New vet tree feels considerably more flexible

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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In a vacuum, yeah, sure? Holistically as part of a build? Not really, and if I wanted to be a disingenuous prick I’d just respond with “bro git gud a buildcrafting” #skillisue, lmao" in the most obnoxious voice possible if this was an in-person conversation, because statements like these give me the impression that you haven’t bothered with pushing and exploring possibilities with the talent tree. It’s true that touching the skill ceiling with precision weapons is harder than other stuff, of course. But by the numbers, they can perform at the same level you just have to go to some ridiculous lengths to get those numbers. Hence my argument. Some weapons do still struggle to find reasonable breakpoints outright since P13 regardless of build set up though, I can agree to that much, with the K12 and Graia IAG being some of the worst offenders.

Also, and this is speculation tbf,as I’ve tested things over time I’ve noticed there’s some weird DPS limiter type shenanigans going on that can make automatics, burst fire, and rapid fired single shot weapons feel real funky even in the meatgrinder. This from what I’ve noticed noticeably f@cks with your dmg output if you regularly use automatic fire instead of single shots and controlled bursts. It literally can often feel like random shots are just disappearing and not registering, again, even in the meatgrinder. Maybe shots fired don’t match firing SFX and animations? IDK tbh.

But I’ve noticed it often enough to have some suspicions, because it seems to only consistently happen when I mag dump, even at point blank “it’s-impossible-to-miss-at, wtf” ranges. If you want to test this out yourself grab a Vraks3 and take it to the meatgrinder, and slap MF on. You’ll sometimes see all your shots hit, the damage will sometimes even register, but stacks won’t build, or only one will build even if the entire set hits. I’m not autistic enough to be scientific about it though, so this will likely remain in the realm of speculation, at least for me.

Part of me wants to agree tbh, but I’m more inclined to chalk this up to inexpperience with FPS weapon design rather than any sot of malice. Seeing as their previous effort here was on 1st person melee combat, they’re probably applying this to their ranged weapon design, and seasoning it with a touch of the usual Fat Shark Jank ™. Though if intentional it could also just be that they’re just afraid of making melee combat unviable if, say for example, the AG1 handled like an actual FAL and/or the Graia like a M4A1. If weapons worked like this IRL we’d still be fighting and competing with Bows and melee weapons, with firearms only being used by SF and super athletes lol. Although following this example to its logical conclusion, ie IRL we don’t generally use melee weapons outside of certain niches anymore, it’s undersatanble that they’d make the choice, they want to emphasize the hybrid nature of the system. The only way I’d see things working with better firearm skill payoff is if they leaned into the survival horror direction and limited ammo, and made enemies more dangerous. I like the sound of that, but people here for the -tide part of the game might not, so idk.

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I’ve got like a thousand hours in the game, I’ve used basically every major build out there, and I tend to use Volley Fire a lot because it matches my playstyle. It’s not a good combat ability. It was nerfed into the ground.

And like, every time I post scoreboards, this community’s response is that everyone I play with is garbage, up to and including +1000 people. I’m well beyond average even among Auric exclusive players.

The DPS you gain from taking Volley Fire compared to other abilities and especially classes, is pathetic.

Top tier precision Veteran gameplay will still easily be outdone by a halfway decent Ogryn using a Kickback. If Volley Fire is supposed to be a pure aggression, DPS focused ability as suggested by the removal of all of its toughness mitigation, the damage nerf to it was unwarranted, especially if it didn’t gain anything like a big buff to weakspot damage to help compensate the loss of primary damage.

Marksman’s Focus stacks don’t make up the difference to the nerf to Volley Fire because keystones aren’t Veteran exclusive. Zealot gets a free 25% crit rate game long that makes him next to invulnerable for the entire match in addition to extra DPS. If Marksman’s Focus in conjunction with Volley Fire caused all of Vet’s weapons to hit all of the important breakpoints and these breakpoints weren’t hit without Volley Fire, a case could be made that the class as a whole didn’t have its precision DP nerfed, but this isn’t the case.

And like we both agree, precision builds are simply more difficult to run than other builds. They shouldn’t be just on par with other DPS builds, they should be superior to other builds if those other builds are much easier to play.

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Ok? Use your numbers as the top percentile average. Whatever our skill levels or individual weakspot hitrates are at are irrelevant to the matter in question by themselves. Look at the general hit rate, note the average, then look at the average for vets that managed to outperform you. Ideally we’d also track what weapon and build is being used by whom. But last I checked neither of us have a backdoor to whatever server FS uses to track player data and stats to see those numbers, and I’m too lazy to start writing down what peeps are packing in the lobby so . . . * shrug *

I also play regularly with it, you can still have reasonable breakpoints unless you’re trying it on Helbores or the K12.

Some weapons can only meet certain breakpoints on MF + Exe’s builds from what I’ve noticed, though the range of DPS is dangerously close to equal across the board depending on what weapon breakpoint sets you compare. It’s why the UX for Exe’s can feel so ass on some weapons while at the same time you can blast the Doom 2016 OST while running Mf+Exe’s+C5 IAG and carry a run.

This is just the usual dark design f@ckery intended to make things feel like we actually have choices and build diversity without wrecking whatever balance goal they’ve got on a board somewhere in the studio. The actual numbers are irrelevant as long as they fit well enough for us to not break out of the pen they’ve set up (revolver and plasma say: lol, lmao even).

On veteran that talent is called Deadshot, and it isn’t even a keystone. It’s why MF was set up to be so meh.

What are you even arguing against here? So I repeat myself, IN A VACUUM OFC. Weakspot dmg sucks, but even pure MF + Exe’s builds have access to other sources of dmg beside weakspot dmg. It’s why you’re going to miss breakpoints by somehow not running DEADSHOT and MARKSMAN on a pure MF + Exe build. It’s why those “single digit” dmg bonuses you get from exe’s 25% can be critical to get access to some breakpoints on some weapons.

Yeah? I never contended this? My argument simply was that you’re missing the forest for the trees here by focusing on the numbers. DMG and skill ceiling-wise those will always be whatever FS wants them to be. The question here is how does the UX pan out as we work towards that limit. When it comes to the logic flow of it, numbers don’t matter if all the equations lead to the same place. What matters is how many different formulas we’re allowed to access to get there, and how rewarding the process of using those are. The UX. How hard, how easy? Does it feel rewarding?

The current paradigm, prioritizes crit and flat dmg, de-emphasizes weakspot. Probably to simplify interactions with stuff like power and rending. At the trade-off of making ranged precision play less rewarding, and I agree that it’s likely due to bias. Probably as a faustian bargain of sorts to enable a lower skill floor? Even if they take the brute force approach and just change the number to something that makes the ability in question feel rewarding that means they’ll just have to nerf something else or revise the maximums across the board. It’s more productive to focus on other ways to alter this rather than just straight up ask them to do a P13 tier rework.

So you just kept restating your point no matter how much I tried tp explain this lol. Not trying to be condescending or disingenuous, am I failing that hard to get my point across?

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I can post some other weapons if you want to see the rates, if you don’t trust what I stated. I can post some videos too at some point.

Deadshot is horrible and should be removed from the game. It encourages being bad at the game. Anything that artificially makes me not shoot at targets I know I can hit is crap. Unfortunately Surgical falls into this camp even though this blessing is objectively good. It promotes bad gameplay. Deadshot promotes bad gameplay and is also bad on the overwhelming vast majority of weapons.

A Veteran hasn’t outperformed my Zealot since the first week I played this game, I’m not exaggerating. The closest one has come in recent memory would be very skilled players using the plasma gun, but even they can’t manage it.

Unless you mean just the weakspot rate, and in those runs I posted, the Vets were using light and heavy infantry, in one run a Zealot was using a revolver. A 19% weakspot rate on a Heavy Braced is lightyears ahead of low 20s with the light infantry and low 30s on a revolver. These aren’t even remotely comparable.

This is a little old, but this is the most recent revolver Zealot run I can post without launching the game:

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You’re missing my point. . . We don’t even disagree on the premise relating to this.

You don’t really need to micro those to that extent, no wonder they feel bad to you. If you play naturally it doesn’t affect you in any excessively negative way unless you’re trying to fit it into an offensive melee build or an aggressive “real men only move by sliding towards the enemy”-type of build. And even on the later its actually workable if you run it with Duck and Dive or a WS + Invigorated build. Just because you don’t like it or can’t make it work for your needs doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Deadshot benefits you in these ways:

  • Core pick in crit builds, I will die on this hill
  • Allows you to more consistently proc Hand Cannon and other crit based blessings without relying on surgical or stacking opening salvo with reloads, eg saves you 3 to 5 points in some set ups.
  • Burst DMG on low RoF weapons in non MF builds.
  • Gives you access to consistent DMG while opening anywhere from 2 to 4 points for other picks in some builds.
  • It helps MF builds achieve consistent headshots, especially if burst firing automatics (sway control).
  • Keeps your crit rate close to or above 50% while you ramp up surgical, by the time it fades surgical should’ve long already reached 100%.
  • It works with MF to guarantee that your initial bursts result in one or multiple kills so you can then lean on the finesse bonuses once your stam bar is dry.
  • In short range fire frenzy builds it helps you bridge the gap between your initial kill and follow-on stacks. IE it improves your ammo to kill efficiency without needing to stack both reload talents or run WS and its reload nodes. You can further improve your kill efficiency here too if you just go for all options.
  • Mechanically it teaches you to switch in and out of ADS for target acquisition which helps you with situational awareness. You can take further advantage of this by stacking both 0.25 regen nodes so you gain anywhere between 10 to 30% persistent stam between targets. These two also pretty much nullify the melee vulnerability that comes from DS allowing you to get the best of both worlds.

There problably more stuff but there are some of the big benefits off the top of my head, DS is incredibly valuable, easily worth 2 to 3 points, unironically.

I’m just talking on a vet to vet basis here, geez. We’re talking about vet. It’s well established other classes have an easier time outperforming vet, this isn’t in contention.

Honestly starting to feel like I’m talking to a wall here. . .

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We agree that Vet has trouble keeping up with other classes, but what we don’t seem to agree on is how severe a problem it is, and more importantly how intentional a problem it is. The left side of Veteran’s tree is incredibly DPS focused, and mostly weakspot focused. This is the utmost effort for the smallest reward in the game. Marksman’s Focus alleviated this a little, but it alleviated it more with rapid fire weapons than precision, which is just bizarre.

If deadshot kept working at 0% stamina and didn’t cause massive sway at that level, I’d agree that it’s very strong. Limiting a good player’s firerate is absurdly bad game design. There is nothing else like this in the game. The Zealot doesn’t have a node that buffs melee attacks while they’re heavy charging in exchange for stamina, and then makes those heavy attacks suck ass at 0%. It’s really only Veteran that gets this level of monkey paw nonsense, and it’s because FS hates shooters.

It’s not one or two things that make precision builds in Darktide underwhelming. It’s virtually every aspect of Fatshark’s game design at every level. I’m nearly convinced the only reason Darktide has most of the weapons it does is because of the 40k setting. If FS had their way, they probably wouldn’t be there.

The only exception to this was that brief period of time where the revolver was good, and by good, I mean mid tier. People were really exaggerating how good the thing was. It was almost always a reduction in DPS compared to weapons like the light infantry and heavy braced. It got its Carapace damage nerfed, and while I haven’t tested it yet, if it’s missing a bunch of breakpoints on Crushers and Maulers, the thing lost its niche and is back to being subpar again.

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27

deadshot is good but the stability it gives is kind of useless for rapid fire weapons, mainly the recon las guns, and i would honestly prefer a solution where i consume less stamina and don’t get the stability

maybe the perk can, consume 0.75 stamina while your not shooting and consume 0.25% stamina per shot
so if your shooting you only get the per shot penalty for rapid fire guns
but when your using a slow single shot gun, you get more of the aim down sight penalty or something like that

even this has its issues because weapons like the infantry lasguns can benefit from both stability and crit probably

i have to take allot of stamina curious and weapon specialist perks then switch to melee to get stamina and back to range to keep my stamina up, with a MK VIIa recon las gun, the slowest firing one, it is a viable strategy as the weaponry can shoot fast enough to deal with hoards, but it is not shooting so fast that your stamina bar gets instantly trashed
MK II recon does almost half damage consumes half ammo per shot and fires faster, which is not ideal for the setup etc
MK IV infantry, has good damage and ammo consumption BUT it shoots slightly too slow to deal with hoards, if veteran had a shooty shooty speed buff on his ability, i would take that and just pop ability during hoards

needless to say, dead shot works better with slower firing weapons
but if your goal is to save ammo and use your gun more often, you need a faster firing gun for hoards, finding the right balance between the 2 is hard

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I feel like completely ignoring Exe’s non damage bonuses makes for a pretty poor evaluation of its value. The recoil and spread reduction is a night and day difference for the effective range as well as consistency of a lot of guns. I hope I don’t need to explain the tactical impact of wall hacks, especially if plasma is involved. It also has amongst the highest uptime of any ability.

I’m not saying it couldn’t be bumped up but your comments honestly come off as you trying your hardest to paint it in the least favourable light possible.

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It’s the most nerfed ability in the game, and it was nerfed in offense and defense. If we agree the defensive nerf was needed to allow other vet combat abilities to shine, we should be able to agree that the massive offensive nerf was then completely overboard. If it is an offensive ability, why nerf it so severely?

It’s because the skill tree playtesters were all a bunch of V2 vets that recoil in terror at the thought of playing Doom. You know I’m right.

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DS doesn’t need 100% uptime, that would be gamebreakingly strong. Ya’ll really underestimate how good it is.

FS artificially pushes up the skill floor for ranged combat because it is objectively stronger than melee combat. There’s a reason they want people to treat melee weapons as their primary, it partly comes from bias too, I agree with that much, but it is a valid consideration anyways. Make ranged too strong and you’re basically forcing them to rework the game from the ground up. The issue can be alleviated, by no means I’m trying to imply that things are fine as they are, but there’s a reason for stuff like DS not having 100% uptime.

Here’s a simple thought experiment to illustrate the issue, you have both a melee and a ranged weapon with infinite cleave, and can hit enemies through walls. They do the same damage, your Exe’s stance is always up, and can spot everything. Everything that can spawn already has. What can help you clear the map fastest? The melee weapon or what’d essentially be a super plasma?

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it’s definitely better than before, but it’s still boring af, imo lol

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Next please work on Psyker Tree. It’s 1-dimensional and not even remotely flexible as all the other class trees.

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If it’s too strong at 100% uptime, the crit chance can be lowered accordingly. Artificially lowering a player’s fire rate to proc the skill is abysmal, especially because it’s already punishing the player by putting them at low stamina.

The way deadshot is supposed to work is that you spend most of your time in melee, quickly switch to ranged to take a few quick aimed shots, and then back into melee. Classic Vermintide gameplay.
If you’re aiming even a third of the run’s time, you’re out of stamina nonstop and shaking like you’re in the final stages of Parkinson’s. With some of the autoweapons, yeah, you can just hipfire them most of the time because they happen to be accurate enough that this works, and then only hardaim them on specific targets. This seems unintentional and they just let it slide. And again, this benefits rapid fire weapons the most. Even with the hipfire accuracy buff, this would be hell on the infantry las.

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Im really enjoying it. I feel like i was able to rexreate my builds more or less and had a good few points left instead of constsntly feeling like the vet needed an extra 5 just because.

I do feel like a few more points couldn’t hurt but im 100% sure that is just me eying a few extra nodes “for fun” and wouldn’t go away till i got the whole tree. Vet is in a nice place

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this is with the MK IV infantry Lasgun, but I’m using the recon MK VIIa now

but you will get the concept from what I’m doing in the video to get near 100% uptime on dead shot

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Not really, I run it on all my builds, and I mostly play melee defensively. The majority of my kills are usually ranged, even in runs where the director’s hitting the bath salts harder than usual. These also include runs where I had to carry.

25% is what makes it, you’d need to find a way to fit the lost points elsewhere in the tree. The stam loss is not as punishing as it seems, specially if you take the necessary nodes to mitigate it. Mechanically it can be mitigated and you can still overperform in ranged combat, it’s not that limiting. The change would also means that they behavior shaping design inherent in it would be injected elsewhere, this is FS we’re talking about, be careful what you wish for, the devil you know and all that.

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That’s an interesting technique, but you have to give up Marksman’s Focus for that, so you will be hitting very few breakpoints.

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You can also achieve that organically by doing:

You can also use other sources of stam, its powerful enough that it can literally be the center of builds, and yes you can maintain MF stacks with this alternative.

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i shoot 117 shots (roughly i counted with video on slow speed) in that video
now this gun consumes 2 charge per shot meaning 131 charge is equal to 65.5 actual shots roughly
so I’m almost doubling my effective ammo capacity with this setup

i don’t care about hitting breakpoints as much when i can simply just shoot more

breakpoints are good when you need to shoot less to kill an enemy thus saving ammo, but I’m already saving ammo ya know :stuck_out_tongue: i can lay into a crusher with twice as much shooting even if its not the ideal choice of weapon, and eventually it will die

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exactly my build is just one example, since my goal is simply to use my gun as much as often
but if your willing to switch up melee and range a bit their are many many other options to get the benefits of keeping dead shot active

my only concern with non ranged focused build is the fact that your giving up curious for stamina
for me its fine i kind of just, kill stuff before it gets close ya know a bit of a glass cannon stay at range always setup
but it is really easy to keep active with a weapon like helbore, or plasma rifle, even without taking stamina curious and stacking a ton of stamina stuff etc, you aim you shoot you go back to melee and regen stamina etc

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