The helbore has been ruined / lost its identity

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

It WAS a great weapon. Perfectly balanced, it wasnt too strong, nor too weak. It only needed its 3rd mark melee adjusted and the sights changed to more clear one.

Instead, they buffed the ranged damage to outrageous heights, castrated the melee and significantly reduced its swap time. Effectively turning it into a generic, boring, easy left click to kill everything weapon.

Before, you had to use everything the weapon had to offer to wield it effectively. Ranged, bayonet, bayonet rushing and staying away from swapping to your sword/shovel except during out of control hordes. It was a unique, one of a kind weapon… Now the left click is so strong and bayonet is so weak that its actually a bad idea to use its melee attacks now. After playing with the updated helbore for several hours i did not find its bayonet attack to be worth using in ANY situation (maybe with the exception of pushing undamaged poxbursters)

Paired with the lowered weapon swap the weapon has completely lost its identity.

All because some ppl kept whining that the weapon was too weak, whereas in reality they just couldnt be bothered to learn how to use it. And now you have it, helbore has joined the ranks of dueling sword, knife and all the other outrageously powerful weapons. It is so powerful in fact that i do not even need to use krak nades/armor piercing melee anymore, maulers literally fall in 3-ish headshots… Coupled with the keystone buff (no fall-off on movement) You simply almost never fall below 10 stacks of marksman (or whatever that keystone was called).

The helbore WAS the most well balanced weapon in the game IMO, and now you’ve… This ^

The weapon is ruined and it is no longer fun to use it.

And the same people that whined about helbore being too weak now whine about power creep…

I wonder…. To the people that were complaining about the weapon being too weak and kept asking to have it butchered like it just was. Do you use the weapon now? Are you enjoying it?

And people that did love helbore before the update. How do you feel about it now?

2

I used Helbore a lot before the update, then kinda stopped for a bit when bolter got buffed, both weapons are really strong but Helbore has almost 0 mobility when ADS and unfortunately the bayonet is really bad now. You aren’t really hard pressed to pull the gun out to deal with a sudden special anymore and not encouraged to keep it out while being pressured by trash mobs so I kinda agree it lost it’s uniqueness.

3

The weapon was already one-shotting everything short of Maulers and Crushers, it was already doing that pre-Arbrites patch (1.8.0) where the damage was buffed. MMF buff only pushed up the breakpoints on those.

The biggest buff it recieved was weakspot preferential and sights fix.

bayonet is so weak that its actually a bad idea to use its melee attacks now

You seem to be mis-remembering. The only nerf the bayonet has recieved was a year or so ago when they lowered its attack speed and removed Hotshot and other melee weapon blessings from interacting with it. In fact, it was buffed in 1.8.0 to ignore stagger resistance.

7 Likes
4

Im not misremembering anything. The attack speed was a big nerf to the bayonet, alone it was still usable, but now that the left click was buffed so high, the bayonet was left behind, unneeded, pointless and redundant. Especially since you can just swap to your melee.

I havent played for a year. When i say “before” i mean before even the covenant/dark gathering or whatever the newest mission is called.

5

The old draw time was…unnecessary, and I’m glad it got changed, it was a huge downside with no commensurate payoff relative to other weapons. Watching every wannabe cosplaying Krieger repeatedly down themselves because they couldn’t manage the swap time wasn’t fun. Coupled with the literally nonexistent sights (seriously, we used an optics rail to aim, not an optic, not a proper rear iron sight, but an empty rail) and long charge time meant this weapon was awkwardly difficult to use, often by the time you could whip your gun out, aim, charge, and fire at a target, it was long gone or already on you. There was a lot of “feelsbad” there in that swap animation.

7 Likes
6

its the byproduct of balancing up to havoc instead of balancing like 4 mechanics havoc players exploit to win and then claim are necessary to the game in every other thread. in fact I think some genius claimed it was a garbage weapon your team has to carry you in order for it to succeed, which made my eyes roll back into my head.

7

I used it in Havoc 40 (MK4) before the update and it was essentially already 1 shotting everything lol

If anything the only difference I notice now is that the draw speed feels a lot better and that’s it

3 Likes
8

Old helbore builds used to require taking nodes to make the swap time and dedicating yourself to mmf exe or stealth with damage buffs to make really worthwhile. Now it’s kinda just a gun you can take in any build, which does suck.

I think helbore represents the largest issue with the changes to talent trees and design philosophy. You knew a build was a helbore build before their changes because it brought a lot of talents that only really got value if you pumped hard enough with helbore. Now, the only difference between exe bolter/autogun and exe helbore is just whether you take shocktrooper or not (and many people don’t bother with shocktrooper anyway).

Really miss the unique flavor of vet before this patch. It really felt like the only class that wasn’t completely stuck in talent tree homogeny, being stuck with only 2 builds or even the infamous 1 zealot build, vet had a lot of different pathing decisions even in endgame content.

1 Like
9

For my part, I’m okay with this. If a weapon can now be used in a variety of common builds, instead of needing to be pigeonholed into a specific alternate build that just exists for its own sake, that should be a good thing. That sounds like more variety and player choice, with less arbitrary complexity.

5 Likes
10

Highly disagree. Whats the point of there being 3 different weapons (helbore, lasgun, headhunter) if every one of them literally does the exact same thing identically?

Generic is NOT good. Special and unique is.

Right now there is no point in picking helbore over lasgun other then the decision if you want to hold to fire or do you want to spam left click… So much variety…

Not every weapon should work with every single talent/build/perk.

Whats the point of adding new weapons if they’re not special in any way shape or form?

1 Like
11

To my eyes at least, they don’t do the same thing. The infantry lasgun is still more responsive and ammo efficient (at least when rapid-firing), the Helbore still hits potentially way harder with well placed shots, and the Headhunter…I haven’t touched in ages and can’t comment.

Similarly, just because something is special and unique does not make it good. If a weapon is more functional in a wider array of builds, over only being usable in a singular build that exists simply to mitigate the weapon’s downsides, I don’t see that as a loss.

Sure, but by the same token if a build existed purely to cater to a single weapon (as was asserted by the previous poster), largely just to mitigate its terrible handling (as opposed to offering truly unique gameplay opportunities), I don’t consider that real build diversity either.

Again, I think these weapons retain more than enough differences to still play very differently. That said, for my part, I think this game has far too many weapons. We’ve got triple digits worth of weapons in this title, more than really can be individually accommodated and actively balanced (contributing to the every-rotating balance passes). This game has 18 different shoulder-fired las and autogun variants/marks (nearly twice as many weapons as many old school shooters like Doom/Quake/Unreal/etc), where tabletop 40k doesn’t even attempt to differentiate these weapons, they all use the exact same stat profile, completely interchangeable.

3 Likes
12

You think this and I’m sure you believe this but I guarantee you right now that there is really only one existing build per class minus a couple points for keystone pathing. The amount of actual “builds” in the game is really low, because the pathing is so free and liberating that there is no variety. Your only variety right now is what weapon you choose, because you don’t choose anything else. Your one build works with everything.

2 Likes
13

I’m not sure I’m following here…if the pathing is free and liberating that fundamentally and inherently means you can take a wide array and variety of builds and nodes, not that you’re restricted into a single build.

If you can use a single build across multiple weapons, I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all, as long as other builds are viable as well, and I don’t think Vet is hogtied into a single build, particularly across all weapons. I certainly am not building a Helbore the way I am building a Recon for instance even if I may run my infantry lasgun similarly/identically.

If the argument is simply that there isn’t a unique build just specifically for the Helbore largely just to mitigate the inherent downsides of the Helbore itself, I’m okay with that as I don’t think that’s really reflecting meaningful build variety. Unless that build is bringing something genuinely new to the table, and not just making the Helbore suck less, I don’t think the game is out anything of value.

3 Likes
14

It’s best it ever was.

2 Likes
15

I love the Hellbore now the switch feels nice. And I rarely see it used in havoc even now over Bolter/Plasma Hell I see recon more. I don’t really get why you are complaining it’s op when hardly anyone uses it. Coming from a 3k+ hours Havoc 40 only (since it came out) player. Sorry it isn’t niche to your liking and is more available for everyone now… (tho I hardly see it)

2 Likes
16

The Tree rework made it so you can pick up all the good nodes without tax nodes, easily path to niche talents, and moved all the trash talents out of the way so you can continue to ignore them. We’re still taking the exact same core talents as before but now you don’t have to choose.

17

Not me! Infantry Lasguns and some ideas to make them better and more fun - #20 by Durandal94

18

they decided to bring up everything to the same level, excruciatingly slowly for better or worse

19

I literally never did this in Havoc

Regarding swap time I’ve never struggled with it either and I took no swap speed talents

Shocktrooper, Surgical, +Unyielding +Maniacs, Killzone and Focus Target was enough to essentially 1 shot everything (except crushers and Maulers) without needing exe stance, while still having unlimited ammo

I just ran shout alongside Helbore in Havoc 40 and was still able to 1 shot every unit

2 Likes
20

I’m thinking pre-havoc before a lot of helbore buffs came in. By the time havoc came out, most of what made helbore interesting was ruined. Exe helbore in havoc 1.0 did kill everything in oneshot, but 1.0 was also just a bland speedfest completing havocs in 20 minutes or less even in pubs, optimization just didn’t (and arguably still doesn’t) matter.

2 Likes