Because all I can think is “Just go back to the drawing board on this one.”
The concept is bad. The core buff is bad. The modifiers are bad.
Taking an ability that is universally used as an awareness tool and artificially limiting its availability in favour of mediocre buffs is not attractive. None of it feels even remotely worth the investment + the trade out of the tag’s core function. Even if the buffs and modifiers were buffed to the heavens, I feel like it still wouldn’t be worth it.
Remove stack mechanic. Tagged enemies (tagged by anyone) take +x% damage from all allies in coherency. Sub nodes give extra bonuses when tagged enemies are killed/tagged enemies do reduced damage.
I like the personal touch, that enemies marked with this ability active get a different outline. But you’re right, the bonusses feel weird. Especially with the stacking going on.
Best way to build vet is to ignore keystones in my opinion. Just like previous iteration, where you’d skip out the final deep end nodes to have more wiggle room above.
The most impactful Vet abilities are the basic talents without a doubt.
Exception is if you enjoy the quick-swap playstyle of shoot-attack-shoot-attack. Then right side deep end is a good fit.
I haven’t had a good go with Marksman’s Focus, but Weapon Specialist feels like it’s got potential. Even if it is clunky as all hell to use.
In fact, I’m kind of afraid that the keystones (outside of focus target) might actually be too strong to ignore, and that the new tree is actually far more restrictive than the old one as a result.
At the beginning, i wasnt keen on the keystones, but now i am quite fond of Focus Target and use it on every build. The toughness heal can be quite substantial and the stacks increase faster than i thought. On average, even with several elites, there is a damage buff and toughness heal around 15% and the 32% are significant against bosses and ogryns. I like it very much.
Melee buff is good, ranged buff is ok but pretty weapon dependent. My preferred shotty on my melee Vet gets bugger all from it in practice unless I spend even more points down there for the reload nodes at which point I start missing out on quite a bit for it.
Tagging plus the node with attack boost allowed me to reach a breakpoint I couldn’t before, and it doesn’t feel downright bad to play. That’s the most I can do, Playing the new tagging vet somehow feels both worse to play and weaker than my previous support Vet build, and I can’t even put my finger on it.
Honestly, I’d rather run the full nade build, but since elite dmg went to the left side it lost too much damage if you aren’t taking the tagging keystone.
It feels downright horrible to play. Agile Engagement was fine if you just forgot it existed and used it as quick-shot breakpoint at most, but this switching stuff to gain buffs takes the cake for the most horrible keystone enjoyment-wise.
Half of it doesn’t even work, it’s like a joke. You can’t even use it with volley fire it just bugs out lmao.
IDK wtf the testers did again, but none, and I mean none of the other keystones occupied so much mental space and none of them have so much busywork as Vet’s IDK how these got okayed to be enjoyable to play. Not even talking about needing so many points to reach them in the first place.
Your stacks dont go away when the target dies until the buff runs out.
As always this might be intended or a bug, but as it is now its not NEARLY as bad we thought it is
Getting it just for the melee buff, is a great deal for 1 point (if you got there already, which is likely, because of the other melee buffs right above it).
If you want to invest further into that keystone, i agree that you have to give something up.
If FS removed the 3 terrible nodes from the middle branch, it would certainly open up a bunch more possibilities.
Not sure what you are on about.
On high diff, you have a reason to regularly swap between your weapons.
If you would not already, all you have to do for a great melee bonus, is to quickly shoot 1 trashmob and swap back to melee.
If you have an extra skill point, you almost never have to reload your gun.
If you have one more, you have 40% toughness regen on demand. You can even use it to get 20% toughness every 3 seconds, when you are in a pure melee or pure gunfight.
Not sure what part you mean doesn’t work.
Can’t comment on interactions with volleyfire.
I don’t think they take a lot of mental space at all.
They are probably less brain-use intensive, than the psyker keystones.
I agree on this point.
They could remove some bloat. Especially on the bottom middle branch (iirc, 3 completely useless nodes, 2 of which you have to take).
You just wrote down what feels bad about it. It feels unnatural. Swapping weapons to keep up the melee buff feels bad. You naturally swap when something needs shooting, and suddenly losing dodge/attack speed and dodge distance feels extremely jarring. This goes against the natural flow of switching weapons when the situation demands it.
If you go equip your ranged weapon with volley fire you don’t get the ranged buff, Crit rate boost only applies to the first shot.
I disagree. I actually like the psyker one, even the highlight one that points out that 2-3 last shooters that want to sneak up on you.
When playing psyker, i swap weapons all the time, just to use them regularly.
Swapping weapons on vet, every 10 seconds in order to gain a massive melee buff, seems completely fine to me. You likely will have something to shoot every ~10 seconds anyway, when playing on damnation+. And thanks to the guaranteed crit on first shot, it is quite likely that you can 1-2tap the target (with some of the guns).
Well you do have a buff indicator that shows you how long it lasts.
Well that sucks and is quite clearly a bug.
I would assume that this is intentional.
Just that many of FS’s descriptions are bad and some are flat out wrong.
Ok. You are free to disagree.
Although i do not understand why you would say that (use taking a lot of mental space and busy work) about a keystone that literally only requires you to tag enemies (which you should be doing anyway), to keep a 12% dmg buff active on everyone.
Or about a keystone that applies a buff to the weapon that you just swapped to.
Aside from that, if keystones are to be part of the identity of a build, they are to be somewhat gameplay relevant, no?
So if you have to do slight adjustments to your gameplay, in order to gain full benefit, that woul not be an issue at all to me.
Do you know what is similar? Keeping up FotF 20% attack speed boost on Zealot, it has a big payoff of a big kill/chunking horde, minimal cost, and doesn’t force you to switch off melee. It feels great to use! Suddenly slowing down gives the feeling of windedness and the ult is like a second wind.
You know what doesn’t feel good for me? Having to randomly drop AS and dodge speed if I don’t pull my revolver to shoot a damn poxie when the side I’m trying to hold a side of some wierd triple horde spawn in maelstrom when my team fights off a boss and the special wagon in the back. It totally breaks how I play.
When I play a damn melee Vet and rush the elite blobs before being alerted I want to slash them up and not randomly drop a bunch of AS and DS/DD if don’t randomly shoot something. Yes I can shoot the damn shotgunners, but if I’m playing a melee Vet I want to decide when to shoot and when to chop naturally and not by the pressure of keeping up some some damned buff.
Yes, that’s the only one I think actually feels good to play, and some how, in some weird way the whole commissar build feels less enjoyable than before, and I can’t even put my finger on it why…
