Vet deserves to have some more ammo outside of las builds, like, additional 10-15% or just make the 25% talent give 35% instead. Exe Stance takes more effort to play than ranged Hive Scum, PBB Ogryn and Psyker, which all have better ammo economy or straight up infinite ammo WHILE ALSO having a greater damage potential. Also I would like to mention Arby’s dog build where the dog gets free kills without needing to spend any ammo. On auric dog + ranged build with Arby shotgun is stronger than Plasma Gun, while being way safer to play due to Castigator’s Stance and all the dog’s help.
Some of Vets ranged talents are super situational. While I understand that it’s for the balance sake and to force some variety, what ends up happening is that people don’t use them at all.
Killzone, Keep Your Heads Down, Opening Salvo, Covert Operative are all skippable talents, I’ll take +15% melee damage tax node over any of them EASILY.
Marksman punishes you for using Exe Stance for way too long, instead of rewarding the more skilled play of prolonging the cooldown continuosly (the talent should be, “any weakspot hits get 20% more strength for 10 seconds after using the ability or as long as your ability is active”). But you’re forced to take Marksman on some weapons like normal lasguns or Headhunter’s to have a chance at more instakill headshots. Without +mutant perk and some of the Vet’s damage talents, some guns might not even kill a flamer on headshot without a crit, which is ludicrous (!!!).
Lock and Load exists only for Double Barrel to give it +1 more shot, but the only double barrel build people play on Vet requires you to use Weapon Specialist for the guaranteed Manstopper crit, which means going in the other direction of the skill tree. So basically another dead talent node for most builds. I tried making it work with Agripinaa Revolver, but you’re better off taking anything else.
At the same time Skitarii’s 10% more ammo aura sucks. All the weapons I’ve tested benefit way more from additional rending and cleave aura way more, since they work both for melee and ranged weapons, and also by playing Combat Doctrines you can achieve nice penetration on multiple ballistic weapons.
Even if I play Skitarii + Vet comp on my team, I’d rather have the rending aura to improve killing Crushers and Maulers with melee weapon on Vet, which saves a lot of ammo in the long run, especially since I don’t use Duelling Sword or Knife every game like some Vets.
Shotguns are a meme overall, even more ammo won’t help them. I use the fire shotgun to solo objectives on maps with tentacles, but you can do it with Bolt Pistol/Bolter marks that have larger AOE explosions (1 hit - instantly clears the tentacle).