[Veteran] Bringing back the Sharpshooter

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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It seems to me that the Sharpshooter design we had on launch where the Veteran could hang back with las-weaponry and deal with Specialists/Shooters by highlighting them and taking them out with headshots is not a popular or desired playstyle these days. It’s my preferred way to play the Veteran, and I do think it has some value in the hands of someone who can chain headshots, but it’s rare to see someone pull that off.

Some of the issues I find are: Poor melee combat avoidance, little desirability in teams, and too high of a skill floor for the average player.

Bring back the old Camouflage to help with survivability
Problem:
You have no good way of disengaging from melee combat. Minor enemies sneak up and tie you into melee combat for unreasonable periods when you’re trying to shoot Specialists for the team. Bosses (twins and chaos spawns particularly) can down you in seconds if they focus you. Melee classes have good ways of skipping ranged combat, so shouldn’t the opposite be true for a Sharpshooter?

Suggestion:
Before the class re-work in 2023, Veterans had access to a Feat called Camouflage, which made enemies favor attacking teammates over the Veteran as long as the Veteran remained stationary. I think Camouflage should be brought back and be activated for as long as Executioner’s Stance is up so that a Veteran can use this Ability to de-aggro enemies, and continue having his gun up to focus dealing with Specialists for the team while they take out the horde/bosses.

Making highlighting desired
With the ‘Enhanced Target Priority’ talent, Executioner’s Stance can highlight Specialists/Elites/Shooters for teammates for 5 seconds.

Problem:
During these 5 seconds, if a teammate kill these enemies before you do, you have a high chance of not being able to prolong the duration of Executioner’s Stance for yourself. It discourages you from picking Enhanced Target Priority for your team.
5 seconds of highlighting isn’t particularly long, so teams don’t desire it.

Suggestion:
Make it so teammates refresh the duration of Executioner’s Stance for you if they kill highlighted enemies. This change would help the average player keep Executioner’s Stance going. Make it so highlighting for teammates lasts much longer. I’d love to see it last for as long as Executioner’s Stance is up, at least for a patch or two to teach players how valuable highlighting can actually be.

By the way, it’s kinda hard to distinguish enemies highlighted by Executioner’s Stance in the new Havoc modifier that makes them glow orange.

Kantrael Lasguns are too reliant on weakspot hits (skill floor too high)
Problem:
You miss your headshot on a Specialist/Elite and hit it in the chest/back instead, and these targets survive like 5-7 shots this way instead of dying in 1-2 headshots. It feels too punishing. Even needing two bodyshots against regular Scab/Dreg Shooters feels too much as there are plenty of these enemies scattered around in cover, and you really need to spend a long time taking them out for your team even if you’re landing nothing but headshots. Enemies in this game twitch around so much that landing a headshot is tough for the average player.

Suggestion:
Make it so Kantrael bodyshots deal more damage. A bodyshot should preferably kill Scab/Dreg Shooters so you can start clicking your way through them. Opting for an easier bodyshot means you’re not stacking Marksman’s Focus as quickly when you need it for a tougher enemy, so there’s a trade-off.

I would comment on Helbore Lasguns, but I just never use these (I prefer the Kantrael playstyle). I suspect they’re affected by some of the same issues though.

Recon Lasguns seem popular enough already. You can mostly ignore headshots with them, making them easier to use for the average player, and they have somewhat higher mobility to help with avoiding melee enemies.

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Considering Veteran is currently the best special killer in havoc thanks to his very ammo efficient guns, quite often actually

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I’ve edited that sentence out. The thread is meant to draw focus to the Sharpshooter tree (left path) which focuses on las-weaponry and weakspot hits, and how highlighting is not desired, and weakspot hits with las-weapons too difficult for the average player.

I’d argue that the only desired thing from the Sharpshooter tree in Havoc is Survivalist.

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No. It’s broken and anti team. You have a new ethical version already tied to infiltrate.

Rest of your suggestions are fine.

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i sympathize with the sentiment but no, patch 13 is not reversable, those times are gone

don’t miss camo, but having that option was surely better than not having it

and no, shooters shouldn’t get one tapped by lasguns on body shots, even on the lower difficulties, that should be exclusive to heavy like weapons like bolter and plasmagun, otherwise there would be no reason for them to exist in the game

as if revolver already making a mockery of those was not enough

they should revert nerf on survivalist and give the free reload back to exe stance, with the state of psyker’s staves right now there is no point on playing shoutless veteran over psyker

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I’m going to assume these Talents would be mutually exclusive, because if not that’s crazy broken.

Camouflage and only shooting, avoiding melee as Vet may sound like a good idea, but we’re past the point where classes fulfill specific roles. Generalists thrive in Darktide, Specialists get stomped on in Auric and above.

Combat Abilities that dump aggro on teammates are objectively the worst in the game.

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Bolters and Plasmaguns distinguish themselves against armored enemies, which is a good reason to use them. Not to mention their cleave and stagger capabilities compared to las-weaponry.

I don’t find that to be true for my experience. Generally I don’t even think about it when someone on my team uses Infiltrate or Shroudfield.

This is about embracing a theme or archetype. For example, you can embrace the theme of a stealthy Zealot or a tanky Ogryn, and you’re able to do those things consistently. Both playstyles get tools to deal with both melee and ranged enemies. As a Sharpshooter, you’re sorely lacking tools to deal with melee enemies (i.e. avoiding them), and that prevents you from embracing the Sharpshooter part of the left tree, as you get stuck in melee too often for the average player to make this playstyle useful.

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No, you use your melee to deal with armor, else you are just wasting your ammo, there is literally a voice line for that, and it procs even if you shoot your bolter

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People can and definitely will use ranged weapons to deal with armor when they don’t have time to spend in melee combat, or even the convenience of entering it, which happens quite frequently in my Havoc 40 runs. Bolters and Plasmaguns have several capabilities that set them apart from Kantrael Lasguns besides just being able to one-shot shooters. They have actual armor penetration, they cause AoE stagger, and the Plasmagun cleaves. Giving Kantrael Lasguns the capability to deal more damage on bodyshots isn’t going to affect this.

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Shovel and Shock Maul are perfectly capable melee weapons for Veteran without needing a build around them.

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Actually they solve everything you’re complaining about.

Take toughness on elite kill and toughness on ranged weakspot kill, and you can stand in melee against a few poxwalkers just fine because you aren’t suppressed or stunned out of your aim.

The 30% weakspot damage is great for either the lower damage helbores in melee because you get a faster bayonet, or the power sword because it’s faster than the heavy sword and doesn’t need the attack speed talent, but is still headshot central on poxwalkers and trash. You can one hit dreg bruisers (guys with the flak helmet) with rampage and slaughterer after using exe, and it refreshes if you take highlight ranged and there happens to be ranged in the wave. If you get overrun that’s what shredder grenades are for. You’re forgetting that you have access to two easy ability modifiers that give you 10% melee base and 20% weakspot damage. You can cleave through a poxwalker wave if you absolutely have to using those.

A single charged shot can take out a ranged lesser, and with good management you can average 50% crit rate easily. With the toughness talent you can get 50% increased toughness regeneration for being at 10 stacks, or 75% if you take 15 stacks of focus. Yeah you don’t get the tagging from focus target, but if you’re really struggling to maintain toughness during exe stance it’s worth it.

The infantry lasgun is just inferior in terms of actually reliably getting rid of reapers, crushers, bulwakrs and even flamers. With 15 stacks of focus and the extra rending by sacrificing grenade regen you can one hit reapers without critting or hitting exe stance or having unyielding perk, and 3 hit crushers with carapace perk. If you hit exe and crit, you one hit crushers. It’s just a matter of balancing toughness regeneration down from that level of damage. If you take shout and focus fire, with 8 stacks you can tag, shout, and with a crit one shot a crusher. You can only do it once, but as a panic button it’s not bad at all, and you can still tag for bosses and other stuff while reliably dealing huge ranged damage. You can take unyielding to even easier deal with reapers, while contributing meaningful boss damage when you can afford to, while still having shout and focus target for utility.

Here’s the reaper one shot:

The problem isn’t the tree, it’s that your build isn’t balanced toward doing max damage and is likely shout + tag for bossing and stability and toughness regen. What you’re asking for is to make it so veteran can basically do everything a zealot can do and snipe everything even harder. That’s not bringing it in line with other builds, that’s making it the most broken.

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You’re misreading OP. They’re asking for tools to avoid fighting enemies in melee entirely as Veteran lmao. Not just good weapons to fight in melee with.

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I understood what OP was saying, that’s still my answer. Avoiding melee entirely is ridiculous. If someone is to take the left side of Veteran’s Talent Tree, those two weapons are good.

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Camo was terrible for team play. As a shooter in the rear in a horde game where enemies come from all directions no where is safe from melee… you may as well try to sit in the middle of team but even there is your not protecting a front then your relying on teammates to take up the slack and its harder to shoot with bodies blocking sight…especially big ogryn ones… maybe you want the piggyback ogryn mode shoot and protected.

Veteran Left Tree is a sharpshooter range focus but you will still need to break out melee or a grenade once in a while, which is why they have Frag on left side as well and the ability is a quick draw range for the clutch snipe moments.

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That was an excellent and well thought out response, I enjoyed reading that.

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That’s not the suggestion. The suggestion is to have less threat from melee enemies during Executioner’s Stance. The old Camouflage didn’t make you threatless either, but there was a higher chance a stray Poxwalker wouldn’t focus you.

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But you also suggested this change, which would effectively keep Executioner’s Stance active perpetually during high intensity engagements - during the moments when aggro dumping affects teammates the most:

@lw88 gave good advice on how to use the existing Talents: Exhilarating Takedown, Close Order Drill, Iron Will and Confirmed Kill to reduce the chances of stray poxwalkers staggering you during Executioner’s Stance. Perhaps read through that?

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I’m well aware of these options, and they’ve worked okay in Auric Maelstrom, but in Havoc 40 I don’t find them sufficient. I’m not a new player to this game. I have 3400 hours played, and do Havoc 40 regularly as all the classes, preferably with non-meta builds to get an idea how well they work (and what doesn’t work). My desire is to see Darktide offer as many attractive builds as possible, and it’s likely we’re looking at a Veteran talent re-work sometime in the near future (along with Zealot) to allow for more build options like we saw with Ogryn, so this is my feedback on what I find the Sharpshooter tree in need of to achieve that. In my experience I’m not seeing any players playing as Sharpshooters in Havoc 40, and I think I’ve outlined the issues well: Insufficient melee avoidance, high skill floor, and undesirable team utility (except Survivalist). Of course there’s an impact on how Voice of Command is seen as the meta, but what I’m hearing players say is that “Take away VoC, and Veterans have nothing left”, insinuating that the Sharpshooter tree is unattractive as-is, and not just because of the strength of VoC.

Don’t get hung up in my exact suggestions, as there are many ways to go about it. The goal is to identify what Sharpshooters need to be sharpshooters.

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Fair points. VoC’s undeniably strong team utility is largely a reason for this and should get nerfed.

Ideally, rather than gold toughness, for a set duration VoC should provide a strong toughness damage reduction to all allies in Coherency and improve their own Toughness regen from their Talents by a set percent.

I agree with you, Executioner’s Stance does need changes to make it more viable, not just in Havoc but Auric as well. I just don’t agree it needs a feature that effectively dumps aggro on teammates.

It does need the auto reload feature back, because activating a Combat Ability for it to be completely wasted by not having ammo in the magazine is absurd.

Counter Fire should reduce incoming ranged damage from highlighted targets, this could also be where a stagger resistance to melee while Exe Stance is active could be implemented.

For example:

Counter Fire: While Executioner’s Stance is active, incoming ranged damage from highlighted targets is reduced by X amount, and melee attacks from non-Elite enemies no longer stagger Veteran.

Also, like CopperBack1 suggested, the anti-Ogryn node that locks out Counter-Fire should include some type of rending buff against Ogryns Monstrosities and Bosses.

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This, in addition to making Executioner’s Stance reload weapons on use, would bring the Sharpshooter tree one step closer towards being more attractive to Bolters and Plasmaguns.

One of the developer blogs back in 2023 talked about Fatshark’s design itent for the Veteran tree during the class re-work, and they said they didn’t want each tree to focus on specific weapons, like “This is the Autogun tree, this is the Bolter tree, etc.”. They wanted weapons to be able to go into any tree. However, over time, I do think the Sharpshooter tree has turned out to be more attractive to Lasguns than Bolters, and one reason as I see it is the lack of a reload on Executioner’s Stance.