Penance Rebalance

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

So put simply, the penances for the various classes are NOT balanced at all. Some are just so much easier to do then others.

For Example let us compare three Malice difficulty Penances.

Psyker’s - Going out with a Bang
Sharpshooter’s - On Overwatch
Preacher’s - Up Close and Personal

Note all three of these unlock the chestpiece for their respective classes.

Going out with a bang - Kill 3 ELITE enemies by exploding yourself on them due to Warp Malfunction (Not the exact text but thats pretty much it lol)

On Overwatch - Take Absolutely 100% No damage of any sort (By this I mean Toughness or Health damage) from melee or it’s an instant fail.

Up Close and Personal - What gun? Only Melee! Entire Mission

I’m no genius but one of these penances seems A LOT easier to do than the others considering the difficulty scale you’re looking at.

2 of them require the luckiest of circumstances to achieve and it isn’t the Zealot’s melee only penance lol.

I got the Psyker explodey one by PURE LUCK (and misuse of peril and deciding F it, I’mma explode on the crowd!) I tried for hours and hours to get it, but either an elite enemy would survive with a smidge of health, or an ally would kill one of the three elites, etc. It was PURE LUCK that I managed to get it. Only 0.4% of players even have this achievement. That should tell you how absolutely bonkers it is to even get it.

I can’t even get close to getting On Overwatch because all it takes is a Mutie or Hound in the crowd or some random poxwalker smacking your toughness bar to make the penance null and void. Can’t even do the exploit of Alt-F4ing at the end of a run and quickly reconnecting to get it.

So far Zealot has some of the easiest penances to get in the game AND they don’t really require luck as a factor in if you can even get them or not. Hell you don’t even really need a coordinated team to knock them out!

You can even look at Psyker’s Heresy Penances and see more of a difference in the ridiculousness of difficulty difference in penances. Do 90% of a Monstrosity’s health in damage BY YOURSELF with only BRAIN BLAST.

Compare that to, say… idk Sharpshooter’s Make Every Shot Count, or Preacher’s Just a Flesh Wound, both of which can be done WITHOUT a coordinated team and offer the same rewards at the same difficulty level of mission.

Penances need a rebalance in terms of how they compare to other penances of the other classes in the same tier.

For Example, On Overwatch for Sharpshooter can be changed to just not taking health damage from Melee, so that way you have your toughness as a shield and can play around that and it isn’t just based on luck if some poxwalker just grazes your toughness bar without actually hurting you. Psyker’s going out with a bang can be changed to either just damage 3 elites with it (Similar to how the Sharpshooter’s grenade penance was changed) or kill 10-20 more enemies with the explosion.

5 Likes
2

Many penances needs and overhaul cause most are damn impossible without severely crippling your team, one way or another. Especially if you’re forced to play with randoms, there’s no point in many of them.

3

Exactly! Hell some were just straight up bugged for the longest time too XD Like Psyker Warp Battery. During the Beta I was regularly playing on Malice and literally held 4 warp charges for the ENTIRE MISSION and didn’t get it.

Of course it was fixed on release so its fine now, was just annoying.

4

Yeah, just tried knocking out On Overwatch again. Took no health damage from melee. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. By the luckiest of luck you can only get this penance.

5

Focusing on this one, I would love to see going out with a bang reworked to just blowing up X amount of pox walkers. It’s a situation you can accidentally get yourself in, easy to coordinate (Hey guys, let me explode this group!) and while still actively griefing, it doesn’t require very specific circumstances, just literally any horde and a team willing to stall a bit.

Going off your other points, they’re all very awful. Not your points, the penances. That is to say, if any penance requires your group to grief at all, then that penance is garbage. Every single penance that requires hyper-conservative/selfish play should be reworked. Without exception.

For example: Going out with a bang should simply be kill X enemies in Y seconds by any means. It could be something like 50 poxwalkers in 15 seconds on Malice and that would be somewhat easy to achieve with a voidstrike, purgatus, or trauma staff.

Basically, I want every class penance to be easy to unlock. Easy in 3 tiers: Sedition (Learning the class) Malice (advanced techniques), and Heresy (Getting the most out of what you have.) And the talents should emphasize the level of skill expected to beat it. E.G. On Overwatch shouldn’t be taking no melee damage, but rather be not going down on Malice. Hard to do, but once you get good enough at the game, you’ll get it no problem.

They shouldn’t be contrived to set up, shouldn’t require a team to do anything special just for you, but should help encourage better mastery of the game on that class.

They can add specialty extremely hard challenges, like don’t take any damage for an entire mission, with limited (borders) or no rewards as non-class omni talents for the actually difficult stuff.

Just my thoughts.

6

On Heresy tho there are so many elite enemies that it shouldn’t be that difficult, annoying that you ahve to literally grief your entire team, but not difficult. May need a tad bit of coordination so you bring the elites low enough for a kaboom to finish them off.

Heck, you can just bring a surge staff on the mission to uhm… Is it kill the assination dude where you enter via the sewers and drop down into that fairly big room with pipes… Should almost always be 3-5 elites at the start of said mission, then just do enough instant surge attacks (brings 'em low enough) while you move into position and blow yourself up once you hit max peril :). Can even do it on damnation, better chance of getting them elite maulers/ragers with armor

Enjoy.

7

The problem is, you still need to get your team to just…not attack enemies for a bit. Then you have to surge staff the elites a handful of times because the explosion doesn’t kill the units outright. And by then it’s just a really badly designed thing.

Like, sure, if we had private games, I could easily force it solo with a couple hours of attempts. It’s not fun forcing that on other people.

That’s also just not good design for the style of game this is. That the situation is easy to forcibly contrive is one thing. That it’s still stupid is another entirely. For class penances specifically, they should all teach new concepts, be on the easier side to set up and execute, and ideally not be actively griefing the player or their team.

8

Just a flesh wound for preacher is too hard atm. Now no matter how much toughness you stack it doesnt matter because of bleed through hp dmg.

9

One of the Assassination Bosses (of the two maps that was initially available) has you walk through the sewer and eventually drop into a larger room with pipes.

That tunnel entrance to the room usually has 3-5 Maulers on Heresy/Damnation. Most people avoid damnation, so… I’d still like Penances to actually be a positive addition to teamplay and not trolling/griefing.

10

While friends will be friends for ogryn is a great idea, it’s a horrible thing to impose on an entire squad just because I want some pants. Absolutely hate any of the penances that require the whole squad to play in an unnatural way, unless everyone gets rewarded.

1 Like
11

I actually agree with what you’ve said here. The fact that most of the penances revolve around hampering your teamplay isn’t good. They should be things you earn by performing exceptional feats of strength by playing your class. I.E. like murking 50 poxwalkers in 15 seconds lol.

1 Like
12

The problem isn’t with the number of elites being the problem, its actually being able to kill them with the explosion. A full health armored or unarmored rager isn’t going to die from your explosion and most other elites are difficult to get within range of exploding. Again only 0.4% of players have this achievement. If we do some math and say 1/4 players is Psyker (And I’ve seen A LOT of psyker players) 25% of the player base and only a small fraction of them have this achievement. It’s a malice difficulty achievement. It should be at least attainable by 50% of the Psyker playerbase.

In the current scenario it requires a degree of luck that those elites you’re targeting are weakened enough to die to the explosion and that your teammates don’t kill them before you go off. Coupled with the fact you’re griefing your team to get it.

13

You only need it for 1 person now I believe. It just says A living teammate, not the entire squad. So basically have 1 battle buddy with you lol. That got changed after the beta, so they are willing to change penances thankfully!

1 Like
14

I think they nerfed that penance somewhat. Now its 75% of the time. So just stay under 1 wound worth of health for 15 minutes, then make that mission finishes in the next 5 lol. Still a bit of a ridiculous achievement to get though I will admit.

15

Bring a surge staff…
Continuously instant fire it and you’ve done enough damage that by the time you’re capped out on peril and explodes they die. Penance achieved. Just make sure that the bots don’t screw it up - either by having them die to the elites first or by tricking them into not coming down with you.

It is the go to way to do that achievement.

Killing a monstrocity on your own is far worse than this one.

16

Hmmmm, don’t really like the surge staff tbh and the fact that I’d have to bring it just to whittle down elites just barely enough to be able to explode on them and take them out without teammates killing them… its still not a very good penance.

I’ve already gotten it by sheer luck (Stupidity) on my part lol. Literally entire horde was coming, had several Ogryn, several ragers, a shotgunner or two in the crowd, and I… accidentally overused my warp and was about to explode so I went “F it, I’m taking you all with me!” and jumped into the horde, only to clear them all out and get the penance. It was pure luck, no setup, no skill, no conscious thought went into getting it. It is a luck-based penance, my friend, and it shouldn’t be that way.

It should be based on your skill as a Psyker. I would even say the same for the 1v1 with the monstrosity as well. It’s not really a test of your skill as a Psyker, its teaming up with friends that wont shoot the Karking thing while you brain blast 90% of its health away.

Personally I find the easiest one to do it on is the Plague Ogryn. Fairly easy to avoid for me ironically enough. Beast of Nurgle is… ehhhh… I don’t like fighting em lol.

17

To me, those penances with a no damage need you to be extremely lucky or you need a miracle to do it.
Enemies’ spawning is totaly a mess, i stop counting how many times i see enemies spawning like that in front of me or using teleportation behind my back … i even get one hiting me with his axe behind a wall because he was stuck in it …

I sugest them to change those with something more realistic like :
For the sharpshooter : “take X amount of damage maximum”
For the psyker : " hit 3 elites" only