The BoltPistol is unfortunately bad

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Hello all, I want to share my thoughts about this weapon I tried to make use of for 7-8 hours in Auric Damnation missions.

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I really want to try play more with this weapon,so I am using it in Weapon Specialist Veteran ,but there are several problems that doesn’t make it a good choice for Auric Damnation missions :

Accuracy - when hipfiring sometimes the bullet doesn’t land in the crosshair area for some reason. When aiming the weapon, the jump is annoyingly big because you often can’t one shot certain enemies.

Damage - I tried every blessing and stopped at Puncture and Lethal Proximity.
You need 25% flak and 25% Maniac perks ,otherwise the damage breakpoints are bad.
There is actually no better perks than those two.

The weapon doesn’t punch-through enemies. The BoltGun does it.
It’s bad against carapace enemies and hounds. I don’t mind it being bad against Infested ,but it should have higher damage against Carapace armored enemies.
Also meh Unyielding damage.

This weapon needs a little more base damage or higher weakspot / body shot damage modifier.
Increased Stability is a must , I can’t change from my melee weapon to the Pistol and actually miss a hipfire when my crosshair is on the enemy ,it doesn’t feel good and make sense either.

I want a buff for the Puncture Blessing ,it would be nice if it has a +6 bleed stacks as level 4 blessing instead of +4 bleed stacks.
If I land a body shot ,the blessing doesn’t actually kill the target. They are left with low hp ,but thats it.

This is my melee weapon.

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The Shred blessing damage buff caries over when swapping a weapon, so you can sometimes one shot a Rager ,but its very hard and not consistent in doing that.

The Rager squad on Auric Damnation can be explained as simply brutal currently.
Their attacks combo are just as fast as their movement speed.

Maybe other Veteran players can share their thoughts as well about the weapon.

3 Likes
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I myself love the gun with precisely those blessings. It took a bit getting used to but it’s an excellent long & distant side leap from the revolver.

Between how the gun has about 50% bigger mag, more ammo, and faster reload speed than a revolver, and how the bleeds and that 56% larger AoE area deal a whole ton of dmg that isn’t immediately obvious (especially if used right), it’s ridiculously ammo efficient. I mean, most matches I top monster dmg when I barely put more than 1-2 clips into the thing: Just put 4 bullets in the start to cap the bleed at 16, then keep firing another shot every 5s or so to refresh & re-cap the stacks while you spend the rest of the time doing whatever else.

You’re right that the hipshots don’t always hit the reticle (as they now should, per the patch notes, btw… just sayin’). But they do get close enough most of the time. With its super fast swap speed, great hip shots and non-reliance on finesse nvm crits through something as slow as Surgical, you can mix the thing way way faster into your combos or between your melees & slides & dodges than just about any other weapon, and it will barely lose any of its effectiveness thanks to the AoE’s, CC and bleeds.

And while its ADS is that awful ironsight, it’s actually really accurate once you learn to use it. With even a bit of time you can easily hit long range targets and those bleeds don’t fall off with range either, and the ADS is fast enough to mix into those slides too when you absolutely don’t want to go for the RNG of whether the hip shot would be accurate enough.

I really think most people who don’t like the bolt pistol are either stuck comparing it to revolvers - which it’s not, it’s just completely different -, or its cousin the big bolter. Or they just get stuck in that heavy hitter mindset and expect the thing to pack a massive punch, instead of seeing the value in everything else it does.

If you only look at its direct damage per shot and nothing else, it’s obviously going to appear underwhelming and for good reason too. But if you look at it more as a mobile utility tool that can just do a ton of things, and accept that its damage is spread into AoE’s and even that single target dmg is delayed through the DoT’s (which sometimes need stacking) rather than all at once… it’s a fantastically versatile weapon. Yes, it’s kinda poor vs. crushers, but if it wasn’t then what point would those revolvers or bolters then have?

Maybe it’s just the main psyker in me but that versatility is everything to me. No matter what’s going on, besides them crushers, the bolt pistol is going to have something significant to offer. And it’s not as if it’s useless against crushers like lasguns or some autoguns either, you can headshot 1-2 down in a pinch if you absolutely have to. It’s just wasteful to do as long as you have options.

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I think it sucks even compared to Laspistols on Vet sadly.

I find it hard to gauge the actual “powerlevel” of the weapon with 2 major bugs being present currently.

  1. Bolt explosions only cause damage on kill (it should cause extra on kill): Link here.
    2. It inherited the crosshair jitter from bolter that it had since for ever: Link here (probably I should go and write a bug post on Bolt Pistol too). Edit: Nevermind, last patch seems to have fixed the jitter on Bolt Pistol.

You can make it work with very specific build using Surgical, Deadshot and Focus Target!, but as a slap-on weapon it is just bad.

Best thing I found about it is that it perform very well against regular shooters, one-shotting all of them on a bodyshot, although it not as good against them as a good old MK2 Laspistol.

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Firstly, more or less adequate opinions about builds or weapons are not listened to here, so there’s not much point in expressing them. (yes, yes, hello shotgun guys, bleed guys and knife guys and others.)

Secondly, I see absolutely no point in spending resources right now to make a more or less adequate new weapon like a bolter or double-barrelled shotgun etc. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re waiting for a new crafting system and COLDfix.

Thirdly. Though you won’t listen, I highly recommend you reconsider looking at the talents you’ve taken, especially the purple ones from branch 3. (Although, to me, almost all of the last purple talents in Veteran are rubbish and it’s a crime to waste points on them).

And yes, I still use bolt guns as a SIDE weapon as I just feel bad spending millions of resources to create a normal bolt pistol. Yeah and discharging the entire clip into a crowd of enemies with one click is a lot more fun.

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Run Deadshot and stamina nodes plus the middle tree for getting toughness back on elite kill, and grab Deadly Accurate and Surgical.

It’s still not Auric Damnation worthy imo but it’s an entirely viable weapon thanks to the recoil reduction.

I think Exe Stance would also help but that’s so depressingly garbage in comparison to VoC that I refuse to use it except for specialized sniper builds.

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Boltguns don’t actually have much armor penetration in TT crunch. The fluff is variable. I never learned the 8th+ system but they had an AP of 5 back in the day which meant they only ignored up to flak armor and its equivalent.

2 Likes
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Different situations.

What we fight are 95% chaff infantry in TT terms which bolters should obliterate, with a few monsters mixed in.

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Ah yeah, I should have quoted him, but I meant to respond to OP calling for more carapace damage and armor penetration. I just meant to highlight that they are supposed to be relatively weak vs heavy armor.

Infested have Feel No Pain equivalent and Blessings of Nurgle sustaining them so that makes sense too.

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I do not see the point of using Exec stance with BoltPistol.
Also Deadly Accurate and Surgical on a BoltPistol seem bad to me ,why would I go with this blessing combo if I am playing a veteran?

The demerit of not having punch-through is huge. The BoltGun has that feature and absolutely obliterates regular shooters and can kill multiple in one body shot, something the BoltPistol cannot accomplish.

I want to compare the gun to the other pistols ,but it just falls short everywhere except the fun factor of the explosions and “feel heavy gun” which is fine, but the damage breakpoints and stability is just atrocious.

As for talents , I went for the extra %15 elite damage ,but those two points should be placed for cooldown reduction and extra toughness above 75% toughness talents.

I would say that the talents below weapon specialist is what elevates that part of the tree.
Just switching between melee and weapon and proccing the talents ,you sustain your toughness and stamina very easily.

As for you comment about not getting new weapons ,because update is 2 months away , you are just making your experience worse.
Tried the mauls ,shotgun and boltpistol and only the shotgun seems somewhat usable for the highest level of play to me ( on veteran ).

I fail to see the value in this weapon being a good all-rounder because it lacks enough damage - if it had enough I would stomach the lack of punch-through ,but failing to kill in one hit often happens. The second shots are wildly off-target because of the terrible stability.

Yes ,you can run that specific middle talent tree that elevates the damage a lot + crit talent and blessings ,but then I would rather run a Vraks Headhunter with the same blessings and accomplish much more than with the BoltPistol.

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To sum up:

Exec stance for the recoil reduction, Surgical and DA for the critical hit chance and breakpoints while ADSing.

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I would rather use a weapon with more ammo like a Vraks 3 Headhunter gun with the same blessings - it is way more versatile and useful than the BoltPistol.
Exec stance shouldn’t be needed for a pistol to feel ok to use.
And defaulting to the most damage crit blessings and raiload to crit build is bad design.
If the weapon had punch-trough ,going all in for the damage blessings and talents would be warranted, but sadly its just lacking.

1 Like
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you need to build tanky with bolt pistol something like this

its not like you will ever score a head shot and get value off it

1 Like
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I do not have problem with Tankiness ,I have a problem with the gun not killing stuff.
The build you have is ok.
On that tree ,you should use Precision Strikes over the Rending Strikes talent.

I also suggest you go for the middle grenade and aura and place the extra point on Exhilarating Takedown talent.

With that much Toughness regen you get ,maybe instead of the damage buff on Combat ability, use the talent Born Leader and share that toughness to teammates.

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I have had the best results using Lethal Proximity and Execution (Puncture sadly does not proc on the explosion) and using it more like one might use a shotgun. Typically on melee vet or zealot and used to break up mobs, stagger elites, and just chunk anything in front of me.

And it still has sufficient accuracy and damage to one-shot counter snipers. Flamers take several shots but the first staggers them out of shooting which is the important bit.

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immagine

ye i usually go for that, good for melee too

if i go Exhil i just sacrifice the out for blood part of the tree

but then again with bolt pistol its not like you are going to get any head shots

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Biggest problem is how unreliable follow-up shots are. I have a max stability Pistol, and the mod to display the reticle at all times even when aiming down the sights (it helps know when you’re being suppressed, among other things).

If you move even a single inch, the reticle goes f*ckin wild.
Also it has some kinda problem with ghost hits. I’ve had shots clearly hit the target, and they flinch because of the explosion, but they don’t take direct hit damage.

So yeah I’ve given up on the Pistol until they fix it.

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I haven’t made a build yet with Surgical & others that actually worked well enough. I honestly think that’s just a trap, trying to make the pistol compete with revolvers in an area where the revolvers are just better. But then I don’t have the kind of aim to hit those precision shots reliably enough anyway so I’m hardly a good judge of that.

All I know is I’ve been using bolt pistols almost constantly since the patch came out and had that specific blessing combo made for both my psykers, vet and zelly, have run a ton of build combinations on each, and it works fantastically. Scoreboards have me consistently topping dmg and especially against bosses, even if it’s not by as much as with some other more brutally offensive builds. But ofc. that doesn’t really mean much since with all the new players around most of us experienced players top the thing no matter what we play.

All I can say is I find the weapon tremendously fun, more than strong enough, and it leaves me with way less risks and vulnerabilities than most others on account of that versatility and utility. Also it basically never runs out of ammo. :smile: That playstyle is just right down my alley!

1 Like
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How do you top damage charts and never run out of ammo with the BP?

You need multiple bolts for even the low HP elites, at least three bolts for a dog, and copious amounts just to kill one charging Rager wave. AoE damage hardly exists.

My experience with the BP is described by the words trouble and misery:

Fetching the occasional Sniper who is camping somewhere remote is comfortable with the BP. Shooting anything dangerous like trappers, or gunners inside waves is a horrid experience, as is dispatching a cluster of gunners that is entering your FoV.

5 Likes
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prolly inflating with grenades

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Personally, I’ve found this to be both possible and easy to achieve on the Zealot because it’s a melee-focused Archetype. The Bolt Pistol seems to complement my Zealot’s playstyle more than the Zarona Revolver does in all areas except Penetration and Recoil. I definitely do think Fatshark needs to fix the ridiculously jumpy ADS that’s shared between Bolter and Bolt Pistol, though.

Post Scriptum: If shared weapons were actually shared, I’d be able to fairly voice my opinion on Bolt Pistol for the Veteran. Fatshark, please let my Veteran utilise my Zealot’s shared weapons and vice versa.

1 Like