Both the helbore and the bolter have tediously long swap times from melee, so long that I sometimes find myself unable to react to threats in time as sharpshooter. It’s fine that melee should have faster swap time, but please put these weapons in line with the other ranged weapons.
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so why use helbore and bolter? the lasgun has very little time and the pistols pretty much zero.
That balances out how powerful that ranged weapon is.
Autoguns have instant equip time and I hate them, lasgun have a reasonable equip time and feel good, but they don’t hit half as hard as the bolter.
If you want a quick to equip ranged weapon dont expect it to one shot things.
3 Likes
Stupid and boring mechanic that brings nothing to the table except depict the weapons are tedious.
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Sure, the bolter is hard hitting. It also only has 15 rounds and a really long reload time, huge recoil and low ammo count. It works well (maybe too well) in some situations but you wont have time to reload it during a hectic fight (that’s ok). The problem is that we end up in situations as sharpshooters where we notice a threat to our team, pop our ult, and then have to stare at a clumsy racking animation as the threat damages the team. I estimate that ~20% of your ult time is spent on the animation if switching from melee. If you empty the clip, change to melee, and switch back, you will have to witness a racking animtion (racking what?), a mag replace, followed by a second racking. As it is I can’t bring it on higher difficulties even if it is a fun weapon.
2 Likes
There’s an ability for sharpshooters to instantly reload the weapon when using your ult, but even if you use your ult before your weapon is full without it that’s kind of a user error.
I’m talking about keeping a full bolter for when it’s needed. With 15 shots,115 ammo and a long reload time, you can’t play bolter sharpshooter by just sitting back with the gun at the ready. So you will be in melee and all of a sudden need to react quickly to a special threatening the team. It’s your job to make sure you have bullets (bolts?) ready to fire in that situation, ult ability or otherwise, but the gun will perform a 1 second racking animation regardless which is too long for many situations from my experience. It also makes no sense - the bolter is already loaded. Why are we racking it?
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They’ve already covered that heavy weapons (ranged in particular) will take longer to equip. The goal is to force players to use around 50% melee despite how effective some weapons can be.
The small mag, ammo count, and reload times already makes it balanced imo. This is a game where enemies can spawn 360 at all times, if you use this weapon you won’t be able to stop threats in time that you could with a lasgun for example. Hell if they still think it’s too strong then nerf something else about it, like add 0.5-1.0 seconds to the reload time.
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At least bolter rewards you for swaping into it, it is worth the wait. Helbore is just garbage, even the charged shot doesn’t do damage worth charging it. One of the reasons is that Helbore’s bayonette isn’t effective and fast enough to be counted on, so you might as well consider youself defenseless in melee, when you are on Helbore. That means you are either primarily on melee, to stay safe and when you need to shoot you swap … and by the time the animation is done, your team already shot all the ranged enemies, because they would die waiting 10 long years for your animation OR you are primarily on Helbore … and die. Because you will get killed by melees. With bolter you onetap most enemies, so if melees get up your ass when you need to shoot … you onetap them and keep doing your business. It defintely feels much better to spend lot of time on bolter to avoid the swap animation.
Yeah, if I’m running with bolter I have it out more often than not. With how hard it hits I haven’t run out of ammo with it yet, but of course I can’t get through a whole level without needing to swap to melee at some point. Feels alright though if you accept the bolter is Darktides shooter answer to a heavy sniper rifle.
I mean, this is a team game, just stick close to an Big Friend (ogryn) let them know you’ll keep the ranged guys dead and they’ll keep the little guys away from ya pretty dang well
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I watched a player use a bolter on a enemy ogryn and when they were just about out of ammo, they activated veteran ult for a full mag so you have a 30 round mag if you really need it considering veteran ult seems to be easy to get off cooldown.
After spending some more time on bolter, I have more feedback to give here. I still understand the need to indirectly nerf boltgun a bit, with that slow reload and the swap time, realised through the animation of racking the bolt back. But here are two cases where it makes zero sense.
One - veteran ult. If I use the vet ult while on melee, my guy swaps to bolter and racks the bolt back, got it, regular swap animation. But if I am already on my bolter, all ready to shoot and use the ult, my guy still racks the bolt back, for no reason whatsoever. This should be changed.
Two - empty mag. When I swap to my bolter and I have some ammo left in the mag, my guy racks the bolt back, got it. But if I swap to my bolter and my mag is empty, my guy racks the bolt back - for no reason whatsoever - and then starts reloading. That should also be changed.
How about balancing weapons by what they do and in which situations they excell or are weak in not arbitrary repetitive animations? There is absolutely no reason fir this animation to play again if the gun is loaded/chambered. If anything you could have it that it will autoreload if you swap to it when it is empty making you choose when to return to ranged combat The bolter re-racking even does it if you get knocked back and after the knock back animation is complete. Given how jank explosion physics are it’s infuriating.
2 Likes
But that’s what the animations do. For example if you make bolter swap instantly, why does plasma gun exist? Plasma gun is imho strictly inferiour to boltgun, except it is instant swap weapon, which some people prefer. That animation (or lack of animation) is what makes plasma gun better in some situations and it makes the weapon actually play differently. I do swap way more with plasma gun, because why not, might as well use the fact I can adapt to circumstaces faster and better. On bolter I try to avoid swapping in the heat of fighting, when I know there are still ranged enemies I need to kill, so I hit anoying melee attackers with weapon special and shoot them instead. I don’t mind animations being part of the weapon strengths and weaknesses and having impact on gameplay decisions, but within reason. The two situations I wanted to point out are imho plain bad and not within reason. Your example of racking the bolt back after being knocked back is also good, that should be point number 3 - also should change.
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It’s arbitrary and frustrates a lot of players. If the plasmagun needs a buff then buff it don’t nerf the bolter because of that?
I have absolute no idea why the plasmagun damages when safe venting. It’s ridiculous. Its attempting to emulate “Gets hot” from the tabletop but that should only apply if you overheat the gun.
I’d say up the damage & pen, give the plasmagun the ability to get to 200% before failure. Everything beyond 100 then damages you (firing/venting) by the curent venting percent. Base damage over 100% can then be multiplied by heat percentage too (150% overheat = base damage x 1.5% etc) This would be a more accurate way to represent plasma technology. Plasma should annihilate single enemy targets and this change would reflect that imho.
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It is arbitrary to a degree, that’s why I tried to isolate the circumstances where racking the bolt feels like nonsense and it just plain frustrates you for no reason, it goes past just balancing the weapon and feels like a bug. On the other hand the game is trying to make you feel like the weapon is unwieldy, which is how it probably should feel to a regular human. It is true though that making plasma gun feel so weak and making the quick swap pretty much it’s only merit, also feels kinda bad. The change you proposed sounds better than what we have now for sure.
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You could also heroically sacrifice yourself taking down a troublesome boss by going down for a 2x base damage (plus modifiers) shot.
I think it being unweildy could/should be represented in its ads sway. Although doing that would require a fire mode swap imho.