We are not happy with the outcome of the previous patch.
The recent “balance” changes, mainly Crusher HP increases, but also the general armoured pressure such as the Havoc Rotten Armour waves, have sacrificed weapon variety, instead of improving it. We have had a number of weapon outliers, such as Duelling Sword Mk IV & II heavy attacks, Uncanny Strike, which made armoured enemies not a real threat.
Why are we trying to balance those weapons by making OTHER weapons which already struggled vs large armour waves even worse?
It might be also the time to rethink the levels of Soulblaze is allowed to stack to. Especially that Perilous Combustion is now able to trigger Perilous Combustion. Infinite cleave without damage fall-off on Venting Shriek and Inferno staff have been breaking Havoc balance for a while now, and remain the highest damage output tools in the game with minimal risks. Inferno staff peril generation is way too safe, and the staff provides constant level of suppression, unrivalled even by Trauma. A competent inferno staff psyker easily doubles the damage output of any other build or class, even tripling that if they also run Venting Shriek.
Another source of certain balancing issues is that blessings on weapons have been allowed to interact with other weapons, Blitzes and Ability damage output. Uncanny Strike, power blessings and Puncture blessing effects can be applied to other sources of damage such as Soulblaze, Assail, force greatsword warp slash etc. I’m not even sure if that list of (surely unintentional) interactions is full.
Food for thought? Something to bring up at some state of balance review meetings?
It feels so weird how so many problems with the balance could be solved, if FS would just make Crushers have an unarmored/flak weakspot (and of course further reducing their spawn rates as well).
Whatever this gets resolved or even acknowledged as a problem is not up to us.
I just feel that game balance should at least consider playstyle variety, as that’s where the game longevity lies. I would like to see weapon choices and various class build options across Tide games, because that means I can enjoy the game in different ways.
Well, that’s the frustrating thing with FS. There’s a lot of feedback that the devs could, and honestly should, hear, but it all falls on deaf ears. CM is supposed to read through Discord, Reddit, the Forums, etc. to see what the playerbase wants, make a list of it all and give it to the devs in a digestible manner so they can then implement said changes in the next update.
The devs have completely 0 contact with the playerbase and the only way they hear anything from us is through the CM. So having any meaningful changes be added to DT like giving weapons more variety, nerfing the OP weapons/mechanics, overhauling things like Havoc or the way they handle modifiers, all depends on one person.
This makes me wish that FS had two CM’s or just people solely dedicated to gathering feedback, because it’s clear that one CM can’t get all the info to the devs in the time between the updates.
The balance issues in Darktide are so entrenched right now that it’s nearly impossible to change course without significant backlash. The power creep has been an ongoing issue in the game. If power creep is reversed with nerfs, casual players will be upset. If underperforming classes and weapons are buffed to bring them up to par with the current meta, players who value the skill-based challenge in Darktide will complain about more power creep. The unfortunate thing is that if casual players who only want buffs make up the largest part of Darktide’s playerbase, that is likely who Fatshark is going to cater their balance decisions to.
Psyker is extremely unbalanced right now due to their easy access to infinite cleave/soulblaze stacking and their insane toughness regen nodes since Bound by Duty reworked them. Arbites and Ogryn were extremely strong before Bound by Duty, and even after some minor nerfs still offer the best CC and survivability in the game. Vet has crazy damage output often on par with psyker since they had the majority of their filler nodes removed and can now stack an insane number of damage and nade talents. Zealot is arguably the most “balanced” of the classes, but even with the slight bump to their power level in the talent rework they have been overtaken by all the other classes in terms of utility and damage potential and are now seen by many as the weakest or most redundant class in higher difficulties outside of just being a support chorus bot. It seems like the devs decided to buff every class except zealot massively in the recent rework.
The current issues with Havoc and insane spawn rates of Carapace, specials, and bosses in higher difficulties are due to power creep IMO. The devs basically have to force unfair situations to challenge the meta builds/classes which further entrenches the meta and reduces build diversity by making off-meta builds even more obsolete.
The only way to reverse the power creep at this point is sweeping nerfs to the player and adjusting spawns to more reasonable numbers rather than more buffs to spawns and enemy HP, but I don’t think that’s something Fatshark would be willing to do. It looks like the only practical solution going forward is likely massive buffs to underperforming weapons and zealot and giving every class access to absurd amounts of rending and stagger which will necessitate more buffs to enemies to make the game challenging.
