The Veteran "problem" and how to fix it

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Hello there!

So, I read the complaints on the forums about veteran being weak and I decided to test a few builds & weapons.
My understanding is that while in previous patches you used to make a build based around your weapon, in patch 13 you need to choose your weapon based on your talents.

This leads us to 2 conclusions:

  1. Some of the weapons that used to be very strong now lack behind because there is no build to highlight their strengths (remember the builds are now talent-based and not weapon-based)
  2. Some of the comments about vet being “bad” are related to (1)

So what talents do we have and which ranged weapons are left behind?

  • The Left side is dedicated to “las”, “crit” and “weakspot” weapons
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  • The Middle is dedicated to rending
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  • The Right side is dedicated to melee
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This is what we have covered so far:

  • Melee Weapons
  • Weapons that benefit from Crit & Weakspot + Las weapons

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  • Weapons that benefit from Rending

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Which weapons do not belong to any of the categories above?
Raw damage weapons

Disclaimer:
The term “raw damage” refers to weapons that are heavy hitting, slow, with high recoil/sway and have a crit multiplier of x1.5 or less (crit weapons usually have 2x crit multiplier)

The solution:

  1. Change the last node of the Middle tree from +15 toughness to +10% ranged damage
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  1. Buff “For the Emperor” duration from 5s to 10s and remove the ally buff (make it a personal buff)
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  1. Buff “Fire Team” from 3% to 8%
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  1. Fix “Tactical Awareness” and “Executioner’s Stance”;
    Currently when “Executioner’s Stance” is activated your cooldown timer doesn’t tick and you get no benefits from killing Specialists
    “Executioner’s Stance” cooldown should be replenished while activated or at least (if you want to reward “Relentless” refreshes) you should let “Tactical Awareness” replenish your combat ability while the latter is activated.
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Comments:

  • Fire team is weak compared to the other two Auras.
    5% speed to the entire team is great
    1% ammo per Elite/Specialist is unique and game-changing on “no-ammo pickup” maps
  • Allowing Executioner’s Stance cooldown to refresh while activated makes it an actually “augmented version” of Volley Fire. At its current state it’s not really an “augmented version”
  • “Tactical Awareness” reducing 6s of Executioner’s Stance CD while Executioner’s Stance is active just makes sense. By not reducing the CD you are basically penalizing good Veterans for keeping their Executioner’s Stance up for a prolonged duration (by refreshing it with Relentless)
  • Adding +10% ranged damage to the last node of the middle tree will buff “raw damage” weapons overall while at the same time remain too far down in the talent tree so that you cannot obtain it without sacrificing buffs and passives elsewhere.
  • The “For the Emperor” change will bring the ability modifier more in line with the other two options. All of them should be self buffs and have the same duration.

I hope this thread was a good read.
I understand that we live in the tiktok attention span era and that my post is too detailed and long for the modern pace of living but thank you for reading it if you made it to the end! <3

Please let me know your thoughts or other suggestions you may have
~ Yobi

p.s. also let me know if you want me to share some of my builds. Veteran still slaps, you just need to remember that builds are no longer weapon-based but talent-based.

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gread ideas :+1:

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What kind of puzzles me about Fire Team is why it wasn’t a ranged damage aura to begin with. Psyker gets 10% elite damage, Ogryn gets 10% heavy attack, resident gun guy gets 10% ranged and… there’s no 10% Melee aura but that’s not the point :joy:

The ability to eliminate downtime of Volley Fire completely is part of the reason it was kinda broken.

Scrier’s Gaze is similar, but has the lingering buff which helps offset things - could Executioner’s Stance get something like that (e.g keep some of the damage OR the highlighting after the main buff drops)

I don’t think it was mentioned, but one thing I would like to see is the consecutive basic nodes in the final branch re-arranged. Make them 2-wide and put them in a place where they merge into a single node so it’s cheaper to descend and you don’t get forced down a left/right path. Since Veteran is supposed to get more passives as compensation, a pattern of 1 → 2/3 → 1 → 2/3 → 1 → [ 2/3 → ] red gives you a lot of relatively low cost choice, and makes the red node accessible within 6 or 7 points.

As it stands, there’s 13/12/13 nodes (excluding the 3-wide branch immediately after Combat Ability, and the red node) in the last section of each branch, which could be retained with
1/2 → 3 → 1 → 3 → 1 → 3 → red.

  • Left branch has 7 basic nodes, which could be occupy 3 rows (of widths 1, 3, 3) requiring you to take at least 3 basic nodes to reach the bottom, leaving blue-filled rows of widths 2, 3, 1
  • Centre branch has 4 basic nodes, which could be occupy 2 rows (of widths 1, 3) requiring you to take at least 2 basic nodes to reach the bottom, leaving blue-filled rows of widths 1, 1, 3, 3
  • Right branch has 5 basic nodes, which could occupy 3 rows (of widths 1, 1, 3) requiring you to take at least 3 basic nodes to reach the bottom, leaving blue-filled rows of widths 2, 3, 3

All 3 paths would then require 7 points to descend (+1 for the red) instead of 9 (+1). 1 basic node could be moved from the left branch to the centre branch to make all branches require only 3 basic nodes to descend instead of 5/4/4

(accidentally hit Reply before I was done, there’s more things I wanted to add)

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Here’s another Idea I’ll throw in. Smoke grenades are barely used, not too popular. Why not make them White Phosphur grenades, it’s a real thing and it’ll give you both smoke and a relatively small cloud of burning damage.

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My main problem is how inflexible the current tree feels. If there was some nodes connecting parts of the last 3 major node areas I feel like I could make some more interesting builds without having to devote 5-6 points into some traveling.
For instance I would really love to have 15 % attack speed and 15 % rending without having to sac basically everything for it.

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Until they actually act like a smokescreen that blocks enemy LoS, smoke grenades will only ever be a troll ability.

I’ve have like 3 wipes today thanks to vets throwing smoke grenades and blocking our sightlines to the enemy ranged, who just kept shooting us like it wasn’t there. Meanwhile we can’t shoot back because we can’t see them.

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Firstly I’ll say that I strongly agree with the three weapons you’ve picked as the biggest losers for current Vet tree. Pretty much everything else can get some good boosts from the tree in some way or the other but those three… Well Kant shotty can stack rending with the fire dot but that ain’t saving it as a Vet option. I agree with a good bit of your other analysis too. The one thing I mainly take issue with:

I strongly dislike the idea of refreshing cooldowns while they’re active. It inevitably turns a strong buff like Exe Stance into less of an ultimate ability to be used intelligently and more of a de facto passive. I had thought the removal of this insane privilege Vet previously had was a heads up decision by FS but then I remembered that they let gunlugger do it now instead like WTF guys. Point Blank would be way less broken if they gave it the same treatment and frankly I hope they do.

Now what I do see as a related problem is the incredible lack of versatility in options for ability cooldown. Zealot is just about perfect here, you get 3 strong options that each match the gameplay of their respective tree. Probably overtuned currently but whatever the core idea is good. Vet needs some other cooldown options since the current one pushes you very much into a sniper role, despite the tree offering very different ways to play Vet to the classic marksman. Like what about a shouting melee/brauto close range specialist Vet? Sure they can still be killing specials but it’s probably not their main job. What about sneaky boy Vet? Give them cooldown options that match what they’re meant to do in those roles, with a heavier melee/support focus.

One of the other main issues with current Vet is how much this tree starves you for flexible toughness regen options. Yeah you can awkwardly force confirmed kill into your build, and the bonus toughness on melee kill is OK I guess? But Vet’s toughness options are both not flexible and not available enough compared to everyone else.

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Based on my former experience with Game Designers and Game Developers, rearranging the nodes in a talent tree right after its release is a “no-go”

For some reason all the visual/UI stuff are much much harder to change than the context
For example you can completely change the image of a skill and its purpose but moving it to another tree is 10 times harder

When I wrote this thread I had this in mind and so I worked with what we currently have in a way that it can easily be implemented / tested / released

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Ye, I was just throwing out my 2c, whether or not it’s a viable solution is another question. It irked me that the final branch was so costly; looking back at the tree as a whole, Veteran requires 20 which is on par.

The consecutive basic nodes though… they bother me :frowning:

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Veteran just had way too much of their pre-patch 13 stats moved onto basic stat nodes, and they also have the most stat nodes.

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totally understandable. I wouldn’t know either if I didn’t have previous experience with another Dev team on another game. Also, maybe FS engine/design supports easy UI changes and I’m simply outdated. Just sharing what I think is true ^^

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Replenishement while activated i agree!

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Unfortunately the problems with the talent tree (imo) are significantly more than vet “being weak” (To be clear I am not saying he is weak) In my experience with various people involved with the balancing/talents he was viewed primarily as “the problem” to be fixed, and you have a talent tree that reflects this.

All of his abilities that empower his “Vet” (ranged) gameplay are almost exactly the same as before but weaker (or gone altogether) with the exception of being able to apply 40% brittleness on fast firing weapons - almost no innovation like you see with other classes.

Shout of command, AKA Kruber ult, works great in V2, where virtually everything is melee, things take longer to kill and CC is more rare - guaranteed stagger is much stronger. In a land of Mutants, Ogryn, Monsters (all immune to Shout) hordes of ranged units, and being unable to use ult during other actions (like revive) a 9m stagger every 45 seconds is mostly a joke.

Infiltrate - Because Zealot can just do it better on a 30 second cooldown.
It lets you disengage… pushing the horde onto your allies, and offers almost nothing else other then refilling your toughness and you can only do it once a minute.

Giving flat toughness and damage are about as boring and vanilla as you can make an ultimate, and those are the primary effects of all three Vet ults.

These ults do not give new gameplay, and they do not enable new weapons/builds to any real extent.

Looking at the Aura’s they are exactly the same - very bland and either makes you unnoticeably faster, or do an imperceptible amount of increased damage. Even if buffed, as they are they will not expand build options like ults, or keystones (which vet didn’t get at all) of other classes because what they offer is very generic.

His toughness nodes are also at the bottom of the three branches, making it impossible to get all of them, and incredibly costly to get more then 2 - leaving him with the same base toughness as my Ogryn.

It also takes 24 points to get Always Prepared and Confirmed Kill (the only ammo option that works for all guns, and only good toughness regen talent the Vet has) which means there are VERY few build options unless you are willing to forgo one or both of those.

At which point you mostly have a bad Zealot. If you want a melee Vet build, I would love to see a lot of Hybrid options (like Agile Engagement) or other mechanics (like buffing allies per kill) to make his melee different from Zealot - more then more crits and damage. Currently melee Vet feels a lot like Zealot who has less damage, toughness, mobility and has no stamina.

I still don’t understand why they took away the base stats, 100 extra toughness, 10% crit, 7.5% toughness per kill to move him towards baseline while leaving his stamina as a joke? - do you want classes to all have a similar baseline or not?

They took away many things that made the Vet unique, nerfed what was left, and gave him some options to be a bland and bad Zealot.

As long as the Vet has access to strong ranged weapons, he will be a strong class. Headhunter III, Revolver, VId Recon lasgun, Helbore - all are incredibly strong, and as a result any Vet build based on those guns will be strong. He is strong cause the weapon is strong regardless of his talent tree, not because of it, and this feels bad.

The focus on the rework was clearly (to me) on “the problem” and not making the vet more fun and expanding his options. I do have some sympathy, Vet was very strong so I can understand wanting balance - it is just a shame (and not fun) that when everyone else gets new toys, the Vet gets a lump of coal, warranted or not.

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Tbf I would actually like to take the 5% movement increase aura of the 3, since my build is already pretty conservative on ammo and there are other ways to get 3% more damage but none to augment mobility besides more stamina.

People talk about the vertical tax to get to some of the traits at the bottom, but I feel like the horizontal tax for branching between trees deserves just as much attention considering it only really serves to restrict experimenting with more diverse builds.

As it is though, I think its completely correct to say the vet got the short end of the stick this update. Im all for seeing the other classes not just being more viable but also fun but it doesn’t contrast well when over here you cant even reproduce the full sharpshooter build because things have been stripped out.

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This is very visible based on how the tree is set up.

The tree is set up in a way to tax you everywhere it can. There are so many dead nodes that have close to no use or even lower power levels than the simple travel nodes it’s infuriating.

Any other class can travel the tree and pick up useful stuff along the way, but on the Vet tree where it’s a choice between 2 options, it’s 2 bad options. Things like the choice between Opening Salvo/Killzone or Get Back in the Fight/Catch a Breath (These nodes are worse than a simple +5% ranged damage or TDR in T5+, in Auric 8m nodes are just useless). Born Leader/Competitive Urge is the worst offender, either a small team Toughness boost or an incredibly unreliant damage boost. I’ll probably make a post about the worst offenders.

Add to that that apart from helbore all other class weapons have their nodes scattered all around, and basically (again apart from helbore) all other non-class weapons get more out of the nodes than PS/Plasma (you can add Bolter to that).

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Yeah and to that point, it isn’t even so much that Vet has offending talents… it is that he has very little else. “oh you can be a token Zealot if you don’t want to do ranged damage” oh… okay?

Don’t get me wrong, I play Krak grenade melee vet because Krak grenades are the one new fun thing Vets got (and they are hilarious to use) and trying to use Krak Grenades while getting range damage buff talents is just not viable points wise. But otherwise you just pick the nearest OP gun that got gigabuffed via blessings and your talents just make the gun better.

Nothing like Assail, or Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude that are awesome, enable entire new options for their respective classes e.t.c.

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First I agree whole heartedly. The only real explanation for this current mess we are in is that Fatshark put everyone who thought the Veteran class was “the problem” onto the team and took their feedback from the cabal of rage-peddlers calling themselves “content creators” who tapped into that nerd-rage against the class to get more views. Then somehow got the whole mess past whatever passes for a QA department (my guess: put it on the bottom of the least-urgent stack and only mentioned it day of the deadline). As someone who has played ranged non-caster DPS for 20+ years this is a frighteningly familiar situation we seem to be in. I just hope we can get things fixed before we join the ranks of EQ1 rangers and their ilk in the “only fixed after the game goes on life support”.

Ironically I’ve found a lot of the individual talents to be okay and some even let us divulge from the old “pure ranged” to try other things. Its that compared to the absolute shower of extras the other three classes got that they are horribly lacking. Which isn’t helped when every other class gets 3 borderline overpowering capstone that are effectively passive. Read that again. Passive abilities offering power on par with our old Volley Fire that don’t require doing anything they didn’t do before. So why don’t Veterans have that? Why did the capstones we were slatted for have to be so hyper-restrictive that they absolutely had to be tied to specfic weapons? Aside from the rather obvious if nasty conclusion I’m sure most of us are coming to.

We need that sort of pinnacle ability. Something that gives the class enough “umph” to pull even with the rest when we can’t be spamming our combat ability as soon as its off cooldown. Something that increase our ranged damage to the point where we no longer are barely ahead of a zealot or psyker that just picked up a lasgun or brings our group support or melee to a point where they aren’t just situationally viable but actually useful. And its not hard. Here are 3 I came up with in 15 minutes one night before going to sleep. Now if these were that easy, there is no reason why a full staff of supposedly trained developers shouldn’t be able to come up with something comparable over a week or so.

Fieldcraft: When standing still for 5 seconds the Veteran gains 5 charges of Camoflague, each reducing maximum detection range to 10/8/6/4/2 meters. Each shot fired removes 1 charge and moving elminates them.
Modifiers:
#1 gives +5% crit, +10% damage, +5% rending per charge of camoflague remaining
#2 when all charges of Camoflague are expended the Veteran recies 75% toughness damage reduction and a 50% increase in run & sprint speed for 5 seconds.
#3 Running no longer drops all stacks of Camoflague, instead removing 1 charge per 3 seconds of running and allow crouch-walking without dropping any charges.

Lead from the Front: Gives the Veteran and allies in coherency a 10% reduction in all damage taken, and 10% chance to ignore stun and suppression per player in coherency. If a player is knocked down while under the effect, all other players in coherency gain “Vengance” - gaining +35% power for 10 seconds.
#1 Enemies within 15 meters of the Veteran have their movement and attack speed reduced by 25%
#2 The Veteran and allies in coherency gain additional 1.5% toughness per hit in addition to those gained from other talents. In addition any extra toughness a character gains will be converted to health.

Shock Trooper: Gives a stack of “shock” each time the Veteran hits a suppressed enemy within 10 meters to a maximum of 50 stacks. Each stack of shock gives the Veteran a 5% increase in stagger, 2% increase in close damage, and a 1% increase in melee critical hit.
Modifiers:
#1 Increases damage against targets by 1% per stack of shock per stack of bleed (so 10 stacks of shock against a target with 6 stacks of bleed would equal +60% damage). If the resulting damage becomes enough to one-shot a target the Veteran gains health based on the damage done.
#2 A chance on melee kills of suppressed targets to suppress additional targets and for already suppressed targets to become stunned.
#3 A chance for melee hits on a knocked down target to produce either an instant-kill that doesn’t count against a weapons cleave cap or expends all stacks to increase the damage by 5% per stack and bypassing 50% of flak and carapace armor.

Then there is the elephant in the room. Our weapons. Specifically the utter lack of number and quality of class-specific ones. Aside from the Orgyn - whose weapons are all class-specific for obvious reasons - we share all but 3 with the pysker and/or zealot. And those three are pretty much bottom of the barrel. Fixing our talents is obviously urgent but a very close second - if not equally important - is telling the “its fine” twits pretending to play Veterans to shove off and fix what we have and give us at least as many options as the other guys. Not like there is a lack of cannonical options either. We’ve already seen Scabs and Dreg gunners using volley guns, and heavy stubbers respectively, snipers bearing Long-Las rifles, and arch-heretics with what looks like plasma pistols. So where are our versions of those? Or how about some weapons we haven’t seen yet like the meltas or hell guns. Perhaps since the Zealot is slated to at some point get a two-handed power sword how about giving Veterans the option for, oh, a lightning claw or power fist? You know, new stuff so we have more options than just “common pool” or sub-standard class-specific and hope the group doesn’t throw a hissy fit.* As much as I love my Vraks III (and I was using it as my general-purpose rifle when everyone else was poo-pooing headhunter guns), I want choices. Especially choices that aren’t bloody mouse-wrecking and rage-inducing “click to charge before use and hope you don’t get tickled/ some twit of a monster or player steps in front just as the shot goes off” sources of irritation.

*Hint - that is one of the reasons I refuse to touch Damnation anymore. Along with perfering trying to seperate a wary mother big predator from cubs to give one or the other their shots than trying to get 3 other people to stay together at least 50% of the time. Even when said predator weighs twice as much as I do and has teeth long than my finger along with matching claws. At least said momma predator is somewhat consistent and rational. Gamers tend to explode at the merest hint that it might better to do something someone elses way but never seem to want to share “their” way before charging straight into the horde.

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My view is a bit more charitable, but I can definitely see where that sentiment comes from.

I feel like they wanted classes to feel unique, even with the new build variety. They recognised the gameplay role similarities between assault-vet and gunlugger ogryn and figured that people who wanted that sort of frontline lawnmower playstyle would migrate from vet to ogryn, which would open up vet’s ranged domain to hyper-specialise more into the sharpshooter style, which again, would be unique to the class and help with class identity.

Unfortunately, gunlugger ogryn feels like running through mud compared to assault vet and the “pick a single class and main it” design philosophy doesn’t play nice with class switches, so people who play assault vet have no gear on Ogryn. So, rather than migrate, they tried to force the assault vet playstyle into the sharpshooter vet tree and are understandably having less success than they’d like.

And then they gave a bunch of very assault-vet-ish talents to zealot because reasons.

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I have talked to several community testers, and they very clearly saw him (Scavenger specifically) as an issue to be fixed. Now it does sound like there were potentially other issues that went into Vet’s boring “you get flat damage or flat toughness” branches. Looking at the tree, and the abilities he got (and lack of keystones) it is pretty easy to see that “problem” priority/focus put on the Vet left him almost exactly how he was prior to the update, just less. With virtually no new game play options

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Also the bulk nerfing, directly and indirectly, of almost every aspect of veteran wouldn’t feel good to anyone who plays veteran.

They should have left the numbers alone initially with the talent trees and then tuned them down in smaller batches, rather than smashing everything down and maybe building them back up. With how slow Fatshark acts to adjust things, it just breeds more resentment than not.

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