I fully agree with this. Buffing/rebalancing other melee and ranged weapons to make them more powerful (and therefore fun to play) would be a great first step to entice players to step away from the so-called OP stuff that the vocal minority here on the forums and on reddit like to complain about.
I get how people like to complain about things being OP and overtuned, but IMO most alternatives aren’t very fun and only work well with specific Perk and Blessings combinations.
With the awful gear lottery in this game, is it really that surprising that many players would choose the weapons that are powerful and fun to use out of the box, instead of having to gamble for a good (for example) Autogun or Catachan Sword?
Imagine a game where all weapons are balanced and a latrine shovel is just as good as a power sword…
Master crafter latrine shovel.
Heir loom of the chapter latrine shovel.
Imagine this guy The Armouring of a Space Marine - YouTube after all the gearing up process grabbing a latrine shovel heh, also reminds of why I thought bolters just shouldn’t be in this game.
If they balance the weapons its going to be a bit ridiculous
btw he’s got a scope on his gun someone tell him its not cod.
Thunder hammer
Shovels
All chain weapons
All recon lasguns
(list not full, these are just from my personal experimenation and research of other peoples work)
And any other melee weapons with hard locked amount of targets they dmg - irrespectively of cleave.
These weapons are worse in average scenarios AND/OR niches they were designed to fill.
All of these weapons are HARD overperformed by other weapons EVEN with Godlike blessings.
And above all of these rest 3 weapons
Flamer 2. Power Sword 3. Autopistol 4.Bolter*
Flamer needs no blessings really to remove extreme amounts of threat
Power sword without blessings is the best melee weapon in the game, and with godlike blessings stays so.
Autopistol overall doesnt belong here EXCEPT that one pinning fire-blaze away combo with psyker or vet.
Bolter isnt even remotely on the same level as power sword HOWEVER it does invalidate guns like hellbore for veteran, since it outdamages them and out efficiencies them. Which should be THE domain of the Hellbores - single shot murder
The problem is you are comparing a laser battle rifle to a man portable light anti tank weapon.
Efficiency wise i would take the hellbore over it just because the hellbore can take on lighter targets without as much ammo wastage while also still maintaining a high damage. The uncharged on some of them is often a little under the 12 and the charged is over it.
The only reason i don’t really like the hellbore is less of an overall damage efficiency thing and more because the sights are ass and i find it hard to aim a lot of times. It’s got some good blessings as far as chained hits reducing charge and other stuff and i would use them far more often if the sights wern’t so awful. Give them a scope and i would probably never put it down.
unlikely, steam archivements depict all people who played the game at some point, we lost 100k players
if every single player who still plays the game was in damnation it still would show “5% of of players archived this”.
so trying to quantify based on Achievements is impossible at this point
my guess is that the actual damnation player-base is around 10%-30% with the people who exclusively play damnation being around a third of that.
The ult giving straight up 50% ranged damage isn’t exactly skill expression.
What it translates to, is that enemies now die to bodyshots instead of headshots, 1 shot instead of 2, etc.
Combined with some blessings it becomes quite disgusting.
In Vermintide, the lack of ammo, as well as blessing, meant that players would naturally aim for heads, increasing skill ceiling
What if the Vet Ult (sharpshooter’s focus?), increased headshot damage, in a way that if the player lands those headshots, he has more damage potential than as if he was just spray n praying with bodyshots?
TLDR:
Change the boost from 50% damage to 100% headshot damage.
The ult gives so many other advantages that it too easily becomes a “press F to become the doomslayer” button
Only problem with that idea is that it kinda biases the bonus towards certain guns and away from others. A brauto just isn’t something you should going for headshots with the vast majority of the time. Last I checked autopistol actually does less damage on head shot than body shot on some armour types, and of course that’s another gun where you simply SHOULD be aiming centre of mass most of the time.
The ult is definitely strong but I’d rather address its uptime first then see where it stands from there. You could for instance make it not start cooling down until one ult’s worth duration expires, so it’s not quite as likely it will be entirely recharged by the time you stop chaining duration refreshes. Heck you could give all duration refreshes diminishing returns the more you chain them without leaving then re-entering Ult. I’d much rather that sort of stuff be fiddled with first over the damage bonus, which currently at least lends itself equally well to any gun you prefer to use.
What would really happen - Power sword nerf suddenly everyone is using combat axe and the zealots and ogryns get to hit more trash mobs each run. Then they stop complaining on the forum.
lol its the power sword that makes vet look flat footed in melee. You sacrifice that movement for damage and its a fair exchange. Give them an axe and they can dance just like everyone else. Its not hard.
Is it just me, or are veterans actually underrepresented lately?
Past 1-2 weeks it seems like veteran is BY FAR the rarest class i see.
Maybe one every 4 matches or so.
3 psykers, 3 zealots or 3 ogryn was pretty common though.
Edit:
Now that i hopped on to play a few rounds as a veteran myself, i got two matchups with 2 other vets…
Is the matchmaker just incredibly borked and trying to have sincle class matches as often as possible?
As a Vet main myself who during my ult tends to go to headshot city to have an infinite ult going on so I can clean up grunts, this is a bad idea for the reason already highlighted by Alsozara.
The problem is more mechanical due to the game working the way it does. Enemies with Carapace for example, such as Scab Maulers, take less damage to the head from weapons like the Lasgun but insanely more damage to the chest. Removing the ranged damage buff from the ult in favour of the headshot benefit reduces the use of the said ult for a job it was initially designed for, taking out high value targets quickly.
Now, give it increased pen and headshot damage, then we are in business. The issue mostly just boils down to the wonkiness of the game’s armour system and how damage scales as a result for different parts. I get the issue you are highlighting here, but you can tell the difference between skilled Sharpshooters from the bad ones usually soon after entering a room filled with shooters and hearing the veteran activate their ult because either that room is empty of those shooters in less than a minute, or you see a couple of dead specials and then get filled with bullets yourself.
Funny because at over 400 hours in darktide I have never played more than 2 games in a row that didn’t have a varied team. I think you are just obsessed with veterans in general and should probably go outside and breath some fresh air lol.
Eii no power sword nerfs, but a nerf to thunder hammer (bugfix)
Force sword aoe seems to be the psykers power sword
There is even less need to play a zealot lol
I’m now pretty convinced that every zealot that says the other classes are more powerful have a skill issue. Zealot is a superhero, with the most mobility, survivability, and insane CC. It’s the easiest class to carry with by far.
It took me around 80 games (including leveling) to make the engagement, and shooter dancing finally click (both when and how), but when it did I couldn’t put it down for another 80 it felt so insanely powerful.
Go, equip an Axe5 with BM and preferably headtaker, and toss your flamer for a braced (with no dmg blessing, just go for TF) put 30 games into it and try to make it click. Once it does you will be far better with every class.
No I just want the melee class to have best melee weapons.
I would remove the 1 hp immortality for power sword, any time.
I would remove the 1 hp immortality for 200 toughness and 7,5% toughness per kill
I would remove the 1 hp immortality for 50 % toughness regen for elite kill with 70% DR for 5 seconds when I use my ult
I would remove the 1 hp immortality for a weapon that has blessings for ranged dmg shield so I can f-cking get into melee instead of being a worse veteran
I want to play a zealot, MELEE oriented class IN MELEE and be BEST in melee.
NOT because I will die last
BUT BECAUSE this IS THE MELEE class
With the psyker buffs going to be seeing a lot more of them now, and one of their ranged attacks blows mobs around all over the place. Even if you get into melee the guys your fighting will start flying around everywhere just before you kill them.
Better make a new thread about psyker now.
The stun and stagger from enemies ranged mobs must be really annoying too. Don’t worry soon fat shark will give you some ability to buff your team mates or remove their corruption you can be a support zealot maybe!
