Unfortunately, Snipers ignore smoke. I just tested this in the Psykhanium to be sure. They were able to acquire and track me through smoke. I play on Damnation and Auric Damnation, and I highly doubt that it’s different in any other difficulty. Since I had discovered this some time ago, my strategy isn’t simply to smoke a sniper, it is instead to draw their attention to me, close the distance, dodge the shot, and then execute.
Alternatively, if they’re occupied with my teammates and I couldn’t aggro them, I swap to my gun and take them out as much as I can, or at least stagger them.
Yes. I absolutely hate this. They were my #1 thought when I started using smoke. But if there are two common scenarios, Scenario A being only a Sniper, and Scenario B with a Sniper, and other ranged enemies, the lesser of two evils is to pop smoke and go for the Sniper. That’s my opinion, anyway. If that means we don’t get gunned down by everything else, then as long as I can dispatch the Sniper while my teammates tackle the horde, the smoke grenade has served its purpose, and so have I.
Honestly just let me double tap grenade button to throw a zero fuse smoke at my feet ranger vet style and make the stagger strong enough to flinch/interrupt all human sized elites and I’d definitely find use for them on non VoC builds.
I still think the general problem is that compared to vets other options I just don’t think it synergies as well with teammates.
Frags are great because they do a boatload of damage, bleed, and knock enemies down.
Krak is a lifesaver in maelstroms with many Ogryn, scab, and mauler enemies…
Smoke is at best a kind of shittier stun nade that makes it harder for your team to see.
The big changes I’m purposing are the following:
-attach a scan or auspec google effect in the smoke to make seeing enemies easier
-make teammates in smoke actually invisible until they fire and then have it kick in after 3 seconds or something
-make smoke cause enemies to target each other in the smoke in confusion
-auto highlight any ranged attacker that shoots through the smoke
Some of these could be related to special capstones or something but I think the bare basics need to either include making enemies easier to see or making the team actually invisible
That’s exactly what I ask
I would like that the smoke effect be thin within the area of effect and darker outside (vision of the player).
The darker effect would permit to identify the area of effect of the smoke grenade.
The thin fog effect would be a way to see that the nade effect is still active, while without being a penalty for the player.
I really don’t like that you have to find the center to not see any smoke at all.
At first, it is not immersive, as you don’t even see the effect
At second, this is annoying when playing in third person
At final, if you don’t place yourself right, the nade effect is just a penalty. Also, unless all your teammates are clipping within you, several will be impacted negatively. At contrary of all other nades type existing in the game that help the team
While the voices in my head tell me it’d be fun to use smoke to troll people, I have faith that most people using smoke nades do think they’re helping. The issue is that they’re almost always making things worse. I say “almost” here not because I’ve ever seen them help, but because there are people here assuring us that it can happen.
Ironically, standing in the middle of the cloud where it doesn’t obstruct your vision is the worst place to be, since the only indication that the smoke has dissipated is that enemies will suddenly start focusing you again.
If a player doesn’t have an option for dealing with enemies at range, it is legitimately safer for the team if they just stand aside for a moment and let the people with guns and real grenades do the job.
It may be time for FS to just consider making the smokes work like Bardin’s smoke grenade, only for the whole team, in exchange for only holding one at a time and a much smaller area of effect.
If you assume that smoke is not infinite, it wouldn’t be sudden.
Also, enemies that alredy had their targets wouldn’t just instantly turn on you for no reasone.
You are kinda overreaching at this point, you already had legit points, you dont need to made up more.
Smoke is that option, if used right. It is about pooling ranged enemies and specials in melee range. There is a reason why infiltrator tree is full of melee perks. Benefits for ranged players are provided by preventing horde to target you inside smoke, so you can do your job without interuptions.
You can get away with doing a run and gun ranged-focused Veteran build. It’s OK, not great. You can do a discount Zealot melee build. The build that is supposed to be unique to Veteran is abject garbage and does make the game objectively more difficult, and that’s a precision-focused ranged Vet build. I’m waiting to see anyone prove this path isn’t garbage. There is nothing this build does that I can’t do more easily, more consistently, and to greater effect with any number of other builds.
It’s not possible to assume the length of a smoke cloud thanks to grenade tinkerer, let alone if you happen to be looking another way when the grenade is thrown. You either stand where you can see things and risk it disappearing without you noticing or you go somewhere that it won’t cause you problems, which usually means as far away from it as is reasonably possible. Even going through it and fighting as normal from the other side is often preferable, if you happen to catch a glimpse of what’s on the other side before it goes up.
And no, they don’t target you for no reason, they target you because their target priority calculations revert to default when it expires and you’re standing there in a place that makes you a target for that default behaviour, unaware that they’ve reverted.
My point there was that it’s safer and usually faster for the team if you just don’t use that option. It’s fine for the smoke user, terrible for everyone else.
A weird obtuse ‘mechanic’ of smoke is that you can actually see through it when you’re in it. This is actually our only indicator of its buff status (unless its on a mod I haven’t seen). In fact that’s probably one of its only uses, standing directly inside your bullet free zone and taking pot shots at shooters. Adjacent to goofing dogs, trappers, flamers and stopping running attacks anyway. Those perks are nice.
The problem is, in real darktide those scenarios are a waste of pacing and ammo.
I think the smoke grenades should be turned into a Holy Gas Grenade or HGG for short.
The HGG emits a gas in a 6 meter area, this gas inflicts a status effect on enemies called Gassed (great name, I know) which deals 5 damage-per-second and slows enemies movement speed by 50%, the damage effect is increased by 5x against infested and unyielding enemies, making it much more potent against those enemies. The Gassed effect wears off 5 seconds after the enemy leaves the gas cloud.
This gas cloud also gives you and allies 10% toughness regen per second (which can go over max toughness like vet shout) while standing in the gas. The gas lasts for 10 seconds by default. You can carry a max of 2 HGG by default, which increases to 3 with the extra grenade skill.
So it’s basically turned into a multipurpose grenade, it can poison enemies, slow enemies and buff you/allies via toughness regen. It’s an ultimate jack-of-all-trades, master of none type grenade.
I aint gonna lie they do need tuneing. They arent 100% useless but unless your literal entire build is built around them they are 95% pointless.
My personal idea is renaming it to a “Tactical Grenade” which when thrown will choke and cough (stun) enemies for half the duration to avoid clashing with Zealot stun but most importantly block line of sight for enemies trying to shoot through it WHILE highlighting all ranged/special/elites inside the cloud for the duration simmilar to execution stance.
It is far from perfect but it lowers the skill ceiling quite a bit and can bring the veteran’s target mass ping to other builds like commando or squad leader instead of it 10000% HAVING to be taken alongside execution stance to do anything.
I really hope that Fatshark doesn’t completely rework Smoke grenades. The utility that they provide against shooters and specials is quite nice, they just needs some adjustments to help them better fit their niche and improve their visibility.
My proposal is threefold: 1. CLARITY
Make it easier to see through the smoke from outside and everywhere in the smoke instead of only the center. This part is obvious. In addition, add a buff icon and a smoky effect around the edges of the screen when inside the smoke to make it clear that the smoke is still active. Potentially a sound effect when entering and leaving smoke as well for added clarity, but this could make moving in and out of smoke during a fight obnoxious.
2. MECHANICS
Prevent Snipers and Bombers from being able to track you in the smoke. This is a consistency change to solidify smoke grenades niche in providing breathing room from shooters and specials to either take them out safely or clean up hordes and melee elites. I’d also make smoke clear fire for some added purpose while sticking to the idea of breathing room.
3. USABILITY
Slightly increase the radius of the smoke and slightly decrease the fuse time.
Ya’ll have massive skill issues with smoke nades they are super useful in a hectic fight, it basically disables ALL ranged dmg (except sniper and bomber), and it makes specialists like trappers, dogs and flamers walk up in your face, it’s on-par with the psyker bubble shield with some differences
“It blocks line of sight” So move into the smoke, it’s free space to take where nothing can shoot into. But I get it, the skill of your average Veteran is pretty trash, it’s a lot easier to seem valid when you can instagib Ogryn enemies. Smoke is more of a “you didn’t even notice that nobody shot at you the whole time” deal.
