One last appeal before the major update, please change Loner

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Two and a half weeks left before a big patch, just want to throw this in there again.

Loner sucks. It sucks for everyone involved. It sucks for the zealot using it, because it’s a pretty garbage way to replenish toughness compared to every other way to replenish toughness available to the zealot, it’s basically just a tax on going for shroudfield (which, incidentally, is also better at replenishing toughness than Loner)

and it sucks a lot for everyone else on the team, because it means the zealot using it doesn’t give everybody 15% toughness damage reduction (which amounts to more toughness kept than Loner replenishes, especially since it affects four people at once while Loner only affects the zealot and indeed encourages the zealot to not stay near their team which reduces toughness replenishment for the other three) or corruption cleansing.

And of course it enables that particular type jerk who completely abandons the other three players and tries to make it to the end as fast as possible, stealthing whenever a monster shows up so it goes back to fight everyone else. I’ve met two of these jackholes in the past week and neither of them got vote kicked off for some unfathomable reason despite being literally so far away their outlines were too small to see (I still say people who run that far ahead of their team should get summarily executed for desertion.) Don’t enable this type of person. Loner enables this type of person. Get rid of Loner.

Idea 1, make Loner do something else. Make Loner timed, make it allow for coherency to remain for a set length of time after leaving the actual coherency range, maybe thirty seconds, maybe two minutes, I dunno, and also keeps applying coherency to everyone else as though the zealot was still there for this same duration. Maybe make it also increase coherency radius for the zealot a whole lot. Maybe it can also let the zealot count as being in coherency with anyone who’s dead, so they can still clutch with it while being the last person alive (presumably because they ran ahead and the rest of the team got killed by all the bosses the zealot pissed off and then stealthed past). Stop forcing Deathcultist Zealots to hobble their team even if they aren’t being speedrunning asshats.

Idea 2, make Loner an optional talent node and not an aura so that it doesn’t sacrifice the rest of the team in the opportunity cost. The Deathcultist Zealot’s aura could then be something else, ANYTHING else is fine as long as it’s a real aura that benefits the team, but my favorite suggestion is something dodge related, like increased dodge regeneration or dodge distance, since that side of the skill tree already has a bunch of “on successful dodge” stuff.

Some people always say meh mreh it’s fine i use it all the time. Don’t listen to these people, I certainly don’t, they’re deliberately contrarian, and are the most likely to be the jerks who abandon their team and shouldn’t be playing a co-op game in the first place. Also they’re wrong, for all the reasons detailed above. Loner sucks regardless of how Fine some people can perform while using it. They are not doing fine because of Loner, they are doing fine despite it. Loner is bad and should be changed to be less bad or be something else that isn’t bad, because currently the other two auras are vastly superior.

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Apparently, there’s a bug where The Emperor’s Will (zealot’s default aura) is still active even after picking Loner. Not sure if it’s a bug bug or a “bug”/unmentioned feature like the ranged interaction with Chastise the Wicked.

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Apparently Loner’s coherency effect actually changes how specials spawn - Zealots with the aura who stay away from their team for a long time don’t get hounded by disablers, so it’s not just for the regen.

That said, I still agree that it needs to just be a standard node instead of an aura keystone. It just feels lame to pick, too.

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Yeah it’s that change in logic when you are out of coherency that is your buff for the rest of the team. It is a strange interaction and one that still goes positive for Zealot and minus everyone else, that’s the issue with it. The game is already at its worst point for actual co op so swiping at the list of social buffs is just bad design. Especially in the ‘aura’ slot that is specifically a buff for you and other players, in the 11 other cases in the game.

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Crackpipe idea but Loner should be on Veteran instead of Zealot.

Veteran can’t really play the long range support role, because if they stay in an advantageous position they’ll get attacked by disablers and will have no coherency regen (on top of already having bad toughness regen in general).

If they got Loner, they could set up overwatch during a horde or an objective and support the team, even if they move.

There are probably a million different problems with this idea, but I really enjoy the mid mission event on Consignment Yard, where 1 or 2 people can stay in the little tower during the event and shoot down in relative safety, at least if they watch the stairs.

Also might get us a Long Las.

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That would have made so much more sense. Calling it “sniper” or “recon” instead of loner too.

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This has always been one of the things about the coherency system I have found baffling. It actively works against the idea of team wide “hybrid combat.” And it seems like it would be so easy to tack on an extra frontal cone shaped projection to the aura to allow overwatch strategies. Hell, they could even make the range of the overwatch projection different for different guns so that a helbore could perform the role better than a shotgun.

Thankfully coherency’s importance has been throughly de-emphasized over time so it’s not really a big deal.

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Veterans basically already have a better version of Loner, that one that makes them get 5% toughness regen per second when there are no enemies in close range. It USED to be a whoooole lot better though because they used to have Camo Expert which gave them reduced threat while standing still. Man I really miss that, but my thoughts on how the Veteran feels like he’s lacking an identity are a whole other topic.

It sure has and then some. I actually would prefer a system that relied more on Coherency for toughness regeneration. Something to the effect of, like, Coherency provides toughness damage reduction as well, and maybe also regular damage reduction, and it’s much faster, but all the other things that currently replenish toughness would be switched to some level of toughness damage reduction, or ranged damage reduction, or regular damage reduction, or toughness regeneration speed, so that Coherency is your primary source of toughness regeneration, but all the other abilities still help protect you from enemy fire. Like imagine if, say, Voice of Command didn’t replenish any toughness, it just gave everyone 90% toughness damage reduction and 100% increased toughness regeneration for 10 seconds. That kind of thing.

It’d be a massive overhaul of how toughness works though, and it would change the whole game, so I dunno if it would even be more fun or not. I just like the idea of including more teamwork in the core gameplay.

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If this is true, then this is a classic Swedish oversight :upside_down_face:

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This is why it’s not nearly as good as Loner. While the toughness regen is nice, it’s not the bigger issue, which is that being in an overwatch position means you will constantly be fighting off specialists spawning around you. If it counted you as being in coherency you wouldn’t have to deal with those spawns.

I really disagree. While I don’t like those people who fly ahead in mission either, the answer to making people stay together isn’t to arbitrarily gut their survivability just because. It’s to make enemies and situations dangerous enough where you actually need help from your team mates to stay alive, or make it to the end of the mission.

Not to mention the myriad of issues coherency based toughness regen has from a gameplay flow perspective.

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U need help? (I ask u because every post u made is very…rude, and maybe its your way to ask for help).

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Loner itself is fine. The problem is that your teammates are playing like a jackass.

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I agree with you that Loner needs to change.
But Shroudfield is much worse.

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Loner is one of those auras that need replacing tbh, just shouldn’t exist

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I think Shroudfield is fine. Being able to chain-kill heavy armor elites with enough CDR is powerful and fun but not totally overpowered - the build that lets you one-shot bosses I would consider a meme build, because it’s hard to set up and it’s pretty mediocre at everything else.

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They tried that, but it doesn’t work, and not just because Loner switches it off. Loner zealots aren’t the only people who try to speedrun. Disabler specialists make it difficult but not impossible To the kind of person who only cares about their own fun and is perfectly willing to screw over the rest of the team to get it, more intense danger becomes a challenge, not a disincentive. But yeah I’m not super attached to the idea of much more emphasis on Coherency based gameplay, it was just something I was toying with in my head.

No it’s not. See OP.

This is a separate problem.

I don’t care for it either, but mostly because I like the other two a lot more. Being able to go invisible on its own is already an ultra powerful ability, so I don’t know how it could be improved without crossing some lines.

Maybe it could drop a smoke bomb on activation, and we can just completely dedicate to that side of the skill tree being for uncooperative jackholes that everyone else on the team despises. Lawl.

Generally I found it really frustrating trying to get backstabs with anything except the knife because you can sprint while charging heavy attacks. The moment you stealth every nearby enemy runs away from you and towards an ally, so trying to charge a heavy attack with anything but the knife slows you down too much. Does anybody use deathcultist zealot without the combat knife? Feels like the build walls you into only using one weapon. Seems suboptimal design.

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Loner is fine. Your anti-loner rant doesn’t change that fact.

Loner allows the zealot to regenerate outside of coherency, this usually means when they leave coherency range from the rest of the party, but it can also mean when the loner is the only player left alive and must solo clutch. This is a benefit to the team.

Loner also has a hidden mechanic that disables the extra specials spawned (especially dogs) when a player is isolated from the rest of the party. This is a benefit to the team.

By using loner a zealot can split off from the party and go down secondary routes to pick up supplies like medical kits, or flank around the back of enemies without spawning extra specials that the party must deal with. This is a benefit to the team.

The reason you think Loner sucks is because you’ve only noticed people using it poorly. By that I mean they leave coherency and never come back, often running far ahead of the party. A skilled player using loner will be indistinguishable from any other aura because they only duck out of coherency long enough to accomplish something important and then return again before you even notice they were gone.

Secondly toughness damage reduction isn’t as important as you seem to think. Damage reduction only applies against damage, it is not toughness regen. Instead of passively saving you from 15% of incoming damage I could go off on my own and use loner shroudfield to kill a dozen shotgunners which is effectively 100% toughness damage reduction because all of the damage sources are dead.

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A good player with Loner/Shroud will run off at the start of the map and you will only see him at events.

I had multiple I-II/VEG runs with knife Zealot 1 room ahead of the whole team the entire time, always outside LoS, and just dumping the bosses and crusher patrols on the team when they spawned with Shroud.

This is utter madness and should not be possible, much less enabled by design. It should be removed as release knife Zealot was squashed.

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Eh, being able to run off alone and kill entire patrols by yourself is not unique to loner zealots, or even zealots in general. I have veteran and ogryn builds that can do the same thing. Removing loner from the game wouldn’t change much because skilled zealots have no trouble dealing with dogs and don’t need coherency because they get more than enough toughness from melee kills.

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Doing it consistently and for the entire match is a Zealot thing. I did see similar from ogryns, but isn’t nearly to the same degree.

I’ve seen it done without Loner, but Loner is one of these pillar enabling it to be done more easily, and that’s why it has to go.

Just reworking Loner might not be enough to stop this, so other measure must also be introduced.