It’s been ages since anyone had mentioned using Autoguns in any serious way on harder difficulties. I’m curious, what are the classes and builds where autoguns retain any level of usefulness? Is there a magic autogun build out there that doesn’t result in a self-imposed handicap?
Keep wondering if there is maybe a vet or now an arbiter build that can make use of them? Even more interested in the headhunter / vigilant autoguns - which literally no one seems to use?
Far as I can tell, IAG’s have been completely BTFO by recon because why fight recoil and mag capacity when you can have no recoil and infinite ammo. Gunpsyker seems like the strongest build for it.
Brautos seem fairly weak, require several hoops to jump through to get mileage from. I’ve heard tale that zealot running inexorable judgement and dance of death can make brautos do interesting things. Have also done a Castigator build with Arbites but it wasn’t anything special.
Headhunters simply can’t. They are 2 years out of date, I genuinely can’t believe they got a name change before a buff.
Columnus IAG was top dog for a while and remains a solid option, but then Recon Vet does the same thing but with burn and infinite ammo. Brauto is solid for running at clumps of guns but then the new Arbites shotgun is like firing 10 brautos at the same time. Headhunters require consistent aim so the majority ain’t gonna bother. 3 shot and single shot with Markman’s Focus will hit very good damage but then you could just play Helbore and one tap H40 Reapers while never dropping below 90% reserve for the whole map.
Then the Bolter has been buffed so many times that it does everything you could possibly need out of a gun while also bypassing the Pus-Hardened Havoc modifier with bleed.
All the autoguns are victims of power creep and are just redundant at this point. Doesn’t help that Havoc has the majorly reduced ammo pickup which hurts them way more than it does the broken guns.
Yeah, it’s kinda sad. They are all inherently borked; the Vraks (formerly Columnus, I think? Thanks, FS, for taking your stupid naming conventions and then changing them all for no reason so that it’s even more confusing) is so much better than the others, and the Recon Lasguns are so much better than it.
Not to mention the marksman rifles, which are ridiculously useless.
Headhunter Autogun was originally designed for mid to long-range combat, and it was quite effective in the early stages of the game when the pace was slower and there were fewer enemies.
However, now that large numbers of enemies spawn rapidly, many players feel it has become harder to use.
Most combat now takes place at close range, making it almost impossible to keep enemies at mid to long distances consistently.
Additionally, suppression causes your shots to miss even when you aim accurately, which adds to the difficulty of using this weapon.
Suppression no longer fits the current combat style and has become an unnecessary mechanic that should be removed.
Yeah, players getting suppressed has been many layers of not fun since the game came out. You already have to deal with aiming under pressure of gunfire and melee enemies. If you decide to use something like Infantry Lasgun, your gun no longer functions when you need it unless you take a(nother) point tax on Vet.
Okay so I found out something hilarious.
On vet? With an actual sight from the Weapon Customization mod? The Vigilant Autogun with single-shot slaps. One-tapping elite enemies consistently with easy headshots and having a good amount of ammo.
Half the problem is vet’s ammo sustain being locked to las weapons, the other half is the garbage sights put on ‘precision’ weapons (I still don’t get why the starting gun gets a proper reflex sight but both sniper rifles get garbage irons).
Brauto hasn’t been good to me for a while. You’re incentivized to take a horde-clear melee and it’s not really powerful enough to justify itself on heavier enemies compared to other close-range options.
IAG is still solid, just outcompeted by existing weapons.
IAG’s work great on Vets with the Brittle and Rending talents. Braced work well on some Zealot builds. Were Headhunters ever really good?
I think all of them are much better now than they were in older incarnations, their original ammo capacities were all absurdly low (and visually incongruous with their massive visually represented quad-stack magazines).
That said I think they also suffer from the issue of “Darktide doesn’t actually need this many weapons”. We’ve got triple digits worth of weapons, many which are just minor variations on each other, and many of which tabletop 40k wouldn’t even bother to differentiate. Between all the Las rifles and Autoguns in the game, tabletop 40k would consider all 18 of those weapons to be the same thing with a single profile.
I tried out a FT/deadshot vigilant build based on comments on this forum and a couple of YouTube videos. Pleasantly surprised!
Infantry autogun on vet and zealot is okay. Zealot you can just hip fire it and get 100% headshot bc funny dance of death talent. Vet you can take weapon’s specialist with agile engagement and with the damage versus elites and damage versus monstrosities and ogryn talents you can delete reapers and ragers mid horde clear. You could also go all in on mmf exe stance and clear ranged seeds for your team without them needing to help you, but exe stance requires a competent team to be its best.
Braced is a good suppression stick, but no one likes to use ranged weapons as a secondary source of dps, rather as the main source. You can lock shooters down so they don’t blast your team, making pushes easy, and you can use it to restore toughness for yourself with inspiring barrage. damage breakpoints are okay, they’re just not impressive.
Headhunters require aiming, but you will no-reg a lot of shots and it doesn’t do great in shooter spam unless you have talents that negate suppression. This isn’t a problem for zealot, but kinda a problem for vet as you don’t need determined on any other gun except maybe inf lasgun to make them work. Investing heavily into it though does give good payouts, but you’re gonna have a better time with most other weapons.
Arbites kinda doesn’t need these weapons. Like you get good dps with them, but shotguns have far more synergy with the class due to high stagger/cleave/damage etc.
They’re not really niche just outperformed and no one plays havoc to have fun they just bring the funny sticks and go brr.
More Crits, more Infernus stacks - no surprise there. Also Scrier’s suppression immunity helps wreck Gunners and Reapers.
I’ve personally had more success with SG Columnus mk5 IAG than Recon Lasgun, mostly because it takes too long for the burn DoT to tick down and I focus more on melee on that build anyways. Maybe recon is stronger but I prefer direct damage.