Re-rework veteran?

[gpkgpk]

I’m sure I’m stating the obvious as you’re purposefully skirting around the obvious standouts, you’re looking at it backwards intentionally and I already addressed your vague insinuations with the most likely scenario, OFC I wasn’t there but the standouts paint a picture.
Scoreboard CAN show downs/dead w/ mod plugin:

@Solkard

And looking at the end screen and noticing one of the Ogryn also just in the prison garbs makes me wonder if that’s a bot.

You can’t get Ogryn bots unless you spawn them in the grinder with a mod, you should know this already. Now I’m starting to think the ignorance isn’t feigned…

Edit: Oh did you just edit out the Ogryn Bot part as I was replying to it? Any more tin-foil hat theories?

But please, do go on.

[Solkard]

And it’s not shown in their scoreboard, so the data is not available to correlate. Perhaps you read my statement as an assumption that the scoreboard couldn’t show it?

Yes, I remembered bots only spawn as Vets afterwards and edited out.

[gpkgpk]

You have enough available data to draw a more than reasonable mostly accurate conclusion. Instead you keep doubling down with “It’s not aliens, but it’s aliens” skirting statements and “that ogryn was a bot!” etc…
Here, snipped it for you:

I’m not against tanky builds trading damage taken for progress and preventing cascade failures and wipes, but the numbers point towards something else.

[Overlord]

Vet is fine, keysones could use some adjustments or an outright buff maybe. At this point I’m wholly convinced that a lot of vet’s issues come down to some of the more common technical issues plaguing the game at the moment like latency f@ck-f@ck games, and the audio queue nonsense.

Plus building ranged specialized classes is pretty punishing atm. Ontop of the above two issues, as long as the spawn patterns, AI director target prioritization algorithm , and melee specialized teammates (especially in soloq) remain physiologically incapable of using the ASD keys and turning their camera beyond an 90 degree angle to their left or right, playing as a ranged focused build is going to continue to be the game’s de facto nightmare mode modifier for all diff levels and classes, esp Auric Maelstrom, lol.

[BongoSkaggs]

@Overlord

At this point I’m wholly convinced that a lot of vet’s issues come down to some of the more common technical issues plaguing the game at the moment like latency f@ck-f@ck games, and the audio queue nonsense.

Vet’s got plenty of real build issues. Toughness generation is a perennial concern whenever you aren’t cruising on a safety cushion of confirmed kill stacks; which means vet becomes very vulnerable in hairy situations where you can’t be constantly killing significant numbers of specials & elites. Smoke grenades suck in their current incarnation and need significant adjustments to be worthwhile. The aura imbalances are very real and constantly pull builds toward the left side of the tree, devaluing a lot of potential builds. Voice of command is arguably too strong for its investment when considering the aforementioned toughness issues. Executioner’s stance is the only ult in the game without any potential defensive utility on top of favoring specific weapons, being high talent investment, and having QoL issues. Marksman’s focus keystone is kind of annoying and also favors very specific weapons over others. Focus target, for some reason, requires an additional talent point to reach compared to the other keystones. And I find weapon specialist’s modifiers to supremely disappointing and generally not worthwhile for their investment cost.

[Tempest_yo]

@BongoSkaggs

Toughness generation is a perennial concern whenever you aren’t cruising on a safety cushion of confirmed kill stacks; which means vet becomes very vulnerable in hairy situations where you can’t be constantly killing significant numbers of specials & elites. Smoke grenades suck in their current incarnation and need significant adjustments to be worthwhile. The aura imbalances are very real and constantly pull builds toward the left side of the tree, devaluing a lot of potential builds. Voice of command is arguably too strong for its investment when considering the aforementioned toughness issues.

You can sum up our tree as as win-more talent tree. When things are going well our toughness gen is fine. When it isn’t we’re 100% reliant on VoC.

Unlike any other class we need to get killing blows. Zealot has a talent to either just gen toughness for being in melee, or dodging attacks.

Ogryn gets an insane 25% of their toughness back per heavy swing which in hordes is way more because stuff is definitely dying to it.

Psyker has insane toughness gen with guns involved. Less so with staff builds unfortunately, but still able to gen without being reliant on kills. That being said staff psyker is less survivable than vet if they aren’t rocking trauma staff.

VoC is our bandaid fix for when the going gets rough. It’s a very very good bandaid, but a bandaid nonetheless.

Thing is though I’m not even sure I want the class to be changed in the survivability department. I want Exe Stance to have a toughness reset, and have its nodes rolled into 2 modifiers total.

@BongoSkaggs

Marksman’s focus keystone is kind of annoying and also favors very specific weapons over others.

The issue with MF is that it favors the wrong types of weapons over others.

Autoguns should not be the best ones to use with Marksman Focus.

The problem is in general as well is that low skill weapons are pushed harder than higher ones other than revolver which still has that forgiving hitbox.

Things like the Vraks MK VII should be top tier with players who can hit their shots, but even if you hit nothing but weakpoints and max stacks on MF its honestly still mediocre as hell.

Same with MG XII, MG Ia, Vraks MK IX etc etc

Though I guess I’m getting into more generalized problems rather than vet.

[Ralendil]

Vets look good… that’s just it is no more the gameplay I like…

Tbh, zealot is the only class I enjoy fully. If they mess it, there would be nothing left in this game for me. I play sometimes vet and I can reach easily 500-700k in auric (so average/good damages output).
Point is, I don’t like the keystones so much, that I tend to avoid playing vet.

A rework of keystones triggers? sure… won’t happen, I guess. Like I won’t appreciate again the vet I guess…

[BongoSkaggs]

@Tempest_yo

You can sum up our tree as as win-more talent tree. When things are going well our toughness gen is fine. When it isn’t we’re 100% reliant on VoC.

VoC, infiltrate, and sometimes just good old panic shredder spam, but not an unfair assessment.

@Tempest_yo

Unlike any other class we need to get killing blows. Zealot has a talent to either just gen toughness for being in melee, or dodging attacks.

Zealot has its own issues with toughness, but generally they are solvable by just building for crit and abusing invocation of death to spam ults for toughness.

@Tempest_yo

Ogryn gets an insane 25% of their toughness back per heavy swing which in hordes is way more because stuff is definitely dying to it.

Ogryn also has the option of offloading their melee toughness generation entirely onto their melee weapon blessings if they want. Which frees up a lot of talent points for gunlugger builds. No other class realistically gets to do that outside of very specific setups.

@Tempest_yo

Psyker has insane toughness gen with guns involved. Less so with staff builds unfortunately, but still able to gen without being reliant on kills. That being said staff psyker is less survivable than vet if they aren’t rocking trauma staff.

I think you got those things backwards. With any staff my psyker is way more survivable than my gunker builds. Getting toughness for warp kills and both generating and quelling peril can get very silly. With a gun you don’t really get to benefit from the latter talents nearly as often.

@Tempest_yo

Thing is though I’m not even sure I want the class to be changed in the survivability department. I want Exe Stance to have a toughness reset, and have its nodes rolled into 2 modifiers total.

I’d like a through reworking of vet toughness gen myself. More actual options for exe stance would be nice as well because the current batch of modifers are very lackluster for eating up so many talent points.

@Tempest_yo

The issue with MF is that it favors the wrong types of weapons over others.

Imo abilities, blitzes, auras, and keystones should be usable with the vast majority of weapons. For MF in specific it mostly just needs to have the number of stacks you get vary depending on the gun used.

Ogryn’s hard knocks talent gives different amounts of stacks depending on how hard it is to stagger specific enemies. So why shouldn’t MF give more stacks for getting headshots with slower firing weapons instead of only favoring rapid firing ones? The modifier for not losing stacks of on crab walking should also totally be upgraded to just normal non-sprint walking. And possibly the passive stack gain for standing still should just be baseline.

MF should also probably also give plain old +x% damage on headshots and crits. Instead of the bonus being some wacky, obscure modifiers based on the guns finesse curve as it currently is.

[Tempest_yo]

@BongoSkaggs

VoC, infiltrate, and sometimes just good old panic shredder spam, but not an unfair assessment.

VoC + shredder is a great way to get out of some very nasty situations, but spamming M1 on Zealot somehow surpasses it far more often than it should.

@BongoSkaggs

Zealot has its own issues with toughness, but generally they are solvable by just building for crit and abusing invocation of death to spam ults for toughness.

That’s what I do! Hooray. I don’t bother really exploring too many playstyles on Zealot in depth. Dagger zealot just seems objectively like it’s the best.

Also has been the class that has gotten closest to a true solo win, and with melee only to boot. The other classes have had carte blanche to do w/e they can to get through the mission, and still haven’t gotten as far.

@BongoSkaggs

I think you got those things backwards. With any staff my psyker is way more survivable than my gunker builds. Getting toughness for warp kills and both generating and quelling peril can get very silly. With a gun you don’t really get to benefit from the latter talents nearly as often

It sounds like we’ve come to the conclusion that Psyker is actually more survivable than Veteran. I think my issue with staff psyker is the tree itself. It really drops my toughness while the gunpsyker tree has a ton of toughness by comparison.

Also you chain crit on gunpsyker, and that gens so much toughness. More than you need.

@BongoSkaggs

Imo abilities, blitzes, auras, and keystones should be usable with the vast majority of weapons. For MF in specific it mostly just needs to have the number of stacks you get vary depending on the gun used.

I mean I agree with you, but also LMAO at fatshark actually doing anything nuanced.

@BongoSkaggs

So why shouldn’t MF give more stacks for getting headshots with slower firing weapons instead of only favoring rapid firing ones? The modifier for not losing stacks of on crab walking should also totally be upgraded to just normal non-sprint walking. And possibly the passive stack gain for standing still should just be baseline.

I’d love this. No notes, but refer to my statement above.

@BongoSkaggs

MF should also probably also give plain old +x% damage on headshots and crits. Instead of the bonus being some wacky, obscure modifiers based on the guns finesse curve as it currently is.

Too direct. They love their bucket system. But also correct.

[FuZIKur]

veteran doesnt need a tree rework. all skills and utilities are interesting (except smoke grenades, even I, who really liked to play with it and used to it in games agree it needs a rework, or even change it to something more interesting), but some are underpowered, especially when you can compare to zealot.
it either needs something added to existing skills/keystones or rebalanced, because there’s not much reason to fully upgrade skills and even less reason to use keystones because of their penalties. like give an ability to walk or make character a less threat when standing for Marksman Focus, for weapon specialist give him more time for a Ranged Specialist bonus, make Focus Target less annoying to team and more bonuses from it. krak grenade sometimes cant one-shot kill Crushers because of a strange bug that makes it explode but not kill, making it less reliable than Plasma, that can stick to your hand when you change weapons and press attack earlier. he’s more like a character who’s made out of good mechanics that wasn’t brought to mind, and I hope this will be changed, and its not gonna be another rework

[VRAH]

First of all the tree’s layout is not well thought out and is very restricting (I drew a new one and wrote more about it here: Vet's talent tree is good but not great)

I agree that most passives are actually fine and interesting to use so no need for change there but the ways to get to them can be improved.

Yes, the keystones are underwhelming but overall if we take also the auras and abilities into account the Vet feels still the most unfinished class of them all. As a Vet main I have about 10 different Vet build but I play only 1-2 of them because I’m missing something in most of them.

[Overlord]

Overall I’d say that the bigger fish to fry, at least in the short term, is team support talents. Not just for vet, but for other classes too. FS needs to make these talents worthwhile to invest in, right now they’ll only be picked if they’re taxing access to a talent you need/want or if you’re on a class with a permissive point economy (e.g. not vet).

@BongoSkaggs

Vet’s got plenty of real build issues. Toughness generation is a perennial concern whenever you aren’t cruising on a safety cushion of confirmed kill stacks; which means vet becomes very vulnerable in hairy situations where you can’t be constantly killing significant numbers of specials & elites.

You can always run Out for Blood you know, it synergizes very well when combined with Confirmed Kill and/or Exhilarating Takedown (assuming you’re running Iron Will by default). It’s also borderline mandatory for Counterfire centric, range specialized builds. All classes have gaps in toughness generation even if you stack all toughness generating talents, it’s pretty intentional. Probably to keep people from trying to solo the map (not that it stops some).

@BongoSkaggs

Smoke grenades suck in their current incarnation and need significant adjustments to be worthwhile.

Sure, I agree, it’s viable though, but it doesn’t offer all that much value relative to other grenade types, and it effectively imposes a 2 to 3 point tax on all infiltrate builds atm.

@BongoSkaggs

Executioner’s stance is the only ult in the game without any potential defensive utility on top of favoring specific weapons, being high talent investment, and having QoL issues.

People really overemphasize the issues with it, overall, it’s fine, it def could do with some tweaks though. The real problem with it is that the current meta makes it way harder to use specialised ranged builds, especially in soloq. Some of it’s modifier talents could probably do with being merged with eachother or the ult itself.

The defensive utility bit is only an issue if you’re specializing, most generalist and hybrid builds can make up for the gap with the right weapon and talent picks, here’s a hybrid build I regularly run on Auric Maelstrom as an example, WS Marksman (Autogun) - Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k - Games Lantern

It is also worth noting that it has way better uptime relative to the other two if you run it with Tactical Awareness, and effectively near infinite in high diffs in counterfire builds.

The only real major issue with it IMO, is that having it’s refresh as a separate node effectively makes it so it costs 2 points. Annoying, but not too restrictive in the grander scheme of things, especially after the point economy tweaks. The same can be argued about VoC, and Duty and Honor though.

@BongoSkaggs

Marksman’s focus keystone is kind of annoying and also favors very specific weapons over others. Focus target, for some reason, requires an additional talent point to reach compared to the other keystones.

Yeah that tax point feels very out of pocket. MF just needs a buff so it can actually meaningfully affect BPs for anything that isn’t a K1a or a K12, and it’s Camo modifier node needs to be reworked into something that’s actually usable in higher diffs. It’s pretty obvious it was only tested on lasguns in vanilla T5s at best.

@BongoSkaggs

And I find weapon specialist’s modifiers to supremely disappointing and generally not worthwhile for their investment cost.

Honestly, of all the vet’s keystones this one’s the sleeper hit IMO. Mostly because people tend to not think about tacking it onto hybrid and generalist builds. There it shines, and can make a night and day difference in helping your survivability, especially if you’re the type that likes to frequently frontline.

You don’t need to consciously juggle your weapons to make the most out of it, same for agile engagement. Play naturally, and you’ll still get a reasonable uptime off of it.

It could use some tweaks though, I especially feel like at least 2 to 3 of it’s modifier nodes should be merged into eachother or the keystone.

@VRAH

Yes, the keystones are underwhelming but overall if we take also the auras and abilities into account the Vet feels still the most unfinished class of them all.

Honestly, it’s the opposite for me, I feel like vet got the most balancing focus to the point that it can feel like he received PvP balancing while the others were worked on with PvE balancing in mind, lol.

Ranged combat is pretty powerfu (cuz physics), so it feels like the designers were tiptoeing around the vet’s tree afraid that they’d break the hybrid combat formula or something if they made him too powerful when working on P13.

[Sledgehammer]

that’s balance issue.

[PapaJoe]

same as me

[Molonious]

@Overlord

Honestly, it’s the opposite for me, I feel like vet got the most balancing focus to the point that it can feel like he received PvP balancing while the others were worked on with PvE balancing in mind, lol.

To me it feels like someone built a talent tree for a turn based tabletop RPG without looking at what the other classes were up to, and it ended up being painfully overthought and awkward in a fast paced shooter.

Something like Marksman’s Focus or swapping weapons back and forth is the kind of thing that turn based games really do well with, but next to stuff like Lucky Bullet or Blazing Piety or Warp Siphon or Feel No Pain or Heavy Hitter or Martyrdom, none of which require much or any active requirement on the part of the player, the Veteran keystones are all really fiddly and narrowly focused. Disrupt Destiny for the Psyker is similarly overcomplex and likewise has issues, would work great in a TTRPG, but is awful in a hectic shooter.

[Aldrig]

Recalled my password specifically to type here.

I am not sure why people are saying that veteran is OK when in my opinion he is clearly not, not as a class overall, nor as a ranged specialist.

I am not even talking about specific balancing points, like, why would you take a veteran in a game when two other classes (Zealot and Psyker) both has access to one of the best weapons in the game (Revolver in both its variants) in terms of both performance, damage and usability. Pocket hand cannon that shreds elites at all ranges even without any specific investments, and can even curbstomp armor with proper talents, meanwhile retaining either great melee potential or great crowd control and utility.

Ogryn is not only decent in melee and survivability even in gunner tree, but is an absolute powerhouse with an all-favourite bleed build that can duel bosses one on one, and uses one of the most broken weapons in the game at the moment - Kickback, that melts anything it touches without any special gameplay style or skills required.

Whilst left tree ranged veteran is a vet noodle who can barely perform in melee (can’t afford to take any random hits at all, even from trash) and is completely reliant on ranged elite kills, while having no gear or skills to highlight him as a dedicated ranged class…

Hence most of the builds you see are focused on either VoC and Plasma or, again, VoC and autogun, which are in themselves not bad, but not as powerful as other classes using their mainstream builds, or some weird gimmicky western revolver cowboy “build”, which works as good for the most part due to how awesome revolvers are atm.

People already kicked a dead horse a couple of times about gun psyker being an actually better shooter then a veteran.

I think vet has a deep identity crisis, he is a ranged class is simply invalidated by other classes having acces to if not better, then at least equally viable tools to deal with threats at ranges, but what makes veteran different is that for the most part he has nothing going on for him except him allegedly being “good” at ranged combat.

I am not sure a simple rebalance will change things. Auras are, well, specific if you want anything but a gimmick style of gameplay, you go for ammo obviously, cause that Ogryn and Zealot need to shoot too!
Grenades are weird and in themselves i would not count them as a good blitz ability. Frag grenades and krak grenades are nice, but once again they are just a band-aid for an inability to properly deal with armored enemies or cc at all spare for a select number of weapons.

Smoke grenade and the whole right tree still baffles me as to why it exists in the game. We’ve got stealth loner zealot with knife and imo right way veteran is just that but also worse in all aspects, with an added pleasure of switching weapons all the time (which is a plus if somehow you count that as a good gameplay).

Meanwhile all the potentially interesting specializations that could’ve been a thing for an IG veteran such as heavy weapons (stubbers, hotshots) and being a supression or horde clearing specialist, or grenade launchers and specialzed explosives, mines even, are left in there to dust with only thing pertaining to the veteran being Plasmas which are not bad, but some people may state that revolvers do many things that Plasmas also do whilst having less drawbacks, or a Power Sword, which is totally okay for a commisar or officer fantasy but offers little to adress aforementioned issues for me.

All and all, this is just my two cents and despite how i love the veteran, i can hardly say i enjoy playing it as i used to at the moment. It’s either first tree with Exec and constant headshots popping praying teammates won’t leave you behind, or weird middle tree which makes me a strange hybrid in between off-brand zealot and some sort of buffer, enabling others.

Main issues for me are lackluster survavability and tools to have a selected role in the game.

[Ryshek]

Currently the only marksman weaponry outside of lasguns feels like the revolver… Which just feels bizarre.

[IshanDeston]

Gonna leave my 2 cents here:

I don’t think the Veteran is in a good place, but i need to caveat this.

I think the Veteran is a discount Zealot now. At least in Damnation and above, the gameplay of the game disincentivises people to stand and shoot. It swamps you with melee enemies all around. The increase of the HP of enemies has lead to the Infantry Lasgun feeling weak.

And if i want to really perform well, i have to basically play it like my Zealot.

I started out playing this game as Veteran. It was the class i wanted to play and why i was excited for Darktide. My friends love melee, and i want ranged. Which is why we transitioned from Vermintide 2 to Darktide. It offers both of us a compromise. Used to be my “Zealot” friend, who loves being super aggressive in melee, hated playing his Veteran, precisely because the Veteran was Ranged focused and he isn’t good with ranged. He is more the spray and pray kind of guy.

Since the Class rework he enjoys playing Veteran, because the Veteran now plays more like the Zealot. With Voice of Command and a Plasmagun instead of the Revolver. And if the goal was to open up the Veteran to other players, then i guess the rework succeeded.

Meanwhile… i am not happy anymore. Veteran went from my favorite class to my least favorite class. I made a thread about wanting the Devs to show us how Veteran is meant to be played a while back, because i don’t think the Veteran works anymore. At least not as Marksman.

Now, mind you… i am using the Scoreboard and so i have an idea about my performance on average. And i am doing fine as a Marksman. When i want to have “fun”, i play my Veteran with a Marksman build and a Helbore. And when i say… Fun i mean, challenge myself.

Executioner’s Stance is a joke now. I don’t think i am a terrible player. Dunning Kruger and all that, i know… but before the Class Change i was able to keep the Volley Fire Streak going quite a while. I legit did all of the Veteran Penances. What I am trying to say is: I don’t think i am bad at being a Veteran, but i find it impossible in the new situation to keep the Streak going for the Executioner’s stance. I just never have the “peace” to stand there and keep shooting stuff. I mean, i tried making Relentless work, but there simply is no situation on Damnation where i have more than 10 seconds of peace and quiet.

I would have to actively have teammates protect me from harm to keep the streak going for more than 10 seconds, so i don’t need to swap back to melee. Without the buff to the Bayonet of the Helbore, that weapon would be absolutely unusable by now.

And i found that the only way i can make Marksman work is in combination with Infiltrate and Low Profile. Infiltration allows me the chance to draw the Helbore and snipe a Special in the distance. Something i can’t do with Executioner’s stance.

And i used the Executioner’s stance with a Recon lasgun, because the stance itself is pointless. I mean, there is no reason for me not to have maximum uptime. There is no opportunity cost to it. No situation where i would want to wait to use it. I don’t get ammo back, i don’t get toughness from using it… there is absolutely no reason not to go for maximum uptime and use it as a hyper aggressive playstyle.

I also do not understand why the Executioner’s stance is on the left side of the tree. In my opinion Infiltrate and Executioner’s stance should swap places. Infiltrate and Low Profile allow you to be immobile and actually build the stacks for standing still on Mark’sman Focus.

I do not see how Infiltrate gels well with the Weapon’s Specialist Keystone either, but at the same time Executioner’s Stance seems to favor hyper aggressive playstyle, which would benefit from Onslaught and the like, so you can better use small rapid fire weapons.

I am fine with the Center Tree, which seems about team support, but I also don’t think the center Tree has an identity of its own. I feel its more something you dip into, than focus on.

So while i can make Marksman Focus work for me, even on Auric, i feel like it’s much more work. It’s a much higher skill floor with zero benefits, and if i would be fine with having a 2nd Zealot, i wouldn’t bother doing this.

And if i really need to play “seriously”, i will not play Marksman either. That is where i go weapon’s specialist and Plasma Gun. Voice of Command. That is when i play a discount Zealot, because that is where the survivability of the class is. Where i don’t need to constantly be on the look out for that spot of calm in any given mission. A spot of calm that rarely exists in the Horde Chambers, which is where i am even as Marksman basically forced into the Melee Role.

I know people complained a lot about the old Camouflage, and i am also not quite sure why the Marksman Focus keystone has an Camouflage offshot, that doesn’t seem to do anything but give stacks for standing still. I would have loved, if that would have given threat reduction. Like at 10 stacks you have 90% threat reduction. So you could actually stand and shoot, then the Executioner’s stance might work…

I honestly feel the Veteran lost its identity. And it’s not that i can’t force it to perform as a Veteran, but no other class makes me feel like the game actively fights me in performing what i think the class was meant to be.

Maybe it is my mistake to assume that the Veteran is supposed to be the Ranged Focused class, despite all the Talent’s focusing on ranged damage. But it certainly doesn’t feel like the game wants me to play Ranged Focused.

Can i make the Veteran work? Sure. I can play discount Zealot and perform well… or i can really struggle to do well as a Marksman.

I also don’t understand why there is no ammo based equivalent for Shock Trooper, or why Shock Trooper is limited to Las weapons. As much as i am happy for near infinite ammo on my Helbore… i don’t understand why you don’t want me to use the Headhunter in the same way. I’d love to take the Headhunter Autoguns for a spin much more often, but quite frankly the game also disincentivizes me from doing so. Not only do they have poor ammo pools but also my Veteran has Talents that actively want me to use Laser weaponry.

Anyway, i am not happy with where the Veteran is right now. I mean, i can make it work, but it’s an uphill battle… and a lot of weapons don’t feel like they work anymore. And i see no reason to fight an uphill battle as Melee Veteran, when i can do the same stuff, but better, on my Zealot. There is just no reason to play Veteran right now. The Ranged Stuff doesn’t really work… and the Melee experience is better with the other 3 classes. I rather go play Melee Psyker and gun Psyker than play Veteran. Especially with Scrier’s Gaze and Disrupt Destiny… i feel like my performance is just as good as with my Veteran, although i have less ammo. But i also have more utility in that i have a more useful Blitz. Sure, i have no Helbore, but i can use the Headhunter Autogun and still snipe people or use a Recon Lasgun with Scrier’s Gaze.

And if i want to play Melee Focused both my Ogryn and my Zealot have me covered. Where i also feel Ogryn is in a real good place right now (just needs more weapon variety), and the Zealot is the same unkillable goodness it always was.

So, it’s not that i can’t perform with the Veteran… it is more a question: Why do the uphill battle, when there are 3 alternative Classes that seem to do what the Veteran does right now, just as well if not better.

Which is why i don’t feel the Veteran is in a good place.

[Ryshek]

@IshanDeston

the gameplay of the game disincentivises people to stand and shoot.

too bad they built an entire keystone around that concept

furthermore the concept is antithetical to guns like the shotgun or the autopistol

[BongoSkaggs]

@Tempest_yo

Also has been the class that has gotten closest to a true solo win, and with melee only to boot. The other classes have had carte blanche to do w/e they can to get through the mission, and still haven’t gotten as far.

I don’t hold soloing as an acceptable yardstick for how good something is overall. Handmaiden in V2 is one of the best solo careers due to her extreme mobility and general ability to just ignore enemies while progressing objectives, but best career she is not. Doesn’t have the damage of many other careers and the vast, vast majority of players simply lack the knowledge and understanding required to truly leverage her unique perks for the benefit of a team.

@Molonious

To me it feels like someone built a talent tree for a turn based tabletop RPG without looking at what the other classes were up to, and it ended up being painfully overthought and awkward in a fast paced shooter.

Something like Marksman’s Focus or swapping weapons back and forth is the kind of thing that turn based games really do well with, but next to stuff like Lucky Bullet or Blazing Piety or Warp Siphon or Feel No Pain or Heavy Hitter or Martyrdom, none of which require much or any active requirement on the part of the player, the Veteran keystones are all really fiddly and narrowly focused.

To me it sounds like you’re more concerned with the uptime on the keystone buffs than anything else. All three vet keystones reward you for doing things you generally should be doing anyways: shooting heads, marking targets, and swapping weapons as needed. I do not find them altering my playstyle in any egregious ways. Talents like deadshot and grenade regen 100% alter my playstyle more than any of the keystone builds I actually use do.