VOC is still the chosen one becuase the team value and situational value is insane even after the nerf.
What executioners stance and infiltrate are missing is a comparable team value.
If executioner stance instead of highlighting enemies for the team gave the team 9 seconds(or anytime) of unlimited ammo or reduced ammo use. So now more classes can bring more weapons instead of just feeding the vet all the ammo while they Regen ammo.
Infiltrate could deploy a smoke screen on use for the team that also has an aoe horror affect for mele range enemies(like VOC knockdown range) The agro dump makes infiltrate the most hated ability for teams.
Even if VOC gets nerfed again golden HP or just the push back can save a run, so the other two abilities need something to compare to.
Were I to change something about Exec Stance, which is fine as an ability as is, it would be to reduce the cooldown of Survivalist to 1s while it’s active or like double it’s effect so it would make sense to apply to all auras.
Trying to make these abilities compete with VOC in a team value sense is a fools errand though. Some of the defensive abilities in this game are just too good + too low cooldown to justify alternate picks. I know it’s a completely different game w/ different CD mechanics but look at the comparable ability to VOC in VT2. Kruber’s shout has a 90s CD and it’s only 25THP which does not work at all like gold toughness does in DT. If FS wants spammable abilities then they need to have an appropriate power level. If they like the power level, then it needs to have an appropriate CD.
That would be cool if it modified the auras. Regening ammo would work well.
Balancing a non team ability against a team ability is hard.
I’m kinda in the camp that golden HP should just be on the zealot. VOC could be reworked into something else that benefits the team, since darktide likes to give classes an option of one team benefit.
I do think havoc games need a balance modifier though. I get not balancing for the hardest difficulty, but adding on some extra words that say in* havoc only to abilities would go a long way for more variety of builds. But more work is more work especially across more classes I can understand not doing that.
I think the Executioner Stance is in a pretty good spot. I’m not sure if it works that way now, but last time I tried it, enemy highlighting only worked from the initial activation and couldn’t be extended. Fixing that would definitely give it better team utility.
One more thing I’d like to see improved is for the ability to have more generic use instead of being strictly a ranged weapon ability. For example, I’d like to be able to throw a smoke grenade, turn on enemy highlighting, and go into melee berserk mode. It reminds me of Riddick - it would be cool to roleplay him in Darktide.
Bad players gave it a bad reputation. That’s all. There is a difference between running away like a coward and deleting hordes of enemies or priority targets with a gun without being distracted by random trash. It’s also pretty good for completing objectives.
The only change I would suggest is to extend the duration of the bonus damage to 10s to make it consistent with the rest of the ability modifiers.
It’s not just bad players, if a inflil vet or shroud zealot have agro of a dog and go invis right before the pounce the dog will 360 to the nearest team mate and pounce without warning.
The invis agro dump on all mobs makes them instantly turn and switch targets, anyone who runs invisibility even if they are a good player cause team damage.
They need to add on a delay or suppression of some sort for invis characters or they are team killers.
If the vet or zealot picked a different ability their teammates wouldn’t have ever gone down and needed to be rescued.
I thought the whole point of the left side abilities is more offensive setups while sacrificing some defensive value. These abilities are high risk high reward gameplay imo compared to the middle tree ones, you take these if your role is team support or if your not confident enough.
I do agree with infiltrate i only have it on meme builds, its was fun on expeditions tho.
It doesn’t do enough damage to make it worth it, I don’t remember what patch before havoc the amount of enemies was a lot less that the ability was usefull, you could stop specials getting to your team.
Now elites and specials are so many most weapons are designed to perform without out the buff just fine and you won’t hit break points if you choose it.