It should be obvious as this point that is talent is mega overpowered, it allows you to use your gun 24/7 on higher diffs, even more than veteran can ever do (Survivalist was nerfed because of this)
The issue is not that it gives you infinite ammo, the issue is the proc criteria
“Kill an elite or specialist”. Like, really? that’s it? That’s just “breathe and you get ammo”. Where’s the risk? Where’s the engagement on it? The difference in effectiveness between playing with Pickpocket and without Pickpocket is so massive, how come this is just that?
Fatshark really forgot they made Bounty Hunter on VT2, and even he has a similar talent but that is not busted
“When out of ammo, kill an elite enemy with Your melee weapon to replenish 20% of your ammo. Reload your weapon by 1 on melee kill”
This is it, the simplest way to make Pickpocket more engaging, change the proc criteria to “Kill an Elite or Specialist with your melee” and suddendly it should become a lot less problematic. You can even buff the ammo given up to 35-60% if the risk is now suddendly too high
Veteran survivalist was nerfed because it gives almost infinite ammo
Veteran Ability reload was nerfed because it was too strong with high mag weapons
Veteran Ability ranged TDR was nerfed because it let you become almost immune to ranged enemies
Now please say hello to Desperado Hive Scum, which has literal infinite ammo, even bigger mags with a reload, and FULL ranged immunity for the duration! We didn’t know it was OP, promise.
Before the Hive Scum came along I was actually hoping that gunzealot (maybe an odd idea but so was melee psyker 1-2 years ago) would get an ammo sustain talent like the VT2 Bounty Hunter, except tuned to melee kills restoring 1-2% while below 20% ammo.
I guess the dream of a ranged hybrid Zealot spec is dead but it will be interesting to see how the balance of ranged Scum feels once their various bugs are fixed and people have time to play them properly.
Yeah, my notes from the time have a fallback if the original idea was too powerful. “Extra ammo from pickups”. The Scum talent tree preview was a bit of an odd experience for me.
If this is the case, why did developers deliberately create a ranged only playstyle thrice in the game’s lifespan, with the original Vet design with threat reduction and instareload, then Survivalist at its strongest, and now they did the same a couple years later with Hive Scum?
Yes, play with chem nades and ranged part of the tree while they are at their best. I think both of them, plus Hive’s toxin DOT, are inevitably walking down to the chopping block. People are already starting to consider them “a bit too strong”.
My bet is on the same treatment as Vet’s aura. I can feel the rework coming : internal cooldown of 30 sec. There are so many elites all the time in Damnation and above, there’s really no other way to limit its usage.
Though if they go for that they better buff melee Hive Scum because that sh!t is either going at 100 mph or ground-kissing simulator
I believe it depends on how balanced they are — if a class is moderately strong but not overpowered even with unlimited ammunition, then they deserve to have it.
Remember what was mentioned in the dev blog before — an aggressive ranged character counterpart to aggressive melee character like the Zealot
Or just make it gain ammo only at close-range specialist/elite kills. If they really need to further nerf this extreme glass cannon. (And to fit it to the dev theme of a close-range gun berserker type of class.)
Might not even be considered a cannon at the moment, only a glass but not cannon. Since all other classes can easily outmatch the hive scum’s range or melee dps. And survive even better too.
And as one commenter above has mentioned, the vet and psyker already have infinite ammo too with 100% uptime using range. (Their version of infinite ammo is innate and doesn’t even require hunting any specialists/elites.)
For example, Vet lasgun can one-shot most specialists and elites with a single headshot at any range, compared to hive scum needing to get to closer range and take some time to burst each down with dual pistols/autopistols, and are more inaccurate at long ranges. Despite the higher risk for hive scum to use range weapons at closer ranges. No ammo issues using lasgun even in havoc where ammo is scarce. So it’s pretty much 100% uptime using range too.
Psyker’s surge staff crit build(surge and warp nexus) primary fire with infinite ammo can burst down specialists/elites extremely fast too, and not much need for quell/reload with Scrier’s gaze Warp Unbound. But it’s just that the inferno staff is even more op.
This is just Fatshark going backwards on talent design again for some reason. See below Bounty Hunter’s salvaged ammunition, which pickpocket is clearly adapted from:
What’s interesting here is Salvaged Ammunition has functionally the same potential, it’s just far more thoughtful and interesting to actually use.
The condition of being completely out of ammo means you need to either a) wade into melee to get the elite kill or b) be cognisant enough of your ammo to get a killing blow on an elite with your last shot.
The condition working only on elites was genuinely tricky sometimes when there was a special you needed dead badly with your last round. I actually think it would cause less issue in Darktide since there’s such an abundance of elites to kill.
I think you could more or less adopt these conditions and the talent would frankly still probably be way too powerful but at least it wouldn’t be brainless to utilise.
This argument is highly dishonest considering it fails to mention Vet and Psyker can only do this with a minority of their available ranged weapons. Heck even some of the ones that could theoretically achieve this don’t in practice. If you ever play a MF laspistol build you will quickly realise that even with every ammo talent it is still quite easy to run out of ammo if you’re not picking it up from the map. Hive Scum doesn’t need to pick up ammo at all really. With any gun.
I wonder why Fatshark became incredibly allergic to any ammo return on melee and instead keep putting in (initially) unlimited proc on elite/special kill effects.
I don’t know if you’re being obtuse intentionally here, I will try to assume the best, though I question how anyone arguing in good faith misses my intent this badly.
I was clearly not commenting on general ammo sustain, they are vastly different games in that regard, and that discussion requires analysing a wide variety of factors.
The point I was illustrating was in how interactive talents are, as well as their trigger condition vs potency of effect. The VT2 variant of this talent requires some thought and CAN create risk if used thoughtlessly. Personally I find this vastly more compelling than holding LMB with no thoughts for ammo.
