Yes use the marksman one by using a automatic weapon
10/10 design fatshark the precision keystone is absolutely terrible to use with precision weapons and excels with run and gun with automatic weapons.
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Come on man. Fired? I imagine being that guy, having good intentions and then my boss comes to me with a swedish translated print out of your comment.
“I’m sorry, we’ve got to let you go, this forum poster is right”
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Let me disagree (joke inside)
Veterans keystones are not uninteresting… That’s absolutely wrong.
They are against the gameplay of darktide. (Except the one that permits to mark the enemies).
So they are just pure garbage
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Strong suggestions. I largely agree.
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Executioners Stance needs to generate 100% toughness on use. Just like infiltrate. I need a way to spike toughness when the fan hits the poxpoo pile. Otherwise i think its fine but a little costly with all the nodes it has.
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Some WS buffs like ammo reload should happen on swap but i think most triggers should move to “until next attack” as happens with Inexorable Judgement. This would mean melee and ranged buffs would only trigger when an enemy is attacked rather than weapon swap. This is my only real issue with the keystone.
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I feel like MF is just inverted Inexorable udgement. I have been playing with it lately and FINALLY found a build that doesn’t totally disappoint. But its not that good and standing around blasting feels worse than moving and shooting. The main issue i see isn’t even the stack loss on movement but rather the speed at which stacks are lost. This forces you to play weird stutter step and feels bad. If stacks decayed more slowly and Camo Expert was built in i think that’d probably be enough to allow more natural freedom of movement.
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In fairness, while I would not support someone losing their job over poorly designing a single talent, the fact that the Veteran failed to meet its expectations/deadlines for the 2.0 talent update with Patch 13, then needed a 3.0 and 4.0 tree update, and is still attracting significant negative feedback far above anything we’re seeing for any other class, is indicative that there is something wrong, and whoever is in charge of designing the Vet talents (and particularly approving these changes/updates) may not be the best suited to their role. From a business perspective, if nothing else that’s resulting in additional costs, delays, and pipeline bloat alongside player discontent.
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Good point, and good post.
The exec stance should have toughness regen and reload at least as an option in the evolution of the ult. It is precious to ult, whip out the bolter and watch the reload for next 5 sec.
I am also not happy with the vet keystones. When the changes were announced I bashed it on the forum and I feel that I was mostly right.
- MF encourages immovable or a stuttering flow of combat (at best) and fails flat when you need it the most.
- The Focus Target is fine. I was wrong here, as I considered the mechanic to be convoluted, but it is the best one of the three and offers strong boons to the player and team (you were right there @Reginald).
- Weapon Specialist is okayish, your suggestion would improve it a lot.
My biggest beef is the Marksman Focus. It is next to useless during clutches or boss fights, encourages “static” gameplay, being at odds with the player coherency mechanics and last but not least contradicts the Sharpshooter archetype by being best used with fast-firing weapons. What are we, an ork sharpshooter that has 100% accuracy because he is firing at everything?
I would propose to give the MF two distinct and mutually exclusive ways to fit into Veteran archetype:
- Marksman
- Gunner
Marksman should encourage precision gunplay focused on eliminating specials and bosses. So for example, you would get strong, stacking bonuses to finesse damage and toughness as a reward for having a high accuracy and/or scoring headshots, eliminating specials… (details to be determined later). Potential offset: the inability to move during ADS (to encourage quickscoping) or losing some stacks if you miss. This would also synergize pretty well with the middle tree.
Gunner would encourage heavy firepower for horde clear and general damage output at the cost of mobility. Think of the cool dude with that massive backpack-fed LMG and a cig that serves as graphical background of the tree. Basically more squishy and more destructive ogryn gunlugger. Potential bonusses: ramp-up damage as long as you fire, extra damage on repeated hits, extra cleave once you reach max bonus stacks, toughness damage reduction… There are plenty of ways to explore here. Potential offsets: inablity to move as long as you fire or massive movement speed reduction.
This keystone would synergize more with the right tree.
Just an idea, I did not thought it much through, but would be more than happy to see some distinct archetypes in the MF keystone again.
Edit: Grammar as usual 
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Sure, and that’s as is may be, but they’re not exactly easy to enjoy using. Because they’re cumbersome and highly-situational, which rather curtails the satisfaction of them, thus kneecapping the amount of fun derived from their use. Surely you’ve noticed that one of the most frequent suggestions for making one’s veteran build is to simply not bother including the keystones at all, yes? I sure see that a lot at least.
I think a lot of the pervasive, and persistent grumbling also comes from how many contrived hoops you have to jump through in order to utilize them, because remember, these are meant to be motivaters; the rewards at the end of the tunnel to keep you playing and to have something to look forward to, but unlike the other classes, they’re not exactly straightforward, and you practically have to consult a thesaurus to understand what’s on offer. Weirdly enough, this is my biggest sticking point, personally.
An analogy: it’s like saving up all your tickets at the arcade so that you can get the mystery best prize, and when you finally have enough, they give you a Geiger counter. It might even be a master-crafted model, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a highly specialized piece of kit, with only one, very specific purpose, and you would’ve just preferred a boombox.
I can only speak for myself on this part here, but personally, I’d just like something a bit more fun and versatile, you know?
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I will assume that you (as many others) are talking about two of the keystones, not all three of them, when you say that they are difficult to understand, very situational in their use, and make you jump through hoops.
You’re correct, yes. Please forgive any poor wording, I’m pretty damn sleep deprived.
vet’s keystones are essentially edge case boosters for more specialized builds. since the vet’s skillset is already very strong without them they’re better used to enhance s playstyle that already works with it instead of planning the playstyle around them.
vet can entirely ignore the keystones with their build, which is a strength of the class. they have an impressive tactical flexibility.
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Imagine comparing a team-wide damage boost to a personal-only damage boost.
+10% team-damage =/= +10% damage
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I finally got a marksman’s focus build that felt good to use. Running infiltrate and marksman’s with a headhunter 7. OR SO I THOUGHT. I took the thing to the range after a few games and realized that 10 stacks of marksman’s gives me exactly 0 interesting breakpoints I don’t get base from the vraks mk7 base. It takes like 2~ shots less to kill a reaper on headshot and that’s about all I can say for it that is good.
WHAT IS THIS KEYSTONE FOR!? I can’t find a single reason to take it and I am trying!
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Is that a “strength” or a reflection of a poorly designed tree? All the other classes seem built around running one, and nowhere has FS stated that running Keystone-less builds was a design choice or intent for the Veteran, nor have they featured any such builds themselves anywhere.
I don’t run a Keystone on most of my builds. For me, it’s not because of the “impressive tactical flexibility” offered, it’s that the Keystones just aren’t worth taking, or there are too many other talents needed to make a given weapon work right. I don’t face that issue on any other class.
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Honestly Markman’s Focus should also offer stamina regen like Focus Target so user could retain deadshot benefit while shooting, it would synergize well with the finesse buff itself and weapon like HH or Infantry Lasgun.
Also Weapon Specialist buff shouldn’t start or drop on weapon switch, would make it a lot less clunky.
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Autoguns.
Funny enough, Precision weapons not working well with MF.
But autoguns do. They shoot fast, they penetrate and they crit alot.
You hit heads more often, you can hit multiple at once and again, crits. All this gets boosted really well by MF, It even gets boosted the most:
You can reach 1 headshot brake point for any horde unit, including shooters, with a gun that can spit about 1000 bullets per minute. One volley into horde should easily give you max stacks.
And you don’t really need to worry about brake points on elites, since fast firing, low damage weapons are favored by DPS, which is always gets increased by MF, unlike brakepoints for prescision weapons.
Edit: I also forgot to add that MF creates pretty big gap betwen headshot and bodyshot damage for autoguns, which results in more frequent headshot kills.
Bodyshots softens the target, headshots finishes it. Easier to gain and maintain stacks as result.
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Well, it’s also because Com5 IAG is already strong as heck and it just make already strong weapon even stronger. Same thing for Gunpsyker.
It’s probably bit more fair on Gria and Agrip though but using Execstance on top of that seem a bit ovekill.
I use MF with Vrak7 in one of my build and it seem to reduce crit headshot needed to kill tankier enemy by 1, with the most prominent breakpoint is being able to one tap Rager in the head.
Honestly the biggest problem for precision weapon is ghost hit imo, unless it’s Revolver or Plasma which have super generous hitbox.
Disgusting.
Is that supposed to be impressive? Because that’s kinda the normal output you should achieve when playing T5+.
You’re not going to last otherwise.
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I never said MF is impressive with autoguns, i said it works the best with them.
Of course you will. Some people really like to be dragged by VoC vets through the whole map this days.
I like the Focus Target! It’s actualy pretty good keystone but I’m kind of tired of using only one keystone, if any, anytime I try something new.
Other two keystones are overcomplicated and enslave people to act certain way even if it doesn’t fit the situation in the game. Even if you learn to play like a monkey doing non-sense just to gain small bonus, that in a grand schema of things might not even matter, it mostly works only for the playstyle with automatic weapons.
Weapon Specialist also enhances melee but I still found that quite unreliable because you need to periodicly swap weapons to keep the bonus up.
Let me give you example how Marksman’s Focus could work:
Gain 40% ranged finesse power, 20% recoil reduction and 10 increased reload speed when crouched down.
Not sure about the Weapons Specialist. I think the idea itself to enhance weapon swap is not bad but the time restriction for buffs makes it so that you need to artificially swap back and fort often. I would suggest something like this:
20% increased weapon swap speed.
Ranged Specialist is active when you are holding ranged weapon. Melee specialist is active when you are holding melee weapon.Ranged Specialist grants 10% critical chance.
Melee Specialist grants 10% increased attack speed.
Other keystone modifiers would grand bonuses to Ranged Specialist (e.g. fire rate), Melee Specialist (e.g. increased dodge distance and dodge speed) or on weapon swap (e.g. toughness on weapons swap, 3s cooldown).
I was also thinking about having bonuses for each “stance” affected per kill in other “stance” similar way as it is now but it would encourage players to not swap before bonus is maxed. So I think enhancing weapon swap and providing exclusive melee or ranged bonuses behind the kesytone for the cost would actually work the best. You know to specialize.
Anyway instead of just criticizing I wanted to provide some ideas as well so here you go.
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They apparently did try to do this, but had implementation issues because of how specific animations are.
Weapon specialist having a faster swap to make things like Bolter a better option would have been great. Hope it’s still on the table.
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