If the bolter is unsatisfying to use, then use another weapon because the crazy power it has comes at a cost.
Seriously name another weapon that can rip ogryn apart in difficulty 4-5 this fast.
You can use veteran’s final talent to get a auto reload allowing for a 30 round mag if you time it when you fire the last shell in mag.
Plasma gun? The rapid fire Lasgun? With Volley Fire, it’s not that difficult, the problem is how many that will spawn at one time. The Bolter doesn’t do that much better, the TTK’s are probably fairly similar or within a margin of error that the reload/switch speed on the Bolter would cover.
The whole point of giving a feedback is to give an impression about something we think might need to be improved, and that’s especially true in a beta / during the early days of a game’s life. And i said several time that i would be very happy if they nerfed something else and that the bolter was probably the best ranged weapon in the game, so yeah, read the whole thing before responding with nonsense please
There are many ways to nerf the gun in other ways than giving it super long animations that doesn’t feel natural at all
Also, not everyone who use bolter have veteran as a class
I play the Pistol Bolter on the Preacher no veteran and on the T4 T5 level of the game. For an Ogryn or other tank shells I usually need more than my 15 shots and it spawns on t4 t5 3x types plus other tough Enemys. I can shoot them down with the Pistol Bolter weaken the kill the mats then. Before you scream for nerfs play in the T4 t5 league and don’t compare the low T1-T3 with endgame areas. Especially because the Preacher has nothing clever weapons to choose from for me that even do anything in terms of range with such enemy types. The Pistol Bolter has 15 rounds and 80 rounds in reserve. That is empty on t4-t5 after the first wave. Because a lot of tank units appear. I find the weapon perfect as it is, that it warps with continuous fire is absolutely realistic. Continuous fire in RL is only suppressive fire. If you want to shoot specifically you use burst or single shoot. I shoot for 20 years on 300m with a SIG 550. Weapons like the Pistol Bolter has rightly the recoil, it is power behind it and needs a certain amount of practice. maybe you should attach an info only suitable for experienced shooters.
To be clear I don’t want a buff, I made a thread about this:
I would just like to see the animations redone, they can be the same length. It’s quite infuriating to see your character constantly pulling the charging handle all the way back every time they equip a weapon, or reload from a partial mag. You do this only when the chamber is empty. It actually has a very real meaning to anyone with any familiarity with how guns work. It just doesn’t make any sense, it would cause unexpended rounds to ping out of the ejection port every time. I just find it very jarring and weird and it happens like 100 times per game.
The bit in my post about lasguns is not important, I since realised it’s just the kantrael animations are a bit odd. What bugs me is the above issue with conventional weapons.
I also think we should get a slightly faster reload if reloading from partial mag, skipping the pull of the charging handle. You would just seat the new magazine, and you’d have an extra round in the chamber (so 16 for a bolter). It just makes sense and it’s good gunplay mechanics; it incentivises good ammo management and would give you a small disadvantage to just mag-dumping on targets.
I would of course be happy for this small buff for partial reloads to be balanced out in other areas (slightly lower damage? even stronger full auto recoil? a little less armour penetration?) because I don’t think bolters need a buff at all, they’re already very strong.
i think the cocking of the gun would be ok… if it wasn’t necessary any ime you got knocked back or somehing liek that. “hey look. Burster blew up? Beast of Nurgle shoved me a bit? Gotta recock the gun…”
Would actually be kinda nice if, instead of cocking, it was working the safety of the weapon
The fact that 40k’s most iconic weapon needs to be tedious to use to be balanced is a pretty big indicator that the other weapons in the arsenal need buffs. The bolter should be exciting to use. On a macro scale, the only reason that bolter feels strong is because the other guns are just weak with many of them not having a role to play on heresy and damnation difficulties.
Overall, making the draw time for the bolter is a benign change that encourages players to switch weapons. The bolter already feels slow and unwieldy with it’s reload speed and ADS mechanics. The fact that slow draw time feels needed for balance despite adding tedium is kind of appalling.
Really, when it comes down to it, the reason that the bolter feels too strong is that it feels like the only answer to the high amount of health and armor that specials and elites have on heresy and damnation. There needs to be more ranged weapons capable of doing that. Make the revolver a pocket sniper that can penetrate armor on weak spot hits. Give shotguns stagger that can disrupt bulwarks and ragers and blessings that cause bleed. Make helbores a true special hunter at max charge and make rework plasma guns to be a usable weapon that has the staying power it deserves. And, most importantly, make the brain burst of the psyker the go-to tool for hunting elites and specials.
If we just had more weapons that felt good to use and answered the same problems the bolter did but in different ways, we’d have room to let the bolter be far less tedious to use.
While wearing power armour.
I agree with your statement, but uhh helbore is already a true special hunter.
I feel like the Helbore is good but it needs to be put into a spot where it outright defeats the bolter in that category for just about every target. If the helbore is going to be treated at THE special hunting weapon on SS then it really needs to completely outshine anything else in that role on 4 and 5. A good spot for it is if it could take out specials much faster than bolter with well placed hits in ADS. Then it could be well balanced against the bolter by having far better ADS capabilities while the bolter still retains good enough ADS sniping with excellent hipfire DPS.
what??? If its better than the bolter its overpowered then. Bolter already one taps a lot of things and nobody said it needed to be the special hunting weapon. Helbore is fine where it is currently as a good special hunting weapon. Besides that thing already one shots ogryn why hell does it need to be better, what it needs is a scope lol.
I think even with the types of changes I was suggesting the bolter would still have the raw DPS of full auto fire and is great defensively as well for just preventing specials like the mutant from reaching you. It also has the ability to break bulwark guards and knock down groups of maulers or ragers. Despite the majority of people I encounter being SS in 4’s and 5’s, I’ve yet to see somebody use the weapon. Most of them seem to just be running bolters and accatrans. I can only imagine that the reason I see helbores the least is because they simply don’t do much better than either of those two options.
For real. The racking animation (while cool looking) is waaay over used. It makes sense on a reload, but not every time I equip it.
I love the Bolter… makes dealing with groups and large enemies more doable.
I agree - I just can’t stand having to rack it every time I re-equip it… that is just horrid in a fight…
Physical weapons, you should only have to rack after loading a new mag, after using every shot from the last.
The weight and reload speed feel right to me, makes every shot precious and full auto risky.
Just please fix the equip animation FS 
The Reload animation on every draw, even after opening a container is simply idiotic.
I hope its a bug, because as a desig choise its unforgivibly bad.
To whoever said “realisem dont match with videogames” GO PLAY any ARMA, or other mil sim.
Games like this is suppose to potray a alternative to our world, but abide same laws of physics and reality.
Racking the loading handle ALL THE TIME breaks immertion and is downright dumb. END of story.
Not only is it excessive, it’s completely nonsensical, and realistically would eject a round every time you do it.
Just a quick note… ARMA fails to do correct reloads too and it’s equally annoying.
There definitely should be some drawbacks to how powerful the bolter is.
Racking the bolt and weird accuracy and iron sight fill the bill already.
Don’t think it’s the best gun for a veteran as it’s just not reactive enough to what one would expect if you had a single veteran in the party : taking out snipers or sudden elite threats quickly.
In that light it’s definitely not the best tool for the job.
For god’s sake, no. The Bolter is already oppressively powerful. It is good at literally everything; it can clear a crowd, it can melt elites, if you use the ironsights and single-fire it can even counter-snipe. Playing with three Vets with Bolters was the least fun I have ever had in this game.
If you removed the only things currently holding it back at all, then you might as well just delete Psyker from the game.
Bolter strongest strength is that its good and its super ammo efficent. 2 bullets per elite kill when you can 1 tap many of them means you have ammo efficency + you fire slowly meaning you can actually don’t shoot bullets everywhere. Anyone that says bolter doesn’t have lot ammo just probably full auto everything.