Veteran and Psyker are unfairly paying for buffs to underused talents

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Veteran and Psyker are once again unfairly paying for the buffs to their underused talents.

Since the 25.9.23 update, the cooldown reduction mechanic of Veteran’s Voice of Command has been changed. Tactical Awareness was altered from direct flat CD reduction to increased cooldown regen speed. In Hovec40, this alone reduced the frequency of VoC casts. Later, Fatshark nerfed Duty and Honour from 15s to 10s. Now Fatshark plans to increase the base cooldown of VoC from 30s to 40s.

The reason given is that Fatshark buffed Only In Death Does Duty End, so Veteran has to pay for it with an extra 10s of VoC cooldown.

Fatshark rarely respects the game experience of us Hovec40 players. Hovec40 is very popular on Hong Kong servers. We love the challenge, but we can only watch as Fatshark gradually weakens the classes we main.

In Hovec40, Veteran already bears the highest mechanical pressure and huge responsibility. Fatshark’s crude number-tweaking balancing is really irresponsible.

Only In Death Does Duty End is a typical low-difficulty talent. It is strong on low difficulties and good for skilled players helping new players, but it is meaningless in Hovec40.

In high-difficulty content, we need to avoid being downed in the first place, not use VoC to save ourselves after we go down.

Moreover, in Hovec40, ranged classes often do not even get the chance to be downed; they are killed outright.

Similarly, Psyker has had its widely used circle shield nerfed because of the buff to the square shield. In the 25.9.23 patch, Fatshark already increased the cooldown of the circle shield once. Now Psyker has to keep paying the debt.

What we Hovec40 players get is frustration from nerfs to core talents, paired with buffs that we still find hardly usable.

Are we supposed to hold onto VoC in Hovec40 and only use it when teammates go down?

Are we supposed to use the square shield in Hovec40? It cannot even effectively block the Beast of Nurgle’s vomit attack.

So what have we got in Hovec40? Just a massive flat nerf?

Hive Scum’s Pickpocket has the same problem.

Pickpocket was indeed too strong on lower difficulties, but nerfing it to only trigger on melee kills makes it unplayable in Hovec40.

Did Fatshark even consider this? To regain 20% ammo, forcing Hive Scum, whose ultimate is not melee-focused, to use melee weapons to kill elites or specialists?

This directly invalidates Hive Scum’s core performance in Hovec40.

Hive Scum has been repeatedly changed since launch, and now Fatshark is randomly breaking one of its core class mechanics.

I can easily list better changes for Pickpocket:

Add a 10s cooldown;

Or remove the fixed 20% restore, grant 15% reserve ammo directly, and then require a melee kill – so Hive Scum can still pick up ammo from the map normally.

The current change is just way too heavy-handed. As a Hovec40 player, I am really disappointed.

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9 Likes
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agreed, the additional nerfs to shout and bubble are totally unnecessary and frustrating from the H40 perspective

Havoc needs to remove derank (game is not stable enough to warrant it) and emperors fading light should be a rotating modifier

then i could tolerate these nerfs

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If this is going to break the entire game mode for you, you really don’t.

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I struggle to understand why Fatshark insists on buffing and nerfing two mutually exclusive options on a class at the same time.

Why can’t you just buff the weaker option first, then observe its pick rate?

Do you really have to nerf the stronger one at the exact same time?

This is exactly what happened with Veteran’s VoC without OIDDDE vs. VoC with OIDDDE,

and also with Psyker’s circle shield vs. square shield.

“Because we assume you will take OIDDDE after this update, so we are adding 10s to the cooldown.”

Fatshark’s logic sounds like:

If you want to compensate for the nerf, you have to take the newly buffed option.

We are telling you how to play the game.

That way the pick rate stats will look good, and our balance will be a success.

There’s a Chinese proverb for this:

When you have too much flour, add water; when you have too much water, add flour.

And you just end up with a complete mess.

4 Likes
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Have you tried playing around your cooldown?

16 Likes
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I love reading this take over and over. If only Hive Scum had extremely strong melee weapons for elite killing even without any investment…

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I understand that some people think Hovec is a failed, extreme mode, or that it shouldn’t be included in regular balance discussions.But since Fatshark created this mode and there are players who actually play it, they owe those players a decent experience and take responsibility for it.They can’t just say, “If changes break this mode and ruin your fun, then just don’t play it.”

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Havoc 40 is the only mode I play and I actively refuse to play with psyker players.

10 Likes
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And yet people will play and beat H40, and have fun doing it, even if some abilities and talents get deservedly balanced. Some people will even enjoy it more than before, because of those changes.
Other people may get filtered because it gets too hard for them, but then again, that was always the purpose of Havoc ranks wasn’t it?

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Players who regularly run Havoc 40 will eventually try a team without a Psyker. It’s nothing new. Challenging yourself just means having more options.

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Gold toughness should NEVER have been in the game to begin with. Fatshark really made a mistake here – it will permanently stain the balance discussion of this game for the rest of its existence.

Case in point: you cannot claim you like playing havoc and enjoy the game for the challenge… and then say that these higher difficulties are unplayable without it (objectively false). That alone sets your story up for failure.

PLENTY of vet/psyker havoc 40 games have been won without the stuff you are talking about. The goal of these higher difficulties is to learn to get better and master ALL aspects of the game. Not just 1 playstyle. The nerfs are just a small piece of what Fatshark needs to do; if anything, they’ve been quite conservative.

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It’s not true that these higher difficulties are unplayable without it. Four-player Havoc 40 isn’t that hard — the real challenge is 3-player or duo runs. I think I’m just tired of having the familiar power and feel of my class taken away. I never complain when they just make enemies harder, though. For example, I was totally fine with this season’s Havoc update that gave the purple healing aura regular super armor.

2 Likes
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Gold toughness is definitely a controversial design, and it has its flaws. But it’s already one of the core mechanics baked into the game—Havoc’s massive enemy damage is balanced around it. Unless you’re willing to rework the entire foundation from scratch, randomly messing with Gold toughness will only leave players feeling frustrated. It’d be better to just make Darktide 2 and change everything properly

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VoC needs to be deleted from the game.

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I don’t mind VOC nerfs, the problem is that the buffs are not that great. The funny thing is that VOC actually got the biggest buff to its revive talent that previously was too punishing too use.

I don’t think the buffs will bring the resurgence of stealth or exe stance.

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You are a bot if you think good players need Gold Toughness and bubble to win havocs.

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I feel like it should be said that the game should never be balanced around havoc 40, it’s meant to be the absolute maximum difficulty and well beyond a normal game of darktide, for example hive scum having infinite ammo resulted in braindead play on lower difficulties where you would just stack as much amour pen as you could and magdump into waves without ever having to pay attention to resources besides your hp pool

i do agree with syatek that if havoc is going to be the super imba strong difficulty with closed matchmaking, it shouldn’t be this hard to access to begin with

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Let’s say I ignore the other Havoc 40 players in this thread telling you this is wrong, and I believe this statement wholeheartedly.

Surely the more logical move here is to tune down the Havoc 40 enemy damage multiplier, not to undo a nerf to an ability you clearly agree is overpowered outside havoc

Your approach to making weapons and abilities match Havoc, rather than the other way around, is obviously unsustainable and leads to meta defining crutches like VoC invalidating the non Havoc game and being effective must picks in Havoc.

Genuinely why do you want the game to be that way? It makes no sense at all to me.

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And they shouldn’t when it comes to BASE balance, never. That’s the most horrible balance strategy possible, catering to a tiny percentage of Havoc players, moreover Havoc 40 players which are almost non-existent, comparing to the number of base game (Mission Terminal / Quickplay) players, making game worse for the rest of players.

The correct way here is already actually tested and tried in many other projects - you balance your game around needs of its majority players, and for endgame/challenging content very few people play you introduce additional tools/crutches (new gear tier with higher stats, additional perks and blesses they can take which only work in Havoc etc) to help classes that struggle in it. You don’t change the base game for that, and you won’t be able to balance a class both for base game and Havoc 40, never will work, that’s same as designing a car for general consumer market that would also survive a battlefield.

4 Likes
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I doubt making wall-shield wider will have much impact on shield choice since bubble-shield is such a massive hardcounter to beast of nurgle while the wall-shield is next to useless against that same enemy. At Havoc 40 being able to create a safe-space to handle the slug when you’re already drowining in elites, specialists, and monstrosities can make the whole difference between wipe or success.

9 Likes