Plasma needs a lot of love as of patch 13

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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At the moment, because of the massive ammo economy changes, plasma needs changes again since it lacks both ammo and competing damage.

The gun was incredibly ammo heavy before, but now it’s in entering unusable territory because of how dependent you become on ammo crates and taking all other ammo drops from everyone else.

If you happen to also be playing with other ammo-heavy classes/builds, your entire team will be struggling on ammo supplies. Being rewarded with 1/3 of a charged shot is pitiful for each kill especially when kills can sometimes take 2+ shots to down a special especially mutants that can easily need 5 shots.

On top of this issue, despite being the armour and special killer you can still easily get out-damaged by various lasgun crit builds (especially with onslaught massively favouring high RoF guns) on top of lasgun crit builds just not needing ammo as severely as plasma (which is nice if you’re the one plasma on the team).

I think plasma needs a major damage increase if the ammo economy changes are to stay, or plasma needs its ammo economy buffed with either more reserve or changing the ammo cost of an uncharged shot to one and making the charged shot something larger and then adjusting the ammo mag sizes to compensate.

One of the largest losses in the new talent system for plasma is the loss of ogryn highlighting. The plasma gun is one of the best ogryn killers, and the loss of highlighting makes volley fire much more unsustainable. Chained ogryn kills should be the plasma’s biggest boon compared to other options, but this option no longer exists, so a welcomed addition would be a new node under execution stance with a lockout with counter fire that allows highlighting ogryns.

As it stands, plasma is lacking in both damage and ammo because of the talent changes since the talent changes severely favour the various lasguns in the game which is a shame since the plasma gun is one of the unique vet guns and in my opinion, one of the most unique guns in the game.

pls buff plasma

13 Likes
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In my opinion the state of the plasma gun is rather a symptom of the more underlaying problems of the veteran.

The class as a whole is right now generally outshined by other classes. The ammo efficiency went down the drain everywhere and the only viable gun for long, heated engagements with little ammo is the classical lasgun.

But then again, unless you are headshot king, then even the lasgun feels weaker, as all the enemies have been buffed a bit to compensate for stronger player characters. Bodyshots do laughable amount of damage.

I agree that veteran was the incarnation of the infamous elf from Vermintide, but he went from Elf to Huntsman in that matter: he has a lot of strengths on paper, but in the game only handful of people are skilled enough to tap into that potential.

8 Likes
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Vet is way too focused on lasguns now and it’s a shame since plasma, the other exclusive vet weapon, can’t keep up.

Yeah there are other issues, but I think they’re most glaring on plasma.

4 Likes
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It seems ok. Sure you lose auto reload, which I advocated previously to never manually reload ever, but you can slip and slide all over the place and your melee is stronger than ever

Plasma gun was always a meleer

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That is what I felt when I read the changes to Vet. It is the Huntsman now. That opinion did not change after playing him for a couple of days.

It is incredibly annoying how restricting the Veterans Arsenal got after the patch. Before you could make anything work. Now alot of weapons just dont have the punch they need to warrant their ammo restriction. Plasma is one of them.

2 Likes
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I’m more inclined to desire buffs to the ammo economy rather than buffs to the damage. If you ignore the ammo problem for a moment, I think that the plasma gun performs well enough in terms of how much damage that you can pump out per second and damage per unit of heat. IMO they can probably just make it consume less ammo per attack and call it day.

Also fix the bug where you only get 8% of your ammo pool from a small ammo box while other weapons are receiving ~13% of their ammo pool back. That’s a huge ~60% difference.

1 Like
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Major pain points with plasma:

  • Cleave is super low. Light shots don’t even cleave Bruisers. A charged shot should cleave chaff as much as Voidstrike does carving a path in the horde.
  • Breakpoints are brutal, damage is low. The weapon requires 80% damage 80% Penetration +25% Maniac damage to one-shot flamers during Executioner’s Stance WITH A HEADSHOT. This is while taking all +ranged damage nodes and Rending Strikes. You have to pick up marksmen to hit the breakpoint without an absolutely perfect setup, but at that point, you are better off running Helbore/K12. Other breakpoints are similarly horrible.
  • Ammo is extremely low. The weapon is only viable as a side arm currently for a support build. Even there it’s bad compared to other ranged weapons. Can’t run it in a ranged-focused build.

All this while having to manage heat, and shot having a charge-up time. The only special thing going for it is penetrating cover which since it was implemented was super fun.

5 Likes
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It’s much, much less than that.

80% ammo plasma gun with 25% bonus ammo is 303 total ammo.

1% of that is 3.03 ammo. So a kill should be giving back 3 ammo, but it only gives back 2 to 1

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As always you have great takes. I propose that the plasma should have base AOE explosions when it runs out of cleave instead of lots more cleave. Yes i want more cleave on lights, but when cleave runs out it should get an AOE much like the bolter as hot gas vents into the local area.

Lmao.

I ran it yesterday and that was my experience too 60% of my game was just chainswording around. Which, i do love, but i’d rather be a zealot with that kind of ranged/melee split. Maybe its up next for those additional balances fatshark mentioned in their patch 13 notes.

4 Likes
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I adore this idea. The plasma shot exploding into AoE when it runs out of cleave sound both thematic for the weapon and super fun.

3 Likes
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Somewhere i read it was part of the original design of the weapon.

4 Likes
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You make many valid points.

Voidstrike at the moment is a better plasma gun than the actual plasma gun. Mind you, I believe voidstrike needs a hard bonk from the nerf bat, but that’s a separate discussion wholesale.

Plasma has always really suffered from a breakpoint issue. Yeah, it does great damage and does like 80% of the health of an enemy, but that’s sorta garbage extremely garbage if it takes twice as much ammo in this new ammo economy (which as a whole, I like, but again, plasma needs to get updated to match it).

2 Likes
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One thing that plasma has also struggled with is giving the charged up attack a proper identity. As it stands, it’s just the same DPS as light shot spam but without the risk of blowing up, so why bother ever using it especially when there are perks preferring light spam like blaze away.

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There was (probably still is) a problem with plasma dealing inconsistent damage tied to each weapon. Previously breakpoints weren’t even half as bad.

My go-to was +10% elite and either + Carapace for Crusher hunting or Maniacs for specials. +10% elites allowed you to clear a lot of headshot breakpoints.

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Thing is, why can’t we raise BOTH weapons up to standard instead of dragging one down to fit the other. We have suffered long with the Voidstrike and with the updated spawn rates of elites and hordes spawned in Auric/Damnation, the Voidstrike feels so much better to play.

Voidstrike doesn’t need a “hard bonk” they just need to fine tune it.
Lower damage a bit against Maniac and Unyielding and reduce the stagger count, right now I’ve seen Psykers perma staggering monstrosities

Plasma gun definitely does need a buff, I have been playing a lot of Veteran lately and I struggle with ammo on both the Plasma gun and Boltgun

QoL changes I would like would definitely to fix Bolter and Helbore pull-out/unholstering speed

Remove the Plasma gun’s firing delay, you can keep the fire-rate same in between shots but remove the delay between clicking and the actual shot, make it in a way where a click instantly fires and then the pre-fire sound comes up instead of the other way around, right now when you click, there’s a delay as the weapon “charges up”

Ammo definitely needs to go up on both Mag and Clip on the Boltgun

  • Bolter at least 20/180 rounds as a base
  • Plasma 150/300 as a base

As of now, the only really fun weapon I have as a Vet is the Viid Accatran (16rps variant) that crits the hell out of heretics.

They seriously need to buff the Veteran’s exclusive weapons, PlasmaGun, BoltGun, PowerSword,

PowerSword definitely needs a buff too, especially with the Zealots exclusive weapons getting so much love this patch, with the newly buffed Heavy Eviscerator and ThunderHammers still going extremely strong.

TL:DR please just buff weapons that need buffing, no need for collateral damage. Been a Voidstrike Psyker since Day 1

16

Stop, no.

Voidstrike was ok, if not slightly, SLIGHTLY, underpowered before patch.

It’s indefensibly broken OP regardless of build right now. There is no raising both weapons up and still expecting us to have a playable co-op game.

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Take this to the void strike topic, please.

1 Like
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It’ll be nice if plasma had normalised damage against all armour types except maniac, since it feels really bad to have any non-elite enemy survive a direct hit from what is ostensibly an anti-materiel weapon.

Ammo economy really hurts, the default crosshair is atrocious and there is almost no synergy with the talent tree. Maybe when they rework talents, have talents that affect ammo also affect heat capacity?

I personally don’t mind the fire delay, but the way inputs can be eaten or unstoppably queued does affect its usability in a big way.

2 Likes
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All these complaints are just different perspectives of the same relationship. If damage is the subject, then ammo per damage is too high. If ammo is the subject, then damage per ammo is too low. It’s all the same problem. Therefore, as literally everyone is in agreement, it’s dead obvious something needs to be done immediately. This should be the easiest fix in Fatshark’s pathetic existence.

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The only things that need a bonk are the people who still insist on bonking fun things.