Preface:
I’d like to open first with the clarification that the “Comperhensive” in this post title is a somewhat self aware. Most of the Darktide Content Creators that I’ve seen have played it safe, showing off the Arbites but not really commenting too deeply on how the mechanics of the class interact with the health and balance of the rest of the game. And this is honestly the smart and safe choice. None of the highest leveled players in Darktide have the hours in Arbites that they do in any other class. Making any broad statements about a class that hasn’t really had time to settle, especially before it’s even hit its first patch, is a good way to waste time and potentially lose credibility. That being said, as I’ve recently been doing breakdowns of the classes that have been in the game since launch, I want to share my thoughts on the Arbites and where I think they’re meant to exist amongst the roles of Darktide’s Classes.
As per usual, there will be a TL;DR for those short on time or patience. If you’ve seen any of my other “Comprehensive” Breakdowns regarding the Zealot or the Veteran, you have an idea of what this is going to be like, but unlike those, I’m not suggesting any kind of rework. Instead, this post is purely a breakdown of information and mechanics regarding Darktides newest class and my personal thoughts on the balance of them. It’s my hope that some of the ideas presented here might help others voice/define their own thoughts on the class to better help indicate to Fatshark what does and doesn’t feel good in regards to playing the class. Balancing is ultimately requires iteration, and I want to approach this with the same respect that I"ve tried to maintain for the other two classes I’ve posted about.
Defining the Structure:
I’ll admit, this was difficult. To be blunt, the Arbites right now is easily the strongest class in the game. Being the strongest doesn’t have to mean that the Arbites is the best at everything, but the balancing of the class is such that even the areas they’re weakest in, they’re still extremely capable. They have builds for horde clear and control, ones for boss damage, and ones for elite hunting, and ones for sustain. They can really fill nearly any position if built right. And they can do so nearly as good if not better than the classes that specialize in those areas. While it’s true that every class should be capable of boss damage, or hoard clear, or elite and specialist dueling, and even clutching, if a class is extremely capable if not the best at all of them, then nothing about them stands out aside from that capability. Now, normally I would break down the class by playstyle first, and then the purpose of the nodes. However, considering that the Arbites is newly added, and the class is strong as to have no obvious role it can’t fill on a team, I want to start with purpose first. Looking at the class, you can roughly break up the Class Tree like so:
But this is only a generalization; a cursory glance. Not every Node in the Sustain Category is actually a sustain node. If you break up the class per node, the position of nodes by purpose looks more like this:
Your generalist damage nodes (the excessive force) are things that will give you damage for general actions. Take “Withering Fire” as example. Everyone is going to reload their weapon at some point; the node doesn’t speak to a specific playstyle like the “Duty” Nodes do. As you can see, those Generalist Damage Nodes are mixed fairly evenly with your Sustain Nodes, and both exist on this extremely open grid pattern. It’s not hard to get to any of the options. That’s easily one of the major contributions to this class feeling so overwhelmingly strong, and we can look at the other classes as to why this is. If you look at Veteran and Zealot, their tress are structured in such a way as to make you choose between certain path lines. Theoretically, you can only gain so many sources of sustain and generalized damage before you’re over committing to nodes at the top.
Now, before someone points out that both Veteran and Zealot are possibly currently at their weakest in the game, I would like to point out that this isn’t due to the structure of their class trees but instead due to Node Quantity and Organization. Veteran has too many Nodes that aren’t impactful, while Zealot has too few, and both have their nodes spread out in such a way that makes it really hard to actually seek out certain benefits based upon where they’ve been placed within the structure of the tree:
Ogryn and Psyker share similarly shaped class tree structures to the Arbites very open grid for sustain and general damage nodes, but not only do both classes still have weird node distribution issues that the Arbites doesn’t suffer from, they also, inherently, have survivability challenges that the Arbites does not. Ogryn’s are Big, comparatively slow moving targets, while Psykers are Glass Cannons. Arbites don’t have the challenge of being a big target in addition to being a slow one (and w/ the right passives, they aren’t even a slow class), nor do they have to suffer from being the class with the least base health or toughness.
From memory, Ogryn and Psyker are the last two Classes to have received reworks, so I understand where this structure is coming from, but if you look at the base Health and Toughness of the Arbites when compared to the other classes, they are already beef cakes at base, and this is before benefiting from a Class Tree Structure that gives easy access to even more sustain and damage:
(Pictured above, The Veteran, Zealot, Ogryn, Psyker, and Arbites on “Empty” Builds, with no Talent Points Distributed and no additional Health or Toughness Blessings or Perks from Curios. Take into Consideration that “Arbitrator Armor” and “Plasteel Plates” are unavoidable grabs if you’re investing talent points, which effectively makes the Arbites base toughness before Curios 150 Points. That’s an entire Psyker Base Health Bar regenerating on Kills and in Coherency.)
We’re going to put a pin in this for now, but trust, we will come back to how this decision dramatically effects the balance of the class.
Now, Unlike the original four classes of the game, the Arbites does not have a easily identifiable overarching “Fantasy” it’s meant to fulfil at first glance. Somehow, I don’t think the fantasy of the class is meant to be “Cop”. And things like “Houndmaster” are still to vague to be useful. Luckily, there’s always the personalities to go off, as I do believe that the names of the personalities are based somewhat on the playstyle branches of each tree. For the Arbites, the personalities are The Maul, The Authoritarian, and the Fatalist. The Maul takes an almost Sadistic Pleasure in dishing out Punishment to Offenders of the Lex. The Embodiment of someone looking for an excuse. The Authoritarian is the Prefecture’s Perfect Little Police Officer, or at least the like to think of themselves as such. They see their rigid compliance to the Lex and their own skill as being both natural and one and the same. And then there’s the Fatalist, who reads as not exactly nice, but more like a burnt out cop trying to do good in a very, very bad city. They want things to be better, to help people through the lex instead of just hurting them. And all that can tell us a lot about their various playstyles.
Now remember, these Personalities and Playstyles are somewhat based on each other. They aren’t meant to be 1 for 1. It’s not mechanically practical to base the entirety of even just a single Branch of the tree on one personality because every personality is meant to be able to use every node. We’ve only brought up the personalities up so specifically because this is a new class, and trying to get a feel for the different branches of the tree is difficult w/out pre-requisite of multiple hundreds of hours played on the class to guide us. This also isn’t the only way to break up the Class Tree, but this is what made the most sense to me based upon natural synergies between Sustain, General Damage, Playstyle, Class Ability, and Keystone Nodes. Breaking up the Class Tree by the Personality Shorthand of Maul, Authoritarian, and Fatalist would look something like this for a General and Per Node Breakdown:
The Arbites has a lot of these nodes that are Dual Branched, in the sense that they give benefits that multiple Branches would be interested in at the same time for different reasons. Their Sustain nodes even double down on this, with options that are useful to all 3 branches at the same time. “Up Close”, “Walk It Off”, “Arbirator Armor”, “Plasteel Plate”, and “Suppression Protocols” all do such broad sustainability that there would be no way to suggest that one is more suited for a one Branch over another. Now, there’s obviously room for debate, but considering I’ve broken down the other classes already, I can tell you now, none of the other classes are built like this, which makes the Arbites Tree super interesting. While this is just a breakdown based upon the inherent synergies I personally see throughout the Branches, I do think I can qualify a lot of these choices.
In broad strokes, all of the stagger nodes feed into Forceful or Terminus Warrant really well. Forceful is all about Stagger so it pairs up really well w/ Break the Line. And the Shock Mines further lean into a Stagger and Shock Control Playstyle. Meanwhile, the Bonus gained from Elite and Specialist Hunting are a Dead Ringer for Execution Order, but they also play very well with, again, Terminus Warrant. Dog Bomb is also specifically good against Ogryn Elites and Bosses, and Execution Order obviously wants to punch above its weight class w/ all the Rending they get access too. The Firearm focus also makes it a great contender for the use of Castigator Stance. Which leaves Terminus Warrant. There are a surprisingly large number of nodes here that deal w/ dodging, giving you specific benefits for doing so and this reads as a Playstyle incentive to me. Forceful doesn’t want to Dodge, because they have too many survivability incentives tied to blocking and staggering enemies already. And Execution Order gets a bunch of survivability just for killing Elite Targets, the thing that the Keystone is built to do. But Terminus Warrant doesn’t have very much survivability built into it aside from having stacks to kill enemies with, as having those stacks can net you Toughness Regen and Impact, to help push Hordes away. This makes even more sense if you consider the fact that If you take Lone Wolf, and you get boxed in by a horde, and there’s a dog or trapper or sniper or even just multiple Elites like Shotgunners or Ragers pushing your position, the other two branches have dog to get them out of that situation. But without dog, you need your gun to be a powerful enough tool to help you knock back and shoot through the chaff. Where before your dog was backing you up and covering ranged enemies (Forceful) or melee elite enemies (Execution Order), you’re all alone. And the Nuncio-Aquilla is literally just the Judge Dread “I am the law” speech, take your pick of which version. But even that feeds into the idea of the Maul being dodge oriented, as the Nuncio can reduce the rate of enemy melee attacks, making it easier for you to dodge around.
I think, purely in terms of Playstyle Mechanics, there’s a lot of cool node options. The class does suffer from my personal grievance, which is in how it organizes and spreads out all of these nodes, but this is something that all the classes have in some capacity. I’m personally of the mind that this always makes the actual build variety of the class worse, but this is in part due to how much better the Ogryn tree got when more of it’s synergistic nodes were moved to be in the direct path of each other. Based on this, I personally feel that the classes tend to be healthier when the thing incentivizing mixing branches together isn’t the options from each branch being mixed up and jumbled together at base but instead strong generalist options that are useful enough to other builds that you can justify not taking the vanilla option. Beyond that, I don’t really have many complaints about how these nodes are distributed. Ignoring Major Nodes like Auras, Class Abilities, Keystones, and Mods, there are 18 Maul Nodes, 19 Authoritarian, and 18 Fatalist nodes. I am counting certain nodes multiple times, but again, this is the only class really built w/ this many nodes that are this general.
Investigating the Effects:
So, i’ve already broken down and alluded to my specific problem in regards to the Arbites Sustain and General Damage Nodes. This is easily the tankiest class based on default Health and Toughness values, and I wanted to establish a connection between those values, the structure of the class tree, and the fact that the class feels significantly overturned early. If I’m going to suggest something is as OP as I’m suggesting the Arbites to be, I feel like I need to back that up. I feel that I left enough information for people to extrapolate, but to be clear, if you are wondering why the Arbites is so busted, it’s not the Blitz, or the Auras, or the Class Abilites, or any of the Keystone options. It’s not even the weapons, as cool and powerful as they are. It’s the fact that the class can become, effectively, feature complete before they even reach their first Keystone options, with enough survivability stacked on top of their already impressive base levels to never go down in the hands of an adept player, and enough general damage options to become and stay incredibly powerful the entire time. Beyond that, the rest of the Arbites tree is honestly fairly mundane, with sensible options and decently clear playstyles. Honestly, some of the options are even a little weak. But in mentioning the playstyles…
Earlier I said I didn’t have many complaints about the distribution of nodes based on playstyles of each branch, and that’s true. I don’t have many complaints. I have one. It’s the dog. Or rather, the Dog Node options. Normally, each Class’s playstyles seem to be largely balanced around the Class Ability of each branch. As example, Fury of the Faithful from Zealot pairs well with Scourge, which pairs well with Blazing Piety. But the Arbites seems to be balanced around their dog. Or more accurately, whether or not they have it. This means that instead of the tree having three gimmicks per class, it has two. But the rest of the Class Tree is still structured and Balanced as if there was a Third Gimmick. This is why, in my assessment of the node by Playstyle, the Authoritarian has 1 more node than the Maul or Fatalist. It feels like the class tree wants you to pick between ranges for the dog. If you pick “Unleashed Brutality”, I’ve found that the dog tends to stay consistently mid range from you. Meanwhile, in my experience with “Go Get 'Em!” the dog tends to wander away a lot more. This kinda seems like an interesting option of a more mid Range, defensive dog, or a further range, more crowd control oriented dog. But Lone Wolf is a non-choice in this set up.
By taking Lone Wolf, yes, you gain a pretty good bonus, but you also lose out on all the Playstyle Incentives that the dog is tied to, and those are incentives that the Maul Playstyle is otherwise built to engage with. This has the knock on effect of turning every dog related option into split branch options for the Authoritarian and the Fatalist, but the truth of the matter is that the Fatalist doesn’t even really wants half of them. They only get included because it’s the only other Branch that can take a dog. And this can be felt through the entire tree. Dog options have to be pushed off to the side as to not get in the way of the Maul’s ability to build w/ Lone Wolf. And I think this shoving around of nodes for this sake makes the Class Tree, especially the bottom half, feel notably worse. The open grid of the first half hides how awkwardly placed a lot of those options are. I’m not trying to suggest that Lone Wolf is bad, but if feels like there has to be a better way to deal with this. Some kind of Lone Wolf caveat, so that the branch can get some kind of benefit from the dog nodes instead of having to avoid them completely.
Proposing Nothing Minor Thoughts:
If I’ve somehow held you attention this long, let me say that I tend to have the mindset of offering practical solutions where I can, and I do have ideas on solutions for some of the problems I personally see and have pointed out w/ the class. The point of this post isn’t to be a rework though, and I don’t plan on touching any ideas on fixing what’s going on in the top half of the class tree. Still, for my smaller complaints, specifically those considering the weaknesses of the Class, I do want to share how I think those issues could be addressed.
IMO, the Dog Nade is very hard to use, and only feels like it gets harder to use the higher in difficulty you move. You mostly want to use the Blitz on Monstrosities, Captians/Champions, and Ogryns. The minute cooldown is long enough that you really want get value out of it. The problem is, since the dog won’t pounce or grapple Captains/Champions or Ogryns, activating the explosion becomes a weird skill shot with sometimes inconsistent timing. If you try and do it when your dog pounces, you’ll be too late. It’s better to try and activate it when you see that it’s about to pounce, but in a horde, it’s hard to see you dog, and sometimes they circle around the target before actually jumping. And no one has time to be watching the dog that closely in the middle of a Horde Fight. I recognize that changing anything about the timing or path finding of the dog might be hard. But again; I want to offer practical solutions. And the one that takes the least amount of work is giving the dog a bark that plays over your vox, with subtitles, and potentially even a character portrait, right before it pounces. Yes, it’s one more audio que in the game all about paying attention to audio ques, but this one would only play on pounce if you were using remote detonation. I feel like this would dramatically lower the skill floor to get value out of the Blitz while also massively increasing the skill ceiling, as now skilled players can do even more things at one time.
Insofar as better incorporating the dog nodes, yeah, I get it, there’s no way to position them as is that won’t feel a little in the way for Lone Wolf builds. But realistically, I would actually prefer seeing them incorporated into the class on a more mechanical level. I think “Lone Wolf Variants” that give you a lesser version of the effect for doing a similar action is a good way to bridge that gap. Take “Canine Morale”, which reads “Killing Pounced Targets grants Allies in Coherency +20% Toughness Damage Reduction and +10% Toughness over 5s.”
If you added “Lone Wolf: Every 5s, Killing a Staggered Target grants Allies in Coherency +10% Toughness Damage Reduction and +5% Toughness for 5s.”
The math there is entirely off the cuff, but the general idea is that those passive nodes actually do something for you if you are giving up the class’s primary gimmick and teamwide safety net. The Hound can really work for you in a satisfying way when the game lets it, and I just want to have to fight it less to get the utility. I even think this could expand to the Remote Detonation Blitz. Human Sized Power Fist are a thing, and that’s one heavy hand of the law for a lexbreaker to bare. Give it some OG Thunder Hammer levels of self stun but a good AoE? But that ultimately feels a little like too much of an ask.
On a small note, I do wish the Dog Keystones were on the top of the tree. Part of this is because not taking your dog is such a dramatic change to the classes playstyle and options that making that choice in the middle of the tree feels…off.
Speaking of having better access to utility, I do think I can see what utility this class would have in a healthier state, at least assuming there’s no massive sandbox changes. The different pieces of kit feels like the Arbites borrowing elements of other classes. Foreceful feels like Heavy Hitter, and has just fantastic levels of Crowd Control and Horde Clear. Using the Crusher on this build made a weapon i’ve always really wanted to explore feel actual viable option. Terminus Warrant feels a bit like weapon specialist, but only on its surface. In practice, I’ve found that the way you build and lose stacks means it’s easier to build up and lose ranged stacks, which meant that I tended to use melee more after building up easy stacks with a shotgun. It’s a real engaging loop. Break the Line feels like an alternate version of Fury of the Faithful. It doesn’t have the massive crit bonus but instead it stuns everyone in the area. Elements like this really make me see this class as one that runs next to and acts as an accoutrement to things that other classes do to enhance the tams capabilities in those areas. The one that feels the worse to me is Execution Order, as it gives so much info that it comes off as better Disrupt Destiny. I can’t tell if it feels overtuned because of its own mechanics or because of the top of the class tree. As of right now, it just feels like it tends to snowball really hard, as once you get a couple specialist or elite kills you can just start chunking through everything. I was running the Extermination Shotgun with Scattershot and Deathspitter and the extra Range Cleave meant that empowered attacks from killing marked targets and the rending criticals were always working in tandem.
My final “for me” thought is in regards to O.M. Nodes. Arbites only has 5 Operator Mods (though I swear Arbirator Armor and Plasteel Plates feel just about as basic), and I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting that every class be brought to that point but the more I go through and breakdown all the classes, the more I disagree with that idea. The Arbites feels like it’s made under the conceit of being two class trees in one; Handler and Hound. You have the basic abilites of your Arbites followed by specific tools and ways in which your dog facilitates the role you’re enhancing on the team, even if that facilitation is in not being there. Really, I think the ideal number of OM on a class is 12, which is 4 necessary OMs per branch, or 13.3% of your total build. If the Arbites is two trees, it kind of makes sense that they have Half as many OM, since each tree theoretically gets half the options. I know people don’t like OMs but they serve really well as connective tissue between branches. Veteran, Zealot, and Psyker have too many, but that doesn’t mean I want to drop to having none. The alternative is more Passive Nodes that don’t actually do anything interesting (again, Arbirator Armor and Plasteel Plates), which is the exact issue that I seen expressed about Veteran especially. I want impactful options; not just for simple ones to be coloured blue. You can fudge the math with that 12 figure a little, like with Ogryn, where the extra connectivity from the missing OMs serve to give the class better access to survivability and general damage options. If a class is too impactful, they’re a good tool to help break up some of those stronger options. But the thing I’d like to emphasize is that they are a tool. Like any other tool, when used well, they feel great. I don’t want their current rough implementation in three of the five classes to convince people to throw out the whole toolbox.
The TL; DR of the Post:
Ultimately, the biggest thing contributing to the Arbites current power level is how open the top half of the class tree is. That combined with some of the highest base Toughness and Health in the game allows the class to become incredibly survivable and consistently powerful without actually having to invest into deeper Class Tree options for their build to go “online”. And when they do invest into some of their further options, they end up feeling like they can perform some of the same roles that other classes are taken for at very near the same efficacy, if not better in some cases.
In a game where certain classes specialize in certain roles or jobs on the team, it is possible for another class to step on their toes. While it’s true that every class should be capable of boss damage, or elite and specialist hunting, or horde clear, classes having specific areas of weakness is what makes them interesting to play. The Zealot being too good at things the Ogryn wanted to do and being more survivable is what made the feel far less viable in the first place, and Fatshark making specific changes to the Zealots Bossing Capabilities and the Ogryns Survivability is what allowed the class to finally shine. Arbites currently has a relationship with every class that feels like the OG Zealot to Ogryn relationship. Anything they can do, Arbites can do easier, if not better.
The games current balance can’t rally support that level of constant power, and while it is true that changes to the Sandbox in terms of enemy numbers, health values, or abilities might actually give the Arbites a challenge, doing so without updating the other classes would mean that the Arbites continues to be the strongest option, as every other class is only as viable as it is relative to the current state of the game.
Aside from the top of the tree, their options are largely fine, with actual engaging utility, but the class is so overturned that its hard to enjoy the specific utility provided because just killing everything before you ever would need to fall back on a specific tool in the kit is unironically just the easier answer the majority of the time. Some of those options, in a vacuum, actually feel a little bit weak, but some slight changes to how certain abilities are signaled to the player could easily remedy that.
