Smite needs to be limited to be fun

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I don’t like Smite. This is a known fact. There have been a lot of suggestions to nerf Smite. This is a known fact. Here’s another one to add to the trash fire.

What Smite does on its own is not inherently a bad thing. There are a lot of mass crowd-control abilities in the game. The closest analog is the Stun Grenades Zealot has - these are arguably more powerful, as you get to use your much more damaging melee weapon or gun while the enemies are stunned, and it doesn’t gimp your mobility.

The reason stunbombs are balanced and fun is because they’re limited: you only get three, and grenade pickups are uncommon. You have to use them intelligently in order to get the best value, whether it’s salvaging a bad sitaution or preventing one from happening in the first place. Throwing a stun grenade is a conscious decision that takes critical thinking to not be a waste.

Smite has no such restriction. You can spam it forever, and each individual cast can go for a dozen seconds. Your only real weakness is Mutants coming around a corner, or ranged enemies, but those can easily be ignored. It’s a no-brainer when to use Smite which is “all the time”.

As the Smite user, it’s not very engaging for me to be constantly tasing literally everything. There’s no sense of skill involved with simple peril management and pressing mouse1 in the general direction of the enemy. As someone on the team of the Smite user, it’s still not engaging, because it turns all the enemies into training dummies that never fight back. Any sense of skill in melee combat is completely lost.

It needs to be reworked and significantly more limited. I don’t have any suggestions at the moment as this is more of a rage-rant than anything, but I shouldn’t have my fun ruined by the existence of a single ability.

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I haven’t played with it, or the game much in awhile, but…

Last I checked it’s damage was fairly low and when you stop smiting the enemies aren’t stunned so you need to rely on allies.

You could increase peril, or a cool down between casts.

Make enemies build up a tolerance to it. Maybe have the stun reduced, and even become immune to it after enough time, but maybe start taking increased damage to it. Or given brittle or something for being shocked for so long.

Or a new status where the enemies receive stacks that make them immune to smite stuns and damage but take 300% damage from all other sources.

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But if it was limited, I couldn’t scream “UNLIMITED POWER” like palpatin ;(

More seriously, I haven’t had any complaints while using it myself. Unless you run empowered psionics it’s damage is pitiful, and you build peril super fast. I find it to be a fun team support blitz more than anything else. If you want proper crowd control in the form of damage, you just run assail like everyone else and their mother does lol.

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There’s certainly a law of diminishing returns on this ability as it scales with tougher and tougher enemies. Using them on packs of ragers, or waves of mutants, or packs of ogryns, is where it really helps out the team as they can struggle under these waves.

It’s my opinion, that using smite against an unarmored horde isn’t worth it, you’re better off killing it faster by just hitting it yourself. Fortunately, the damage is low so it doesn’t just Nuke everything.

And you can’t spam it forever. You have to take a breath and cool down like everyone else. If you get periled out by a squad of ragers, you’re done for. You wont be able to reduce peril enough to do enough damage to kill them, and you can’t zap them long enough to shock them all and keep them stunned. It’s a race against time for your team to come to your rescue.

The Ogryn Taunt ability is not that much different. Taunts with bash or combat ability, then the heads of everything is not only glowing but turned and facing the ogryn in a nice little patch.

If you’ve got a skilled team, a zealot can execute his ability to repulse enemies and grant shields to allies at the precise moment, making them target dummies by keeping them stunned. By the time he’s finished his chanting, your team has already killed the majority of whatever wave you’re facing, and anything left over is jokingly negligible.

Of course, there’s issues with the smite.

It doesn’t work on Bosses. The Chanting does. The Taunt does.
It doesn’t work on Nurgle’s blessing enemies. Not sure if chanting does, but I do believe taunt does.

Recently, back in April (or was it may) they buffed the stagger resistance of a few enemies, making them more resistant to the smite. It took a week to get used to, but I adapted.

People who use it as a crutch don’t succeed because they don’t know how to defend themselves in melee combat. Let them learn. Let them earn their marks.

Fun is a subjective term. I like having smite as a tool when we have downed teammates and I can cover for people to pick them up and once they are, I can switch back to killmode again and unleash the fury of the warp on the helpless heretics who don’t stand a chance.

To me, it’s unfun when I get a team of cloakies who aggro the room and then cloak up dumping their aggro on me. I’d say that’s also where smite really shines: counter aggro dump which Psyker can have a hard time dealing with.

If you don’t like smite, don’t play with people who play with smite.
If you get in randoms, find some friends who’ll match the playstyle you seek. There’s plenty of people in the discord servers that play this game for this to be a non-issue.

There are plenty of things that I consider “unfun” from other classes. But I recognize that it’s fun for them. So I focus on myself and shine as best I can doing what I do. Who am I to call for the nerf of someone’s favorite thing?

Like Knife-users on shock troop gauntlet or waves of specialists? You’ll see them sitting there hacking away at one or two specialists, when there’s a congo line coming their way. of stuff that they can’t handle with a knife. But hey, that’s fun for them, and I don’t mind playing with people who wanna have fun. I can’t imagine people are too fond of assail. Or my fire spreading-voidstrike build. Or my Gunpsyker. Some say I shouldn’t use ammo because I’m a psyker. It hurts team cohesion. But it’s fun to me.

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Somewhat agree with the above comments, I don’t typically sit there and hold it unless sh*t is really hitting the fan and we need the CC, usually fire it off and knock some stuff over as needed. Still, don’t take my Palpatine fantasy away from me haha.

The only way I could see this maybe being reworked to make it less braindead is maybe making it a CC cone in front of you instead of something that just links eternally wherever you point it.

At least that way you couldn’t stop looking at the thing you really want CC’d. Could also maybe make it a bit shorter range but in exchange the CC could start sooner so mutants and the like are actually stunned when you want them to be instead of 10 years after starting the channel.

Although now that I read what I wrote, that’s just the flamer staff with less damage to unarmored targets and more to armored targets I guess? Although if we want the CC, it would still be doing negligible damage.

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@CobaltNinja What’s your feeling on the Surge Staff?

I ask as that was my favourite at the time - before patch 13 and Smite - and it did a mix of CC and damage, whereas now Surge is almost all damage, and smite all cc.

There’re times when I’ve looked up and thought “oh shoot” as a pack of ragers descend on me, only to be saved by a smiter. Then there’s times when a player locks a horde of groaners and I think “this is a waste”.

Wonder if Smite should only lock targets wearing metal; i.e. flak, unyielding, or carapace (non monsters) ?

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What is this “sense of skill” you are talking about?

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I agree it should be limited to the 29/08/2024 and removed from the game after that.

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That’s the issue. As many of us say, it’s not too strong, it’s too slow and inefficient and way too spammable. It’s a crutch made out of overcooked lasagna noodles that’s dripping EVOO and I’ll say it for the umpteenth time, a colossal noob trap. Even cutting down the uptime to 50%-66% would improve games and maybe encourage smykers to be more than a 1 trick dying pony that holds the rest of the team hostage.

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Dont really know why smite exist. In my most efficient builds i dont have smite. Why i need something that staggers enemy when i just can kill it.

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that’s why i stay away from smite, it’s too simple and tempting to just stand there and smite away and not have to melee, so smykers aren’t very good at that (and fall on their face when they overload or face green enemies)

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go touch grass take a break from the game and come back when you are rusty.

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And when I’m rusty I’ll still demand a challenge that Smite won’t provide.

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Honestly the best Smite users I’ve seen either use it very occasionally, against very dangerous groups of enemies, or use just a few seconds of M2 to knock down a horde and then go to town with the melee or staff.
With empowered psionics I feel it’s worth zapping a big horde or groups of gunners ; it kills them quickly enough.

I dunno about a cooldown just for Smite… It’d be OK, but it would really suck getting interrupted by a stray mook and having to just wait.

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How about if Smithe’s area of effect was doubled and it’s effective duration halved?

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I don’t think its AoE needs increasing at all. It’s more than enough by default to stunlock literally everything.

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Could just make only affect single target but do really good DPS(at least more than surge) so it still have that Papaltine feel witout ruining teammate’s gameplay. Might also help Psyker be more competent at killing mostrosity.

Just anything that doesn’t literally turn the game off.

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okay no one is forcing you do use smite there is two other options.

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