Playing Veteran Marksman (Helbore) feels awful

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I can’t get the Helbore to work in Shock Gauntlet/Maelstrom Aurics because I’m always forced into melee by nonstop trash and specials. I end up point-blank firing, dodging constantly, trying to get distance without leaving coherency, kiting back when I pull aggro from the constant special spam, then backing off again just to take a shot. It feels awful.

Since the rework, stealth knife + revolver is far more reliable: stamina bonuses, smoke to shut down shooters, quick one-taps, and Weapons Specialist + Always Prepared so I can swap, reload, and kill specials while meleeing trash. Marksman doesn’t support a real Marksman playstyle. Focus stacks are easier to maintain with faster weapons (I can spam a damn autogun at the head and maintain stacks just as easily), and Executioner’s Stance is terrible while being swarmed, unless of course you have a quick stamina revovler/laspistol build or an autogun. The Marksman keystone ironically works better for me on autoguns, revolvers, laspistols/lasguns, bolters, or plasma since they fire faster or cleave through trash. With all the special spam, the game doesn’t favor a slower more methodical marksman.

In trying to make things work, I end up needing the same Infiltrate/Weapons Specialist setup I use with the Revolver, except slower weapons demand even stronger melee, stamina, and dodge investment; pushing me to the right side of the talent tree and making the Helbore inferior to other ready-to-fire weapons or stuff like Bolter and Plasma that brute force through and can also be spammed. he Helbore’s non-charged shots practically do nothing, and the melee on it is garbage, so it really is just a single-purpose sniping weapon that is still inferior, even after the talent rework and buffs.

The two things that actually help are the post-Infiltrate 90 aggro drop and Always Prepared feeding ammo through Ranged Specialist stacks; that alongside crits don’t consume ammo make reloading almost unnecessary. Marksman’s buffs are pretty mid, and work on anything that gets headshots, while slower guns force me into melee and require lots of dodging/sprinting.

Maybe I’m missing something though, hopefully someone can chime in with a cool build, but for now I join the ranks of the many fallen Kriegsman players getting downed with the Helbore.

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This is the build I generally use when I feel like helboring: Helbore HeadClicker - Veteran Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k

For Aurics I like the MkV, it ones shots most things and charges the quickest. It 3 shots crushers once you have stacks up of things and can 2 shot if you get 2 crits right after using Exec Stance. Idea is to be shooting like 80% of the game. I find the events to be the most melee intensive parts for this build since they tend to spawn a bunch of chaff and few elites/specials so you can run whatever melee you’d like. I used to use Heavy Sword but have falchion here because it’s a new toy. Shredders are for when you get overrun, melee weapon for when you’re really overrun.

Otherwise, yeah it’s a lot of dodge slides and repositioning. In most situations, I just try to sit behind my frontliner(s) while trying to keep my back or side against some cover to minimize trash melee enemies getting up on me. With the toughness regen + resistance from talents and Exec Stance, you can face tank basically any ranged damage. Also taking the occasional hit on a sneaky trash mob while in combat doesn’t matter because you’re gonna regen that toughness back instantly.

It’s a very selfish DPS build but you make up for by making sure that your melee teammates never really have to deal with ranged threats or specials. You can even pick off a Crusher or two or three before they lumber over. Boss damage is kind of mediocre but it’s not bad if you can hit weakspots.

I’ve also run Big Dom’s build: HAVOC 40 DKOK HELBORE - Veteran Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k which is for H40 but translates well to Aurics. It’s safer, takes more melee nodes, and is more team-oriented than what I normally run. If you wanna know more, you can watch the vid he made.

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Hilarious.
All the buffs and people still cant use it.
Which proves my point i made long time ago that it was never about the helbore strength, but skill and knowledge how to use it.

Here’s a guide i made for it : Veteran precision helbore build/guide

Its a bit outdated because they castrated the helbore bayonet. But you might still get some use out of it.

Surprisingly for the first time on this forum i actually agree with and 2nd what someone said about helbore. @Dizzy721 has the right idea and we actually share the same build with some minor differences.

And im going to add some things :
First you need to get it out of your head that helbore is a sniper rifle. It is not. It is a precision rifle, thats a big difference.
You’re not supposed to be standing still, if you’re standing still while using the gun, you’re going to die, either by being riddled with bullets or by clubs to the back of your head. You’re supposed to be always on the move, with your team.

Your priority is to take out every single ranged unit in the game and trust your teammates with taking care of the melee. But dont rely on them to babysit you, if you’re staying behind you’re going to die.
You need to always be the first person to enter the new room and start clearing out the ranged units there.
As a true death corps, should always be the first person to charge ahead unafraid.

I’d also tell you to use the bayonet as much as possible, but thats been ruined by fatshark so yeah…

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I almost cleared H40 silo cluster with helbore, though i used focus target and we all died in the end event, but it was close. And i cleared plenty of aurics with it and marksman focus, even with regular lasgun. This game is mostly melee and you need to use it, forget about shooting all the time.

If you use regular lasgun, then you can’t drop reciprocity, because you need ghost, which should proc it on headshot. Helbore use either what i show in build or heavy one with weight of fire instead of armour bane, it will one shot reapers, while this two shot i.e one charged shot and one regular.

With surgical there’s no need for deadshot talent, otherwise you will have to drop two nodes somewhere, take stamina curio and tunnel vision, maybe with duck and dive.

Since weapon forces you to shoot heads, exhilarating takedown is great, it gives stacking 3 times TDR which now don’t go away at once. Out for blood is a must, best veteran toughness regen talent, it’s +5% to all toughness regen, without need to have stacks like tunnel vision. Very good with shredders and shovel when fight horde.

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I’ve run Hellbore, and it’s okay. Your usefulness depends entirely on your ability to make snap headshots consistently - it’s a very high bar, because the Hellbore has just kind of been crowded out of the game as a result of enemy number increases. It is possible, but takes a supreme amount of skill to deliver any return, and will still be outperformed by someone spamming Recon Lasgun or Plasma Gun.

But what can you expect? This is a game about fighting hordes.

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And you likely wont in the nearest future due to the ever increasing speed and aggro of the teams. The Auric/ML environment and teams became simply too fast for the gun to work smoothly!

Go Havoc with it because i don’t really think there’s a suggestion or a build that will force your team in ML/auric to part time babysit anything.

Lastly i really doubt the efficacy of the whole thing in ML/auric, because a proper melee Vet playing alongside you with a bolt pistol is gonna outsnapshot you pretty bad…and if the snapshots are kinda the game…

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I think people realise it. They just don’t want to play every build and weapon like run’n’gun be it shotgun, dmr or rifle. They want some playstyle diversity, but since the game is balanced around spamming enemies it’s not possible.

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Highly disagree. While the gun stopped being fun (for reasons i said in another thread) The weapon always was and still is extremely good in auric/maelstrom.

2-3 weeks ago when i came back to darktide after a YEAR LONG break, i was playing on auric shock troop gauntlet alone with my buddy (private lobby) and we managed to win a match with just the 2 of us.

And that was after a year long break when i was extremely rusty.

Actually i swapped to a recon gun on several tries and was going far worse then the helbore.
IMO helbore is much more powerful then recon (unless you’re playing as a gun psyker with recon… but that one’s stronger then i think any other class/build in the game)

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I think this could be a problem. Okay player knows to stick together, good player knows when not to. Sometimes it is better to stay back a bit where you have better shooting position, then blindly follow your team. If you fear specials, then I’m afraid you just need to git gut, 99% of them are dodgeable, and hellbore itself is great weapon against them.

Oh, I sure hope you run with a talent for faster swap speee, it makes day-night difference. Only problem with it is that animation is not well synchronized, and you can use your weapon before it ends.

There is also one mod, that autocharges your hellbore. Great thingy, not only it saves you a lot of clicking, it also helps with aiming, as you have finer control over the mouse when you don’t need one finger to constantly press a button.

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YMMV, ofc, I should have said “in DPS”. The only advantage the Hellbore has over Recon is accuracy (not an issue except on efficiency at extreme ranges) and being able to deal good damage to Crushers. Which can be valuable, ofc, but the Recon Lasgun can put effective DPS into literally everything, even hordes occasionally if needed. That fire DoT stacks up to crazy damage.

By dint of the Hellbore needing more skill to use effectively, Recon Lasgun is just going to always pull ahead in DPS. But, of course, being that marksman who picks off the key targets quickly is the whole appeal of the Hellbore and why I occasionally pull it out for a run.

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You can also disagree mildly or lowly, you do you m8.

Having said that, when i think a weapon is bad i generally by a rule tell people to take it to Havoc, kudos to you for figuring it out :+1:

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Stop caring about Coherency. Coherency toughness regen is useless. There’s very little buffs from other players nowadays that have enough of an affect to matter. All you need to be is close enough for/to be rescued when needed.

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How to say you’ve never used helbore without saying you never used helbore.

The weapon is highly mobile, shoots faster then the revolver if you take reload into account and does not need space….. Well or at least it didnt need to, but since the bayonet is slow af now its kinda more difficult to keep everything at bay. But at the same time since the swap time was reduced it shouldnt give you any problems to simply swap to your melee when things get out of hand.

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Its interesting how even after all these buffs, people still $hittalk the helbore… It is literally the only weapon in the game that people talk so badly about while the weapon itself is great but simply has a higher skill requirement then other weapons.

There’s the thunder hammer but that one really was awful. No idea how it is now though.

It makes me wonder how many buffs would this weapon need to get for all the whiners to actually stop complaining and finally admit they simply suck at it.

Maybe they need to give it aimbot…. Wait they already did increase the headshot hitscan….

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I mostly agree with you, helbore is havoc able weapon now.

Also people really don’t consider benefits of shock trooper, paired with helbore and survivalist, it’s nearly infinite ammo, such veteran can enable every other class to go wild on their ranged weapons. It can even work without shock trooper, because for the most part it’s one headshot - one kill for free.

Oh and I hate thunder hammer, I’d rather play scab only with heavy sword that with this gimmick weapon.

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No reciprocity? Is Competitive Urge actually good? That feels off to me.

Always Prepared exists. It pairs extremely well with both revolver and Helbore; reloads are a non-issue.

I don’t disagree, and you clearly understand the weapon better than most; your build guide is the first thing I found when I started using it.

That said, a good weapon isn’t only about balance; it’s also about its role and how it feels. The Helbore is positioned as a precision headshot weapon, and we even have the Marksman keystone built around that idea. Naturally, I expect it to play like a true sniper tool. But in practice, it doesn’t. It ends up feeling very similar to a revolver build; just slower. Both delete enemies with headshots, but the revolver is faster and more mobile.

My Helbore setup basically became my revolver build (minus smoke grenades) a stealth-leaning build; bleed grenades for space control, lots of dodging, and mostly close-to-mid-range headshots. Since the update, it no longer plays like a long-range sniper, and it feels like it’s lost some identity. Before the Veteran rework and Helbore buffs, it still was awful in Auric Maelstrom and Shock Gauntlets, but at least the role was clear; closer to something like Kruber’s Longbow in Vermintide 2.

And that’s the problem. I am looking for something I can use like that, but because Darktide’s challenge is built on special spam, it makes playing a slower methodical Marskmen impossible. I have yet to try havoc, but it’s just constant stuff in your face. Vermintide 2 had larger health pools with the higher difficulty, necessitating breakpoints; Darktide is just a lot more spam because they make specials easier to deal with.

This is the build I started with:
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/a05d3f34-2257-460a-abb0-147eafebbd4a/helbore-marksman?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button

And this is what currently works best for me:
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/a05d426f-8395-4627-a23c-b69f2e34ff0a/stealth-marksman-2?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button

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Nerfing the bayonets was really unfortunate. It was pretty unique terms of a ranged weapon that had a serviceable melee attack for dealing with stray enemies. Would’ve much rather they kept the longer swap time and faster bayonet attack. The buffs to the weapon were nice, but the bayonet change undercut it a bit.

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The bayonet speed nerf is kinda cancelled out by letting trench fighter drills apply to it but general power creep / hp inflation is chipping away at its power.

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Hmmm. I’ve noticed 2 mistakes you’re making.

There are 3 marks of helbore, i am using the fastest one, maybe thats your problem and you’re using what used to be mark 1 or mark 3. Mark 2 (now called MK V) was the only one that ever worked for me.

And 2 you’re not using “weight of fire” blessing. Which not picking this is a death sentence to the weapon. Not only using the slower marks of helbore but also not picking weight of fire is the reason this weapon feels slow to you.
Try it again with mark 5 and weight of fire. Trust me. Drop armor’s bane, you dont need it.

Give it a try again with the marksman build and mark 5 helbore with weight of fire.

Also personally i also tried going with the right side build using helbore and i just couldnt make it work…. Just find it interesting how others are able to make that work and i cant and vice versa with my build. Wonder if there’s a more psychological? mental? thing at play here. Different people are able to play in different styles

Sorry, cant have that. People dont want unique weapons here apparently.

I think the bayonet would still be viable if its speed wasnt nerfed. Though certainly not as reliable as it used to be.

I wonder if we’ll ever go back to how things used to be. If the game can be “unscrewed” Think it’d take space of an entire major update to reverse the damage the powercreep has caused to the game.

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Really?