Playing Veteran Marksman (Helbore) feels awful

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
22

I’ll give that a shot with marksman and weight of fire blessing.

The right side of the tree works for me because I can drop aggro, and I need to melee often enough that I get Ranged Specialist with reloading shots on melee kills. The -90 aggro on infiltrate is great for 10s of quick sniping. Infiltrate allows me to easily res allies and reposition which is the closest I get to a marksman play style.

I didn’t really want to go the route of a charge time blessing. The problem I have is that it’s now just another “run around, dodge, headshot spam” weapon. If that’s how it plays, if rather just use revolver.

I haven’t yet tried it in Havoc, and I haven’t found a Havoc game since my steam friends are not online.

Ultimately, I think I just want a Darktide mode with stronger enemies, as opposed to constant spam. Less modifiers too. Lights out and haze are annoying when I drop into quick play with a long range weapon.

In VT2 the sniper role was based on breakpoints and positioning, but in Darktide the ranged enemies and enemy spam make it so you just dodge a lot while holding a ranged weapon and taking mostly medium to short range quick shots.

What I envision for a true Marksman play style would be like Huntsman from VT2. That just doesn’t translate to Darktide due to there being so many ranged enemies. You don’t really think about ranged special/elite breakpoints or feel it out like you do with the Longbow charge in VT2. It’s just a lot more arcadey.

1 Like
23

And that’s entirely fine. Dont force yourself to use it.
You’re right about what the helbore is now. I also hate it, i even made a whole thread about how the helbore was ruined. It used to be much more special, unique hybrid weapon…

(although the blessing was always a must-have for helbore, even during its glory days)

Personally i’ve never played havoc and refuse to touch it on principle, so cant say how it’d do over there.

1 Like
24

I play with these a fair bit and enjoy them. I think the Kantrael lasguns are the ones that even if you do put the effort in suck. They’re the only weakspot demanding weapons with ass boss damage. You basically can’t use them without vet’s passive or scrier’s gaze since they do nothing to suppress even weak shooters and suffer hugely from suppression back. And unlike Hellbore they don’t get that giant course correcting hitbox that lets you aim at the space around a heretic’s head instead of their actual head.

Hellbores they should just toss the green version into the garbage there’s no saving it. It seriously is the worst third version of anything I can think of in the game and Veteran would be better off having it replaced with another exclusive.

1 Like
25

I’ve experimented quite a bit with reciprocity but I found that I just didn’t trigger it enough while shooting. Perhaps I could have been more mindful about trying to proc but I consistently had lower crit rates with Reciprocity compared to Opening Salvo and Volley Adept. Volley Adapt comes with the benefit that if you start your reload at the beginning of a slide, you’re done just after finishing which helps a ton with mobility. So basically I found those two talent points to be better spent there than on +Melee Damage and Reciprocity.

Competitive Urge is a meme pick tbh. It’s uptime is pretty low. But Rending Strikes doesn’t actually help hit any breakpoints in ranged (except maybe at some intermediate stage of building stacks for Marksman’s Focus). +25 Toughness is probably the best pick for most builds but I don’t really have a taking damage problem so I pick the greedy RNG node. In all cases, it’s just the node you’re taking on the path to Bring It Down.

EDIT: I did most of the work on this build pre BbD but I just tested that Rending Strikes will actually 2 shot the increased HP Mauler without needing Exec Stance. Doesn’t impact any other breakpoints though. (Plasma Gunner to the Meat Grinder when???)

1 Like
26

They got ok boss damage with 10+ stacks of marksman focus.

True, even 75% talent don’t help, but ghost blessing helps.

Nah.

27

I didn’t realize anyone used the Helbore without input mods. It’s one of the handful of things that make you wonder how many of the developers actually play the game at Damnation difficulty or higher.

28

It’s about the strength of the weapon not the abhility of those using it. It is just bad.

29

I find it annoying that I have to use mods for features that should be included in the game, but what kind of input mods do people use for Helbore?

I think it’s a strong weapon, at least on paper, but the rework they gave it and buffs seem to cater to the special spam, and even still, for me it falls short of weapons like Lasgun, Laspistol, and Revolver for quick headshots. The problem is, anything stronger than those is only helping with breakpoints on Crushers; which I believe can be 2-shot with crit headshots; having to take one or two less headshots on a crusher isn’t a huge benefit.

I think the original idea prior to the rework was to have a strong sniper weapon like the Longbow from Vermintide 2 where you get a feel for how long to charge a shot before you hit the right breakpoint for a one-shot head-shot, or even a one-shot body-shot as the case may be.

The problem I keep finding is that Vermintide 2 makes sniping easy because there are no real threatening shooting enemies, and they didn’t spam specials. In VT2 you had to plan your loadout around hitting the right power breakpoints to one-shot specials. In Darktide, the Revolver/Lasgun easily hit those breakpoints; which makes the Helbore seem a bit superflous. It doesn’t offer much benefit over those.

I think the best way to make a slower more methodical Marksman Veteran work would be to have an ability with stacks that reduce aggro. He already generates toughness simply for not being the target of ranged enemies, so I find Stealth Veteran works a bit better for sniping specials, and it comes with the benefit of being a good clutch talent.

It’s very challenging to be an effective Marksman if your team can’t keep the heat off of you, and hopping into quick play with haze, and lights out, and having a couple crappy players doesn’t help. It just feels bad having to constantly dodge and juggle avoiding attacks while taking shots with the Helbore.

With a stealth-revolver build, it’s much easier to manage over Helbore (however, it does just feel like a discount Zealot stealth build with less melee benefits and a bit more shooting; the Zealot can still one-shot specials with a revolver).

30

So I tried your suggestion, but I still used the Stealth talent tree with Weapon specialist, and my god, the Mark V with Weight of Fire changed everything. Suddenly, I was the star of the run, one-shorting all the specials, and clutching.

It’s still not the slow methodical Marksman that I desire, but it works very well. Maybe even better than revolver. I think I might stick with stealth for clutch revives since people be going down a lot, however, I think Marksman keystone will give me better damage since the Mark V doesn’t one-shot things as easily.

It’s just another run around, dodge, headshot stuff weapon now, but in order to ever have an effective build for a slower high damage marksman rifle, think Veteran needs perks for keeping aggro off him and run around more than he currently gets, even with stealth, otherwise the team has to be a meat shield to make it work.

The Mark 5 with those blessings is really good. Here’s the build I am using now if anyone is interested:

Screenshot 2025-11-15 212337
Screenshot 2025-11-15 2123371920×1007 357 KB

Here’s the scoreboard, wasn’t the star of the show, but I did end up clutching and reviving the team. 54 specials; the Arbites and the Zealot did the most damage. If you don’t prefer the smoke grenades, and you go for the bleed grenades or armor grenades, you might get more damage.

I will say, after using Mark V some more, I’m not totally sold on it. I think the other two were much better at taking down crushers, but it is very fast which is needed for special spam.

1 Like
31

Glad you enjoyed it a bit more. Its just such a shame that you’ve to experience it when it was already ruined by fatshark. It used to be so much more fun with the bayonet making the gameplay so dynamic…

Yes. It does deal less damage then the other 2, thats what deadshot, tunnel vision and rending strikes are for.

(Unless your aim isnt very good and you cannot hit headshots to restore your stamina. But at the same time if you cannot reliably headshot you shouldnt be using a gun like helbore in the first place)

Get rid of grenade tinkerer, reciprocity, and iron will or killzone and grab the 3 i mentioned. Reciprocity is anti-synergetic with stealth since it only works when heretics are shooting/swinging at you.

Grenade tinkerer is useless because smoke nades usability is questionable. Plus since you got rid of exe stance then you can no longer see whats behind it, making it hinder your work instead of helping you.

And killzone, lets be real on auric you’re going to get a club to the head from a random poxwalker pretty often. But if you’re confident you’re not going to thanks to stealth then get rid of iron will instead.

OR get rid of both of them and grab opening salvo.

Guess you could also simply swap the toughness node at the bottom middle for rending strikes and save one of the talents. OR go even further and get rid of them all and instead of the toughness perk grab chink in the armor. That way you’ll have plenty of rending for the crushers/maulers. Your choice.

Such a weapon is not possible with today’s darktide. Not the fault of the weapons, but the overall balance mess we currently find ourselves in.

2 Likes
32

I still used the bayonet, and it has okay single target damage in a pinch on Mark V. I don’t know why but the other two don’t seem to do as much damage as they do on paper. The other two are over 400 damage per charged shot, but it doesn’t feel that way. Maybe it’s just not good forhow long it takes to charge.

I updated the build and took Chink in the Armor instead of the 25 toughness next to 10% rending for a grand total of 25% rending at 10 focus. Yeah, the Mark V is much more versatile.

The build on Gameslantern is updated too now, with the suggested changes.

1 Like
33

I dont use ANY mods for the helbore. Didnt even know any existed.
The only thing i’ve ever used was weapon customization to give it a proper iron-sight. Which honestly i stopped doing because i cannot be assed to update the mods every time there’s an update.
And they did update the “sights” if you can call them that…. A bit so its not as bad as it used to be. Still would recommend getting some ironsights for it if you can stomach the mod updating.

1 Like
34

Is it though?

I myself play with MK3 (the slow one), and the charge speed almost never is a problem. It charges in around 1 second, which is enough for everything but most heated moments of h40.

One thing that really helps, is precharging your weapon, don’t just wait when target becomes shootable, charge before that. In worst case scenario, you would waste bit of ammo, on quite ammo efficient weapon. Ofcourse you need to be able to predict movements of enemies, but thats a skill you should have with any weapon.

If you plan to play havocs in any capacity, you should really consider taking extra damage with your weapon. Breakpoints are all out of wack with Fading Lights and other moddifiers. This extra punch that MK3 brings is really helpfull. With guaranteed crit, you can body shot almost all specialists. While of course you shoukd always try to get headshots, realistically sometimes you just don’t have enough time and space to aim properly, so having backup option to one-hit bodyshoot is great.

2 Likes
35

The others worked okay, but with the right talents, the Mark V does well enough, and way faster. If it can one shot most elites and specials what’s the point in using a slower variant?

1 Like
36

H40 really, and maybe bosses.

When you face enemies with 80% damage reduction, briging a weapon that can deal upward of 4000 damage in just one shot, make sense.

1 Like
37

I think the most popular one is honestly far too complicated for such a simple application, and it’s called Skiitarius. It can also be used to do some less kosher things, like infinitely chain the L2 stab on the Deimos Force Sword for extremely high armor-penetrating DPS or (formerly) turn Force Staff light attacks into machine gun fire. But as far as I know, it’s not banned and it allows a bind to fully charge and fire, or charge and then immediately discharge, either on press or hold.

38

Nobody’s ever playing Havoc. I haven’t touched it since my steam friends left.

I’m doing aurics and maelstrom. I’ve tried the other two, I always keep a shot “pre charged”, the DPS output of 5 is better and it hits the breakpoints I need it to, even for many one shot body shots. It’s only a bit slower for armor.

1 Like
39

ouch, thanks mate :<

1 Like
40

Yeah nobody on my servers. Seems like everyone on the forums is always talking about it, but in reality It’s about as dead as Versus / Winds of Magic in VT2 where you can only occasionally see 1 team in the lobby browser. Maybe because there’s no quick play I need to join a discord.

41

Maybe it’s time, in eu server during day(for me) it’s empty, but not at late evening or night.