It’s rather basic. In the fluff a plasma gun is super versatile and destructive with the draw back of having a longer down time.
Overcharged plasma gun shots looks and feels underwhelming. Plasma bolts from a charged plasma gun should explode and have some AOE potential.
In upcoming patch 14 it will get some 15% number increase BUT a absurd cleave increase.
IIRC it will now penetrate 5 crushers OR pretty much infinite amount of anything else
its about to get buffed so much that it will get nerfed in patch 15
Well that’s good news.
Hopefully not. Ammo wasn’t touched so unlikely plasma will be meta, but it will be nice seeing more of it in game.
It’s getting a grip of buffs shortly.
However the biggest problem was, and still will be, ammo. I don’t usually have too big a problem with its killing power. The problem is running out of ammo after a couple dozen shots.
I will say post buff it felt really good to use last night.
With a build focused on getting toughness on elite kill, getting extra reload speed, and dumping extra heat into toughness it REALLY just tears up elite packs on shock gauntlet style missions.
I think it would be nice to see sone different marks of plasma gun though. Have a plasma gun with an aoe blast secondary Vs a penetration and maybe one focused weapon on melting armor that smaller but can fire more.
post buff plasma feels amazing. The delay, charge time and reload time feel like excellent balancing factors.
Leave it where it is now, I say.
Would love a plasma gun with AOE blast on charged shot
I enjoy the plasma gun, but on Damnation I tend to blow through all my ammo extremely quickly with just how many special/ big enemies there are. The damage is a welcome addition, but the ammo drain on it is more of a problem in my eyes.
I genuinely have no idea how this weapon can be properly balanced in a game like Darktide. A big, slow firing, massively damaging weapon with limited ammo works fine in games where you can either carry a lot of guns, swap out guns in the field, or both. In a game where you can only take a single ranged weapon, it feels incredibly out of place. It’s either going to be overpowered (it currently is) or close to useless (how it was before the latest patch).
Honestly, Darktide would have been a lot better if the pistol weapons were a tertiary weapon every class had access to. They’d obviously all need a nerf so as to not completely overshadow primary weapons, but it would be an overall buff to ranged combat, and open up a lot more possibilities. A low ammo, powerful primary totally works if you can fall back on a weaker secondary ranged weapon between ammo pickups/generation.
It’s what happens when you bring in an anti-materiel weapon into any situation with infantry in games, it’ll be simultaneously the strongest and weakest weapon as well as being the most and least useful weapon at the same time too.
My opinion of it is its currently great but I just don’t like the vets survivability.
Melee vet is really great and strong and you can do a ton of damage.
Range vet that is basically what build you must run to get 25% more ammo and the ability to wall hack with a wall pen gun that makes it so fun is a full glass cannon.
It really could use a ammo boost because on high difficulty you have to get that 25% more ammo at the end of the tree and that means you got like 3 hits till you die in melee.
This is your choice, you can also play Commissar and have less damage and ammo but great survival.
Or they can just get both ammo and survivability?
@Bababoofa How is the below build not survivable with close order drill, confirmed kill, and iron will all on the same build (as well as the ammo talent as specified)?
With plasma you should easily be able to stack a heap of confirmed kill very quickly.
I think with the same setup, except swapping to deadeye, you can be as, if not more, effective with a revolver. They both have ammo efficiency issues, but at least with the revolver it’s a lot easier to score headshots and you don’t have to worry about overheat. The only thing plasma has going for it is being able to shoot through walls and shields. I’ve also noticed some really awkward glitchy behavior regarding damage inconsistencies with the plasrifle, where sometimes I’ll be able to 1shot hs a crusher, and then the very next shot it’ll do like 2-300 less damage for no reason, same distance. Even got a crit headshot to do less damage than a regular headshot. There’s something funky going on with it.
The executioner’s stance is one of the only 2 abilities that can’t be used defensively at all (the other being the absolutely unused Scryer’s Gaze).
CK and IW together with ET is very tanky… If active. If you have your stacks going and aren’t swarmed by melee, it is very effective, but even with it, it’s probably the setup with the least survivability compared to any setup of any other class (although not by a lot), and the worst in recovery by far (ability to recover from a bad situation).
That said I think it’s okay if the damage output is there, and Plasma definitely delivers the cannon part.
SG was absolutely made to be used with gun-psyker, and I think it works very well with that.
I haven’t found anything that does as much damage with SG as peril-transferring surge, but yeah SG can do good things for HH autoguns and the las pistol.
Oh absolutely, I wasn’t criticizing its power, just that’s the only thing comparable (the only other thing that absolutely lacks defensive power) and basically, nobody uses it in pugs.
