A lot of other people have already talked about the problems they have with the veteran talent tree, so I won’t really focus on it too much. One of the bigger problems that I see with the Veteran is that it feels like theres only really 3 weapon choices that are viable: Plasma gun, Bolter and the Revolver.
All of these weapons are good at dealing with armoured enemies that in my experience often pose the biggest threat to the team. Other weapon choices can’t really deal effective damage against these enemies, and yes Veterans do have access to krak grenades to deal with crushers/maulers, but you often don’t have enough of these grenades to deal with 4-5+ crushers at a time - something the plasma gun, bolter and revolver can easily handle. And if the player is forced to take krak grenades they can’t use the shredder frag grenade to deal with hoards.
So as an example:
Veterans who want to play in a more sharpshooter role (the whole left side of the tree is focused on it!) might pick weapons like the infantry lasguns or headhunter autoguns. But both of these weapons deal basically no damage against carapace armor, but they also aren’t really good at dealing with hoards because of the slower rate of fire and lack of ammo.
The player then has to choose which grenade to take to help them, either they take frag grenade and they die to crushers or they pick krak and die when they get surrounded.
And I think having to make choices with your equipment and talents are a good thing, but other classes don’t struggle nearly as much:
A psyker can take smite or assial to deal with hoards and a voidstrike-, surge staff or revolver o deal with single targets
or they can take brain brainburst to deal with single targets and trauma-, purgatus staff, infantry autoguns etc to deal with hoards.
(And no matter which you pick it will be effective)
So here’s a few ways I think this could be improved:
Make it so more weapons deal higher damage against carapace armor.
Increase the amount of krak grenades a player can carry (might make it too easy against bosses).
Add new blessings to marksman style weapons. Blessings such as +20% brittleness on weakpoint hit (only example)
Make it so executioners stance ability greatly increases weapon penetration for ability duration (but this might OP weapons even better).
If you pick a ranged option unsuited to tackle crushers and don’t want to pick krak grenades - you still can pick an armor piercing melee weapon. I personally find most ranged weapons viable - just like most melee weapons. As long as one of the two choices can pierce armor.
Just bring back the auto reload for Valley Fire for the love of god. What’s so difficult putting 1 more skill for the ult? Why did you, FS, have to remove it?
This is a huge risk though. I don’t think there are any melee weapons for vet that can handle a big clumped up ball of crushers anywhere near as efficiently as one or two krak grenades or some kiting space and a revolver. I will say that this is only really an issue at Auric, and even then it’s only when there’s literally nobody else on the team with an effective crusher-killer setup.
Unfortunately, with the average game experience being a rando pug team, this is something you really need to think hard about before you decide to try a melee weapon as your anti-crusher weapon.
I generally agree that basically every ranged weapon is viable on vet, with the one exception being crusher killing.
Let’s admit that there is something that is needed…
more weapons… yes diversity is problem. But also, and in a more problemtic way, for Ogryns and Psykers that rely on staff.
There are several weapons ready (different patterns of what we know).
I don’t get, yet, the interest of headhunter rifles. I have to test with scope (weapon modification mod that should be part of this game!), but for now, I am not convinced by them.
However, braced autoguns and also infantry autogun are both great. Especially the MKV infantry autogun (would like to see other MK vairants buffed in other areas than close combat).
So, there are other choices than the ones quoted… and against crusher you have the grenades (and you can select talents to help them regenerate) and also melee weapons.
Tip: A Power sword kill everything in the game…
If anything this game needs less of this. CRUSHERS are such a joke right now even in auric maelstrom its so easy to mop the floor with them in their big 10 man patrols.
The most dangerous enemies are disablers and specialists, but armor blobs are pretty spookie if you’re unprepaired. Also one of my favorite vet builds uses a Graia Autogun, and its perfectly adequate at any level of gameplay. However a veteran has a ton of options for dealing with these:
Frag storms dumped 2-3 at a time can knock them all over making for easy clean up. kraks, obviously. Following that with sufficient gumption you can actually kill whole groups of them with chain sword and chain axe shred attacks. The lazy man’s version of this is power sword, especially mk6 which can be built to 2 shot crushers using push attacks. Then there’s always the combat axe which should allow you to kill them all with little trouble an stagger any incoming attacks.
If all else fails and you’re not confident in melee you can just take Onslaught or another of the ubuiquitous veteran rending skills and blast away with whatever gun you have. It’ll work well enough.
Sorry, meant to type IAG. I rather like the IAG varient. I run it with dum dum and punishing salvo specifically on vet. Its meh elsewise. Maybe good on gunker.
As the chain axe man i can say with confidence that i am probably of suspect opinion on what is and isn’t good.
Fortunately for most of my most vehement hot takes i do rigerous testing first. Punishing salvo is an unfounded opinion of mine. It feels impactful, i think.
Personally it just comes down to how I play Graia IAG that I don’t think I would ever use. Most of the time I’m firing bursts that are much longer than 4 rounds. Especially with the mechanic it has where the recoil stabilizes the longer the burst it doesn’t seem like it would do much besides for more consistent/quicker kills on basic shooters (which may be good enough to fill its own niche, but not for me).
I’m glad you alnowledge that weapon diversity is an issue for other classes as well. Psyker weapon diversity has inproved dramatically since launch and I’m really hapoy about it.
I think additional feats for veteran to take, perhaps areanged in such a way that you can only take one at once, would be the way to go. Right now there’s the flat rending bonus, and a rending bonus for consecutive hits, that requires 4 hits to break even with the former. Its a good start, but other options, such as one that specializes in weakspot hits or crits would give veteran players far more meaningful choice when it comes to rending.
