Weapon Blessings are boring and flawed

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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With 1000+ hours in the game, I still use the same blessings I was using when the Unlocked and Loaded update dropped, there is no real choice, 90% of blessings are just there to take up space and give you the illusion of choice, also to give you bad weapon rolls when the blessings were still locked.

You see you brutal momentum, you take brutal momentum, you see power increase, you take power increase, you see anything else, most likely you are not picking that, there a few exceptions, but blessings need a serious look spread across multiple updates to make picking non-damage increasing blessings realistic.

Take the heavy sword for example, 40% of the possible damage, cleave, and stagger are locked behind headtaker, since it gives you 5 stacks of 8% power increase unlike the other weapons that have this blessing, making it a must on heavy swords for optimal performance.

Power sword with power cycler, you get 2 extra active attacks (up from 1) for a total of 3, I see no sane person skipping it.

The existence of Wrath and Savage sweep on multiple weapons is puzzling to me, both give +200% cleave, too similar.

I think the blessings system is not in a good place, and needs to be looked at, maybe increase the weapons’ base power and tone down power increasing blessings or simply remove them (the ones with easy conditions, like headtaker), and buff the other unpicked blessings.

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Don’t forget Uncanny Strike and the glorious synergy it has with DoTs.

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It’s so broken that I foolishly believe they will nerf it.

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“Oh no.
A blessing has slightly more depth than many of the others, having an interesting synergy with dots.
Let’s remove it.”

Honestly, i don’t think that the issue with this blessing is the synergy.
The issue is the effect that it has on knife and ds damage against certain enemies.

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It’s an inherent problem in modern videogames, the illusion of choice. I mean, there’s only two real routes in nearly every case a game has lots of options in perks and such:

  1. The casual player who just picks what sounds cool, probably only plays a small amount (relatively speaking) then moves on to another game.

and 2) The long-term player, who likely min-maxes, figures out what is optimal, and largely uses that and only that.

Sometimes people will branch out into something that is fun even if it not optimal. But very few Blessings in this game fall into that, because they’re almost all just stat changes.

Some blessings are just never going to get used by anyone intentionally once they are well-understood, and most aren’t unique enough to make them fun to even play around with.

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If it only had synergy with DoTs applied by the melee weapons, then it would probably be acceptable. But the fact it works with DoTs from other sources like grenades or fire stacks is beyond idiotic.

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That is the part that makes it interesting.

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No, that is the part that makes it broken.

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It was voiced since release. Blessings are boring and outdated in their design. Stuff like Deflector or Can opener that alternates how you use your weapons is the way. Not every blessing will be equally usefull, some will be niche or unpopular and it’s fine. They just should be interesting, solely stacking damage isn’t that different from “+25% vs” perks.

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Man I really sympathise with this viewpoint. I really do. I strongly believe cross kit interactions create more dynamics builds and really enhances build crafting.

However, I think it’s also pretty hard to argue this particular interaction isn’t pretty unhealthy. I really really don’t think frag grenades or infinite cleave soulblaze applicators should be killing crusher groups because you made the wise build investment of taking one of the strongest melee weapons with a meta blessing. The cost/reward ratio is really just silly here. Like it would be a cool interaction if you got it by using an otherwise mediocre blessing on a below average weapon. Unfortunately that’s not what we’re actually dealing with here is it?

As a side note yes I know they will very likely nerf uncanny on DS but no mention of doing so on knife so I think the point stands.

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More blessings should have synergy with their alternative option like point-blank. The main problem is that a lot of cool blessing ideas for weapons have largely been turned into nodes and keystones in the class tree for a general purpose. It’d be cool if perilous combustion was a specific interaction with force swords on a special kill, but instead every interaction can proc it. It’d be cool if killing enemies reloaded ammo to your secondary, but that’s a vet exclusive keystone.

So we’re kinda just stuck with a majority of blessings being performance enhancers rather than changing your approach or style.

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The illusion of choice is also based upon play style, there’s nothing wrong with play style, its all about skill. Obsession with meta has been the bane of every game lol

Finding the synergy that works is always the best for the player

For the most part, this is what I’ve noticed upon how less than clear wording in blessings has rendered many players unclear of their functions

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Most of this post procs the “ I don’t like fun” crowd lol

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Many blessings have remained largely unchanged since the game’s release, so in today’s evolved combat system, many of them have become outdated.
Certain weapons, such as the PS and Combat Axe with BM, are essentially unusable without specific blessings, while others have blessings that don’t synergize with the weapon at all (having no reason to exist). If a blessing’s effect, like Agile, is too strong, it removes any real choice for the player.

Currently, the main challenge is how quickly you can take down large numbers of enemies, so it’s only natural to prioritize blessings that boost damage over those that merely enhance stagger or cleave.

Take the Combat Axe as an example: excluding BM, there are six types of damage-boosting blessings:

  • Thrust

  • All or Nothing

  • Headtaker

  • Limbsplitter

  • Decimator

  • Decapitator

In practice, only Thrust or Headtaker tend to be chosen, because they offer the best damage boost and efficiency.

All or Nothing increases damage as stamina is depleted, but the lower your stamina, the higher your risk of dying. On top of that, the damage boost it offers isn’t worth the risk.
Limbsplitter can only be used every 3.5 seconds, and you can’t choose the target, making it extremely inconvenient.
Both Decimator and Decapitator are simply inferior versions of Headtaker.

Ultimately, the deciding factor is whether a blessing provides a truly efficient benefit in combat and whether the return justifies the risk. Most blessings could become at least somewhat viable with just minor numerical adjustments.

For example, All or Nothing currently applies the same bonus per stack, 8% from 99% to 80% stamina, and 8% from 29% to 10% stamina. But what if the power increase per stack scaled with the remaining stamina percentage? For instance:

  • 99–80% stamina: +10%

  • 79–60% stamina: +18%

  • 59–40% stamina: +35%

  • 39–20% stamina: +60%

  • 19–0% stamina: +100%

These numbers are only examples, of course. Similarly, Limbsplitter could be changed to an 80% bonus instead of 60%, and made to trigger only against Specialists or Elites. This would at least give it some competitiveness against blessings like Headtaker or BM.

In short, the first priority should be adjusting the core game balance, such as weapons and classes, and then reworking blessings based on that foundation.

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The issues with blessings have been known and raised since the game’s earliest incarnations. They’re badly designed, badly explained, badly implemented, and badly implemented.

For anything that just gives different forms of +damage, there will pretty much always be 1 or 2 clear choices and a ton of false choices that are just simply worse alternatives. These also form the overwhelmingly vast majority of Blessings in the game with some of the least immediate transparency into mechanics for players. These are the least interesting in terms of impact on gameplay.

Blessings really are best when adding at truly new aspect. Deflector and Infernus I think are great examples of this where they add a new capability to the toolkit that didn’t otherwise exist, as opposed to just adding raw damage or armor pen or whatever.

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The cap for Rending with Uncanny is still too high. The best anti armor melee weapons in the game should be Greatswords, Relic Blades, Thunder Hammers, Power Mauls, Combat Axe, Crushers etc. Weapons that have reasonable mobility reductions.

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Blessings are definitely one of the most dissapointing things about Darktide. The vast, vast majority of them, don’t change how you play in a major way and are just flat stat boosts. It’s a bad look that one of the best blessings in the game has the incredibly hard activate condition of “hit enemies.”

Vet generic shovel (not folding) with uncanny and decimator/skullcrusher and serrated blade is really fun and fits in well with this imo. It shouldn’t apply to the shredder nades still, but it’s fun. While I support Uncanny Strike getting nuked, it does make me worried about what will happen to the Sapper Shovel afterwards.

So true you had to say it twice.

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“While I support Uncanny Strike getting nuked, it does make me worried about what will happen to the Sapper Shovel afterwards.”

Maybe Fatshark could start with making it so melee Blessings like Uncanny no longer apply to DoTs, then proceed to adjust Uncanny as needed afterwards. That’s a big part of it IMO, Blessings like Uncanny turn DoTs into armor busters when DoTs are supposed to be effective for soft targets.

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100%

10000000000000%

Devs could choose to be braver with the blessings if they wanted to. Instead of the same stacking blessings, rending blessings, and useless blessings that require perfect blocks, FS could choose to slip in stuff that actually changes the weapons.

Or just expand on the current ones. Run n’ Gun is one blessing that will always almost be good until they make it apply to reloading. Can Opener is almost good until it greases up the Ripper Guns melee special to be more responsive or able to shoot during a stab.

Make blessings completely change the weapon special attack. I’d put a flashlight on a kickback, the melee bash is whatever and I’m only ever benefiting from 1 blessing at any point in time because of how its blessings work.

Guy up thread said games are ruined by meta, should check DRG where you can have a meta mod that’s just vanilla gun+ or a mod that makes your gun have recoil-based move tech.

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This is a major flaw in the Tide design: they introduce a mechanic, and then they totally nullify it with blessings or difficulty modifiers. Armour? Uncanny Strike. Weapon/build based on stagger? Red enemies don’t get staggered.

I mean, ok?

Also we still have a lot of trash and god tier blessings and talents. This isn’t variety or good design. Fatshark seems to be too afraid and too slow to nerf and buff things. Weapons usually have a lot of blessings, but only few combinations make any sense of them.

On the top of that we have dozens at this point unintentional blessing and ability / blitz interactions. The QA team seems to be MIA.

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