Why nerf the Vigilant Autoguns?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Okay first to address the good before malding; the changes specifically to the burst fire variants were very needed, the reduced sway and increased projectile size make the guns much easier to use and get head shots with.

Now that I am done with the good, its time to gripe - one of the stated purposes for the Vigilant changes were as follows:
”DevNote: The intent is to increase overall consistency and to be less reliant on weakspot hits. To get best value players should still aim for weakspot hits.” (Emphasis added)

However of all the things that didn’t happen THIS didn’t happen the most.
Why you might ask? well a little buried change I shall highlight

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See this, in conjunction they literally don’t talk about it after this would make you believe that the crit strike finesse was reduced at the same rate as the Weakspot finesse… however that isn’t at all true.

On the Mk VII, the finesse for WP suffered a modest reduction from 3 to 2.8, Crit finesse was reduced from 3 to .4 yes, that is 40% from 300%, that is LESS THAN THE SHREDDER AUTOPISTOL. The burst fire variants have less still, meaning they have HALF the crit finesse of the Shredder, putting them on par with the plasma gun, which is at the bottom of the finesse barrel. Headshot crits (which are important since you will NEED headshots on this gun now) are only increasing damage by roughly 9% (depending on armor and weapon mark) down from about 40% prior to this patch.

What does this mean? well two things.
First: Body shots have become pointless - do not do it, they are bad. If you believe these patch notes and try to body shot a Scab gunner in havoc you will have a bad time.
Second: Most damage blessings are now bricked.

So which blessings are bricked from this update? lets go over them!
Surgical: 9% damage boost that you need to wait long periods of time to get consistently~
Headhunter: Occasional 9% damage increase~ woo.
Crucian Roulette: was already bricked, but now it is MORE bricked with crit AND mag size reductions - a very rare 9% damage boost!
No Respite: with the large reduction in stagger guess what doesn’t proc~ This blessing!
Falter: With the large reduction in stagger guess what you get way less of - stagger! not that this or No Respite were good prior to this patch, this patch ensured they cannot replace the nerfed crit blessings!
Opening Salvo: this one is more indirect - THE reason to take this over Deadly Accurate was trading raw damage for versatility, it gave damage on body shots. Well now body shots aren’t worth increasing damage on so RIP. Now the reason to take this is you just don’t want to invest the second blessing to gain access the good damage blessing I suppose.

Which leaves Deadly Accurate which also got nerfed due to reduced finesse damage! Fortunately this was far more minor than it was for other blessings and is still actually good but requires you to invest a second blessing that does almost nothing but enable this one.

However lets say you do take Surgical and Deadly Accurate, what then, how does it compare to before the patch? I am glad you asked random internet Denizen!

Obviously body shots are not comparable and carapace is a nonissue, so we will stick to headshots, and crit headshots at 80/80 for damage and stopping power and all other armor types:

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What does this mean? if ALL you are doing is getting headshots, the MK VII is doing mostly fine this patch. However if you used Headhunter, or Surgical to get crits, and are wanting to use Deadly Accurate… well the results are well awful.
Outside Maniac, everything else is down.

Overall this is a massive nerf to the VII that didn’t benefit much from the sway/hitbox buffs, and I’d argue a nerf to the burst fire (III and IX) marks that while they can hit heads more consistently, the significantly reduced damage and removal of versatility given by crits is still incredibly painful.

I’m confused why they would nerf the Vigilant autoguns that were already underperforming, but that’s above my pay grade.

2

Bump

3

Typical FS logic: Buff Bolter and DS, nerf the least used Autogun.

4

So that’s why crits just suck in general now with these. One step forward, two steps back, as usual.

5

indeed - they just removed one one of the best methods for getting damage multiplication on ranged weapons, and what the Vigilant was designed for, and gave it nothing to compensate… I would love to pick the brain of the people who thought this change was a good idea.

6

The whole idea of Random recoil pattern should be deleted. Don’t know why they added that. Even some PvP Competitive games lacks those.

7

After trying out some weapons on new MF Vets I think Kant X Laspistol pretty much beat Vigilant autogun in everyway right now imo.

It’s Las-weapon so it can utilize Shocktrooper, fast reload so no need for Volley Adept, great mobility and it got huge finesse bonus pairing with Desperado and Reciprocity it’ll absolutely shread everything non-carapace even on non weakspot hit.

I really wonder what they’re so scare about Vigilant Autogun becoming competitive with other weapon when there’s still thing like Plasma gun that could pen through multiple elites and oneshot all of them.

8

Yeah any las gun, the helbore specifically can just do everything Vigilant can do, but backwards and in heels though while also killing carapace and having near infinite ammo. I really doubt they were scared of the Vigilant? My guess is they just really didn’t think through how the changes would affect its ability to scale with damage multipliers? but who knows.

9

yeah the las pistol shoots the first round off the hip dead center which just feels so good with the new marksmen focus. I’ve been using the lagnum probably the most on vet lately just for cracking most enemies in one hit at 7 stacks and above. Its too bad the vigilants got hit with a nerf considering the IAG still does the exact same thing feathering the trigger and controlling recoil but also having full auto. Honestly at this point I miss the launch Mk7 that had 30 rounds you could spam on semi auto. It was like a giant pistol and a hell of a lot more usable than any iteration since. Especially with how badly their accuracy tanks on the move.

10

Personally, I think the fire rate of 3-round burst guns could be increased.
Over the past year, encountering a player using the Headhunter Autogun has been extremely rare—so rare that i could count them on one hand. As for this 3-round burst, in that entire year, I’ve only seen a single player use it. And they were almost a beginner, so they probably just tried it out for fun.

11

Honestly, I wanted to test after the patch. Took it on the veteran with a “sniper” build.

This is excellent. Really good. You can one shot close to everything. You have enough power in your hands.
But…

There are so many weapons that do a better job… because, burst or semi auto is great at long range… it is less efficient when facing enemies that come from all directions and that you’re stuck in a perpetual close range combat… here your headhunter is… inefficient.

12

I’m sorry Sweden, but wtf? :joy:

“Math isn’t mathing” smth.

13

With 15 stacks on Marksman Focus you do hit a lot of breakpoints, getting there is a pain in high havoc, and it is a significant ammo expenditure and time sink - time and ammo both being on the scare side in havoc.
Where as Bolter, DB shotgun, and plasma all get as good or better breakpoints, and just don’t need MF

And if you want to use MF, the buffs to Helbore just mean its better in every conceivable way than the Vigilant - it also has Surgical, it has worse WP finesse, but massively increased base damage and crit finesse so it can actually hit many body shot breakpoints.
Has near infinite ammo and only rarely reloads.
Does carapace damage.
Has damage blessings that are actually good.

While Bolter, plasma and all lasguns got ammo nerfs (the latter two were not mentioned in the patch for w/e reason - perhaps others have as well?) slight reduction to ammo for helbore is trivial.

14

I don’t think he even play Havoc tbh.

Reduced ammo on Havoc is stupid anyway imo, rather than just nerfing all the OP range weapons that trivalize the game they rather choose to make every gun relate build suffer instead(and then there’s also mfing Pus-hardened skin and Rotten armor)

Which mean all the range weapons still maintain the same status-quo but the non-meta one become even more unusable.

Meanwhile Psyker still melt everything because they don’t care about reduced vent speed.

15

Ah yes, the old headhunters, my favorites from back in the early days of Darktide. Been playing with these on Auric while knocking out the event, and my conclusions are:

Gracia VIII (single-shot): Remains consistent. Has great hip-fire accuracy and is the only variant to keep its strong stagger. Has the best armour penetration on crit of any variant, and 1 taps most everything to the head. Lower DPS, and so less good on body shots, than other Vigilants.

Columnus III (3-shot burst): Really feels like it’s fallen off comparative to the other two. Decent DPS and ammo pool on paper, but lacks hip-fire control and the spacing between each shot in a burst is too long to reliably track enemy heads. Spammy; feels closer to an Infantry Autogun.

Agripinaa IX (2-shot burst): Huge glow-up, now comparable in power to the VIII. Recoil almost doesn’t exist, and the second shot in a burst comes out so quickly it feels like a single-shot. More ammo-hungry than the VIII, but more reliable kills and stronger into clusters of enemies.

Overall, I found the guns highly effective into Auric, comparable to if not more powerful than the Infantry Lasguns, and better for quickly picking off a few targets than the Infantry Autoguns and Recon Lasguns. Still need to try out the Laspistol again to really get a gauge, though.

The considerable improvements to the veteran tree, most notably the increased survivability a Focus Target + Marksman’s Focus build, new viability of Krak grenades, and multiple easily accessible new/improved damage nodes make not only the Vigilants, but all of the underperforming “infantry” guns actually quite effective in their roles. Outside of a dedicated marksman build however, I can’t see them performing very well. I really struggle to see a place for them in Havoc under any circumstances.

As for your complaints about parts of them being nerfed, I think they’re warranted. Outside of Carapace armour modifiers and some breakpoints (mostly on the VII), crits give almost insignificant value under most circumstances. This, coming from a weapon that used to rely on them. On the positive side, the weapon’s damage is now much more reliable, but classes (or even builds) without the pure buffs to ranged finesse damage that a dedicated marksman Veteran has no longer have any way to make up for the lack of this. It remains a very niche gun.

16

This is a very low hurdle to clear - I find the devils claw and shredder to be effective into auric.

I agree that this was an indirect buff to all non-armor damage weapons on vet - but most of them (particularly the ranged ones) still underperform even against non-carapace enemies when compared to their armor damage dealing counter parts.

In what way? all they have done is remove how you can do damage from 2 options (Crit AND WP) down to 1 (WP only)
A 6%~ (depending on mark, armor e.t.c.) flat damage boost doesn’t make non-crit body shots any more viable than they were previously…

If anything the increase to scab life, and decrease to flak armor damage will make body shots suck more as all gunners, shotgunners and Reaper all have flak centers meaning you will have to shoot the body significantly more with these changes, not less.

I really just don’t understand in what way it is more reliable.

17

Reliable literally in that before, you were very dependent on crits to deal decent damage. With that factor removed, and damage against non-carapace armour much more equalized, you can reliably know exactly how much damage each shot will do, and most enemies take roughly the same amount of shots to put down. You no longer have to fish for crits to reach breakpoints using a dedicated marksman build.

I believe its good a build like this doesn’t need them, but as I said, I agree crits should do more so other builds/classes can take advantage of the weapon’s strengths in their own way. It’s not exactly going to push the weapon into overpowered status even on a Veteran build dedicated to getting the most out of it.

Strongly agree with this. The gun’s previous identity was how strong it was against flak. While body-shotting other enemy types undeniably feels more impactful, flak is mostly what you’re engaging with, making body shots in general feel lackluster; counter to the intended changes for the gun. Also, likely a big part of the reason the MKIII now feels like the weakest variant.

18

Auric headshot breakpoints have basically not changed at all, almost all non-melee specials and elites could be one shot head shot.
And note, “fishing” for crits with surgical requires very little effort - likely the entire reason they removed the crit finesse to begin with.

In havoc many one shot head shot breakpoints did required a crit, but the Vigilant is just no longer capable of getting enough damage to reach them now, so you have “reliably” just removed many one shot breakpoints.

Changing the armor damage modifier doesn’t change reliability - back when the ADM for maniac was less, I still knew exactly what it took to one shot body shot flamers in auric.

Body-shotting other enemy types is infinitely less impactful as, without crits/crit finesse, they just aren’t worth doing in Havoc - a single flamer will eat up 1/3 of your mag to kill through body shots.

*IF* you desire to make a gun that doesn’t require crits, there are ways you can do that - plenty already exist. A gun where half its blessings are all crit related, and most of its damage is in finesse CANNOT be made that way and still be good.

19

Shredder is Havoc meta. What are you on about?

20

There’s a global bug with weapons that have an ammo stat where that stat basically stays at 0