Here’s my 2 cent when it comes to buffing the vet like and giving him a little more class identity with some unique weapons and better options for dealing with armor that’s not the plasma gun.
-Executioners stance replenishes 10% toughness per second and has a 15% toughness damage reduction while active. Executioners stance reloads currently equipped weapon (like at launch)
executioners stance has 20% rending
-Remove smokes, replace with (3) hopper mines (lore accurate) a mine that shoots into the air and detonates when enemies get close spraying shrapnel everywhere. Fits the infiltrator playstyle. Smokes are useless and do nothing but hinder your team.
-Replace Stealth ult with a “berserk” that increases movement speed by 25% and weapon attack speed by 15% and critical chance by 20% for 10 seconds
-grenade launcher (frag/krak grenades)
-increase Krak carrying capacity to 4 (base)
-Breacher Shotgun (lathe pattern boarding gun+ shield ) Vet only. Very powerful shotgun with hoard clear and maniac, unyielding damage that can block shots and melee
-Melta bomb (2) (another replacement for smokes) manually triggered large anti armor explosion
-Melta gun, close range anti armor. Excellent carapace damage but low range.
-rocket launcher, very low ammo 1/9 high unyielding damage. Blessings change rocket type based (frag/krak/incendiary)
-I haven’t thought of ways to buff the keystones yet
Only buff exe stance needs is teammates to accomodate it and some space. Make every shot suppress enemies in 8M would be a more suitable change, vet can already stack damage with the appropriate build.
He does’t need a Rocket Launcher to delete anything thats fun and engaging…
Exec stance is nicely balanced, shout is just OP. Giving exec stance toughness regen to make it more like shout and giving it rending to make every weapon capable of busting up crushers is the opposite of introducing variety, it ensures all choices feel the same.
The berserk idea is frankly loathsome too. I don’t like stealth but that’s just a lame version of scriers gaze (which is already mostly lame stat buffs) and doesn’t fit veteran at all to begin with. I’d rather they overhaul stealth mechanics so it becomes fun to use and stops breaking the games AI.
Melta gun sounds fun, Melta bomb sounds too much like krak, while i dislike smoke grenades they are unique over explode and kill enemies. Rocket / Grenade launcher.. more annoying explosives… think we have enough with Ogryn. Not Baseline executioner gonna to need some tax talents to get special effects and increased CD… it def. needs a toughness regen as only ability without it.
Keystones have the most potential for more unique play but WS kind of already does this, Tagging is almost too iconic now… Marksman could do some special shots at max stacks that change Veteran gameplay.
Exec stance is only in a bad position because of the enemy spam.
Personally, only three real changes are needed for vet:
Marksman’s Focus needs to be a straightforward buff to sniping, not a turret simulator punishing you for moving and requiring you to farm stacks. Make it benefit ADS.
Smokes need to be replaced with a mine that doesn’t break stealth. Run in, park it, run back to cover. That or just make smokes give everyone stealth which would be funny AF.
Replace Fire Team and the movement talent with buffs to getting back toughness and grenades on elite kills respectively. Plus buff Survivalist back up to decent amounts of ammo.
Imo, Execstance feel bad because most of toughness regen on Vet come from killing enemy so if your teammate kill steal everything you’re going to suffer terribly.
If anything they should offer more way for Vet to regen toughness naturally and not punished by teammate performing well, so he doesn’t have to depend on ability’s instant toughness regen as a crutch and make Execstance not feel like a suicidal choice in most situation.
Also Infiltrate’s invisibilty is too long to be useful unless you just want to intentionally grief your teammate, I rather trade it for shorter cooldown.
or more like vets toughness regen perks activation requirements are the worst in the game, and they nerfed confirmed kill back when they added keystones in patch 15.. that are the worst in the game
so you just don’t ever get anything now unless you are in a killing spree of elite, but when that happens you don’t need toughness cause you are in a good spot already
vet has been worthless since patch 13, unless they voc of course
and before anyone start yapping, worthless when you consider the other classes that can do everything just better, vet got hobbled into a melee class, where every single other class are doing much better in melee
especially in that time period where duelling sword was exclusive to psyker
I always felt that the Zealot stun grenade should have gone to the vet.
IDK - but spitballing - the zealot could have had a vial of holy water that did AOE dot tick damage as % of enemy health; so that it hurt bigger boys more than trash mobs. Perfect for softening a mixed horde; rather than a giving the speedy zealot effectively a “free-res” tool.
Easily solved by only having 1, reducing stun time, or making the stun radius smaller.
You just balance by tweaking those three aspects.
Your argument is not dissimilar from saying the vet could just wipe elite clusters every 30 seconds. They don’t because the damage, damage radius, and number you carry are all balanced against each other.
I won’t argue they are the most restrictive with there talents, and a ‘good veteran’ has to work a lot harder than a ‘decent’ any other class at keeping themselves upright outside of shout these days (given Psykers and Ogryns are now basically ‘drain tanks’ when build appropriately, and Zealot is Zealot).
But, I’ve been running around with the reworked Catch a Breath on more builds recently (after playing Ogryn for weeks and Psyker a week more I finally decided to screw around with them and the few changes they provided to them), and honestly? I’ve grown kinda incredibly hooked to this little ‘can’t touch me’ mini game that makes the gunner playstyle feel worth while.
It’s felt like ‘the missing piece’ to me at least, I’ve ran it on a couple set ups (I got a few Executioner Stance Builds just for the sake of variety and enjoying high damage output), mainly consisting of using it with a Boltgun, Recon Lasgun, and Infantry Autogun (Braced Autogun can likely work too, but I just use Inspiring Barrage with that and become a drain tank of my own). It requires careful play and propery standing behind your ‘meat sponges’ (the rest of your team), but properly ends up feeling like the ‘specialist killer’ fantasy that lets you actively do so, standing behind them pot shotting all the things that might threaten them while getting continual regen from both Confirmed Kill and Catch a Breath all the while.
And when stuff does get on top of you and sneaks a hit in? one can just toss a grenade (one I feel should always pair Shredder with E-stance, it just makes up for so much of it’s weaknesses) for space and get that regen back up pretty quick, or go about your standard melee structure to keep yourself above Iron Will range to get back behind your team and regen the rest. Granted I feel this feeling might come from me also always running max toughness on my Veteran builds (274 babyyyy can’t get enough toughness babbyyyy), so that might play into how I feel about this regen actually being meaningful to me, but for all the times I’ve ran it over the past week across a vast amount of games, it’s felt very good, and actively got me into the ‘sit back and continue to push/smack things away from me while gunning everything down’ playstyle. While it still is actively way more restrictive than the other classes regen and requires a ‘mini game’ the others don’t need to play, it’s 5 second refresh rate after getting hit is rather manageable most of the time (in my experience), and keeping yourself permanently topped off from any form of gunner fire makes the moments you do get hit feel a lot less punishing (and usually by then you have a few confirmed kills going to to make up the difference).
correct, these are the best, any other point spent in toughness regen talents is wasted, even out for blood fell short
but i still can’t swallow the fact that my toughness bar gets nothing after i kill a couple specials, and there is no amount of copium that can fix that
True true, though I’m confused what you mean by ‘nothing’? 10% + 2% regen a second per kill for 10s is still pretty dang potent especially in this elite/specialist spam era, and if you mean in terms of having full toughness most of the time, I mean the other classes also don’t get anything once they are full right?
