There’s no good way to satisfyingly switch between lanes in the Veteran talent tree. It’s so big that if you don’t just directly go down left, middle or right, then you’ll be missing out on way too many synergies within one lane. The other classes’ trees didn’t feel this restrictive. If an expansion of the max character level is in the works, then this is fine, but if not, then the current Veteran tree is just too big. Some things need to be consolidated into single options that do two things.
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I feel like merging nodes is a fast-track to getting smacked with the nerf bat. There’s probably some nodes that could be merged without making them significantly stronger than alternatives, but I don’t think there’s many of them.
Squishing the tree, IMO, makes the most sense - same number of nodes*, but fewer rows with more choices in each row. If 2 points could be reclaimed in order to go top to bottom, that’d open up a lot of options - combined with the tree being 2 rows shorter, a lot of the nodes at the bottom of the tree are significantly more accessible (it would cost up to 2 fewer points to reach certain nodes, and you have 2 additional points to spend outside of the “backbone” of your build)
*Merging nodes, or other solutions, could be done in conjunction with this, if necessary
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No other class tree suffers from this kind of impediment. And it’s made all the more obnoxious because of how needless it is.
If Vet keystones had been released in time for 4th Oct patch, the problem wouldn’t exist 
Putting in a substitute to replace the absence of keystones, then adding the keystones without removing the substitute was always gonna be messy 
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I don’t know if I agree… That implies that it would have been released in an acceptable state at the time, does it not? Because if it weren’t, then we’d still have faced the same problems then as we’re facing now.
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There is a good handful that are extremely weak or incredibly situational. Some others could be easily merged thematically while preventing any overpoweredness.
Born Leader is useless, Exploit Weakness is extremely weapon-dependent and almost useless, Skirmisher is a joke and close to useless, Catch a breath is useless (on T5+), Competitive Urge can go for all I care (F-ing 2,5% proc on ally kills lmao). You can even just get rid of Grenadier and just give +1 nade for all types…
For merges, Kill Zone + Catch a Breath could be easily merged and it would be totally fine. The same with Fully loaded + Shock Trooper, it could easily be merged. Could make the node only provide ST bonus to the Las weapons, las weapons don’t need the ammo node anyway.
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Sorry, I should clarify - if Vet keystones were ready . Not to say whether they were good/bad/indifferent – that is its own issue – but the tree size (as per the OP’s complaint) wouldn’t be completely borked.
Obviously, shrinking the tree won’t make bad talents better, it’d just give more nodes within reach.
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Ah, in that case, yes, fully agreed.
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I think the tree is about 2 total nodes too thicc. Compress it by about that much and itll feel pretty good i think.
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I forget exactly what nodes do what so…
- Born Leader - this is +Coherency radius, right? I feel like it’s only made useful by other talents; merging it with the +Toughness DR for allies in coherency would be reasonable
- Exploit Weakness - depends on a crit build (so Reciprocity and/or weapon) but 20% Brittleness is significant for just about any melee weapon, and goes a long way to shoring up anything your weapon is weak against - if my napkin math is correct, Devil’s Claw would do 30% more damage (multiplicative with other damage modifiers) against Flak, for example
- Skirmisher and the sprint cost reduction could be merged, to justify all the sprinting you’re gonna be doing
- Competitive Urge - I kind of like the idea of the talent (20% base damage and edge-of-screen sparkles) but… eh, I think at least one of (a) 5% chance or (b) being able to proc from your own kills as well would do the trick for it; (a) would bump the odds of at least one proc per 5/10/15 kills from approx 10/20/30% to 20/40/53%
The rest, I don’t have any strong opinions on. I just recall seeing some suggestions from other threads that were suggesting merges of already-good talents (along with buffs, for good measure), hence my concern of fast-tracking a nerf
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Gives 15% of toughness gained to allies too. Doesn’t work if you are at full toughness…
Yeah, that’s right. I think it is only good with Devil Claw with Shred blessing. On Knife, it’s quite questionable since you have very easy rending on it (Uncanny). On other weapons you only take it since Skirmisher is a joke.
On Skirmisher… the main problem with it is that the duration resets extremely slowly, so you only have around 40-75% duration left when you want to use it. It’s also insanely bad that Infiltrate breaks sprinting…
It would be useful if it would work like IJ (Zealot mobility keystone), only triggering when you attack, or with the duration doubled, but currently it’s horrible. Even on a heavy melee build you get close to nothing out of it.
Yeah, that would be a really bad idea. I mean even coherency radius (Charismatic) I consider a really strong node. Could be merged with Born Leader, but Charismatic is already very good.
Merging something like Nade regen with Field Improvisation would be just ridiculous.
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Take a Plasma Gun, always be venting Not being able to use it at full toughness really brings it down a notch. If you’ve got a bunch of stacks of Confirmed Kill on the go, being able to share a portion of that with your team (irrespective of your current toughness) would be handy; might not be a huge amount, but being a source of uninterrupted regen would be compelling.
It’d be a nice bump for chainsword vs flak/carapace, axes vs maniacs/carapace*. Shovel doesn’t have Shred or innate crit bonuses iirc? Power Sword, same deal as shovel but you’ve already got armor piercing on the special attacks. Knives, largely goes to waste with rending blessings. I can’t remember what other melee weapons a Veteran gets
*I think maniac/carapace is where combat axes are weakest, could be wrong though. Not sure about tactical axes
Oh, that’s lame. I get that infiltrating is meant to be sneaky and all that, but no sprint? Dang. I wonder if that’s intended, or if it’s been bug reported. Given that Infiltrate is already behind Shroudfield at baseline (cooldown, buff on attack etc), denying sprint as well is disappointing
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I laughed. Yeah, you could make it work, just stack CK and keep walking in-and-out bomber fire.
I guess you are right, it does give a bump to a selection of weapons. I don’t think it’s useful on Caxe, PS, or Knife, but Shred Catachan, Chainsword, and Taxe with its innate crit can get some use out of it.
Also probably the shovel can get a bump in damage on bosses or something. Although I have to say, if it wouldn’t go up against something so bad as Skirmisher it would be a hard pass for me on most things.
Still now talking about it feels more useful than I initially thought.
It’s probably a bug, it gives +25% MS and stops sprinting, and also locks you out from sprinting again for a good 0.5-1 sec. It couldn’t be intentional.
It would also be great if infiltrate would break enemy attacks like stealth does in VT2. It’s horrible that you can go into stealth and get hit after from certain attacks.
Honestly, Rending/Brittleness are probably the strongest buffs in the game IMO per 1%. It won’t benefit every weapon in every scenario, but many weapons do <100% base damage to Flak, Carapace or Maniac, and the worse the weapon is in that scenario, the better Rending/Brittleness performs (also Fire/Bleed benefit too, which has made Uncanny/Lacerate knife a lot of fun on my Zealot). If you lack the crit to maintain it though with the shovel for example, you’re kinda boned.
Oh, I thought you meant that sprinting would force you out of stealth. Interrupting your sprint, ye, that has to be a bug
Given that there’s already a number of effects that put you in a dodging state, putting a stealthed vet into a dodge state for a moment upon activation seems like a fair thing to do. You vanished from sight, why the heck would target tracking linger for any duration.
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we need a bit more than 2 extra points, i really hoped the devs looked at the other trees people made
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Two points should be enough in my experience. Keep in mind two points would bring the grid into a slightly more compact state. In every build I have made there’s rarely a case where 4 points total wouldn’t get me everything I want with some compromise. Usually there are 2 nodes I definitely could cut if there was something worth getting. 5/10 of my builds just 2 points alone would be enough with no compromises.
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At that, when it comes down to the last few points, I think compromise is reasonable (and true of other classes). You want A, but you also want B - are you willing to trade one for the other (or is there something elsewhere you can do without so you can have both A and B) - the Veteran today is more like “I want A, but have to give up B, C and D to get it”, which is unreasonable.
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