I say this as a zealot player that mainly uses thunder hammer. Thunder hammer is bad, at least in comparison to other zealot weapons. Yes you can do huge burst damage with it, but only if you sacrifice both your ult ability and keystone to enable that. Its burst damage isn’t even that good (or safe) without martyrdom and shroud field. Plus, you’re then stuck with a poorly-performing melee weapon for everything else for the rest of the game.
Having an ability that can do the huge burst damage on its own is better. You don’t have to sacrifice your melee weapon or keystone for it to work. You don’t have to make a one-trick pony meme build for it to work.
The game averages 3-5k depending on the day of the week. On Skitaari release there was over 51k people at one point - I didn’t bother to keep checking. With that in mind, you can assume that at least 95% of the people you play with are complete drones that have no clue why or how they’re there, they’re just there. Don’t expect ammo, don’t expect help, don’t expect them to get a dog off of you while they’re standing directly next to you (watch them run directly into another room and then die). After a few weeks all these tourists that can’t hack it above heresy will stop playing and we will all have a much better time.
Probably an unpopular take but I think fatshark flopped with this talent tree. Not only is the layout really bad but 75% of the talents just feel straight up useless. It seems the only viable build this class has is chord claw with the transonic blades, and even then it still doesn’t feel like this class can do anything that one of the other classes can’t do better. I have tried multiple builds in havoc 30+ and this class definitely feels the weakest out of them all and I think that when the novelty of playing as a Skitarii wears off then other players will start to see this as well. And yeah chord claw maybe needs nerfed a bit but this class needs to see a lot of improvements in every other area
Claw is a powerful skill, yet the Skitarii’s melee weapon pool leaves much to be desired. This means the Skitarii sacrifice one skill and one archetype core to attain melee performance on par with, or marginally better than, other classes—hardly a worthwhile trade-off. Especially on our server, Claw-wielding Skitarii are widely regarded as a downgrade from the Thunder Hammer Prayer Zealot.
I don’t think my impressions hold much value, as I’m only level 23 now with my Skitarii.
But I see the design unravel bit by bit the more I play.
I think the design and implementation of this class is really well made to fit Darktide.
All the hallmarks of different build-supporting weapons and talents are there, and I think the new skill tree design handles versatility much better. In addition, the class design with the power-point management and usage is also quite neat, nonetheless I did not fully grasp how it works, as the game still has really poor UI/UX when it comes to information about mechanics.
Even the most diehard Darktide streamers seem to use the extended tooltips and explanation mods.
But that’s not Skitarii-related.
What dawns on me is, despite the prospect of multiple build ideas I already formed in my head and I thoroughly enjoyed on the other classes, I think the design could have gone further. Adding body-altering traits in the tree with major drawbacks, like replacing the legs with the elongated deer legs I know from the tabletop model to go full in on the melee build, or getting really long legs for battlefield-overview sniping, would have been cool.
In addition, I’m rather disappointed about the servo skulls. Here I would have hoped for some sort of equipment system and/or a full focus on only fielding skulls as offensive tools while trading off my ranged weapon for them, for example. And the Double-Tap-Mark enemies control is a pain in the ass. Already a reason i don’t like playing the Arbites.
I know in the “real” game such very penalizing but rewarding choices can break the game for high-level play and would need heavy refocus on balance and power, but overall the fantasy is not really fulfilled for me for an AdMech class here.
Why is combining the Thunder Hammer with the Prayer perk an illogical build choice? Veteran players on our server almost always run Smoke Grenades. With minimal ranged pressure, the Martyr’s Crest is the most common keystone for Zealots. A Martyr’s Crest Thunder Hammer build can deal massive damage to bosses even without stealth, and it reliably eliminates the Captain on its second shield break phase.
gonna be honest here, yes. like, the class is great, but it’s got major problems and minor ones. the biggest problems i have are that the phosphor blast pistol is a debuff tool only, (meaning it has some AoE damage and next to no single target) and that the mech power sword doesn’t have any horde clear ability. i wouldn’t mind if they had a second mark that were the opposite of their current versions, but thats not gonna happen.
then there’s the fact that the flame skull has this slow turn that doesn’t even work for setting enemies on fire half the time when it touches them, if it even manages to do it since it spends half the time it’s deployed just twiddling it’s non-existant joy-stick. it doesn’t even do much damage. how am i supposed to light 80 enemies on fire with this thing? it can’t even do half that! honestly, the damn thing should’ve been on cooldown like the OG skull.
then we have the lack of cosmetics, which i wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the fact that almost all of the ones we have are all recolors and we’re not gonna be getting anymore for a long time, if ever.
then there’s the small stuff, like the fact that your character never faces the right way in the inventory, the fact that you can’t name your skulls or customize two of them, and the general lack of dialogue from what i can tell.
there’s also the fact that some of the penances were clearly just made to meet the minimum required for the class to launch. the class is still fun, don’t get me wrong, but it just was not ready for release.
chord claw honestly is the only strong thing the class has regardless if its broken currently or not, 1 big bad tool doesnt mean the rest of the class feels good to play or is balanced.
