn and Zealot.
Also imo smoke is better with a sniping weapon to help clear out gunner walls, and shredders are better with a melee build to provide instant stagger safety and bleed. Smokes are super reliant on what type of spawn seed you get which is why I’m still not a big fan of them.
I think the grenades on cooldown talents should first be made available for every vet build (by putting it on the obligatory early intersection among all three branches) for this to be a good idea
Any supplies regeneration talents are damaging for the supply economy.
Exploration should be the main source. However not like it’s done with openning 40 000 yellow boxes, but events.
Like you have several random rooms on every map (arsenal room or something), similar to martyr skull rooms. But it has full medicae station and ammo refill chest (like in V2)
If you dare to hack the door then alarm triggered and wave of mobs spawns. After hacking is done room opens. So here is risk-reward exploration element of the game, they were trying to promote. You play this game for mobs killing anyway, not yellow lootbox simulator.
Also if there were more content could place some cosmetics there you can extract with and earn as a reward or loose if mission is failed, like in DRG kinda. Or quest items, a bit of tarkovtide.
If you still want to have some easy supply refill talents, then something like “big ammo bag also gives 1 nade”
Even in VT2 we had Ranger Vet grenade generation from using ult, and Outcast Engineer producing his own bombs
It is not damaging for vet to be the guy that wouldn’t need to pick grenades, as long as it’s something constant and can’t be obtained in massive bursts
VT2 Bardin respects this, DT Vet doesn’t with Demolition Team on a Havoc game (Dump Survivalist aura as well, because it’s beyond broken and it’s amplified on higher diffs just like Demo Team)
We shouldn’t lock gameplay affecting supplies to secrets/exploration, these should be extra rewards, not required rewards
We already have Scriptures and Grimoires, increase the reward for them and place it in secrets/hard places to reach on new maps, simple as that
Vet has NOTHING going for him in terms of standing out to other classes without his grenade regeneration talent, this is why I would like to make it mandatory so it forms part of his identity
In V2 range wasn’t that strong, it was mostly a melee game. So nades were your clear/panic button. In DT we have all sorts of range aoe explosions/infinite cleave spam. Without any resource managmenet involved.
Pointles and boring. Them also don’t provide anything for the runs itself. Like comon, who cares about books.
Having some of them behind the side objective is infinitely better than openning gazzilions of boxes, wich rushers ignore anyway.
Their idea about ammo management and exploration was right in the release build - always low on supplies and sometimes out off. It adds a layer of stress and pressure aswell as deccision making. It’s just people don’t like to press E on boxes a lot.
Hello I agree that the RNG talents are the worse but like I said in posts in the past.. I think that the only path forward for all classes is Specialties. They sort of did it in Vermintide 2
The reason I thought that then, and still think it.. Is because the classes as they are now are fine for an introduction to that playstyle (in terms of how they are set up). Once they hit 30 though, most people should know what they like or don’t like for that particular class. From that point, there should be a tree specifically designed for those specific playstyles. Examples from my past post
Marksman: Gains the ability to use Hot Shot Las and has passives revolving around repositioning (movement speed passives, a low cooldown cloak, etc). Between the passives and a Hot Shot Las, it will fix one of the other problems the Veteran has.. A lack of weapons geared towards Anti Armor, and ones that compliment their existing passives
Anti Armor: Passives specific towards the use of the Bolter or Plasma Gun. This will feature damage passives specific to Monstrosities, Carapace and Flak. Has a higher ammo capacity for those two weapons than the base Veteran
Brawler: Passives specific towards using Melee, Pistols or Shotguns. This class will have higher ammo capacities for these weapons than the base Veteran. That is one of the issues specific to the new Bolter, Revolver and Shotguns.. They have less ammo than other weapons which means they do not work with Scavenger as well as they should
On the highest difficulties (cata twitch/modded) Ranger vet runs Handgun/revolver 24/7, hitting headshots to have infinite ammo
And as we said if we wanna solve the ammo issue simply nerf Demo Team / Survivalist and that’s it
This is not even an argument tho
I said to increase the rewards for the books, and you could also add a new interesting event when one of this is taken from a side objective of a new map (like the totems for this event does)
And rushers aren’t going to ignore side objectives because..?
You might said this but there’s a lot of people that enjoys constantly shooting their guns and don’t care nor want to feel that stress nor pressure because for them it’s just a Game you join and kill heretics
We already got a mode for players who want to feel stress and pressure, that being AM or Havoc
What I feel is that the first approach of Fatshark was the right. They have kept only one thing… Laser gameplay.
I think we should have node to specialize about:
playing with laser (we have)
playing with ballistic high fire rate weapons (Iag braced etc. - we DON’T have)
playing with grenades (we have)
playing with melee (we have)
playjng with high precision weapons (one ability is about that)
But what we should not have something that emphasizes a gameplay:
where you don’t move
or that you need to switch your weapon
For the keystones, I like the idea of something linked to the precision. But the stack system is really too bad.
I totally dislike the system that requires you to switch your weapon all the time. This one is an absolute no…
I like the bonus type, but the system is too bad.
Again, it’s not on the level of bolter magdamping. Just as Bardin can’t spam torpedo like ogryn can spam rumbler. Neither Sienna can spam casts, she needs HP/THP for venting.
In V2 ranged careers have lower HP pool. In DT you can run bolter with VoC. Wich is like Merc+Huntsman with repeater or smthg.
Because it’s easier to rush when you can use medicae or grab ammo box on the fly.
But if we are talking about incompetent rushers, that are willing to rush with no ammo and HP just to die for. Then nothing will stop them for sure. “Easy to grab” is just a part of why rushing is so easy, not the main thing anyway.
Some people like more simplistic games, some don’t. That doesn’t change the fact game was like that before FS increased ammount of mobs to counterbalanced overbuffed players. And so ruined that deccision making and supplies management aspect.
It’s sophistic oversimplification. You can apply such logic to any aspect, why do you even need to have cooldowns and ammo, and even stats, if the only thing that matters is dying mobs. Shooting gallery is a peak gameplay then.
Except we don’t. Your typical 40 havoc is a spam of aoe explosions, flamer/purgatus, golden toughnes abilities (wich also stagger) and dome. Cooldown and ammo economy doesn’t exist there. You just throw everything at the meatwaves, it’s much closer to a braindead mmo piano loop gameplay.
You never get punished for being inacurate with your tools. “Wish i didn’t use “x” thing on that blob” isn’t a thing in DT.
Anyway, this topic isn’t about core gameplay problems. Game was much healthier before patch 13, when survival and tactical elements was there. If you disagree then it is what it is. It’s a fundamental disagreement.
I agree that the RNG talents are the worse but like I said in posts in the past.. I think that the only path forward for all classes is Specialties. They sort of did it in Vermintide 2