Why why why do so many enemies do damage through toughness?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
4

Agreed with the previous posters.

The zealot passive feels like something you ideally should never use during a perfect run, but is there when you mess up. It is there when you eat an overhead swing from a mauler while having Toughness broken after long range shooting. It is there when you eat a volley gun to the face after making an erroneous charge.

Its a get out of jail free card rather than a mechanic to maximize Zealot’s low HP buffs. Having that passive save you after getting smashed by something big means you can pull back, drop a health kit and get yourself back to fighting fit.

Zealot’s buffs at low HP in Darktide never struck me as the ‘way to play’ Zealot being to remain on low HP through the run so to speak. With the amount of good enemy shooting in DT, having so low white HP in general is extremely risky even without melee penning through.

Those feel more a mechanic to boost you through bad situations.

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5

That just doesn’t really make sense to me. The bonuses you get for being a low health aren’t even that large, and the whole point of mechanics like these in general is playing with less room for error in exchange for greater offensive power, i.e. risk/reward.

If you’re not intended to make use of them they just seem kind of terrible and unsatisfying.

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6

I agree that at some point (under X % ?) there shouldn’t be dmg through thoughness anymore, or it should get to be less and less, or even you can’t die if your thoughness isn’t exhausted?

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7

You guys seriously believe that these feats that you can take on his tree are meant to be temporary emergency measures??? So if you’re playing perfectly and take no damage, you are by default weaker than every other class that has buffs from their feats that aren’t HP dependent. And if you take his buffs that don’t rely on being low health, what’s the point of his passive that gets a pitiful damage boost from missing health?

V2 Zealot was good game design in my opinion. Being fully buffed meant being low health, so being tanky at the same time meant building THP by killing hordes. It was a fun and recursive loop that synergised with itself and encouraged aggression in melee. Darktide zealot has no synergy with itself at all in comparison except the first row talent of 50% increased toughness per kill which is worthless at 1 health barring perfect no-hit play.

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8

I’ve never understood Zealot’s design to be ‘get low health on purpose’ but rather to reduce risk for being low health in the first place. I agree that Zealot’s need some way to tank harder at low health but I don’t think the intended design is ‘get low health and stay there’, it should just make you less scared to play in close at low health.

9

I already made a topic about this and it needs to be addressed
here is the link- The chip damage to your health from melee attacks needs to be removed

i even showed that this feature isnt even consistent to how they train the player in the game, in the training it claims that you will not take damage until your toughness is broken yet in play you do from melee strikes. This needs to be removed, its overly punishing to the player especially with how many other features exists that make the game a lot harder than vermintide 2

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Ah, thanks for linking it. The fact that the game is so filled with inaccurate and misleading tooltips like that is also a tremendous annoyance. How hard is it to write what you mean? Unless they’re making so many changes that they can’t be bothered to update the tooltips right now, which clearly isn’t the case for toughness because it was like this last beta as well.

I would be a lot more okay with this mechanic if there wasn’t literally a class with feats and passives and an ability revolving around maintaining toughness and permanent buffs at low health, but here we are.

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11

VT2 Zealot’s ‘low HP’ build, frankly due to how THP works in VT2 just became an always on buff. As such you can’t really compare it to DT Zealot, where those talents you mention are more for digging yourself out from a grave.

Also the damage boost from Martyrdom is not small, depending on the weapon you are using. A fast weapon like a dagger or a sword benefits a lot more from a slow swinging Thunderhammer, for instance. Also unlike Saltzpyre, you get the bonus early and quickly. You only need to lose 45 health normally to get your full damage boost, which for Zealot is not a lot. Even with the ability that lets it stack to 6 stacks, you only need to lose 90 health. Remember Zealot has a lot more white health than classes like Veteran.

Zealot does not require you to play at extremely low HP counts to get the full boost.

This gives you more than enough white health to play with since melee penetrations through toughness do VERY minor chip damage.

And yes ideally, you should never have Until Death trigger in a run, but lets be honest. We are not perfect players, and Until Death has saved me many times.

Letting yourself get hit until 2 HP is a VT2 Zealot tactic, and frankly is pointless and a misunderstanding of the DT Zealot class.

12

Game Devs don’t even play their own game anymore, or some CEOS kid is the one behind game balance. The majority of changes from the CBT are not based upon any logic. Preacher is STILL broken lmao

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Currently Martyrdom is bugged and requires you to be missing 50 health to get a single new stack. It is impossible to achieve max stacks.

And what do you mean “digging yourself out of a grave”? There is exactly one talent that lets you “dig yourself out of the grave” and it’s competing with immunity to melee stun and effective 25% damage resist.

And I can absolutely compare Zealot from Vermintide 2 to Darktide Zealot, considering the passives, active ability, and multiple feats are either copy pastes or downgraded versions of talents and passives from the class in V2. There is no “misunderstanding” to be made here. The reason that Darktide Zealot demands a more cautious playstyle that doesn’t fully utilize his low-health buffs is simply because he is a worse, riskier version of the V2 class. You’re agreeing with me.

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Game Devs don’t even play their own game anymore, or some CEOS kid is the one behind game balance. The majority of changes from the CBT are not based upon any logic. Preacher is STILL broken lmao

Based on that comment alone, I can only assume you don’t play Fatshark games either.

15

Until Death by default 100% is a dig yourself out of a grave ability even without the buffs. Given that it literally stops you going down when you take a fatal hit. It lets you extricate yourself into a position where it is easier to revive you, or where you can get healing. If you take the talents that let you heal during it, or restore lost health from a hit, then that will allow you to bounce back further as well.

Speaking of which, 25% damage resist and immunity to melee stun is a dig yourself out of a bad situation ability. Getting hit is a bad thing, good play means you don’t get hit. The damage resist and immunity to melee stun help mitigate really bad things from happening if you do make an error.

Stun grenades are really REALLY good at reviving allies downed in a horde.

The amount of times that has saved me from going down due to ranged fire while I was trying to cut through a horde and was not paying attention is a lot.

And Zealot has 200 health base as a note, with curios you can make their base health very high, to the point where you dont need to be low to benefit from Martyrdom. 150 missing health with 3x health stacking curios means you have around 200 health remaining to play with. And it is 100% possible to achieve max stacks even with the bug and the 6 stack limit talent, and still have enough white health left to work with to deal with melee damage bleeding through toughness. Doing so basically almost doubles the damage output of a combat blade.

Does VT2 Zealot get access to stun grenades? Flamers? Stub revolvers? Boltguns? No, they do not. Its not a fair comparison as a result. If we did the comparison in reverse, then a complaint for VT2’s Zealot would be that VT2’s Zealot cant just cook entire hordes from range, that he cant stun elites and specials in a large AoE from range. That VT2’s Zealot cant just block full combos from 3-4 Plague Monks indefinitely.

Unlike VT2’s Zealot, in DT you arent supposed to just facefirst into the enemy horde all the time. The reason why you play Zealot in DT more cautiously is more because if you are silly and face first into a horde with a shotgunner or two without noticing, they just one shot your toughness and then all of a sudden all the enemies are just hitting your white health directly. Pure melee hordes are no more of a threat to DT’s Zealot than VT2’s Zealot.

I’d agree there are issues with Zealot at the moment, and their classes has reasons why they aren’t that great. But I think that has more to do with how quickly Zealot’s toughness drops due to ranged fire, to the point where it really hurts their ability to frontline effectively. Pure melee threats I really dont see as a problem at all for Zealot, except for Mutants and Hounds. Melee damage poking through toughness is frankly one of the last concerns for this class.

What I think Zealot needs is the following

  • Better toughness regeneration while in melee/toughness gain on kill so they actually have some staying power while in melee with ranged threats peppering at you.
  • Ways to make yourself a less appetizing target for ranged enemies. One of the big problems I’ve found is Veterans will usually take Camo Expert (as they should), but as a result every darn ranged enemy will then train their guns on you and promptly focus you down if you ever so stick your head out. While Veterans and Psykers can use the Shield Gryn for cover, you don’t really have that option.
  • Faster weapon switch speed than other classes. Your job is to dance in the frontlines, which means pulling out a frickin boltgun is going to be a pain. At the moment this basically invalidates any slow switching weapon for the Zealot. In exchange you can cut down on the amount of ammo Zealot gets.
  • A Feat that causes Until Death to break you out of disables like Hound and Trapper net would also be amazing. As a Zealot you usually are the one that is responsible for rescuing people out of terrible situations and disables (especially the Trapper nets). But other classes arent quite as able to rescue you.

All in all I don’t think Zealot is bad, just boring with little progression since your feats dont really change how you play.

16

If good play means never getting hit, doesn’t that even further suggest that zealot is supposed to play at low HP with all of their buffs always active, since a “good player” has no need for HP at all?

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17

Yes and no. In DT there is almost unavoidable damage, i.e. ranged fire. No matter how good of a player you are, unless you have wall hacks and precognition, you are going to take some level of ranged fire. Fortunately ranged fire does NOT chip through toughness. Having some white health buffer vs ranged attacks is not a bad idea though, since it can break surprisingly quickly.

But low hp and 2 hp, i.e. dying through one hit on minor melee chip through toughness is a big gap.

With the proper curios you can get 6 stacks of martyrdom and still have 20+ health to play with. Which is WAY more than you need. Chip damage is in the single digits. You are going to get your toughness blown through way before chip damage is going to get you.

Practically speaking the only time you are going to die from chip damage through tougness is taking a melee hit after Until Death has alrrady saved you. Even if you are deliberately lowering your health to take advantage of martyrdom, there is plenty of room where you have max or near max buffs and still enough white health to not die from chip.

Thats still just asking to die from a wayward shotgun blast and some autogun bullets though, which happens a lot more than taking 10 poxwalker melee hits without ever breaking toughness. Playing low health zealot in general in DT has waaaaaaay more issues and risks than “melee chip damage”. Number 1 being how fast ur toughness evaporates the moment some ranged shows up.

18

I’d agree with you, except for the number of feats zealot has that incentivize being at low hp. They have a talent that gives attack speed and another that increases the number of martyrdom stacks you can have, just off the top of my head.

If the low-hp playstyle isn’t intended to be used, I don’t think those talents would be there.

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19

so many? it is literally everyone!!! every enemy in the game can do chip damage, even a bomber in melle with a kick, even the dog that jumped and missed you, but pushed you aside a little, that also does chip damage, so stupid lol

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At that point though, the problem is not THP, its the class thats exploiting it. This is a super common thing that Fatshark does that im not a big fan of, when something comes along taht causes problems, rather then fixing said thing causing issues, they over correct the mechanic being exploited.

Example of this in recent was the dodge nerf that was being exploited by the knife, and saber. Rather then jsut nerfing the knife and or saber they nerf dodge.

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21

If darktide zealots talents are ‘just in case’ bonuses then optimal play will leave you objectively less kitted out than all other classes

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@jberns407 @scythid I am with both of you. I was speculating on the reason why they allow melee damage through toughness.

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23

I know I’m a bit late to this thread, but I have to really really strongly disagree with this. Zealot was, to my mind, far and away the worst designed class in V2. He had such abundant THP generation that he was straight up less dangerous to play than most other classes. There was no risk in the risk/reward dynamic, heck it was extremely common even on Cata to see Zealot’s aggressively hit trade for Ult generation, he was extremely strong and tanky, and to boot had a bunch of anti synergy with other characters that made his design feel even worse.

I really don’t want DT Zealot to be anything like that. I really think the low health bonuses are there as insurance, not for you to maintain throughout a whole map. I think it’s fine that they’re like that, though I would agree that with that in mind, the bonuses themselves are undertuned. “But what if I never get low health throughout a whole map”? Awesome, then you played so well as a team you didn’t need them. However (and again if the bonuses were tweaked upwards somewhat), they could be something you REALLY appreciate when things are dire and your back’s against the wall. I think that would be a much more healthy direction to take those talents in than changing mechanics around so you’re actively encouraged to run through a whole map with barely any HP.