Talent tree rebalance theorycrafting

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Darktide’s current talent tree system is awesome but leaves a bit to be desired. In this OP I’ve compiled a list of notable talents I think need changing on the talent tree to make some choices better than the alternative, at least from a meta perspective.

I hope this sparks some insightful discussion. I’ve played this game for a while now and wanted to share my opinion on the most powerful options. Darktide is well-balanced in that everything is viable, but as a player who always wants to maximize their effectiveness, having more ways to do so would make the game more fun for me.

Psyker

  • Kinetic Flayer: Talent now only triggers when hitting an Elite or Specialist enemy, and is guaranteed when off cooldown.
  • Mind in Motion: On top of the current effect, now also prevents being interrupted whilst quelling Peril.
  • Kinetic Presence: Increase damage bonus. From 5% to 15%? Too small to make a difference in the majority of cases.
  • Unlucky for Some: Just get rid of it entirely, replace it with something better. Maybe another Soulblaze related talent?
  • Warp Rupture: See this thread I already made.
  • Telekine Shield: There needs to be a better argument for using the wall shield over the dome shield. Right now the dome is incredibly easy to use and arguably provides more value than the wall shield.

Ogryn

  • Steady Grip: Far too small of a toughness boost to be useful in any capacity, outclassed by the rest of the tree. Needs a change, I don’t think it should restore Toughness.
  • Bombs Away!: The worst of both worlds - a non-rechargable rock you only get two of with none of the problem-solving potential of the Frag Bomb. Objectively the worst Ogryn grenade, and needs a change to be competitive.
  • Slam: Extremely mediocre talent overall, to be honest, as with all Impact talents. Ogryns don’t need more knockdown force, they already knock everything flat on their own. Compared to Soften Them Up, it’s a bad pick every time.
  • Go Again!: Pales in comparison to the massive damage boost provided by Valuable Distraction, which can also be triggered by Attention Seeker. Overall not needed.
  • Thick of the Fray: Inferior to Hail of Fire. Movement speed not needed during PBB. Bracing is generally not worth doing most of the time with ogryn guns anyways.
  • Crunch!: You have to hold the heavy attack until it lets go by itself for a bonus that Thrust provides in half of the time needed. Especially for a fast-paced game like Darktide, this just won’t do.
  • Stay Close!: Apparently only affects passive toughness regen. Not sure if true, haven’t tested this myself. Not a very powerful effect anyways compared to the other two auras.
  • Too Stubborn to Die/No Stopping Me!: Just so much weaker compared to the talents right next to them. There is no reason to pick it them over the alternative.
  • Implacable: Almost never comes in handy. Feels bad to have a dead skill point before a powerful keystone.
  • Unstoppable: Supposedly broken and only increases toughness regen from kills to 5.5% instead of the previous 10%, making it worthless.
  • Get Stuck In: Honestly it probably doesn’t need a change, it just lasts too short for my tastes, especially when combined with Indomitable. You get maybe 2 seconds of usage from it max.
  • No Pushover: A valid contender for worst talent in the game. Why does this exist? Pushing doesn’t have cost issues, and the stamina efficiency bonus is small enough to not even amtter.
  • Mobile Emplacement: See Implacable. More useful due to shootgryns generally not having as much close-range knockback potential when using PBB.

Veteran

  • Vanguard/Tactical Reload/Out for Blood: This top side of the talent tree is a lot weaker compared to the other sides. The amount of toughness regen and defensive bonuses you receive from the left and middle always outshine. I hope Out for Blood isn’t bugged like Unstoppable.
  • Smoke Grenade: Sucks. Worthless. Trash. The utility of the Frag Grenades and the Krak Grenades of killing enemies in exchange for… blocking a sightline? Really? A taunt Ogryn can do this so much easier and better.
  • Get Back in the Fight!: Bad compared to Catch a Breath. If your Toughness is broken you’re probably already in a situation where that 6s buff isn’t gonna help ya.
  • Survivalist: Too powerful, removes a skill element of the game by nullifying the ammo economy due to just how many elites and specials spawn. The amount of ammo regenerated is probably fine, but make it only drop on Specialist kills.
  • Fire Team: Similarly to Kinetic Presence, this is too weak of an aura to make any noticeable difference.
  • Close and Kill: See above.
  • Kill Zone: While somewhat powerful, the nature of higher difficulty levels is that some enemies are gonna slip through the cracks or appear behind you, and that 8m radius feels bigger than it is. This buff will almost never be active when it matters.
  • Opening Salvo: A meager +10% crit chance for, what. 4 or 5 shots? Come on.
  • The Bigger They Are… You don’t need to highlight these guys. Takes too long to kill them to be useful with Relentless.
  • Twinned Blast: Extremely mid talent overall and not worth taking compared to its two siblings.
  • Voice of Command: This is a weird one. It’s fine on its own, but compared to Veteran’s other active abilities, it’s easily the strongest - spammable, powerful, and easy to use. Its addons allow it to easily transform into a win more and clutch button. The other actives need to be competitive.
  • Hunter’s Resolve: Basically just a worse version of Low Profile. Why take TDR when I can have effectively 10 extra seconds of cloak?
  • Shock Trooper: Completely inferior to Survivalist. Barely has any effect.
  • Marksman’s Focus: There’s already a thread about this that explains everything wrong with it. For my part, I’ll just say it feels bad to play around.
  • For the Emperor!: The duration is too short for me to appreciate, and the bonus too small. I see a lot of meta Veteran builds use this, and I just don’t get it.
  • Competitive Urge: Again, compared to its siblings, just extremely inferior. The bonuses are powerful on paper, but the inconsistency is the issue.
  • Close Quarters Killzone: Once again a mid talent compared to its siblings. Same deal with Marksman.
  • Skirmisher: Strange activation, poor tooltip, minimal bonus. Overall just inferior to Reciprocity, really.
  • Weapon Specialist: Why isn’t this the one called Agile Engagement? Regardless, this whole keystone rubs me the wrong way - for a similar reason to Marksman’s Focus, it feels bad to play around. All of the add-ons are mostly moot (except Always Prepared, that’s pretty rad on plasma guns or revolvers) and the effect is awkward to take advantage of.
  • Veteran keystones in general: These are all just awkward to use and weaker than other classes’ keystones. Instead of being a powerful passive effect that you take to enhance your chosen playstyle, instead you have to change your playstyle to suit it, and suit it exactly, otherwise you don’t get the full effect. They’re all really really weird.

Zealot

  • Fortitude in Fellowship: Same kind of deal with Stay Close!, and sitting right next to a damage up.
  • Blood Redemption: See Unstoppable and Out for Blood.
  • Top Zealot tree in general: For a melee-focused class, the +30% crit chance and powerful dodge/crit bonuses on the top right side of the tree feel disproportionately powerful to the other two sides, since dodging and critting are things you’re going to be doing all the time.
  • Dance of Death: This feels like a dead skill point and also awkwardly placed - why not on the right side with Good Balance? Having to take it just to reach Thy Wrath Be Swift feels bad. Less spread and recoil doesn’t feel useful at all, maybe the most it does is quality of life for Bolter.
  • Desperation: Too small of a damage boost to matter, trigger condition is too dangerous to try and take advantage of.
  • Until Death/Holy Revenant/Benediction: Ah, yes. The get out of jail free card and the best Zealot aura. For every Zealot build I make, I always path over here, because these talents are just SO STRONG - why isn’t Until Death a keystone? It feels like it should be, with how strong it is.
  • The Emperor’s Bullet: Impact strength is meh. Trigger condition doesn’t happen often enough for attack speed bonus to be useful.
  • Unrelenting: See Vanguard.
  • Shield of Contempt: Really just feels like an awkward talent to use that isn’t gonna clutch anytime soon.
  • Hammer of Faith/Grievous Wounds/Punishment/: Impact bad. Damage good. Do I sound smart yet?
  • Beacon of Purity: Considering that it only cleanses corruption up to the next wound, it seems mostly useless unless you’re playing a game without a Veteran running Field Improvisation, especially considering that it doesn’t actually heal that cleansed health, not like the purifying torch does in Chaos Wastes VT2.
  • Loner: Auras that don’t help your team are bad. The toughness regen from always counting as being in 2 coherency is too small compared to the multitude of other toughness regen bonuses you can get from the tree.
  • Invigorating Revelation: Doesn’t really feel useful, as Shroudfield is an offensive-focused active ability, meant to get big damage numbers.
  • The Master’s Retribution: Unlike Gromril Curse, which is really useful in the context of Vermintide, this isn’t as useful, considering how much more powerful your defensive options are. Also, ONLY that one attacker? That’s awful! And Invocation of Death is right there! Why would you ever take it?
  • Left Blazing Piety: Bonuses simply aren’t as good compared to right Blazing Piety. Toughness regen on trigger doesn’t mean squat when the duration is refreshed for every kill, and you aren’t gonna have lost much toughness by the time a proper fight starts and Fury triggers. Giving allies a meager +5% crit chance isn’t worth the additional skill point, either.
  • Martyrdom: I’m gonna say it: I don’t like it and I think it’s bad. Per-wound basis stuff is on a lot of important things (like health stims and Beacon of Purity) and to gimp that in the name of some more attack speed and damage, on top of being in one-hit territory, is a bad idea. Zealot in VT2 has the advantage of temporary health to fill up his health bar when he’s in a scrap, making him as durable as he is at full health, which Darktide Zealot doesn’t get, even with I Shall Not Fall’s small TDR bonus. Along with Martyr’s Purpose, which only triggers when you spend a very limited resource, I just don’t think it’s good.
  • Retributor’s Stance: Considering you’re already on the dodge side of the tree, you’ve probably got Second Wind on lockdown and don’t need the extra toughness regen that this talent offers. No reason to take it.

/rant

5 Likes
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When a horde of dogs or several mutants spawn in, I throw up a shield, and everyone laughs as the enemies bounce off of them, I’m always confused as to why people don’t use it more. Dome has no CC. If the team is on the back foot with a horde of melee enemies, they just push you out of it.

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Interesting thoughts, most of which I agree with! Just have few thoughts while I was reading through so figured I’d slap them down here, if it’s not here I agree whole heartedly! But otherwise:

  • No Stopping Me! seems incredibly potent to me, though I might just be to ‘tiny man’ pilled to realize I don’t need it. But With so much toughness regen placed behind doing heavy attacks, being able to always do them without ever being interrupted is something I have on every build that even thinks it’s going to heavy attack. The one before it is rather forgettable though, fantastic when it procs and funny to watch one sweeping swing instantly fill your toughness bar, but you have to be so low health to proc it it’s not worth it yeah.

  • Implacable is great, gives you DR during the only moments you’re vulnerable as a melee attack Ogryn! Any extra DR I think is nice, and see no reason it should be considered ‘dead’ unless one…isn’t, heavying, as the heavy melee class? (in which case why not just go down feel no pain?).

  • Same thing for Mobile Emplacement, though it really is only supremely useful on the Stubbers and the Rippers to an extent. But it helps keep the gunfire from really hurting all that much while using them. (And those are the only two weapons you really want to go all the way down to ‘Burst Limiter Override’ anyway, the rest of the guns Ogryn have just can’t proc it basically at all and you’re better off getting the free DR and damage from the melee tree).

  • Smoke Grenade, why does everyone still hate on my boy so much? Even after his glow up people still kicking him like he’s worthless. They are literally a free Psyker bubble that can’t break every 60 seconds at this point. They stop gunners from trying to shoot you, they prevent hounds from jumping on you (at least before they get in the cloud), they even seem to stop trappers on occasion when the stars align from doing anything. Everything has to be in the smoke cloud to see you, it’s an incredible defensive tool and supremely useful for utility. Now, is it the best tool for every situation? No, but when I’m running around with a Power Sword for ad clear and a Boltgun for everything else, why not make it so that everything has to come to ME to do anything? Being able to Shout everything out of the cloud so that they have to re-engage with you back inside of it is incredibly useful too, and tossing it on a row of gunners forces them to re-position. Just, aaaaaa why does everyone think this thing is pointless? You can build around it just fine people just hate on it needlessly especially now that it even stops Snipers from shooting you.

  • Get Back in the Fight! , I actually have the reverse problem. Catch a Breath feels so incredibly worthless to me given that it will only ever proc when you don’t care and the the wave is dealt with/you’re moving between them. Otherwise there’s ALWAYS something pushing your position and the benefit is hardly ever felt verses becoming briefly unreactable to everything. If nothing else it might get you to line up that shot to kill that something to get your toughness back verses actually doing nothing and just having you die anyway. So just interesting the dicotomy in view points there.

  • Kill Zone gestures to your get back in the fight comment waaaa, you say my exact point above for this one! Now I’m confused, do you agree with me or not? (I say jokingly)

  • Opening Salvo: while largely not great, Revolvers, Shotguns and the Lasweapons (with Shock Trooper) make good use of this. Granted, two of those things aren’t really meta at all, but I think it’s what they are going for with it, and it probably mostly feels bad because if you want to use Exe Stance, you have either that, or a dead perk. And that just isn’t a fun choice to make.

  • Shock Trooper: Surgical Helbore Lasgun would like a word with you. (but otherwise yes).

  • For the Emperor! is pretty much used entirely due to it doing something, verses the other two options which are basically nothing and ‘only useful with certain things’. And if you’re shouting, it’s decent. Would like to see it bumped up to 10s to match Marksman and Close Quarters Killzone though.

  • And to point out the Close Quarters Killzone/Marksman point, you use a Shout Build before? With how much that’s up having just a free 15% extra damage/20% on weakspot hits is pretty dam potent all stacked up, and one can easily get back to shouting again before those buffs go down half the time. Nothing like 3 light attacking a Crusher to death with a Power Sword, or heavying through a Bulwark with ease.

  • Punishment I’ll actually make a case for, the amount I’ve noticed being able to stun entire rager hordes when I’m fully stacked with my Zealot and cleaving through with the heavy Evis light attack is quite noticable, and not being able to be interrupted (because I can never justify wasting a point on Dance of Death for Thy Wrath be Swift) is very very good to keep stunning things. The rest is just impact by itself though with no stacking, literally 1 of the 5 stacks of Punishment are the other two talents and it’s like whatever.

  • Invigoration Revelation: Speak for yourself my guy, while yes it absolutely is meant to hit biggy numbers, being able to do that AND pop out of stealth with regening toughness and further DR actually makes the skill feel worth while compared to just running Fury of the Faithful. Nothing but a monstrosity will feel your big sausage energy any harder, so being able to use it as a sudo bit of toughness regen and a proper defensive reposition tool is vastly more helpful, especially with it also making big damage numbers!

  • Martyrdom: This one I feel can be worked on a bit, but I think where it is is fine to. As I see random Zealots here and there running around with it, living on 2 wounds and a dream with Revenant and just being skilled enough to make that work, I say it’s fine. I got my tank variant that I like too that couples Bleed for the Emperor and Restoring Faith together to just becoming unkillable, so I think it’s in a fine spot, though I wouldn’t be sad if it got reworked either.

  • Retributor’s Stance: I mean, why not still take the up to 40% extra toughness just for existing? with everything else being pointed at legitimately bad things, just seems weird to me to end it off with something that’s honestly fantastic just cause ‘you might use something else that will also regen you’. I know my Gun Zealot doesn’t go down the crit tree and goes down the middle before going right so he massively enjoys the Momentum toughness since you can trigger that with the autogun (and while The Voice of Terra is nice it is more a supliment to the momentum toughness refreshes). But yeah, it’s whatever just thought it strange XD.

But yeah, there’s all my ‘points’, as stated anything not hit above I just holistically agree with, but figured I’d just put this here. Good things to bring up overall though!

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Can’t say how many things I disagree in your post… won’t talk about psykers and ogryns, I dislike these classes (first I really don’t like, the second is too slow). However, I play zealot and veteran every days, so I can talk about these classes.

Veteran: they need to rework keystones… I played a lot specialist, that’s somewhat acceptable (but I have returned to no keystone, cause it is better). The marksman’s focus need to be tweaked.
smoke grenades need to be more efficient. Maybe a larger effect area.
Survivalist I don’t even take it…

Zealot:
Loner aura is absolutely good. That’s just cause people are not enough confident to play alone… so they need a baby sitter every minute it seems (can’t find any other explanation)
Martyr’s purpose need a rework. This talent is a waste of point.
Martyrdom cannot reach the 7th bonus stack on damnation (loosing 7 wounds means you’re dead)
Chrorus of spiritual fortitude is too strong and need a serious nerf (i would like that the cooldown is increased)
Holy revenant is great… but it impacts your skill progression as you can commit error without getting the punishment. With or without doesn’t really change the output. I like to take it when I will play dangerously
All zealot keystones are good… all of them. Even martyrsdom

This is actually the main talents that I think need a change… wanting to change 50% of all talent trees is not realist…

I really would prefer they fix the invisibility bug… I hate to use stealth on zealot or veteran and see a mutant coming from nowwhere to grab me… same about poxbombers…

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I read through the zealot one. ( If I’ve more time I might comment on the others :slight_smile: )

I’d add to the list:
Punishment (Passive, lower left) - I dunno how others play, but if I’m going for the crits keystone (etc.) then I don’t generally carry a weapon that will hit three players. If I think crits; I’m thinking knife or tactical axes, neither of which have reknowned cleave. Feels more like a talent that should be higher up on a less significant branch, maybe top left with Disdain, not a pass-through node to the keystone.

Top of tree in general Agree the top right is in all my builds as it’s so intrinsically ‘zealot’. What I do dislike is that the grenade type is tied so firmly to four other nodes above it. I like immolation grenades for the ‘safe zone’ - but that requires four nodes that I probably wouldn’t choose to take otherwise; I mean, they’re “okay” but it’s a bit limiting. I don’t think the other classes have that same dependency.

I think in general the trees should be split in to thirds; weapon style (heavy attack block-duking vs light attack dodge-agile), melee preference style (crits, or cleave), and ranged (close vs long). Obvs in different orders for the different classes so the focus ends up on melee or ranged.

I don’t think they’re bad right now, but I do think I often find myself picking up a pass-through node that I don’t end up triggering.

2 Likes
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I disagree with your general sentiment about this part of the tree.

Out for Blood is arguably one of the more underrated skills in the entire tree, and what largely goes unnoticed is the fact that it makes kills, which typically do not generate toughness, generate toughness, and so even a simple Shredder frag drop will become a ticking toughness-over-time effect, theoretically. This is on top of the effect that makes you generate more toughness with melee kills. It’s insane value that largely goes unnoticed.

The other skills are not great, but if Vanguard is the price to pay to access OfB, then I’d say it’s well warranted. The small move speed node is also probably the most impactful of small skill nodes at the end of each branch of this part of the tree.

2 Likes
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When I play Zealot, I break off from my team frequently to force Gunners and shooters into melee so they stop shooting them. The amount of toughness regen I get from other talents is orders of magnitude more valuable than the “passive regen” I’d get from Loner, which only ever triggers when I’m not getting hit anyway (i.e. not in combat). Compared to a free 15% TDR, it’s trash. Literally just Second Wind on its own gives so much more value, and you get it within the first four skill points. If you’re breaking out of coherency with your team, you simply do not need Loner.

My point here is the opportunity cost from spending a skill point on this. By the time you reach Momentum, you’ve already spent a couple points on Toughness regen nodes - on top of this, it’s a max of 40% toughness every 8 seconds, and maybe not even that, since you’re not going to be getting a lot of Momentum stacks in combat unless you’ve taken Inebriate’s Poise and are dodging a lot, which you should be. In a fight, it doesn’t trigger often enough to really come in handy all that often, I find, and that point would be more useful spent on one of the cooldown reduction nodes at the bottom of the tree.

Hah, I’ll concede that maybe I sound like a bit of a hypocrite here, but I promise my reasoning is valid for Catch a Breath! If you’re alone, it’ll still be providing Toughness regeneration, which helps a lot when you need to clutch - and it helps you shrug off the occasional shooter that you forgot existed. It provides a very nice quality of life buff.

I disagree, I think the +1 stamina node in the middle tree is more valuable. A bit of extra blocking, Deadshot time, or sprinting is always good.

My issue with Out for Blood is that compared to the effects of Confirmed Kill and Exhilarating Takedown, you aren’t getting any TDR from it. ET is incredibly easy to proc and gives a more powerful effect than Out for Blood, and Confirmed Kill is past Close Order Drill, meaning you have up to 33% TDR just passively, and then multiple stacks of CK ticking, providing extremely powerful passive Toughness leech. Considering the amount of Elites and Specialists that spawn, in any kind of fight you’re probably gonna have at least 3 stacks of CK up all the time.

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I need it to explore the map…
yesterday I looted 32 plasteel packs, cause 2 of the others players were busy at dying.
When you’re alone, cause the others had the bad idea to die, loner is great.
I need loner cause people don’t loot even when a plasteel pack is in front of them. So yes, I visit every corners of the map, and loner is great for this.
It seems you can’t see how this aura is interesting. And we can add that the talents just above it (both branches) are really great. Good balance gives you +25% damage reduction when dodging… that compensate the +15% of the other aura. Ambush with raking fire is the beast of nurgle ultimate killer… thy wrath be swift is a game changer for slow melee weapons and grievous wounds… well maybe if you check it, you could see how it can change your gameplay (more staggering = less annoying enemies)

+20% against unyielding and infected is not a waste of points.
Anoint in blood is a game changer in close combat (3 weeks I play veteran / zealot dagger orientated close combat - and tested various builds)
Fortitude in fellowship: good, unless you have, like me, all curios with such bonus.
The voice of terra: for a zealot orientated ranged… must say that, this talent is a big no for me. Don’t know if this talent can be useful.
Restoring faith: Good if you use it in a survival build.

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Maybe they died because you abandoned them to scrounge for crafting materials during a fight? Come on, man. Thy Wrath Be Swift, Good Balance, and Ambuscade are the only good talents on that side. Stagger is pointless compared to damage, because death is the best status effect you can inflict.

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your opinion…

stagger is great when you can kill dreg raggers and forbid them to fight back cause they are… staggered…

Maybe you have not noticed, more and more people don’t wait others, don’t bother looting and are just pushing forward.
That’s their right… but if they die… that’s their fault (and I did it, I died in stupid ways, and I have learnt a lot).
And yes I will always loot. They don’t want to wait me, no problem. I can deal with dogs, mutants and trappers (off course, I can make a mistake, but 95% of the times, I can deal with them).
However I won’t stop to loot just cause lot of players don’t consider others (disclaimer: this is not all players, and in Auric things are easier).

and no they died cause we were only two that were carrying them.
And any player should learn to play solo… stop with the cries “waaaa I was alone”. This is exactly the situations that will make your skills progress. And believe me, I died so many times in hilarious situations… and again, I have learnt a lot.
As I said, only people that can’t rely on their skills complain about one player that is not in coherency.

Final word… i have seen many guys explaning me loner was useless cause toughness does not regen in fight. True. However, it regenerates between fights and that’s the purpose of this aura. Also, what apply to loner, apply to teamates. Toughness does not regen also, even at 4 in coherency, when you fight. So loner has no impact on others…
If they die, that’s just cause they need more pratice or that the difficulty is too high for them.

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I highly disagree with this. While i do agree that dome is infinitely easier to use, the value you get from good walls easily floors what you get from dome. For instance the wall easily denies any modifiers with mutants/dogs/poxbursters while still relieving lots of pressure in the extra special modifiers.
You also rarely if you play even semi intelligently get shot from 360 angle, so the dome actually gains you nothing extra in terms of shooter coverage.
So what you get is argument between ease of use and toughness regen vs 2 walls that actually have potential to stop lots of extra things.
I personally think the balance here is almost perfect and i do use both depending on what I’m doing.

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Has some synergy with weapon specialist and say shotgun builds. It could probably be 20% of the ammo instead of 10%, but the talent itself is not horrible.
Its decent amount of crit for very little effort. If anything its probably badly placed in the tree.

Was giga broken when recon lasguns could abuse this and rending. The effect is not horrible by itself its just that lasguns in general are kind of meh and its buried semi deeply into a tree branch that many builds don’t care for.

I still don’t understand the awkwardness factor, but regardless i can agree the add in ones are kind of meh for the most part and there are freaking 5 of them. Weapon specialist itself gives giga good bonuses if you can play around it. Guaranteed range crits on plasma/revolver/shotguns opens lots of stupid stuff and 15% attack speed is just giga good.
I would hate this one to be massively changed just because some don’t like it. Buff or change the augments for sure, but the keystone itself is fairly powerful if you got the build for it.

Badly placed, the value should probably be higher and preferably it would buff the entire team. I think the idea of this talent is actually ok for supporty zealot.

Bugs aside, this at least makes sense for zealot. The numbers probably need to be higher. (At least i never use this).

This is only really the case if you play with blazing piety style or god forbid a knife build, and even then i would never consider something like duellist to be a good talent due to how stupidly this game counts critical hit damage.
(50 % increase to 100 damage does not mean you crit for 150 due to fatshark coding)
Right side is arguably the strongest if you fully metagame zealot, but as a person who just loves immolation grenade/stun grenade, i never fully path that one. Left and middle paths still have some really good gems so that i really cannot fully agree with this statement. The opportunity cost is there at least imo.

From what I’ve gathered from this talent and the testing I’ve seen, its almost exactly like barskin from vermintide 2. Barskin was arguably the best neck trait you could have in that game. Its really strong, i really cannot agree with this.
The uptime is also really good with 4 seconds usage and 10 cooldown for every time someone near you gets hit? It might not clutch games but it certainly can save lots of attrational oh crap damage.

I don’t buy the reasoning. I would most certainly not path second wind if i were to play with Inexorable Judgement. (3 points of ehhh before second wind in non crit type build?) If you do then its definitely overkill amounts of toughness.
If anything i would nerf or get rid of second wind considering how stupidly good it is. You really don’t need that amount of toughness to play this game at the highest level.

But yeah some more. Rest i either agree to some extend or just don’t have strong enough opinion to say really.
Some talents like Loaner i also can say are good but i absolutely despise the gameplay it enforces in some people. So i left those types of deals uncommented.

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In terms of numbers, I think 5% is okay, mainly because your build is the accumulation of a bunch of small improvements to get you to your target threshold, coupled with the fact that it’s a team bonus rather than a personal bonus.

Similarly, for Blazing Piety’s left track, 5% per teammate is reasonable IMO - if the preceding talent didn’t suck and team leaned into crits weapons, then it’d be worth considering to lean into providing a little extra support.

If Fury Rising branched into 10% personal crit/5% team crit (and Stalwart just went away), then it’s a reasonable choice. Right now, you have to give up proc on crit AND take the clunky toughness talent - that’s a far bigger detractor IMO than the % bonus on offer.

I haven’t used smoke grenades in quite a while, but if they worked as you’d expect them to without heavily obstructing player vision, they’d be decent IMO. There’s plenty of scenarios where there are large enemy sight lines, and being able to shut those down and (ideally) force them to reposition would be really handy e.g. finale of the first carnival map, getting down from the skylink bridge.

Dance of Death is honestly very nice with braced autoguns. And part of the talent tree layout is to make you make choices and decide what you’re willing to trade - if all the best stuff is easily within reach, then there’s much less meaningful choice to make.

Being able to undo corruption is really handy, just because the risk of chip damage taking away one of your (or your teammates) wounds is substantially lower; on Damnation, you’ve got your 1 freebie wound before you’re dead, and Beacon is simply squeezing a bit extra out of that.

Much like Stalwart, I think this is just a really impractical talent. Up to 40% toughness sounds nice but if I’m at 100% when it procs, then the talent has had no benefit and is effectively on cooldown for the next 8 seconds. Waiting to get punched in the face before attacking isn’t very practical. If it provided a very short-lived amount of toughness that could exceed 100%, maybe that would be useful, but the current version… nah

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Loner is goated. Even for helping the team. I use it to break off from my team to hard flank the gunners and ranged units and cut them to pieces while still haveing enough toughness regen to survive alone consistently. I have also had countless solo clutches where i end up fighting of horde after horde even monstrosities to then get the other 3 players up. loner is a carry for situations where i have to fight alone to get the team up and i have been thanked for using it the way i do as i make it my primary objective to pull gunner aggro, close distance and make them disappear for my team.

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Yeah, as stated in my initial response the main time I find it incredibly useful is with this build specifically Gun Zealot - Build for Darktide - Darktide WH40k (the invis can be swapped for chorus + attack speed, was just seeing how invis worked on it and felt it was nice for reloading so put that up when I shared it). Since as you can see I get no other toughness regen beyond popping Chorus/Invis, it actually helps a lot in keeping me topped off while shreding through things with an autogun.

In most builds it’s not needed though for sure, but most builds are running Blazing Piety in that case for the crit cooldown regen so it becomes a bit of a moot point XD cause a free 55% crit from just existing on your tree is one hell of a drug.

But yeah, for the ‘Kill Zone’ point I tend to just function off of coherency regen in the ‘random shooter’ case, but yeah, will admit if one’s good at running or capable of creating distance it can be a good clutch tool. Might need to run it more and just see how it feels.

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Heavy Evisorator + Devilsword both with Savage Sweep / Shred make great use of Punishment, and I think they are the main thing that the talent is being geared toward. I could probably see the Crit nod and Punishment swapped though so you don’t have to ‘lock yourself’ to it for stuff like the knife and the axes as you say, which will never see it’s benefit but very much want the crit reduction still.

Agree with the grenade lock too, would use immolation grenade so much more if they just moved that line up one level or something so I could get over to it.

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It is always good indeed, but movespeed, as minuscule as it is, can reduce the time for you to catch up, collect materials, outspeed certain enemies, etc.

Confirmed Kill is not granting you any TDR, either, and even if ET does, it still is a multiplicative TDR (which is even multiplicative with itself by the way - it’s not 30% TDR, it’s ~27,1% TDR) source that is multiplicative with other sources of it, and Vet’s arguably best source of TDR is Iron Will skill. Unless you are not using Iron Will, that TDR is up to only a 63,55% reduction that greatly shows how diminishing returns it offers.

Confirmed Kill also requires you to kill elites/specials, which is not a big deal by itself, but if you don’t have any of these enemies to kill, you will be starving for toughness if you don’t have other sources of it.

I do not think that there is strictly one option that outweights the others - it’s different means to the same end, and whereas Confirmed Kill scales exponentially on higher difficulty levels due to increased presence of elites/specials, it still is limited ways that other skills are not.

I’d look at it the following way:

  • CK is the most convenient option if your build needs more staying power against elites and special kills, with no regard to how they are killed - they “only” need to be killed by you, which is a relatively situational occurrence.

  • ET is an option that provides more toughness staying power that goes beyond just shooter combat, but requires paying attention to making headshot kills (which can be either relatively difficult to uncomfortable against certain enemies, depending on your ranged weapon). Its additional strength is the TDR increase, even if multiplicative with other sources, but overall it can make marksman-specced builds perform better at killing shooters and provide the player with an additional means of staying alive against any foe that might struck you in melee combat.

  • OfB is an option that does not discriminate against any kills you make - every single kill you commit will give you toughness to stay afloat, even kills that typically waste toughness (DoT, explosion/grenade kills, -I’m not sure about environmental ones-). It works basically always, you will always be making kills, you will sometimes be oppressed enough that CK or ET will either not be worth chasing, or outright difficult, whereas chaff enemies will keep OfB satisfied.

It also goes without saying (typing?) that OfB is a much, MUCH stronger “typical” a toughness replenishment method for Veteran than -the examples below- are for Zealot. This is also on top of other utilities (like making DoT kills not worthless):

  1. Blood Redemption (+2,5% more percentage points of toughness replenished per melee kill) and
  2. Vicious Offering (flat 7.5% toughness replenishment, but the condition’s only heavy attack kills), or
  3. Voice of Terra (which is just garbage when compared to other options, I’ll give it that much)

All of this just goes to show how inferior Zealot’s options in that regard are, but they have Second Wind though, which invalidates all that fuss :slight_smile:

I might have some more comments on takes to make, albeit it might take some more of my time to approach the topic appropriately. All I’m really looking for is a civil discussion - I don’t agree with some of your comments is all, so I’m always happy to agree to disagree in one regard or another.

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I have a lot i could say, but for now, i should probably let you know that benediction is only ~8% effective TDR, since it replaces the base 7.5% aura with 15%. It’s one of the most overrated auras since everyone thinks it’s actually 15% TDR. I myself overrated it until i learned this.

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It’s amazing on brauto. Haven’t tested if it affects shotgun spread but if it does it’d be decent there too. Seriously I WISH I had this talent on brauto vet real bad. Probably makes IAG crazy accurate for counter firing shooters and gunners too.

Out for blood is insanely good. It’s just extremely consistent, and getting toughness from every possible method of killing feels great. As others have said it justifies spending some points on the right on its own.

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I feel like you’re forgetting that picking any aura replaces your base aura. So it’s still +15% TDR vs taking either of the other auras.

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