Veteran talent tree as well as smoke grenade and voice of command rework idea

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I got a idea for how to rework both stated things in the title that i feel would make everything vet has be on a similar level and make him a better standpoint for how to change everything to be STRONG A tier but not go so crazy as to make s*** S tier in a way that you get kicked from lobbies for NOT using them.

for starters, this idea will have the smoke grenade and the shredder nades switch positions. This is an effort to nerf the value of shredders by making them the furthers from survivalist aura and when paired with another change to voice of command later, will hopefully make shredders and kraks on even ground as kraks arent bad in the least but shredders right now from both a talent tree and in game persepective are just too strong. beyond this, smoke grenades will be changed a good bit starting with fixing them so any ranged enemies on the other side of smoke to you or your allies with no possible LOS they can find will now move to where they would normally go to shoot your and than stop there and wait for the smoke to clear to help make their movement far less finicky and random and any ranged enemies in the smoke will stop and hunker down waiting for the smoke to clear so they can shoot again. Next is that 3 new effects will occur with the first and simplest being that when your smoke interacts with fire, tox gas, tox fire, and pox corruption like the beast of nurgle and the phage tree spew, it will clear them with for every 3m of effect removed, it looses 3 seconds of its duration as it neutralizes the corruption and chokes out the flames with this leads into the next change that it heals all allies corruption that hasnt taken a wound state yet just like beacon of purity but at half of beacon of purities efficacy. Lastly, all elite, specialist, ogryn, and monstrosity enemies IN the smoke or touching it are highlighted.

with those changes, it already if you ask me fixes the issues with the blitz options A LOT with next, i feel that demolition stockpile and demolition team need to move to the left side tree with smoke nades, survivalist aura, and executioners stance while voice of command and infiltrate move places. this is to further nerf shredders just a bit and help make it so using them isnt as effective as previously while also moving voice of command to a more fitting spot where it benefits from the melee vet tree since you want to be in the thick of it with the team (note this is a nerf of voice of command, im not trying to buff it with this is just me pointing out that its not the end of the world since the abilites design still works well even in this position) with beyond that, voice of command should loose its gold toughness talent and have that be replaced by 10 seconds of 100% boosted toughness gain from all sources. gold toughness is already REALLY strong and needs the nerfs chorus of the faithful has that requires the zealot to loose the ability to take any actions and thus requiring good teamwork to make its use truly shine with infiltates 2 charge ability should be replaced with its own version of tactical awarness that reduces your abilites cooldown on specialist and elite kills by 6 seconds meaning with tactical awarness, you get a minus 12 seconds on ALL specialist and elite kills meaning just 3 reduces its cooldown by 36 seconds which if your in the middle of a gunner horde, aint hard to do.

all in all, i feel this makes smoke nades ACTUALLY useful and puts them right in line with not only the best aura but the best paired talents of demolition stockpile and demolition team while most of all making them actually do what they are supposed to while making using executioners stance with the highlighted auras on all ranged enemies, specialists, and elites on the other side of the smoke being the best synergy to further help make them good while also making kraks which ARE ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD but just limited by their talent tree position in relation to shredders with this change letting them be better than shredders more often than not because they are so much closer to survivalist and demolition stockpile and team while shredders get to be in line with the extra grenade talent and the field supply to make it so they can get nades back from ammo crates with maybe that could be moved to the right side of the talent tree to just help a bit more and make the nerfs to shredders less harsh.

edit: i realized i should also clerify some minor talent position changes starting with longshot and exhilerating takedown moving to close order drill and confirmed kills spot with next would be take a breath and get back in the fight replacing grenade tinkerer and covering fires positions respectively.

next would be kill zone and opening salvo replacing twinned blast and demolition stockpile while leave no one behind would replace field improvization.

the next change would be moving born leader and iron will to replace reciprocity and desperado and moving competetive urge to exploit weaknesses spot and vice versa. lastly you would move bring it down with superiority complex and move born leader to duck and dives position with the final change would be presicion strikes to take move to rending strikes spot and vice versa.

these changes would just make things a bit better suited to work well with eachtoher especially with the final major change i would suggest being marksmans focus to take the place of focus target as its the stealth infiltrator with semi auto weapons and all the time in the world to aim for heads while invisible and standing still and who would have a heavy crit and weakspot focus versus the executioners stance vet using likely auto guns that ACTUALLY DO need the bonus damage from executioners stance and who would likely be wanting to fire with reckless abandon into a crowd to covering fire their teammates or mark specific targets for EVEN MORE damage taken with most of all, its the commander with voice of command who would want to be in the middle of the fight close enough that VoC can actually hit all teammates and thus would want all the bonuses to melee and fast swapping back and forth to and from it.

edit 2: i just realized it would make more sense as i am running these ideas through my head to give close order drill to the right side of the vet tree since thats the MELEE side so why does the guy who gets close up in melee NOT have close order drill espeially when its a coherency boost to not just you but your TEAM so the VoC COMMANDER type vet should be the one to have it while the weapon swap speed honestly would do its best work on executionerstance vet and being boosted to like maybe even 50% faster swap speed so you can hot swap to melee to kill poxwalkers too close to you as you CAN swap while in executioners stance to melee and get some kills in it but you just need to stay ranged mostly to actually keep up the executioners stance but ESPECIALLY with my change to the highlighted for teammates talent to make it so that lets your teammate kills in cohrency on highlighted targets boost your executioners stance duration with maybe even buffing it a little more by giving it a damage boost to ALL teammates in coherency with you on those targets for HALF of the damage boost you get.

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Shredders aren’t OP, players are just killing the things that Kraks are meant to deal with way too quickly by using Duelling Swords and such. The Grenades aren’t the problem. Smokes are… only useful in a small handful of EXTREMELY specific situations.

VoC could definitely use a nerf, though. It’s too spammable and I feel like it probably shouldn’t give us Gold Toughness like Zealots’ CoSF does.

7 Likes
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VoC is the single most versatile and I would argue, fun addition to come out of the class rework. Its presence almost makes up for the severely lacking and underwhelming keystones.

Leave it alone.

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i hear ya there but as a vet main who knows the power of shredders, trust me they ARE too strong as you can EASILY make up well over a third of your damage on pure shredder nades and since they bleed and especially with grenade tinkerer which is so easy to get for shredders, they do SO much damage to even armored enemies as the bleed doesnt care about armor and in such a wide radius doing so much stagger and regenerating so quick with stockpile and team that flatout, they are hard S tier and not getting that makes me think you dont play high enough difficulty as vet to know that especially since you also think kraks only use is killing elites and ogryn type enemies when their REAL biggest strength is the fact that they are in the line of stockpile and team AND they do SO MUCH STAGGER and thats ON TOP OF the fact that they can guaranteed one shot AT LEAST one but even if you do it right, 2 or so OGRYN type enemies.

like honestly plenty of other talents need moving too especially if the changes i suggested happened like iron will taking the place of the dodge gives you more crit chance which should follow the infilitrate ability or superiority complex which should take the place of the bonus damage to ogryn type enemies and the fact that the marksman key stone and the tagged target keystone should be swapped with kill zone and the regening toughness with no enemies within 8m of you being moved in place of demolition stockpile and covering fire with also exhilerating takedown and long shot being moved to take the place of close order drill and the toughness from elite kills making the guy who can go invis get the benefits from no enemies around them and the bonuses to weakspot headshot damage as well as more elite damage since they cant benefit on the front of tactical awarness and the extra tac awarness attached to the infiltrate ability from the bonus ogryn damage and would do much better with the bonus elite damage while the executioners stance vet would want better ogryn damage as they would be better served by it ESPECIALLY if a change to executioners stance to make allies killing highlighted targets extended it by the same duration as if you did it as long as they are in coherency would make it so choosing between all ranged enemis and ogryn types would be an actual CHOICE.

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nah bro, it needs a nerf so we can justify BUFFING everything else because thats the point. its NOT fun when its THE ONLY way to play because VoC is so broken overpowered that literally running infiltrate or especially executioners stance gets you kicked from lobbies and honestly while neither are STRONG, they arent BAD either and just need the minor buffs i suggested to fix infiltrates cooldown and executioners stance problems with teammates killing your targets you need to stay in it as well as its highlihghting targets for your allies in a general sense normally having no use but being able to make smokes WAY better especially with my buff ideas to smokes while the smokes in turn make executioners stance way better.

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you gotta look at things from more than “is it fun to use to me? yes? ok than its perfect and needs no changes…” and instead see how they affect all other things around them and affect the health of the game especially when vet is not weak enough to be acting like they are a bad class with the keystones especially not being bad or underwhelming but just the fact that vet gets TOO MUCH in his tree that just GOOD and almost NECESSARY at times.

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I simply propose that it should perform more like Kruber’s Morale Boost (OG VoC) from Vermintide 2. The Invincibility that Gold Toughness brings combined with the fact that you can shorten its base Cooldown to, what, 25 Seconds WITHOUT accounting for Specialist Kill CDR? It’s a bit much and I’d gladly endorse such nerfs as long as they’re done carefully.

2 Likes
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Nonsense. There is no “need” whatsoever, there is subjective preference. I’m assuming you play on the Uber difficulty levels, yes? I don’t. All the clutch stuff and playing on the margins you mention may as well be Greek to me and don’t factor into it one bit.

I’ve also been here before and know how abysmal FatShark is with nerfs, so I maintain leave it alone.

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They never will though… Because they never have. Otherwise I’d agree with you unreservedly.

1 Like
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Kraks would also be “strong” if their purpose wasn’t infringed upon by Meta Weapons. The Grenades aren’t the issue.

That’s only an issue because of the Veteran’s capability of getting way too many Grenades back with Grenadier Builds. That’s not a “Shredder OP” issue; it’s an issue of Veterans getting an absurd number of Grenades back from Elite/Specialist kills while also being able to Regenerate them passively. Again, the Grenades aren’t the issue that needs to be tackled.

Who do you even think you are, dude? You’re shoving all of these words into my mouth, words that I NEVER said. Krak Grenades have a role to play and the biggest issue regarding Krak Grenades is that players ARE killing certain enemies too fast with Meta Weapons like Duelling Sword and this causes Veterans who use Krak Grenades to basically reserve them for Monstrosities only. Why? Because throwing a Krak Grenade at a Crusher only for Speedy McZealot with his toothpick to oneshot it instantly absolutely sucks. Check yourself before you make such arrogant and (mind you) incorrect assumptions.

“Hurr durr you disagree with me, so you probably just play low difficulties” is an unfortunately common Reddit-tier cope strategy within the Darktide community and I’m starting to get REALLY sick of it.

2 Likes
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thats the problem than. YOUR NOT PLAYING AT THE HIGH LEVELS WHERE IT MATTERS… stop acting like stuff is supposed to be balanced for heresy my guy cause its not… beyond that even if you play casually, the rest of us dont and would prefer things to be balanced with mind you, the changes i suggest to VoC WOULD NOT MAKE IT USELESS AS EVEN WITH MY CHANGES IT WOULD STILL BE REALLY STRONG…

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like full stop, the changes i suggest is to bring everything up to VoC’s level while SLIGHTLY reducing its strength as well as reducing shredders strength so as to not need to make vet go back to being so broken playing anyone else felt like you were nerfing yourself which the zealot currently holds the title for doing with psyker being a close second.

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personally i dont think the problem is them getting a lot of nades purely because thats HOW HE WAS DESIGNED to work. literally a GOOD vet will have pretty much equal use of all their items hence shredders overperforming BEYOND that IS a problem with how they line up with the strongest aura and ability cause its too easy and get them and too costly in comparison to use anything else.

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“My guy”, stop acting as if you’re the arbiter of what matters. Respectfully, you don’t speak for anyone but yourself. Just as I do. And neither your preferences, nor mine dictate any “need”.

In any event, what I take issue with ultimately comes down to how inept FatShark is with nerfs. Such things require a scalpel, and I don’t know where this belief that they could handle it comes from when past experience has indicated they seem to bring a jackhammer to the operating theater.

2 Likes
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dude you LITERALLY said kraks have a fringe case use that gets dealth with by meta weapons like the cavalry saber

Shredders aren’t OP, players are just killing the things that Kraks are meant to deal with way too quickly by using Duelling Swords and such. The Grenades aren’t the problem. Smokes are… only useful in a small handful of EXTREMELY specific situations.

not understand that NO they do NOT have a fringe us and are VERY good at horde clear with both demolition stockpile and team but shredders are just a bit better generally as while the dueling saber is way too strong, its not what makes kraks never used compared to shredders.

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how inept FatShark is with nerfs. Such things require a scalpel

on that we agree which is why im laying out what quite frankly arent even that hard of nerfs in the least but just more of almost SUGGESTIONS in terms of how much they would affect balance as they force vet to have to be more specific in what they want as a part of their build rather than the ONLY way vets can play being to grab shredders, grab grenade tinkerer, grab survivalist, and than beline it down center with once you got bring it down, you grab presicion strikes and fully loaded cause while it doesnt matter you, just like you said, NEITHER take overrides the other and so this balance change is for those who play at damnation and above and quite frankly WOULD NOT be noticed by anyone playing below that and even in damnation isnt gonna hurt ya hardly cause of how strong the things in question are

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like srly what i am saying is at the top level of play, these things become such hardcore S tier that there is no other options so these changes that SLIGHTLY nerfy them to the level of everything else would help stop that and in a way that at lower levels hurts nothing and so if people agree enough and fatshark follows to the letter, it is that sort of scalpel change that would just be quality of life and good for the games health type change that NEEDS to happen

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If we could trust that they would handle it with care and nuance then I’d be on board. But I’ve seen nothing to convince me that they won’t just make it worse by going too far in the opposite direction, waiting 2 months to un-fúck it, then go on vacation.

2 Likes
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dude im just gonna leave at saying if you look over my main post again, LITERALLY i would argue about 90% of that is MASSIVE buffs for krak grenades, smoke grenades, executioners stance, infiltrate, marksmans focus, and focus target. the NERFS was a SLIGHT change to VoC as well as moving both VoC and shredder nades to be in slightly more inconvient positions on the tree in regards to survivalists aura, demolition stockpile, and demolition team while also actually putting both in BETTER spots for what they work best with which is a melee build and while giving them easiest access to also some of the most broken abilities vet has being born leader, iron will, and field improvisation in a way that they actually get to just one line the talent tree FAR easier for these massively beneficial things in exchange for loosing access to the other strong stuff with hell, honestly i could even see them with these changes being able to make survialist aura a base part of vets kit with the talent just DOUBLES it so its talent point is still PEAK but isnt THE ONLY choice because all vets get survialist aura like how all psykers get the bonus damage aura ability and how all zealots get the base toughness damage mitigation ability with their respetive keystones just making those stronger.

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like im IN NO WAY vouching that they take a sledge hammer to all ability strength but instead that they work on building up all the walls to the first walls level