Two nodes give most of veteran’s damage buffs - skirmisher and competitive urge, but neither is reliably maintained, so no build ever takes them. Skirmisher works right up until you have to fight a large horde or elite spam, and then you just can’t afford to run in a circle to keep your damage buffs while exposing yourself to gravitationally attracted running attacks. Competitive urge works, but is unreliable, useless at lower difficulties, and can disappear when you need it most with a possibility that it just doesn’t activate again until you just don’t need it any more. That makes both totally useless for higher difficulty games, to the point that they might as well not exist.
If competitive edge were triggered with repeated melee or ranged weakspot hits, changed to standard base damage instead of just melee, and it were moved to where keep their heads down is, it would give you an actual bonus to damage for playing a certain way, require fewer points spent, and offer far more tree flexibility.
If skirmisher bonus stacked based on effective melee dodges, changed to close damage, and were moved a little further up to where reciprocity is, it would again give you a way to reliably trigger the damage bonus, have a much larger impact for fewer points spent, again more tree flexibility, and give a needed momentary damage boost to sniping or ranged builds that get overwhelmed in melee.
With two small changes suddenly veteran has viable horde clear that still doesn’t match marty zealot or ogryn, but without the need for grenade spam, ranged sniping capability without being forced to stand perfectly still or lose that ability on most weapons, and can reliably proc the damage bonuses it already has. That’s it. That’s the gambit - just make two damage boost nodes actually feel like they’re worth investing in.
Great suggestion, Skirmisher should stay where it’s at though.
First part good, second part too strong to be at the top of the center Talent branch. A Talent like that should require more commitment, Vet already has a lot of very strong offensive Talents easily accessible at the top of the 3 branches - Precision Strikes, Reciprocity, Desperado and Tactical Awareness.
I can’t say I particularly agree with this statement, but it’s mostly besides the point so I’ll leave it at that for that point.
Firstly, according to Kuli’s guide, it already does give general damage. It’s just the impact part which is melee specific.
Secondly, I’m genuinely not sure there’s much of an issue with current competitive urge. Yeah you don’t have any control over it, but on higher difficulties the proc condition is pretty trivial, and the duration decent. If you’re already down there for Focus Target, it’s a pretty good value talent point investment. I also don’t think weak spot related stuff makes a huge amount of sense in middle branch thematically. The current version makes sense to me for the support centric middle tree, as a way to personally benefit more from how much more aggressive middle tree allows your team mates to be.
If enemy spam is ever toned down it might need do be retuned somewhat. Being less good for lower difficulties is fine when it’s a completely optional talent, it doesn’t block off anything else.
Current skirmisher is definitely kinda weird and lame. Maybe some theoretical synergy with run and gun blessing. I’ll admit I haven’t tried it since it was last buffed, so maybe it’s ok now. No particular issue with your suggestion besides placement. I like reciprocity being relatively accessible, wouldn’t want it dislodged.
I just don’t like the sprinting aspect of skirmisher if it was just distance travelled to gain stacks could be the opposite of marksman’s focus and include slides, walking and dodges to proc talent.
Competitive Urge, seems about right for namesake percentage could use a boost or tweek the numbers and have it proc on specialist ally specialist kill since that’s veterans niche.
Veteran has a ton of damage options and these are in no way it’s lynchpin and fix it’s issues.
Unfortunately your suggestion for Skirmisher, while I would certainly prefer it, is actually very close to Momentum for the Zealot. Seems unlikely FatShark would copy-paste the way stacks are generated.
Skirmisher numbers could drop down with more usage in mobility to at least include distance based sprint / slides and successful dodges but could be tweaked up as well to all movement. Similar but not point per point the same as Zealot versions.
I dont know if vet needs a bunch of things combined and as much of a rework as ogryn but vet definitely needs things shuffled around and id like to think its going to be more than two minor nodes. Infiltrate does not need to be where it is in the tree because full melee vet with weapon specialist has to take smoke grenades and you cant swing over to survivalist and still get to weapon specialist or other useful skills its a point tax. I actually have been playing with infiltrate and its a lot of fun but i really hate that i cant take shredders because i dislike smokes. I think the 5% damage aura should be swapped with the movement speed aura or completely reworked because it doesnt even remotely compare to survivalist or movement speed. I also dislike where agile engagement is in the tree cuz you cant swing over to get agile engagement and then swing back the other direction and still take all the other skills and a keystone agile is just in a horrible place in the tree and thats why most people dont take it. A vet rework like ogryn got would be amazing for the class.
