Immunity against shooters in Havoc. Better ammo economy with any weapon type. Auto-reloads on ultimate ability (a feature which got removed from Vet in the past). Extremely easy to play compared to sharpshooter/Exe-Stance Vet builds which either limit your mobility or require hitting heads to output decent damage (and still getting outperformed by staff Psyker 2x).
Rewards stealing every kill from teammates to prolong the ultimate, even stealing hordes from melee-oriented characters, which makes playing melee builds awful after you were so insistent on promoting melee play for the past two years.
In this old thread a year ago I’m literary saying:
Buff smokes by giving them 10% crit chance for players inside the cloud or 20% damage resistance… At worst you can rollback those numbers next update, where’s the harm? Give Executioner’s Stance 30% damage reduction against JUST shooters so it can see SOME play in Havoc, even with a change like that it’s gonna be a lesser version of Voice of Command.
In this thread I was one of the first people suggesting Exe Stance getting toughness regen and also the one who suggested them to merge Stealth talent nodes as one of the few players actually playing Stealth Vet (changes they did a few patches later):
The 2nd charge stealth node should be basekit, since for a much stronger and versatile VOC you only need 2 points, but for weaker Stealth you need 3. The node that provides damage buff when coming out of stealth should also last longer to make it middleground between having VOC and Exe Stance. Right now stealth provides only utility, some survavibility, and no damage (since cooldown is too high to spam it for damage buffs).
Exe Stance should increase toughness regen the longer you maintain it, rewarding players who can refresh the cooldown without losing the streak so to speak. Veteran doesn’t need the damage, they need survavibility in melee. Or give it its autoreload back.
It’s disgusting you put such insane ranged build behind a paywall (I say this as someone who has lvl 30 Hive Scum) after people complained about Vet losing it’s ranged prowess in the recent years and lots of people on the forum gatekept buffs for Exe Stance.
I’m not saying to nerf them. It’s just, the balancing for this game is so stupid. It tries to cater to everyone at the same time, and in the end it makes nobody happy. The devs buffed Ogryn and made them enjoyable to play, the next patch they nerf them but at the same time buff Psyker which was already stronger than Ogryn DPS-wise.
You gatekept Vets playing with ranged weapons, because it’s not healthy for the game, but then you introduce Hive Scum which is encouraged to steal every single kill from the team and they don’t even have a weakness outside of the BS stuff which kills every other character as well (lots of disablers, instakills, 20 armored enemies at the same time in tight area with nowhere to go back), because they have enough rending for armor, enough reload speed to keep up the ultimate, enough movement to escape melee, enough ammo.
Executioner’s Order of Arbites and Disrupt Destiny Gunpsyker were already superior to ranged Vet in terms of damage, now it’s one more build that completely overshadows ranged Vet.
If you decide to buff Psyker, then don’t nerf Ogryn. If you decide to introduce “a better Exe Stance with un-nerfed Survivalist”, then don’t “adjust” ranged Vet builds (btw they nerfed las weapons by moving Shocktrooper talent one row below, so you have to spend one more point to get it) and don’t force them into melee by limiting their ammo.
Selling people the solution to their grievances in the form of DLC class is very scummy.