Nightmares & Visions - Early Balance Look - Dev Blog Pt. 3

[MunKy]

@FatsharkStrawHat

Allowed the following weapons to remain active after a stun

@FatsharkStrawHat

Allowed the following weapons to remain active after vaulting

[DanAphelion]

@FatsharkStrawHat

Special Activations Reset by Stun

THANK GOD, FINALLY. As someone who really wants to use the thunder hammer more, this is a God-sent change!!

Now I just wait for the other feedback I gave you, @FatsharkStrawHat regarding the thunder hammer in my thread about the thunderclap audio and AOE additions back in January, yay!

Thunder hammer - thunderclap audio & AOE

I went back to using the thunder hammer recently because of the Waking Giants event. By all means, I am having a lot of fun playing with it, but there are two things about it that really bugs me and I wish was different, so here are my two cents, my humble opinion. [image] Feedback nr. 1: When striking with an activated hit, it is absolutely criminal that the others in the strike team do not hear the roaring sound of thunder as it strikes the foe! I have tested this several times with diff…

[UrielKeynes]

My recomendation.

Dueling sword is a fencing weapon. Its core identity involves fast footwork, quick slices, and coup-de-gras penetrating thrusts. Maintain this identity while trimming away unnecessary power.

• Mobility: Maintain current high dodge distance, but reduce the sprint speed boost. Its a fancy footwork weapon so dodge distance makes sense, but it doesn’t really need/warrant the high sprint speed. Let that be the perk of having a combat knife or devils claw.

• Crit Boost: Maintain high weakpoint dmg modifier, but decouple it from crit dmg modifier and reduce the crit dmg bonus from 2.5 to maybe 2.0. Weapon still does incredible damage vs heavier enemies and carapace, but makes it harder to trivialize hardy enemies like crushers by one-shotting them.

• Reduce the base dmg of the weapon but increase finesse dmg so that total damage is roughly the same on weakpoint hits, but is less on non-weakpoint hits. Dont reward a fencer who shows poor form.

• Decrease the heavy attack (thrust) attack speed on just the mark IV variant considerably (somewhere in the range of 20-40%). It can still one-shot weakpoint kill most enemies, including maulers/crushers on some builds, but the reduced attack speed decreases the throughput capability of the weapon to murder-hobo entire packs in mere seconds. Also opens the door for players to maybe try other variants of dueling sword which will be unaffected because they have less problematic attack patterns.

• Make the Mk IV heavy attack thrust only deal damage for the very instant it thrusts forward. Currently the weapon continues to linger its hit area .3-.5 seconds after the thrust has fully extended, doing wierd things where turning sideways after the thrust has completed, but your blade is still extended will still, hit and kill enemies. Not only does it feel wonky when it happens, but it offers hits that really should be misses.

I feel like, even with these changes, the dueling sword would still be a very very strong weapon, and may even continue to dominate the meta. However, its a step in the right direction, trimming power where it isn’t really needed, in a way i don’t think will cause many players to argue that it was over-nerfed.

[DeltaJackal]

All of these changes are good. But it doesn’t fix the problem that Duelling sword is overtuned. Please, balance it. Thank you.

[MixedLetters]

My boy Parry Sword getting that heavy attack speed up is actually huge, like holy heck I always had to run that with an attack speed node in order to ‘safely micro stun the wave’ but now it sounds like it might just do that on it’s own and do it even better with the node and that’s so good. Better Parry stuff is great too and

FINALLY NOT GETTING SUPER DUNKED ON WITH THE POWER SWORD JUST FOR GETTING BONKED ONCE WHILE PUSHING THE BUTTON, YESSS! (and same goes for Thunder Hammer/everything else too, just AAAA).

This update might not be ‘content city’ in terms of new things to run through, but the amount of ‘we listened’ I have read in these posts has me just,

(and yes the DS didn’t get touched and that’s a bit weh but I feel like this probably isn’t the update to be like ‘Ogryns are finally playable and got a huge amount of buffs! also you tinies are getting your cruch kicked out from under you get bent!’ wouldn’t be the best look. Better as a ‘balance pass’ later with more universal touch ups like Golden Toughness poking and things I’d say, than ‘we randomly gutted the DS on top of buffing a bunch of other things, good day’).

[MunKy]

“Loyal Protector Replenishes 25% Toughness”

[MixedLetters]

Not to mention toughness regen for the duration based on number of targets hit (up to 10% per second)! Finally feels like one can taunt the wave AND actually fully manage it on Auric+. Literally taunt 20 things and become near immortal for 10s while it tries to beat you up, that + the passive dodge shoving just has me weeping (in a good way).

[Index]

is there a longer version?
something tells me 3 sec later would be

[Ryshek]

Combat shotguns feel so sad being left out )=

[MunKy]

Its somewhere on youtube iirc. I dont have the source anymore, I delete them after I make em and I made this years ago.

Edit: Here we go
Its even better with sound!

Sarah Calande Overall Forms Grands at the 2011 Dixieland Nationals

[MONIKA2333]

what about this weakness lasgun,do we have any strength?

[Goare]

@FatsharkStrawHat

I won’t say it will never happen! We are open to conversations around that one.

Are you though? Are you? Because the conversations have BEEN happening for months and they more or less unanimously say it’s an overpowered no-skill joyride of a weapon that trivializes difficult content and invalidates most other melee weapons by existing. Seriously?

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/how-would-you-balance-the-dueling-sword/

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/the-duelling-sword-balance-problem/

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/what-about-the-dueling-sword/

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/dueling-sword-too-good/

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/dueling-sword-nerf/

Normalize movement

Just kill knife and dueling sword being able to do their best Sonic impression. And also kill their ability to deal with armor. And if Darktide 2 ever happens, don’t add them back.

Havoc has higlighted that Time-To-Kill is too low

I think stuff like dueling sword spam throw that calculation off hard. Crushers die pretty rapidly on Havoc 40, but that’s cause there’s usually 3 or more people spamming dueling sword pokes. Hordes die pretty quick, but that’s because someone with infinite aoe dot stack applications is taking care of that. I think Havoc is pretty terribly balanced for non meta loadouts. Trying to cleave hordes with e.g. a shock maul, a weapon designed to have decent cleave and does it fine on Aurics, is just f…

This was literally 1 minute of search in your own forum. I’m happy with the stun changes, I’m happy with the attempt at auto pistol revival, I have various other things I wish would get looked at …

… but all of that pales in comparison to my fury at the balance team for letting that abomination of a weapon persist in its current form for so long. I love the 'tide games because they require SKILL and decision-making; weapons have tradeoffs, strengths, weaknesses, and aren’t mindless to use. The dueling sword trivializes content and does not require meaningful skill to use. Complete antithesis of your own design model. Fix it yesterday.

The Dueling Sword Problem | Darktide

The combat knife has similar issues (too easy to use and too effective) particularly for zealot, but it’s merely S-Tier to Dueling Sword’s ALL-GALAXY-NO-CONTENDERS tier.

[MONIKA2333]

Uploading: lasgun.png…
what about this one,i really hope this lasgun could get some strength

[Khorne_Dawg]

@MONIKA2333

i really hope this lasgun could get some strength

Please buff Infantry Lasguns! | Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - Commentary

Infantry Lasguns

@FatsharkStrawHat Hi, everyone! I am creating this Topic as a suggestion for how to improve the Infantry Lasguns in Darktide. The Infantry Lasgun is the standard issue rifle of the Astra Militarum and I think that it deserves better. Firstly, the Mk IX (MG XII) is blatantly inferior to both the Mk IIb (MG IV) and the Mk VII (MG Ia) in DPS. This is not in any way complemented by its low RPM which also negatively impacts its Crit rate. The Mk IX is in dire need of a DPS buff so that it can actua…

Please buff Infantry Lasguns, they deserve so much better!

[MONIKA2333]

[Ragnar4257]

Extremely disappointed that all staff psykers are going to be nerfed, just to fix a problem with 0.001% of psykers macro’ing LMB.

Was there really no way of fixing this, that didn’t involve nerfing QQ-cancel for Voidblast RMB? Which is a perfectly valid, non-game-breaking tech, that barely allows that build to keep up with meta stuff? Was there really no way of just adjusting LMB, without touching quell/RMB ?

Meanwhile, Johnny Mouthbreather can keep his VoC/Plasma/Duelling-Sword Infinite-ammo Infinite-grenades Infinite-toughness absolutely untouched.

The feedback on duelling-sword has been non-stop for months and months and months. Fatshark ignores it. But 1 psyker macro’s something? Bam. Instant nerf-hammer down an ALL psyker builds.

Who is making these decisions?

I would rather there was no update at all. Will probably take a break when it drops.

[Goare]

@Ragnar4257

The feedback on duelling-sword has been non-stop for months and months and months. Fatshark ignores it.

Yup. But now they’re ‘open to conversation’ on the Dueling Sword, so … sure, lets have one.

Fatshark 'open to conversation' on Dueling Sword

Fine, lets start (another) conversation. The conversations have been happening for months and they more or less unanimously say it’s an overpowered no-skill joyride of a weapon that trivializes difficult content and invalidates most other melee weapons by existing. I love the 'tide games because they require SKILL and decision-making; weapons have tradeoffs, strengths, weaknesses, and aren’t mindless to use. The dueling sword trivializes content and does not require meaningful skill to use. H…

[ForumWarrior]

@Vertraxxx

DS will steal all the work when it comes to hordes of crushers

This bothers me so much about the dueling sword. This weapon would realistically bounce right off of armor. Especially carapace. This weapon does not need that much AP, it’s stupid lol

[Elodie]

All in all this sounds amazing! Thanks!

That said, I do worry about the special activation fix specifically with the vet’s Power Swords. For about year since release it was just so ridiculously OP there wasn’t a point in using anything else. And while it’s still offensively arguably the strongest, that domino effect of losing the powered state is its greatest downside.

You have to avoid getting hit while swinging or re-powering the weapon, or you’ll lose everything that makes it special and likely go down in short order. Dancing on that knife’s edge, acknowledging that risk is what the weapon is about.

If you can just tank the occasional hit with no risk, it’s hard to see how it wouldn’t become completely OP all over again. What’s a hit or two when right after you’ll kill & stagger everything in front of you and instantly cap your toughness anyway?

[gpkgpk]

@Elodie

For about year since release it was just so ridiculously OP there wasn’t a point in using anything else. And while it’s still offensively arguably the strongest, that domino effect of losing the powered state is its greatest downside.

Uh you’re neglecting to mention after the big #13 tree update PS was nerfed into the ground and THEN buffed again months later, and it was nowhere near as strong as what it was in year 1.

The deactivation on hit (and vault) is NOT intended behavior, it was a stupid now 5-6 month old bug that also plagued force and chain weapons for a month, a side effect of refactoring the special activation code for the new relic weapons.

Going through all the trouble of setting up a THam bonk or PS with low mobility and useless deactivated states only to have it fizzle out is ridiculously bad.

PS would hardly be OP again, it wasn’t OP before this breaking bug as it required knowing how to dance, push,block and reposition to get it activated with low mobility. Most people sucked with it as it actually required some setting up (and you didn’t see it much).

Despite FS now trying to gaslight us into believing it wasn’t a bug, it’s restoring it to it’s previous post #13 state, NOT pre-13 year 1.