Preface
Veteran has an identity problem. And if you’ve seen my breakdown and suggested rework for the Zealot Class, you should have an idea of what’s coming next. But for those unacquainted, this is going to be a fairly comprehensive, math light, mechanics heavy breakdown of the Veteran Class, the role it’s meant to fill, the fantasy it’s meant to evoke while doing so, the weak points of the class, and suggestions for what might help improve the balance of the Vet. This is math light and mechanics heavy because it’s easier to quantify gameplay into numbers on a sheet but harder to do so. Vice versa, and this post is going to be long enough without trying to. The point of these suggested reworks is to help create more engaging incentives for certain style of play, and more rewarding synergies for mixing those styles of play together. Now, unlike with Zealot, I’m not a Vet main, and so I have significantly less hours on the class. That being the case, I’d like to explain my process at each step to help justify the logic behind the proposed changes. And last but not least, for those short on time or patience, there is a TL;DR
Part 1: Defining the Problem
If we’re suggesting a rework, we have to be able to substantiate that there’s currently something wrong with the class. And the first step to doing that is by breaking down the class into a generally defined structure. We also want to define a shared set of terminology to convey the fantasy each branch of the tree is meant to evoke. We can get a sense of what the Veteran has a focus on for all of those definitions from the artwork for each tree of the class, and reading all the nodes of the class tree, and even from the three Personalities for the class.
In order to figure out the general structure of the Class Tree, I try to look at the Blitz, Aura, Ability, and Keystone, and assign the nodes nearest to them as being a part of that branches specific gameplay fantasy. The point of this isn’t to be perfectly accurate but instead give us a general structure to work with when we eventually reorganize node placements. And from our reading we can identify a couple of things about what the Veteran Class has a focus on (aside from shooting):
- Stamina is a repeatedly emphasized resource
- They want to Prioritize Specialist and Elites
- They have a focus on Toughness Restoration
- Veterans have very powerful support options
- Ammo Capacity and Efficiency as emphasized resources
If I were to break down the Class as I understand it from both gameplay and nodes, I would argue that the three fantasies the Veteran Class Tree is meant to Evoke would be: The Field Officer, The Marksman, and The Guerrilla. The Veteran’s nodes seem to be broken up into nodes that effect how the player will use their weapon, nodes that contribute to player survivability, your class action, which gives the player some utility in how they play, expertise nodes, which hone in on the specific benefits the build receives, and finally, the Keystone, which serve to reinforce the role that the build will be focused on when deployed into the field. If I were to divide the Class Tree up by each Fantasy as well as the Purpose each chunk of the Class Tree is meant to serve, it might look something like so:
Remember, this isn’t meant to be accurate to how the Class Tree is actually divided. It’s just a useful visual for us. Now that we’ve have our terminology, we can go about trying to Identify potential weakness in the class, which leads us straight into the next part.
Identifying the Weakpoints
One way to get a cursory glance of a class’s Health in Darktide is to see how much build variety depends on Node options versus weapon choice. If the class is healthy, the build will inform the choice in weapon instead of the choice in weapon determining variety of play style, and theoretically, the healthier the class, the more variety in build path you’ll see at higher levels of play. We could compare all of the Veterans options at (Tier 1) Sedition, but that wouldn’t give us very useful data points. What we want to do is look at higher level play and determine the value of different options there. For this, I’ll be using Damnation as our Standard. It’s not the highest level of challenge, but it’s high enough that some patterns begin to emerge. If you look at the relevant Blitz, Aura, Ability, and Keystone, there’s always a Comparatively Strong option, a Comparatively Mediocre option, and a Comparatively Weak option. Now, I would like to be clear that an option being comparatively mediocre or weak doesn’t make them bad options. They’re just options that have a deficit of value when compared to other choices, either due to balancing or even just placement. I would argue that Vet’s options are:
Comparatively Strong:
Shredder Frag Grenades, Survivalist, Voice of Command, and Weapon Specialist
Comparatively Mediocre:
Krak Grenades, Fire Team, Executioner’s Stance, and Focus Target
and Comparatively Weak:
Smoke Grenades, Close and Kill, Infiltrate, and Marksman’s Focus
To justify these placements somewhat, Smoke Grenades are hard to get value out of because they require you to have good map knowledge and for the enemy to be in a position that you can exploit. Close and Kill just doesn’t provide as much value as the other auras, Infilitrate is good, but requires too much investment to be competitive, and Marksman’s Focus is a known problem. Everything in the Medicore Options would be strong in isolation, but when compared to the value of the options of the comparatively strong…
Now that we know the value of the Classes Main Options, we can work to try and understand what purpose they serve, what fantasy they cater to, and then try and identify what is missing from the other options to make them more competitive. Our first read-through of the nodes gave us the descriptive definition, but this time, we’re trying to understand the prescriptive definition of how each node is meant to contribute to the purpose and playstyle of the class. This will help us figure out a better way to organize the nodes of the class. This also means that we may identify nodes that don’t fit well into any playstyle or any specific purpose, so we’re going to have to make use of the average number of nodes for each purpose and each core fantasy to guide us along.
Even then, we still want to be careful, due to the existence of nodes that are balanced in a very generalist way. If we’re assuming that the Veteran is a class that wants to fight Elites and Specialists, then extra damage against Elites is going to be a good node regardless of play style. It’s not that generalist nodes are bad; they can help encourage mixing other branches of the class tree into a build. But we’re not just grouping any nodes with synergies; we want to group synergistic nodes that are going to help reinforce or incentivize a specific style of play. If you’re wondering why, for instance, Smoke Grenades read as belong to the “Marksman Branch” of the tree, it’s because how the vision obscuring smoke interacts with Executioner’s Stance, which can let you see through the smoke while still benefiting from it.
With that said, aside from the Blitz, Aura, Class Ability, and Keystone each Branch of the Veteran’s Class should have, each should also possess 3 Weapon Handling Nodes, 3 Sustain Nodes, and about 9 Expertise Nodes (28 divided by 3 so two branches have 9 Expertise Nodes while one has 10). It looks something like this:
This is by no means the only or most correct way of dividing the nodes, but it is a way specifically meant to build a level of internal synergy within each core fantasy. With this, we have a sense of what fantasy each node helps to reinforce, what function the node has in doing so. Combined with a shared set of terminology and an understanding of the value of each branches different core options, we can finally move on to actually proposing how to better balance the class.
Proposing Solutions
So first of all, with any kind of solution that we propose, we want to make sure that we retain the structure of the class tree. The actual shape of the class tree is very important and helps reinforce the fantasy of the class. Take the Zealot for instance. Their tree can largely be divided into three segments where you make broad but powerful choices committing potentially ⅕ of your total points at a time. It helps reinforce the idea of playing a character with an overly simplistic black and white worldview. Y’know, like a Zealot. For the Vet, their class tree emphasizes general weapon handling, sustain and combat utility options, and then long areas of high commitment that speak to a level of specialized training. Are you a Krieg Sniper holding down No Man’s Land, A Catachan Commando using guerrilla warfare blend in and out of combat, or a Commissar barking commands? I also don’t want to make excessive changes to how the majority of nodes work, or add or remove too many. This is supposed to be a rework, not a remake, and the less work Fatshark has to do to implement changes, the sooner we can enjoy them. Finally. when putting together a solution for a rework, we want to modify the existing options to either gain value in a different way, depending on if it needs to be nerfed or buffed, while also making sure that any reorganization of nodes or structure of the class tree facilitates and adequately encourages branching away from the specific class fantasy. So with all that preamble aside, what is my actual suggestions?
Well first, there’s the “easy” fix; reorganization of the nodes. Something like so would serve to create a lot of internal synergy for each branch of the Class Tree, and by leveraging universally strong options at the intersections, I believe that this shuffling of nodes would help improve the balance of the class:
Looking at this image, you may have noticed a couple of things. For one, I wanted to add a little bit of crossover near the very bottom, because any good Soldier knows that even if the commander goes down, someone still has to give orders (Just listen to Sgt. Morrow’s past to hear this in action). This should help give the class a little bit more variety without compromising the “Field of Specialization” fantasy that the structure of the Class Tree feeds. The second oddity you may have noticed some duplicated nodes. These are placeholders meant to convey the other half of my proposed balancing, the “hard fixes”, fully reworked mechanical options.
I’d like to start with easily the most egregious balancing issue in the Veteran’s entire tree, and no, it’s not Marksman’s Focus. Being bad isn’t nearly as big as a problem as being absolutely busted. I’m talking about, of course, Voice of Command.
Part of the reason why Voice of Command is overvalued is because of Gold Toughness. Toughness regeneration speed, toughness damage reduction, toughness coherency generation, and gold toughness especially all heavily complicate Darktide’s combat sandbox. We’re not here to try to fix all of that though, just minimize where it creates value issues in the class itself. And for Voice of Command, having access to an ability that gives you a sizable chunk of toughness of which any extra becomes gold toughness is, on its own, not that bad. But then tactical awareness comes and ruins that. Now you have that same value, except for that it’s immensely easy to spam. Especially if you don’t take Only in Death Does Duty End. Now you have a base 30 Cooldown Class Ability that gets shortened by 6 seconds (⅕ of the cool Downs value) every time you kill a specialist. And that Class Ability gives you the best survivability in the game.
I don’t think it’s realistic to expect every class ability to have the same value proposition, but it becomes infinitely harder to balance the value proposition between the class abilities. If you give all of them access to a cool down reduction node. While it will make the weaker class abilities stronger, it will also make the stronger class ability exponentially stronger. I try very hard not too drastically change aspects of the class where I can help it, but Duty and Honor breaks the value proposition of all of Veterans Class Ability options so long as Tactical Awareness exist. That being said, I do think that we can save both of them.
Firstly, replace Duty and Honour with Tactical Awareness as an Ability Mod for VoC. Update Tactical Awareness to read “Once per Ability Activation, when you kill a specialist, reduce your class ability Cool down by 15 seconds.”
Make this a mutually exclusive option to “Only in Death…” so players have to chose between a more supportive Vet Shout or one that they can conditionally get back very quickly.
Next, we want to take “Duty and Honour” and kind of cut it in half, dividing aspects of the original node into two new nodes. Node 1; “Honour Guard”. “Your allies in coherency gain toughness equal to half toughness restored to you on use of Voice of Command. This toughness can exceed their maximum toughness.”
Make this a mutually accessible Ability Mod for Awareness and Death. This is the new VoC Class Ability. It is weaker, but it still offers plenty of sustainability. If you’re using “Only in Death…”, it means that rezed allies will start off with Gold Toughness, which can come in clutch if they went down in something like fire. Normally you would have to wait for the fire to go out or risk them taking too much damage before they can get out of the Hazard, but this fixes that. Additionally, while VoC might be spammable with Tac-Awareness, it only fills your toughness to full, and your allies only get toughness equal to the difference between your current and total toughness.
We still have the other half of what was once “Duty and Honour” to talk about to. Node 1; “Duty Driven”. “You Replenish 15% Less Toughness. You can exceed your maximum toughness.”
Realistically, I’m not sure that the 15% penalty to toughness generation is necessary; this is a math lite post. But the point of this is to demonstrate that even after weakening VoC, the Veteran will still have access to a powerful way to get sustainability.
Moving away from Voice of Command, the Veteran could also use some love to their Auras. I propose changing “Fire Team” to “Chain of Command”: “Allies in coherency gain 15% of any toughness you generate.”
This is stolen word for word from “Born Leader”, but don’t worry, that’s getting changed to: “Every 3s, when an ally in coherency kills an elite or specialist, you count as killing an elite or specialist.”
It’s a little tongue in cheek but you should be able to start to see the synergy forming from this
“Covering Fire” is actually a little weak too for a really interesting reason, so we need to buff it slightly. “Covering Fire” is fine when you allies are fighting into packs of basic enemies, but because other classes have survivability and combat skills based on killing enemies, and groups of basic enemies become less frequent in higher play, this node can actually become a disservice to teammates. At higher play, If you take a fight into a group of elites, and you’re expecting a kill to net you the power or survivability to get through a fight, and the enemy your veteran shoots and kills just so happens to be the one you were fighting, you might now have to drastically shift plans or risk being out of position when the rest of the elites you’re engage turn on you. At high level play, that risk is bread and butter, but this node is almost like team wide anti-synergy. The solution I have for this is to change “Covering Fire” to: “When you kill an Elite or Special with a Ranged Attack, Stagger and Suppress Enemies within 1m of the target and Allies within 5 meters gain +20% to all base damage for 3s.” This change would make it so that a vet shooting into enemies that allies are engaged with actually gives allies space, and time to re-engage or fall back, but it limits this benefit to prioritizing valuable targets instead of any enemy.
We’re going to give “Focus Target” a buff as well. Firstly, we are going to make increase the bonus given by “Target Down” and “Redirect Fire”, but in return make them mutually exclusive. From there, we can add a third mutually exclusive option in the form of “Hunker Down”: “Whenever you use a Stim, place down an Ammo Crate or Medi-Pack, complete an Auspex or Data-Interrogator Puzzle, or Pick up an Ally, gain 2 Stacks of Focus Target.”
And to finish off “Focus Target”, we’ll make “Focused Fire” a mutually accessible secondary option for all three. Now “Focus Target” lets you choose between greatly enhancing your damage , generating a lot of recovery for you and your team after a fight, or just being able to spam your Focus Target at a decently high stacks by assisting the team in various ways. And all of them have the option of increasing their maximum stack to 8.
But Veteran has a lot of areas of weakness, so we aren’t done yet. “Close and Kill” underperforms, so we’ll be giving that aura a pass over as well. “Close and Kill” is going to become “Kill Team”: Gain 5% movement speed 15% stamina generation for you and allies in coherency."
We also want to buff “Smoke Grenades” somewhat: “The time between melee attack of Enemies in smoke is reduced by 25% and they take 25% more impact. While inside and upon leaving the area of a smoke grenade, you and allies count as automatically dodging all ranged attack for the next 3s.”
Giving the smoke grenades some more explicit utility will help enhance their value, and these specific effects tie back into Toughness and Stamina generation nodes elsewhere along the Veteran’s Tree.
From there we want to tweak “Grenade Tinkerer” and “Twined Blast”. For the former, we want: “Krak Grenades: +8 Stacks of Brittleness. Stagger Enemies within 3m of explosion., Frag Grenades: +2 Stacks of Bleed and +25%, Smoke Grenades: +75% Duration and Radius.”
As for “Twined Blast”, we’re replacing it. As is, despite not wasting any grenades, it’s too difficult to get value of it. We’ll replace it with “Spare Ordinance”: “On grenade use gain a stacking 20% Chance to not consume your grenade on the next use. When this node triggers, reset stacks back to 0.”
This should give a lot more control over how your grenades are expended while still maintaining the luck factor.
And with that, we’ve made it to “Executioner’s Stance”, our next Class Ability to adjust. Executioner’s isn’t bad as is, but instead a bit unfocused. We don’t want to change the core ability but instead make the Ability Mods lean into the choice between targets more. We’ll change “Counter-Fire” to be: “Executioner’s Stance outlines all Human Sized Elites and Specials. Gain 5% Impact, Critical Chance, and Critical Damage against these targets.”
Meanwhile, “The Bigger They Are” will be updated to read: “Executioner’s Stance highlights all Ragers and Non-Human Sized Enemies (Ogryns, Mutants, Dogs, and Monstrosities). Gain 5% Impact, Critical Chance, and Critical Damage against these targets.”
Lastly, we’ll take the “Bring it Down” Node and turn into a Ability Mod. Counter-Fire and The Bigger They Are are both still mutually exclusive to each other, forcing the player to choose between Ranged Enemy Control or more Specialized Targets.
Next we have “Rending Strikes”, which were going to give a stacking boost in the form of “All Attacks gain 10% Rending. Gain an additional 10% Rending on Bleeding Enemies per 4 Stacks of Bleed.”
This means that at max Bleed Stacks you can have up to 50% Rending (Armor Negation). Keep in mind, Rending is selfish, and will allow you to deal more damage but won’t help your team at all. Not to mention that if you aren’t focusing down on your target, they will lose those blade stacks and with it you’ll lose your damage.
Next we reach Infiltrate, and there’s not much to change about this Class Ability. That said, I think we should incorporate “Low Profile” into the base ability. Vet invisibility isn’t like Zealot. It leans far further on the utility side of things. Make *“Surprise Attack” and “Overwatch” mutually exclusive, and make “Hunter’s Resolve” a shared, secondary ability mod they can grab.
It was mentioned earlier that “Marksman Focus” was too weak so lets change that. The bonuses that you get from the core ability are fine, but the movement penalty makes this a far weaker option than it need be while also emphasizing the wrong things. To change it, we’re going to have to get rid of all the Keystone Modifiers and replace them with some of our own. Our three Branches will be focused around the ideas of Suppressive Fire (shooting meant to suppress enemy action), Covering Fire (shooting meant to provide cover for allied actions), and Sniper Fire (Slow fire rate, high damage). Let’s call them “Extended Mag” , “Uplifting Volley” , and “Resounding Shot” .
“Extended Mag” changes Marksman Focus so that you loose all your stacks on reload now, but in return, you generate extra ammo in your next magazine based on how many stacks get cleared. This ammo isn’t from your reserves but is instead gained on the reload. Additionally, we can steal from the Arbites a little and increase the time between melee attacks of enemies in your coherency based upon the amount of stacks you have.
For “Uplifting Volley” , you Lose 2 Stacks every 3s you don’t fire your weapon. In short, so long as you are shooting consistently, you won’t lose stacks until you reload. And if you are getting critical or weakspot kills, you’ll gain stacks. In return, you and allies in coherency gain interaction speed (using items or picking up players), toughness regen, and stamina regeneration based upon your stacks. At max stacks, you and allies in coherency become uninterruptable.
And last but not least, “Resounding Shot” changes Marksman Focus to additionally lose 2 stacks if you fire within 3 seconds of your last shot. In return, you gain Range Strength (bullet penetration, damage, and impact) as well as crit chance per stack of focus. This path has the most damage potential, but the least defenses, theoretically making it high risk, high reward, and something that your team will want to work around to include, similar to Thunder Hammer Zealot.
You could even have the paths reconverge with a final Keystone Modifier: “Braced Barrage”: “You count as Blocking when using your ranged weapon’s secondary action.”
This provides some additional utility and sustain while also playing well off the nearby Deadshot Passive Node, making this specific Keystone relatively Stamina Hungry.
Last but not least, there’s "Weapon Specialist". We’re not going to do much except consolidate “Fleeting Fire” and “Conditioning” into one node . (Edit Note: Forgot to mention we’ll also want to make the consolidated “Fleeting Fire” and “Conditioning” Mod mutually exclusive from “Always Prepared” and “Invigorated”. Additionally, “On Your Toes” will be a mutually accessible third option. The idea behind this is to make Weapon Specialist to make you choose between leaning on your melee, leaning on your gun, or a balanced approach. Since they’re now mutually exclusive, you may need to slightly buff their bonuses, but that’s a math concern.)
The end result of these changes should encourage three primary playstyles with high potential for intermixing aspects of one play style into another. Or in other words, a highly modular but still distinctive build variety.
The Three Primary Playstyles that would theoretically emerge from these changes is the Marksman, Field Officer, and Guerilla.
The Marksman will favor nodes like “Longshot”, “Volley Adept”, and “Opening Salvo” to maximize up time down the scope, and nodes like “Exhilarating Takedown”, “Covering Fire”, and “Catch a Breath” reward you for making space and keeping the enemies pushed back. Nodes like “Keep Their Heads Down” and “Determined” are generalist but help you stay on target and suppress gunners when you send retaliatory fire. “Grenadier” and “Fully Loaded” are two more generalist nodes that synergize especially well with the Marksman branch, and “Bring It Down!” will share a similar position as “Close Quarters Killzone” and “For the Emperor!” as easy to grab generalist Ability Mods. The Marksman’s deeper investment Nodes are *“Superiority Complex” and “Precision Strikes” with “Shock Trooper” acting as a decent grab for the Field Commander Branch to empower those Heavy Laz Pistols, and “Deadshot” will give the Guerilla Branch something to spend all that Stamina on.
The Field Officer will favor nodes like “Grenade Tinkerer”, “Demolition Stockpile”, and what was formally “Twined Blast” (now “Spare Ordinance” to maximize the value of their grenades, and nodes like “Born Leader”, “Confirmed Kill”, and “Charismatic” will give them a constant drip feed of toughness. Nodes like “Close Order Drills” will keep them healthy enough to make ample use of “No One Left Behind” but both have generalist value. “Close Quarters Killzone”, “Trench Fighter”, and “Iron Will” are all generalist nodes that help the player stand strong when the dark tide comes crashing on them . The Field Officer’s deeper investment Nodes are “Demolition Team”, “Precision Strikes”, and our new node *“Duty Driven”, while “Onslaught” will give the Marksman Branch a way to more easily burn enemies that the focus on.
And Finally, The Guerilla will thrive on nodes like *“One Motion”, “Tactical Reload”, and “Agile Engagement” keeping them prepared in both range and melee engagements, while nodes like *“Out for Blood”, “Get Back in the Fight”, and “Field Improvisations” will keep them aggressive and mobile without letting them be completely unmoored from the team like Zealot. Nodes like “Reciprocity” and “Duck and Dive” are generalist but emphasize and enhance the Guerillas speed and evasion. “Competitive Urge”, “For the Emperor!”, and “Skirmisher” are all generalist nodes that help the player take the fight to the Horde instead of vice versa. The Guerilla’s deeper investment Nodes are “Killzone”, to reward them for not just being aggressive but staying evasive while they do so, while “Serrated Blade”, and “Desperado” will increase your melee capabilities further, but not to the same extent as a zealot. And lastly, “Rending Strikes” will give the Marksman Branch a way to improve their own melee when they need to fall back on it, and the armor negation when shooting is a nice incentive even if they are staunchly opposed to using anything but their gun .
I could go over all the weapons that would excel on these three branches of builds or combined branches, but this has already gone on for a while and I still have to write the TL;DR, so we’ll leave it for the comment sections if anyone really interest in it.
The TL;DR of the Suggestion
- Reorganized placement of Class Tree nodes to enhance previously poorly defined synergies and facilitate more distinct Single Branch Fantasy and Multi-Branch Fantasy Play Styles. Re organized nodes are as follows:
The Guerrilla Nodes:
Out for Blood, Get Back in the Fight, Field Improve, One Motion, Tactical Reload, Agile Engagement, Serrated Blade, Kill Zone, Competitive Urge, Rending Strikes, Reciprocity, Duck and Dive, Desperado, and Skirmisher.
The Marksman Nodes:
Exhilarating Takedown, Catch a Breath, Covering Fire, Longshot, Volley Adept, Opening Salvo, Keep Their Heads Down, Grenadier, Precision Strikes, Determined, Deadshot, Fully Loaded, Shock Trooper, Superiority Complex, and Marksman.
The Commander Nodes:
Charismatic, Confirmed Kill, Born Leader, Grenade Tinkerer, “Twined Blast”, Demolition Stockpile, Leave No One Behind, Close Order Drill, Close Quarters Killzone, Iron Will, Demolition Team, Exploit Weakness, Onslaught, Trench Fighter Drill.
- Completely reworked Marksman’s Focus, Focus Target, and Voice of Command to give the player a more defined and balanced choices between the bonuses of those Class Abilities and Keystone.
- Reworked the “Fire Team” and the “Close and Kill” Auras
- Reworked “Tactical Awareness” and “Duty and Honour”. Buffed a Collection of other Nodes. Made small tweaks to Weapon Specialist.
If the changes listed in this short summarization don’t convince you that these are compelling and worthwhile changes to make to the class, please read the full post and let me try to.
Closing Thoughts
From pouring over nodes, sniffing out potential synergies, and identifying play styles hidden in the Veteran Class Tree, said tree should be able to provide three distinct playstyle fantasies:
- The playstyle of the Commander, who uses their team like a weapon, enhancing their damage and survivability while also taking care of task to keep the team moving.
- The playstyle of the Marksman, who can cover their teams backs from long range threats, making room to push up, suppress enemies and stop them from aggressing in the first place, or snipe them dealing tremendous damage.
- The playstyle of the Guerilla, who with cunning savagery
and savage cunningslinks in and out the fray, hunting down enemies and catching them off guard, like a guardian wolf protecting the team from the tree line with both melee prowess fit for a predator and enough range fineness to remind you that they are still a highly trained soldier.
That being said, we aren’t there yet, but I do have the confidence we can get there. The point of this posting isn’t to list demands for changes I want made but instead to try and illustrate to the community the different points of weaknesses the Veteran class is currently suffering from, and try to highlight different places where the class’s inherent and party synergies can be enhanced. The Veteran does not need a massive overhaul that completely changes everything about the class, but by the same token, a simple buff or nerf to a few elements of the class won’t adequately address the real organizational problems currently inherent to the class.
It’s a lot, but if the class is going to be at its healthiest, those problems have to be addressed too.
In my Zealot Class Breakdown, I mentioned being afraid that Arbites might invalidate my Main. I find it ironic that a Veteran Main peer of mind expressed the same sentiment, but in regards to their main of choice (The Vet). I suspect the fear is due to the other classes currently feeling far more refined than Veteran or Zealot, and now a powerful new class, with strong melee and range options, is being introduced to the game. Perhaps it’s a childish fear, but I don’t want to lose my favorite toy. I want to be able to enjoy a new one alongside it. I doubt the Arbites will trull replace either class, but until both of them get well deserved Reworks, the Arbites just might be more enjoyable to play due to a greater variety of valid way to play into higher difficulties.
And lastly, speaking of Zealot, I am planning on potentially writing a Redux of my Rework suggestion. None of my thoughts have changed but, by the nature of not writing this while sick and dead tired, I think this proposal came out significantly more concise. My Zealot Breakdown was received positively, but I know I can do better. And with that, I hope that your missions always end in glory, especially those who read everything. Until we next converse.
Edit Notes. Cleaned up a little language, iterated on a less polished ideas (specifically Krak Grenades Improvement changes, the addition of Covering Fire buffs, and the structure of the tree itself), and clarified more of what the end results of some of these changes are meant to support so that the reader need not extrapolate.