(T5 Feedback) Weapon Perk Suggestions & Changes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

I’m looking into overall perk preference and would like to address the most problematic options that are available to players.

Feedback is primarily for Damnation difficulty and Tier IV of all perks.
This accounts for both ranged and melee weapon perks.

I am not a game designer. I try to make fair and relative suggestions with the information and tools that are available to me, as well as hundreds of hours of experience thus far.

As such, these are just my opinions on what should be changed and removed. That’s all.

I hope this can doubly serve as helpful information for those that may need it.
I will provide some general commentary but will keep it minimal in this post.

+25% Damage to [Enemy Type] currently is:

  • Capable of helping a weapon reach breakpoints and perform optimally in T5
  • Consistently the best choice for any weapon in the game, hands-down

Best Enemy Type From Most Performant to Least (Based on Enemy Density)

  1. Unarmored
  2. Infested
  3. Flak
  4. Maniac
  5. Unyielding
  6. Carapace

No changes needed.

This can vary slightly based on some weapons. Most importantly the vast majority of enemies in this game are Unarmored and Infested, closely followed by Flak.
(A lot of Flak enemies additionally have Unarmored arms, legs, and heads.)

Maniacs account for all but 4 Specialists in the game. This is a very important enemy type to counter.
(Scab Bombers, Scab Snipers, Pox Hounds, and Pox Bursters are not Maniacs.)

Most optimal perk selections would be choosing one of these four enemy types to allow breakpoints.
(Flak is dependent on the weapon’s damage modifier toward it, but still overall a good pick.)

Unyielding has its place for killing Monstrosities and Ogryn Bulwarks or Reapers, but most all weapons already perform as optimally as they can for these HP meatbags.

Carapace is the worst enemy type to build breakpoints for, as Crushers are currently the only enemy in the game covered 100% in Carapace.
(Scab Maulers have a Carapace head, but you should be hitting them in their Flak bodies.)

+10% Damage to Specialists currently is:

  • Underperforming, as +25% Damage to Maniacs is just a better version of this
  • Lacking a reason to exist right now otherwise

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Damage to +6/9/12/15%, AND
  • Merge with Elites for more coverage, OR
  • Removal of this perk

I hate to suggest removing something but this perk is currently useless due to the disparity of enemy types among Specialists. Unless they plan to change some current Specialists or add more types, this perk is functionally useless—even for pushing breakpoints.

The only other way this perk can be useful at all for any weapon is to be merged with Elite damage.

+10% Damage to Elites currently is:

  • A suboptimal but decent perk, that covers a lot of enemies with different enemy types
  • Used in conjunction with +25% Damage to Enemy Type to kill specific threats quicker
  • Marginal in its use cases for pushing breakpoints on important enemies overall

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Damage to +6/9/12/15%, AND
  • Merge with Specialists for more coverage

+10% Damage to Groaners/Poxwalkers currently is:

  • Functionally useless, as +25% Damage to Infested is just a better version of this
  • Not needed, as no horde-clear weapon struggles to cleave or kill Groaners
  • not actually helping with breakpoints at all with any weapon

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Damage to +10/15/20/25%, OR
  • Removal of this perk

This perk currently does not benefit any weapon in the game. It does not push any breakpoint and does not really benefit cleave damage.

Increasing the damage significantly would make this worth taking on some weapons where its best quality is cleaving entire hordes, such as the Power Sword, but even then I struggle to think of any situation where I would want this over +25% Damage to Infested or Unarmored.

I am open to being proven wrong, but so far all my testing with this perk has not gained any tangible results from using it.

+10% Damage to Weakspots currently is:

  • Functionally useless in Darktide’s current implementation of Weakspot damage bonuses

Suggested Changes:

  • Redevelop Darktide’s Weakspot Damage System

Due to the way damage bonuses are implemented, this perk can’t be recommended at all.

This is because this is only additive to the bonus damage that Weakspot hits already provide, which results in very miniscule damage increase at all.

@Flawless wrote a quick explanation as to how it functions below.

+10% Critical Hit Damage currently is:

  • Functionally useless in Darktide’s current implementation of Critical Damage bonuses
  • Functionally one of the worst perks in the game due to its requirement for Critical Hits

Suggested Changes:

  • Redevelop Darktide’s Weakspot Damage System

Much like Weakspot damage, this increase in damage often results in little to no tangible increase in damage. See above.

+5% Critical Hit Chance currently is:

  • Teetering on being one of the worst perks in the game for almost every weapon
  • Not even beneficial to weapons that want more crit chance to perform optimally

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Critical Hit Chance to +6/9/12/15%

A triple increase to this perk’s benefit would make it actually competitive and allow for more variety in building weapons. This would also vastly enable crit-centric weapons with low damage to actually perform optimally in T5.

I was deciding between +10% and +15% critical chance, but I’m highballing it for now.

+10% Reload Speed currently is:

  • Not competitive at all with other options right now
  • Not desirable at all, but may help with some slower reloads

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Reload Speed to +10/15/20/25%

One of the more useful non-damage perks to get, especially for non-Veteran operatives, but it is still underperforming as a perk that is desirable or useful over other options.

Most players are unlikely to notice any tangible benefit of having +10% reload speed.

+15% Sprint Efficiency currently is

  • Not competitive at all with other options right now
  • Lacking a use case for being on weapons

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Sprint Efficiency to +15/20/25/30%, OR
  • Removal of this perk

This is where we get to real ugly territory for perks. A lot of these are almost pointless to have on a weapon, especially when your primary goal with weapons is to boost their damage output.

I’m currently highballing to +30% to achieve an absolute maximum +90% efficiency categorically—if you’re capable of getting +20% of an efficiency on all 3 equipped curios and this is something you actually want to build around.

+20% Block Efficiency currently is:

  • Not competitive at all with other options right now
  • Lacking a use case for being on weapons

Suggested Changes

  • Increase Block Efficiency to +15/20/25/30%, OR
  • Removal of this perk

+1 Stamina currently is

  • Not competitive at all with other options right now
  • Lacking a use case for being on weapons

Suggested Changes:

  • Increase Stamina to +1/1/2/3, OR
  • Removal of this perk

This is a weird one because it literally doesn’t change at all regardless of its tier. Anything higher than +3 Stamina would probably be too potent, and would make Stamina curios even less desired.

1 Like
2

Disagree on block efficiency, stamina and crit chance being bad picks. Block and stamina is what lets me pick your sorry arses up in the middle of a horse, and crit chance is top tier on zealot.

If you’re not hitting any breakpoints with a DMG vs, then you might as well take extra stam which is actually useful.

3

I agree on almost everything you said.

I think that there is a different problem with + weakspot damage and + crit damage, than just their low values.

Both these stats work in an unintuirive way that makes them not only hard to understand, but also almost completely worthless with the numbers they currently have.
But even if their numbers were inflated, the effect of these bonuses would still be highly weapon dependent, because of the way they are calculated.

If you get a bonus of +10% to crit damage, or to headshot damage, you would expect to deal 10% more damage on a crit/headshot, than without that 10% bonus.
But this is not how these bonuses work.

They increase only the additional damage that you dealt because it was a crit or a headshot by 10%.

Click here to see detailed explanation and calculations that show how it works

I will explain with the example of headshot damage (crit damage works identically).
Let’s say

  • you do 100 dmg on a regular hit
  • you do 150 dmg on a headshot (100 base dmg +50 headshot bonus)

Because you dealt a headshot, you dealt not only the 100 base damage, but additional 50 headshot damage. A % bonus to headshot damage will only increase the “additional x headshot damage” of an attack.

This means that the + 10% headshot dmg

  • will not grant you (100% +10%) x 150 → 15 extra damage
  • will not grant you 50% +10% = 60% headshot bonus → 10 extra damage
  • will grant you (100% +10%) x 50 → 5 extra damage (+3.3% damage on headshots).

Not only does this mean that the real damage increase from this stat is always much smaller than expected, but this also means that the bonus damage is potentially different against every enemy health type, since the damage bonuses that different weapons get from crits and headshots, can vary between all of the enemy health types.

Crit damage bonuses and headshot damage bonuses should be changed to increase the entire damage of the hit by that %.
This would make the effects easier to understand as well as theoretically being useful for any type of weapon, not only for those with already massive crit dmg and headshot dmg multipliers.

As it is right now, a weapon (mk XII infantry lasgun) that deals ~2x damage on headshots, would only gain 5% dmg output on headshots from this 10% bonus.
A weapon (shredder auto pistol) with ~1.1x damage on headshots, would only gain +0.9% dmg output on headshots from this 10% bonus.

Click here to see the proof that this is how it works

Mk XII infantry lasgun on zealot (no feats or passives that affect ranged damage, elite dmg, weakspot dmg, or anything like that).

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Weapon info displays dmg vs unyielding: 276 dmg on bodyshot and 442 dmg on headshot → 1.6x dmg on headshot.

This is the weakspot dmg against a reaper from 3 meters without 10% weakspot dmg perk.

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443 headshot dmg according to meatgrinder.
442 headshot dmg according to stats board.
Rounding error.

Since the headshot dmg multiplier is 1.6 according to the ingame weapon damage stats, we would expect the following numbers for headshot damage with +10% headshot dmg perk:

If it increased the overall dmg of the headshot by 10%, we would expect:
276 x 1.6 x 1.1 = 487 dmg

If it increases only the damage that was dealt due to the hit being a headshot, we would expect:
276 x (1 + 0.6 x 1.1) = 458±1 dmg (an effective increase of 3.6%)

Here is the same test as above, but with 10% weakspot dmg perk.
As you can see, the 10% only applies to the additional damage that was dealt due to the hit being a headshot, which means that the 10% bonus dmg is actually only 3.6% bonus dmg.

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2 Likes
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I just put those on curios instead of weapons.
In beta flamers were Unarmored and Flak originally. I think Trappers were flak too. Plus Dreg Ragers are maniacs rather than unarmored (fair enough) and Scab Ragers are flak not maniac. Generally speaking it feels weird.

Also why is the plague ogryn unyielding instead of Infested?

5

I was actually reminded of this earlier and completely forgot this is how weakspot and critical damage works in Darktide, so thank you for the necessary input.

It also worked this way in Vermintide 1 and 2, and I don’t think they’re going to change it any time soon.

6

Correct.
And although the bonus is +20% in Vermintide 2, there are pretty much only 2 use cases for the crit dmg bonus on weapons.

  1. Maximized boss dps on Shade, with the guaranteed crits from the ult, combined with high crit multiplier weapons.
  2. Additional breakpoints for the Bounty Hunter, making use of the guaranteed ranged crit from the passive, using a crossbow (high crit multiplier).
7

Some weapons like the Headhunter Autogun have an almost 90% increase in their Weakspot damage, so a +50% damage to a shot that goes from ~188 to ~357, so if I were to suggest a blanket increase of +50% Weakspot damage as a Tier IV perk, that’s an almost 90 damage increase on headshots for one weapon type.

I think that’s the only situation where you can actually get close to a true +10% increase in damage.

I think the only solution then would be either to rebuild the way weakspot and critical hit damage bonuses work, or individualize perks across weapons. Either way, it would be a lot more work for the devs to sort out than just removing it.

8

Even if you do 2x dmg on a headshot, a 10% bonus headshot perk only grants 5% bonus dmg.

9

No you’re right. I’m too tired to do math right now. But I really appreciate what you wrote up and created.

10

Crit chance isn’t something to be f’ked with too much.

Mercifully, there is no blessings requiring a crit that are anywhere near the realm of “good” with the exception of Charmed Reload.

Crit chance modifiers beyond the norm need to be baked into classes to avoid the issues FS should know about from VT2.