The adjusted tree layout feels WAY less restrictive.
I’m still constructing new builds and I’m not ready to give a final verdict yet, but my feeling at this early stage is that this change will alleviate most of my own complaints about the vet tree.
13 Likes
Yeah, the changes have given most of my builds anywhere from 1 to 2 points of extra leeway. It also gave me the chance to try some set ups I wasn’t able to go for before. A welcome change of pace.
3 Likes
Yay fatshark actually listened to the community for a balance change
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It is definitely an improvement, though I would very much prefer the grenades to have a ‘pinch’ afterwards (like you do just before) so if you want shrapnel grenades and the to down the right, you don’t have to pay such an aggressive ‘tax’ and vice-versa.
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Tree is 
now. No issues with it. Can’t pick up absolutely everything like some salty bois are saying, but we have way more actual choices we can make.
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My guy, the fact that vet can so freely choose his blitz already makes him the best in that case, because no other class can do so.
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I dig it. It gave my shotgun build the ability to take the 30% weakspot damage which is all it was lacking before. So now it’s tied together nicely and very strong
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Big improvement. Would be better if we took out a bunch of the absolutely awful talents, or merged some together.
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I think vet tree is considerably better now with how flexible it is and feels really good to use. But if we’re all being honest the keystones are still outclassed by single nodes. All the update did for keystones is make them less painful to take they don’t influence build choices as much as other class keystones.
Anytime I’m taking them I find it very rare that they make that big of a difference as opposed to just picking up another node further up the tree
No tricky choices to make anymore can just swipe everything , put together a weakspot+rend+grenade+class skill+keystone focused build and all the middle tree to, its pretty good , dont even need the kraks for the crushers can just rend through the face plate
Still not taking the keystones.
8 Likes
Its definitely good now. Could always be better with slight tweaks, same goes for the other classes as well, but I’m happy enough that I can pick keystone or keystoneless playstyle and pretty much get the nodes that I want now.
The structure of the tree is more or less fine now. The actual abilities themselves were not changed in this patch, and some of them are nonsensical.
Volley Fire is still hysterically weak for a pure DPS combat ability, Marksman (20% headshot power) not extending with it is totally absurd, not being able to have both ogryns and shooters highlighted is asinine (this should really just be a single node, it being two in the first place is silly), and Exhilarating Takedown is the highest effort for the least amount of toughness mitigation it the game. The least this should be to not be a slap in the face is 3 stacks of 15% lasting for 12 seconds. Alternatively, the old up time can remain, but if it expires, it should just go down a level, not totally reset. Remeber, Zealot gets a minimum of 50% toughness damage reduction from all sources for free for the entire run. 45% from just ranged with a much harder condition is not even a little broken.
4 Likes
The new tree works much better, and is a huge improvement. The extra 3p-5pts to use for builds makes all the difference.
The Keystones however…I’m still not running a Keystone on most of my builds, which is practically unthinkable on any other class.
There are two reasons for this. First and foremost, important talent nodes remain spread all over the tree. If I want both ammo and functional rending/brittleness on an Autogun or Recon Lasgun, I need to invest into all 3 trees. Second, the Veteran Keystones still have a much higher skill floor than the keystones of other classes that I play and often don’t mesh with many weapons. With a Plasma Gun, none of the Keystones really synergize fantastically, and there’s more utility picking up resiliency and grenade nodes.
With Empowered Psionics, this can proc off any kill (and autoproc on any Elite kill) and will hold stacks until I choose to use them. With Warp Siphon I can do literally nothing and my teammates can generate warp charges for me and then those stacks sit around for 25s sequentially and just passively add bonuses to everything I do. Blazing Piety again just requires 25 things nearby to die, regardless if I kill them or not, and then just makes any action I take dramatically killier. FNP and BLO are just “always-on”, don’t need to do anything to activate or trigger them.
Marsman’s focus requires me (alone, no teammate help) to make specifically weakspot kills, and then applies a bonus for specifically only for weakspot/crit hits (finesse damage), and loses stacks if I move. Focus target wants me to ping basically everything I shoot at, and Weapon Specialist wants me to micromanage swapping weapons in an inorganic way for a very short duration damage buff. The power levels aren’t the problem, it’s that they require so much more to get use out of than other Keystones or are just more situational.
3 Likes
Honestly yeah, keystones are just not worth taking right now. Exe stance is also very weak, I’m hoping they can change those, but I don’t think there will be any more big changes to veteran this year.
Honestly I’m inclined to disagree, though I agree that it may struggle in generalist builds. Otherwise, if you build around it and your weapon of choice it’s pretty competitive. The vet tree structure currently is set up so yo can build around one of your two weapons or team support utility. This is fine IMO, and with the economy changes you now have leeway to either give generalist builds some extra oomph to be competitive relative to minmaxed ones.
The only real issue for pure Exe’s/MF builds is the current ranged precision weapon weakspot hit rate and skillfloor paradigm IMO (nvm latency hitreg f@ckery). Centering headshots as a primary source of dmg on precision weapons is only viable in hipster/offmeta or minmaxed meme-ish builds. I’m personally fine with this, but you’re essentially locking most of the playerbase out of like a third of the tree if they’re running anything that isn’t a revolver, plasma, bolter, or C5 IAG. Especially now with massed elites being the main threat source (pyromaniac shenanigans aside). All that extra armor and health really forces anything that isn’t a minmaxed vraks7 to work overtime to keep up. It’s why anyone interested in playing under the marksman archetype are just setting up defensive/utility VoC builds, and just running and minmaxing whatever the current overtuned flavor of the week is (or bolters) instead of trying out some of the current sleeper hits like the V3/7 and K1a or A1 IAG (K12, lol, lmao even). In my runs these days all I see are revolvers, C5s, Plasmas, and maybe a bolter in 1 out of every 10 runs.
The closest thing to a real weak pick for vet atm are Helbore builds. Their breakpoints on elites are not where they need to be for what essentially are high-powered bolt action rifles with irosights. The H3 is the closest to being there but requires you have one with 78-78-78+ DMG-StpPwr-Stab plus a minmaxed tree with the bare minimum of defensive picks and no grenades to make it work. You only run the H1 if you want a bayonet build, you can murder anything but bosses and ogryns with it with 1 to 2 jabs. The ranged damage is serviceable, but mediocre, if you want a Helbore for a ranged build you just take a god roll H3. The H2 needs more stagger at a minimum, or an outright rework at best. It’s just a K4 lasgun with way worse RoF, but better recoil control.
Defensive picks are accessible enough now that you can basically stack Iron Will + Confirmed Kill + Disciplined + Exhilirating Takedown + Relentless as universal core picks. Then still have room for either Demo Team or grenade regen without losing all that much DPS, and even still having room to minmax some ranged or melee weapons. I wouldn’t be amazed if some of these get shuffled or nerfed down the line, and I’m preemptively getting ready to be pissed off about it too.
2 Likes
I’ll take Focus Target! for its use on nasty targets like Ogryns and Monstrocities on my squad support build, otherwise I’ve passed on them for both my ranged and close-quarters builds. They just do not bring quite enough to the table for me to spend the points on them, not when there are better places to put the points with the greater degree of flexibility the tree now gives.
Generally, I’m happy with the updated tree and feel much more comfortable creating builds, something I did not feel before the update.
+25% ranged damage is hilariously bad considering Zealot gets this as an always-active passive node high up in the tree, and it works at most of the ranges that actually occur regularly in real gameplay.
The +25% weakspot value on Volley Fire, like all weakspot modifiers, is a bucket value, so on most weapons this is a low single digit percent increase. The weakspot increase should be, at an absolute minimum, 100%. There is an argument to be made that it should actually be a lot more than this.
I run Volley Fire. It’s not great. All the other DPS ults eat Volley Fire for breakfast. It’s hilarious. And it’s especially terrible for precision builds because Marksman doesn’t extend with it, and it’s also too low of a value. Why was this nerfed from 50% down to 20%? It makes no sense.
2 Likes
Which is enough for breakpoints on most automatics, especially if you stack MF, it’s why everyone and their grannies are rocking a C5 these days. Also why FS does infuriating and random seeming proc conditioning f@kery on these like the sustained fire blessing only proccing on the 3rd and 4th shots. Or all the x on kill conditions (also inanely infuriating, at least to me).
The problem isn’t the weakspot damge, it’s the recoil pattern and enemy animation design conspiring to make sure not even the sweatiest, and dankest of tryhards can go above 15% weakspot hit rate on average. Emphasis on the word AVERAGE. Theoretically you can do god emperor tier dmg with weakspot centric builds, good luck with making actually making it happen if you’re the average player or even slightly above average though, especially if you’re like me and don’t have Swedish fiber. Even then, these have good enough breakpoints that it can work if you get sweaty enough for it. Problem is that relative to the current hotness, it’s not enough. By the time me with my IAG or HH and Exe + MF have nuked 2 grenadiers, a sniper, and a mutant, the guy at or above my skill level running a plasma or revolver has killed 2 times that, the horde, the horde that hasn’t spawned yet, multiple elites, and singed the AI director’s pinky finger. I exaggerate, but I’m sure you get the point. The catch is that just nerfing those, and/or bringing up the others likely won’t fix the issue.
In utility? Sure, DMG, not really? Unless you’re stacking all three Ult DMG modifiers and going for burst dmg. Which you can also do for executioner’s anyways. Uptime with precision weapons can be nigh infinite if you run counterfire too (same, and easier with automatics though).
Issue here is the skill expression dynamic, not the numbers on the talent(s) in question.
I’m well above 15% average weakspot rates on guns with any kind of accuracy, and I’d say I’m at or even a little above that with guns that have horrendous random spread like the Heavy Braced, and I’m telling you, 25% extra weakspot damage on Volley Fire is practically useless on most guns. It fails to hit vital breakpoints even on weapons like the medium infantry las. Back when Marksman was 50%, it did allow for more consistent one-shot headshots, but again, this has to extend with Volley Fire to be of any real use.
Fatshark has a fear of really rewarding ranged skill with any kind of notable increase in damage output. The game is much closer to having an inverted skill-required to weapon proficiency ratio than a 1:1 ratio. The best guns in the game are practically braindead. The Kickback needs to serve some jail time for its crimes against humanity.
Some of my recent Heavy Braced gameplay. I’d say my going average these days is at least 15%.
Light infantry would be closer to 30. Infantry las is like 35-50, it has a wide range. Revolver would be 50%+.
The heavy shift I’ve made favoring Zealot over Veteran is also not a coincidence. It’s just a better class in most scenarios. If I wanted to get the most out of Veteran, I either have to run a boring plasma gun, or sweat the entire lower half of my body off with the medium infantry las and get demolished in damage taken more often that not in the process. Zealot, like all the other classes, is a better shooter than Vet in the situations the game actually throws at the player. Vet is only better synthetically while shooting at targets in the training room, and even then, it misses some weird ass breakpoints that it has no business missing.
Here’s a list of enemies that can survive a close range medium las (80, 80 roll, +25% flak, +20 maniacs) headshot in Volley Fire with 15 stacks of Marksman Focus when the 10 seconds of Marksman is up that we all know shouldn’t be able to.
Pox Hound, Tox Flamer, Scab Flamer, Rager, Scab Rager.
The weakspot bonuses are underwhelming.
3 Likes