Some of these are pretty bad. Like abnormally so, even as tax nodes.
Martyr’s Purpose is also up there.
I genuinely think a lot of Zealot’s tree has avoided the kind of crazy scrutiny we like to do because his good talents easily hard carries the rest. Not to mention how much heavy lifting toughness on ult is doing.
The Marty keystone, as well. I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people who like martyrdom asked for it to be based on hp instead of wounds.
For all of my whinging about Ogryn, I’m fine with saying his two main toughness regen nodes are class defining. Change those and people will immediately celebrate being allowed to light attack. Crunch and BLO also need changing. I want FNP totally reworked, but I can admit me hating something is different from the kind of bad Crunch inhabits.
I’m not saying there’s nothing to be improved, but let me list the talents out of those you’ve circled I consider genuinely bad to the point of no niche existing for them.
EWEW, Fortitude in Fellowship, Emperor’s Bullet, Hammer of Faith (technically these last two might hit a useful stagger breakpoint but that’s very opaque to even figure out and excessively niche).
Not useless but you don’t particularly care about having them: Voice of Terra.
Some of those you’ve circled I think are pretty damn strong, like Vicious Offering (assuming weapon synergy obviously), Bleed for the Emperor (Martyr specific but pretty strong defensively for it), and Shield of Contempt is pretty fantastic team burst damage protection, Sainted Gunslinger plays pretty great to how you generally use your gun as Zealot.
Honestly those post grenade middle nodes mostly suffer from effectively competing against UD/Holy Rev/Duelist on the left, and TWBS and DoD on the right, and to be fair to them that’s really tough competition for any talent to go up against.
Even so I’ve definitely tried slipping Shield of Contempt into a Martyr build and didn’t regret it. Honestly if Emp’s Bullet wasn’t the gatekeeper to those nodes it would also help a lot. Like if it was swapped with Sainted Gunslinger or even Unremitting that’d help a lot making those nodes desirable to dip into in cases outside just wanting to get to Beacon of Purity. Or just rework Emp’s Bullet cause outside of niche stagger breakpoints it’s not good.
I’m surprised that a lot of people view the Ogryns toughness regen nodes as a good thing. As you say they’re a substantial part of what kills the classes weapon and gameplay variety, they’re 66% of the reason Ogryn is just braindead heavy attack spam (the other 33% being heavy hitter and bleed) and it’s one of the biggest design issues he has. When I think about Ogryn rework, it’s primarily my hope that this dynamic can be killed off and replaced with fun varied weapon usage like every other class has.
Well ogryn players don’t take over the Darktide internet space whining whenever they get any changes. They just go ‘deng, well’ and either keep going or play ogg less.
TY! At work so I was trying to keep it short and sweet. Also drawing circles on a cell phone with fat thumbs is hard.
I’ve been wanting to bītch and moan about all impact talents for a month now, but there’s never any time to test things. Their existence hurts me, emotionally, because I think my big blunt weapons should just work and not require a talent/blessing combo to stagger elites, not when there exists other weapons that are allowed to stagger things for free. I think they all need to be replaced or impact talents completely rethought of since I only ever care about stagger when elites are tanking my hits and shredding my health.
The good nodes here are victims of tree placement, imo. A tax node to get to a really great node is okay, but the amount of bad nodes in this area kills my desire to take these good nodes and stunstorm grenades.
Bleed for the Emperor we would need to keep an eye on if Marty changes ever happens; and I do really want Marty changes! It’s mean to say but I feel like I only ever encounter two kinds of marty zealots in game. BTW I know where I am on that dichotomy so I’m not out here just slandering everybody.
I don’t think they would change anything in that regard. However, we have seen plenty of examples where stuff was leaked and then companies changed things around, just so the leaks weren’t as accurate anymore.
There are a few ways to look at which tree to prioritize. By popularity of play, by degree of how close to ideal they already are (closer to ideal first) or the inverse of that (less ideal first).
I thought I’d have an instant answer but I couldn’t easily decide on one. I could somewhat put them in order for how they should be done but putting the entire explenation in here will take much longer.
The tl;dr is: I’d do them from simple to complicated and that would be Psyker first and then it gets screwy. Probably zealot next then ogryn and veteran last.
Then again, if you really want to make ogryn more popular, he’d take the most effort and even then, he’s got other factors against his popularity.
I agree with this point but I do think there’s two angles to it. Ogryn is immensely popular among the community when it comes to social media posts, representation in youtube vids and memes and all that. Ogryn is honest to god kind of the poster child for Darktide in a way because of that. If they made the class actually interesting I think they could rope in a lot of players who currently hold opinions like “love Ogryn but he’s so boring” and quit. Even if he’s (most likely) the least played class now, if he was actually well designed that could easily change
Most of his attacks hit like a rubber toy compared to every other operative class.
In his tiny weapon selection, fewer still are viable, and often have very repetitive attack patterns.
Additionally his weapons have lots of useless or nonfunctional blessings.
He needs to be tougher. His only advantage is that he has higher base line numbers, but he’s huge in size and easy target for anyone with a gun. Meanwhile Zealot has an insane amount of DR talents that make you near-immortal, while also being better at dodging and everything else.
Losing toughness shouldn’t be staggering him, and he should really have more DR available.
He has a worse dodge than everyone, which makes him an easier target for trappers - and especially if chaff enemies are blocking your way, which a massive Ogryn somehow can’t dodge into or push to the side.
The only consistently good aura is Bonebreaker’s Aura, Coward Culling loses effectiveness the higher in difficulty you go, and Stay Close is completely worthless.
Stay Close only improves coherency aura regeneration and is disabled in melee combat, if anything it should just let you regenerate in melee combat regardless.
Maybe at a reduced rate if it is “OP”, or only for the Ogryn.
Soften Them Up needs to be moved to a better location, or just be baseline built into Ogryn. 15% more damage on anyone you hurt in melee for 5 seconds is so good, that you’d be crazy to not pick it.
Which means that if you want to Big Friendly Rock, all you get is more impact - on Ogryn that is already really good at staggering.
It’s ridiculous.
Even his keystones need to be reworked in my opinion.
Ogryn is probably the most recognizable aspect of this game. You could be seeing maps or weapons and know it’s 40K. You see an ogryn with his bat and armor and you know it’s Darktide.
It’s just such a shame he’s essentially “veteran with 1 stamina and 2 HP curios but non of the interesting talents, 1/3rd the arsenal and separate progression”
It’s also very funny to me that veterans tree launched without keystones because they didn’t want to make weapon specific keystones, yet ogryn had the “twin stubber keystone” for his entire existance.
The other two keystones also are just “toughness DR, the keystone” and “more heavy damage, the keystone”
The only thing ogryn talents prove is that the 4% CDR on elite kill talent is the way to go for CDR talents imo.
I just want to echo what’s already been said, but in my own experience.
Ogryn is populair because he’s unique in this game and basically any game. To play a huge guy, or body type 1, like this is something you can’t do elsewhere.
My first char was Ogryn and I thought he was good. Until I leveled the others.
I absolutely loathe how all of his talents restrict you into heavy attacks. Not doing heavy attacks means you’re getting nothing from your skills.
Talents should provide choice and build diversity. I also don’t like how slow he feels. He’s big, so running around at the same speed as the lil uns feels slower. The lower the camera, the faster it seems.
I think his base speed should be increased and he should get a talent for another increase. Yes, he’s huge and heavy but he has the muscles and limb length to match. You could still have low sprint speed and high stamina cost to balance it out.
Then we need to have more stagger and impact bonus talents for heavy attacks and bleed and crit on light attacks. That way swinging heavy or fast becomes more of strategic choice.
Taunt needs to provide significant block cost reduction.
And his shield special attack should protect you from dog and mutant pounce. Seriously, I was amazed that it didn’t. It just freezes you in place while offering no benefits.
We also need two handed hammer or something which should absolutely smash armor. Dual wield is probably too much to ask.
I like the shovel for hords and the activated attack feels great, but takes too long. Usually there’s not enough time. The enemy is already near or killed by another class which is better at fast DPS burst.
Most of his weapons don’t even play into that design! So what do you do? Pick a weapon that does have optimal heavy-only combos? Do you pick a better weapon but only benefit half the time?
Do you ignore it because you like the cleavers better?
I got plenty of ideas for how to improve ogryn myself but I’ll need some proper time to type that out.
No joke. But don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see ogryn rehabilitated too though.
As it stands, just select none of vet’s keystones and use the perks on more useful filler. Best advice @Mayson ever gave me. Did that from practically day 1 and never looked back. To this day they remain entirely empty on all my veteran builds.
That being said, it’s still an entirely less than ideal scenario that seemed to be brought about by Veteran in particular being beaten by the FatShark nerf-stick so much that it was turned into a paraplegic before they walked it back and repaired it. Now they’ve moved onto maiming ogryn instead, which is why I basically splutter into my coffee whenever I see people calling for nerfs. Such things need to be handled with precision, but FS has a “proud” tradition of essentially performing surgery with a jackhammer, taking 3 months to fix the damage, then going on vacation. At least the communication has improved from what it was; all praise @FatsharkStrawHat .
The veteran’s current keystones are situational to the point of exclusion and the bonuses are so convoluted that they’re not worth bothering with. Not to mention horrible incentives to grind for.
It’s like saving up all your tickets at the arcade to get the mystery best prize, and when you finally get there they give you a Geiger counter. It might even be master-crafted, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a highly situational piece of kit with only one specific function and at the end of the day, you would’ve just preferred a boombox.
I always thought that the vet keystones are cool personally. I’m not denying there’s a balance issue with how not picking a keystone is just a better generlist approach and works for every weapon, but 2 out of 3 of the keystones vet has are actually build enabling. Wep specialist lets you make use of singleshot/low mag/low firerate weps like nobody else can, and has extreme synergy with shotguns and revolvers, and enables a playstyle not found for any other class (swapping to your ranged mid melee, blasting something with the free reloaded crit, going back)
the marksmans focus keystone is less unique in that it doesn’t fundamentally change your playstyle, it’s really just a ramping headshot damage bonus, but it’s still a really good keystone that lets you absolutely juice the hell out of certain guns with certain breakpoints. Or just generally juicing the hell out of any accurate-ish full auto weapon by making its damage per bullet skyrocket, AND it has synergy with exec stance by making those weapons far more accurate.
Focus target is whatever though. Not bad numbers wise but it’s really something I’d expect out of a small node and not a whole keystone.
I think that people feel inclined not to pick them has to do with how they’re not good on every weapon, and how just going for the standard “pick every good blue passive talent” build just works with every weapon anyway. Plus all the blue nodes are so good it feels bad to skip them for a keystone that doesn’t actually benefit every weapon, which is then compounded by how absolutely ass the loadout system and limits are, people just end up gravitating to the one&done build.
I really just wanted to say that I think they’re great design wise but the vet talent tree as a whole is just so badly shaped and lopsided that it makes them feel bad. Vet’s tree is full to the brim with gamechanging great talents, just their positions and opportunity cost decisions are not well thought out.
It’s sort of the opposite problem Ogryn has. Ogryns tree isn’t really badly laid out or something, or rather it lacks any weight that could make it feel unbalanced. It just has nothing of value in it other than a couple key talents that you can get on every build anyway.
And this playstyle isn’t outdated yet, either. To this day I also refuse to keystones on my veteran builds, except for the support / melee hybrid going with the upgraded enemy marking.
Crazy stuff really. Darktide is one of the few games I know where certain talents just outperform the endgame tier talents by a significant margin.
I find that everyone of those ‘just do it all’ builds could just put 1-3 nodes into Weapon Specialist instead and be a lot better. I can’t think of ammo stash, ogryn damage, agile engagement, another grenade or even a stamina delay node as being better than passive reloading extra dodge and attack speed, and a guaranteed crit ranged shot (or extra speed for weapons that shoot bullets instead of bullet). And On Your Toes is pretty powerful for toughness on demand, hence the 3s cooldown.
But I think that being able to entertain the idea of no keystone is very interesting itself, and obviously exclusively a vet phenomenon.
