Hello Everyone,
Ahead of our next update Unlocked and Loaded, we wanted to share these patch notes related to balancing for Weapons, Blessings and Classes within Darktide. The purpose is to give players a sneak peak at what to expect, as well as to receive feedback on what we’ve prepared.
Important Note: These are not the complete patch notes for the upcoming update, Unlocked and Loaded. We’ll have more to share on the release date, September 26. This is to simply give players a look ahead at the balancing!
Depending on player feedback, we’ll be able to tweak values for the changes below. If there are any larger reworks requested, we’ll likely be unable to make those changes before the update. However, we’ll be able to revert anything that feels out of place / doesn’t feel right for players and remove it from this patch.
So, grab some tea or coffee and give this a read. Let us know what you think! We’ll be reading the comments.
There are 28 pages of notes here, so we’ll need to do a part one and part two.
Weapons
Weapon Changes
Thunder Hammers
The Thunder Hammer family of weapons suffered for being over-specialized into the Monstrosity-removal niche, while being very underwhelming against most other threats and in general failing at keeping up with the increased intensity of high difficulty missions.
With the following changes we aimed at rebalancing the weapon to preserve its single-target focus, but also to make it more well rounded and more exciting to use in all situations.
While the upper end of the damage on Special activated attacks against the Unyielding armor type has been lowered to prevent unhealthy 1-shots of Monstrosity enemies, the damage against Carapace Armour has also been significantly increased to conversely be able to more effectively handle Elite enemies like Maulers and Crushers (potentially dispatching them with a single well placed hit).
The Light activated attack damage profiles have been improved to reward weakspot hits and to more easily eliminate any human-sized enemy.
The self-stun after a Special activated attack has been significantly reduced on both marks, and differentiated between Light and Heavy attacks.
This will make it way easier to find a window of time to deliver its devastating activated blows without being overly punished by other enemies.
Also, most Light and Heavy attacks have been improved in their damage and reach, to make the weapon more reliable in dealing with lesser enemies when not activated.
Both marks of the Thunder Hammer weapon family have also received some additional targeted changes, explained just below!
Dev Note: It’s also a hammer.
Detailed Changes
- All Marks
- Tweaked the damage profile for Light Special activated attacks:
- Armor damage modifier vs Unyielding from {2.0,3.0} to 2.0.
- Tweaked the damage profile for Heavy Special activated attacks:
- Armor damage modifier vs Unyielding from {3.0,5.0} to 3.0.
- Armor damage modifier vs Carapace Armour from 1.0 to 1.5.
- Improved the headshot/critical damage bonus multiplier on all Light attack profiles:
- Finesse boost from 0.3 to 0.5.
- Improved the damage of the Light Strikedown attacks:
- Attack power distribution from {150,300} to {180,350}.
- Improved the damage of the Heavy Relentless attacks:
- 1st target attack power distribution from {150,300} to {180,350}
- 2nd target attack power distribution from {80,160} to {100,200}
- 3rd target attack power distribution from {50,100} to {75,150}.
- Fixed several windup and attack actions which could be canceled by sprinting.
- Tweaked the damage profile for Light Special activated attacks:
Crucis Mk II Thunder Hammer
The Crucis Mk II mark always boasted the higher damage compared to its Ironhelm Mk IV brother, but delivering that damage to the intended target was often difficult due to the horizontal direction of its Heavy attacks and the effective lack of cleave on Special activated attacks.
This led to not uncommon scenarios where a Heavy activated attack could be completely absorbed by a single intercepting Poxwalker, leaving the target enemy unscathed.
To give players more control on the situation, we added a new overhead Heavy attack to the weapon, only chainable after the Special activation action for a short period of time.
Also, a small amount of cleave was added to the Heavy activated attacks, meaning that the swing will be able to go through at least one lesser enemy.
These changes combined will make the weapon more reliable in delivering its devastating damage to the intended target.
Additionally, the damage profile of the Light 3 attack has been improved to reward players completing the attack chain instead of resetting it.
Detailed Changes - Crucis Mk II Thunder Hammer
- Reduced the Self-stun duration after connecting with a Special activated attack:
- Light stun from 1.3 to 0.3
- Heavy stun from 1.3 to 0.5.
- Tweaked the hitboxes and damage windows for most attacks to be more aligned with their animations.
- Improved reach for all Light attacks and the Push follow-up attack.
- Tweaked the speed and chain time for the Light 1 and Light 2 attacks:
- Light 1
- Slightly reduced the attack speed
- Improved chain time to Light 2 / Heavy 2 attack start from 0.65 to 0.55.
- Light 2
- Significantly improved the attack speed.
- Light 1
- Added a bespoke improved Light Strikedown damage profile to the Light 3 attack
- Attack power distribution {200,380}
- Finesse boost vs Unarmoured 0.75
- Finesse boost vs Flak Armour 0.6.
- Slightly improved reach for all Heavy attacks
- Changed so that the Heavy 2 attack chains into Light 3 / Heavy 1 instead of Light 1 / Heavy 1 to give an alternate access to the improved Light 3 attack.
- Special activated attack changes:
- Added a small amount of cleave to Heavy activated attacks:
- Cleave distribution {1.0,3.0}.
- Attack power distribution {400,800} when cleaving.
- Cannot cleave through Elites, Specialists, Monstrosities and Captains.
- Added an attack start chain from the Special activate action, chaining into Light 1 and a unique Strikedown Heavy attack with a vertical animation.
- Improved the duration of the Special activate buff from 4s to 5s.
- Significantly improved the Light activated attack properties:
- Attack power distribution from {300,600} to {400,750}
- Finesse boost vs Unarmoured from 0.3 to 1.0
- Finesse boost vs Flak Armour from 0.3 to 1.0
- Finesse boost vs Maniac from 0.3 to 0.5
- Overall Finesse multiplier curve from {0.25, 0.75} to {0.65, 1.15}.
- Added a small amount of cleave to Heavy activated attacks:
Ironhelm Mk IV Thunder Hammer
The Ironhelm Mk IV received few additional specific tweaks, but will still benefit greatly from the overall changes to the Thunder Hammer weapon family.
The improved reduction in self-stun duration after a Heavy activated attack will help in further distinguishing it as the more nimble and well rounded Thunder Hammer mark.
Detailed Changes - Ironhelm Mk IV Thunder Hammer
- Reduced the Self-stun duration after connecting with a Special activated attack:
- Light stun from 0.7 to 0.25
- Heavy stun from 0.7 to 0.4.
- Tweaked the hitboxes and damage windows for most attacks to be more aligned with their animations.
- Improved reach for all Light attacks and the Push follow-up attack.
- Slightly improved reach for the Heavy 1 and Heavy 3 attacks.
- Improved the Light activated attack properties:
- Attack power distribution from {250,500} to {300,600}
- Finesse boost vs Unarmoured from 0.75 to 1.0
- Finesse boost vs Flak Armour from 0.75 to 1.0
- Overall Finesse multiplier curve from 0.25 to 0.65.
Boltgun / Bolt Pistol
In this release we added a set of targeted buffs aimed to increase the overall reliability of the iconic Boltgun and Bolt Pistol weapons, but also to significantly improve their performance against specific enemy types and in various situations.
Dev Note: We are aware of some issues regarding the aim of the bolt weapons, particularly in the recoil and sway when shooting continuously.
Unfortunately the issues are rooted quite deeply in the interaction between multiple different systems, so a complete fix was not possible for this release. We are going to continue investigating a solution and provide an update on our progress at a later date.
In the meantime, we have added some tweaks on the Sway and hitscan behaviors which should at least alleviate part of the issue.
Detailed Changes
- Both Families
- Reduced the intensity of the Sway from 1.0 to 0.3.
Dev Note: This will make the weapon to be overall slightly less unwieldy when aiming, and also make it less likely for the aim position to be significantly displaced when transitioning from hipfire to ADS.
- Extended the radius of the hitscan for the bolt projectiles.
Dev Note: This will make the hitscan detection to be more generous and allow for shots that would have slightly missed the target to still be considered a hit.
- Changed the bolt properties to ignore limbs on non-Monstrosity enemies when the projectile trajectory would have also hit their torso or head.
Dev Note: This will avoid situations where a bolt could be intercepted by the limbs of the enemies even when aiming at their center of mass, resulting in heavily reduced damage.
- Armor damage modifier vs Carapace Armour from 0.4 to 0.5 (both near and far range).
- Armor damage modifier vs Infested from 0.5 to 0.9 (near) / 1.0 (far).
Dev Note: Bolt-type weapons were penalized when shooting against Infested enemies. This tweak will normalize the damage in order to make them more reliable against this armor type.
- Locke Mk IIb Spearhead Boltgun
- Significantly improved the wield speed, from around 1.9s to 1.6s.
- Improved the stagger properties of subsequent hits on the same target.
Dev Note: This will make it easier to open up Bulwark shields and reach stagger thresholds on other hard to stagger enemy types.
- Godwyn-Branx Pattern Bolt Pistol
- Added cleave properties to the bolt projectiles
- From no_cleave to {1.0,3.0}.
- Added cleave properties to the bolt projectiles
Dev Note: This will make it possible for the shot to hit the intended target instead of being fully absorbed by even a single minor enemy.
- Reduced some chain timings after the Special Push action:
- Chain to hipfire Shoot from 0.56 to 0.4
- Chain to Unwield from 0.54 to 0.4
- Chain to Special from 0.9 to 0.75
