Recently I’ve been playing more Vet just trying to click heads and have an overall jolly good time with the mk5 hellbore, and first I’d like to say that everyone on the forums complaining about not being able to ranged only is mental/stupid/bad at video games. My primary weapon was my hellbore and I got the most kills in every category, including trash (though many of my trash kills were with frags and melee). Learn to aim, noobs.
Beyond that, though, my satisfaction with shooting everything in the head is extremely marred by the fact that there are so many things in the game that prevent you from just being able to snipe in peace, even if you’re moving around a bunch and not just setting up shop. I had to constantly drop grenades at my feet to deal with hordes swarming me (and it CERTAINLY DOESN’T HELP THAT GRENADE REGEN JUST DOESN’T WORK HALF THE DAMN TIME AND ISN’T GOING TO BE FIXED UNTIL ADMECH DROP), kill a random trash mob that slips through with melee, your teammates are never next to you when you need them to be (which is all the time because of the enemy density), having kills stolen so I can’t chain Executioner’s Stance, and the hitreg very clearly looking like I shot something in the face and giving the sound feedback but doing absolutely nothing is the absolute pinnacle of it all.
This sucks and is annoying. I hate it. FS pls fix.
Melee sneaking thru is just the nature of the game, best you can do is just stack up on toughness-per-sec regen so you can just ignore a couple of trash on your booty. And even then certain pug comps just don’t really jive with a slow sniper vet.
The worst is when you take Lasgun and it becomes “oops all Maulers.”
Maulers at least can be dealt with with investment in Chink in their Armor and Rending Strikes with an infantry lasgun, and I have enough toughness regen from CK stacks that even three enemies getting in isn’t a problem, but it’s just that they keep coming in if I have to try and drive them off, or if there’s a drought in elites and specialists. I wish my teammates would “orbit” me more often, so to speak. I don’t even think I’m that slow, dude.
The anger is that it takes so much more effort to play this fun playstyle when I could just run Scrier’s Gaze with a force greatsword or play Rampage HS and get the same results.
This is a legacy of the “old Darktide”, where the game was expected to be “hard” and players would prefer to stay in coherence range. Veteran and psyker would focus on picking off ranged units/specialist, and ogryn and zealot would repel melee units around - by design. Of course, this is unthinkable in random teams these days, where treat level kind of low.
Sad to say, the closest thing to sniper play is revolver, or staying in lower difficulties for less dense horde.
Revolver struggles pretty hard in aurics. Limited ammo and tons of things to shoot.
If you get used to plasma cannon it’s the best sniper in the game and can be played to havoc 40.
I hope the new classes rifle is a sniper.
As for hordes you have to get used to darktides dodge system and you can just skate around before you pick off a couple.
By far the best build to play more range and more long range focus is the shout build with the mele kills reloads ammo key stone. Shout every 30seconds or less and picks up teammates, while knocking everything back. Then instead of wasting time reloading swap to a fast weapon and get some kills and swap back to shooting.
Solves the small guys that make it through, they now reload your gun
At this point I’d even settle for Revolver ammo reserve buff.
I’d dig Longlas but it’ll probably have like 50 shots ammo reserve in the name of balance.
You basically need hyper-oppressive enemy shooter mobs in order to force your team to stay near you. At least, that’s my experience when they patched those guys briefly.
No, ranged vets need give up the damage worship and accept that the stagger meta is the dominant force that lets you shape the battlefield and the flow of enemies in your favor.
You can either tell people about how you got the most kills in every category with your Hellbore or take the Locke Mk III bolter and flip the script by the mere act of missing and hitting ground…
They buffed exe stance to such an absurd state its really hard to consider it frustrating at this point. You now casually pop the ability when in melee combat for stun immunity and toughness regen because it lasts forever.
Sharpshooter Vet is my second favorite way to play the class behind Shredder Grenade Vet. I don’t find it particularly frustrating, I just pocket whoever is the best horde clear/frontline the whole match. The only thing about the Helbore that I don’t like is the bug that causes your charged shot to disappear if you’re holding sprint and let go of ADS right as you fire.
Plays las weapon on the class with infinite ammo talent → calls people bad for giving feedback, despite a good amount of weapons existing with awful ammo economy, especially in Havoc.
I like your posts most of the time Cobalt, but don’t go down this path of pointless toxicity, especially when IN THE VERY SAME POST you described all the same pains people share when discussing ranged builds.
Melee hybrid builds fitting the gameplay 50% better most of the time, because with melee/ranged hybrid playstyles you will have enough damage and survivibility in BOTH melee and ranged, while most strictly RANGED builds lack in terms of melee damage and require 2x hits on the same targets on melee. Also in Havoc by trading Voice of Command on Veteran to play Exe Stance, you reduce not just your own, but your entire team’s survivibility, because most people are not that good at the game, which is fine, but just one burster exploding into HP without golden toughness can instantly send Vet, Hive Scum, Psyker to respawn point.
Maybe play more than 1 weapon with infinite ammo build and see that ripper guns, vigilant autoguns, revolvers, bolt pistol, shotguns, some of the autogun marks to some degree-- especially on classes that’s not Vet-- lack ammo and also damage in certain cases to just continue continously keep shooting, despite having subpar DPS compared to some of the truly meta builds that lean towards melee more.
It still comes with a set of its own problems, like the nearly complete lack of crowd control, heavy emphasis on weak spot hits and being forced to create objectively suboptiomal builds to make it really work!
Then there’s the Marksman’s focus, which many of the las veterans picks even thou its a pretty backward keystone that makes no difference half the time
Honestly it’s not as bad as most people make it out to be. Specials are just tall enough for you to snipe most of the time and if you really want to penetrate the horde there’s plasma/helbore/bolter spam. Plus they seem to only come from one or two spawn locations so you just blast them before they get mixed into the horde.
Then again I find Inf. Lasgun to be fun in havoc so I might be off my rocker.
Umm yes, revolver needs it since the ammo aura nerf. How we can hold more bolter ammo than regular revolver rounds is just hilarious. Other stats of the weapon are fine.
yeah that’s what enemies are supposed to do. Honestly I’ve been playing havoc helbore a lot lately and I’m not having this issue near so bad. Hell - exes stance refreshes off melee too so you can put your gun down, melee that one elite that snuck by, and go back to snipy snipe town.
Its actually really easy though. You just kinda have mid melee so it can be annoying if you get stuck on a horde. (that’s why I take high mobility high horde clear melee weapons).
+75% finesse at max stacks is a lot and enough to give Rager breakpoints on infantry lasguns.
I’m trying not to be toxic and just venting my frustration where it can be discussed, I promise, but also how dare you assume anything I post to be of genuine value, you fool and buffoon. Don’t you know who I am? I’m the girl that’s gonna burn your house down. With the lemons.
FWIW I think Havoc ruins the otherwise well-balanced ammo economy in DT and creates this unstable equilibrium where the infinite ammo guns retain infinite ammo and the ones that struggle really struggle.
What do you recommend? Shovel seems mid and so is tacaxe/dueling sword for this purpose IME.
To me it feels like people can’t fathom the concept of low ammo reserves as a drawback for a weapon. Havoc lowers the amount of ammo you receive for a reason, the base game spawns and gives way too much ammo. You should have to loot and look around for ammo *if you want to shoot all game, and not be able to self sustain yourself on Survivalist + the little tins you pass by on the main path.
The bolter didnt need the ammo buff it got either. Thats a prime example of why constantly buffing weapons that don’t need them is bad. You’re now using it as an example as to why another weapon that doesn’t need an ammo buff, now NEEDS an ammo buff.
The ammo economy in normal modes is just entirely skewed the other way. Its almost impossible to run out of ammo even if you’re spraying the whole game. You’d have a full team of columnus spammers spraying at everything and it didn’t matter.
For helbore MMF specifically Devils Claw or Tac Axe will be best.