TL;DR In concept, auras are an additional incentive to stay as a team, and make the strike team greater than the sum of its parts. The existing auras are boring non-choices in many cases, and each class should have unique choices that reflect, at least somewhat, the archetype they’re designed for.
I don’t want to just add more noise to forum, but I think there’s something we’re all talking around rather than specifically addressing. What is the point of the auras and what should they be?
I’ll do my best to answer those questions, but I am not an authority on this. The goal here is discussion and working together to better understand the auras’ place in Darktide.
What is the point of the auras?
Generally speaking, the strike team is stronger when working together. Your teammates can keep the horde off your back and make space to take out specials. And with everyone’s damage being concentrated in a small area, elites and bosses will die faster than if one person were fighting them.
The toughness mechanic and coherency-based regeneration adds another incentive to stick together. Auras add more benefits on top of this, spreading a buff across the team that increases everyone’s odds of surviving above the sum of each person’s individual performance.
So, it could be said that the “point” of the auras, from a design standpoint, is to incentivize players to stay close to each other and/or punish players from straying by making them weaker when away from their teammates. It also makes each death in the party more impactful than just subtracting their DPS as their aura buff dies with them.
If we accept that this is an accurate assessment of the purpose of the auras, it raises the question:
Do the existing auras achieve that goal?
Speaking for myself, coherency toughness regeneration is reason enough for me to stay with my team. The zealot Beacon of Purity aura has a unique and apparent effect, but isn’t so essential that I miss it when running Benediction for toughness damage reduction. Of course, Vet’s Survivalist aura is (in)famous for how impactful it is (or is not, as the case may be). Everything else just isn’t big/cool enough to notice when I’m under their effect or not.
With four classes and 3 auras each (4 if you count the base aura), there is a need to design 12 effects that somehow land between being useless/imperceptible and over powered, ideally with good reason to pick any one of them. It’s no easy task, but certainly within the realm of possibility.
What should the aura’s be?
This is where my opinion puts me at risk of getting into trouble. In the game’s current state, the auras are generally ‘meh’, so proposing changes that make them more interesting/powerful means proposing changes that make the game easier. I don’t think the game needs to be easier, but the auras should be more meaningful choices than “which side of the talent tree do I want access to” or “do I want to have tons of ammo or not.”
It’s easier to talk about archetypes and appropriate aura effects than specific mechanical suggestions.
My experience playing as Veteran and Psyker is limited, and I’m not super familiar with the 40k universe, but it’s my forum post and I can be as wrong as I want.
Veteran’s archetypes are based around being a proficient shooter, being a leader, and being a weapons expert, and the auras should reflect that. There’s some notion of providing supplies as well, with the enhanced ammo boxes and grenade regen and ammo aura, but that fits with any/all of the bigger archetypes and is useful regardless of career, to borrow from Vermintide.
- Shooter aura: More ammo (see below for how I think Survivalist could be changed)
- Leader aura: Counts as two allies and minor buff to damage dealt and damage resistance (akin to the Leadership skill in Alien Swarm, another game in the genre).
- Weapons aura: Stim share (Not super related to the weapons expert idea, but there’s a thin thread of ‘resourcefulness’ in there somewhere. As for what I mean mechanically, when an ally in coherency uses/benefits from a stim, all other allies in coherency gain a reduced version of the effect in potency or duration or both. The health stim shouldn’t restore wounds to all allies though, just the one who used it.)
Another thing I considered was something to heal a small amount of health to the team over the course of a mission, but I didn’t want it to be too strong, better at higher difficulties, or encourage players to sit back and wait as their health regenerates. Something to the effect of a tiny heal whenever an ally in coherency picks up ammo/uses a stim, but that led me to the stim share idea.
Alternatively, a “Discipline” aura that increases reload/quell speed might be more palatable in place of any one of these.
As for the ammo aura, it was the first, and possibly worst, idea that I had. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it. Rather than the aura giving ammo on certain enemies killed, what if it provided a chance to not consume ammo (though not how Lucky Bullet works, more like Conservative Shooter in VT, so the kickback/rumbler still has to reload)? The effect of increasing ammo availability for the team is preserved, but waves of specials aren’t walking ammo packs. It has the benefits of not punishing players for shooting at a special just after someone else killed it, players will still need to pick up ammo packs every once in a while as they don’t get ammo added to their reserve, and it can easily be tuned to be however impactful it should be by adjusting the chance.
The leader aura is perhaps the least interesting idea here. Phrasing it as “counts as two allies” might be hard to implement or introduce problems I’m not considering, but the intention is essentially the zealot passive Fortitude in Fellowship but on an aura.
Okay, I did not expect to write so much for this post, but I can’t stop now. Let’s keep digging myself deeper and deeper into this hole.
Zealot archetypes are easier for me to identify as I have the most time on the class. Fanatic, Bastion, Sneaky-beaky like. In the talents themselves, we also see some focused around improving zealot’s ranged capabilities, but gun-zealot isn’t really its own thing as far as I can tell from the talent tree. Also, the current auras aren’t all that bad, ignoring loner. Make it a passive (if loner must exist at all).
- Fanatic: Take Shield of Contempt (Barkskin) and adjust the numbers. It already applies to you and allies in coherency, it is an aura in all but name. Benediction is viable, but hard to notice the difference it makes.
- Bastion: Beacon of Purity is good
- Spy (TF2™): Lord of Blood’s Exultation (™). You and allies in coherency gain an attack speed boost when an enemy suffers some percentage of its total health as bleed damage or when an elite/special/boss dies to bleed damage. Different triggers have substantial consequences how often the buff would happen, but the idea is the important thing. A consistent attack speed boost is nice (see the dominance of Swift Slaying in Vermintide), but a big periodic buff might be more fun/obvious. Tying it to bleed (something most classes can apply, but Zealot has very easy access to) seems thematic, though could be too good or insignificant if the numbers are off.
Psyker archetypes are, I would guess, what I have the worst grasp of. But that hasn’t stopped me so far! You’ve got Problem Foreteller/Mitigator, Time Bomb, and Space Magician. You’re right! I am making this up as I go. Let me explain myself before I get too carried away. The Foreteller idea I see in the single-target removal of brain burst and kinetic presence, as well as the role in lore of psykers as navigators for warp travel. They can sense problems and solve them before they reach the team. The time bomb should be easy enough to understand, eventually the psyker is going to succumb and be a problem for everyone and they’re holding back until that moment. And space magician to include the lightning and soulfire leaping from their finger tips.
- Foreteller: Clairvoyance. (Allies in coherency can see chests, pickups, auspex scanning targets, etc. within a certain – reasonably short – distance through walls, as well as the next symbol in the hacking minigame. Generally helps navigate through the level more thoroughly/efficiently and make certain objectives easier. I think this is an neat idea, but might not be useful enough for keeping the team alive which is more important than finding every small diamantine pickup. As well, it could encourage players to split up to grab those pickups they wouldn’t have otherwise bothered searching for, which is counter productive. Better than .075x extra Elite damage though. Maybe buff dodges somehow, but now we’re looking at a little too much going on for one aura.)
- Time bomb: Breathe Easier. (When an ally in coherency quells peril/vents heat, at least some minimum amount perhaps building up as stacks that decay over a moderate amount of time, allies regain some percentage of stamina and toughness. Giving this an internal cooldown seems entirely reasonable because four psykers cycling their peril gauges shouldn’t be able to walk right up to a gunner or through fire or something ridiculous.)
- Magician: Seer’s Presence. An aura that grants ability cooldown is fine, maybe not precisely in the form of Seer’s Presence, but a reliably good-enough option seems fine in comparison to the Forteller aura above which some players might never pick because it doesn’t make your numbers better.
I’ve spent way too much time writing this post, but I can’t leave out Ogryn, so here we go…
You’ve got three different flavors of tank, as far as I see it anyway. You can squish the enemies so they don’t hurt your teammates, you can taunt enemies and push them around and take damage instead of your team, and you can control space by laying down overwhelming firepower, though giving up some defensive options by switching to a ranged weapon. Call them Skullbreaker, Bullgryn, and Gunlugger (because that’s what they are).
- Skullbreaker: Soften Them Up. (This is already a passive that Skullbreaker is going to want to take, unless the desire for rocks is too strong. The aura could be more along the lines of Vermintide stagger damage, where staggered enemies (or those in a recovery animation or something) take extra damage from allies in coherency. Better yet, make it a rending bonus. Make staggered enemies glow similar to what Taunting them does visually. Something to make it clear that they’re vulnerable after being knocked down.)
- Bullgryn: Watch My Back. (Backstab/Ranged Attacks from behind bonus damage to make it better to attack enemies distracted by another teammate, most likely the Ogryn taunting things, but not always. Also helps against bosses as everyone who isn’t being focused has a relatively easy time of getting behind the boss.)
- Gunlugger: Make Some Room. (Increased Stagger for allies in coherency, like VT2 Warrior Priest’s Prayer of Might)
Perhaps the least creative set of auras, and reasonably close in effect to the existing auras for Ogryn (do more damage, do more damage, and recover from damage / stop enemies from doing damage). I ran out of steam a little bit, but you know what this post was more for my sake than anything. I hope the community gets something out of this and maybe even we can all learn from a discussion about auras, but I think I have overstayed my welcome.