The game is just becoming a slog of never ending crusher/mauler overheads and by-design endless 2+ rager attack loops that can’t be interrupted without the right build due to buffed stagger resistance. Enemies simply take too long to kill if you aren’t abusing meta builds and weapons, stack up, and kill you on Zealot. For reference, on Zealot I’ve tested primarily both thunder hammers, Eviscerator, and Catachan sword this patch doing solo Damnation attempts. I have soloed Damnation recently, before patch 13.
All commentary and recommendations are based on DAMNATION data and experience
Impact stacking is now required if you are the last one up to hope to survive since dodging isn’t unlimited, and even then elites will continually spawn due to the time-to-kill being so high as you have sacrificed damage for stagger. Thunder hammer taking 3 charged hits to kill maulers with 25% flak damage added as a perk is ridiculous. Thunder hammer taking 2 charged body hits to kill dreg ranged trash units is ridiculous. Non armor-piercing weapons like Catachan Sword are usable in general, but miserable when you are taking 15+ seconds of uninterrupted attacking to kill a crusher.
People are complaining about the game being too easy because CERTAIN builds are incredibly broken. Mainly crit refresh stealth knife zealot being able to solo any mission in the game with no skill required, and assail psyker being too easy to use for how effective it is. Some things on Ogryn are a bit overtuned, but that’s okay since they aren’t very fun to play judging by them being the least played class.
However, the game has become much more “difficult” outside of broken meta builds and weapons, in the sense that most ambient mobs are replaced with elites, that have been both significantly buffed in health and stagger resistance while player weapons have NOT kept up.
The weapon buffs in patch 13 addressed most of the complaints with each weapon BEFORE PATCH 13 ENEMY CHANGES. It’s great that the Crucis doesn’t have the horrible and illogical cleave cap where you deal damage to one poxwalker with a 3 stack Thrust IV heavy attack then tickle the second and third before knocking all the others around for no reason. Now it has had its damage cleave cap removed.
Except, you’re still only killing 1 poxwalker per heavy swing. Because the enemies have had their health buffed too. The weapon still feels just as bad to use.
This is the case for many of the weapons I’ve tried, that either feel the same or weaker effectively despite being buffed.
Zealot balance recommendations:
-STEALTH AND CD REFRESH ON CRIT IS NOT A PROBLEM, THE COMBAT KNIFE IS. Why the fastest attacking weapon in the game has the highest crit rate by far is a bizarre balance mystery. The crit rate on the knife needs to be significantly lowered to average out to the same crits per minute of slower weapons, while significantly increasing crit damage to compensate and keep the weapon from becoming weaker. This will fix the issue of zealot’s stealth soloing entire missions with no difficulty due to infinite uptime given by the knife’s unacceptably high crit rate, WITHOUT ruining crit CD builds. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater and ruin an entire Zealot tree because of one weapon, CHANGE THE WEAPON.
-Thunder hammers are still NOT GOOD. The design philosophy of sacrificing everything good about a weapon (damage, crowd control, mobility, survivability, speed) for a single powerful strike isn’t ideal in a game that demands versatility in build like Darktide, but let’s try and work with this.
The charged strike needs to one-shot anything short of a mauler with a light attack. This isn’t a big ask. The charged move is incredibly unsafe and will not be usable in a mixed horde situation without resist death activating due to the hits you are guaranteed to take.
Lights and heavies just need big damage buffs. Why is this slow weapon so weak? It’s not fun.
The CRUCIS charged heavy should one-shot crushers on a headshot with 25% carapace damage added. The Ironhelm should do it in one charged heavy headshot and one charged light body hit with 25% carapace.
The CRUCIS charge should do significantly more damage than the 5-10% bonus it has over the Ironhelm charge currently, OR the charge should be made to be as fast or faster than the Ironhelm to compensate for no penetration.
Both CRUCIS and IRONHELM need to clear hordes on continuous heavies MUCH faster. General non-charged attack damage buffs and significant cleave damage increases are required for this.
Both CRUCIS and IRONHELM need SIGNIFICANT attack speed increases. Stacking all available attack speed nodes and using the charge ability, both Crucis and Ironhelm require using the 2 available dodges of the weapon to avoid eating poxhorde hits. This is unacceptably slow for such low damage. When attack speed is stacked, both thunder hammers should be around the same speed as Slayer Bardin 2H Hammer after jumping with attack speed buff. EDIT: This is not factoring in Momentum as that entire keystone feels horrible to use. Momentum should not be necessary for good attack speed.
Eviscerator
-Much nicer to use in general, but still not very good outside of abusing crit refresh stealth builds.
-Carapace damage on activated heavy needs to be heavily buffed by around 3 times, normal lights should see a slight bump and normal heavies a moderate bump. An activated heavy hit into a crushers skull should one-shot without critting if using 25% carapace damage perk.
-Activated heavy should one shot body-shot maulers WITHOUT flak damage perk. You are locked into a long, unsafe animation, this is not unreasonable.
-Stagger on most non-heavy actions needs to be buffed. MULTIPLE ragers should be interrupted out of their looping attack by pushing using this weapon, with 1 stagger node allowing you to do so with bodyshots instead of headshots.
-Second heavy attack (the overhead) should either come out much faster, or do significantly more damage. Right now there is not a reason to ever use this move.
-Both unactivated heavy attacks should have the mini-chain lock removed or have their damage increased to compensate.
-The Eviscerator should be an overall better version of the Chainsword, not the other way around.
Catachan Sword and other chaff clear weapons:
-Need sweeping buffs to carapace damage. Whacking away at a big dumb crusher for 10+ seconds uninterrupted isn’t engaging or fun gameplay.
-Alternative solution: Catachan parry and heavy sword special attack should automatically apply severe rending or brittleness (brittleness may be too much) to targets hit and bring TTK closer to heavier weapons such as chain weapons and hammers.
Closing Thoughts:
There are many more weapons that need love, but I have not played with them enough to give good feedback. Word on the street is that Chain Axe is still as bad or worse than before the patch. Ogryn weapons I’ve used such as Shovel feel weaker than before, when they weren’t even meta beforehand.
I believe the best course of action going forward is tune down overtuned aspects of the game that do not require any skill to utilize such as stealth knife builds and assail builds, but continuing buffs for most other weapons/talents as the game is suffering worse than ever from HP bloat but people are not realizing it due to relying on crutch builds.
