Rework survivalist by making aura buffs for everyone

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Pretty much remove the survivalist talent by just making it a in built feature of vet and replace the node with something like more range weak spot damage.

Biggest change is a massive nerf since its kinda op compared to every other choice including other classes is that these inbuilt team buffs only work when the player gets the kill and the team will receive the buff.

You then make some other team buffs on elite and special kill for the other classes.

Just random probably not very good ideas for the ability that might be fun.

So vets on elite/spec kill give 1-3% max ammo to everyone in coherency.

Zealot could be
10% max move speed for 5 seconds on melee kill stacks 3 times to everyone in coherency
3 corruption is removed every elite/spec kill.

Pyker
2 second or 2-5% skill cool down per kill

Ogryn
10% range damage resistance per kill for 5 seconds on everyone in coherency
10% toughness on kill for everyone.
Immune to suppression for 5 seconds.

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This buffs that you are suggesting are all insanely broken.

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I am fine with some class specific stuff but not like what you’re saying. I think it makes sense for the ranged character to have a built in ammo generation. Ogyrn already has extra wounds and can carry objectives faster passively without any talents. Zealot has damage reduction on sliding. Etc.

I think the survivalist aura, but only for themselves, at 1% as a passive would make sense.

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Survivalist is a problem.

  • It benefits mostly certain types of weapons with a certain playstyle. Which is already unfair to other types of weapons.
  • It’s team-wide, so everyone gets ammo at the same rate. Should be that your teammates recieve less, than you.
  • It’s trivializes the “no ammo pickups” maelstorms. As all of the sudden you always have ammo.

Removing it creates more problems.
Making it built-in veteran feature also not a good idea.

So we need to change how it works, while still having the concept of ammo replenishment. Make survivalist “recieve +25% of ammo pack your teammate picked up”.
Somebody took ammo pack from under your nose? At least you will get +25% from it.

Then we can make some adjustments to talent tree:

  • move survivalist into middle tree. the dmg aura moved to left tree and changed to “weakspot damage”.
    Survivalist, as an aura, now shares 25% of ammo pack for every teammate in coherency. You picked up ammo pack - you recieve 100% ammo from it. Your teammates in coherency get +25% of it. Your teammate picked up ammo pack - you and other teammates in coherency recieve +25% of that ammo.
  • Make this new survivalist a talent, not an aura. Only giving ammo to veteran whenether a teammate steals your pack. Can be limited to coherency radius. Maybe veterans will start picking +50% coherency radius talent.
  • Make this feature built-in veteran kit. Then it will require other classes to recieve their own built-in kits. Not just ogryns.

Numbers can be tweaked in favor of balance.

The survivalist as a concept is not a bad aura. It’s just Fatshark’s understanding of Difficulty is -“throw as much elites and specials at them as possible”.
Which instantly creates huge problems with talents, that benefit on killing elites and specials. Like with waves of hounds. You can, no joke, get 50% of your total ammo by killing spawned dog wave. And use your voice of command 4-5 times in the span of 10s.

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Why is that?
Assuming that you are talking about the idea of survivalist being turned into a built in passive that only applies to the vet and not to teammates.

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because having a built-in ammo replenishment is beneficial to one types of weapons, over the others. Fast firerate weapons already in a bad spot (excluding imbalanced columnus). So ammo gain compared to ammo spend is unfair towards these weapons. While beneficial to weapons like plasma and revolvers.
That makes it less rewarding to use autoguns and more rewarding to use revolvers.

Furthermore it’s OP on higher difficulties, where game spawn WAY too much specialists and elites. Making veterans a better class over others. Especially when only veteran himself replenishes ammo and not his team.

Plus it’s trivializes the “no ammo pickups” maelstorms. As the most classes that go into that type of maelstorms are either survivalist veterans with plasma. Or psykers.

All this makes survivalist either too OP, or unfair, or working where it’s not intended to. Too many problems to balance.
Just share some of the ammo packs with other teammates. All you need to balance - is the amount shared. Brings down weapons like plasma and revolvers. While makes it more fair to weapons like autoguns.

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The ammo regenerated is a % of the max reserve.
Your issue has absolutely nothing to do with the weapon‘s firerate.
It only has something to do with how efficiently the weapon uses ammo (% of max reserve ammo used per kill).
So any issue that you could have with survivalist in this context (ammo economy being different for different weapons), you should have anyway (because all sources of ammo are % based).

Btw it makes sense for fast firing weapons to have a worse ammo economy.
They are better at clearing hordes, so why should they be just as good at clearing specials and elites, as slower firing weapons (damage wise or in regard to ammo efficiency)?

Yeah… imagine how bad it is to actually be able to somewhat play your class…
If anything, this modifier is trivialized by psykers, zealots and ogryn, because they do not need ammo to function properly.

OP or unfair? By letting the “gun user” class use their gun more than the other classes?
Working where it is not intended to? Like where? Do you really think that a maelstrom without ammo drops is supposed to be played by a veteran with absolutely no way (outside of dying and respawning) to gain any ammo beyond the reserves they started with?

2 Likes
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That creates so much extra ammo… it doesn’t really change anything… it still seems mandatory, but it’s an interesting idea.

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and the amount of ammo needed to kill target differs from weapon to weapon. Revolvers spends 1 bullet to kill elite/specialist and replenishes 1 bullet.
The autogun spends more bullets, than replenishes.

Plus it creates a situation, where you more inclined to use your weapon only against specialists and elites. Which is more beneficial to weapon, capable of single-target killing, rather than spraying the horde.

Which makes a class, that uses guns, NOT use guns to kill horde. Despite those guns being made TO KILL that horde. Because of ammo management.

If i pick survivalist and use revolver to only kill specialist enemies and fight everything else with my melee weapon - i am not a veteran. I am worse version of zealot. But i will never lose any ammo. Therefore ammo packs on the map are useless to me.
If i pick survivalist and use autogun to only kill specialist enemies and horde with my ranged weapon - i am a veteran. But i left with no ammo. Therefore i have to fight for ammo packs with my teammates.

Imagine creating a fun modificator. For one class to come in and completely remove it. I have the same problem with extra-blitz modificators. Dont get me wrong. It needs balancing. But survivalist is objectively a bad balanced aura and should not be in this current state of the game.
Just as krak grenades should not kill 5-6 crushers in one go, because these fat bois merged into each other.
Or having infinite uptime of Voice Of Command, because you only need to kill 3-4 specialists within 15s and auric spawns tons of specialists.

All these problems boils down to how Fatshark treats difficulty. Instead of making individual enemies harder - they make more of them. As i said - there is nothing wrong with the CONCEPT of survivalist. It’s the current conditions of the game that make it broken AF

it is OP on modificators like waves of hounds. Where literally 40 of them spawns. They easy to kill. Usually some psyker or zealot always rush to farm those juicy specialists kills for their scoreboard numbers. So you dont even have to shoot. Just free ammo. OP amount of free ammo.

It is unfair for certain weapons, that benefit from it more (look first quote).

It is working where it is not intended to. Because you supposed to use your ranged weapon either in dire situations or to kill whatever small amount of ranged enemies you encounter. It’s a “melee” challenge for all classes. To see how they perform in melee enviroment. I dont like, that psykers have no handicaps on that mode either. They should have increased peril generation.
But once again, majority of “Mostly melee, only Scab faction, no ammo pickups” mission i play - it was psykers+veterans. Zealots and Ogryns are very few in those missions. Because no matter how good you are as a melee class - surviving 10 crushers and 7 maulers is a hard task even for them.

OFFTOP: we do have “Mostsly ranged enemies” modificator. But it does not come with extra limitations. I would like to see “No healing items and less healing station charges” and “More ammo pickups” there to encourage trying all the classes with ranged weapons. Forcing them to play more “shooter based” type of game. Taking cover, peeking, picking off enemies. Maybe even “No ability use”, to really spice things up.

So not only survivalist veterans and psykers are working where they not intended to. But they also harm experience of other classes. Because of the nature of how Darktide AI director acts. You supposed, as a team, to split enemy attention evenly. Melee classes (Ogryn and Zealot) dealing with melee enemies and taking their attention. Ranged classes (Veteran and Psyker) dealing with ranged enemies, taking their attention.

But now majority of enemy melee’s attention is only on zealot and ogryn. Because veteran and psyker are far in the back, taking much less aggro. Making zealot and ogryn to deal with far more enemies, that they are intended to.

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it’s not mandatory on ammo effecient guns like Kantrael lasgun. Or plasmagun (if you not shooting every trash enemy).

And why should we lock out other classes from playing ranged weapons? Let’s say we have zealot, ogryn, psyker and veteran. And all of them using ranged weapons.
Now what?

Why should other classes not recieve any ammo, because veteran takes it all? With ammo sharing - even if veteran takes ammo pack, the rest of the team will still get benefits from it. And if greedy zealot steals ammo pack - other teammates will benefit as well.

Getting some ammo is better, than getting no ammo.

So much extra ammo? +25% from a small ammo pack, that replenishes 25% ammo. If you have weapon with 100 ammo - those “extra” ammo results in around 7-8 bullets. Do you think that’s a lot? and if someone takes big pack it will result in 23-24 bullets for you.

IMO much less, than survivalist gives. But still better, than no extra ammo.

Once again. If the developers remove the obscene amount of elites and specials. And instead make them harder to kill. Then problem with survivalist will dissapear.
We discussing the way to make survivalist work without reworking the enemies.

P.S. other solution is to put cooldown on abilities, reliant on killing specials/elites. Like “Replenish 1% ammo on killing enemy specialists or elite. Can occur once in 2s”
Numbers can be tweaked for balance purposes.
All of the sudden that wave of dogs you killed with a single grenade no longer result in you refilling half of your ammo.
Altho it trashes autoguns even more. Rewarding playing slow firing weapons…

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i’m not saying i wouldn’t enjoy tf out of it, but those zealot buffs are broken as s**t lol 30% additional speed on what i already have would be ridiculous, and i don’t even have all the movement speed nodes lol

i do think the vet should have a better scavenger perk, though.

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Pretty much every talent node in the game works like this.

Why?

So does the entire psyker class.

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All aura related thing are Bulls hit… FS needed something to justify the disasterous coherency mechanic wich is supposed to limit rush therefore made auras for extra bonuses… then made a zealot node wich always count you as in coherecy wich undermining the whole anti rush concept and act like the biggest Fyou…

Basicly the devs saying we dose not want you to rush but we dumb enough to not think ahead / give a damn and made a talet wich allows one specific class whit insane mobility to… rush. Prime example of FS desing backwardness…

What next, making a system which governs how many enemy you can hit with a single mele hit… idk like hit mass / cleave ? then throwing a monkey wrench in the whole thing and getting hard coded limit as a form of target cap ?

… ohh wait

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not every. Some talents benefit fast firing weapons. The prime example “onslaught” stacking Brittleness on consecutive hits. Easier to achieve on fast firing weapon.

because some weapons are not made with that talent in mind. Prime example: ogryn’s rumbler grenade launcher. It has very small ammo reserve. For a tradeoff of being AoE stagger beast and ogryn/monstrosity killer with adhesive blessing.
This weapon is strong with a balance of low ammo reserves. To make ogryns… think, yeah i know sounds unbelievable… when to use this weapon and not just randomly shoot everywhere.

But here comes the veteran, with a passive aura, that replenishes that ogryn 1 grenade each time a specialist/elite enemy is killed. Completely breaking the balance of this weapon.

Or classes like zealot, that are ment to be melee class, but due to this aura can use revolver actively and not suffer from lack of ammuntion. Because revolver with survivalist aura replenishes 1 bullet per kill. And revolver can kill any specialist in 1 hit. Once again completely breaking the balance of this weapon on classes, that should not be veterans.

we are not discussing psykers. Create a topic about how psykers are unfair in “no ammo pickups” maelstorms and i will go there and will agree with you.
This is topic about veteran survivalist aura

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You get an ammo back every 2 out of 3 kills.

That 1% does not round up.

You constantly operating at a loss unless you are always killing 2 or more elite/specials per shot.

They can’t. The 1% does not round up.

I played an auric mission with a gunlugger ogryn he was constantly running out, but we gave him the ammo packs because he was destroying the monstrosities. I doubt he got much out my survivalist in comparison to the double taps of Ammo crates, and such.

1 Like
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yeah, you are right. Indeed it doesnt round up. But still, replenishing 1 ammo every other kill results in effective 50% ammo increase. Thats a HUGE increase. Considering you be always oneshotting enemy. Which isnt hard on a revolver.
Not to mention, that ANY elite/special kill rewards ENTIRE team with extra ammunition. You dont even need to kill enemy to replenish ammo. Let’s say there is a wave of specialists. You kill 1. Your teammate killed one. You spend 1 bullet. You replenished 1 bullet.

If survivalist worked “Any specialist/elite kill made by VETERAN replenishes 1% ammo” that would be a completely different story.
Which still unfair to automatic weapons.

all that ogryn had to do - is to walk near veteran for a single wave of specialists to get most of his ammo back.
I played ogryn a lot, with a friend who had survivalist. I perfectly know the difference in ammo between when we have veteran with aura and when dont.

Obviously if all ogryn does - shoots grenades and random single shooters, or some scattered melee horde enemies, or spams grenades pointlesly. Then of course he will be low on ammo.

I dont know how can you tell, that survivalist dont replenish much. When so many specialist waves are spawning.
Wave of mutant modificator spawns like 10 of them.
Wave of hounds spawns 3 waves of ~12 dogs each.

Each of those specialists replenish 1% ammo. Each of those modded specialists have reduced hp.

But ok, showcase time. 1:13 to 1:30 a 17 seconds of ogryn spamming grenade launcher under his ability.
He started with 28 grenades. Ended up with 20.
He shot 12 times and spend 8 grenades. It’s a 50% ammo effeciency. Which is ABSOLUTELY broken in course of entire match.

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In the example listed from the time he threw the grenade which lowered everything’s HP dramatically (improving ammo efficiency in the process by lowering the amount of shots needed) he shot 11 nades, and ended with 20 from 29.

You can see exactly at one point where he gets 2 back from a multi kill.

He also likely got a Burst limiter proc for a free shot refund.

This is a very cherry picked scenario.

When you get bad enough special waves people can’t always stay grouped up especially when fire starts coming into the mix. Auras have a very small radius even with the area of effect nodes (which no one grabs on veteran).

It is a 1% return with limited up time. When it’s there it’s super great for the classes that can really abuse it, but this is a feature not a bug.

All this being said:

I’d be ok with this, or making Survivalist a passive node with no aura mechanics.

The class that needs it the most at the end of the day is the one that was built from the ground up for shooting guns.

I simply don’t believe it should be entirely nuked from the face of the game as some are suggesting.

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When I play Ogryn with Kickback or Rumber the differece between having survivalist or not is pretty noticable tbh.

but imo the goal isn’t about nerfing Survivalist or overall ammo economy. it’s about finding solution so that Vet doesn’t always railroad into picking obviously BIS aura and reduce the pressure on any team with range focus build when they don’t have Survivalist Vet(Ie. gunpsyker or gunlugger).

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I’m not saying it’s not noticeable.

It’s about the equivalent of an extra red bag worth of ammo, but as someone who needs/grabs around 2 of those per match + magazines in spades (my vet is hungry) I’m saying that’s not THAT big.

Again, though I’m down for making survivalist completely baseline at .75, and its just a class feature, or making it into a 1% passive you have to spec into, and just giving us a crappy 15% weakpoint aura I’d be fine with that as well.

As long as vet can keep some ammo regen to do those 200+ special spawn maps while being an actual sharpshooter build.

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You want Back 4 Blood launch day specials that were insanely tanky? O.O