Uncanny Strike (up to 24% rending per weak spot hits stacking 5 times) + Shred (up to 4% crit per chained hit stacking 5 times) is pretty insanely killy. Agile is also great for just staying up forever.
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Ehh…you can only “tailor it to your own playstyle” so much, this is a bit meaningless. Those bunch of MeTaS are usually builds that take a bunch of strong nodes that keep you alive and help you kill mobs.
You “tailor” builds around weapons and goals some, but there are limits, you adjust your playstyle around build too, especially if you’re new player like OP. You can’t force a square peg into a round hole in either direction.
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That’s a pretty bad build dude, so yeah you’re kinda doing it wrong as you were wondering. It shouldn’t be an issue on malice but you will run into issues soon, you may as well fix it in malice and move up as you feel comfortable and gain experience. Try a starter recon build no keystone and adjust accordingly. You can remove the shock troops and it becomes a MK5 infantry autogun build.
Edit:
2x TUF curios+1 more TUF or wound (if you need it, training wheel for harder diffs) or even STA if block a lot and find you’re out. On curios, Gunner DR x3, STA regen x3, 3x sniper DR or whatever, sniper might help you more as you level.
Leaning into HP on a vet with so many toughness damage resistance (DR) nodes is anti-synergistic and may punish you later on. More toughness means eating more ranged shots, higher % threshold for reduced chip damage and iron will. If you’re not using recon you can move Shock Trooper to a +25 tuf node.
Work on your footwork and not taking damage, using shouts (spam) and killing specials for CDR, special and elites for tuf regen etc. Target prioritization is an important skill to hone, especially for vet. Shouts and grenades are mostly spammable and are both a defensive and offensive tool to create space.
Bind dodge to a separate key, put Stationary Dodge on in Options and use both, dodge while shooting, don’t go into turret mode; be mobile.
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Try this tree:
You can swap Superiority Complex to Counter-Fire for better uptime or Stamina Regen node (small node just under it) for better stamina management.
Swap Curios for:
- 2x Health, 1x Toughness
- 3x Gunner resist, 2x (or 3x) Toughness Regeneration, Remaining 3-4 is whatever you prefer.
VI PS should have Brutal momentum instead of slaughterer… Or go for a more mobile melee option like Caxe, New Shovel or DS with Uncanny.
Recon model should be the fastest shooting blue one (old name is VId).
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K. I’ve been out of game a long time. I’ll try what you posted.
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Ogryn didn’t get buffed, it got badly nerfed by losing the 10% toughness to lame shooting branch of the skill tree. Game has been much more challenging since they moved that.
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Put the point into a 15 toughness node and it’s almost the same.
Delight in Destruction nerf is a little more substantial. Lugger got a bunch of small buffs.
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most of the things on vet are still effective. I freaking love duelling sword
For curios:
I run 2hp+1toughness, but i run VoC. Bursters and snipers ignore toughess so you want some hp. You don’t need extra stamina if you are not running Deadshot and even if you do 1 curio stamina is enough. But for Exe stance probably 2 toughness 1 hp would be better, test yourself.
Get rid off toughness regeneration speed, take x3 gunners resist, 1 sniper resist, maybe 1 bomber resist. x3 stamina regen speed is overkill kinda, 2 is enough, but whatever. You also don’t need so much or at all sprint efficiency, wtf malice speedrun build. Just spam slide, it doesn’t eat stamina but keeps the momentum, spam it!
Block effiency - S tier, helpfull both in fights and during revives.
Chainsword needs +dmg vs infected perk, cause inbuild vs infected dmg is low, you will stuck clearing poxwalkers later (instead of +crit chance)
Either Bloodletter to boost dmg against muties, bulwarks and bosses. Or more cleave if you are bad at melee.
Ghost is a waste blessing, take Headhunter instead to stack crits.
Also +vs maniacs is better than some +5% CC, most specials are maniacs, and muties are fat.
MGla is better than Mg12 (don’t know new names, green>brown), almost the same dmg numbers, but higher RoF.
Tree is horrible in both cases - you take 0 survivability. I will comment on the first one.
Take - Close order drill, Confirmed kill, Iron will - those are you fundamental survivability talents.
- Charismatic is a hidden gem - bigger aura means your Close order drill talent is more reliable. I beleive it increases cohererency aura radius overall, not just COD raidus as it says, since COD works in Coherency (logical conclusion kinda), so coherency toughness regeneration and other players auras apply to you more often, especially with randoms, but i think most people ignore it, test by yourself.
No Determined for lasgun = gg, once gunners will start shooting at your aim is gonna be cooked.
Catch a breath and Kill Zone are useless (second one is unavoidable to take sadly), never take talents with conditions “no enemy around” there always will be some poxwalker behind you.
Demolition stockpile gives you 1 nade per minute, do math how many nades per run. Grenade tinkerer only buffs frags for 25% dmg and radius. Also you don’t take kraks, but your weapons can’t deal with crushers.
Born Leader shares 15% of toughness you farm wich is a great synergy with Confirmed kill.
Keeps their heads down - useless.
Focus fire without Redirect Fire is meh.
Overall Sniper vet is in a bad place currently, left branch has 0 survivability and it’s bloated.
Your builds look very random without thoughts on synergies and your gear tbh. Take smth like that and you should be fine till Maelstrom, then switch from infantry to something else (and adjust build)
P.S. can’t edit the build, instead of Enchanced target priority take Precision strikes
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25% extra damage really isn’t much and barely effects many damage breakpoints
Jeez finally someone else gets it.
Where’s that dude who kept replying to me “4m” all the while going on about his 0.25 second node.
I have few issues stomping pubs as vet, though sometimes I wish I were running Power Sword or Plasma because of how much some randoms seem to struggle with every aspect of killing enemies in the game. Weapon selection has gotten way better since you last played.
A few melee weapons I enjoy lately for different reasons on vet are the Rashad Combat Axe, MK III Shock Maul, the standard issue Shovel (with a pokey special attack rather than a folding special) and the Heavy Sword. Power Sword is very strong but I treat it more like a win tool because I find it boring after a while.
You mentioned liking the Kantrael (Infantry?) Lasgun, so why not try the Laspistol or the Helbore? I play Laspistol to oppress shooters, gunners and specials and usually compliment it with some good anti-armor melee weapon. There are of course other viable ranged weapons but it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve in your games. I always run something with good horde clear and something capable of killing crushers or ragers, whatever I think will prove most problematic in a pub.
This I’ve see people with meta builds go down to purely horde on damnation
i tried the shock maul today grinding up the masteries and doing the milk man missions and its actually pretty good i thought : ) i dont have tier 4 blessings for it but i was doing alright vs everything really with it.
i was using the increase impact and chance to stun on stagger blessings
Completely agree, nicely summed up.
Vet is a powerful class but the main issue from my perspective is the lack of variety caused by a certain talents being either underwhelming or unreliable. Also insufficiency of talent points (1-2) always leads to taking the most efficient path. As a result, there are talents on the tree that you always take and talents that you almost never take.
Keystones are not great
- Weapon Specialist is alright but most of its keystone modifiers are pointless or unattractive to ever be considered a choice.
- Focus Target! is pretty good but the recharge is too slow for such a fast paced game.
- Marksmen’s Focus somewhat works for a fully automatic weapons but the design that incentivize player to stand still over period of time imo doesn’t belong to this game and should be reworked completely.
When it comes to auras, there are pretty much only 2 choices: 1. Suvivalist, 2. pick something else to save talent points.
As for abilities, it’s no surprise that Voice of Command is the most preferred route. Not only you get a great survival ability for you and your team mates, but also free granade replenishent along the way. Other ability routes can hardly compete with something as impactful. If anything, they require more points investment! For example Executioner’s Stance needs to compensate elsewhere for the lack of survivability.
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The one problem i have with vet is that the keystones feel kinda underwhelming and i still dont build around any of them, although the right one has some potential.
I agree with your whole post.
VoC is far above other abilities in terms of impact, although Infiltrate has some niche value. The drives the tree towards the middle.
Krak grenades have vastly more utility in rounding out a vet build for dealing with crushers and monsters, so is almost always the preferred choice, which also reinforces the middle of the tree.
I feel that survivalist is not a great choice because you waste extra points getting over to it and back, and honestly since the nerf just learning to be more judicious with shooting is better. Take the extra damage aura and call it a day.
And last, the keystones are all underwhelming (weap specialist the best of them though), but definitely not worth investing a bunch into their sub-nodes.
So this basically leaves you with this build:
If you don’t use las weapons you can use Shock Trooper’s point elsewhere (and reciprocity if you don’t need crits), and if you don’t use a high rate of fire weapon you can drop Onslaught and the node above to pick up to take Longshot + Exhilarating Takedown up top or extra grenades, or go harder into melee talents.
The point being, that there is a core build here that is both flexible to a wide range of weapons (melee and ranged) with just moving a couple of points around, and in terms of impact and utility surpasses other ways of moving through the tree.
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I quite like the Infitrate but don’t like its long cooldown, and most of the ability modifiers are not great. Only one I consider useful is the Low Profile specifically for a gunner builds, because it gives you peace to actually aim an shoot without being bothered by a stray Poxwalker. 
Overwatch imo is not worth 15s extra cooldown duration and the talent point.
Another thing I’d like to see improved is the visibility when Infiltrate is active. When you use stim on top of that you’re pretty much blind.
I guess it depends on the weapon. If you’re using ammo efficient weapon then Survivalist is not needed. But it’s definitelly worth the investement for ammo hungry weapons. It might not help you sustain ammo indefinitely but it pretty much ensures you always have something to shoot with. Not to mention it also helps to sustain ammo to your team mates which might result in them not needing the ammo as much.
Having read through the thread, in my opinion I don’t think the Veteran is in a bad place, in fact I think rather the reverse. It is a strong class/archetype. However, there are definitely a few issues that chime with my Guard-centric perspective (‘Vet main’ if you will).
The keystones, as others have pointed out, are too extra. I used Focus Target! after they finally added the keystones, but I quickly tired of it, as I was having to break out of the rhythm of fighting to use it, I had to forever be concentrating on too much and it got a bit too overwhelming. The other two I did for the Penances, but after that I shoved them roughly out of the way and just spent the points elsewhere.
Marksman’s Focus having such an emphasis on static fighting in a game all about movement is just odd and I feel it should work in some other way. Weapons Specialist is not too bad as its like the Ogryn’s Heavy Hitter keystone, where if you are taking that you know you are going to be building towards a heavy attack build. If you take WS you’re going to swap weapons often as the keystone emphasises having a build all about that and with the talent swap to One Motion, its encouraged.
I feel that Voice of Command needs some attention. I thought it was absolutely fine, but I was blinded somewhat by it being precisely what I wanted to be doing to support a squad (shouting at them and providing utility) and that I did not want to use Executioner’s Stance and Infiltrate, and that I was not properly paying attention to the situations I was using it in.
After a discussion with another forum user and playing around both with VoC and other builds without it, it is really rather overpowered. That massive ‘shockwave’ effect and granting all that extra bonus toughness pushes it a bit too far from what it should do. Whether that shockwave should be mitigated into an instant suppression for those in range rather than knocking anything down or not, whilst also interrupting heavy attacks from Maulers, Crushers, Bosses/Monstrosities, might be a more balanced use than knocking everything down and forcing it to spend time getting back up.
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It karking kills me inside when I’m doing the objectives and I hear the stealth vet popping infiltrate, battling a horde 40 meters away.
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