Fatshark fanboys mindlessly defending the awful ‘rework’ be like
The mental gymnastics they do to try and make the vet tree not look completely awful.
So the way i see it this is the deal
you either go here
which is a sorry excuse of a clone of this bad boy right here
or if you just reject the thought you go here
with this tax perk as a bonus
I’m having fun. Sorry you’re not.
Just ran my first Infiltrate/Focus Target Auric Damn. Was aces. Near-permanent damage buff for the entire team and constant toughness/stamina reup. And all I have to do is make sure to keep stuff tagged, which is already well-set in my muscle memory. Loved it. Feel like a real badass squad leader.
Focus Target! is the one that is definitely the least worst, and I agree, Saltzpyre’s WH ability would have been a better thing to have.
I think they should have ripped out the Bounty Hunter’s big gun ability and slapped that in somewhere, modelling in the Hand Cannon for it, maybe as the right tree’s keystone. In melee and suddenly a Crusher or three arrive? Time for the Hand Cannon! I had much fun with the BH special in VT2; lining up 2 Chaos warriors for headshots was just 
. Hell, it would be worth taking regardless of where else your points are going in the tree.
I’m going to keep experimenting and see what suits me, I just hope that FS will do something to truncate the tree a little and make improvements. As we’re getting another update with Part II in Dec, lets hope they do something good with the tree before their Christmas holidays.
Played solo and 2 with @Antilus, and I gotta say Shout+Tag Bolter+PS is at least B-tier. There are better setups for Shout+Tag but it’s not downright bad as I thought, it’s a solid setup. Gotta pick +ammo and suppress immunity with it tho.
See, THAT is what Focus Target should have been. Any marked target takes extra damag, then the nodes add other debuffs or bonuses. Like restoring health/ toughness or adding extra on a marked targets death, suppressing or slowing the target while marked, etc.
Instead we got a damage increase that doesn’t help against 95% plus opponents because they already die too fast.
Hope is the first step on the road to dissappointment.
At this point I recommend finding alternatives. That way when they screw up the Veteran yet again you are already more invested in a better product. Makes saying good riddance far easier.
See? Sometimes I do have good ideas!
This is exactly what it does now, right? There’s effectively a “debuff” you place on the tagged enemy so everyone gets more damage on them…but then when they die, the extra nodes grant everyone toughness/stamina and a damage buff. Then you tag the next guy, the damage debuff rolls on, and so forth.
I could be wrong though, will be testing more tonight.
I believe in VT 2 anyone could mark a target to receive extra damage, not just Saltzpyre.
However thats a bit irrelevant as Focus Target and it’s modifiers are incredibly strong with the right loadout.
Ah I see the “any” distinction now. Thanks for pointing this out.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. 
jk
I myself, tried doubling down on invisibility and smoke grendates. I was barely able to branch off to get additional perks. I only have 1 additional talent to spare when I go full right maxing out both Infiltrate and Weapons Specialist. It’s disheartening
I’m trying to play with my commissar build, but Bolter is a bit unwieldy and slower to reload right now:
(No Tactical Reload 
)
I’m not ready to go FullBolter (left lane), because THAT would be a glass cannon with no buffs for team. Commissar is at least tough enough to handle some punches.
I thought getting “Dead shot” would help, but stamina regen nodes are to far away to get even one. Also gaining stamina from Keystone is a bit lacking. Quick ADS is not helping, it just adds delay to stamina regen, but I have not tested it outside of Psykanium, yet.
I really have no idea what to do to make it work well on Auric, I feel like I’m dragging team down on HiSTG instead of helping. I’m not quitting bolter or powersword. I can make this work. I just don’t know how.
This works just fine when you’re running PG instead of bolter. Due to PG being pretty nice at the moment.
Imo reload is fine, it’s the swap speed. I play on maelstrom with almost the same build as your first one.
Try this:
Don’t take krak nades, your gun is already anti-armor, go for frag. Frag to Survivalist takes 1 less talent point.
Don’t take revive shout, better to spam VoC, it will help you to create some space for safe swap/reload on par with frag.
Take Redirect Fire.
Optional - don’t take Target Down. Born Leader+VoC+Confirmed Kill should be enough for you and your team.
So you will have +2 talent points and can take Tactical Reload aswell (or anything else)
Take high mobility melee, not PS, bolter is slow already, you need something to reposition yourself fast and easy (devil’s claw is nobrainer)
Now the only problem is no anti suprression.
Imo they should swap these nodes, Deadshot is more niche than Determined
I take back what I said about Focus Target. I read the description backwards. The stacks build up on you before you tag something, NOT on a tagged enemy. I assumed you have to tag something and wait for stack to build up for some reason. This makes it slightly more useful.
Everyone in coherency do 32% more damage to a tagged enemy every 16 seconds, and on kill end up with a team wide 12% damage buff for 10 seconds. Useful for melting monsters I suppose. Everything else tend to die quickly enough anyway. This doesn’t scale that well in higher difficulties where elites and specials are common, but it just might grow on me. I run it with Mk VII Headhunter and some autoguns so far:
The problem lies with the user. Due to poor visibility in the game, I developed a habit of spamming the tag key when faced by a horde, to ping specials and elites in the crowd. That is hard to unlearn and goes back to VT2. Fatshark insists on brown upon brown colour pallet with occasional grey filter, just to make things worse, when you are close to death 
