ranged only is totally fine and strong anywhere but on high havocs, and high havocs specifically nerf it because it’s too strong
it doesn’t need to be buffed
if you’re listing specific weapons consider that many of them are designed for hybrid gameplay in order to compliment melee weapons but they could make marks that go both ways. but imagine that, using the mark system in an interesting way instead of just to inflate the weapon count thats technically in the game
I have this insecurity that the perfect block stuff might be like the push attack talents, but for a higher skill tier. My favourite zealot/arbites builds use the PA talents but a lot of players never get that fancy with combos and would get absolutely nothing out of them.
Maybe if my personal skill was higher I would be using the perfect block talents all the time? Is this something I should be working on?
In my unprofessional opinion, no. I use PA talents for Zealot, esp my Evis build.
I am a reaction timed skill enthuisast in games and I just don’t believe the current state of combat allows it.
Sure, in small engagements, but is that node really worth taking for such small activation uptime/chance?
I was excited to hear about parry on the devil’s claw when I arrived and then perfect block mechanics later. But, my experience with Auric+ combat just doesn’t allow for it reliably over other options. Maybe a skill issue, but I’m eating fine without them.
Don’t worry about it, blocking in Darktide simply sucks ass.
Twin-linked stubbers are never going to get the buffs I want. Neither is the Lucky Bullet keystone. 1.5 to 2 seconds of free ammo on proc would be significant for weaker guns while barely felt on meta stuff… but asking for the strongest boy to get any buffs is a very brave stance to take.
Genius
Someone else said it first.
The right side ability, point blank barrage, is such a bad ability. This ability just doesnt work if you have no ammo. This is especially bad in Havoc where the ammo economy is heavily nerfed
for some reason the ogryn rework nerfed light em up from orbit (deserved) and the rending option. there was like no rework to point blank barrage being garbage. they still won’t even let you see when you activate this ult unless you use mods. do you want to get blurry drunk vision for 10s and only have gun buffs? on the class with the smallest reserves and slowest movement shooting?
still wild to me that ogryn gunluggers are known in the lore to go crazy and use their gun as a melee weapon when out of ammo or when a reload is due, but the gunlugger tree in darktide does not reference this in any way shape or form and it’s just “buffs to your shooting”
I think someone figured out the best application of the arbites perfect block traits is that you can leave a poxwalker behind you as you push attack swing to trigger perfect block talents in a somewhat consistent manner. I personally don’t see it being much use for zealot, but I also wouldn’t ever use this talent since I already have bcr and revive speed on my curios and I take ij for dodging better and faster.
You may want to read the descriptions of the highlighted talents more carefully. Also consider the fact that all ogryn ranged weapons except for the heavy stubber perform melee strikes as their weapon specials and these strikes proc the toughness return talents and used to be a critical source of toughness for gunluggers.
none of those talents encourage you to bash stuff with your gun and doing so is incredibly ineffective, gun swings have absolute trash joke damage profiles
not really lol people did it cause it’s funny not because its any amount of effective
It’s not in the talent tree but there are a few blessings on weapons that involve using the weapon melee to gain buffs for ranged and vice versa, but they’re definitely not equal in value, most aren’t even that useful.
I wouldn’t mind if instead of lucky bullet being this source of free/situationally infinite ammo it was designed more around hybrid combat. Could have an initial buff that’s basically gaining stacks for every enemy hit by ranged attacks, and for some time your ranged weapon melee attacks gain extra strength, then maybe a node that buffs attack speed the more ammo missing in your mag (meant for stubber gaming), node that increases the strength of your next shot/volley after weapon special with multiple stacks (meant for rippergun/kickback/rumbler), and then some nodes that boost stack generation/decay and it’d probably be okay. Call it Gorilla Tactics or something.
They’d probably have to design actual blessings and buff weapon specials for this to be good as well, as currently a lot of ogryn melee weapons have huge power buffs that hard carry their damage, like brittleness/skullcrusher, thrust/slaughterer/headtaker etc. Can’t really have a keystone designed around buffing niche attack patterns with little to no damage/cleave if all they’re gonna do is be much worse in melee with extra risk.
Nah Rippergun with Can Opener was a phenomenal tool to get/keep your HH stacks up, maintain toughness, and take on Crusher packs due to its insane stagger.
A bayonet plus a volley or two took em out about as fast as the Branx, it was comically good!
Back in my day… 
Ripper bayonet is still the best one. Not only is there can opener still but before the first stage in the reload you can spam bayonet attacks and they cancel right as they execute. Like most not melee melee it’s still gimmicky but it actually kills stuff and elites. Way stronger than trying to use the Hellbore bayonet or Arbites’ shot pistol bash. Or emperor forbid bolter bashes…not too many other moves that do any respectable damage in this department.
holy bait
I agree with you. Setting aside the bit of overstatement, that many weapons simply aren’t viable in Darktide’s high-end content. It is more like 8 out of 10 builds that use meta weapons, in high havoc it is 9/10 however. (unless you are a douche)
Outside of a few niche builds (like the Agripinaa Mk I for weakspot-focused setups or the bolt pistol bleed build), most weapons just don’t hold up in Auric or Havoc missions, no matter what some people claim. Even those exceptions, especially the Agripinaa Mk I, fall off noticeably at the highest difficulties. Bleed however still holds up very well, that is untill they nerf uncanny (justified)
Even if you adjusted the tone of your post slightly, it’s worth remembering that the forums tend to be an echo chamber, so you probably won’t find much agreement there.
i thought that one was just bugged and stabbed twice as fast as it was supposed to if it was empty
the ripper stab being the exception to the rule aside it doesn’t exactly scream “gunlugger” to me, whereas swinging a stubber would be extremely thematic but is also anemic as hell. even the kickback/rumbler swing that people keep saying is good only hits 3 targets or so
