I hope that FS reads these debates but I fear that they are only listening to their dedicated melee players who only sees guns as a crutch.
All that work to make guns fun for the average Vet enjoyer, washed down the drain. At some point Vet will just be a worse Zelot or Ogryn.
It is also so weird to see all the elitists claiming melee is the “true” way to play, and ranged playstyles are for skilless players. It feels disrespectful, and is self sabotaging this game.
I really think that, while the Vet has ranged talents, it’s really the soldier class, not the shooter class. That means shooting, sure, but in 40k soldiers are also supposed to get stuck in melee.
Because even though the primary job of ranged attacks in this game is the removal of high-priority threats, no class is meant to hang back to provide consistent long-range support (except Psyker, and that’s completely broken, so it’s not a good example). Honestly, despite this being a team game, it is built from the ground-up at the highest difficulties to expect every character to be able to do a little bit of everything to varying degrees. When have a monster and lots of elites with specials all over the place, you can’t realistically be guarding your ranged guy or have him reliably be taking out every Trapper and Bomber.
There’s a much bigger issue with ranged characters than Survivalist, though. Executioner’s Stance is broken as long as the buff drops on switching weapons. I’d even be for pausing its duration for a little bit during a switch. The pressure on backliners in 'Tide games is too high to expect you not to be able to switch to melee at all. I don’t know why they won’t change this key detail.
If they want ranged weapons to be more of a chosen playstyle, they need to fix that, and maybe also to give all ranged weapons a push for making space. I dunno what key it could be bound to, but it’d actually make them much more usable. It’s not that strange; Left 4 Dead had pushes with ranged weapons, and I think it could at least be tried in Darktide.
And, of course, the power of ranged weapons just needs to be reigned back; strong things like Plasma that can eliminate big threats need to be balanced around that so that it is not efficient to spam them into hordes or at every single ranged enemy. Yes, you should be choosing to sacrifice the ability to shoot at every viable target to remove specific high-threat ones.
This nerf was good, because Survivalist was, by far, the most impactful “aura” in the game, which is horribly unbalanced. Only without it, or at least neutering it, can they actually make a balanced ammo economy.
That’s what elitists are for, brown-knighting every “no fun allowed” decision.
I might’ve said this before in this thread, but if they’d either removed survivalist or made it base-vet aura like how Ogryn gets an extra wound and TDR, and replaced the node with finesse/headshot damage and the middle tree with something more team-supportive, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. It’d have improved balance, it’d make the ranged aura about ranged damage, and it’d stop the ammo economy nonsense.
God forbid the Shooting class has a way to regain the ammo they spend shooting the 20 gunners, 10 shotgunners 5 flamers 4 trappers and 3 snipers the game spawns each encounter.
If we go off of the whole part of “did the aura deserve to be nerfed” angle sure perhaps the aura had it coming
But butchering the aura like this? Seriously?
I kill one ranged enemy, regain one bullet for my revolver and cannot gain more ammo for 5 more seconds?
And this is just the revolver, this is gonna be even worse for the plasma and the bolter who don’t regain a full bullet on survivalist proc.
So either in one encounter I get back one bullet or I don’t shoot the ranged enemies shooting me and my team (who by the way got a damage buff by having our toughness grace period removed)
You seem to be under the impression that you should be regen’ing as much ammo as you expend.
Survivalist isn’t butchered. It still adds up to alot of ammo throughout a mission. You just can’t permanently hold down trigger anymore.
If I can get through Auric Monstrous Maelstrom with a Recon without running out of ammo, you can certainly manage with a more efficient weapon. It just requires the discipline to stop shooting stuff that’s in your face and hit it with your sword instead.
If you’re under the impression that you should be able to used range on everything if thats your preference, then please explain to me what the point of the ammo system even is?
Explain what’s the point of XP rewards in Auric first.
Or what is “Shock & Awe” actually good for?
At no point did I say that we should be regaining as much ammo as we spend, nor did I insinuate you should be able to keep shooting stuff that is in your face.
I am bringing up the point that the aura nerf basically butchered the ability to regain ammo as 5 seconds is way too long for your average encounter in Auric (maelstrom) difficulty as the game spawns specials and elites in big groups.
You now are being punished for killing stuff too fast, if they wish to nerf the aura reducing it to even
0.5% is a better alternative than punishing efficiency by locking it behind 5 seconds…
Your statement of “If I can get through Auric Monstrous Maelstrom with a Recon without running out of ammo, you can certainly manage with a more efficient weapon. It just requires the discipline to stop shooting stuff that’s in your face and hit it with your sword instead.”
Is just needless passive aggressiveness towards your perceived version of my skill as if that has any bearing to what I am saying nor any relevance.
Basically any class can get through auric without using their ranged much if at all especially with zealot which is the class I play and enjoy the most.
Not a comment on your skill, just anticipating the inevitable comments about mine.
Except, it didn’t, you still regain a considerable amount throughout a mission. Just not infinite amounts. It’s still a top-tier aura that any other class using a gun would almost always use in their build if they were able to. Gun-psyker with and without survivalist is night and day difference.
Takes like these are genuinely why this game is dying for the third time. If you want to play vermintide so badly then go play it and stop trying to make darktide a worse vermintide
No joke, when the Veteran talent tree was released, I did some damnation runs with purely knife using melee veteran. No ranged needed. Absolutely idiotic of course, and mindnumbingly boring. But possible.
Meanwhile post patch we continue finishing games with 60-70% of ammo left and a spare ammo crate. We seem to be playing different games.
Exactly… moreover, why I have to discipline? We already have two melee classes which must be really careful about when and what to shoot
If I choose to be a shooter, let me shoot how and how much I want… it’s a video game, let me have fun! Then, you don’t like this gameplay and prefer counting bullets? Well, very free not to take this aura and choose another one (both should be buffed, so it doesn’t feel like you’re choosing something counterproductive on purpose)
Exactly how happens for the Psyker, rightly free to use a lot its staves
Because you are playing hybrid combat game and probably on the highest difficulty i suppose, so you should be stressed and punished by the game if you don’t react properly, like threats that push you out from your playstyle. And another part of the difficulty is resource economy and exploration.
And you can’t (atleast with some guns) because you have so much different weapon types, from aoe grenade launchers to regular auto rifles, some weapons don’t ask you to aim (and you don’t need to learn recoil patterns in this game also). So it means you shouldn’t be efficient at killing some targets with specific guns. Add here that most elites, specials, bosses are melee or mid range enemies.
Kinda same things should be for melee, there should be enemies that are extremely hard to charge, like close range zoners (like flamers but they are not), so it would be very health/time inefficient to kill them in melee (like daemonhost applying corruption just because you are close to it), but movespeed and move tecnhincs are so boosted, that it’s not a problem currently. Aswell as range enemies isn’t a big threat or easy to deal with if you know how to ingage them.
The question is about range-melee ratio on certain builds.
Just to add to this, ammo calculation for any weapons are not done with total ammo but reserves only.
Plasma doesn’t calculate off of the 303 total but the 165(?) reserves it could have.
It’s just for most weapons the difference is so smal, it doesn’t matter to differenciate between the two.
The amount of people that use the argument of “melee more” when the shooting aspect of the main shooting class gets stripped is simply unfathomable.
There’s nothing wrong with the gun guy being allowed to do gun guy things and everyone claiming something else can kindly f*ck off 
JTClive made a video today about this today and it’s on the money.
Tl;Dr: Remove the CD, make it a passive for the veteran and only affect vet. Replace survivalist aura with an aura that improves handling of ranged weapons (better reload times, faster pullout, put away times etc.)
There was a part about loner in there too but that’s off topic here.
Don’t see this phrase as something passive aggressive, I swear it’s not, but why tell others how to play? It’s indeed a shooter/melee hybrid, leave players the power to choose which part to delve into. It’s a game, let anyone have fun
There are many players who focus almost entirely on the melee aspect… yet no one complains. Let the opposite be true as well
I mean, the whole game is 50% shooter and 50% melee… but then there are classes more oriented towards one aspect, and others in a different one. Let’s see the Psyker, for example, it can shoot (magic) like the old Veteran
Then obviously this aspect is subjective… but we fall again into the bias according to which, if I have enough ammo, then the game doesn’t put enough pressure on me, which for me is very false. The game can be hard also shooting a lot
Not to mention that, even if we had literally infinite ammo, there would always, always be times when it would be better to switch to melee weapons
It’s not me, it’s a game design. Games work cause of rules, restrictions is a part of the rules.
I’m not sure what do you mean exactly, if it’s about one player is 100% melee, one is 100% range, it’s not a hybrid combat, it’s just a regular RPG.
Because it’s a quite an obvious thing. Range enemies are easy to lock, like i literally said that there are problems with melee, how it’s strong against range enemies and takes almost no effort to lock blobs of range enemies. And on top of that zealot is overbuffed as he is a main charger, aswell as some anti range options like dome, or ogryn taunt forces shooters to go melee.
It’s like your initial point there are no ammo efficient guns, or there are some problems with ammo overall, which is not. Or atleast you are talking in very general takes. Without examples how it should work exactly.
There balance problems with talent tree for vet and weapons, but not at the ammo side, or should i say ammo for some weapons is just a symptom, not a cause.
Survivalist just was sabotaging the whole team ammo economy and exploration part of the game. Why would you even go side ways and loot, if your team doesn’t need ammo?
And no it’s not false, again - weapon depended. If you run very specific gun that has its niche - anti boss, vs non-human sized enemies and you are shooting every dreg stalker or poxwalker hordes, you should run out of ammo, it’s your punishment for utilizing a tool wrongly.
If you run autogun you should have plenty of ammo, but sry it can only tickle crushers and monsters.
Do we want to play with definitions? This is what appears searching online:
“Darktide is a first-person co-op shooter, set in the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40K and developed by Fatshark Games.”
This is just to say that the definitions are often vague and arbitrary… and in any case they continually evolve, patch after patch
Then, even pretending that it’s written in stone, like the 11 commandment, that Darktide is a hybrid… well, technically it’d remain a shooter/melee hybrid even if the shooter part was 99% and the melee part was 1%
Anyway, that a Veteran was enough to let the team to stop searching ammo and start shooting endlessly, is only imagination
The melee part has always remained fundamental. It was essential to have melee characters to withstand enemy pressure. And the Veteran itself, even having still ammunition, was often forced to switch to the melee weapon to defend itself
Well, but Darktide is also a RPG… we have classes, builds, talents, weapons, equipment, a character to level (again: the definitions are vague)
For me it’s something positive that increases variety and fun
If by choosing the Veteran I can shoot a lot (although, as mentioned, the melee part remains regardless)… even better, it’s fun, it doesn’t harm anyone: let’s let people have fun with a game
p.s regarding the difficulty, I simply disagree. For me it remains difficult even when shooting
yup exactly, thats the issue
the devs never figured this out for almost a year and a half , and never will it seems.