Veteran Ability Talk + Poll

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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After the Keystone talk [Veteran] Keystones Talk + Poll - Warhammer 40,000: Darktide / Gameplay Feedback - Fatshark Forums I think this one will be much easier… but who knows…

The Veteran has 3 strong and identifying abilities two have slight problems and 1 is niche but more balanced and fun (Infilitrate). I don’t think they need much change if any but mostly just a tweak some of the weaker and overpowered aspects and spicy up some of the skipped boring ability talents.

What would you do or suggest? Here are my initial thoughts and ideas…

Edited following for condensed ideas and polling.

Infilitrate: No Change
Low Profile + Hunter's Resolve: Lock each other out
Surprise Attack: Leaving Infiltrate now also staggers nearby enemies, Next attack after entering stealth deals +100% Damage and +100% Weakspot Damage.
Overwatch: Infiltrate Gains 2nd charge but its duration is reduced to 5s.

Infilitrate Changes?

  • Some Tweaks
  • No Changes
  • Replace it
0 voters

Voice of Command: Cooldown increased to 60s
Only in Death does Duty End: Voice of Command revives allies (no negative additions)
Duty and Honor: Voice of Command also restores 50 Toughness and grant +25% Toughness Damage Reduction to self and allies in coherency for 15s
Rallying Cry: Reviving allies instantly reduces Cooldown by 30s and for each staggered enemy reduce cooldown by 1s up to 30s max.

Voice of Command Changes? Multiple Choice

  • Remove Gold Toughness
  • Increase Cooldown
  • Remove Revive Negatives
  • Nothing
  • Other
0 voters

Executioner’s Stance: +25% clip ammo reloaded from reserves on use

Enhanced Target Priority: Executioner’s Stance now outlines Elites & Specialist enemies for allies in coherency for initial duration. Killing Elites & Specialist highlighted restores 10% toughness for Veteran and allies in coherency for initial duration, these kills also refreshes Executioner’s Stance, but not this talent

Counter-Fire: Executioner’s Stance now outlines all ranged enemies and reduces highlighted ranged enemy damage to Veteran by 25% (Locks The Bigger they Are..)

The Bigger they Are…: Executioner’s Stance now outlines all Ogryn, Monstrosities, and Bosses. Veteran gain +15% Rending & +15% Damage against Ogryn, Monstrosities, and Bosses while highlighted. Duration increased by 5s and Cooldown increased by 15s (Locks Counter-Fire)

Executioner Stance Changes?

  • Enhanced Target Priority
  • Counter-Fire
  • The Bigger they Are…
  • Full reload at extra CD?
  • Other
  • Nothing
0 voters

4th alt. Options

Executioner’s Immunity: +50% First Shot Damage for duration, Gain immunity to damage, stagger, suppression for 1.5s. A successful range kill in this period refreshes effect once. Increases Executioner’s Stance Cooldown by 15s

or

Locked and Loaded: Now Reload ranged weapon completely on use, +25% reload speed while active. Reloading replenishes 25% of toughness for while active. CD increased 15s

Do you want additional ES Talent?

What would you do or suggest? Nothing? Anything?

2 Likes
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I rather like a good amount of these, the infiltrate ‘lock out’ is something I already mentally use and feel is worth doing just for clarity (as you either take reduced damage or make nothing hit you, both is a massive waste). I like the idea of Overwatch dropping duration instead of CDR, right now I never take it as holding a ‘back up charge’ is never worth just using it on CD and getting up to 18 seconds of effectiveness (thanks to the buffs + duration) while working my back to a cast with Tactical Awarness. But even halving the duration (4 seconds per pop) suddenly makes it actually a really cool playstyle of ‘go in, suppress everything, smack stuff around, pop out as things get harry, run back to team, work on getting back both your charges before rinse repeating’, without absolutely neutering that playstyle by making the combined CDR two minutes (instead of a minute and a half). Good stuff, Surprise Attack I honestly wonder if it should just be removed (I never take it over just having a permanent buff from somewhere else on the Veterans tree), or as you say, just make it effect the first effect out of stealth, and bake it into the base ability. The fact it also lasts only 5 seconds (instead of the 10 seconds of near everything else on the veteran tree including the ability modifiers) just makes it that much more annoying, to me at least.

Voice I say big yes to, especially with things being looked at around havoc (whether that’s a good thing or not), just make the revive ‘not cost anything but a talent point’ since more often than not your corrupted to instant death anyway, and I’d say making even ‘Duty and Honor’ a similar ‘Hunter’s Resolve but radial’ for the team would be nice. Could even do ‘50% for the Veteran, 25% for his allies’, and make it 10s like everything else, and now it’s still super strong for the veteran, but not game breaking for him and the team. Still plays into ‘keeping your toughness high’ for Iron Will too, just by mitigating damage a LOT verses giving you more above the 100%.

And when it comes to Executioner’s, I still just want it to autoload/have the autoload back. You pull out your gun, you feel so cool, even still does the reload animation for most weapons, and then you just got 2 bullets cause you forgot and welp there goes my activation. Just autoload it, it’s not that op vets aren’t gaining toughness like Ogryns just auto load itttt. I also had the thought of increasing it’s duration to 6s (why? because of Survivalists cooldown, lets you ‘risk the whole buff’ to keep your ‘infinite ammo’, or desperately hold on to your last mag depending on your weapon, etc etc). Beyond that, I like ‘Can’t Hit Me…Again’'s code being re-used for this for sure, getting specifically ranged DR (and especially adding that to Counter-Fire specifically) feels real nice, makes that talent point that much more worth it (verses just being more of a niche pick for builds that want to spam shots into the wave because screw ammo economy am I right), and with said buff above does just let you drop shooters ‘for free’ should you take the time to do so. And do like ‘The Bigger They Are’ giving a damage bonus, especially with ‘Bring it Down!’ getting 5% shaved off, getting that ‘back with avengeance’ but on the damage CA would be cool, and lets ‘both halves’ of the skill actually thrive instead of just, being an extra tax for boltgun and plasma builds that want to use it.

I do like the Enhanced Target Priority change too, but while I like getting a form of toughness regen, I am unsure if both is ‘balanced’. Because with this, one can arguably literally never drop this damage bonus passively, which is VERY strong. Your zealot/ogryn sprinted into a line of gunners and you followed close behind? Damage. You Psyker took out a trapper on the way? damage. Dog melee’d to death? Damage. Psyker inferno flame flied through the horde and killed it all? Damage. And now, also, infinite toughness regen to the entire team on top of that. Kinda destroys the ‘single use’ 50 toughness the shout is giving, though I will admit you and the team have to be ‘active’ for it, but still feels a bit much. I feel just the refresh on team kill is enough, as it feels like it should do that to begin with (given you just gave everyone else the ability to see them), OR, give toughness to everyone on kill of them (a temporary ‘Confirmed Kill’ order to your allies), but I don’t think it should do both. (or like, if it does, each kill by your team adds 1s to your current timer up to capping at 5 or something…).

That’s all from me, a vast wall of words mostly to say ‘yes to all of this, also here’s a small pointer about the Enhanced Priority idea’ XD but yeah! I think these would be nice on the whole.

2 Likes
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Part of me hates having to choose between Counter Fire and The Bigger They Are because before patch 13, ogryn enemies still refreshed the duration even without the talent selected and they get in the way often enough to end your Exe stance. It just doesn’t feel like we should need a talent to get a refresh for killing priority targets and The Bigger They Are could give a different bonus, like the extra damage and a partial reload or something. Aside from that, Exe stance could give a little toughness replenishment or damage reduction of some kind.

4 Likes
4

VoC golden toughness needs to be removed and replaced with something else;
Infiltrate should be removed completely, same with the Shroudfield and replaced with something else;
ES is ok, but depends heavily on the weapon and sucks if your team sucks.

1 Like
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I tried to word ES toughness regen along the lines of highlight for Allies it would only last 5s

I think ES current wording is also refresh instead of additive because I think it originally was a deemed too powerful or maybe it was too weak?… as is now with counter fire and shooters can sustain quite well up to the next cd reset

Refreshes veterans other bonus are the base boost and shooter/ogryn

Infiltrate: Same

Low Profile & Hunter’s Resolve: Lock each other out…. Noob trap

Overwatch: Gain second charge but stealth duration is reduced to 5s.

Surprise Attack: First attack does +100% Damage & +100% Weakspot Damage. Leaving Infiltrate also staggers nearby enemies

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I believe I attempt with baking it into sub talents of Group targeting for toughness regen and counter fire for highlight specific dr

But certainly could be done more directly

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Agreed with pretty much everything you said here @MixedLetters, but I’d tweak a few things in response to @CopperBack1 :

I. Executioner’s Stance:

Scrap this one, it does a bit too much. Just give Suppression immunity to Counter Fire for the duration of ES, get rid of TDR completely for Executioner’s Stance.

TDR and Toughness regen should be reserved for VoC, here’s why:

Iron Will already provides plenty of TDR, Confirmed Kill provides plenty of Toughness regen in addition to good synergy with Executioner’s Stance, Exhilarating Takedown provides a means to get Toughness regen from enemies outside of Elites/Specs and finally if a Vet wanted to they could pick up Out for Blood. Point is, there’s plenty of TDR and Toughness regen available in the top portion of Vet’s Talent tree.

Love the idea of being forced to choose between better effectiveness against ranged human enemies - via suppression immunity, more ranged targets to keep ES active and Anti Ogryn/Boss effectiveness with Bigger They Are Harder They Fall. The extra Rending against Ogryns/Bosses would make this node a much harder choice to pass up on vs Counter Fire.

II. Voice of Command:

Get rid of Gold Toughness completely for VoC. It’s just excessive because of how many CDR options there are and the short default cooldown of 30s. Extending the cooldown time wouldn’t do anything without getting rid of some CDR sources.

Duty and Honor: +50% TDR and +25% Toughness Regeneration for all allies in Coherency for 15s is plenty.

Let teammates be responsible for their own Toughness regen.

3 Likes
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Well I could concede tdr but every ability has a means to generate toughness but ES, psykers are more implied with initial tree toughness talents.

I also didn’t want to infringe on suppression immunity talents already have 2 in tree… maybe just tdr against shooters.

——
Could scrap my idea =( … (I may try to make it fit into keystone again…) maybe for the reload mechanic so as not to buff ES main talent too much

Locked and Loaded: ES reloads weapon and increases reload speed by 25% while active.

With all these buffs also tempted to increase CD to 45-60s. Perhaps could vary depending on choice.also assuming vet cdr becomes 100% regen rather than flat reductions and lack of psyker group cdr

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All I want is one of Ex Stance’s sub nodes to increase the duration. I know someone likes Ex Stance as it is a lot and I’ve tried all of their builds… and I just hate it. Recon Las or Plasma? No problem. Everything else? Feels terrible to me. Ult fizzles out before I can even get it to work with anything or the reload just eats all of it. TF am I supposed to do with Helbore?

Personally, I’d choose The Bigger They Are. 7 seconds or something. I dunno.

1 Like
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Currently have to reload before using and works very well for Helbore as it bypasses the slow swap speeds… but not having ammo will eat up the timer… so maybe the on use reloads weapon would be a good option for you will make that 5s much more useful and more chance to refresh it with kills.

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The automatic reload upon initially activating Executioner’s Stance as a base trait is actually a great idea, I would actually argue it should be a full reload not just 25% because of how little ammo weapons like Double Barrel Shotgun and Zarona have.

Executioner’s Stance is currently wasted if the ranged weapon is empty and for a Combat Ability to be that dependent on whether or not the gun is loaded to even function is silly.

I completely forgot about Determined, so that’s a good point. In that case, TDR against highlighted shooters is a good idea. It’s not universal TDR, nor does it apply to teammates so it would be distinct from VoC.

Yeah, perhaps the cooldown would need to be increased slightly.

1 Like
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Well my typical last bump for ideas, rewriting OP adding some polls for last bit of ideas.

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Overtoughness as a concept is fine, the problem is that it makes you completely invincible. Gold toughness should be nerfed so that it no longer fully prevents damage from sources that would otherwise bypass toughness. This would still make it a strong effect, but not meta-defining.

1 Like
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I remember looking into the details of golden toughness and remember it being quite complicated seems like TDR mechanic would be simpler to comprehend for most players with raw toughness gain possibly even 100% to balance it out the loss of gold toughness.

…though TDR math is also complicated.

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