Veterean shout srsly?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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So I recently decided to play a bit more veteran as I haven’t played it in literal years and wanted a few more penance points for a picture frame.

The game is so easymode compared to psyker it’s utterly ridiculous. And let’s not even get into how it compares with playing the sluggish Ogryn.

Why do veterans have an AOE shout that staggers monstrosities, sends even nurgle-blessed mobs flying to the ground, including bulwarks and crushers, restores toughness above your normal maximum, and can even ress other players with a talent point?

Both from a gameplay and a lore perspective it’s nonsensical to give one class such a powerful ability. He yells so hard plague ogryns take a step back. Crushers with nurgle blessing fall backwards and onto the ground. And it restores his own and allies toughness above it’s max. And resses any downed teammates within it’s area of effect. And it has a normal blitz cooldown.

The CEO is playing veteran or what?

Edit: Some other posters have made some good points about the rez node actually being inferior in many situations, which I agree with. I think the point remains even if we discount the rez node, the ability is incredibly strong to a degree where it makes the most difficult aspects of the game seem rather easy.

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Psyker is so much stronger than vet it’s not even close

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Shout is a really strong ability, but I always wonder how bad people are with other classes considering these takes. Psyker is strong AF, and don’t even get me started how stupidly broken ogryn is.

The ress node is actually a trap.

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This has been in the game for well over a year, and you’re just now noticing it exists?

Like, I get you said you haven’t played a veteran in a long time, but have you played the game…at all?

If you haven’t noticed this ability at all to this point, even when playing other classes, I’m going to suggest it’s probably not as huge an issue as is being made out here.

It cannot both buff allies toughness and res downed teammates, you have to choose between them.

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This has been in the game for well over a year

no…

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Rez node is a giant noob trap.

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Oh snap you’re right, I had to actually doublecheck that, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone take it. My brain just automatically assumed it was like the Counterfire/Bigger they are node.

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A well played psyker is very strong, yes. Kinda irrelevant to how easy the game gets when playing a veteran in comparison, though.

It seems to require very little skill and effort in comparison to play a veteran well. And in my experience it seems to come down largely to how many potential problems the shout solves and how well it solves it. It’s effectiveness is excessive.

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I see people take it all the time, and they’re always the ones that need rezzing. I’ve also seen a much larger number than I thought possible NOT take the overshield node…

A shouty vet with overshield makes the game much, much easier for everyone, assuming they don’t do anything silly like taking rez node or skipping CDR node.

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That makes sense, I legit don’t think I’ve ever experienced being rez’d by Shout. Likewise I’ve seen people not take the overshield node more often than I’d expected, but I’ve had to realize that a lot of players don’t really think too much about talents too much either :rofl:

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No, I just haven’t played it myself. But I have definitely noticed that the game is easier when there are shout veterans around.

I played a game with 3 of them not too long ago that really brought out the absurdity. Me playing venting shriek purgatus psyker as I almost always do, on probably the hardest map+modifier currently in the game: Auric Maelstrom Clandestium Gloriana with blessed mobs, chance that elites become lesser monstrosities modifier. Maybe pox gas modified Excise Vault spireside is a contender? Anyway, it was a total cakewalk to a degree I haven’t seen any other team composition make it.

I’ve seen a lot of good players play Ogryns, Psykers, and Zealots well. Everyone has tools that can get the job done and we can complete the hardest maps. But it’s just not a meaningful comparison. It was pathetic so easy it was with multiple veterans on the team.

It’s not necessary to spec into to, to make the game absurdly easy. Agreed. But it does make it even easier.

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I’m not saying other classes aren’t strong (smite psyker is idiotic on many modifiers, for example). These takes about whether other classes can be played well and solve the combat puzzle too are besides the point.

It’s that you can almost faceroll yourself to the exit as veteran. The input investment required to complete the missions aren’t in comparison.

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Exactly my point, psykers have it so easy that their brains are so tunnel visioned into their own brain dead mechanics that they sleep hard on those very noticiable things

back to OP topic, yellow thougness in general is overpowered, vet shout in particular shouldn’t be a thing in the first place

on this patch though they made exec stance more playable, and i’m having a good time with it, if you just started with veteran i suggest you go for that

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If you’ve got three people spamming it in a mode that feeds constant CDR tokens, it can get pretty silly, though that’s also not unique to Shout. If you have one or two of them on a team, particularly with modes that don’t rely on spamming raw numbers of elites/specials for difficulty (or are just lower difficulty), the ability is substantially less powerful.

For my own part, I’ve yet to walk through that map on Auric like it was a cakewalk with any build/composition, it’s a bloody knuckle-drag every time.

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Same. I play my Exec Stance build almost exclusively more than my VoC build now, and I’ve even been playing with Infiltrate. I love the idea of VoC, but it really can be too much as it currently stands. When you have 2x VoC being alternated it gets even more ludicrous.

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Res node = noob trap
Gold toughness may too strong.

But VOC itself is fine.

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The game has been out for about exactly 2 years, and it takes hundreds of hours to even begin to learn & understand its various hidden mechanics, builds and general balance.

VoC is overtuned for sure (as is plasma), but I’d advise against making sweeping statements about balance based on all the experience of a few hours with a new class & ability. You’re bound to get it wrong.

Besides, it’s a mistake for new players - and that’s what you are, with a break like that - to compare anything to psykers. They’re well known for having the highest skill ceiling in the game. Anything seems easy compared to psykers for newbies. But an experienced psyker is ridiclously strong. I say that as someone who’s mained 2 since release.

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I was with you till you stated this part, which is just silly. I’ve played since the beta.

It’s also oddly contradictory to other things you write which basically concedes that the shout is overtuned and that psyker generally takes more skill to play to it’s full potential.

I can also only repeat myself: This isn’t about whether the game can be played well with other classes and you can be strong as psyker, which it can (and for the record, smite is also overtuned, though it at least has some weaknesses).

It’s essentially about the relationship between skill investment and payoff. In my experience, compared to all the other classes and their different builds I’ve played (and that’s all of them at the hardest level this game currently offers), playing a veteran with the shout makes even the most difficult parts of the game seem like a cakewalk. In comparison to what level of effort and skill investment it takes to play others as well, or better.

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Yeah, the ‘revive your teammates’ node is incredibly bad, to the point no good player is taking it. The talent just strictly makes VoC worse, they HEAVILY over value the ability to instant revive a downed teammate, and to that extent basically gut the ability by nuterring it two fold, making it’s CD 45 seconds AND dropping it’s effective radius to 6 meters instead of 9. If it had one or the other, it honestly might be pretty good/worth it.

But in it’s current state, it’s just strictly better to shout more often and knock over 9 meters worth of enemies while giving your team 50 toughness, verses watching them die and THEN shouting to get them back up again. (not to even mention the fact that you can always shout with a golden toughness VoC 9 meter push back, then revive the 1 downed ally anyway with basically no threat to you. Verses gutting your ability to do that slightly faster).

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As a response to the OP though, yeah, VoC Veteran is basically the floor when it comes to skill level of this game, and I think that’s by design. Only class I personally consider better/easier would be Zealot, but they are prone to getting themselves out of position and falling over if you’re bad, where as VoC Veteran is a decent bit slower with a ‘auto spacing’ button, so it’s ‘floor’ is incredibly low in comparison to everything else. (especially when paired with a powersword).

A high end player using a Psyker will far outweigh a base level veteran though, and to me the two classes are basically equal in what they can provide if you assume both are at high level of understanding and player competency. Psykers floor is just SUPER far down there, as they are insanely squishy and require a lot of knowlage to get right, where as an iron will + shout vet just drops everything to the floor and gives game immunity (golden toughness) every 20-30 seconds, so so long as their team is good around them they will probably only fall over a couple of times.

And I will agree with you on the Ogryn point though, they (to me) are the weakest of the classes atm. Big targets, eat shots and hits for days, no DR anymore to deal with it, and eat immobilizing specials constantly with no real way to combat them outside of ‘hoping your kickback gets pulled out fast enough’. They are extremely reliant on their team to function, unlike the rest of the cast which can be self sufficient with the right build and game knowlage. Which I mean, makes sense given how they where designed, but makes them feel extremely clunky and slow by comparison.

And on a lore note, I was actually thinking about it, and a friend of mine pointed out that the emperor really is everywhere, and can exert his presence in interesting ways. Like, the totem on Zealot is literally just him ACTUALLY exerting the smallest portion of his will through the chant and just doing that level of staggering and boosting of allies resolve every time he does it.

So the idea that the veteran, for literally just a split second, can channel that in his shout and create a shock wave that shoves even a monstrosity back, isn’t to far fetched tbh. Now, him doing it every 20 seconds, maybbbbee a bit much, but given the fact it also has an upgrade pip that gives it golden toughness, I’m pretty sure that’s just the lore implication it’s going for.

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As your knowlage is/has been incredibly insightful (I ended up making a Crusher build the other day thanks to a separate post on Zealot, had a great time with what I thought was strictly a mediocre weapon, was fun!), I would like to know why even YOU think the Plasma gun is overtuned?

To me it feels like a clunkier bolt gun that’s a bit more flavorful/fun to use, but takes a LOT longer to kill anything by comparison. One can absolutely melt monstrosities in 1 clip of a bolt gun but it takes like, 3 very long overheats to do the same on a plasma, so I’m just wondering if I’m missing something or if people just really like the fact it can 1 tap most specials?