The effort to reward ratio on all the vet keystones are awful with Weapon Specialist being ok, but only because the dodge distance is so funny on dagger. I’ll just leave it at that.
Marksman Focus in particular. It is quite a high effort keystone by all metrics, but is barely noticeable in actual gameplay.
Neat that guy died in one less shot. Was it a crit? Was the stacks? Iunno.
I’m probably gonna drop it. Been watching my gameplay footage, and it’s up less than I thought it was meaning its been mostly a placebo node for me.
What weapon are you running with it? I’m curious, because watching my footage I’m seeing it up a LOT more than I thought it would be, and I’m seeing it up in situations I didn’t expect it to be.
With revolver, I shoot into a crowd of poxwalkers and instantly get to full stacks. Then I start going to town: one-shot maulers, one-shot ragers, one-shot reapers. My crit rate in my last 2 games (with Surgical & Deadshot) was 60%, and it could theoretically be 100%. The TTK dropping drastically on metalmen and ragers is hugely impactful in my experience.
To be fair the revolver is kind of the outlier at the moment and I would argue is a tad overtuned.
I can run revolver in my zealot and get similar results because the revolver is just good on it’s own. Really if you run it on any tree it’s going to feel pretty good since it has pen, insane damage, and a fast draw time.
Running something like a hellbore oran mg12 feels way worse but all the skills mostly point to that being the intended weapon set.
The infantry auto gun isn’t awful.
Recon las does well with the rending but you burn through ammo so quickly keeping stacks rolling.
Shotgun is worthless on it. I gave it a fair shake but the ammo economy isn’t there for it and I burn way to many shots relative to damage output even with hitting mostly head level.
I haven’t tried the plasma because honestly it would feel really overkill and I haven’t tried the shredder or las pistol but those two might be ok.
Main issue with the node is still the complete lack of survival skills. Even if it gave you plus toughness or toughness DR it would be something.
I’ll be so sad when they take my current revolver and give me the one I was using since beta…but I will still use it! It’s my comfort zone no doubt.
I’m going to try some other weapons/builds with MF (and might even take Executioner’s Stance, which would be a first for me) because ranged finesse power (so, not just for weakspots) seems really err powerful. Testing with an ol’ helbore 3 I never used is showing great numbers.
I will say hellbore was doing fine damage wise (it was 1 tapping shooters with uncharged shots and everything else with charged) but I’m more and more tempted to properly hunt for the mod that lets you put different scopes on various weapons since the irons are rough past a certain distance. It really does feel like swapping scopes was a 100% intended feature they just didn’t have time to finish
BTW ppl misunderstanding how exactly Focused Shot + Redirect Fire work.
If your team kills a market target with 1 stack of Focused Shot, you get 1 stack of Redirect Fire dmg boost
When if you kill a market with 1 stack Focused Shot while 1 stack of Redirect Fire dmg boost is active, it refreshes the timer on the buff and adds 1 stack of Redirect Fire dmg boost to a grand total of 2
Then if you kill a market with 1 stack Focused Shot while 2 stacks of Redirect Fire dmg boost are active, it refreshes the timer on the buff and adds 1 stack of Redirect Fire dmg boost to a grand total of 3
And so on and so on, until you reach 5 (or 8) stacks Redirect Fire dmg boost.
Also, multiple tags on the same target do not overwrite each other to players disadvantage, i.e. if you applied 8 stacks to a target, then tagged it once more while having 2 stacks , 2 stacks will not overwrite 8 stacks already applied, on contrary if you applied 2 stacks to a target, then tagged it once more while having 4 stacks, 4 stacks will overwrite initial 2 stacks
To my knowledge, the weapon customization mod (it’s available on the modders discord; I don’t have a link, but it’s on the sidebar of the Darktide subreddit) builds entirely off of incomplete functionality in the game, so I think the not-enough-time is probably accurate (or there was some technical hurdle, potentially)
it’s the best in general for any build, so far for me anyways. They’re all just so situationally marginally impactful, whereas most of the other nodes that reach them are always active and much more helpful.
I’ll say it here just like in the other thread - Not going off the deep end with this War Veteran has a double meaning.
It’s in my opinion the best way to build him, no matter if you go full clawsword hobo mode or pewpew shooty guy. The keystones are too tedious and don’t compare to just getting some +15% base crit or some toughness regen whenever you kill something of note.
The other classes were designed around, at least in some ways, the keystones. The Vet keystones seem designed around the class, not the other way around.
I think its best explained by how easily justifiable not taking keystones on Vet is, besides maybe Focus Target. They’re not really class/build defining buffs. Take For zealot, Blazing Piety is a huge buff easily activated and is essential for most crit builds. Martydom has a distinct playstyle of either running at low health or being buffed in bad situations, making you tougher and more dangerous. Inexorable Judgement is probably the most passive of the 3, but if you’re not taking the other 2 keystones is always worth taking.
For Ogryn, Heavy Hitter prioritizes a specific melee combo playstyle. Feel No Pain is a huge buff for Tank builds. And while Burst Limiter Over ride sucks right now, it incentivizes a constantly shooting playstyle.
Honestly the best course of action would’ve probably been to nerf/remove some of Vets talents and just make the keystones easier to get to and far stronger.
The more I use inexorable the more I like how it’s designed. The gain stacks on dodge node encourages more use of perfect dodges over safer forms of damage avoidance, so there’s a little risk/reward in there but you don’t have to play into that for it to feel good. The bursts of toughness whether using melee or ranged are noticeable. The bonuses are pretty universally appreciated by any loadout. Using a gun that doesn’t really care about the fire rate? Well you’re still getting bonus damage and bursts of toughness, so you never really feel that you’re missing out because of weapon choice.
Weapon specialist just feels so much more awkward and less impactful by comparison, outside of giving a guaranteed ranged crit for weapons like revolver that really benefit from that. Otherwise I feel like I’m sacrificing way more to get a bit less when compared to speccing for inexorable with Zealot. As has been said the majority of that is related to the point expenditure to get to the damn keystone in the first place, but I do think the design of the keystones themselves is plenty to blame for feeling unenjoyable to build for and to play around.
I love inexorable judgement. Its been my favorite of the 3 Zealot keystones since Patch 13 launched. Passive was not the right word to describe it, I think I definitely more meant “build agnostic.”
What’s funny to me is I feel like I might like it more on an actual ranged focused build. Only having to get 1 ranged kill for the full melee buff, and being able to cache that melee buff for whenever you need it and reload your weapon when you switch back seems great. However you can’t try it out with a ranged focused build because of Vet Tree Design intent.
I do think both Marksman’s focus and Weapon specialist were designed around not being optimized for. Just play the game normally and get the buffs when they would happen normally. They feel a lot better when played that way imo but such a design philosophy is very tone deaf for the way people play the harder content, and again in comparison to many of the other class keystones which can have near 100% uptime.
Yeah, I feel like Inexorable Judgment is equal or more power for no busywork, and it’s also very good with about any setup you have including immobile weapons such as TH. I think it’s generally a good design to make harder-to-use stuff have a bigger payoff (stronger), and with Vet keystones they are harder to use and not stronger.
That said my issue isn’t the strength of the Keystones just the busywork/unnatural playstyle they force you into. That and locking your build in too tight with the huge point cost to reach and spend a few more points on them.
I’ve been playing a LOT since this last patch and I’ve played exclusively vet. I’ve tried ingesting all of the negative feedback and forced myself to play well outside my comfort zone to try to see the issues with these keystones. But I just don’t get the assertion here that they require more, or more funky, “busy” work.
MF requires you to hit 4 headshots to get to full stacks or you can stand still/walk with the extra node. FT requires mere tagging (and anyone on the team killing stuff) to get regular team-wide buffs with the extra nodes. And WS requires getting kills in either melee/ranged for some tangible and interesting hybrid combat benefits.
All of these are totally normal actions that require almost no thought and slot into a variety of different play styles.
The augment nodes for each keystone make the keystones work, but that’s how it is for every class.
Psyker is where I’ve spent the most time in the game, so I’ll speak to those keystones:
Warp Siphon requires getting specialist/elite killshots. No mean feat on a stacked team when using your ult regularly (hello 1/2 little shield, goodbye WS damage) and with stacks only lasting 25s.
Empower Psionics comes “raw” as a messily 7.5% chance to get a buff to your blitz. Without the nodes for 3 stacks and guaranteed charge on Elite (again, requiring a kill), that’s a hard sell for me.
And Disrupt Destiny oh lordy don’t get my started! What could be more unnatural busywork than trying to prioritize randos?
All of these only seem useful to me once you spice them up with the augment nodes, same as for vets. And they all require, in my opinion, more sweat that the vet keystones.
What am I missing? I don’t feel like I’m busting my hump to get the juice out of the vet keystones.
Again last one is a bit of a ramble, but it helped me point out something… Compared to damage blessing it’s way harder to trigger unless you are gaining stack on standing still… which doesn’t feel great.
There is no comparison in tedium between these and Psyker keystones. I take some time with Disrupt Destiny comparison here because I think it warrants it:
Disrupt Destiny comes with:
Points out hiding enemies for you.
Doesn’t come with forced gameplay such as not moving.
Have immediate pay-off on killing marked enemies giving you a huge (20%) toughness return. Can also add a chance (20%) to quell.
Bonus doesn’t fluctuate.
Stacks last a long time (15s) and you can double it (to 30s). You aren’t forced to not do stuff to keep stacks.
Have a mix of boosts to include both weakspot and general. Bonuses are about equal, but DD boost non-weakspot too!
Fun (subjective) minigame.
The only problem with it didn’t mark targets in event scenarios the last time I tried it. Otherwise, it’s strong and interesting to play with the Voidstrike+Assail build.