Light em up Gunlugger change is mostly a buff

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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You get 4 stacks per shot now. It used to be 2 capping at 32, now you get 4 stacks per shot stacking at 16.
Where do these 32 stacks actually matter? Let’s investigate. Tested with a flak+maniac achlys stubber, the weapon that most benefits from fire stacks due to a high firerate and low impact damage per bullet:

Elites and regular enemies:

  • Maulers die to 12 stacks.
  • Both Gunners die to 8 stacks.
  • Both Bruisers die to 6 stacks.
  • Poxwalkers, shooters and groaners die before the stacks really matter, but seems like 4 stacks help finish them off sometimes.
  • Scab Ragers die to 12 stacks.
  • Dreg Ragers die to 10 stacks.
  • Both shotgunners die to 8 stacks.

Specials:

  • Both Flamers die to 8 stacks.
  • Mutants die to 14 stacks.
  • Trappers die to 6 stacks.
  • Both Bombers die to 6 stacks.
  • Snipers die to 4 stacks.
  • Dogs die to 8 stacks.

Ogryns:

  • Reapers die to 12 stacks.
  • Bulwarks die to 14 stacks, hitting exclusively the shield.
  • Reapers die to 12 stacks.
  • Crushers are the only non-boss enemy that survives past 14 stacks in the game. At 32 stacks (16 shots) they take roughly 50% of their HP in damage. At 16 stacks (8 shots) they take roughly 20%. The fire damage seems to account for ~20% of their HP at 32 stacks and ~8% of their HP at 16 stacks, ticking for 58/28 respectively.

In conclusion: For literally every single non-boss enemy but crushers, Light Em Up will have half the shots needed to kill post update. This is a major buff to Firelugger Ogryns damage output, potential killing power, and ammo economy.

The only two exceptions are Crushers and Bosses.

First of all, Crushers. This was tested with an Achlys Twin Stubber which does bad damage to crushers to begin with. PBB did not significantly elevate the damage with light em up even then because carapace mitigates a lot of fire damage. In fact, even at 32 fire stacks, a crit shot still does more damage than the 32 stacks tick for. With 10% rending via the on-kill proc, the 58 fire damage gets doubled. It’s still not anywhere close to killing a crusher via the fire stacks even then. Only with a red stimm is there a significant TTK difference between just shooting the crusher and shooting it with PBB on: Avg 2300DPS with PBB, Avg 1337DPS without. I’m unable to test what 16 fire stacks would result in but somewhere in the middle. Not a huge difference and it’s never really sensical to shoot a crusher to death regardless with the achlys in particular.

Second, Bosses. Bosses are the obvious part where this is a nerf. They don’t resist fire like carapace very well so dropping from 32 fire stacks to 16 stacks is a pretty significant DPS nerf. I’m sure the math has been done on this so I wont bother, but rest assured that is less than half the damage from just the fire stacks.

Other things to consider:

  1. This was tested with an Achlys twin stubber, to reiterate. Standard fire lugger build. No stacking buffs of any kind before testing. This is the highest firerate, lowest impact damage weapon available to Ogryn, so the fire stacks matter most here. Meaning that with any other weapons, the fire stacks will not need to stack this high to kill, since the impact damage will be higher. In other words, these are the worst stacks-to-kill values you’ll get (minus flak/maniac but I feel like most people run that anyway, and I’m not sure it’d make a diff. I also didn’t sanitize crits, I went with first result. Test yourself if interested, I doubt any enemy survives 16 stacks even then) and on other guns this “nerf” will be even more of a buff. 4 shots to 16 stacks vs 8 shots to 16 stacks will make a lot of weapons far stronger in most situations.
  2. Ogryn will gain various damage% talents with the patch, most commonly payback time and a gunlugger node for 15%, so 30% increased ranged damage. This will probably keep these stacks to kill even lower, i.e. the 16 stack limit will be even less relevant. It will 99% also end up killing crushers faster than now just via raw damage, even compared to the 32 max stacks PBB.
  3. The same concept applies to bosses. Fire stacks aren’t the only means by which Ogryn can ruin bosses, increased ranged damage%, batter, increasing ally damage by 15% all will contribute to bosskill times to counterbalance the nerf at least a little.

TL;DR & Conclusion: In any situation where you don’t fight a Boss, realistically, Light em Up got massively buffed and AT THE VERY LEAST halves Ogryns shots to kill, possibly more. On Crushers it doesn’t matter so much because they barely take fire damage. I was tired of reading “it’s a straight nerf” so I felt the need to assemble this info. Light em Up isn’t “ruined”, it was made twice as good on a vast majority of targets, and brought in line on boss damage.

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Sucks that it apparently still does not work for Rumbler and GG explosions…

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It’s odd but I see the thought process. Considering 8 stacks + two explosions would surely kill anything but crushers and bosses that would turn every 2 rumbler ammo into an ogryn frag grenade. This is reality for Vet shredder grenades, very OP and I dont think they should bring that into the game more.
Instead they made it so you can get 1-2 burn stacks on explosion and get the rending and 15% damage PBB instead. It’s probably a bit undertuned because of the exponential nature of burn stacks and them not really doing much damage until 6, but I think the approach makes sense if the explosion-burn talent is later adjusted a bit. Or maybe 1-2 in practice already does work and I’m underestimating it, remains to be tested

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Sucks, because that was only use I gave it. I crunch everything else in melee

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You used PBB once or twice per mission only?

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I mean, yeah. When would I need it otherwise? If I ever pop it not to kill a boss is just for pleasure, not out of need.
Also, on auric and maelstrom there’s more that one or two bosses.
Doesn’t do anything to crushers, and you can easily kill specials, hordes and shooters without it. Plus there’s also other 3 people shooting at them, so they die even faster.
If a mass of carapace/ flak melee is coming to me, I just pull out the pickaxe and everything get staggered and dies quite fast, without spending ammo.

It would have been quite useful on havoc… if it wasn’t because of the stupid ammo restriction.

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What’s the time-to-kill (TTK) difference though? 32 vs 16+buffs?

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Hard to compare cause you’re waiting on the dots to tick down partially, but 100% for sure faster because there’s no way you get to above 16 stacks before killing any (non crusher non boss) enemy with the achlys right now. So if you can’t even get to 9 shots in on an achlys before the mob dies to the sub 16 burn stacks, getting those 16 stacks 4 shots in is going to be far faster. I don’t know how I’d actually test this though and I don’t want to do the math, but this logic seems sound to me at least.
In other words, worst case it’s still faster TTK on the achlys, best case you hit really good breakpoints on less fast weapons too. Stuff like a MK2 rippergun only stand to gain too because now you take half the shots to hit 16 stacks on the full cone at long range, but I guess actual TTK isn’t linear

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Using that logic you don’t really need it for bosses either, they die fast anyway and are barely a threat.
Using normal logic it stands to reason that it’s better at killing elites now and worse at killing bosses, and I know what I’m non stop fighting in Darktide and does the most damage to me, and it’s not bosses

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^ It was fun burninating bosses down, but realistically they were always the lesser threat in DT in normal games.

I’m still unsure where gunlugger fits in the grand scheme of things given every talent is a “vet version but (much) worse”, and other nodes like the topmost melee tuf replenishment got reduced, only to have them restored++ further down on the other tree; I don’t feel like that was needed.
It also seems targeted towards lugger, like having batter bleed way out on the left?
Are the new changes enough to boost ranged prowess to be more viable than before?
Or is going to be so far behind the vet overall that it has no real place in the game.

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I think the gunlugger changes in particular are mostly geared towards creating variety. You now get batter and more melee talents more easily, so you’re allowed to be a good melee class on your ranged build now too (just like every other ranged build on other classes). The fire stacks were reshuffled to allow more weapons than just the achlys and rippers to get mileage out of it, whereas previously you basically had to use the achlys/high aoe rippers because that was the only way you get anywhere with 2 stacks per hit. And obviously just a bit more damage% and DR. Explosive talents were added that may or may not be good, and support for melee-ranged hybrid with singleshot weps was also added to BLO, which I personally think is massive. Also, a lot of weapons got buffed to mesh with these additions.

Like, to drive the last 2 points in, I think you can reasonably make a grenadier gauntlet build now that just punches/melees stuff and does a free lucky bullet crit explode punch every so often. I think it’ll be tons of fun on aurics. I can even see this being kinda havoc viable, since Ogryn now gains a guaranteed free shot and the explosive punch is STRONG. No other class has anything like this. Obviously can also just run that with a kickback/rumbler and just enjoy getting to blast away for free whenever you melee anything.

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Bosses by themselves alone are not a threat, but hardly are alone in anything auric or maelstrom. Bosses have one purpose, which is to overwhelm players that are dealing with with other stuff, that’s were I melt the boss faster than anyone else, leaving room for the others to take care of small enemies. Funny enough, people say that bosses are not a threat but my experience is that teams tend to wipe in those circumstances, and that doesn’t happen when I melt the boss in a few seconds with my rippergun.

???.

Yeah? That’s how it will be, never said otherwise. I just don’t have much care about it.
You are telling me that I’m going to be very good at killing elites (not carapace) now… and I was already very good at that.

Yes, to YOU. Elites are not a big deal for me, and are going to be even easier with the buffs to melee weapons.

That’s the whole point of it. That being said, I don’t see myself using the rumbler or gauntlet unless the aoe sets the enemies on fire. Neither the kickback.

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I guess it does suck if you literally only needed PBB for bosses and don’t use it for elites. What can I say to that? If that’s how you use it it’s a straight nerf for you. I think you might very well be the only person who prioritizes like this and doesn’t use PBB elsewhere.

Not that I think your logic is sound. Elites and other small enemies aren’t a threat, but when a boss spawns the elites and other enemies kill you. Wouldn’t you benefit from killing the elites twice as easily with the new PBB? Apparently not because you don’t use PBB that way? I recognize your self imposed rule to not use PBB outside of bosses makes that true, but perhaps the self imposed rule is not really how you use the class properly and the class shouldn’t be balanced around it

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I’m sorry to inform you I’ve spent a good amount of time testing GG special and it currently cannot proc BLO at all. I kinda doubt the new talent fixes that unless there are unlisted changes to GG coming.

That’s personally the number 1 build I’d love to make, but between special not proccing BLO, and explosions generally not benefiting from ranged damage bonuses, it looks pretty dead on arrival frankly.

If you want explosion radius you need to take PBB too and literally the only parts that can affect the special punch are the +15% close range damage, the rending (barely does anything), and the reload speed I guess.

The way they’ve designed GG special so carefully to cuck you out of any potential synergies is almost as masterful as it is mean spirited.

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Damn that’s messed up

@Hank_jw please let em know they’re one small property change away from a really fun build being possible!!!

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Don’t forget this part too:

Equally messed up IMO. As you’d expect only the punch part gains melee damage bonuses. So the explosion part of the punch is pretty much unscaleable with your entire tree and blessings with the exception of PBB close range damage bonus.

Edit: well I guess any damage bonus you can get access to that isn’t typed as melee or range can benefit it, but anything consistent or synergistic with the gun part of the weapon is basically dead to you.

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My only self impossed rule is to avoid the team from being overwhelmed and wiped. This does the trick.

No, because if the game decides to keep spamming things and I have already used my skill, then what? It’s quite common to have wave after wave of elites, but uncommon to have one boss after another. The only boss you can not prioritize is the plague ogryn.

No proper way to use gunlugger, as it was it had one decent trick and that was it. No, the class shouldn’t be balanced around it, but you could have a talent tree with skills good for killing bosses and dealing with carapace, dealing with packs of elites, and maybe a talent that let’s you consume less ammo, so you can simply shoot more idk. All 3 excluyent, so you don’t miss anything, it’s balanced and has variety.

Now we will have mid boss dmg and great (maybe) elite killing, they just changed the weight to something else, which might not be balanced at all. If it’s really as good as you describe and ogryn wipes everything not carapace/ boss, that’s not balance neither. And the changes to hail of fire seem kinda bad so light em up is still going to be the only option, there goes variety too.

The more I think about this change, the less I understand it tbh. Because light em up can already kill elites quite fast even when not using the ripper or stubber, anything that doesn’t die to the fire (because of the slow rate of fire of, let’s say the kickback) will die anyway to direct dmg.

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Probably hit the boss with a melee weapon, it’s a sandbag. You already more or less acknowledged that bosses are not dangerous on their own

It’s a bit of a pointless argument because it assumes bosses are dangerous. I disagree, but you can also disagree. Just not reallly something I’m that interested in arguing, it’s like one of those things that are self evident to most people who play for a while.

In the end killing the bosses too fast just isn’t exactly good balance either so it’s probably good it’s getting reigned in.

Well if you can come up with any reason to use the gorg twin stubber, the achlys one does it better. This alleviates that by letting the gorg twin stubber get good mileage out of burn stacks just like the achlys did. It’s not a perfect solution and it’s not significant for every weapon, but it’s good.
Rending changing to 15% damage is also probably going to be good on quite a few of the slow, single shot weapons. The kickback could be the sole exception here, it’s one of the few weps in that category that don’t already have pretty solid armor pen.

Also as a side note, if you play gunlugger and enjoy shooting any enemies but bosses (most people do) this acts as a big big ammo efficiency buff. A common pain point for the class

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I’m literally explaining to you that the game continues to spam enemies. That’s the point.

Yup and because I have 2400hrs I know where teams tend to fail. People who have played for a while very well know that it shows a lot when a team doesn’t have a boss killer (of any class you want). So yeah, let’s just disagree on this.

Can’t.

Is that balance??? No. The weapon should not be balanced around using it only with that skill. And still… after these changes, I can’t come up with a reason to use it over the achlys.

I do enjoy to shoot at everything when the team is full of psykers/zealots, and I can get most of the ammo. That being said I wouldn’t make this trade, but it is what it is, I can only wait and hope for the best.

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It’s more balanced than before. Ogryn weapons shouldn’t be balanced around only being good with batter either, but their solution to this issue was just letting gunluggers get batter. It is what it is

Should be better boss damage and better crusher damage, along with punching through elites more with more stagger, better flak performance without PBB. After this, now that the Achlys isn’t one of the sole weps that reasonably attains 32 or otherwise relevant burn stacks fast and it got capped more reasonably, other weapons have their own actual inherent benefits matter again.

You mention gimmick design based on one talent and that’s literally what PBB light em up was before now. Not only are there now gunlugger builds that probably wont use light em up, but light em up is now good on more weapons. Improvement in every way