Nice reply 
I can see that there are a lot of gameplay positives out of it for sure.
But also - a single gunner stripping all your toughness because you didn’t do a 360 every second … that’s a bad™ thing …
In general enemies spawning behind you is a bad thing imho. This isn’t a realistic stealth squad shooter. No one player should be permanently on rear guard. It’s not fun.
Man, this is where the lasgun has always shined. I’ve never thought of shooters as threats because I’ve used the lasgun as my primary since… forever. I have the blessing that means headshots = ranged immunity. I also run all the crit and ammo save on headshot stuff, its been my playstyle since forever.
But I’m not so ignorant as to not notice that shooters are causing others issues, and your thread is not the first to tackle this either. There clearly is a problem there, and me going from lobby to lobby shooting them in the head for everyone isn’t a viable solution.
Is there some general consensus on the best way to make them less… overhwhelming?
Honestly - I think this would be totally toxic for the game.
Having to wait for 30 seconds while your veteran headshots the players in cover? Maybe in some combat sim, but not darktide. As someone else pointed out, enemies in cover are practically impossible to hit, whereas they shoot you with ease. Thinking of the breadth of builds and classes, urgh. No!
My opinion anyway
Trickling enemies from the back is kinda bad in this game. Sometimes enemies are kinda “off screen” and only follow you slowly making it feel like constant trickle. They don’t even have to bee shooters, 1-2 melee trash every 5 seconds is bad enough.
Same goes for elite mixed horde appearing suddenly pouring out whatever curve the map has. You just cleared an area and suddenly 3 meters from you there are 2 crushers and a full horde with no “teleport door” in a 20 meter radious. It’s cheap.
On the other hand I’m fine with specials or patrols (even shooter patrols) spawning behind.
Oh that’s a great idea! I’d love to see that. Bit more variety in gameplay is very much welcome.
It’s not just Vet gameplay. Using suppression, taking out gunners, using Stun nades, rumbler shots and whatnot.
Lasguns on Zealots used to be a thing pre patch13 so they can help clearing shooters in the more open areas if they were running something that wasn’t particularly good against shooters (eg: thunderhammer).
BTW I think this should be fine as long as Zealot can reasonably go in either under covering fire by the allies or burning a blitz in most areas. I really miss the shootouts this game had previously.
If I’m in a group that is struggling with ranged enemies, I bring out the new and improved 7a (heavy variant) Recon Lasgun with Executioner’s stance (no Keystone, I’ve tried it with MM’s Focus and it didn’t feel that much better. You could run Focus Target if you want) and have a field day with it. It feels great now, and you actually feel as a medium ranged rifle vet that you are contributing massively to the team.
I don’t exactly remember my full build but I could send it later if you want.
Next step:
BUFF SHOTGUNNERS NOW
Don’t you think that all this is a little bit of overreaction?
The buffs to shoters is very minior. It’s only on their accuracy. Simply not ignore them and the problem is solved.
Thats a new word I didnt know, ty!
Gunners got accuracy, shooters got increased fire rate. Gunners are the guys with the big guns, shooters are the generic guys with rifles.
Actually, yeah, you’ve convinced me 
Maybe those roadblocks would be good. But also, they should be surmountable without a vet character. I mean, we don’t always have one in a game? 5 shooters behind a barricade is a pain.
Honestly you could probably extend this too…basically all the spawns in Darktide.
I know the threads have been done to death about it but enemies spawning in clumps don’t make the game too hard or too easy, it’s just broken.
What kills me is we have 10-15 different ledges, spawn doors, and areas for mobs to come in from in a given room. Instead the director will decide to spawn big clumps of Ogryns, shotgunners, shooter squads, or melee specialists literally inside each other in a corner.
Spread them out, hell MIXED SQUADS so it’s more difficult to approach as you need to account for melee, ranged, and specialized weapons.
That way you also aren’t getting situations of the 10 crusher blob 1 shorting people or a single plasma gun vet wracking up 10 kills in a single shot.
Edit: that way you could also set your spawns up so they are using actual tactics like putting your melee enemies front to lock enemies up and firing from an L shaped ambush or using grenade wielding specials to flush fireteams into shooter killing grounds or even having shooters ambush from behind to pincer teams.
Making the spawn behaviour not as stupid would probably go a long way to making the game feel better overall.
Cough Darktide is a 50% melee, 50% ranged game. Just as a primary ranged player should learn and master melee, a primary melee player should learn and master ranged.
You should try shooting back or flank.
See how all things work out? Not so fun now huh?
Surely, I mean for me the best case scenario is that people would lean on more to have some anti-shooter capabilities and wouldn’t just melee rush shooter nests.
Psyker is another class that can be particularly good at this, but the other classes also have tools available they can lean on to soften up shooters until there is only a few left that can be moped up in melee.
Maybe if we got a shooter resist on the curios like gunner resist, and removed gunner resist to make them lethal instead. Let the trash enemies be trash and increase lethality of the elites instead of it being the other way around.
Blockquote BUFF SHOTGUNNERS NOW
Hell. No. They are already infuriating enough when they spawn 5-10 of them and just shimmy you off ledges of something, but making them hit harder too? No…The game doesn’t need every single thing to be able to one tap you.
It would be nice to spec into (smol) gunner resist; for the players who really hate them (me) it would be an impactful gear choice.
As Ogryn I’ve recently been leaning into suppression mechanics — lay some ripper fire towards shootie concentrations to give you some space. Also feels great to send ‘em packing!
Like any difficulty spike, it’s often a matter of changing your play style and expectations…
And that is the d-mented part of design of this game.
Darktide is at BEST average FPS game
But at worst still one of the BEST Melee games out there
Focusing on enemies that are objectively much less fun to deal with it is stupid period
More shooters are fine, there are plentybof ways to deal with them. Here are some of the ways I like to aproach them
Ogryn shield taunt from infinite range
Veteran bio optics
Ogryn bull rush to lead the charge
Infiltrate/stealth and deep strike them
Slideslideslide
Smoke grenades
4 man coherency charging
Brain burst or other ranged precision weapons
Lead the charge on your psyker with deflect to tank rhe shooters
Psyker shields
Theres so many ways
If theyre too hard or stressful for you, lower the difficulty a notch or two
Uffda.
I’m not someone who would ever turn down a shiney new lasgun build, but my comrade, I tried it and I still hate it.
Ammo issues constantly, wasting shots when a single bolt or two would do it (mg 1a). I really wish there was any other las weapon in Darktide that was at an acceptable standard for Auric.
I was using Exe stance as you suggested. Tried it with Weapon Specialist (brittleness per hit), tried it with MF, avoided Focus Target since I hate it. But yeah, I just don’t get on with that gun. Sad!
Thanks for hitting me up with a build though, choom.
Try exec stance with accatran vd… something, the torrent shooting lasgun, its very forgiving, shooter killing king
Don’t know what to say, it’s great in the right hands I guess.
6D is also great if that’s more your speed. Sorry you didn’t like it.
Yes. They’re basically just slightly stronger shooters atm, barely deserving of the title of ranged elite. They should shoot something stronger than a bean bag.