Veteran Talent Tree: Problem Nodes and Hostile Design

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
41

This always was a pain in the backside. Any amount of Preachers had and have Talents that make each other stronger, or more durable. Ogryn do too. Many Psykers in a team sometimes made it harder to upkeep stacks, but it wasnt that bad at the end anymore, thanks to them falling one by one.

Vets always negatively affected other Vets, because of the way their toughness regeneration works, and their Ult gets reset and prolonged. No other career cares much about kills, but you get herded to that mindstate thanks to how the tree works, and there is no getting away from it. Not taking Tactical Awareness is not an option for whatever ability you choose. It is, potentially, just that strong.

I dont wanna sound dramatic, but I will still write it anyway. The Vets tree is a failure.
There is, unlike with the other three careers, a clear and strict line you follow to make one weapon type incredibly strong. The Laz weapons. All the other weapons, like Plasma, Revolver, Shotguns, and even the Bolter, dont have a line in the tree that would enable them to get close to the performance of the Laz weapons. We have one weapon type that can get some value out of the tree. The one anomaly, the Headhunter Rifles, pushes through this mess on the back of the ammo availability and Rending changes.

It is awful how Vet got turned into a career that is taking that much value from headshots, after being one that had all the options to still work with weapons that dont needed to be that head focused, while still promoting a headshot based playstyle.

I understand that a melee line was something Vet players might have wanted. I would have preferred Vet as the career that can make every gun work, not the one trick pony the career got turned into. A kill greedy Laz Sniper.

Edit: I originally wrote Ogryns Bruiser also promotes a selfish mindstate by requiring Elite kills. He does, but it does not matter who kills the Elite, as long as the killer is in Coherency range. I dont need to add that this is a lot more healthy for the group. Changing Tactical Awareness to what Bruiser does would not make it such a fight over who gets the kills in a party.

42

I mean it’s absolutely a mess. The ammo node at the end of a Precision tree (which weapons are already ammo efficient) is a good indication of that.

43

Yeah I actually went out of my way to take Out for Blood since regening toughness as quickly as possible is more valuable than + or % toughness increases to me, great for enhancing your survival in horde heavy damnation difficulty missions where you want to keep that toughness topped up.

Not being melee specific is also true for Onslaught in ‘melee’ branch… up to 16 stacks of 2.5% rending (40% total) for 5 seconds when hitting something more than once, from my testing thats as true for my lasgun as it is for my combat knife. It really helped cover my builds weakness vs carapace but it feels almost too good when so many other traits in the tree feel so inconsequential.

44

Just FYI dots also stack onslaught.

Yeah I’ve been trying it out a bit, I’m not quite convinced it’s worth going out of your way for, but I do definitely feel it. It’s noticeable for getting toughness back quick from hordes and does help somewhat dealing with pure shooter groups on weapons where exhilarating takedown is hard to use (eg brauto and auto pistol).

It definitely doesn’t feel like enough on its own to forego confirmed kill, but it’s solid.

45

Yeah I noticed that too when applying bleed stacks, lets you focus on evasion more without worrying as much about the stacks dropping off.

Ive yet to properly try confirmed kill, the extra node to get to it means it costs an extra to get to vs the one node jump to Out for Blood when coming out from Krak grenade, the vet tree being what it is ive already cut out what I can to save on points. I suppose in that sense OfB could be considered a budget version lol

46

Except that zealots have other ways to regenerate toughness that are 1) higher in the tree so much more accessible and 2) either provide a steady amount for doing what they already do normally want to do (ex. get into melee) or trigger on damage not just killing blows.
And remember that zealots now have more toughness than we do courtesy of all their nodes being nice and middle of the tree or higher. So they can afford to take a ding or two and still come out ahead after the skirmish. We can’t. Especially when we don’t have their slew of “oh crud” abilities to get out if things go south.

47

Shock Trooper really should have been a broader ‘Weapon Specialist’ perk that included different bonus thematic crit effects for different weapon, in the same way that lasguns’ reliability and ease of sustainment are played into through the current trait. It might then need to be moved somewhere a bit more accessible to the tree at large but more flexilibility in general would be nice so whatever.

Just off the top of my head, something like:

  • Shotguns: +X% Stagger on Crit
  • Autos: +X% Sway/Recoil Reduction for 2 seconds on Crit
  • Bolters: I got nothing on this one tbh, maybe Reload Speed or Rending on Crit?
  • Plasma: +X% Crit chance on fully charged shots (Please Plasma needs the love)
48

Also Veteran’s modifiers for his ults outside of Executioner Stance all nerf his ult, which is basically not a thing with the rest of the characters except the turbo buff for Zealot stealth that turns it into pre nerf Shade from VT2’s single-damage delete. But Zealot can still crit build into ult regen on like any tree set up for no cost lol.

49

Cool story bro. In case it wasn’t super obvious I wasn’t actually going for a holistic Zealot vs Vet thing, just defending that talent as pretty good.

50

The main thing the guns that just dont cut it right now need is ammo efficiency.

Extra Stagger, or crit on the secondary you rarely use is not gonna make them better. The general Idea of having such nodes do different things for different weapons is not terrible, but I think that this solution would make weapon balancing more complicated. Not easier.

I honestly dont even know where to start pulling Vets tree apart, and where to put things.

The other careers prove that FS is very much able to design trees well enough. I have no clue why Vets gun variety on auric had to get shafted that way. (Ogryn got something for every weapon. Psyker can basically run whatever. Zealot doesnt have a single bad melee weapon anymore and got a good reload Talent in its tree.)

51

I love this… as what replaced them were these:
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Flat toughness, and flat damage. If the stagger could stop Mutants, bosses and Ogryn I would count it as more than toughness. As is stagger is already a weak mechanic in DT, and this ult specifically has very little of it with very little range… yeah it is basically just toughness.

What does Infiltrate and Close Quarters do?
Flat Toughness.
Flat damage.
The invisibility part does little more then dump more enemies on your allies letting them die faster. Not to mention Zealot (who wants to be in melee) does it more, does it better and has actual purpose built into the ult.

Much excite, very wow. Give me the weapon tax, give me the the boring weapon skill - it is infinitely better then this flat damage and toughness for ALL THREE ult abilities, and all three ult upgrades.

To me by far the worst offenders are the Abilities, and Ability Modifiers that are criminally unoriginal. Any new builds the vet has access to have NOTHING to do with his Abilities or Abilitiy Modifiers.

52

Wouldn’t this just make such a keystone must-have for Exe Stance and not useful for other builds?

53

I’ve got a couple of thoughts. Took a few days to stop interacting with Vet threads to play the class.

First off, I think Relentless should be baseline for Executioner’s Stance and I think Infiltrate needs at least one of its own sub modifiers to be baseline as well (my first thought is surprise attack, but any of them besides double ult would do).

On the subject of talents that benefit non-lasgun weapons, you could maybe give up Skirmisher for a passive aimed at activation (+1 charge and extended activation). The +1 charge might be awkward for chain weapons if you attack/stick to one thing and then attack/stick to another thing, but extended activation duration has been long overdue for power/chain weapons for us that like to prepare or chase down enemies.

I don’t have a suggestion for a plasma gun, centric talent. I decided to spend a few days playing with my only plasma gun with 73% damage, no power boosting blessings and comparing my gameplay with videos on YouTube. For the most part I can’t seem to reach breakpoints. I found myself enjoying it anyway over helbore because of the quicker draw time, making it a not bad pick for the vet support build. It may be better to just straight up give it a tiny buff than to make a specific talent for it.

Also, and don’t hate me for this… I think Krak grenades may need to be reduced to one. It’s not the first thing I want to see changed on Veteran, and they’re not anywhere near the same level of toxic as other aspects of the game; I might not be able to explain this well, but I feel like their abundance gets in the way of veterans using other anti-armor weapons (that’s on top the other things discouraging vets from picking up the plasma, bolter, plasma sword). It’s really, really good, and maybe taking the extra grenade/grenade regen talent is probably a good tax here if you consider how efficient a constant stream of krak grenades really is.

54

Imo, it’s way too early to tell exactly how good krak grenades actually are. Just because so many things are absolutely butchering the kinds of targets krak grenades are supposed to take out. I two shot a crusher with a bad voidstrike staff last night ffs. My gut feeling is that in harder missions the team will have enough carapace and bosses thrown at them that even going full nade spam with kraks wouldn’t be overpowered but again, it’s impossible to tell.

As for your other points. I think I would rather see Shock Trooper work on all guns than start adding a bunch of new weapon specific talents. Though maybe an optional power/chain activation talent in the melee branch wouldn’t be so bad, since the choice of melee weapon on veteran mostly seems cosmetic now.

Plasma gun especially just needs Sustained Fire to come back. The 10 second reload is absolutely intolerable in bad situations, even if you take 50% reload speed from other talents.

Would depend on the quality of the other keystones. They managed to make quality alternatives to old mechanics for zealot and psyker.

55

I mean conversely vet players shouldnt feel forced into taking one of a handful of anti armor weapons due to a lack of other solutions no?

Imo the Krak is a neat ‘screw that one guy in particular’ gadget since it will delete whatever it sticks to excluding the boss monsters, but thats all it is. Even with the 60s regen perk youre looking at deleting one carapace man on occasion, 2 at once if you save for a rainy day.

It can keep the pressure down when in a tight situation but anyone solely reliant on kraks to deal with their plus size problems is going to have a bad time at heresy/damnation levels, especially auric which is perfectly happy to throw 8 crushers at you simultaniously, even combining all the grenade related perks wont save you there.

The krak grenade is no orgynheimer and you already carry one less than the frags, knocking it down to a single carry would force most people down the right side of the tree considering smoke grenades are already a hard pass, or force them to take the 60 second regen perk to make it viable.

56

Crushers were turned into wet tissue paper this patch. The number of weapons that kill them in 3 seconds is stupid, so why would you nerf krak down to 1 capacity, which mostly just makes their ability to contribute to boss burst even worse (not particularly good with 2 anyway). Bulwarks are also getting trivialised by the amount of bleed flying around (and general damage output).

If a bunch of dumb stuff that mercs crushers with 0 resource requirement is brought back to earth then we can talk Krak nerf.

Krak really shouldn’t be near the top of anyone’s nerf list.

Are you not aware of the rending talents?! I can mince crushers with my brauto if I want to.

57

Don’t forget the occasional 4 or 5 elite kill!

Obviously the exceptional case, I wouldn’t consider it a great reason to nerf it

58

I was going to say, if you want something that combined with a perk makes dedicated anti-armor a bit of a joke, check out a recon las with onslaught applying 40% rending in a matter of seconds lol

Honestly I would go back to frags if the tree didnt tax me for the privilege, I find the kraks sit around until a boss shows up to blow them on, crushers only if things are getting particularly dicey. Rending for consecutive hits is enough AP for my requirements and a frag with bleed would put rending stacks all over the place lol

59

If they were to make a keystone that provides some benefit for each combat ability, it’d be no big deal. I just got the impression from reading the original message that it would lean heavily into Exe Stance.

60

I’m ready to be convinced, but running Krak for a good 15 games I find it incredibly underpowered.

  • Crushers are just tissue paper. Even Recon and Helbore are more efficient in dealing with them than Plasma/Bolter.
  • Shield deletion is nice, but Frag can do it too. Just as good if there are 2 shields, and better if there are 3+.
  • Burst damage on the boss is nice, but in a meh kind of way.
  • It gets little to no use in events where heavies are either absent or are in really small numbers.

I actually feel like Krak needs a buff, not a Nerf. Even the Bleed frags need to get their 4th slot back I feel like it was reduced for no reason.

The only use I got out of Krak was on Monstrous Specialist Maelstrom where the Weakened bosses can be 2 shot with them if you pick up boss damage+ and some other stuff, but those matches usually have at least 1 dedicated boss remover anyway that can do it with less resources burned and actually deal with the non-Weakened bosses too.