Been having a pretty miserable time since the patch released. I only run Aruic STG or Maelstrom btw.
Trying to play any build in pubs that doesn’t move at 100KPH+ is getting borderline tilting at this point. To add insult to injury most mid to long range vet builds force you into running high mob shovels, knives or TacAxes if you want to be able to survive, and keeping up with the rest of the team. Then run an aggressive/high mob build? Then you better have Swedish fiber and/or John Wick reflexes because there’s no coming back from mistakes or getting f*cked by latency shenanigans. Yes I did try other classes, they’re boring. Psyker and Ogryn are easy mode, and the game seems to punish you for playing as a pro-social zealot thnx to the new garbage spawn patterns where no one is ever safe regardless of how spot on you are with your room clearing and positioning.
Maybe it’s due to the influx of new players, but I’m seeing way too many lvl 300+ (True Level mod) folks who’re playing like suicidal asshats. To add insult to injury current balance rewards them for being so anyways. So I can’t even get the schadenfreude I used to get before from seeing knife-tards die on the other end of the map. Everyone seems to be hellbent on being at 30m+ away from the nearest friendly at all times if they’re running a melee build, or in chasing the kill feed if they’re a DPS carry vet/psyker or gunlugger ogryn. Before it was pretty much a coin toss if people bothered to pace themselves to the team, and actually looked behind them, checked around, and tagged stuff, etc. Now the planets have to align for this stuff to happen.
On top of it all the changes to spawn locations and patterns has just straight up been ass. The director constantly drops 1-5 mobs in your blindspots while you’re in ADS trying to take shots even from spots you’ve cleared. I’ve been knocked down by stuff straight up coming out of walls at points. Clearing rooms used to be an iffy affair, now it’s irrelevant since the moment your sight is off the room random crap if not entire special waves will be dropped in there once the spot is up to 8m away from you and no one has eyes on it. The director makes no pretenses at this point and just straight up spawns spawns grenadiers/mutants less than 15m away and in your blind spots. It spawns snipers and trappers inside hordes that already are on top of the team. If you killed a sniper on a far off perch or end of a long hallway it will often just straight up spawn another one in the same spot even if you still have eyes on that spot.
I’m just going to let this sit at least until the next major patch, probably longer. Bye.
Yeah I largely blame the truly insane amount of power creep this patch. Good team work usually comes from necessity, not good nature, powering everyone up this much just seems to make everyone think they’re the main character.
Hopefully the inevitable nerfs will slap some sense back into people.
You know what’s the hilarious thing about this too? That vet is also on the same level despite the what most other vet mains think. He can easily compete even with dps carry psyker too. Problem is you’ll be squishy and slow as hell, and if you don’t have a teammate willing to babysit you or aren’t an experienced player with godly reflexes, and/or Swedish fiber you’ll spend most of the game down or dead anyways, lmao.
I’d like to see that. Playing Zealot, Ogryn, and especially Psyker no vet can compete with me ( not even the good ones with Helbore/Recon).
I can top the chart with Vet doing around 50-100k+ more than the other (being the first to engage with super aggressive playstyle) if there are no other very aggressive players, while I can do as much damage with Psyker as the other 3 combined.
It’s really getting to unplayable levels now. Had a Auric-STG today with Ogryn tank + Rumbler, Knife Zealot, and Assail Voidstrike Psyker and everyone was running around solo not even getting a sweat. I did the same. Everyone was so broken that we didn’t need each other at all.
And you just described yet more reasons why I will not touch Damnation and Hersey is only if I’m feeling utterly reckless.
I know the tactics. I used to clear control points in Planetside II using them even when all I had was 2 or 3 randoms who happened to drop or spawn at the same base or Sundy. Pick a field of sight and fire, watch each others backs, move at a pace everyone can meet, and above all stick together and communicate (even if it was only proximity chat or in-game emotes) your intent. The issue isn’t that Darktides players are ignorant of the basics.
No they are actively hostile to group-focused tactics. I have been yelled at multiple times for suggesting politely that instead of everyone running off to do their own thing it would be better to move as a group. I’ve offered to let my Bullgyrn (orgyn with a shield) move first into rooms so he took the brunt of the response only to left in the dust as a zealot at 1/4 health charged in and promptly get flattened because he couldn’t tank a tox flamer and a few shooters scattered around the room. Then get called an idiot because I didn’t follow him. And then there the times I’ve seen the group charge head first into one horde while leaving my veteran by his lonesome to deal with the ones left from the previous batch.
Endless spawns that always seemed to target my character - especially my veteran - first just made it worse. Its hard enough with somewhat controllable spawns and a group that all too often refuses to cooperate. When the spawns are constant, always hitting you from behind, and its every man for himself at a difficulty where you are no long Sly Malone but just another grunt it stops being fustrating with small moments of fun. Now its just outright self-punishment that only gets slightly lighter at some point just to kick you between the legs when to you start to get back up.
And I don’t play games to punish myself for others amusement. So I’m sticking to Malice where there is a chance that in a worst-case I can at least not feel like I’m beating my head against a steel-plated brick wall in the hope that the wall will talk to me.
Oh and doing as much damage if using a specific build as others while so squishy that you need a babysitter or Astartes-tier reflexes isn’t performing at the same level as the rest. Not when every other class can pretty much grab whatever gear it wants, cut-and-paste some random joes build that looks fun, and run around by its lonesome without dying unless they truly screw up. That is called barely scrapping by. After all, if they can do that while having all their toys, just how much damage could they do if they focused solely on offense?
I’ve easily hit a little over 700k with helbore3 playing defensively, although, tbf, no psyker in that one. I also did get a run with a guy who hit over 800k (also helbore3) with an assail psyker ingame who did a little under 700k in a borderline bugged Auric Maelstrom run. So it’s theoretically possible at least, wish I took a screenshot.
Checked, nvm, alzheimer’s hit early. I apologize. I was mixing up two separate games, and adding 100k to the vet. Highest vet DMG between games I got averaged at a little under 600k with most dps psykers I could pick out doing between 700k up to 900k. I stand corrected.
Haven’t seen one yet? The crackheads running around solo-pulling rooms and clearing them? They just run around in events too, solo bosses… All on Auric-STG+.
auric board is legit the only place I see stupidly asocial behavior. like this total trooned out loser who would rather lose the game than pick me up for using scrier gaze on the staff, after crying about me not using the bubble in the lobby like I’m supposed to totally make a new tree to satiate him. There’s too much try hard nonsense, so just carry bad players instead in regular.
I’m not saying knife is a meme, but its horde clear rate is still pretty bad, and I don’t buy its single target stands out enough from other things to benefit it enough. I dunno maybe it for some buffs, or there are some insane synergies in the tree I’m not aware of.
Increased survival is mostly from being able to run multiple toughness talents + crit DR + crit CDR, and knife hardly benefits exclusively from any of that. Like it’s fine but if people are doing that well my instinct is that’s a lot more to do with Zealot kit than knife.
bleed is super overly buffed so it actually makes more sense to run crit builds and use flesh tearer (lacerate is still good, but flesh tearer is now +8 stacks). bleed is the new knife.
Knife and MG XII has been my Vets primary loadout since beta (daringly original for a guardsman, I know) the original logic being that the lasgun has the ammo sustainability to be run as primary with the knife acting as utility.
Its high mobility makes it great for keeping up with fast moving groups (especially useful since the most recent patch) or catching up and consolidating when you needed to quickly grab an objective or something, get separated or need to move to support someone else who did.
Its high evasion makes it a pretty effective evasion tank for controlling the attention of boss monsters while using grenades and occasional swipes to put bleed stacks on them between blocking. You can also reliably dodge strafe through hordes to avoid going down to chip damage and maintain cohesion with others until space can be made and the situation stabilised, if or when the director tries to bury the team in a melee crush.
Its slower to clear hordes but remains a capable control tool which can maintain a front to give the rest of the team space to focus on their directions or recover a downed comrade. With bleed, even before the massive buff to bleed damage, once it got stacks going on the front row of a horde it could happily melt rows of chaff as quickly as they came.
Considering the lasgun as my primary weapon and ranged elite control as my primary purpose, the knife is also valuable for quickly disengaging from a melee and making a few seconds of space to pop off Executioners stance/volley fire and pick elites out of the mix before they cause problems for you or someone else.
There are always going to be more overpowered or popular options at any time but with the drama around balance swings like the PS I can appreciate the consistent utilty value it has provided since launch. Imo how well it performs and what it brings to the team comes down to the mindset and priorities of the person using it.
This is why I am in favor of nerfs in a PVE game. Claiming it’s not PvP so they shouldnt nerf is a bad take. They absolutely do need to nerf things like void psyker because just one of these can delete everything on screen so it makes other players feel like they’re spectating the psyker solo everything instead of actually contributing
