Just wanted to chime in here again. I’ve said that here before but shotguns are probably about the most underestimated & misunderstood weapons I know. And I get it, I really do. I mean I was right there with everyone else thinking them mid at best for my whole first year since release. It wasn’t until I finally got Man-Stopper & Flechette and started zealously testing & experimenting on them, when I realized their real potential.
I’ve done a ton of detailed posts about shotties before, but the problem is they always get too verbose on account of just how many mechanics are involved that most people don’t even know about. But in short, a vet with the right build & Agripinaa can do more dmg & the same cleave with regular ADS shots than plasma ever could in any build. I already covered one example of a similar Kantrael above. A Lawbringer can stack massive AoE CC & bleed with decent cleave while combining that with autocrit precision shots at max range etc. Just as an example.
If someone only believes scoreboards then sure I routinely top them, but that’s not evidence of anything at all. I usually top them on any other half viable build anyway while doing the most objectives and collecting 2x+ more materials than the rest of the team combined… it’s not exactly a high bar. And I promise don’t mean this in some douchy egotistical way. I’ve played like crazy since release and my main psyker is almost lvl 1k, while most ppl on T5+ pubs now are ~lvl 100 or less. It’s not a fair contest nor something anyone should ever use to judge or look down on others.
But the point is, people just don’t know how to use shotguns and/or they don’t have the T2 blessings. Likely both.
I couldn’t keep it short … Anyway, to elaborate a little more:
Every shotgun has a completely different spread pattern and crit / weakspot dmg bonus depending on hip, ADS or specials. The specials also have their own extra utility. Using shotguns effectively means you use all 3 firing modes, often anticipating in advance what you need to do next.
For example with Kantrael the special has massive spread, infinite cleave and stacks burn, but does very little direct dmg. You use it to set up mass DoTs & save ammo, or stack Scattershot to near guarantee a crit on your next regular shot, or stop & stagger specials and set them up for BoF or an easy headshot. But since on ADS it has a very tight spread and the burn has no max distance but depends on pellets hit, you can also use 1-2 specials to focus down snipers etc. at max range, or even just to stack up burn on a boss for passive dmg well exceeding the value of 2 regular shots again for that economy.
Lawbringer is similar but no the same. The Scattershot & Flechette example I used above can spam specials for crit AoE CC & bleeds only, or do 1 special on group to stack Scatter → then ADS & autocrit to oneshot some distant priority target, repeat. Or on the second phase you can just use hipshot’s spread for a compromise and deal with a few closer specials and whatever trash is there to keep Scatter mostly stacked for your next shot.
Especially on a vet with Deadshot, combining hipfire for spread & stacking & short-mid range targets while recovering stamina, then burning that stamina on ADS crits against priorities especially for Agripinaa’s insane ~x2 crit-weakspot dmg (on ADS) is literally basics to get the most out of the weapon. It both means you’ll never burn out of stamina while doing absolutely insane dmg where it counts. And ofc. since reload speed affects specials, vets have a lot of talents to really take those to the next level too.
Shotguns are in this ridiculous place where if people knew how to use them, they’d get nerfed SO fast and deservedly too. But since they don’t, the meta is still Full Bore & No Respite, and most everyone thinks they suck or are mid at best.
Theres enough ammo to only use ranged. But not enough ammo that the rest of the team needs to give most of the drops to the ranged-only player.
Ammo drop quantity is ight.
I feel like you’ve lost the plot in that we were talking about ammo economy, and that people are going to opt for guns with ammo penetration on higher difficulties now that ammo is more scarce.
I don’t really see it as a problem. If your ranged weapon sucks at killing armour, take a melee weapon or blitz that can do it.
It’s the ranged weapons that are supposed to be good at trash clear but ALSO have terrible ammo economy (like the flamer) that have real problems.
There’s no “forcing in a direction” with having a generous ammo economy. The people who want to shoot all day already do that, they just compete with their team to suck up all the ammo on the map to do it.
I think the problem with brauto balancing is that if you buff it into a category that Shooter Vet has a good time with it Zealot would just make it OP, so the balancing have to be Vet side.
I play a lot of Agri brauto on Zealot and without any damage mod (I’m running Stripped down and Hit and Run) I just match any Ranged Vet (even the good ones) on ranged damage output.
I see your point and agree on Agrip, I don’t think that’s as true for graia which I see as the more trash clear tuned variant. I think onslaught vs FotF goes more in the onslaught direction for graia due to volume of fire and lower flak mod making it less effective as bursting crushers during FotF duration.
Wouldn’t really advocate for Agrip buffs anyway other than fixing close range tag.
For Graia I would like to see much smoother brace swapping so goofy stuff like calculated deadshot dumps become more practical, and at least enough cleave to start penetrating a poxwalker with a stack or two of Deathspitter, if not at base. I don’t think those changes would suddenly make Zealot want to run graia and become a powerhouse with it. It kinda just does a job he has no interest in filling with his ranged weapon in the first place. Heck I don’t think there’s a reason for graia to exist at all currently other than getting a buzz from seeing a high reserve number briefly before dumping it quickly to mid effect. Agrip just does effectively everything you could want from it better.
To my mind he likes brauto, specifically Agrip currently, for even more free gunner diving and not having to try to fence overwhelming groups of ragers with melee weapons that can’t stagger or control them easily.
So yeah I think they could pretty safely buff graia a bit to more effectively use its large ammo pool without unleashing any balance headaches.
Though it’s kinda irrelevant now since even Vet currently wouldn’t think to try and sustain a ranged weapon mostly suited for trash clear.
You mean how you can literally do it with braced autoguns, plasma, stubbers, correctly build shotguns, kickback or rumbler? Is 700 ammo not enough? Why don’t we make it 2000 ammo reserve, or just infinite. I suppose only then the complains will stop.
Regarding “gunlugger”, stubbers and few other weapons like kickback simply have too good ammo economy. I wont even go into the silly psyker staves and abilities which just remove whole hordes in seconds and require no ammo or real resource management.
That last thing we need in Darktide is more playstyles which are about pressing LMB in the general direction of enemies. The last thing I would like is for Darktide to turn into another generic, brainless first /3rd person shooter where resource management is a pretended mechanic for all classes. We have staff / assasil / shriek psyker, plasma bois and gunlugger builds for that.
I think the relevant difference between the shotgun and the plasmagun etc is that the shotguns atleast need you to experiment and minmax to get to that level and there’s things they just can’t do.
You won’t be killing a crusher with a kantrael or lawbringer period. I’m not saying crushers are a huge threat or anything, just that it’s a relevant weakness since it now necessiates you to rely on your team or pick a different melee weapon that can do it, even if those situations aren’t very common. It’s a compelling tradeoff imo because it either means you have to specialize or you pick a different melee weapon that covers that weakness.
Meanwhile guns like the revolver and plasmagun don’t have an equivalent weakness or niche: they might not be as good at killing poxwalkers, but literally every single melee weapon does that great, and they still destroy mixed hordes, specials and elites, so there isn’t actually ever a tradeoff involved. Hence why i think shotgun balance is fine, but plasmaguns and revolvers are stupid OP.
Oh right! Those posts were meant to address the idea that shotguns were not ammo efficient (or that they were mid, which they’re not ).
Basically, if you use that meta Full Bore & No Respite and dump your Kantrael into 1 mob at a time, then yes ofc. it’s going to be a bad gun with atrociously bad ammo efficiency.
But if you instead for example use Scattershot & Man-Stopper and place your shots so you can cleave through and kill 30 specials & ragers & everything else every 1-2 shots, take advantage of the special for AoE & boss DoT’s or ranged, use ADS headshots for oggies & monsters etc. then it’s going to be a fantastic weapon with insane clearing & dmg and a very sustainable ammo economy.
This same idea applies to most weapons imo, even if it isn’t as extreme as it is with shotguns. Mixed horde clear is extremely valuable, and personally I favor that far over crushers in almost all my builds. Not just because they’re far more likely to happen, but simply because even 20 crushers aren’t going to be a threat even if no-one has anti-armor tools, as long as you have the room to move safely.
Edit:
I guess what I’m trying to say is that imo much of the ammo economy issues comes from how people intuit their use. High armor pen weapons are simple: You hit the targets its meant for, use melee for everything else if for no other reason than because the gun is too slow to deal with the rest even if you did have ammo. This happens naturally, and since armor is rare the ammo consumption is naturally limited.
But with weapons with variable armor pen & horde clear potential that usage gets blurry. Most of them exceed melee and work against just about everything the game throws at you, all from the safety of range. These guns are actively begging to be used all the time, so it’s instead up to the player to constantly manage that economy and weigh the pros and cons for whether that cost is worth it or not. And even if those guns are bad against armor, many of them might be worth it in a pinch when safety is important and you absolutely need to do something.
I get it, but I just think that having having +55% damage (AiB, PtU, IJ) on Zealot against Infected and +35% at close range in general is impossible to match on Vet. Come to think of it, it’s also true for any most (Flachette shotgun is probably an exception due to the autocrit) other human horde clear weapon.
Anyway, I don’t really know how good Graia brauto work on Zealot compared to Vet haven’t played it on Zealot in a long time, so maybe I’ll try it out again.
PS: Considering FtoF I run it with Crusher, Knife, or Caxe so I don’t need to burn it to boost agri against Ogryn Crushers. I’d rather see Onslaught replaced with AiB, than it being a balancing factor.
I’ve read your posts and I’m not seeing it. You can sweat on WS with flachette+manstopper and only quickswap to burn the autocrit and sometimes get a good cleave and double or triple kill on some specials or maybe IDK you can play Voidstrike psyker have better horde clear, similar “feel good” multi-kills and you have infinite ammo, but I guess Voidstrike is also OP, everything is.
Rant
Whatever, I guess everything is OP now and the only ranged playstyle we can play on Vet is quickswap because “muh ammo economy” while you can bust whole day with Psyker for twice the efficiency. Meanwhile I haven’t met a Vet in game since the update that I wouldn’t just match on ranged damage on basically any other class. What a joke.
Tabletop back in my day solved this discrepency by giving succesful melee the advantage of extra kills via morale effects only applied to melee while guns had to do the work the hard way. Basically routing the enemy in melee. I dont think anyone wants to see that since we all want to actually kill our enemies.
But personally i think it would make sense to just not worry so much about ammo. Even when the vet has ammo for his horde clear gun i pretty rarely don’t get to melee hordes if i want. Ammo should be a concern more for anti armor weapons than horde clear weapons. Running out of ammo should still be a mechanic because it creates pressure but let those who want to shoot hordes shoot them without feeling like a burden.
This whole debate could easily be fixed by giving veterans access to power fists and power sabers that allow them to effectively melee heavy armor so you can invert your loadout from typical and just have fun. Plus it would allow some ranged weapons to just be bad at armor without rending all over the place.
To that point with the buffs (and my habits/skill level) the MK4 chaxe kinda proves this out because before the survivalist nerf i was running an MG4 lasgun with it and it was quite fun just blasting at everything not wearing armor all game long and no one complained that i ruined their fun either even when i was topfragging. So i vote for less restrictive ammo for horde clear ranged weapons.
i´m pretty certain it wouldn´t be feasible from a gameplay perspective, but if there was “real” ammo (as in fitting calibers for only certain guns) much of the ammo economy could be restructured.
for example have different ammo clips, magazines, drums, boxes and only pick-able for that gun across the map, hence give only certain guns the ability to refill at certain steps down the match.
maybe ogryn grenades are placed where heavy ordnance is located (added) or certain crates only carry bullets for the automatic rifles etc.
beltfed crates/stubber, drums/ripper, clips/shredder etc.
add new enemy supply types that lorewise carry ammo to their allies only to be intercepted by us rejects and repurposed.
like i said, nothing to be effective in the heat of the moment, unless you learn the map patterns anew by heart, but a change in ammo economy nontheless.
Agreed. If only to give each weapon a distinct looking ammo pickup instead of the ugly bag and one size fits all clip.
Yes, like a loot rat. Perhaps give gunner groups a chance to have extra ammo that they’ll drop upon death aswell. Also, perhaps give the small ammo clips/stashes the ability to be saved and taking up the stimm slot aswell for quick boost of saved ammunition later on the run.
I had a similar idea. Altough the ammo stashes would be placed in makeshift guard posts and have enemies guarding the ammunition instead of having it just lying around or having events tied to giving these ammo stashes, like an elevator coming down with an opened ammo crate and perhaps a grenade or two.
I have a theory: The ammo regen aura nerf was in preparation for new blessings and/or talents that help with the ammo economy. We already had stuff like this in Vermintide 2: Refund ammo on headshot, regen some ammo on crit, certain talents regenerated ammo when specific conditions met.
By default the game spawns enough ammo for everyone but if that get’s hogged/stolen, which is what usually happens in pubs, that’s where the problems begin to unfold.
Some options to chew over regarding ammo specifically:
1. Resupply calldowns from helldivers universe, heh.
2. Checkpoints have ammo/stims/medkits (much like L4D)
3. New Sidepaths that lead towards ammo rooms, enough of a distance to cause a horde or have a patrol/boss trigger. Risk/reward scenario.
4. Hidden stache rooms that require explosives or tools to open, much like a breakable wall a boss will spawn through. The empty rooms they come from are just sad.
5. Scavenge ammo from dead traitors, no need to get weapon type specific, just a general % ammo pickup they drop when defeated. Maybe even stim chance to drop or grenade.
Anyway, to elaborate a little more:
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