So a class identity of the Veteran is already as the grenade guy. I think that’s okay; why not play more into it?
What if he could get his specialty grenades in addition to his base grenades? Hold G to switch type. How nice would it be if your Veteran could have his frag ‘nades but also smokes or kraks?
I frankly like the idea of making Vet just a little hardier (more base health), but leaving his melee ability where it is, and let him focus on range and support.
Yeah, I think smokes should be a toggle that can be used with any other grenade if they are going to remain being complete trash as they are curently. Demo pack that can be remotely detonated could be a replacement for smokes + it could have a nice synergy with stealth.
Another great idea that will never be implemented.
Give them grenade launcher and different grenade types!
The best grenade guy currently is Arbites with Lone Wolf and Impact Grenades, sorry not sorry 
Kinda feels like maybe the Vet should have had those instead of smokes…
Impact Grenades are good but Vet’s bleed nades get more value, and he has more ways of regenerating them. That said, yeah, Arbites is too good, but that’s a different topic.
Why applying some half-hearted patches to mask a real issue, instead of fixing it - yet again? Such proposals have zero sense. Smokes need to be reworked, that’s it. They must become an alternative at least worth considering, not just a bad addition to some other ability.
Because unless they make smokes a literal throwable bubble/nuncio, they are going to be useless. They need to be buffed AND made a secondary blitz, because in no way smokes are going to be better than frags and even the lame kraks, unless you’re a redittor misinfo enjoyer copelord of some sort.
just nerf vet grenades and talents, isn’t that easier?
No, lol, that’s “Havoc player mentality” in its finest. When they say “useless” they mean “cannot be used in some niche ridiculously difficult part of the game almost nobody plays”. Though I don’t mind them increasing build variety in Havoc, it’s still not a primary goal for any balancing tasks. That will be to make other abilities/blitzes/weapons/blesses at least considerable for use in base game, except for the Auric may be. If Smokes can be reworked in such way they become useful and fun to use in Heresy and Damnation - we are already succeeded, for the most of it, it’s the most played part of the game. Currently it’s a wet fart of a blitz almost nobody takes even in modes where people casually play fun builds on day to day basis.
I don’t know what to say, man. They are useless in every game mode, except for the Mortis Trials where you can make them shock enemies, etc.
If smokes will be able to extinguish hazards like fire and gas and massivily debuff melee enemies inside with less damage, tracking, stagger resistance etc, then they maybe become worth using. Even then, a pure utility/damage option like frags would be more useful in pretty much all scenarios.
The thing is, their main toolkit is badly implemented itself. There is a video that at length studies how AI of different mobs reacts to smokes, it’s confusing and unpredictable at times. There is no rule of thumb, something you expect to have in your toolkit, you definitely don’t need more chaos from it, it need to help you to reduce chaos.
Even if this issue is rectified, that would still make them too niche tool nobody uses. Their scope of application needs to be broadened as well:
I think with those tweaks in place, they already will see substantially more use
Supression only works against like 3 enemy types in the game (gunner elites, basic shooters and groaners), so that would basically do nothing unless you make it deal forced supression like Zealot’s relic.
Again, I don’t see a use for smokes as a replacement for damaging blitz.
Because it isn’t by design? It’s not a damage blitz, it’s CC blitz for stealth build of veteran. But it blows even as such.
The design sucks, that is it. Why would a stealth vet need smoke to conceal and CC if you can already go invinsible and use frags for CC and good damage? They don’t make any sense.
Because you need to unstealth on regular basis to do the stuff you were stealthing for? Like kill a bunch of gunners - while using smoke to prevent their buddies from firing at you from the other side of the room. Or to put a screen of smoke so you could block a portion of melee mobs from running at you while you are running to rescue your buddies. That’s the intended design idea behind them, which went to crap.
The problem is such cases are not frequent enough, and a blitz that’s only occasionally useful isn’t really attractive. So they need to get extra niches in the game, something you could use it for every few minutes.
And the rest is irrelevant honestly, the matter of other blitzes and abilities is, first of all, to provide different ways of playing the game, they are not required to have same dps to be viable. In base game, people will play any build until it can survive there and is fun to play, and makes them feel useful, that’s it. If Smokes will feel useful on constant basis, people will start taking them
Smokes being more niche than the other grenades is fine but to take smokes in the current tree you’re either investing in the right side of the tree or spending more talent points relative to the other blitzes to spec back into the “normal” survivalist shout build. In either case the Vet is weaker relative to their other builds. Almost all vet problems are solved w/ different tree layout imo. Fix smokes being inconsistent for sure tho.
Smokes are honestly so bad at this point that they could give them to a new special enemy and it would be dangerous. Gunners still shoot at you, just less accurately (and you can still get hit), trappers get scarier because they act unpredictability, and they interfere with player vision.
That’s genius! I never even considered that, but this would actually make the smoke grenade worth picking
