Toughness is meant to be a buffer against taking occasional hits in this game without losing health while also being meant more for countering ranged attacks than melee. This is why ranged characters are better equipped to survive enemy ranged damage while melee characters are (supposed to) be better at dealing with melee enemies. This is why the bleedthrough was originally added I think. In order to make melee enemies actually scare to a Veteran Sharpshooter with a wopping 200 base toughness. The big problem is that it damn well hurts melee way more! Even if melee characters are tankier and take less health damage, they still get hit way more cause they are in the front.
The easy fix is to just make enemy melee damage have no bleedthough, but deal more damage to toughness than it does to health. Melee characters have very easy ways to get damage reduction and sustain toughness in melee range so this would be way easier for them to deal with while ranged characters would still feel the hurt from letting things beat on them point blank.
It’s that easy. The game won’t be easy AF for ranged characters while not feeling like bull for melee characters. It’s not even like this game is balanced around not getting hit anyways, otherwise we would all have no toughness bar.
If the goal is to make it so Veteran has a large toughness pool to deal with ranged enemies, but bleedthrough is there to make it so melee enemies are still a threat, they could just make it so melee damage does a percentage based damage to toughness.
This means that a Veterans, or anyone with toughness curios, their toughness would protect them more against ranged damage, but it would not protect them anymore against melee than it does at base toughness.
The percent of toughness you lose to different melee attacks doesn’t have to be equal across classes either, in a situation where Zealot loses 20% toughness, Veteran could lose 50% toughness to the same attack, just as an example.
Though that would, I think, limit the purpose of Veteran’s toughness pool being so much larger rather than just giving Veteran ranged damage resistance as natural perks/feats. I was under the impression from the beta that the purpose was also to allow Veteran to just straight tank a couple melee hits while they try to counter snipe/shoot enemy ranged.
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I think that FS could find great options to deal direct health damege. They could add some special that were psykers and and warp damage us, or give some enemies Power Swords that ignore toughness (or most of it), daemons that shoot corruption… I mean… they got a full universe for inspiration and create fair threats instead of what we got now.
I really wish there were some enemies designed around dealing direct damage to hp or mitigating toughness. Something like a flamethrower that instantly deletes your toughness maybe, or an AoE grenade that splits your team and removes toughness if you step into AoE. Or maybe l4d2-like charger that would deal damage directly to hp. Maybe even add a mechanic to deal permanent damage to hp that cannot be healed and call it a corruption or something. Add in a gutter runner equivalent that deals corruption and maybe some infested enemies like poxwalkers that deal corruption damage. That way there will be a lot of enemies that can mitigate your toughness and drain your hp over the course of the run so toughness bleedthrough is not needed anymore.
What I meant to say is that attacks from common enemies or “non magical” attacks should not bleed through toughness.
But if they really want to ignore that mechacnic and inflict direct health damage they could add other things or patrols of special units to make us fear the close combat.
I love elites and specials in this game and their mechanics but FS could go further with them instead of using the weird bleeding system
Apologies if my message came up as hostile - wasn’t meaning to. Just wanted to point out that DT already has a lot of way better designed ways to make toughness not OP and mitigate it.
I feel like this game already has much more punishing melee than VT: dodges stop regen of stamina so you already can’t dodge-push forever as easily as you could, on top of that we have big amounts of ranged enemies taking potshots at you even when you are in melee (i noticed they love to flank if terrain allows them to do so) and lots of elites and specials lead to toughness being close to 0 in lots of situations, which means trash mobs are already dangerous.
On top of that there is a corruption (poxwalkers dealing corruption damage was a way better solution to making trash dangerous than bleedthrough ever will be) and toughness deleters in the form of fire. Bleedthrough feels like fatshark overdoing way too much. It isn’t necessary and only hampers class balance.
What FS should do in my opinion is roll out a patch where bleedthrough is turned off completely for a week or so, see how it goes and then keep it this way if game feels better (it definitely will) or add bleedthorugh back if players want it.
Didn’t find your message hostile. It really made me see that mine was poorly explained.
And while I can understand the stamina management (lots of games do that) I agree with you that it feels like FS is overdoing. It seems like they are not sure about how melee should work and go from tactict to chaotic and just throw ways to punish players instead of incentivate us.
Since the release change that you take no health chip at 100% toughness, the system feels pretty perfect to me now. I’ve only played Zealot but across several builds getting back to 100% toughness after a stray hit feels very reasonable to do. If you’re taking several hits in quick succession, you get punished accordingly, which is reasonable. I have more of an issue with how quickly ranged trash enemies delete your whole toughness bar then stagger lock you than with melee chip.
I dunno, I got the complaints while there was guaranteed chip damage even at 100% toughness, but with how things are now it just feels right to me.
I’d like to add on to my previous post that Toughness gain from weapons perks could also use a bit of a rebalance.
Toughness from weapon blessings should give a flat amount of toughness rather than a percent so that they feel more balanced between the different class options. A Veteran shouldn’t get double the toughness from melee blessings as a Zealot etc. Also this would allow for the stat values to be set a bit higher for players not running max toughness curios. Example: the 5-8% toughness on chain melee hits blessing could give up to a flat 10-12, instead of a percent. This would overall keep toughness gains from being insane for some classes that they shouldn’t be while making them viable options for the ones they should be good with. Melee classes with their % damage reduction melee talents would find more value out of 12 toughness than a ranged character and therefor be stronger in melee combat, all the while having a lower maximum toughness as a buffer for ranged shoot-offs like the Veteran.
I do think those blessings are a bit overtuned, but they’re on a very limited set of weapons. I’m not even sure if toughness curios are a good choice currently, nerfing that stat with flat toughness gains seems like a questionable at best idea.
100% agree with this. Toughness system is fine as it is for melee. Ranged damage melts toughness as a zealot, and while I generally try to engage them as quick as possible in melee, damnation is pretty much all ranged enemies which makes zealot tough.
Melee on the other hand, I can avoid damage by dodging and blocking while still being able to take a heavy attack from a crusher and be fine. I don’t think we need to have toughness block all melee damage, it’s fine as is.
This game is literally a snoozefest until damnation most of the time.
And yes I’m aware of enemies spawning behind, or hell even in front of you and then backstabbing you. This isn’t a fault with the toughness system, therefore toughness shouldn’t be balanced around it.
(My arguements are in general, not aimed at you alsozara, just using your post to build on)
I don’t disagree for the most part with the bleedthrough system being bearable for melee only combat, but it literally CAN’T work smoothly with there being standard ranged enemies in the game. Taking a ranged hit lowers toughness to the point that melee enemies will always chunk your healthbar if you are fighting in melee range and get shot, due to the bleedthrough system. The current system FORCES melee character to prioritize ranged enemies instead of what’s directly in melee range a lot of the times and this goes consistently/annoyingly beyond the threat of elite/special enemies that are naturally high priority. I think if bleedthrough was gone it wouldn’t change too much of the gameplay besides letting people properly focus the enemy types that their character’s role is supposed to focus. If the game becomes too easy they can just buff enemy damage. Toughness bleedthrough feels more like a difficulty bloat mechanic rather than an engaging one.
Here’s a thought. Instead of crazy “Whoa, enemies do more damage to toughness!” which would require reprogramming and potentially other problems, why don’t we do this?
Normalize all toughness to 100. Every career has a passive, perhaps you can choose it, perhaps it’s pre-chosen. “% mitigation against X.” Veteran would have, say, 50% toughness mitigation against ranged attacks (200 total). Psyker, a weird omni glass cannon, could be 10% to both melee and ranged, they also have bonus toughness regeneration, like Ogryn. Ogryn could be 40% to melee 30% to ranged, and Zealot 10-15% versus all per Martyrdom, capped at 30%. The trait for +3 martyrdom raises the cap versus melee to 45%.
These are off the cuff and in no way representative of what would actually be balanced, but it might be easier to code toughness mitigation vs X than bleedthrough. Plus, doing it this way allows Zealots to, you know, get stronger as they have lower health. Allows classes to be strong versus X but weak versus Y, and in general makes it a lot simpler, better designed, and easier to muck about with if required as it’s a per-class system and not: “Veteran magically has more toughness because they need to be able to deal with ranged threats.” Whistles innocently at Psyker.
The point being, you can differentiate things and make them interesting just with 100 base toughness.
If you read the rest of my post, I said that towards the end. But I also pointed out, that defeats the point of what I thought the additional toughness was for, so that Veterans could tank hits while still shooting.
It’s really just whatever Fatshark wants from toughness. To me it seems like they want Veterans to have a larger pool that’s harder to fill without elites to kill, while Zealots would more quickly fill toughness in melee. That’s just my speculation though.
There’s a lot of things they could do with toughness.
Obviously you should be trying to avoid getting into hefty melee fights in direct sight of ranged trash squads. That is a basic component of the situational awareness the game expects of you. Pull melee enemies behind cover, or clear ranged trash with a lasgun before running into engage. This all works perfectly well in practice in my experience.
The question of whether or not ranged trash mobs are overbearing or over centralised at the moment is an entirely different discussion to melee chip damage. At higher difficulties a handful of shots will rip Zealot’s whole toughness bar apart, which is much more egregious than a melee enemy hitting you afterwards (when you likely have 0 toughness anyway).
It’s just like the enemies spawning behind you argument, it’s conflating two separate issues, then weirdly deciding melee chip is the problem rather than wonky spawns.
Under ideal conditions combined with skilled play then yes.
I feel like you are missing my point a bit here. If you get hit enough for your toughness to get obliterated anyways then yes bleedthrough doesn’t matter, but I’m not talking about taking a handful of shots and then getting hit by melee when your toughness is practically gone. I’m talking about how crap it feels to get hit by 1 bullet and still having a notable portion of toughness, only to still take 30 health damage from a 2nd hit from the smallest, most widespread enemies in the game while still having some of your “anti-chip damage bar” still present. It just feels like crap.
I’d say the reason people (myself included) are pointing at chip damage so much is because it is an unnecessary mechanic that causes proliferating smaller issues when interacting with a bunch of other problems/inconveniences that Darktide already has.
Bleedthrough damage just isn’t a good solution to making melee combat harder. It causes just as many issues as it fixes. There are plenty of ways to make the combat of this game more dangerous and/or engaging without the “anti-chip bar” being inconsistent, confusing, and rough for the less “elite” players. I personally am not good enough to pull off Damnation difficulty missions and can’t always carry/win Heresy missions, despite previously being able to carry Legendary missions in Vermintide 2.
Bleedthrough needs to happen because the only people who really get rekt by it(not that it did a lot of damage on full toughness) are veteran and psykers who failed to watch their backs.
People in vermintide 2 take a far larger chunk of hp damage when they get shanked in the back by even(or rather, especially) a single slave rat. In darktide it was just tiny chip damage if you were at 100% toughness(and now it’s 0).
Zealot has feat to regen hp, ogryn has a ton of hp.
And being in melee(due to, you know, being mostly melee class) naturally regen lots of toughness even without coherency…etc. due to just killing the enemy with melee. If there is absolutely no bleedthrough, the amount of toughness regen you get would have to be toned down - which means you’re weaker against ranged enemies(which are often the main threats).
