Smoke Nade build

To be fair every commando vet I’ve seen since patch 13 was horrible to play with and incredibly ineffective. Smokes being weak and incredibly quirky, to say the least, doesn’t help. Also going for Low Profile on a melee-focused build to boost your burst is something I haven’t seen mentioned before anywhere.

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I see knife vets make use of this every so often, also works for sniper builds if you couple it with the dmg boost node and go for the +power on HS ult modifier, and for raking fire autogun builds too. It’s one of the ways I ran my helbore/infiltrate sniper build before it got nuked by P14/15. Have you tried this with the +rending on backstab blessing? Works pretty well when I tried it.

I meant actually using it to boost your melee.

This whole build uses infiltrate mainly (70-80% of cases) to just go ham with PS, and 20% of cases as a dmg steroid for plasma. You can kill like 5-6 bulwarks in basically no time, just stealth and stab them in the back. Same with Crusher patrols even without having the 2-shot brakepoint.

I have never seen someone using it like this, or mentioning it. Most I see using infiltrate are using it as a “oh sh-t” button or Low Profile with a ranged weapon.

Eh… IDK why would I do that? PS lets me have horde clear and kills enemies for behind super quickly anyway. I’d just run any knife Zealot at that point.

Let’s you nuke armored threats just as well, reasonable horde clear thnx to desperado if you get the other rending blessing too.

Okay, I’ll try it out! Although losing easy rager control will be a pain, but I guess that’s what plasma is for.

Edit: Come to think of it a bit, if it doesn’t let me 2-3 shot crushers from behind IDK if it’s worth it. PS can drop armored enemies from front and back super fast.

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Was talking both, lol.

Takes a bit more finesse but you can be just as effective if you can nail headshot heavies with it (with rending on HS blessing). Thnx to +attk speed you can do some ret@rded rager horde clears by spamming heavies if you’re willing to get sweaty for it. Make sure it has high mobility to get max dodge count and range.

Also, most autoguns will do just as well in the ranged dept, they synergize better with specialist thnx to their faster reloads and switch speed too. The Kant12 + HS DMG blessing + Precision Strike talent or one of the Accatrans + Punishing Salvo + Precision Strike works too if you want to be a hipster about it. More so if you run the ammo mag regen node on them.

If you struggle to make the knife work, TacAxes will let you bully Ragers if you gitgud with weaving special strikes with light-heavy combos.

Let me know if you want to go into any more detail on any of these options.

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Pretty sure it’s there, might be wrong, been a while since I tested it. Carapace (Wperk) + Elite (WPerk) + Rending on backstab (Wbless) + Rending on HS (Wbless) or Mercy Kill if you run lacerate talent. These plus Reciprocity and Onslaught + Exploit Weakness should let you dominate anything but a doom wall with grenadiers behind it. Again, make sure it has good mobility. Synergizes well with your plasma too for additional survivability and positioning flexibility if you decide to keep it.

You can PM me some builds, I’ll try them out. Although I have to say, I’m not really into doing twice the work to get a worse Knife Zealot.

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I have met someone playing with smoke nade a lot… and picking all nades on the map…

As I play in 3rd person view, yes i hate such thing. Also the fact that I cannot have any grenade.
I hope you don’t steal all of them

I usually never pick up Nades on the map. Only if nobody uses them.

Ya’ll really need to drop the “well I saw someone suck with this, therefore. . .” memes. If you feel its not viable/is bad/etc. Try it out yourself and post your results, alternatives, etc. Otherwise just walk away if ya can’t be constructive about it.

You’re not the only one doing this on here, but I’m too lazy to scroll up to quote others.

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I don’t say that… and i would not even think to kick someone that use something in the game…

Just commenting the first post guy ;p
I don’t judge…

My only problem with smoke grenade is the design behind them. Nothing related to players, but more how FS made them.
I would like that the smoke has a thin effect inside and more darker when outside. Just to allow us to play in it efficiently

EDIT for explanation… you launch a smoke nade, I have to go out of the smnoke cause I cannot see what happens… so more dangerous for me.
I play in 3rd view, but even when switching to first, I don’t feel confortable in the smoke.

Both smoke nade and infiltrate seem inferior to other branch so I just don’t bother after spending a few rounds playing with it. Weapon Specialist on the other hand is crazy good though, it’s even better with Agile Engagement but sadly that’s on the opposite side of Survivalist aura.

I prefer doing it like this instead, probably doesn’t need all the reload speed and could spend points on Tactical Awareness but I like having it since I use shotgun.



If I want stealth build playing Shroundfield Zealot seem like a much better option, maybe it’ll change next patch if they combine some infiltrate sub node so it doesn’t cost whopping 4 skill points to make it good or just having more spare point to use in general.

Can’t wait until I can actually pick both Survivalist aura and Agile Engagement without having to give up on other good stuff.

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Tried the knife, but gave up after 2 games. It isn’t useless, but if the team has CC it feels horrible and I have to sweat extra hard to get less out of it than Knife Zealot. It doesn’t feel like it gives anything unique at all. It’s just another version of playing “Budget Zealot”.

You were right about it eating ragers super fast and having okay horde clear.

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Honestly, I could never make the agrip shotgun work reliably (by my standards) on any commando build. I prefer to run it on a hybrid marksman - commando one. Other two just don’t seem to work optimally anywhere else in my tests, lol. Here’s what I roll with: Trench Sentry Guardsman - Darktide WH40k - Games Lantern

It revolves around 1 to 2 shotting most things with slugs, and using regular shot + counterfire to clear shooters. Rashad is a good alternative for it, but you can get faster horde clear with the TacAxe since I can’t afford to run Trench Fighter on it.

If you’re running the reload talents on specialist you don’t need other regular reload talents, use those points to either get Iron Will or Deadshot + Precision Strikes (benefits melee too).

The combat knife seems to have block frames still active into its push attack, I routinely parry and hit ragers at the same time spamming pushes like I do with it at any point in the game.

And I feel personally attacked by smoke grenades being bad, honestly veteran has the lowest impact blitz except maybe the box of hurt. I’ve not been getting the same multi shenanigans off with kraks, when they even kill the target they stick (I like how I’ve suddenly been seeing this a lot since they claimed to have fixed it, not before). Grenades really feel the bleed nerf, even throwing 2 won’t kill a group of ragers/maulers like before from just bleed and then a separate unyielding type nerf hurt their utility a lot for me as well.

This is where I like smokes, at most points in the game you can segregate combat into pure melee on demand. It also gives you a pretty big buff to melee gameplay, disabling tracking attacks and gooning most specialist AI (dogs can’t pounce you, trapper needs to walk right next to her target along with flamers). The entire gunfire thing is kinda just there if you want it, like if you want to shoot out with an autogun but didn’t have points to get the suppression immunity that lets you be a veteran and take control of shootouts). Its also adjacent to a bunch of decent nodes.

Its the garbage movement aura that needs a buff, like why do I always move around it even for point cost? There’s nothing as good as even looping around ammo, and there’s points enough for tactical awareness/ult buffs and the bottom right tree buffs. Even these ult modifiers I struggle to see the point of.

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Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, lets you knock out crushers in 2-3 strikes even when off infiltrate. You can also bully ragers with it too. Also, as a bonus you can credibly LARP DKoK bayonet charges with this while still doing well against ranged threats as long as you manage your ammo well. The Mk1 bayonet is surprisingly potent in this set up and will easily wreck most things, you can even maul crushers with it, but the knife or a Rashad are still better options there. Going to run it through more games, and tests to refine it. Options for the Catachan CB are in the text section.DKoK Scout - Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k

I agree with the sentiment, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a “budget zealot” if you know what to go for, as long as you don’t overfixate the build around the knife and melee you won’t have this issue. You won’t be demolishing things like with a zealot knife build but you’ll be more versatile, although survivability will still be an issue (as with anything in the realm of pure commando builds really).

Meh, I wouldn’t go that far, its lackluster, but it’s good enough if you know where you want it when making a build. I’d definitely bump it up to a 7.5 or 10% just to entice minmaxers to give it a go though, since what makes it mediocre is the fact that to run it effectively you’ll need to pick the extra movement tax node too.

There’s also the dark design aspect of it, which personally irks me, this set up is there just to functionally funnel you into the commando tree if you’re just chasing extra movespeed while buildcrafting. One of the many design quirks of the current vet tree layout atm that triggers the f out me, lol.

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I tried it doing almost the same build, but with K12 (Hit reg issue eats every 3rd shot for me sadly), probably works better with Helbore. Run Knife with Ruthless+Uncanny.

I think I wait for the patch to go more into sniper builds. I played them for like 15-20 games in this patch (but not with keystone) and they were very sweaty and didn’t feel good at all. Although have to say I’m not really into sniper playstyle in the first place (I’m not the best shot).

So true. It’s built in a way to pull you into multiple directions at once while it nickels and dimes you as much as possible. No other tree feels bad to build, while the Vet tree is a constant struggle.

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I wouldn’t say this is a sniper build though, working on that one atm, this one revolves around the bayonet and knife. Uses your original build as a base with some tweaks.

On precision weapons, if you can make the plasma work, precision weapons will easily click with you over time if you give them a chance. You just gotta learn the recoil patterns, and how to manage your ADS and target acquisition work. I break this bit down in some of my other builds in the linked site. See the write up in one of my designated marksman builds.

I feel you, struggle with latency f@ckery too even though I’ve got the best my ISP can provide in my area (this is the only game with issues). I no longer play during high traffic hours as this seems to alleviate the issue a bit.

Yeah, shotgun is kinda suck when use as main weapon. It’s only good when use interchangeably with melee which Weapon Specialist encourage.

I mostly use it to stagger enemy then combo with melee or open Bulwark shield with slug then just spam it head with normal ammo or Axe’s overhead. If it wasn’t for that I probably would just use Lawbringer instead.

I wouldn’t even advise using it if you only want slug round, it would be just a shittier Revolver with high stagger.

Sometime spamming normal ammo for kills after proccing Agile Engagement can work wonder too but probably shouldn’t do it too often especially when you don’t have Survivalist aura lol.

Revolver and Plasma would beat it anyday in term of raw power, I’m just bored of spamming meta weapon.

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