Nope, the ranged combat is great.
Some of the best PvE shooting of all times, perfect hitreg, amazing suppression and stagger mechanics, perfect weapons .
What you are describing is the intended difficulty aspect of the game. If it’s that annoying for you maybe you should just go back to Vermintide.
Dregs feel very broken, or a lot better than the Moebian 6th equivalents overall, which makes no sense. They have more HP but no armor, which is an advantage for them more than a difference in tactics for us. We all know about the suppression immune common mook, but gunners are also harder to break and stagger. And shotgunners in particular are messed up. Scab shotgunners use common shooter AI and will lock in melee combat. Dreg shotgunners have no melee weapon at all and will still be firing at you between stagger frames if they’re getting knocked around by teammates and as you drop your melee into them. They are the most dangerous shooter enemy in the game.
And Dreg autoguns do high toughness damage but less HP damage, which makes them 100% more dangerous in game than the other shooters. Hopefully the actual trained soldiers will be anywhere near as threatening as these cultists turned militia someday. Just their numbers are crazy compared to other shooters without adding 33% more HP to each mook shooter on Damnation. Seriously its always 70% yellow shirts.
Problems which make the ranged combat TERRIBLE:
no scopes or only bad scopes
no toggle aim
no aim sensitivity
no speed loader for revolver
I tried Heresy a few times on my Zealot with a Thunder Hammer and Braced Autogun or Revolver ; I couldn’t go back fast enough to my Tactical Axe Crit blessing + Flamethrower for hordes.
Trying to fight at long range when you’re not a Veteran (or a Psyker, cause of the headpop) is just an immeasurable dissapointment. Zealots are always better served by rushing in with ult, get that 75% toughness dmg resist, then dodge-slide your way around gunners, rinse-and-repeat.
Also, the revolver reload animation triggers me everytime. Why do I need to empty the chambers again if my reload is interrupted ? I should only need to do that once. There are tons of weapon with a partial reload animation. Why not for the revolver too ?
I don’t use any of the damage reduction or stagger resistance perks as a zealot. I play damnation and damnation high intensity. Too many players looked at dodge and slide and didn’t understand what it was for, even after being told. (myself included). You don’t really need it in malice and it doesn’t start to matter until Heresy.
I do use a flamer, because lighting all the shooters on fire before they run away is a good way to deal with shooter mobs, but Damnation and Damnation hi-int groups still can be a problem because they can spawn spread out. When this happens I either rely on my teammates or flank around, dodging and sliding from pieces of cover until I can dash at someone. I know a lot of people find shooters oppressive at first, and I understand why, but this is just a matter of learning how to deal with them. Where to be and when.
I’m sorry but that’s just wrong in general. A real life shotgun is effective against man sized targets out to like 100+ yards/meters. The pelletes they fire, in 00 buck, are around 7-9 effectively 9mm projectiles. Darktide has some of the most real world and lore accurate shotguns in any game. The main problem with dreg/scab schotgunners is they mysteriously do no friendly fire damage and can blast through an entire horde of poxwalkers. Their firing animation is separate from the “tell” that is supposed to allow you to dodge, so you just get shot randomly. Dreg shotgunners are half immune to stagger, stun and suppression.