Since this has become a thread of wish lists, might as well add my own. I’m not going to go node by node, as that would make my already long af posts even longer, but here’s my ‘general vib’ I’d liked looked at/I would look at if I had the ability to manually change numbers myself:
Veteran
The most balanced of the classes at this point (which is saying something), I like their flavor and think if they are touched to much, it will result in the game being ‘unsalvagable’, as this is currently the only class who’s base kit doesn’t immediately shatter the game. With their more recent changes (maybe making Catch a Breath functional), I think giving them maybe one source of more consistent toughness regen that’s universal (like 0.5% on weakspot hit or something, or a regen over time that occurs for X seconds every weakspot hit so as to not make it broken for fast fire options) would be a good start that wouldn’t break them wide open. Then as stated pull back on his ‘tax nodes’ a bit and make smoke grenades electrofied (doing bits of damage to enemies that walk into it, mainly just to get people to stop whinning about it, though getting it subbed out for C4 or something I’d be ok with too), and that would hit most of the pain points. Tactical Awarness becoming 100% over 8 seconds or something, then dropping golden toughness for DR (as at this point, they’ve basically already done that with Arbite/Ogryn not needing any source of it to tank full havoc 40), and the class is ‘perfect’ in my eyes (one can deal with Marksmans Focus later).
Psyker
Give em a few more nodes toward the bottom trees so they have some more interesting options to play with like everyone else (instead of all builds being homogenized to the exact same two types of talent trees), make it so Soulblaze can’t deal basically any damage to Carapace armor/is unaffected by rending and brittleness, and does half damage to flak, so Perilous Combustion/Inferno Staff are used to thin the wave, not drop it all entirely. That’s about it really, if you give this class any other ways of gaining DR they become broken (just get ‘50% DR over 75% toughness’ in Mortis Trials and tell me you can still die I’d love to see it).
Zealot
Talent Tree re-shuffle, a gutting of the ‘middle tree’ in it’s near entirety and removal of Impact nodes for damage and rending. With Arbite being in the game, I feel Zealot should be pushed further into being the melee DAMAGE class, while Arbite focuses on knocking things around and weakening them that way. So slim down their tree of tax nodes, give it a bit more freedom, keep the staples (all the crit stuff), and move out the DR from Enduring Faith alone + Good Balance and give em some other options to make up the difference, like what was done with Ogryn so they weren’t just glued to delight in destruction. Ohh, and make all their CDR nodes into upgrades for their specific Combat Abilities, because having access to more than one is ridiculous (and likely make them all ‘regen bonus’ too instead of allowing Pious Cutthroat to still have a percent).
Ogryn
Honestly, I think they are largely fine. Sure, they are nigh indestructible, but they are also the ‘mascot’ of darktide, and still rather slow. This means ‘everyone gets to have fun’ even if an Ogryn is present, and they can still get caught out by Dog’s or Trappers or get their big hit boxes stuck while being less nimble. The only thing I think NEEDS to happen is Batter getting reduced to 1 bleed stack for light attacks, as it’s a bit to ‘free’ killing everything with thunderous bully club slaps, and I feel making it take twice as long to do so is preferable. They could probably lower their base/passive DR back down to 20% again too.
Arbites
The new problem child, the reason this balance talk has all started in the first place. Infinite DR and toughness, infinite damage, and a dog that blows up the field. This is the only class I’m going to get granular with, as I have recent experience with them (6 games away from 100, it’s taken, so long…so little motivation…), and I feel I know more of what to do to them specifically.
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Drop all DR sources by half (except the Toughness DR node which is left the same and Part of the Squad is reduced to 5%), also drop all toughness regen sources by half. This can be ‘bargained with’ if nodes are removed instead of augmented, but assuming all of them stay the same, one should have to work for them/combine a few together for survivabilty (like every other class has to), not just sit here with Man and Cyber-Mastiff for 5% regen a second, Canine Morale giving another 2% per second, and killing a marked target getting a bump of 15% every time, and you still got 18 hundred other choices to choose from. You can have twice the amount of a Psyker bubbles toughness regen per second just for blocking an attack while next to your dog that just killed something, this is not good, please fix.
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Lower the dog’s damage output against things it doesn’t pounce, or remove it entirely. The fact it jumping through the wave applies bleed I think shouldn’t be a thing, Remote detonation exists, one should have to pick when their dog kills the wave, not have it do so for them by just pouncing at an enemy twice and applying 16 stacks of bleed instantly. Make it apply bleed to the target struck like all the other augments too, or remove it entirely for something like ‘enemies staggered by your dog take bonus damage for X seconds’.
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Delete Concussive, it sounded cool when I read it, but circumventing mechanics meant to make the game harder is actively terrible and shows how not balance tested the Arbite is. You can completely ignore actually knocking down enemies in havoc and still get your entire tree of bonuses, and that is actually stupid. The whole point is you get a lot of impact bonuses and then hit things over to then kill them, why am I allowed to 3 shot a crusher before it even flinches just because I hit it in the head first? I feel half the reason people feel Arbites weapons are broken is this singular talent alone.
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Castigator Stance is ridiculous, the ability to become immortal with one button press is insane. Sure, it feels a little lack luster, but do any havoc 40 and activate the stance while 10 crushers are pile driving you and watch your toughness hardly move, and you’ll see the problems with it. Reduce it’s Toughness DR to 50% (the fact 80% ever got past QA while still stacking with every other buff you can have on Arbite is insane to me), and reduce the activation toughness regen to 50% instead of a full bar. Bake in Bloodlust to compensate if desired (since it is the ‘dog side’ ability, so why do I have to upgrade the ability to get dog damage?).
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And to be fair, here’s a few buff ideas based on clunky feelings I had, for the first one, Terminus Warrant now stacks ranged stacks up to the capacity of your magazine, with the respective buff nodes counting for half and then the full stack amount. Ranged stacks fall off per hit, Melee stacks fall off per SWING! and Melee stacks are still caped at 30 (with stacks received still being based on number of hits, so the ranged cleave still matters/can get you ‘free melee stacks’ for bullets hitting mulitple targets). One could even double the amount of melee stacks gained per ranged hit, think that would help too, but this feels like it would make the keystone ‘hit the vision’ a lot more verses how it does(n’t) now.
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Buff Nuncio’s range to twice the amount it currently is, no reason it’s that tiny (especially after the nerfs above).
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Add Engage as base functionality to Break the Line.
I think that’s all I got for Arbite really, with ALL that I think they become ‘good but you gotta build them right and rely on your dog a bit more/actually CC enemies consistently to get full value out of your kit’, instead of right now where you just hit headshots, get full over stated stagger bonuses for breathing, and watch everything die while your dog kills everything else.
And finally
Weapons
Arbite’s Maul gets poked down a bit, though I’d like to see it after Concussive doesn’t exist to actually get a proper opinion. But I say making it rely on thunderous a bit more and lowering it’s penetration values to 0.6 for carapace and 0.8 for flak would be a solid start, and maybe a slightly slower attack speed.
Duelling Sword honestly I like the ‘currently in Dev’ idea they where going for, remove the immense stagger poke it has for no reason in place of a ‘Parry’ move similar to the Devil Sword (given it actually makes you ‘duel’ things), lower it’s base penetration by a lot but like the devil sword, increase it drastically again for SPECIFICALLY it’s parry attack, so it’s like you ‘caught your opponent off guard and found a weakness’ instead of ‘I poked your cast iron head once you died haha’. Think that would be fun to bring them in line.
Plasma Gun, just make the light fire mode have low cleave but high blast radius (so you can still use it to push back a wave but it won’t just merk the whole thing), make the charge attack have steadily increasing cleave and a narrower more powerful beam that punches through armor/shields. Done, fun engaging weapon that actually encourages you to use both sides of it.
Bully Club, Lower it’s heavy attack penetration a tish, basically ignoring Carapace armor I think was a bit much given it has Thunderous. Dial it back to 0.6 and I think it’s fine, and maybe lower the Flack one to 0.9 instead.
I’m gonna leave it at that for now, their could be more but I’ve spouted enough words for most people to scroll past XD. This would be what I’d do though, where I able to have access to the code. Maybe someday…
Also on a side note, I actually really like the Infantry Autoguns in their current state, specifically the Mark 1 and the Mark V. They are weakspot weapons (which is a bit counter intuitive but once one gets the hang of their recoil it feels good), and rely heavily on Dumdum + Sustained Fire for their quicker kills, but they can melt really well and I always like my ‘bullet hose’ type weaponry that shoots bullets instead. If they made a even slower fire one than the Mark I, I’d want that to either be a fourth mark or a new weapon, verses changing the weapons themselves (cause I like them as is, they are very fun special/gunner killers for melee builds, and can MELT on their own with the right Veteran set up).
