Specials are Still Overpowered: Breakdown

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I understand specials are supposed to be a massive threat to you and your team, and should be priotized at all costs… but specials are too tanky, spawn far too often, and seem to be completely unstaggarable except by the Ogryn’s alt. I do want to break down a few things about each special in particular.

Scab Shotgunner: Their shotguns are more like a rifle, also far too tanky for as often as they spawn. Which feels like constantly on Lvl 3 and above.

Trapper: Still not a good sound queue for these guys. They talk about snatching you up, but usually you can’t hear it over the rabble of the rest.

Rager (Armored/Unarmored): The armored ragers are far too armored for the dps they do. They stagger your character endlessly, and almost seem to be unaffected by all melee attacks. The unarmored ones are fine, but a hulking menace in full armor shouldn’t be able to attack as fast as they do.

Scab Bomber/Flamer: Throw the bombs way to frequently, bomb explodes way too fast, why is it a AOE attack, if you find yourself stuck in one for even a second say goodbye to all health and armor. Seriously. Flamer’s flames also need to be nerfed, and their fire goes through half walls FYI.

Pox Burster: Just make it a 2 shot please. That thing is much too tanky for being a nurgle filled puss ball.

Hounds: Make their health less, and make it so that you don’t have to kill it to remove it from your teammate. I feel like if you hit the thing with a firemans axe it would fall off.

Mutant: Can make 90 degree turns to grab you and slam you when it’s a 500lb mass of flesh? I don’t think so. For the love of god give them a grab cooldown, if you find yourself stuck in a small room with one of these things you’ll be stun locked and thrown around like a child in a bouncy house.

If I didn’t mentioned them it’s because I feel like they’re fair.

EDIT
Snipers: Forgot to mention these bad boys. If you thought other enemies had aim-bot, these guys will make you cry. One shot through full shield and health? What’s the point of even keeping shield then? Make their aimbot less annoying.

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I kinda understand your frustation, and I also feel like some specials spawn too often or are too tanky. I think tho that shotgunners are more like an elite enemy instead of being a true special. Their range is kinda far for a shotgun, but in all fairness I am using the combat shotgun for my Zealot and I headshot kill armored enemies from like 40 m away, so yeah… shotguns in real life dont also just shoot like 5 m and after that range you wont hit anything. :slight_smile:

Ragers are broken. I hate them. Cant stagger and they attack relentless… at least Berserks in Vermintide did like a short brake, but those guys just dont care, they really want you dead it seems…

Apart from that, I would say the rest is more or less fine. In the beginning I would have agreed with you on the sond queue for the trapper, but I got used to it, in fact to all special queues.

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Yeah, as someone who has played 1,000 hours on Vermintide 2, and done the Fortunes of War on cataclysm, AND solo, they made the enemies incredibly hard to kill. But my main concern is the gun-play. Even normal enemies with guns shred your toughness and health, you can’t shoot back bc they are either too far away and you can’t shoot them (need a ranged weapon for long range, single target damage), or you just get staggered to oblivion as they fill you with holes. It honestly takes the fun out of the game. And the snipers… well, they definitely need reworks. You turn a corner and they instantly shoot you through a wall, removing all toughness and half your health. Really??? Also, headshots don’t feel as rewarding as it does in Vermintide. I’m not sure why, it just does, but it might have something to do with that nearly EVERYTHING is armored.
I’m still looking forward to this game, but if they want it to be challenging but fair, they really need to rework a lot of the enemies.

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Definitely agree with you on the staggering from being shot by random enemies. Headshots almost seem required to be effective in DT. Which is harder than it seems because gunplay is kinda sloppy right now. And that right I forgot snipers, dudes are way OP. I get one shot at Lvl 3, full shield and health. At the end of the day though that’s why we’re posting here!

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Sound queues for me should be like in VT2 where it’s a global sound that you hear. Trappers seems much to quiet, the rest I’ve gotten used to for sure. And 100% agree with you on the Rager take. Shotgunners are still my biggest pet peeve right now.

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oh thats right… snipers… forgot about them too… they are way to overpowered and I think thats the only special for which I dont even noticed a sound queue. they come out of nowhere and almost insta kill me… :smiley:
they need to be nerfed.

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One thing that I saw is that shotguns are not ‘video game’ ranges, for both us and for the enemies. You can shoot closer to real world applications of a shotgun instead of having to give a colonoscopy with the barrel.

TBH having everything be tanky is something that I think is valid (we are facing Nurgle cultists after all, and tanky is Nurgle’s thing), but not how tanky they are and the amount of damage they deal. Both of them combined is too much imo.

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I think the sniper is the easiest one, keep dodging and he can’t hit you at all. The hounds and mutants are still a bit janky compared to VT assassin, maybe I just didn’t find the que yet, but can be dodged.

Trappers otoh, whey they are in a horde they can be a real pain in the ass. Slavers had to get up close at least, but these just shoot you straight through the horde, while being impossible to spot and hear. Got a really nast wipe what we had two standing in a horde behind two of the big bastards with shield.

No way to see them, couldn’t tag them behind the shield boys, couldn’t get to them after they pulled the first two victims.

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Agree with all of these tbh, team that I play with agrees too.

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I’ll never forget when I saw the sniper laser, and immediately did a slide to cover. I was so pleased with myself because it felt like a high action move out of a movie.

Then even though I could see that the cover was taller than me when crouched, he shot me anyway and I was downed. Was so sad.

Agree with the rest of your assessment

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I having been playing VT2 a lot this past 2 weeks i agree the sound design might need some tweaks in DT. I understand its a hard line to draw because you wan the guns to sound and feel good. In VT2 a lot of the weapons are “quiet” compared to darktide. (I’m deaf in one ear so figuring out where stuff is coming from is already pretty difficult for me) but in VT2 I easily notice every elite spawn via audio. In DT there are so many explosions plus the guns are so loud that I don’t even think I’ve heard an audio queue for an elite yet other than a character talking about them. There is just too much sound competing.

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Yeah, full agree here. I play mostly Psyker, so BrainBurst is the obvious solution to the problem… but when the team doesn’t have a Psyker, I do not know how anyone can deal with multiple Ogryns/armored ragers without one.

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I think the game needs to just try to MM for 1 of each class a bit more (maybe a problem with player count right now etc.) but some of the recent threads seem to stem from not having one of each class in a party yet. ex: reselecting is difficult (yet ogryn excels at it) elites are hard to deal with (psyker can help quite a bit) etc.

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I think the simplest solution, to resolve Quickplay woes, is to show everyone’s weapon loadout in the prep phase (like in VT2 except it was optional). This way, you can estimate other people’s capabilities for killing specials/elites or dealing with hordes.
Flamers, in particular, are so specialized in dealing with hordes ; no team should have 2 flamethrowers.

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Completely agree, except for

Hounds : Make their health less

Something I noticed was that hit detection on Hounds, particularly when they’re leaping, is atrocious. In VT2, if an Assassin leaps at a player, and another player stands in its path, the Assassin then attacks that player it collides with, unless it’s hit with a melee attack, push, or an ultimate ability that staggers/pushes.

Hounds don’t do this. They don’t respond to pushes or attacks in mid-air, and hits don’t even seem to register with them while you’re attacking when they’re leaping. I also think they’re way too fast, especially if you can’t hurt them until they’ve leaped on someone or they path into a wall.

Fix the hit detection, make them slower, and allow players to interrupt their leaps/run-arounds by pushing/attacking, just like Assassins. I’m fine with the health of this particular special, as it isn’t a tiny, fast-moving rat, but a mutant, roided-up dog.

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Since im mostly playing Psycher and didint get to do lvl 4 i can say about your posts:

  1. Shotgunners are getting down VERY fast by good teammates and if not i brain burst them easilly.

  2. Trapper - basicly the surround sound is messed up. The volume and direction makes it VERY hard to detect where enemy is attacking from and i have NEVER heared Trapper say anything. As for his health its ok. Annoying is that you need to help a trapped teammate, feels like the net stun is permanent

  3. Rager - exactly, there seems to be VERY little that can stagger them or stop them from swining.

  4. Bomber is terrible, grenade destroys your toughness instantly, but the burning ground means you cant escape. Single bomb can down a player. As for flamers, didnt realy have much issue with them, exept they always come from behind and that they burn the ground.

  5. Pox Burster… so far didnt have trouble with them aside them spawning on the other side of the door…

  6. Hounds - yeah having to kill them to remove punce is too much. Other aspects didint bother me, but REALY ? Psycher needs to kill hound WHEN HE IS PUNCING to unlock cosmetic ?

  7. Mutants should not be homming missiles

  8. Snipers, f* them. Often they can hide so much, their hitbox doesnt poke from cover. Cant mark or target them for brain burst.

But like i said at start, all mentioned is level 3.

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As a Psyker main, I find it hard to relate to this post. Specials and elites go down very fast for me with Brain Burst. Most are a one-shot.

I think elites and specials, and armored units especially, are supposed to be the specialty of the Psyker. If you’re in a team without one, or with a bad one… Yeah, good luck.

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Lvl 1 and lvl 2 most die to single casts, or worse, before i get to charge the cast, leaving me with peril.

On lvl 3 you need 2 casts on berserker, shotgunner, bomber, mutant, bulwark, crusher and ogryn with gun i dont remmeber the name. On most ocasions teammates kill specials before i get to cast a 2nd burst.

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Weird, I don’t need 2 casts the vast majority of the elites you described in Malice. Perhaps I am using higher power gear (I am level 15).

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What ? Equipment increases brain burst damage ?
Im lvl 11 and even with 4 warps i cant insta kill berserker.

also force sword charged attack is such a let down…