Its a head scratcher maybe melee weakspot kills just maintaining stacks (not gaining) would be enough for the versatile combat of DT.
Ah missed it mentioned, same basic idea though, not exciting change but it would make keystone more attractive and usable.
Caveat: I’m not a vet main and its my least favorite and least played class by a decent margin.
There is no denying the penance sucks hardcore and it made me hate the keystone initially.
But i’ve learned to prefer it over focus target by just not focusing on the movement penalties. Just let the stacks build and fall naturally as you play and enjoy the bonus it gives.
Sure this probably keeps you from numbermaxxing your breakpoints, but its far less irritating and I find it more engaging and rewarding than the power of the ping (outside of high level/support play).
Maybe if MF had some kind of threat reduction, to lower the chance of being the subject of a enemies attention.
Just a small amount, a tiny % linked amount of stacks you have.
Or what if
The stacks didn’t fall off with movement at all?
The stacks on the other keystones don’t have such strict standards. The stacks that fall off on Zealot’s Fury of the Faithful only fall off if no one around you is killing anything, and that is way more impactful and powerful.
I’ve seen in this thread that the stacks aren’t even that powerful. Put an internal cooldown on getting stacks, like 0.5-1 second so that spray fire into crowds is not efficient. Then just give each stack a timer, no attachment to movement.
In my experience going fully for the left side of the tree has been the greatest skill issue challenge
I still been trying to master the Executioner Stance using either MF or Focus Target Branches to get that sweet unlimited full auto bolter madness
(Need build help!)
Yeah, I think the keystone is a classic issue of ‘idea verses perceived fantasy’, if it was called something like ‘Dialed In’ and it and Focus Target swapped places, I feel there wouldn’t be as much outcry for it, as the point would be ‘spam shots to dial in your aim against your foes, stop shooting/swap off to unfocus and then ‘dial back in’ again’.
But right now it’s in the ‘precision shot’ side of the tree, but encourages just throwing ammo down range vaguely pointing at enemies heads to see a bonus, I don’t think that’s how it ever should work tbh, even if right now it is forgiving so long as you’re just continually shooting your weapon, but like, it shouldn’t punish you for engaging in the other half of the equation/swapping to your melee weapon.
To that end, I’ve always felt the ‘missing weak spot hits loses stacks’ is a good enough stack loss tool that also wouldn’t really cause the keystone to be broken. Both Weapon Specialist and Focus Target are up 100% of the time regardless of skill, why not allow the ‘skill keystone’ to allow you to actually flex said skill by also keeping it up 100% of the time so long as you’re good at aiming? It’s already locked to a RANGE Finesse bonus, so why not let the stacks just not decay unless you’re missing ranged weakspot hits?
Then just have the stack decay determined by weapon fire rate, 1 stack per miss on fast fire weapons, 2 stacks on medium, 3 stacks on slow fire weapon. Encourage actually pausing and ‘taking aim’ instead of just spamming down range, while also allowing you to hold onto your stacks indefinitely when you swap to melee to deal with close range threats. You now have a proper gameplay loop of stopping to hard aim down range, keeping up your focus with headshot kills, and then swapping back when you’re done/enemies get to you and still keeping your focus up for when the next target comes in to vision to head shot, instead of just needing to hold your ranged weapons trigger down or else you don’t have a keystone. Can even keep the choice between ‘higher top end’ and ‘forgiving floor’ with Camo verses Assassin, and now even if you’re not confident in your aim you can still slide into a crouch with that Helbore and fire off a few high powered shots before missing a few and heading back in to melee.
Just feels infinitely more like the fantasy to me, verses ‘a guy that just holds down the trigger on recon lasgun/heavy laspistol regardless of situation’, and doesn’t feel that broken as you still have to always be headshotting to see any actual damage increase from the keystone itself. Still wont ever see it in pubs as most normal people aren’t perfectly accurate, but lets the sweats ‘flex’ with high damage at the cost of survivability (since you need to go all the way down the left tree). Makes sense to me.
I run this personally, and it feels really good to me. Main thing to keep in mind is that Executioners buffs Shredder grenade damage (since it no longer turns off when you swap weapons anymore), so you can use it to keep it active by chucking a bleed nad into a crowd then gunning down everything else. Rest is detailed in the build itself, but yeah, ‘of all the builds, this has felt the best with Executioners + Boltgun to me’. (you can drop the right side for more ammo and superiority complex + Marksman, but I’m to addicted to the forgiveness of max toughness, and given Catch a Breath’s percentage based goodness, more toughness = less of a percentage that is needed to regenerate after a hit, which helps a LOT when you don’t have a ‘instantly full toughness’ button).
It was a talent conceived and implemented before the game was in its current state for sure. It feels like a remnant from not long after release or beta, where enemy density was much lower, and it made sense to stand still for long periods of time.
MMF has 99 problems but this ain’t one.
If you consistently click heads the movement grace period is forgiving. It’s everything else about the keystone that needs tweaks.
I think the problem is more that the other two keystones provide as good if not better ranged damage potential while also buffing all other damage (including melee) to either the elite/special or whenever you quick-swap weapons respectively without the risks of missing/turreting.
That whole keystone is rather meh. I ran it for a while with crit bolter, helbore and Agri shotgun, but there better options out there. I wonder how well it works with IAGs and and VAGs. Sadly marksman vet doesn’t work that well in high intensity game modes. You are constantly surrounded and at risk of getting backstabbed.
The problem is that it only benefits you while Focus Target bossts the whole team’s damage thus making tougher targets like bosses die way quicker.
While we do have precision weapons like the revolver or hellbore they are rather niche and they already 1-2 tap any non boss enemy without the stacks. Also building stacks passively should be a default thing, the node should give it a treshold we can’t go under.
i love it, its my fave and actually only vet build i play. i don’t think it punishes you for moving, i think it encourages an aggressive shoot and move play style, it just feels right to me. personal taste and all, i’d be sad to see it changed.
In and of itself, this too is an issue, if the keystone that’s supposed to be all about taking considered, precise headshots is best when aggressively pushing forward with automatic fire at close ranges, while the weapons that are most effective/reliant on well placed headshots at range do better with another keystone (or none at all), something is probably wrong with the fundamental keystone concept.
Is it really doesn’t work well with precise weapon or is it just because automatic fire is way easier to gain stack with for average player though?
Tbh I find the problem is more about how most precise weapons(Headhunter, Helbore, Lasgun) that could benefit from the keystone are pretty far behind the meta even the huge finesse buff doesn’t bring them up to par to that of Revolver or Plasma.
Also the shitty hit register problem on these weapon doesn’t help while Revolver, Plasma and Bolt Pistol/Bolter get to have huge headshot aim assist.
I agree these weapons also have a host of other issues (the Helbore having an absurdly long equip time, bad sights, and a useless primary fire also don’t help things), but MF as it stands feels like it was implemented and conceptualized in a way that just doesn’t support what it’s really intending to do.
Part of the problem is that a huge finesse buff isn’t really what these weapons need. A crit headshot with a Helbore will insta-kill most enemies, and nearly everything with even a relatively small finesse buff. Meanwhile a burst-firing autogun getting a huge finesse bonus on high volume fire is enjoying a lot more of that damage actually going into the target instead of being wasted on overkill.
For the Helbore type weapons, the issue with Marksman’s Focus is more that they’re pretty garbage unless they’re getting those sweet headshots, and they don’t so much need a tremendous amount of help when they’re landing those sweet headshots. I think if the functionality were reversed in a sense, that the concept would function better. If landing headshots granted damage bonuses to following shots (wherever they hit) that may make torso or limb shots more effective, we’d see better functionality. If probably wouldn’t be worth it for the burst-fire weapons to try and milk headshots in quite the same way but would allow for these slower weapons to more quickly and reactively engage follow up targets after a good shot that may allow a less well placed but faster taken shot to be effective, while still rewarding landing good hits. I don’t think the movement component would be necessary to retain either, either time the stacks or rework it to not be a stack functionality and just apply to the next shot.
If it really wanted to be a precision weapon could add building damage buff while aiming down sight like crit blessing… but think they wanted keystones to be able to work for all range weapon types… this wouldn’t really hurt rapid fire weapons but add to slow shooters more.
source?
i find it works well with most guns even the single shot lasguns and headhunter variants, you dont need to be shooting the close targets just because your upfront usually you have exe stance up as one kill in 5 seconds is pretty trivial to maintain during fights thats illuminating all the ranged enemies for you , all the sway reduction an accuracy boosts with the suppression immunity and huge regen popping heads.
its perfectly possible to just stand in the open behind your melee guys slaughtering any ranged enemy at the back, just because you’re aggressive and mobile doesn’t mean you have to shoot the guys the melee characters have handled.
is it a little redundant? maybe there is an excess of damage , and maybe some people wanted a boss killing sniper build on that keystone which is fair enough.
not wanting to be harsh but it sounds more like the problem comes from you expecting it to be something else.
With Marksman’s Focus, the basic functionality means automatic weapons firing at close range are going to have both an easier time generating stacks, and get functionally more out of the bonus damage that isn’t being wasted on overkill. With slower long range weapons, often those huge finesse bonuses are just absolutely wasted when you’re already one shotting many opponents on a headshot anyway, especially if you’re using Exe stance and have that up.
Meanwhile, someone using an Autogun can skip Exe stance and go for Shout and be much more resilient while both getting more value out of MF stacks and having an easier time generating those stacks to begin with.
The basic concept of the ability results in short range automatic weapons getting a lot more actual value out of the ability than the seemingly intended weapons like Headhunters and Helbores. For many of those long range high damage weapons, even when MF does help and isn’t just wasted overkill, often you don’t need tons of extra crit damage for that important breakpoint, and something like Focus Target would have been just as useful in turning that two-shot into a one-shot, and that’s what I tend to run when I’m playing a long-range precision build instead of MF.
