Or, alternative perspective, not unlike the classic RPG roles of tank, dps, healer, buffer, utility and so on, the psyker’s sort of designed to be a glass-cannon that fills the role of AOE dps. In that view it’s not actually meaningful to compare overall damage output by the different classes. The ogryn excels at tanking, killing bosses and enemy ogryns, and creating openings through walls of enemies to ress downed teammembers or create routes of escape. The vet excels at killing ranged elites and specialists at distance , and the zealot is something in between all three depending on the spec and weapons chosen.
Of course everyone have multiple specs that enhance or minimize all the different aspects, but that’s really where they each truly excel.
A view which is incorrect since it’s not how it works in Darktide, it’s not how it’s supposed to work in Darktide (based on dev streams) and it wouldn’t align with previous tide games where it, once again, wasn’t like that.
In tide games, just like the L4D series it’s based on you do not have specialists. Various characters and weapons have their pros and cons, but overall everyone is a generalist to a large extent.
There is a reason I play Darktide, and the fact that we don’t have specialists is a large part of it. I had all the reason to expect Darktide to provide such an experience and was not disappointed in that regard. You have no reason to expect Darktide to conform to the “classic RPG roles of blah blah blah” since Darktide is based on horde shooters - L4D especially - and not RPGs.
Thank you for your incorrect perspective, but please don’t push for Darktide to conform to it since that is not the premise on which the game was based.
So as I understand your point is that Electrokinetic Staff and Infernus Staff have tradeoffs when compared against ordinary ranged weapons and as such are not just clearly a superior choice but rather something that is compelling, but not entirely one-sided.
And you know, I would actually agree with all of this as a reasonable take. If they didn’t have infinite ammo and immense spammability on top of that.
I just have to note that I disagree. What I wrote appears to be factually what the different classes excel at. It becomes particularly noticeable in Havoc mode where people are likely to pick their strongest, most min-maxed specs. Which also basically proves that a team of cooperating specialists will typically outperform a team of generalists/hybrid classes.
While everyone can in principle perform all the different roles, each of the classes just are much better at doing one of those roles compared to the others.
Next time just edit your message to add another paragraph instead of posting a new one.
Different classes have things they do better or worse, but it’s not set in stone as you can build any class in a variety of ways (melee and ranged being the core choices you can go for regardless of the class). On top of that, even if you make eg. a ranged Ogryn, your melee will still be very strong and you’ll find yourself switching between the two - despite the clear focus of your build. That’s because the character build system in Darktide isn’t built around strict specialization and isn’t made to mimic RPG games, which is a blessing.
You don’t even have different roles in this game. Which is, again, a legacy of Darktide’s influences - chief of them being L4D. And it’s the better way of doing things, because strict specialization is anathema to the core formula of the tide games. Roles like “tank dps sniper aoe” don’t work and should not work here, otherwise you’d end up with the kind of gameplay that Berserker from Killing Floor 2 presents. Have you played it? Almost no one ever wants to go Berserker simply because of how boring it is.
Fatshark made a good decision by staying away from the strict class-role system. You want that kind of thing, go play MOBAs. I’m playing tides specifically because it’s not here and the gameplay is much more engaging when I get to switch what I do on the fly depending on the situation as opposed to “oh no a horde is here but i’m a sniper and not aoe so i’m useless against it, whatever shall i dooooo ;_;”.
And as for that…
Go argue the devs, then. I specifically told you that your view is incorrect as opposed to “I disagree” because there’s a mountain of evidence pointing to the contrary, including the intent of devs being to not pursue this “classic RPG roles” but rather having everyone do everything to a large extent as noted on their streams.
The Electro one is way under powered, to the point of being useless. The number of times I have been unable to take out the weakest of enemies, despite a fully charged burst (yes, even with stacked damage buffs, before you ask).
It’s a perma-stagger staff with aim assist. Aim assist isn’t always accurate firing into mixed hordes, but good luck getting a buff on Electrokinetic with secondary having perma-stagger and aim assist already.
I’ve tried suggesting it should lose the aim assist in exchange for more single target damage but nope, not a popular idea.
Have you tried a Scrier’s Gaze Electrokinetic build with Disrupt Destiny? Electro shines with a heavy focus on Crits. Really good against Specialists, Gunners, Ragers and Shotties. Best to use a Greatsword for Crushers, bosses and Maulers through overheads/stabs, because GS can also do solid work against hordes.
Yah I like Electro staff, so crunchy satisfying and it has the lower /faster peril generation making it much more spammable than voidblast or voidstrike… its everything smite should be short and impactful with less crowd stopping.
Psyker has more gameplay loops than other classes. It has one of the more interesting talents trees, talent, blessing and weapon interactions.
Also about “braindead spam” comment. They are certainly some monotonous and low effort psyker builds / weapons (purgatus staff comes to mind), but psyker gameplay can be one of the more action intensive. You can afford far less mistakes than other 3 classes, which can make it the most difficult class to play as a result, unless you running few specific builds.
I don’t think it matters what anyone said on a dev stream, what matter to actual player experience is what the game is actually like. In reality. Not in words. Not in the intentions, desires, fantasies, or halluscinations of it’s developers. In practice. How it genuinely functions when played.
From my own experiences in the game (for better or worse) it just seems that the game has moved more and more into these min-maxed niche roles for the different classes. Because that is where they each perform their best, and the strongest team compositions are the ones that exploit these roles to the fullest. Which is most typically seen at high level Havoc games. Ogryns excel as frontline tanks taunting and directing the flow of enemies, vets excel as specialist snipers, psykers excel at AOE damage and crowd control, and the zealot seems the most hybrid class of them all.
Yes everyone can in principle perform other roles, they’re usually just much less effective, and everyone has their one best spec.
If the developers want the game to be something else they’re remarkably poor at implementing their vision.
Maybe the top 0.001% of psykers on havoc 40. Nowhere else.
Strange, me and my friends are always close to the psyker in dmg. Seems to be an “everyone else” problem.
Also, fun fact, damage is not everything.
Oh no, It’s really not that hard to actually dominate as psyker. Venting shriek + Purgatus/Trauma/Surge can solo-frontline havoc and massively obliterate Auric maelstorm. Psykers can basically turn auric maelstrom into a single player video game due to how it obscene it is. I remember just hogging all the kills in all of my maelstrom runs this week by just spamming warp-flurry surge all the time that people complained.
Most people don’t realize how powerful psyker is because most pubs are simply too reliant on crutches like dome and smite to actually see how overpowered it is. I have a feeling as the playerbase grows and becomes less reliant on defensive tools rather than offensive, It’ll be come very, very apparent that the blue-dueling swords needs a change. It’s frankly even worse than BW’s pre-nerf Famished flames.
Grows in skill, I mean. Vermintide had the sameof people just never playing the witch since she was a sort of an enigma during the first few years of of that game, but once people actually picked up on how powerful she was people started complaining.
It OP-ness always there but no one utilized it, either from the knowledge gap or learning curve to actually achieve it is rather high that most people just kept playing the more orthodox careers. The few times you actually do see a BW in campaign during my times, they tend to absolutely obliterate everything so it’s glaringly obvious that she was poweful. Psyker is capable of doing the same thing, but most people whom I found to play pskyer tend to uitilize psyker as a crutch to mitigate/avoid normal gameplay conventions rather than proper utilize the proper force of nature that it is; so people get the false impression that psyker isn’t OP.
There’s too many bubble-smykers in pubs, not enough blue-dueling sword (purgatus) shrierks in my games. Even in armored scab maelstroms where there’s virtually no gunners, people still bring dome because that’s how they always done it and can’t live without it. that makes me very sad.
Sounds like 100% skill issue and not understanding roles in a match.
If someone complains for “losing kills”, they maybe should think about what they can and have to do with their weapons and talents.
