I feel like bringing back shielded trash mobs would help here. They’d both limit the effectiveness of just holding M1 with an automatic gun while also eating a lot of cleave for your melee and so force you to weave in more pushes. In general l think their removal is a significant part of what simplifies DT horde combat compared to VT2.
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You are missing my point. I agree that shooting build is harder than a melee build. Just that horde clear weapons clear hordes with much less effort (and usually time) than meleeing them does.
While it may be second nature to us at this point, it is still objectively more mechanically involved than shooting them.
Pull out your melee weapon??? Ig if you’re only saying “you’re only allowed to use one!” than sure. But even than unless there are melee elites mixed in I don’t see how on a properly built staff psyker that enemies are getting to you in any meaningful amount.
Also if you’re running full backline staff Psyker, and your team doesn’t intercept them or they get to you there are some bigger problems at play.
This would be a great way to go about it, although if they didn’t want to work to add more enemies just make enemy armor much more important. Have Bruisers in Flak armor be a larger road bump than they are currently, or at least spawn large Bruiser groups more consistently.
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Just wanted to say that I use Lawbringer shotgun as it’s my favorite weapon on Veteran. Scattershot and Man-Stopper with +Damage vs Unarmored and +Crit Chance is my setup along with Deadshot and Opening Salvo talents and it 2 shots whole hordes, even on Damnation. I’ve never actually ran out of ammo or come very close to despite not running Survivalist and using it to snipe Snipers and Gunners. Luv me Lawbringer 
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Hmmm. Fair question. How about this proposal:
There are 4 hidden classes of ammo. For the sake of discussion and contemplation, maybe even a category for easy programming. They all pickup out of the same ammo boxes so no new player complexity. But weapons could be sorted into each bucket and ammo recieved on pickup could be modified as a block based ok the category their in as well as a weapon by weapon basis. I mean you could do it all bespoke like now too, i suppose. But i like to simplify.
- Strong horde clear (flamer)
- Horde clear (light IAGs, mg4 las)
- Anti-armor (bolter)
- Strong anti-armor (plasma)
I realize fully that DT has a lot of gradiation and i dont want to eliminate that but just broadly speaking this allows an easier way to conceptualize which guns need easy access to lots of ammo and which should naturally have more limitation on constant firing.
Isn’t that kinda the problem with hordes though? They’re effortless in melee for 1 player as it is and melee has infinite ammo. They’re supposed to be a time and mobility sink not a real threat. So getting horde clear ranged right is more about TTK than safety.
Things that are bad against specialists are always going to be last pick because specialists are run enders. So that just needs to generally not be a thing i think. But good point.
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I guess, but since melee is second nature it’s just way easier to do.
I’m happy if I get 1 teammate/game that looks out for their teammates and not just jumps into the middle of the enemy group or runs off in some random direction and all that. 4 solo player balance goes hard.
Never! /jk
I totally misread your post as pure sarcasm.
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TBH while they have the potential to do this I don’t think many of them actually do due to restrictive cleave. Graia brauto and autopistol both being limited to hitting 1 trash mob per bullet while taking multiple bullets to kill a trash mob well I mean that’s… not particularly efficient or quick compared to a heap of melee weapons.
For the ones that do have good cleave though yeah I get your point.
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Autopistol having 0 cleave would be fine if we had a 3rd slot or offhand option. But the rifles really need at least 1-2 cleave on trash. Autoguns are pretty high caliber from what i recall of the lore (and the models). Bunch of 7.62x51mm REAL FING N(e)ATO ROUNDS pouring out of 50 round tripple stack mags is pretty fun and more than suffiicent for punching through some slimy skin and bones groaner or two.
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And what to do vs a pack of 12 crushers on something like CIVI? Ineffectually load your special shell and watch the crushers with their new level of stagger resistance march on towards you?
Like I’m not denying that the horde clear guns clear hordes. I’m saying that increased ammo scarcity means you bring less to the team when you take the ammo box versus the guy with a plasma rifle who can drop armor and still clear hordes with his melee.
I’m not even personally accusing you of not bringing something to the team, I’m just pointing out the fact that ammo scarcity inevitably drives people in the direction of using ammo efficient armor piercing guns because that is what the game starts to demand of you. But this is only if you want to be a “do it all” player, if you’ve got a team with a psyker who loves brain bursting, than yeah, you’re great to be horde clear!
Perhaps the answer is to give the horde clear guns a level of armor penetration, or to make it through talents. Unknown. Just pointing out the shift it the meta I’ve noticed.
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Imo for me what the Auto pistol seems like its intended to be, or at least what makes the most sense for me is a weapon you use to suppress enemies while you run at them. However, it has neither stripped down or Run n Gun. So balance would always seem to suggest that it will either be a worse or better brauto with higher mobility.
Imo I would hate this, we really don’t need this.
Isn’t this just not changing how anything is balanced now? Every weapon getting back a different amount of ammo based on what it is? Because if it’s just a numbers tweak I’m sure that’s fine but it doesn’t seem like anything new.
Secretly we’re all hoping for a chain sword/bolt pistol option.
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This is only really true to a point. Several of the best ranged weapons in V2 are not traditional special killers. And one only needs remember back to the days of the flamer meta to see the same in Darktide. If the power is there sniping is negotiable.
It could solve a lot of issues and implement new build niches; if it was well executed. Rather a moot point though since I don’t believe the game has enough free controller keybinds to execute the concept for consoles, which means it will never happen.
As it is now every weapon just gets back a percentage of its reserve ammo. Which is a big part of the problem for a lot of weapons that either suffer from poor ammo efficiency and/or low reserves.
Honestly, Reg’s suggestion seems like a remarkably Fatsharkian idea: attempting to solve an issue in a way that requires additional complexities that are hidden and unexplained.
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Its not really anything new. I’m kinda just reframing the conversation into a categorical framework to make it easier to play with. FS could implement but its fine if its more of a guideline than a hard system.
I think we need offhand/dual wielding for sure. But 3rd slot could be a fun class mechanic.
I might have been here too long. Have i absorbed the fatshark ethos?
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I feel that putting ammo sustain blessings on ranged is a mistake (VT2 comes to mind), if you want to encourage melee, melee should have the ammo blessings.
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The mistake is that Fatshark has been all over the goddamn place with how much they want players to be able to shoot their guns. The only thing that had been consistent is veteran being an ammo bag for the team, but now they’ve decided to go back on that design.
Imo, the choice is clear. Either they go back to an ammo paradigm that works, even if it’s not ideal and has it’s own major flaws. Or they bite the bloody bullet and rebalance ammo usage and generation holistically from the ground up.
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Yes, and on Zealot the throwing knife can help close that gap. However for something like a Brauto, unloading into a specalist feels like you are shooting frozen peas not bullets. Maybe if they gave it better cleave into hordes that wouldn’t feel like an issue, but for me that would be greatly appreciated. And much more inclined to take those weapons.
Additionally it would have to come with so many different balancing changes that I don’t think it’s really worth entertaining as something that’s possible. The most I would expect would be Saltzpyre Rapier alt fire or Saltz Bounty Hunter ult, or Bardin’s crankgun ult as “3rd weapons.”
This is what I am desperately fiending for. Alongside a human shield weapon (give me my Suppresion Shield and Power Sword NOW)
Just in general I want melee and ranged weapons to complement each other more. I feel like that can create such a fun flow and should be leaned into more. Stuff like Point Blank on the revolver should be moved to melee weapons, etc etc. So then on melee weapons you can choose between making it more effective or buffing your ranged weapon, and vice versa.
But veteran still is an ammo bag, just not as big of one.
Also the question remains on where Psyker should stand in all of this.
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Apart. As is normal for vile witches.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You know my opinion on the braced autos. The infantry autoguns are too similar to both their braced and headhunter cousins and end up eating their lunch by just being better all around. It also doesn’t help that bracing doesn’t really improve accuracy at all on a weapon that requires headshots. But that’s getting back to a general “what the **** is this ********ing gun supposed to be good at?” design conundrum that is way deeper than even the ammo problem.
Ideally Point Blank-like effects should be on both melee and ranged weapons so players have a choice about which weapon they are sacrificing effectiveness on to make the one better. Not dissimilar to choosing between specing into melee or ranged specific talents.
Seems like it’s been downsized to more of an ammo scrotum.
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There really should have been only 3 auto guns (not counting the pistol), with the fast fire rate one being braced and the high damage one being a head hunter.
However I do feel giving brautos 1-2 cleave could carve a niche out for them. Granted, it wouldn’t be a great niche. But it would technically exist. As for Head Hunters I have no idea what to do about them. They are also outclassed by Lucius las on Vet. And with DT map design, and how easy it can be to get into melee, the extra range isn’t as important as it could be.
Still imo Peril management on Psyker needs to be actually perilous and not the boredom simulator it is now.
But yes they are disgusting mutants and should be excised from the game at FS’s earliest convenience.
Technically speaking they do have a niche: higher suppression values. It’s just that suppressing enemies is yet another mostly vestigial feeling game system that doesn’t really amount to much. (See: coherency, corruption, probably half a dozen other things I’m forgetting about.)
I wouldn’t pin psyker’s peril as their primary problem area.
In theory I believe the cast times and venting times are supposed to produce the danager vis-à-vis positioning and time spent. But that is out of whack due to staff design and the build options psyker has to ignore those considerations. Try playing shield/DD voidstrike without warp flurry and I think you’ll see what I mean.
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The Agrippina brauto does have cleave, and it’s one of the reasons why it’s actually decent as a generalist ranged weapon. Space AK does what space AK does.
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Yeah it would be great if that was a core mechanic to get into melee with ranged enemies, rather than just making it harder to hit enemies. I’m fine with Coherency not being a focus anymore, and I think corruption is fine right now. Even if the only time you notice it is when a Poxburster blwos you up or you get stuck in a small room with a Beast of Nurgle.
I play a DD Voidstrike build with Warp Nexus and Surge and still have zero issues with with quelling or charging. Maybe it’s because I have experience and know how to position well but it really doesn’t feel like I am doing much.