Solving Survivalist

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
21

I find it real weird that they gave Hive Scum 3 great ways to manage ammo econ, but the hive scum only needs pickpocket. Even after the nerf, they’ll never go hungry on higher difficulties.

I think they should take some of that stuff off of Hive Scum and give it to vet and glugger.

IMO Executioner’s Stance, Desperado and Point Blank barrage should always refill your current clip on activation, I think this is a good middleground between infinite ammo and no ammo, and ensures you always have some ammo when you use your ranged-focused CA. Its weird to have CAs you can’t get full use out of because you’re out of ammo.

I think they should change survivalist to a variant of Gunslinger, being you gain an advantage when scavenging ammo. I also think Gunlugger should get something similar too, instead of coward culling. (If anything, it’s way more thematic, why Hive Scum gets this aura of all things is absurd to me, give them coward culling instead and call it spray and pray).

Here’s a thought, give glugger gunslinger (Could even call it ‘Gun Lugger’) and change survivalist to ‘ammo pickups give more ammo when in coherency’, so having the glugger be the dedicated ammo-picker-upper becomes a synergy.

An alternative could also be that Exec Stance, PBB and Desperado gives everyone in coherency a bit of ammo on activation as an offshoot node or base-kit, and rework gunslinger and survivalist completely on the grounds that ammo econ is too strong for an aura.

The key takeaway here being that ranged-focused builds that gobble up ammo should have ammo econ built-in to offset the negative impact on the team, and that this econ probably shouldn’t be flex-able. Any ammo-regen node would become a must-pick at higher difficulties, for any build that uses ranged weapons. But I feel Hive Scums would rage if you took away their pickpocket so ‘eh.

But if they changed pickpocket to be something like ‘elites and specialists killed from behind drop small ammo packs, with either a % chance or cooldown to prevent having a sea of small ammo packs’, having a glugger, a vet and a hive scum could be a pretty meta comp (Assuming the aforementioned changes to survivalist and glugger aura), as the Ogryn could taunt, hive procs pickpocket ez, glugger picks up ammo, entire team gets ammo+ from vet’s survivalist) What a world that’d be huh. Either a Dream or Nightmare I’d assume.

22

Desperado works with 0 ammo, it loads in a full mag of “magic bullets” that don’t pull from reserve while the ability is active. On Exec Stance, having a full clip worth of like Plasma Gun every 30s sounds busted.

23

Honestly, I don’t think the Survivalist is as necessary. It’s more that the other Vet’s auras are not good or impactful enough.

Ammo should be balanced without taking the Survivalist into consideration, because you can have a party with no Vet. Also, a Psyker with a staff or Hive Scum with Gunslinger provides a similar bonus to the party in a different way. It’s a nice bonus or quality-of-life improvement, but not necessarily something mandatory.

24

Aye. Desperado has infinite ammo, and is the only ranged CA that’s self sufficient in this fashion.

As busted as infinite-ammo plasma could be, you would be giving up VoC for this, and they could always tweak how plasma works, as it does have a built-in limiter. Exec Stance could also be nerfed to account for improved ammo econ.

25

The key issue here is that folks don’t like Havoc’s ammo drain. Which can make ranged-focused builds nonviable, unless you’re Hive Scum. While I don’t think we need to make every build ‘havoc-viable’, accounting for the ammo drain on ranged-focused CAs would ensure that a hungry glugger or vet teammate wouldn’t eat all the limited, limited ammo.

26

I don’t understand why this modifier still exists in the first place. Is there anyone who finds this fun?

27

No, I don’t think there is. It’d be right up there with giving melee weapons slower swing speed just cuz. If anything, Havoc should give more ammo, since you’re dealing with such high-levels of enemy density, but that itself is its own can of worms FS shouldn’t have ever opened. In a perfect world Havoc wouldn’t have innate drain, and the density would be on par with Auric but with stronger enemies, with no weapons/mechanics that’d trivialize this.

28

I actually like rituals or other modifiers that do something rather than disabling you. But ammo drain is just nonsense. No wonder people are saying the Psyker is OP. Removing this **** would be a nice place to start to balance things.

29

There are many good places to start, a lot of low-hanging fruit here, but FS seems adamant going about things their own way, at their own pace, and its infuriating.