Preface:
So if you’ve been watching the Gameplay Feedback Topic of the Forum, you’ve probably seen a couple of these “Comprehensive” post by now, where I go through the Class Trees of each Class and try to illustrate what the class is meant to be good at, how they are meant to achieve their role, and the things that either facilitate or hinder the actual reality of the class filling that position. This is to be my last Class focused breakdown.
Now, unlike before with my breakdowns for Veteran, Zealot, or Arbites, I’m doing two classes at once instead of making individual post for brute or sparkhead. In all honesty, there are a couple of simple reason for this. While these two classes have diffrent problems, the source of the problems is one and the same, so I figured that it be best to talk about that problem in the same place. My other reason is that I’ve been writing these Comprehensive breakdowns while in post op, but as I begin to recover and can get back to work, I recognize that I’m just not going to have the time to do long form breakdowns like this. It requires a lot of testing and back and forth to bring forward all the information I present, and even more time to try and write my arguments for my findings in an even semi-concise way. There’s already not terribly many people willing to engage fully with long form content, especially when presented in a less coinvent medium to consume than video.
I want to get out all of these Breakdowns at least somewhat near each other that way, for the people who are engaged w/ what I’ve been writing, there’s time for people to engage with each one, compare and contrast my suggestions between classes, and overall have the ability to look at the game from a wholistic perspective before anything too major changes about the game’s sandbox completely change the balance of that sandbox. Despite thinking every class needs a rework, I do believe that despite the state of the games balance, Darktide is in a really good position, because all the classes have understandable problems that targeted changes could fix. So without further ado, lets get started. And as per ususal, for those short on time or patience, there will be a TL;DR for both Classes.
Defining the Problem:
Now, normally, I would point out what I believe to be the major, core issue for the class, and spend this first section highlighting the things that support this, but that’s not really an option for Ogryn or Psyker, because the source of each classes problems is based upon what’s no longer in the game. You see, Ogryn currently fills the role of Boss Busting in the team, and Psyker is Horde Clear, but I don’t believe that either class was built specifically to fill these role. They just kind of stumbled into it. This belief is based upon changes to the balancing of the Horde and various enemies. While the Psyker and the Ogryn are the two classes w/ the most recent reworks, the Darktide that we’re facing just isn’t the same as it was when those reworks came out. And by extension, out understanding as a community as the role and position of the classes is completely different. And if that’s true for us, then that’s true for Fatshark; the Ogryn and Psyker reworks weren’t targeted reworks, to reinforce any role that the class had, but instead general power reworks, that just made the class stronger. Their current roles and positions are based what that general power increase has made them good at. Not what they were good at.
As one peer put it to me, we are effectively on Horde 3.0. Veteran and Zealot both used to be over tuned, so despite the lack of changes, they function pretty well. They have 2.5 Horde Balancing. Arbites is overpowered for the current horde, and the only real way to argue that they’re balanced is if you assume future enemies and modifiers will create a need for an individual class to have that much power, which makes Arbites balanced at Horde 3.5 at best. Ogryn has had the most recent balance update, so while the class isn’t perfect, they are the closest to being balanced for the current Darktide, so Ogryns are around 3.0 in balance. Which leaves the Psyker, who was definitely not overpowered before their rework, which came out around Horde Balancing 2.0, so as you can expect, despite still retaining some strengths that make them effective in certain areas, Psyker are effectively built and balanced for a version of the game that no longer exist. Keep in mind, these changes to the balancing of the Horde, while major, are still relative to each other. It’s not like the entirety of the game has been completely changed by enemy and horde tweaks. Elites and Specials is where the majority of those changes have been focused, so things that were good into a general Horde before will still be good now.
So enough with all the text; lets get into some pictures as we breakdown the Ogryn and the Psyker individually. Starting with the Ogryn, I’m going to break up the class by Playstyle and Purpose of the nodes, on both a general and per node basis. And if you’ve read any of my other Breakdowns, you’ll know that I tend to present the opinion that all of a classes Playstyle nodes for a specific Playstyle of the class should be in one path of the branch. And here witht he Ogryn, you can see exactly why I believe that:
These are the most collected branches of any class save Arbities. Even if you break up the nodes on an individual level, they still stick largely to the path of their specific Playstyle Branch. If you believe that Ogryn is currently OP, you might assume this to be the cause, but that has more to do with the structure and general bonuses of the class. Specifically, the fact that the two melee focused branches of the class tree are right next to each other, and their damage bonuses are flat damage increases instead of targeted damage increases against specific enemies. That means it’s really easy (down right exploitable in fact) to build to get a lot of value out of just smacking everything around. That’s also why explosives are so strong in the class at present. If you get damage increases against everyone then it makes the most sense to use a weapon that can target everyone. So fixing this means just moving all the Guardian Nodes to the right, and all the Artillerist nodes to the center, right? Eh, no.
The Class still has Structural, Organizational, and Balance issues outside of this comparatively simple Branch issue. Moving the nodes of the branches over without addressing those issues might potentially lead the class getting nerfed back into irrelevancy, and that’s not what we want. You can better see those organizational issues if you breakdown the Class Tree by the purpose of the nodes:
(If you read my Arbites Breakdown, you might notice that this Ogryn Breakdown is a little diffrent from the one I used there. Again. Lots and lots of testing and iteration goes it making these.)
If you look at the per node breakdowns based on Node Playstyle and Node Purpose, you’ll notice that the left side of the tree is currently holding too many of the Ogryn’s General Sustain/Survivability and Damage Nodes. Additionally, the structure of the class tree and organization of these nodes throughout reinforces the current meta of Ogryn Explosives and Light Spam. The open structure of the top half of the tree makes it really easy to pick up a lot of nodes, which, unlike Arbites, is actually really important for the Ogryn, as they are otherwise are a Big, Slow target. But unlike Arbites, the top Half of the Ogryn Class Tree isn’t occupied only by General Sustain and Damage Nodes, but also Playstyle Nodes. And the relocated Nodes are where? That’s right, the Left Side and Middle of the Tree. Considering that the Ogryn Meta, even for builds using explosives, is backed up by light attack spam, it’s really easy to see the current placement and purpose of these nodes reinforces the power of that meta.
And then there’s Psyker. I love Psyker. I may be a Zealot Main, but as Tanner once said, Zealot is Pancakes, and Psyker’s are French Toast. Zealot, as a Class, is easy. They are built to gain stacking Strength and Survivability the more dire a situation is. At high tier play, a Zealot surrounded is a Zealot in the zone. Zealot rewards you for learning how to play on the knifes edge of your build. But Psyker? With the Highest AoE Damage and Lowest Base Survivability in the game, playing on the knifes edge is the basic expectation for excelling at Psyker play. Being good at the class requires Precesion, Finnese, Coordination, and forward Planning. Which is why it frustrates me to no end that the Psyker has the worse executed Class Tree in the game.
I’m sure what I’ve said might be inflammatory to some, but I can back it up. If you believe that Psyker is actually an easy class; that it only requires you to consistently place down Shield, spam Heavy Soulfire Inferno shots into horde, and have Smite for Hound Waves, then I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re not playing Psyker at a high skill level; you’re just playing it at a high tier. And there is a difference. Just like looking at Ogryn and assuming the class is OP because of light melee spam isn’t the full picture, looking at Psyker and assuming the class is in a Healthy spot because of the meta options is equally ill-informed. And you can see this immediately upon breaking up the Class’s Nodes by Playstyle:
You might look at this and think surely the structure of the class based on Playstyle isn’t this bad. That perhaps I am just a fool who doesn’t understand where the power of the class stems from, but to put this breakdown into context with the other classes:
Table Courtesy of CopperBack1
In my Zealot Breakdown, I argued that at 37 Passive Nodes out of a total of 80 Nodes, the Zealot did not have enough Passive Nodes to support 3 Branching Playstyles. And you will note that Psyker, with 14 more nodes, for a total Node count of 94 Nodes, only has 32 Passive nodes. If Zealot does not have enough Passive Nodes to make three Playstyle Trees viable with almost 50% of their Total Nodes being Passive Nodes, take into consideration how much worse this is for Psyker, where only 34% of their Total Nodes are Passive Nodes. The Psyker unironically has more bloat than impactful, quality options, and at a higher rate than any other class in the game. To be blunt, in no uncertain terms, Gun Psyker doesn’t exist. It isn’t a Playstyle supported by this Class Tree, even before looking at it from a Class Role Perspective. There are only two nodes, TWO, that give you any kind of bonus when specifically wielding a gun, and neither of those bonuses provide enough ammo conservation, ammo efficiency (damage), or ammo generation to offset the sheer resource deficit that a “Gun Focused Psyker” will generate at high tier play. The only Psyker branches that have enough Nodes to build around are Staff Psyker (The Seer) and Melee Psyker (The Maverick). And both have substantial organizational issues.
The base Structure of the Psykers Class Tree isn’t Inherently bad by any means. The separation of Sustain Node Chunks helps reinforce the idea of being a Glass Cannon, and the separation of your Damage Nodes (Manipulation) theoretically would make it so that you have to decide how your damage is actually generated. But just like the Zealot, this Class Tree Structure is hindered by the fact that it doesn’t have enough Nodes to support all of its playstyles, and so the Tree isn’t Strucutred based upon Three Healthy Playstyle Branches, but more like two (Seer and Maverick).
You can see this really easily in the actual structure of the manipulation boxes. All of the nodes in the top Manipulation catagorey are pushed out to the sides. There are no center tree manipulation nodes there. And in the second Manipulation Node segment, you can see how shallow the depth of options actually are there. You could get all of those Nodes with half your total talent points. If you’re looking at General Sustain and Damage Nodes, our 32 Passives, then this means that each Branch only has 10 Nodes each to divide among themselves. You might think that maybe a lot of those Nodes have synergy between Playstyles, similar to the Arbites General Damage and Sustain Nodes, except we already know from the Playstyle Breakdown that there are some very specific synergies as opposed to general ones. And when you look at the actual organization of the nodes, you can see that so much of this value is concentrated on the left side of the tree, which has the most General Sustain and Damage/Playstyle Nodes concentrated on its side. And to the point of Playstyle Nodes, there are so few Passive Nodes that it would be hard to suggest any are good for a specific playstyle when almost all of them are needed to build for any Playstyle. Realistically, that second Manipulation Segment should be a part of the Domain Category (Playstyle Nodes), but there are so few Passive Nodes that it’s not really viable to break up the tree like that.
Identify the Weakpoints:
So in the previous section, I tried to make the argument that the Ogryn and especially the Psyker still had balancing issues regarding their Class Trees, and I tried to define what those problems specifically were. Hopefully, the details provided in the previous segment were enough to help define that problem and convince you of their existence, but if we want to fix those problems, we need to actually identify where the weakest links of each Class Tree exist. And luckily, because of the relative Balance of the the game and classes right now, this is pretty easy. People may keep wondering why I keep suggesting that the overall balance of Darktide is in a good place, especially when I’m highlighting what I feel to be major issues with the Classes, but as a game designer, I measure balance not in terms of how broad the gaps are but how easy it is to make targeted solutions. And both of these classes can be greatly improved with relative simple and/or targeted changes. Relative, that is to say, to trying to balance them with weapon or enemy changes.
So lets start with the Ogryn, who has the least number of problems to actually direct our attention to. The Ogryn, from a power Fantasty Perspective, should be thought of as The Inquisition’s Monstrosity, but we still want them to be balanced compared to other classes. As stated earlier, the things that are currently contributing to the Ogryn appearing OP is how easily they can synergistic value from the Left and Middle side of the tree. Synergy can be good, but if the specific synergy is always more valuable than building any other way, then there’s a problem with the value of that synergy compared to everything else. Instead of nerfing anything though, my suggestion is to just make it harder/costlier to build for that Synergy. That comes with moving the Gun Ogryn Branch into the middle, and moving the Shield/Taunt Ogryn Branch to the Right. But as stated earlier, we can’t just do that without addresssing the areas that underperform in the Ogryn Tree at present.
One of those major weakpoints is Point-Blank Barrage. Remember, we are balancing with High Tier play in mind, because if something is viable in High Tier play, it will automatically be at least somewhat viable in any lower tier play. And while PB Barrage is fine at Medium to Auric High Tier Play, it really falls off moving into Havoc. Other Content Creators have done a better job of breaking down why PBB is weaker at high tier than I have time to do in this forum, but the short version is that it does not provide enough value for its resource cost. As I keep bringing up, Ammo is precious in high tier play, so if something is going to spend it, it has to ensure that it can get value for doing so. This is where the Zealot’s Class Tree organization can help though.
In my Zealot Breakdown, I suggested that the Preacher Branch, Zealots Firearm Focused Playstyle, needed to be in the center specifically to leach off of the general sustain/survivability and damage nodes of the other two. And the Ogryn Artillerist is much the same. In Darktide, you shouldn’t only be using your gun. The only class that can get away with that is Veteran, due to Nodes like Shock Trooper and Survivalist, and even Veteran should switch to their melee pretty regularly. The reason why the Ogryn’s Class Abilities are categorized as “Impact” is because that’s what you use them for. You charge when you need to clear a path through the Horde for you and/or your team. You shout when you need to draw Agro away from your allies in a hard encounter. You shoot when you need to clear an area of problems so that your team doesn’t get overwhelmed. To that point, you shouldn’t be using your gun all the time. And to facilitate that, you need to have easy access to melee options to help support you gun focused build when you aren’t using your gun.
Then there are Nodes that need to reworked or relocated. “For the Lil’Uns” is a great example of a Node that needs to be reworked. In lower tier play, the value that you get from this node is fine, but as you go higher and higher in difficulty, the mechanical benefit of this nodes gets more and more tenuous. At the highest tier of play, trying to pick someone up in the middle of a Horde Encounter is almost never the correct decision, especially considering that the few enemies that can Stun the Ogryn consist of Elite Gunners, Disabler Specialist, And Bosses. All of which are targets that you should probably be dispatching instead of picking up an ally the majority of the time, which is doubly true for the Boss Bashing Class. “Strike True” is a great example of a Node that should be relocated. Right now, the Savage Branch of the Ogryn (Heavy Hitter) has way too much access to every melee buffing node in the tree, and “Strike True” in particular is a node that meshes much better with the vibe of the Guardian Ogryn, who has a far more measured approach to melee combat and far less benefits for it. Where the Savage is fine with spreading as much pain around as possible, the Guardian wants precision, based upon other synergistic nodes like “Unbreakable” and “Focused Fighter”.
Then there’s the Psyker, who, despite having a tree that makes me feel like I’m going to have an aneurism if I look at it too long, actually has relatively easy points to address. Just like Zealot and Arbites, I’m not really interested in touch structural problems with the class, as resolving those kinds of problems, especially for the Zealot and the Psyker, will largely be dependent on what kind of nodes they add. As someone who tries to retain as much of what’s there for a class when I suggest any kind of work on them, structual changes are just beyond the purview I am willing to take up in these forum post. But I do believe that I can, in the very least, identify what those missing nodes should focus on for the benefit of the playstyle, and that starts with Gun Psyker.
I’ve already mentioned that Gun Psyker isn’t really a thing, because there aren’t really many nodes supporting it. And you’ll also recall that I mentioned the reasons why Gun Psyker isn’t a thing has to do in part with the Psykers Role in the game: Horde Clear. But what you might not have noticed is that those two “Gun Psyker” Nodes that exist, “True Aim” and “Surety of Arms” are grouped with what I have marked as the “Volatile” Branch. And there is a bit of synergy that we can infer from this. This Branch has a lot off effects built around passively spreading Soulfire with Nodes like *“Wildfire”, and the additional focus on Elite and Specialist enemies with “Perilous Combustion” further cement that synergy. While these are useful nodes for the other branches to pick up, there’s a specific trail of synergies you can see forming. Similar to how “Smite” being the only Blitz that effects melee weapons tell us that there’s an inhrent Branch Synergy between that Blitz and the Playstyle of the Maverick Branch, Brain Rupture is the only Blitz that cares about Elite Enemies at all. In fact, Soulfire Headpop is already a popular combination. And Empowered Psionics lets you do it far more consistently. And doesn’t a Psyker with loose control of their powers, relying on guns and the ability to just overload someone’s brain w/ warp energy fit the idea of a Volatile Font of Power perfectly? My suggestion is to lean into this association. Gun Psyker doesn’t work because it’s too much of an ammo consumption cost to use your gun for Horde Clear. But Blitz Psyker? That has the potential to be as resource efficient as Staff or Melee Psyker.
Other issues, like reworking or repositioning nodes is too far beyond what we can do in this forum. Those kinds of changes will be heavily influenced on what nodes get added, how they function, and how valuable they are to the other builds. I was barely able to do it for the Zealot, who has a significantly stronger foundation with the shape of their nodes, and who is missing significantly less nodes to help inform their playstyle. I don’t feel comfortable doing it almost at all for the Psyker, save for specifically changes to the Class Abilities and Keystones. In adding more Node Options, I do think that some of the Class Ability Mod options should be folded into the Base Ability or turned into their own standalone passives. With “Telekine Shield” and “Venting Shriek”, there may be more than two options, but you can only benefit from two at a time as those options will lock you out of others. But Scrier’s Gaze has 5 options and you can benefit from 4 at a time. This is just too much. Remember, 5 points is 1/6th of your total talent points. That’s a substantial investment to be spending just on a Class Ability. Meanwhile, for the Keystones, “Disrupt Destiny” doesn’t do nearly enough, and instead of being especially valuable if you’re running a Crit Build, it’s only valuable if your Crit Fishing. On the flip side, “Warp Siphon” is doing too much, stealing the Elite and Specialist focus of the Volatile Branch while also doing the Class Ability regeneration that the Seer’s Aura incentivizes. The Passive Node “Psykinetic’s Aura” is like a tiny version of this same issue. So now that we know where the weaknesses for these classes lie, here’s what can be done to try and address those problems.
Proposing Solutions:
So this post has run on long, and when I decided to do two classes at once, I knew it was going to, but I’m hoping that my other “Comprehensive” have bought me enough leeway with those who accept and trust my class breakdowns to get away with it. Now, it’s time to actually wrap this up. And unlike every other section, I want to start with solutions for the Psyker. And I’m starting w/ the Psyker here because despite having so much to say about their problems, there’s very little I can suggest solutions wise, as so much of that solution will be dependdent on what Fatshark designs and what they can actually program. The reason I don’t care for suggesting a ton of Fan-made Passive Talen Nodes is because I don’t work for Fatshark, and I have no idea of what the games engine can or can’t handle. So what can I actually suggest?
Well, as previously stated, I think the third tree for the Psyker, the one that is missing the most nodes, is “The Volatile”, a playstyle branch that leans on the offensive power of the Psyker’s Blitzs, Passive Soulfire spread, and increased damage to elites and specials. So what kind of nodes are missing from this branch of the tree? Crowd Control, Blitz Efficacy, and Firearm bonuses. Your Blitz generate a lot of peril very quickly, and only “Smite” has any reasonable level of Crowd Control. But to take a page out of the Mortis Trials, explosions might be our answer here. Both Headpop and Smite cause enemies to…burst when killed. So something like “Explosions you cause spread Soulfire” can fit right into this. But what about “Assail”? Well “Assail” specifically targets enemies heads, which are weakspots. “Volatile Infusion: Weakspot Kills cause enemies to Explode”. That means you can still get the Soulfire Spread even with Assail, and it also feeds directly into you using a gun. Oh joyous Bolt Pistol. Nodes that clear Peril for Elite Kills can be great here, as well as a more generalist version of “Kinetic Flayer” that let’s weakspot kills trigger micro versions of your blitz surrounding your target. And something like “Terrifying Display: Basic Enemies within 3m of Targets you Weakspot Kill become staggered” and “Warp Munitions: Weakspot Kills Return Ammo in Clip” can give gun psyker the ammo economy and crowd control to make using a gun worthwhile on the class. You can even do something like “Manifest Munitions: Once every 15s On Reload, Generate Ammo to your Reserves based on current Peril Level” higher being better. This one is a little rough but you can see the picture. “Smite” benefits from these last three ideas the least from that, but it already can crowd control and explode targets on its own, so it doesn’t need it. Which leads well into Keystone suggestions.
Let’s overhaul “Empowered Psionics”. We’re going to take the focus on killing Elites and Specialist away from “Warp Siphon”, and use that to give “Empowered Psionics” a kind of reward system. Stacking benefits like reduced peril generation, Blitz damage, and weakspot damage so long as you stay above a certain threshold, let’s say 75% Peril or higher. Drop beneath that, and you have to build up stacks again. This is wear nodes like “Crystalline Will” can really come in handy.
For our other two Keystones, similar to Zealot, I think there’s a problem w/ the bonuses and names that the keystones provide being weirdly inversed. Disrupt Destiny, just based on the name, has always given me the vibe of Denying Fate. But the ability doesn’t do that at all. In fact, Warp Siphon’s gimmick of getting you your Class Ability back faster fits that idea much better. So I propose a name and gimmick exchange. Our new version of Disrupt Destiny (or Neo DD for short) still highlights random enemies within 25m, but killing those enemies now contributes to gaining stacks that, upon Class Ability use, expend themselves to reduce your class ability cooldown. This is a very general overview of what this change would entail, but again, you get the idea. You would have to change around the Mods, but I think the current version of Warp Siphon has two Mod Options too many.
Which finally leads us to what I think the new version of Warp Siphon should be. Melee Psyker (currently) needs “Scrier’s Gaze” to build up Peril for them while they use their melee weapons, as there is a lot of extra damage to be had while at high peril. This is why nodes like “Kinetic Deflection” are especially useful on the build. Currently, you really only run Disrupt Destiny because Scrier’s enhances crit chance. But beyond that? While the Toughness and Move Speed are nice benefits, unless you’re using the Force Greatsword, it can be difficult to actually build those stacks up, as your melee range is so limited. And nodes like “Malefic Momentum” (which could also be useful for Gun Psyker) helps provide context to what this Branch is missing from its Keystone. So Neo Warp Siphon will act our way to provide those missing benefits. Firstly, Neo Warp Siphon now builds stacks on enemy kills. Any enemy kills. Those Stacks net you Extra Movement Speed, Toughness Regen, and attack Speed. More importantly however, the Keystone allows you imbue your weapon with Warp Energy on Special Action Trigger, depleting your Perils. Imagine now, if you would, your Chainsword is covered in Warp Energy when you Rev it. Your Devil’s Claw now has a Warp Infused Parry. The Melee Combo Chain or your Force Staves are now actually useful.
For Keystone modifiers, they can gives you a flat bonus to Damage, Critical Damage, and Critcal Chance. You can do a Warp Shield that makes it so that, so long as you have toughness, health damage is converted to Perils. A great option would be Critical Kills triggering a Warp Explosion. Maybe Heavy Melee attacks can send out a Warp Slash a few meters in front of you. Perhaps the weeb in me thirst for the ability to do a Getsuga Tenshō with every melee weapon, but if you could every weapon, every attack could be a force weapon, a warp attack. Which would significantly expand your options of good melee weapons to use beyond just the Force Swords.
With these changes, Gun Psyker would be a Playstyle Branch actually supported by the Class Tree, and the Keystone options would provide universal value to a build that any Branch could benefit from leaning into. Keep the Seer (Staff Psyker) to the Left of the Tree, the Maverick (Melee Psyker) in the middle, and make the Volatile (Gun Psyker) to the right. We want the melee focused options in the center of the tree because just like Gun Ogryn wants to leech off the benefits of the melee branches on either side of it, Gun and Staff Psyker want to leech off of good melee options in the center of the tree. If you want to play Psyker at a higher skill level, you need to be making better use of your melee weapons, but I can’t blame people for being put off by that when the class has so little survivability up close. Reorganizing the Class Tree so that Psyker has better access to their survivability and general damage manipulation nodes should significantly increase the Class’s ability to be self reliant, instead of needing to be babysat by the rest of the team.
That was already a lot, I know, but bare with me, because the only thing left is the Ogryn Suggestions for Improvement, and these suggestions come with pictures, I promise. To recap, the biggest things we need to change about the Ogryn is relocating where it gets its value, and reworking the nodes that don’t offer enough value. This doesn’t constitute a lot of changes, but these changes are still significant. So significant in fact that I want to clarify something i’ve failed to state in this post thus far. These breakdowns are math light and mechanics heavy because it’s easier to quantify gameplay into numbers on a sheet but harder to do so vice versa. Short of extensive modding (that I’m not interested in doing), I have no way of checking the math for any of these suggestions. These suggestions are coming from a place of mechanical exploration and balancing. That being said, it is easier to tune Math to make mechanics work than it is to tune mechanics to make math work. I can say that I don’t want to be the cause of a class that has finally found its place getting nerfed again, but if any of these changes caused the Ogryn to become weaker overall, tweaking the math on some of their values ever so slightly would be more than enough to bring them back up to spec. So in terms of reorganizing the Ogryn Class Tree, I think it would look something like so:
(These are such a pain in the butt to make.)
For the sake of Clarity, and so the reader doesn’t have to compare the edited tree to the real one to tell where everything is, these changes would make it so that the nodes are divided among the Ogryn Branches like so:
The Savage:
“The Best Defense”, “Too Stubborn to Die”, “Smash 'Em!”, “Big Friendly Rock”, “Furious”, “Dominate”, “Frenzied Blows”, “Indomitable”, “Bone Breaker’s Aura”, “Attention Seeker”, “Delight in Destruction”, “Get Stuck In”, “Batter”, “Payback Time”, “Implacable”, “Strongman”, “Beat them Back”, “Crunch”, “Slay and Spray”, “No Stopping Me”, “Massacre”, and “Heavy Hitter”.
The Artillerist:
“Steady Grip”, “Too Stubborn to Die”, “Simple Minded”, “Frag Bomb”, “Furious”, “Heavy Weight”, “Soften Them Up”, “Point-Blank Barrage”, “Coward Culling”, “Concentrate”, “Dedicated Practice”, “Ammo Stash”, “Big Boom”, “Reloaded and Ready”, “Can’t Hit Me…Again”, “Keep Shooting”, “Unstoppable Momentum”, “Mobile Emplacement”, “Fire Away”, “Lucky Streak”, “Massacre”, “For the Lil’Uns”, and “Burst Limiter Override”.
The Guardian:
“Lynchpin”, “Simple Minded”, “Towering Presence”, “Bombs Away”, “Soften Them Up”, “Bash and Blast”, “Bruiser”, “Loyal Protector”, “Stay Close!”, “Strike True”, “Pacemaker”, “Brutish Strength”, “Unbreakable”, “Pumped Up”, “Focused Fighter”, “Won’t Give In”, “Slam”, “Hard Knocks”, “No Pushover”, “No Hurting Friends”, “For the Lil’Uns”, and “Feel No Pain”.
Truthfully, I’ve had to hold back my inhibitions a bit with this. There’s a lot of ways you can restructure this tree while staying in line with it’s general shape. I personally think of Operative Modifiers as a useful tool, but I recognize that, especially during a current balance crisis where a lot of classes are suffering from too much “Node Taxation”, trying to convince people that O.M.s aren’t the worse thing ever is an uphill battle. Additionally, I really want to treat the nodes surrounding the aura’s almost like Aura Mods, similar to how a lot of classes have floating Class Ability Mod Nodes. But again, that would be an unnecessary complication. (Not that I didn’t spend too long experimenting w/ it). With what I’ve ultimately gone for structure wise is nearly identical to what we have now with a few key differences. For one, obviously the nodes have been reorganized, to better separate the melee damage nodes of The Savage/Heavy Hitter and the Guardian/Feel No Pain. Slam is no longer floating above an Aura that has nothing to do with its bonus and has been repositioned so that Feel No Pain can get better use out of it. The logic here is that Loyal Protector and Feel No Pain are both vanilla options of the Guardian’s Branch, but neither have as many damage options as Bullrush or Heavy Hitter, so giving that Branch better Impact will actually allow it to better protect itself. Additionally, you can see that I’ve added two Keystone Mods to Feel No Pain. If you make Toughest and Pained Outburst mutually exclusive, you make player choose between a safety net or a stacking advantage. From there, I would suggest adding two mutually exclusive Nodes that give either a little extra impact per stack, or a lot of Impact at Max Stacks. Giving players options between safe consistency or contingent power is a great way for players to learn more about a playstyle. Plus, symmetry is just great. And finally, Lil’Uns and Massacre have been made in-between options. It’s really easy to promote mixing and matching elements of each branch when it’s easy to jump between them.
There are also so reworks I can suggest, but I will keep this brief (for my own sake). First of all, if you don’t want Ogryn to be nearly as good at Psyker in Horde Clear, or nearly as good as Veteran and Zealot at Elite/Specialist Hunting, then you need to Specify. Those. Bonuses. A really easy example of what this might look like is “Hard Knocks”, which reads “Enemies staggered by your Melee Attacks take +15% more Melee Damage for 5s.”
An easy fix would be changing “Enemies” to “Captains, Champions, and Unyielding Enemies”.
Captains are the Scab Bosses, Champions are the Dreg Bosses, and Unyielding Enemies cover Ogryn Enemies and Monstrosities. Don’t do this for the Ogryns damage resistances though. The team’s personal monstrosity should be unphased by most every enemy. And then there’s specifically “For the Lil’Uns”. I stated that this Node in particular has diminishing value in High Tier play because trying to pick someone up in the middle of a fight tends to be a worse option than clearing the area and then rushing to get them (or letting your Vet Rez Shout, or letting you Zealot Chorus Shout). I personally think giving your allies Stun Immunity, and +25% Revive Speed is better than giving it to yourself, especially with Ogryn Shove Taunt and Shout Taunt at your disposal. And considering “For the Lil’Uns” sounds like some kind of impromptu war cry an Ogryn my belt, maybe tie this to volley fire.
" Neo For the Lil’Uns: On Ally getting Toughness Broken, gain +10% Melee and Range Strength, and +25% Toughness Damage Reduction for 10s. 30s Cooldown. On Ally getting Knocked Down, Allies in coherency gain Stun Immunity, and +25% Revive Speed 3s per Melee or Range Hit, until downed ally is casualtied or resuscitated."
That way the node is actually…for the little ones? It’s not perfect, but this gives value back into your team, instead of making you randomly immune to Stun from the few enemies you aren’t already immune to, and who you should really be paying attention to.
Another thing to note is in regards to “Batter”. To give Gun Ogryn greater options, something simple like 1 Stack of Bleed on Crit added to this passive Node would go a long way.
TL;DR for the Ogryn’s Changes:
-
Reorganized the Ogryn Tree so that Gun Ogryn has greater access to Melee Nodes to help it when it doesn’t have it’s firearm out.
-
Reworked a few nodes to give them greater generalist value for cross branch pollination.
-
Specified Targets that Ogryn gains greater damage against from every enemy to Bosses and Ogryn Elites.
-
Gave “Feel No Pain” extra options and moved Impact Related Nodes to its side of the Class Tree so that Heavy Hitter can stop hogging every melee damage bonus in the tree.
TL;DR for the Psyker Changes:
-
Suggested concepts for additional nodes to flesh out and support the Psykers missing third Playstyle Branch (Gun Psyker).
-
Suggested changes to the Keystones, to give each more defined, yet universally applicable bonuses to the various Psyker Playstle Branches.
-
Suggested reorganization of nodes to give Psyker increased access to their Sustain/Survivability Node options, as to make the class less reliant on the team and more reliant on player skill for safety.
[If the changes listed in this short summarization don’t convince you that these are compelling and worthwhile changes to make to the class, please read the full post and let me try to.]
Closing Thoughts:
This was a long one, but I am glad to be done with it. Not because I hate thinking about Darktide; I’ve made a “Comprehensive” Breakdown for every class, and two for my main so obviously I don’t. But these are a lot of work to put together. Back and forth consideration, testing in matches and the Psykhanium, and a lot of iterative analysis goes into being able to present these at the level of clarity I am personally satisfied with. Does this post meet that arbitrary standard? Probably not; I rushed through it a bit. But I did it to myself so I shouldn’t complain.
As the last of my Class Specific Breakdowns, I want to reiterate why I feel like this collection of “Comprehensive” post are important. I will keep saying that despite the balance of each class currently being…less than optimal, the overall balance of the game is in a good spot. And the reason why it’s in a good spot is because each class has easy to identify and address problems within the current sandbox. The work that is needed to balance all of the classes comparative to the sandbox is less than the work needed to balance the sandbox to the classes. If the sandbox changes while the classes are still unbalanced, it will require significantly more work to identify what the classes are missing from their kits in the new sandbox and to balance it, because they will also still be missing whatever would balance them in the current sandbox. As stated at the beginning of this post, that is the exact reason why Ogryn and Psyker are still unbalanced despite being the most recent Reworks; they’re making up for a mechanical deficit incurred from multiple sandbox changes. But now that I’ve talked about all the important, series balance changes I think the game needs, my next post is definitely just going to be a “for me” thing. I wanna talk about things I’d like to see in the game.
[If you are a high skilled player, especially if you main these specific classes, and you think that I’ve overlooked something, or otherwise failed to consider a balancing concern either within one of the specific two classes, or in regards to these classes’ relationship with the other classes, please let me know in a comment. I do not consider myself infallible (especially when I’m rushing to finish); the only way to improve upon weaker arguments is to iterate upon them, and I want to hear what other people think. And if you think that the ideas presented in this forum post are worthwhile, please like this post, share it with your peers, and/or tell me which ideas you specifically vibe with. The easiest way for the community to get the changes they’re interested in seeing in the game is to direct the Dev’s attention to those ideas. Thank you.]
You can read my other Breakdowns, regarding the Veteran, Zealot, and Arbites at the associated hyperlinks.
