Snipers are blocked by smoke now. They changed it like month ago.
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Maybe if they had better player retention I’d still be around to know that 
My point still stands, though. Every situation that can be “improved” by Smokes would be improved 100× better by either simply shooting the enemies or throwing a Frag at them from behind cover.
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Smokes can be useful in situation where frags or kraks might not be. However these situation usually occur at most 3-4 times per mission, compared to the multitude of times you will be using frags or kraks. The opportunity cost of smokes is too high for the value they provide compared to the other 2 nades. Not to mention blocking los for other players (yes if you stand in the smoke it’s fine, but if you’re behind the smoke it’s not).
Personally I wish they were never added in the game in the first place and were replaced with something else, because now they will never be replaced because of the small amount of people who like them.
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I think this is much less an issue of design, and more their actual function; smokes are inconsistent and buggy, and inconsistency in a game like this is terrible. And yes, their obscuring of enemies IS a detriment, given how dark the game is. It’s frequently difficult to see enemies even without smoke.
Are they capable of helping? Yes. I mean, an exploding Psyker can ‘help’, too, but the cost is too high to be worth it. Smoke grenades are not that bad, but they’re worse than every other option and overall just not good.
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There is… And someone explained it.
My main concern about smoke grenade is the line of sight. Yes you can see through when at the center…
But I would prefer a thinner smoke that can show you where the smoke grenade works and let you see outside.
But from outside, the smoke would be darker.
This would give the benefit of a protection for all without the bad points of the current smoke grenade.
I don’t like to see an other damage blitz. Smoke grenades are great in the melee orientated build.
Yes, far from DPS builds based on broken balance (plasma, revolver builds)… But fun to play
This. The game moves too fast for mines. Grenades would be better in 99% of scenarios we face.
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krak grenades work as well as a mine would for like 80% of the situations you’d use one in, really. i frequently do that.
There’s no reason at all to add a mine version of a krak when a grenade version already exists.
That would make it bad design.
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Only if you can’t throw them further than the blast radius (if you’re not moving, as a shoutout to how they were on tabletop)
No, there isn’t. Just shoot the enemies or throw a different grenade at them from behind cover. Smoke blinds them but Frags leave them battered and bloody on the floor so you can clean house. I’m unmoving on making Smokes at least a little bit better.
you only knowing one way of doing things doesn’t invalidate other ways of doing things.
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@Ol_Jakal every five minutes:
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you getting good enrichment out of posting weird crap? and pinging me with it?
Maybe. I love keeping you on your toes 
Oh I know how to play around smokes. I just don’t because I’ve never once seen a situation where they were helpful, and most of the time it’s better to get as far away from them as possible. Most of the time they’re inconsequential and when they’re not, they’re often making the situation worse. TBH I actually haven’t seen one used at all in quite a few months now.
If everyone who sees smokes doesn’t play into them the first few times, that can be forgiven as them having a learning curve.
If everyone who sees smokes still doesn’t play into them after months (or years? I have no idea when the patch that introduced them happened) of seeing them, that’s a big red flag that the playstyle they need is, at best, horribly unintuitive, and at worst, detrimental to the gameplay experience - Somewhere in the middle sits “unnecessary”. In any case: Bad design.
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One could easilly go through half a round, and never use Frag grenade. Those are best used in situations when stuff is going out of control.
Ofcourse usage of smoke is heavily dependent on enemies, it’s hard to hide from shoots, when there are no shoots. Nevertheless after playing with melee oriented vet with scream, I really started to appreciate how usefull they are for helping someone downed at the frontlines. Need for this may happen only several times in the round, but it can also save whole run.
I will second this, despite the obvious ‘na uhh’ that will happen from it. Was wondering if someone would say it/didn’t initially engage with this thread but as someone did, I’ll agree.
Smokes require skill and knowledge, which is something this community doesn’t really value. If you aren’t spamming DPS constantly and having everything in your kit geared toward that end, then you are trolling despite still providing equal to if not more wave clear and providing an obscene amount of utility on top of it. The amount of ‘inconsistency’ with the smokes is insanely overblown and likely people actively using it wrong (at least from my experience using it myself and just you know, standing in it and being immune to snipers/dog pounces and the like without issue).
This right here is the main way it works, which is probably why so many Vets consider it ‘trash’ and don’t decide to think that other playstyles exist. Powersword/Shovel melee shout vet, the smoke gets you in and keeps you protected while you bash the brains out of anything that enters the smoke. Everything now HAS to enter the smoke to engage you, resulting in blood baths of carnage as you cleave through them, shouting if you ever get overwhelmed to knock everything out of the smoke and require them to re engage with in it before hitting you again.
It’s an insanely powerful playstyle, there’s a reason ‘10% melee damage’ is RIGHT AFTER THE SMOKE, it’s intended to encourage you to take it. It’s the easiest thing in the world to then go grab the smoke upgrade and the damage aura without a care in the world because you are MELEE! and you save all the points going straight for shout after. Easily fill up all the end trees with everything you want after that, and you just become the most effective of bruisers while still having your gun as a highly effective option (usually being a Revolver to proc Weapon Specialist, or a Boltgun if you went with marking targets for boss melting).
Sure, yes, if you see someone using a ranged weapon standing in the smoke they are likely doing something wrong, or doing a meme (I’ve tried it with sniper but having the wave clear of Shredder is just to nice when your gun deals with everything else). But there’s a reason it gives you melee damage, it’s meant to be used with the melee playstyle.
And the fact it protects your squishy Psykers from gunfire and forces gunners/reapers to re-position is a very heavy added bonus.
At this point, I feel the main thing that smokes need is just to be near completely transparent to allies, just enough to know it’s there but not enough to obscure as much as they do, while going away completely while in it. Just so that people can stop complaining about it and stop acting like their lack of desire to engage with the playstyle is somehow detrimental to them enough to warrant continual verbal abuse toward the one having fun. Granted, I’ve had thankfully more good experiences with my smokes than bad, either neutral or people noting surprise at my ability to use them right and actively lock down entire choke points with them and protect my team from lines of gunners. But it’s still annoying there’s enough people that will still just call you a detriment despite getting carried themselves, and removing the one case they have an argument for would be a solid change.
Smoke may be randomly inconsistent but imo it’s easy enough to make that out when it happens, you still spot the sniper beams locking on you after all and it’s not like you don’t need to dodge the melee anyway. A vast majority of the time it works just fine though. It’s effects are also always immediately obvious: Every time the team gets surrounded by massive ranged fire, a single smoke ends that right then and there and the team’s hp & toughness bars stop going down, and start going up.
It’s boring the same way the psykers shield is boring yes, but in my experience it’s crazy strong.
I just don’t agree with any of this.
You say I used a hyberbole after first leading with how smokes are 20% of the effect for 80% of the effort? That’s not even close, and the effect is incomparable anyway. They’re just entirely different tools. And rendering your team virtually immune to ranged and disablers - assuming basic dodging and anything above the worst and rarest of lucks with its glitches - is in no way 20% of the effect anyway.
As for “most players don’t get it” being a bad design choice, I couldn’t possibly disagree more on that one. Good game design is all about catering to different levels of skill, tastes, styles, and needs in general. The idea that some class, weapon or tool is harder than others but provides some crucially important or even flat out superior advantages to compensate for it is as common as it gets, and something that’s used in virtually every game. Especially competitive ones.
Darktide is no exception to this, actually the opposite. From psykers to many precision weapons to hammers, to the hundreds of nuances and hidden properties and synergies all over the place, DT is filled with things that are hard to learn & master, but extremely strong when used right. And it’s a massive part of the game’s charm imo.
As for the shield, I think I already commented on that but there are multiple points where they differ. Most notably the shield’s duraoion depends on fire taken and needs to invest in talents and special+ takedowns to keep it running. It also has no range, doesn’t protect from pounces, and doesn’t entice enemies to get out of cover and move closer. Obviously the shield is an incredibly strong tool and one of the best if not the best team ult in the game, but they’re not the same.
With smokes you can be 50m away from your team and still provide cover, secure a zone proactively while moving there, disable a bunch of ranged or force them out of cover… you can even create a corridor of security to move from one location to the next, or spread them around to create a huge field of cover. They don’t lock you out of ults, synergize wonderfully with shout or stealth, and their long duration & rechargers means you’ll basically always have them available.
Smokes are in every way a gamechanger when used right. One frag or krak won’t turn the tide of a single fight on T5+, but a well placed & timed smoke can frequently make critical situations borderline trivial.
I want to emphasize here that I’m not saying smokes can’t feel boring and underwhelming. They absolutely can be that (even I don’t use them often, much like I don’t use the psyker shield anywhere near as much as I should). And matters of taste can’t really be argued in the first place. I don’t object to smokes being tuned or buffed in a way that caters to more fun for most people at all. But to claim that they’re weak or don’t work as a rule? That’s just wrong. That’s all I’m saying here.
This exactly. People seem to miss out on the overall talent balance in general. Blitzes, ults etc. are never just about themselves but also the cost and adjacent talents. For example the Survivalist aura which is ofc insane is surrounded by some of the overall worst talents in the tree. I say worst when I mean niche (they can definitely be great for some specific builds), but the point is that most builds make a sacrifice going there both for the extra 2-4 talent points spent from mid/right tree, as well as the path through there generally much weaker than the alternatives.
This is also part of why shout is so overtuned. It’s not just super strong and on a short CD, it’s also in mid lane so easily accessible for any build, only needs 1 subtalent so cheap, has fantastic adjacent talents above to the right and leads straight to the middle low node that basically every build wants to pick for the strong talents there. But I also want to point out that, smoke doesn’t just have the 10% melee dmg, it’s right on top of Agile Engagement which is just all kinds of insane, and the aura below it connects to +crit and an extra nade.
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I ain’t readin’ all that. There’s no way that you actually spent that much time and effort writing a Throne-damned essay about Smoke Grenades being somehow as good as the other ones… which, of course, is by default nonsense if you go by (as @Jonboy said) Pareto’s Law.
Well… ok? I did reply to each of you separately and yours wasn’t that long.
But I’m certainly glad I spent all that work to write up a thoughful response, thinking we were actually having a civil conversation here… all to be met with “didn’t read, nonsense anyway” and a reference to a random internet law strawman - that doesn’t even apply - for it all. Real classy. 
I’m just honestly confused, is this a language barrier thing? Am I misunderstanding something here? You’re one of the last people I expected to resort to petty insults like these just over a disagreement. So I really don’t know, am I just reading this wrong?
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