Terminus Warrant Rework

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Terminus Warrant = Weapon Specialist 2, but worse, that’s kind of the feeling I get from running it, not to mention the other two arby keystones are flatout better then it.

Forceful turns you into a tank who can bully pretty much all enemies, while Execution Order buffs you and your dog quite a lot and has nice utility’s like extra move speed or monster damage if you want it, but it’s most powerful upgrade is the 50% cdr, allowing you to use your ult way more.

I have a rework idea for Terminius Warrant to move it away from it’s cousin Weapon Specialist and to make it on par with arby’s other two keystones.

Basically I’d have TW give permanent buffs throughout a run based on how many specials and elites you (or allies in coherency) kill. Kind of like how Keeping Protocol works, but for other stuff.

So base TW would give +15% damage to elites and specials as a base feature, that’s all it does to start with. Every 1 elite/special kill = +0.25% strength, stacks up to a max of 15%. So after 60 elites or specials die you will be at the maximum stacks for the buffs.

The two perks below terminus warrant could give other stats.

One for damage reduction (+0.5% per elite / spec kill) max 30%.

Another for Attack speed (+0.25% per elite/spec kill) max 15%

The two side upgrade nodes can stay as is (just have them always be active) since they are ok as is, although I guess they could have secondary effects tacked onto them that work like the other upgrades, like gaining max movement speed or critical hit chance for killing elites/specials.

So at the start of the run this keystone will be kind of weak, but by the middle or end it’s pretty strong.

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I’m playing with the keystone precisely because I don’t like it and want the related penances out of the way. I reached level 30 before being done with it XD
The buffs for reaching 30 stacks are especially poor imo.

The main problem I see with the keystone is that it “locks” you into using certain weapons: I’m playing exclusively with the new weapons, and only the first version of the new shotgun hits enough enemies to enable you to play the keystone effectively. If you brought the pistol you’d spend so much time locked on your ranged weapon, stuck reloading for so very long.

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Yeah I removed Terminus Warrant from my builds once I finished the penances for it.

Does seem like it’s built entirely for the executioner shotguns, which is a flawed way to design a keystone.

I hope they remake it into something Unique instead of being a worse version of Weapon Specialist.

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It needs some work for sure to be more viable on higher difficulties. Some thoughts:

  1. Stack removal on hit means that trash mobs are going to eat all your melee stacks. Because you can’t just not deal with the horde, and of course they are the enemy that you needs buffs against the least, particularly with the rest of the melee damage buffs elsewhere in the tree.

  2. On high ROF/capacity guns, the ranged stacks run out before your blessings fully kick in, so it’s sort of useful as buff for the time between starting to shoot and max stacks blessing. You can get some overlap shooting into trash mobs and switching targets to elites/boss/etc. But it goes back to point 1 where you’re essentially wasting the buff on enemies that don’t need any buff to kill.

  3. Like Weapon Specialist, the ranged buff is probably best on weapons like the revolver and now shotguns. But unlike WS, it comes at a pretty major cost to the melee buff benefit. I haven’t done much playtime with this particular setup so I can’t speak to how it feels. But on paper, unless you’re running the new mk3 shotgun, it seems like a lot of shooting to get any meaningful melee stacks.

Compared to the other keystones which are virtually always up and granting their benefit, this keystone is definitely lackluster. For buffing ranged specifically, there are a bunch of talent nodes that provide essentially the same benefit as this keystone, e.g. damage, reload speed, but have significantly better uptime. So yeah it’s pretty a poor keystone. That being said my experience in running it for penances is that it isn’t like the Arbitrator suffers while running it.

I don’t have a great idea for how to fix it but the stack economy would be the first place I’d look to make tweaks. Add a node like “Only lose stacks on elites/specialists/monstrosities” or “Marked targets refund stacks used on kill” idk.

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Yeah, it’s hard to upkeep TW, especially with certain weapons.

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I like it, it’s great for anti-monstrosity builds where you mostly use Bolter, Agripina Revolver or Abites’ shotgun.

With Weapon Spec you need to constantly switch between weapons to profit from it, for Terminus you can just sit on 30 ranged stacks, waiting for a moment to delete something instantly

Nuncio-aquila placed + Monster Hunter + Obstinate + Writ + Zealous Deadication + Soulgilt Scan = insane boss damage on weakspot hits, especially if you recoil control well

It also buffs sniper bolter playstyle with Surgical, since it has synergy with crits by giving them more crit damage.

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I feel like this is the main crux of the ‘issue’ with Terminus Warrant, that makes it feel worse than Weapon Specialist and any other Keystone the Arbite has at it’s respective job.

It’s not a boost to both your weapons playstyles, it’s a boost to your ranged weapon, that’s it. I feel if they changed the penance wording from ‘kills while having the keystone’ to ‘kills while under the effects of the keystone’ suddenly it makes a lot more sense as to where the annoyances and lack luster feel of it come in.

Because on Weapon Specialist, sure it can be annoying sometimes to proc, but basically the same thing you bring up here can be done with weapon specialist. You want to stack up kills and wait to unload a massive hit with high attack speed against a boss? Go for it. You want to get use out of the melee side of in between seeing bosses? it actively lets you do so, and after 1 ammo spent, you get 10 full seconds of guaranteed melee effectiveness, before ever having to think about ‘am I getting any bonus from my keystone?’. And you’re only ever one hot swap shot away from getting full benifits again, even if you want to save the stacks for an unload against a Monstrosity (while still getting the same reload speed and fire rate boost, and crit CHANCE, meaning you’ll actually get a crit verses hoping for one, even if it doesn’t do bonus damage).

Meanwhile, you look at Terminus, and it’s basically just a ranged damage amp with extra steps. You will never have enough melee stacks to ever do anything with past 2-3 swings of said weapon, and the amount of ammo you have to waste to keep up that bonus is obscene, especially given the Arbite has no active way for them to recover it. This thusly results in you just never using your ranged weapon outside of high damage unloads, which at that point, you’re just doing a strictly worse Executioner Order Cosplay.

Because Terminus Warrant gives you:

  • 15% ranged damage (other stats largely irrelevant if one’s using a boltgun, and don’t factor into damage besides)
  • 15% fire rate (so you’re burning more shots faster and seeing more damage, but no active per shot/ammo conservation increase)
  • 25% Critical and Weakspot damage increase, thusly meaning the modifiers for that weapon are increased by that amount, not the damage outright (so in turn the damage actually resulting from these modifiers are drastically lower, verses say, Soulguilt Scan which actually increases strength so the holistic damage increases by that amount).
  • 20% reload speed if you take that too (which shouldn’t matter to much since we are looking for an ultra fast melt, but hay you can get back to burning even MORE ammo faster!)

This all compared to:

  • 50% Ability Recharge (so your Nuncio-Aquila debuff is ready more often, thusly making it more functional since you can maybe actually have it in the right place to get your burst damage off)
  • 30% PERMANENT damage and DR against Monstrosities
  • 10% further damage and movement speed on dog pounce (which will happen at the start of most boss engagements, resulting in an effortless melt)
  • Further situational buffs occurring based on further talent point expenditure and if you/your dog can get a quick marked elite/specialist kill before hand, not something to rely on but still a further 15% damage amp with 10% crit chance, 25% crit damage and 10% rending on the table in those circumstances.

All of the buffs above applying to BOTH your melee AND your range at any given moment, and staying active through out the entire fight/never falling off no matter how many shots you need to fire or how many hits you need/how many monstrosities you might need to deal with in quick succession (Hi havoc/Auric Mortis Trials later waves), meanwhile Terminus Warrant just gives you Ranged Bonuses effectively…for 30 hits…or effectively 2 mags, that’s it. You get like, maybe 1 swing of melee bonus at any given moment after shooting at a couple specials or elites, and then 2-3 swings after dealing with a monstrosity. Meanwhile the Execution Order Arbite has thrown out more CA’s than you, has done more damage than you, and has a strictly better dog than you.

As you can have up to 40% increased damage with a situational further 15% just for putting the same 4 points in your ability as Terminus Warrant does (assuming you take reload speed) for 15% damage and some minor crit and weakspot bonuses, and the ability to more efficiently waste ammo. This, isn’t really a great trade off to me, especially since you have to ‘waste’ further points grabbing Street Smarts to get to it (though in this case you are probably grabbing it either way regardless to get to Monstrosity Hunter, or going down the right side for Cower, Miscreants! and Target Priority if one values those). Granted as stated you are probably putting points down the middle to get to said monstrosity damage anyway, but at least with Execution Order you have the choice, verses Terminus where it’s required.

There just isn’t much of a reason ever to have Terminus unless you’re actively using both sides, but to do so requires so much ammo investment that you’re basically strictly using it with a Braced Autogun/shotgun or not using it at all. Though I will say I also went the path of looking at Terminus initially and going ‘this will be great for monstrosity melting!’ but after using it for a mission I realized ‘wait…Execution Order is just strictly better for this’, and after I swapped I got better melts AND an overall better experience since the rest of my kit actually functioned along side it, and I wasn’t dumping nearly as many shots/conserving ammo a LOT better.

Thus, I feel this keystone definitely needs help along with OP, I’d personally say though just make it easier to get Melee stacks. Maybe melee stacks are awarded based on the amount of bullets in a mag (so 20 or below you get 5-10 per hit, between 21-45 3-5 stacks, and then 1 stack when at 45+, or something like that). Then the melee side of it can actually be used, and the keystone becomes pretty functional. But for the moment, with it being in it’s ‘basically only a ranged bonus’ state, it’s just E Order but worse.

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This keystone is also done no favors by being the latest victim of the UI buff bar bug where one of the stack counts won’t show up.

Really starting to think I need to pull the trigger on custom hud and better buff mods.

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Yeah, the buff UI bug is pretty annoying.

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I did the penance and don’t see myself ever using it again. I found it’s real easy to get melee stacks up with 3-barrel shotgun style play though.

But I don’t like micro-management keystones in the first place and the other ones are just way better. The highlight elites one is amazing and honestly feels more powerful on a range focussed build.

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Wtf do you mean? It’s like Weapon specialist but actually good.

Weapon spec is way too clunky and restrictive, TW is just good.

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I feel this is likely a ‘preferred level of difficulty’ sort of difference, if one enjoys wasting shots into the wave on a consistent bases and also is only really ever fighting up to 5 enemies at a time, I can see your conclusion being reached.

But when the screen is full of enemies and one swipe of your high cleave weapon consumes 10-15 stacks of your melee buff, a comment like yours isn’t really anything but delusional.

As Weapon Specialist, at the low low cost of 1 bullet (more often than not, or 'the amount of ammo it takes to kill one thing), gives you a full melee buff for a guaranteed 10 seconds, and if you ever need to swap back to range? well you get every single bonus of Weapon Specialist at max effectiveness outside of fire rate given you more than likely got at least 1 kill before needing to swap, thus you shoot the special you need to, get the FULL BENEFIT of the melee buff again the moment you want to swap back, and can just shoot whatever else you need to before swapping back and dealing with the wave some more.

Meanwhile Terminus Warrant? Clunky af in comparison. ‘Ohh I’m dealing with the wave but I ran out of Melee stacks, uhh let me swap to my gun and just waste ammo into the wave until I get back above 15 melee stacks, ohh? something my melee has to deal with is in front of me? (ie heavy armor, given you probably brought an ad clear gun or else you’ll just be a worse ammo hog than a Gun Lugger Ogryn), heck I don’t have enough stacks, gotta try and ignore it instead of deal with it until I have them. Cool, I got the melee stacks, let me melee a few times and, op, there’s a special I have to shoot or die, let me do that real quick, ohh, now I’m at 12 melee stacks and not above 15 for my attack speed bonus, guess I gotta waste a few more shots again. Ok, finally above 15 again, let me swap and hit a few mo-ohh there’s another special again, let me deal with tha-’. So on and so on an so forth.

If you’re trying to use the keystone ‘optimally’, you’re either wasting copious amounts of ammo and being drastically less effective the entire while to keep your melee stacks even close to comparable to the number of enemies in front of you, or keeping your stacks ‘perfectly balanced’ to keep the effects active you need/want and running into the issue CHEDDAR pointed out where the UI bar just hates you and won’t even show them half the time. Meanwhile WS gives all it’s buffs off of 1 kill, has them active long enough you’ll easily be able to ‘trade back and forth’ without any issues, and thusly inherently works for basically any weapon combination and any engagement, while Warrant strictly works with shotguns and the braced autogun, and even then, you’re gunning down entire waves with full clips of ammunition that should really not have had shots pumped into them just to keep bonuses active that the Arbite hardly even needs/can be better gained from the two other keystones.

I’d look at the bullet points above for a more ‘weapon centric’ comparison of the effects between it and Execution Order, but it’s night and day, and I didn’t even bring up Forceful as that keystone is so laughably broken Warrant can’t even try to hold a candle to it. So even if one tries to say ‘ohh it’s better than WS’, it’s still immensely worse than the other two options you likely have ready access to, bar none.

This all not even mentioning something I just noticed, but with the new hotfix today, they removed Remote Detonation counting as a ‘ranged attack’. So the one used case I was actually minorly enjoying using it with (pointing at my dog, hitting a crap tone of things and nuking all my ranged stacks for free, then going back to meleeing), doesn’t work anymore. It no longer counts/triggers Warrant, making the keystone even MORE useless.

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I’m struggling to undestand if you are delusional or do you gaslight people on purpose.

Surely, if you play malice then weapon specialist is good. You always have enough damage and there’s barely any targets to shoot, while a lot or weak enemies to stack ranged spec.

Meanwhile on aurics weapon spec is a joke. Yeah, one empowered shot with which you can’t do anything. You may waste it into trash mob to gain buff and return to melee or shoot elites, hopin that you will oneshot them. And you not always will, thus wasting time, ammo and buffs.
Not even mentioning that melee buff from weapon spec is laughable and ranged buffs need to have several stacks to be somewhat good, giving you one guaranteed crit. And all this in punishingly small window.

Terminus warrant? Good design. You get good buffs for decent amout of time, without ridiculus force swap, because in reality you never have to swap as often as weapon spec requires to maintains it. With TW you can swap anytime and lose almost nothing.

The only thing weapon spec it good for is reload abuse. Otherwise it needs a buff. For example ranged spec working the whole duration instead of single shot. Only THEN is will be somewhat good.

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I’m going to assume this is hyperbole and you aren’t showing your ass about not using WS.

I exclusively use my doom guy WS build on my veteran and it is far from as bad as you make it sound. It may be fairly limited in utility, but a good double barrel build is fun as hell and plenty viable for pre-havoc anything, even C-I-VI if you play smart.
The guaranteed crit at 3 measly trash kills and the reload node bring far more to the table than any modifier for TW. In fact, even Writ of Judgement has greater potential to run out in “one empowered shot” than the timed activation of WS.

Terminus Warrant required much more mindful management (say that 10x fast) than WS for little gain. You can argue TW just being a “nice to have” that you shouldn’t mind meticulously is better, but that’s a different point than saying it is objectively better or WS is shite.

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and again here by bring the exmaple how do you use it with weapon that abuses reloads.

I run it too with knife and bolt pistol, since it’s only viable option for melee vet, but it doesn’t mean that it is good

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What? There’re plenty of viable options for melee Vet.

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“Using it with weapons that are good with it is bad”

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Yeah, double barrel, pistols… maybe plasma to abuse realoads. Meanwhile TW is good with everything. And still better than WS

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Just, completely incorrect. TW is literally only functional with weapons that can horde clear, Braced Auto, Combat Shotgun, and the Arbite’s Shotgun, with Shredder Pistol as an ‘Honorable mention’. Every other weapon is either to single target or requires WAY to much ammo investment to keep up the Melee damage bonus, resulting in just a strictly worse Execution Order in literally every way as you’re functionally only using the weapon part of it (again, see this comment)

Meanwhile, what you mean to say is Weapon Specialist is usable with literally every weapon, since it doesn’t require anything from the user besides being able to get 1 single kill with the ranged weapon of choice. I got builds using Weapon Specialist for basically every weapon, from Lasguns to Laspistols to Helbores to Vigilant Autoguns, and even the token ones using Plasma Gun and Boltgun. Because All you need to do is point weapon into crowd, shoot a couple times, then insta swap back to your melee and go to town for 10 full seconds. Meanwhile (using the boltgun example), you try and use Terminus Warrant, Dump a full mag into the wave, get 15-20 Terminus Stacks for a FULL CLIP! and then swap back to your melee, swing (lets be generous) three times with increased attack speed. All the stacks are gone, and you gotta dump a FULL CLIP of Boltgun ammo again just to see the attack speed bonus.

Meanwhile WS, I fire one Boltgun shot, instantly have the melee bonus, go back to my melee and kill everything, not to mention having One Motion now and being able to swap between literally any weapon type like a gliding maelstrom. You can get the same reload speed bonus as Terminus with Fleeting Fire (while synergizing with Tactical Reload thanks to Always Prepared), free toughness for simply activating either of the two specialties, (instead of 5% extra toughness per melee kill…woow…), and as CHEDDAR pointed out, a free crit on your next ranged shot after 2-3 kills, while getting attack speed and dodge distance for your melee, making you insanely safe even running around with a Powersword with low Mobility.

This all just confirming to me you’ve got to be either a Heresy andy that glues themselves to their gun the whole game, spams ‘I need Ammo’, and will only ever swap off of it to hit enough things to get your gun buffed again. Or you just walk around with the OP class that is Arbite, literally ignore your Keystone entirely, and say ‘it’s good guys I don’t even notice the keystone doing anything but it’s good because I’m doing good with it!’, in which case I deeply implore you to use Execution Order/Forceful and see all the true levels of broken you’ve been completely missing out on. This keystone is heavily stifling if one tries to actually engage with it, verses heavily rewarding like WS or any of the other Arbite Keystones. And even after making a good few builds with it that ‘utilize it to it’s fullest’, I can only say ‘the gameplay loop for it feels awful in comparison to anything else I’ve used, and I’ll only ever use it again for a brief game of novelty just because it somewhat enables Combat Shotguns not to have to take Manstopper for cleave’.

(though now that I think about it, this would all be ‘fixed’ if Terminus consumed Ranged stacks on hit like it does now, but it consumed melee stacks on swing instead of on hit. Suddenly you’d have up to 30 guaranteed swings and the keystone would instantly be insanely good/very usable. But 30 hits is literally nothing, you blow through that in one Arbite Maul push heavy swing combo, and that just feels awful every singe time. )

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I got the related penances completed before they lowered the requirements, so I spent a bit of time playing around with them.

As far as getting and maintaining stacks, it felt best with shotguns. Regular ones, not the Arbites versions. I don’t know how much effect it had, but eh. I was able to keep going between stacks and often could keep them each at 15 with hot swaps.

As someone else said, I find these micro-management keystones just annoying. I really have no desire to play with it again, even if it gets buffed.

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