State of Vet today?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
21

Tbh, to enjoy the keystones, there would be few changes to implement.

the changes I would like
  • marksman: they just need to remove the walking stack removal and put something like all other classes. A refresh when you trigger again the keystone, and a bonus that disappear after several seconds without refresh (one by one or all in one time, that is a choice here). And if needed, they can nerf the bonus a little.
  • Specialist keystone, this so annoying to have to think to NOT switch to the other weapon… On this keystone I would say that the bonus should apply for a fixed time once you hit an enemy, and not when you switch to an other weapon. Also, the keystone should integrate one motion with a better bonus (+50%), maybe as a specialization (so under the keystone and put back vanguard where it was). Also the keystone should have less bonus but that would last longer.
  • Focus looks fine. I don’t like it, but it looks fine.

But I guess it won’t happen. Killing with headshots is easy on a laspistol or a revolver, less with an IAG / brauto (close to impossible to always hit the head). Stacks that are lost when moving is so stupid…
Marksman should be the keystone for one shot-one kill weapons (revolver, helbore, headhunters)

While specialist should be the one for fast firing weapons. Sadly, it is the contrary :roll_eyes: and sadly (again) they are both bad. At least, that’s my opnion.
So, I really wait a new archetype. I just hope that it won’t have bad keystones like the veteran.

1 Like
22

ive got a pretty decent one i was looking through my weapons on vet as i made the post above : ) i havnt done the masteries all to max yet and sorted out all my weapons etc i made the rashad the same as the antax and tested it it seem very similar, any advice for blessing for rashad?

23

Brutal momentum and headtaker. If you can get a good rolled one it will outperform Antax in every category. The only real difference is the Rashad has a stagger focused push attack while the Antax has a damage one. The rashad push attack stagger is one of the best staggers in the game and will stagger everything except mutants, crushers and bulwarks.

1 Like
24

Call me crazy but I like the attack patterns on the Aeschylus (sp?) variant the most. The heavy 1 is a perfectly horizontal decapitating strike which goes nicely with brutal momentum.

1 Like
25

It really depends of your gameplay:

Antax = better cleave
Rashad = better critics/weakspots damages AND increased melee speed

Brutal momentum is seen as something mandatory. You can couple it with:

  • shred if you go for critics (less useful on a veteran… I would not pick that)
  • decimator (great), but it needs that you don’t miss enemies (any swing that don’t hit reset the stacks number)
  • headtaker: less powerful than decimator, it is also easier to use
  • thrust: good against single target. I would not take for this weapon except if you want an anti crusher and if don’t want to use PS and if don’t take any ranged weapon than can deal with crushers (lot of “if”)
  • decapitator: good on a zealot, not useful on a veteran

Now, the fun thing about axes. You can use them without Brutal momentum. You just have to rely on power. All or nothing + decimator can be great by example, decimator + headtaker can also be good.
I tested it on the veteran, it works great, but sure, you have to pay attention to use your stamina.

To be honest, I prefer the antax cause it cleaves very well. I would not use the rashad for all or nothing + decimator / headtaker. Rashad is good on my zealot, I prefer antax for the veteran. Pure personal choice.

True… but not the “only” difference. As I rarely use the special, I did not think to this point.

2 Likes
26

I switched from the Antax to Rashad on my Zealot and haven’t looked back in 900 hours. I finally made a dueling sword for my zealot so we will see how it goes. I didn’t really test the two weapons personally I saw people online talking about it and said Rashad was a better version of the Antax. Antax definitely isn’t bad but I think you gain more from a Rashad on a Zealot for sure.

27

On zealot this is not the same.
With inexorable judgment I only take a rashad to get the attack speed bonus from the rashad (to be complete, I usually take BM + decapitator that gives a a finesse bonus, so again more attack speed).
I take antax for critic build (yes I have a critic build with a combat axe, tested it a lot it works really well).

But, if I go for all or nothing + decimator, sure it is antax only. Without BM, you want to favor the cleave.

Also, decimator is really better than headtaker. Harder to use but you can get till +50% power while you can get only +25% power with headtaker.

EDIT: yes, I have tested every configurations with combat axe. On zealot and on veteran. I had before this patch like 30+ combat axes between 4 characters.

28

Rashad gains more crit and weakspot damage from its Finesse stat. Combine that with brutal momentum and you are outperforming Antax to every degree. I have no clue what you are talking about when you say antax has better cleave because I kill more with a rashad than I ever did with an antax.

1 Like
29

And you take shred on a veteran? remember that OP speaks about a veteran.

You get 5% bonus and eventually 15% bonus if you go melee veteran (something I doubt the OP will do).
I would not take that to gain so few damage bonus that will proc 1 hit / 5 (I am really generous here) but sure you will get the bonus for weakspots.
But when do you use an axe as a veteran? when hordes come.
And here it is better to have something that cleaves.

I know that a lot think in term of “this weapon is better” and “this blessing is mandatory”. Guess what? I test everything, even the weird builds. That’s why sometimes I can end with 8 times on floor in a mission cause I wanted to test something… and that it was a bad idea.
I have learnt something from my tests. A lot of things are underestimated in darktide.

Cause different stats…

god-roll-antax-axe-is-the-cleave-important-beyond-51-v0-ivmat6y4ppwb1
god-roll-antax-axe-is-the-cleave-important-beyond-51-v0-ivmat6y4ppwb11280×941 272 KB

I can’t get all datas, as I am not at home. But you will get a weakspot damage bonus (something like 1 hit / 2-usually weakspot hits are around 40% to 45%) and rarely (on a vet) the critic damage bonus.
You will benefit from the attack speed increase (the bonus is not a game changer btw, see threads on reddit about this).
But, you will have less cleave. Something that is compensated by BM usually. With Decimator, the blessing I often take on a CA, I really prefer to boost my cleave, as more you hit in one hit, more stacks you get.

From my scoreboards I can assure you that I can do high amount of damages with an antax. Tbh, I think the best I have made was 900k melee damages in damnation and it was with an antax (decapitator + BM using inexorable judgment before its nerf). But Antax with all or nothing + decimator surprised me (wanted to test, I have think that it would be a disaster and it was, in fact, really good).

EDIT a long time ago after…

To put a complement here about combat axe…

I have just tested again the achlys variant. Now I feel this weapon interesting.
You need to use block attacks or not to chain them (a simple pause even less than a second) and you can chain heavy horizontal hits.
With BM and thrust, it can be really satisfying.
I would not advice with any other blessing. I would also point that we are on a slow weapon then… and that the weapon is far more difficult to use than a normal axe.
However, you can get 75% weakspot hits if you pay attention to what you do.

I will use it, and try to see what can be done with it.
I would not advice it for someone that is just practicing a veteran however.

30

Rashad has as much cleave as an Antax with 50 in the cleave stat from memory. So Antax actually having a cleave stat allows it to have higher cleave than Rashad with any cleave stat over 50.

Of course this is largely irrelevant since Brutal Momentum bypasses the weapon cleave for the most part.

While I agree Rashad is better overall Antax has both a better special and better push attack, so there is some preference involved in which you prefer. As Ralendill has pointed out if you power stack without BM Antax generally benefits a bit more due to having more cleave to get boosted by power bonuses, which makes it easier to get away with not having BM for trash clear while getting an advantage over BM setups in terms of single target damage.

3 Likes
31

:person_shrugging: I take it, when I’m chipping away at the penances.

Damnation and Auric Damnation are full of players with limited observational skills and also a strange inability to press their [spot] key. Glowing yellow figures is a very useful indicator. Heck, I even take outline all shooters too.

It’s not that much of a sacrifice given most things below are fairly meh anyway.

1 Like
32

I’ve recently been having fun with boltgun / bolt pistol exec stance. Grab the CDR and Iron Will nodes on every build. With shout, grabbing all the orange talents (on ult bonuses) gives you big power spikes on a low cooldown.

1 Like
33

Your assessment is more or less correct. Apart from some specific build going for VoC usually required to grant you what you need to be in line with other classes.

If you are not into VoC there are still options to go for, but non of them will be meta level outside Recon (and maybe Inf Autogun), and Infiltrate melee build (but that’s not so Imperial Guard).

For grenades, yeah they are kinda weak apart from Kraks for monstrous specialist mod. Even full shredder grenade setup VoC lags a lot behind.

That said you can make a lot of weapons “work” even without VoC including lasguns/helbore, but you won’t be carrying scrubs as much as the good stuff.

My advice is to try Bolter with Exa Stance, it feels great now if you can get your hands on some ammo (otherwise you’ll run out in no time on Auric, but it’s probably more than fine on malice). It’s not VoC + Plasma/Revolver, but it does a ton of damage.

Also, I’d stay away from PS outside melee or VoC builds (at least until activation bug gets fixed) it’s a death trap. Good ol’ Caxe does a great job, Catachan aswell (especially if you master the parry), and shovel is always an option.

1 Like
34

Shovel on veteran is definitively a good option. Especially the 2 that have the special that can hit hard carapace/flak.
Shovel is really a great weapon. I use it with thrust and decimator (yes decimator is really great).
Definitively, I would advice to test the shovel on a veteran. The PS is great but slow, CA is versatile (especially since the maniac fix)… shovel is really the all days weapon that can handle everything.

Recon: yes, but you have to go for the left part of the tree and go for critics
AIG: works great, but you should stick with the columnus (MKV). Others are not good (and should get a buff)
Braced: good, but far from excellent on a veteran in my opinion.

Grenades, I totally agree with you. Krak are good, others are acceptable for shredder and a point wasted for smoke grenade.

I would not advice a stealth build, at least to begin. Voc is better, exec is not bad either. Stealth can encourage to bad behavior that will lead to problems when someone wants to up to heresy.

2 Likes
35

I’ll have to try it out. I keep forgetting we can just change the weapon marks now so i dont need to build another lol

36

Well outline all shooters is useful for keeping exec stance up

Really the only thing exec stance has going for it is it’s ability to be kept up by killing relevant things

37

It’s the way the Vet keystones operate. They all require the Veteran to actively do something. Doing stuff like mechanically switching weapons just to trigger a buff, or requiring the player to remain stationary and be landing weakspot hits, or be actively Tagging targets (like Hunters Mark in D&D). These are all things that in a tabletop setting, all work fine and make a lot of sense, but next to the game’s other Keystones and in a real time shooter (particularly one that actively punishes remaining stationary), they all feel very fiddly.

When we look at most other Keystones, they trigger doing the things you’d normally do anyway.

Heavy Hitter just straight up adds damage to heavy attacks, Feel No Pain just straight up adds toughness repleneshment and damage reduction, and Burst Limiter Override just refunds X amount of ammo spent. Blazing piety adds across the board crit chance and triggers just off enemies dying nearby (the Zealot need do nothing themselves), Inexorable Judgement triggers off any movement or dodge (that the Zealot is likely to be doing a lot of anyway), while Martyrdom adds damage as you take damage. Warp Siphon is triggered off Elites/Specialist kills but can be triggered without the Pysker doing literally anything (with Psychic Vampire), while Empowered Psionics is gained through just killing stuff.

Disrupt Destiny is really the only other Keystsone like the Veteran ones, where it requires the player to specifically chase and kill a designated target.

3 Likes
38

How’d you mean? It has +25% damage going for it? And if you’re using a torrent weapon I guess spread and recoil bonuses.

39

i think saber is the best thing that happened to vet, made me feel like activating cheat codes

playing that with exe stance now its more than viable

40

What are you putting on dueling sword?

Agree, but there’s a lot of little thing, like how long it takes to deploy a grenade which isn’t on that. I’m going to try a macro which tosses them as fast as possible and see if it helps, but overall the number of grenades I see others using is pretty low.

I’m asking how other people are running vet, I’m long past expecting FS to make changes, no matter what.

Hard agree, and I’ve been on about the devs funneling us into a specific playstyle for a long time. Feel like the heavy handedness on that has been half the problem with the game. Now that crafting is fixed maybe that can be next?

I’ll do that, but what I want out of vet is I want to scratch that Imperial Guardsman itch, and it seems like that at least is something Vet can’t really do anymore.

Fair enough. I have two I run

This is kind of what I WANT to run…
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9d247272-18e9-44f3-b5e2-f2cdd02cc500/base-vet

And this is what I usually do.
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9d2478c7-08d9-46d9-8945-b831aab86a2e/actual-vet

1 Like