Wish I didn't care about doing penances for cosmetics, or they had given multiple ways or different penances/cosmetics for the variety of abilities they've released.
The standard build is good and solid but I wanna experiment...but some of these penances are a long grind.
Psyker to 30 now, working on Zealot.
No idea how the heck I can get the "kill 40 stunned enemies" penance without a group that won't blast down a horde before I can flame them.
StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
So I have a pretty good power sword on my vet but I'm thinking of changing out slaughterer 3 for supercharge 3 which adds 3 stacks of brittleness on energized hits.
Is brittleness better than slaughterer 3 on a power sword?
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I suspect Slaughterer is going to be better if you're using it for horde clear. Brittleness on energized hit is nice but how often are you repeatedly hitting high health targets with your sword?
First impression of the veteran rework is, to paraphrase Fernando Alonso, "The talents feel good, much worse than before. Amazing."
I'm far from an expert player, but I'm really not liking the new talents at all. Too many points needed, too many filler talent points, arguably only one good aura, a lot of the good passives nerfed and all this to add keystone talents that really don't seem worth it. The ranged keystone feels like complete junk from what I've tried so far. Takes time to ramp up (the extra stacks seem particularly pointless unless you have really good aim) and the benefits from the stacks really don't seem worth the effort. Worse still, it actively discourages movement. I simply don't think that's viable. The game absolutely demands that you're on the move all the time - either through spawning hordes, trappers, hounds etc behind you, or simply to avoid shooting into your teammates all the damned time. Too many hoops to jump through for not enough reward.
Right now I'd quite happily revert the talents to their pre-patch state.
altid on
+1
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
marksmans focus is a niche thing so dont worry about it if you dont find ur getting consistent value from it. it also has quite a steep learning curve because the version they went with requires quite active stack management actions that don't make intuitive sense like remembering to kill a random poxwalker before you reposition, stacking up when a boss shows by killing random adds etc
not the perfect implementation but its very strong with the right setup
if you're not sure try infiltrate instead of exe stance w/ -90% threat for 10s on leaving stealth and it should give you some alone time to get stacked up with the stack gen upgrade if you take that - stealth sniper is actually an archetype now lol
the other thing you can do is, and this sounds tragic, but just run a revolver. revolvers have bullet magnetism and multiple kills with headshots will get you multiple stacks
Weapon Specialist is a bit underwhelming. Its pretty easy to use, you should be swapping weapons pretty regularly.
The attack speed is fine, although not the stat you'd probably care about most when swapping weapons constantly. If you're in melee and swapping to a ranged weapon, you're probably doing it to tag a special a few times then swapping back, so you're looking for maximizing potential in 1-3 shots not somehow sneaking in a 4th attack. The crit bonus is pretty fierce if you can build into it but the lack of reliability means you can't use it to guarantee hitting breakpoints on elites.
The auto reload is weak but nice, can probably save your bacon when dealing with big hordes that have heavy infantry mixed in -- free reloads to your revolver, bolter, or plasma gun can keep you in the fight. Toughness regen is also nice but like the rest of the keystone, feels kind of like passive power for just swapping weapons instead of something you really "play around."
The melee damage buff is nice but also kind of underwhelming, its just some free power for swapping to melee but doesn't feel like something to intentionally play around.
OK keystone but the juice doesn't feel like intentionally focusing on the squeeze, trying to play around the keystone is mostly unrewarding so its just kind of some passive power.
Focus Target is probably stronger than it will get credit for, but it also feels kind something you don't really play around with because the effort required isn't worth the benefit. As free power, 8 stacks of focus gets you 32% more damage to the target, 12% damage for 10 seconds after the kill, and 40% toughness and stamina regen after the kill (buffs to allies in coherency too). That's pretty good, but only at 8 stacks. More realistically, you're probably gonna get the 8 stack activation when you don't need it (long range, start of a fight) and after that marking elites for your allies is higher priority than trying to micromanage a buff that slowly builds over time.
The fact it benefits everyone in coherency and you get it for just playing like you should is nice, but the big weakness is any subsequent target mark overwrites the last one, so you can't safely mark multiple specialists in a fight unless you give up the majority of your keystone.
Like Weapon Specialist, as free power it isn't bad but the only way to consistently get a solid benefit from the keystone is to intentionally hamper your team marks. "Sorry I didn't spot that trapper for you, I really wanted 32% more damage against this Crusher" is the opposite of a good team perk.
Marksman's Focus might be the one I like the most, which isn't what I expected from their description. Like the two other keystones, the activation cost is onerous, "stop moving" is just bad advice in almost every aspect of Darktide. Unlike the other two keystones, the benefit does feel pretty substantial. The bonus Finesse damage is pretty considerable, and was letting me tear through Crushers on Damnation. It also encourages you to build for crit as well, so you can kind of double dip and get really terrifying headshot damage.
Camo feels kind of mandatory, getting free stacks for crouching or standing still helps and unless you're using a fast firing weapon you are unlikely to ever get 15 stacks through weakspot hits alone. Really shines with a Helbore Lasgun, which isn't the most meta of weapons but killing Damnation Crushers in two shots from a laser weapon is pretty spicy.
For now, I think I'm most interested in trying some marskman builds and maybe an infiltrate weapon specialist setup. Will try out Focus Target a bit when I have more time to see if I'm underselling it. The keystones are not weak, but the activation requirements feel a bit onerous for the benefit they give.
Two goats enter, one car leaves
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
ignore the sarcastic commentary a friend asked me how it was possible to use but note just how easy it is to maintain stacks while moving
Yeah I think people looked at the movement limitation and basically decided the keystone was trash. You don't lose all your stacks, they just start to decay and they aren't super hard to top off. Camo if you're running a slow weapon and you can stay at 8+ pretty comfortably (fast weapons like automatic rifles probably don't need camo). The damage buff you get from the keystone is considerable, running it on a Helbore with Onslaught (yo dawg ramping damage for your ramping damage) was pretty fun.
Of the three keystones I think Focus Target is the only one I really dislike. Marking specialists as you see them is too important.
Tree feels really clunky still. Should be 10-20% shorter maybe. Lots of questionable talents that don't seem worth taking. 2 out of 3 keystones being fun / usable is a good start though.
Two goats enter, one car leaves
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
ye length is really the big issue because you only get left like 4-5 points to splash which makes everything feel peepee
but fairly easy to fix that in a bunch of ways so i am optimistic. as ever the first law of anything to do with self-identified vet mains follows this rule
It's a little funny that my veteran fulfills my preacher vibe much more than fanatic. I want a fanatic who shouts his team back into action.
The icon is cool tho.
Tried the Vet out a bit more. Pretty underwhelmed.
Marksman can be really powerful but its pretty limited, you really need a fast firing weapon for it to work well (sort of the opposite of the sniper fantasy). Holding still on higher difficulties is just not an option, and you'll be too slow to get stacks with anything that isn't an autofire weapon for the keystone to do much. If Recon Lasgun wasn't nerfed so hard it would probably be a really good weapon for the keystone, but the sniper fantasy just doesn't work because the mechanic punishes slow weapons too hard. With a good autorifle-type weapon its pretty strong, and if you manage to get into a position where you can stack it with a slower weapon it slaps, but if your team can cover you standing still for a long time what talents you take probably doesn't matter, they've got you covered.
Focus Target stacks a bit better than I thought but all the original complaints still stand, its wonky in a bad way.
Weapon Specialist is honestly more impressive as a zealot talent than a veteran talent. Bonus melee attack speed and dodge for a single ranged kill? Sign me up. The attack speed bonus isn't useful on most of the ranged weapons you'd want to swap to, and the crit bonus isn't reliable enough to count on. The secondary benefits are pretty limited, reloading on switch sounds neat but the way the mechanic actually works is punishing and really only gives you a benefit if your weapon is empty, so it requires you to be very unlucky in horde management or just bad at reloading.
That's all just nitpicking though. The big problem is that there's no tree you can take without giving up really important talents, so every build feels like it is lacking some fundamental parts of the Veteran kit. There's just too many bad talents / filler talents / meaningless nodes, so whatever keystone you take you end up sacrificing too much from the other trees for it to feel good.
It is funny that despite my gripes about being pigeon-holed as the zealot to get these penances done, after a quick break of Vet it's good to be back as the zealot cause of the ballet of death I can deal with the crusher.
Vet brings a lot to the table, god knows I wouldn't have been out of ammo for a good third of the last match if we had one with scavenger aura, but fat shark melee feels goooooood.
I still shoot, I've just never been that good at it. I like to blame it's being a lefty who has always used the mouse in the right but feels too late to switch now and hey I got big swings and bigger shotguns to have my fun.
Really shines with a Helbore Lasgun, which isn't the most meta of weapons but killing Damnation Crushers in two shots from a laser weapon is pretty spicy.
I dunno. I tend to run into Helbore shocktrooper builds (aka, the Krieg build) really often due to the synergy Helbore I/III with the Surgical blessing and the shocktrooper talent, and if they can take down Crushers in 2 shots now... that build is only going to get more popular.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
helbore 3 has been one of the best vet builds since patch 13 and its even better now i got the shot buffering fixed - if you hold attack it will chain charge shots without you needing to time it now which is a huge qol improvement
Does it also reload cause I was having times it wasn't and so I would just be staring daggers at yellow outlines
exe stance alas does not reload any more but the nice thing about the hb3 surgical shocktrooper deadshot setup is that almost all your shots don't cost ammo
Played the Circus on Malice a couple of times last night with my Psyker
A lot of fun, and it’s nice to have an entire new map, the ending event is a lot of fun and really tests teamwork and ability to adapt.
Speaking of my Psyker, I’m torn on how to build.
I tried the Surge staff and Brain Burst, but just didn’t like the surge staff enough.
Right now I’m using brainburst and voidstrike with the left side capstone (soulshard charges?) and the damage is amazing, but I worry that I should swap brainburst for smite to get that CC / swarm effectiveness. The voidstrike staff I absolutely love, the charge attack with some aim just blows through hordes and provides knock down and suppression to whatever doesn’t die.
I enjoy Purgatus Staff with Brain Burst, the rapid attacks let you take some crit talents for damage / toughness and the rapid attack speed of the staff makes the on-hit brain burst passive go off basically every possible cooldown.
You can run it with Venting Shriek, which lets you basically get a full extra staff attack in (if you're over max peril but in the firing animation, the full animation will finish before you start to overheat, and then you Venting Shriek to put more soulflame on everything and bring yourself back to 50 peril). Telekine Shield is probably the safer / group friendly option since Purgatus + Brain Burst is going to struggle with huge groups of weak ranged enemies. I'd recommend a sword with deflector if you don't take Telekine Shield.
Empowered Psionics is really good with Brain Burst, and I recommend trying it if you haven't. Getting an empower on every elite kill works perfectly for the ability (although it doesn't seem to trigger 100% of the time). Chaining 0-cost fast cast brain ruptures on high value elites is fun. You can also combo it with Kinetic Resonance for rapid group kills or to use brain rupture as decent monstrosity DPS.
This is what I've been using on my Psyker, still not fully geared but holds up fine in Damnation so far:
You do suffer a bit from large groups of ranged attackers, and you either need to rely on your teammates for killing them or use a combination of deflection / horde management / hard cover to make an approach.
Fast attack on the Purgatus Staff is underrated too, doesn't do a ton of damage but has solid range, costs almost no peril, can activate Kinetic Flayer, and seems to have pretty good stagger for most enemies. Good way to move forward safely.
Purgatus and the constant supply of soulblaze to everything in a horde helps you clear large groups and get kills on distant specialists you weren't even really aiming at. Can swap in Telekine Shield to cover your long range weaknesses and give better group support in exchange for less soulblaze stacking and less peril shennanigans.
Played the Circus on Malice a couple of times last night with my Psyker
A lot of fun, and it’s nice to have an entire new map, the ending event is a lot of fun and really tests teamwork and ability to adapt.
Speaking of my Psyker, I’m torn on how to build.
I tried the Surge staff and Brain Burst, but just didn’t like the surge staff enough.
Right now I’m using brainburst and voidstrike with the left side capstone (soulshard charges?) and the damage is amazing, but I worry that I should swap brainburst for smite to get that CC / swarm effectiveness. The voidstrike staff I absolutely love, the charge attack with some aim just blows through hordes and provides knock down and suppression to whatever doesn’t die.
Reddit was saying the targeting on surge staff is wonky right now. It seems to be prioritizing limbs when last patch it would target torsos, and a bunch of mobs take reduced damage on limbs. Something like tripling the number of casts needed to kill a crusher.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Played the Circus on Malice a couple of times last night with my Psyker
A lot of fun, and it’s nice to have an entire new map, the ending event is a lot of fun and really tests teamwork and ability to adapt.
Speaking of my Psyker, I’m torn on how to build.
I tried the Surge staff and Brain Burst, but just didn’t like the surge staff enough.
Right now I’m using brainburst and voidstrike with the left side capstone (soulshard charges?) and the damage is amazing, but I worry that I should swap brainburst for smite to get that CC / swarm effectiveness. The voidstrike staff I absolutely love, the charge attack with some aim just blows through hordes and provides knock down and suppression to whatever doesn’t die.
Reddit was saying the targeting on surge staff is wonky right now. It seems to be prioritizing limbs when last patch it would target torsos, and a bunch of mobs take reduced damage on limbs. Something like tripling the number of casts needed to kill a crusher.
it got changed to chain properly from like limb to limb, but they forgor limbs take reduced damage on some enemies. some weapons (like plasma) ignore limb penalties so probs it will just get the plasma treatment, and end up being the same except it will look cooler and occasionally hit weakspots - which means a slight damage boost and an interaction with the weakspot crit talent. just gotta wait
Messed around with some more Vet build stuff. Quick additional impressions:
Marksman's Focus itself is hard to evaluate because the left side of the tree feels so bad. When the stars align you can really tear things apart, if you're in something like an Ogryn / Zealot / Zealot team and you can just sit back and shoot things all day while covered you really put out crazy damage. Problem being there are so many situations where things don't work well. Biggest pain point, especially on the new map, is how little defense you have against enemy shooters. No resistance or toughness against ranged anywhere in the tree, so even though you're a long range character you struggle pretty badly against grouped shooters unless you take your time / have a bunch of support. Feels bad to be the "ranged specialist" that can't deal with the #1 ranged threat pinning your team down. Also, the keystone feels bugged because I don't always get stacks on weakspot hits (hard to fully evaluate given how chaotic big fights can be plus I have dad aim).
Weapon Specialist is fun, works great with Plasma or Revolver. Skip the reload perk for plasma, if you can't find time to reload your gun once every 5 or so fights you've gotta change strategies. Reload on revolver is useful so you can shoot once, get a kill, then swap back to your real strategy (slashing / stabbing). The Attack Speed buff on ranged is 100% wasted, but its secretly a melee keystone and the ranged buff is just there to trick people. You run around with your plasma / revolver, get a single kill, and swap to your melee for a bunch of buffs that last 10 seconds for getting a single ranged kill. Works great with a dagger / bleed build if you have the right blessings, with all the attack speed boosts you can get you're basically a blender. Don't really need armor pen when you're attack as fast as the game can animate. Probably one of the stronger builds overall, and dagger + plasma gun is a really fun combo (super fast stab gremlin with a giant fucking plasma cannon). Works great with powersword too, high damage and incredible horde clear. Easy to sneak Voice of Command into the build at basically zero cost.
Tried out some infiltrate builds, but on higher difficulty it feels really dangerous to skip Voice of Command. The on-demand toughness and knockback covers so many of your weaknesses and, perhaps more importantly, fits well on almost any build path. You only really need one upgrade for the ability as well, saving you 1-2 points wasted on bringing Executioner or Infiltrate up to speed when you're already point poor. Did have at least one "infiltrate saved the entire run" moment where it let me flank a group of 8+ gunners and then just murder them at my leisure to cover my team. If the trees weren't so desperate for points Infiltrate would probably feel better.
TL;DR - Marksman really fun when it works but a ranged class weak to ranged enemies feels awful. Weapon Specialist + Bleed Dagger / Plasma Gun is an incredibly fun murder gremlin build that is probably what I'll use for the time being. Highly recommend trying it out if you're looking for vet options in patch 15.
After the earlier character reworks, what are people feeling the best curio bonuses are for zealots right now? Going down the fury of the faithful side of the tree, if that changes anything?
If you can fit the free +2 wounds talent into your build (and I think most builds can find a way to do so), you probably want +toughness / +health unless you're specifically trying to maximize wounds for a martyr build. +Stam isn't bad if you feel good about your blocking / sprinting choices.
Beyond that, +Toughness / +Health / +Sprint Efficiency all seem solid, or you could lean into specialized damage resistance perks if there's a specialist type that's really ruining Christmas. Gunners seem particularly Zealot-hungry right now, so 20% gunner resistance is probably a good perk. FYI, DR perks are multiplicative not additive, so three 20% DR perks doesn't equal 60% DR (still OK to stack them if you want, just don't think you're getting a mathematical extra benefit from doing so).
Cause for some I haven't really seen much different between a 40 and a 100+ (wounds +1) and all the extra slots are just based on the item level and can be refined to better ones sooo...
Cause for some I haven't really seen much different between a 40 and a 100+ (wounds +1) and all the extra slots are just based on the item level and can be refined to better ones sooo...
The toughness and hp curio’s have a larger spread of values that reflect their item level better
I forget if the wound and stamina have fractional values that get rounded and if those have any gameplay implications.
I tried giving thunderhammers a try, and I can see how you can build a character to make them devastating, but I've found that eviscerator, revolver, and flame grenades suit my playstyle best.
I suspect Melk is somewhat to blame. 1000 dregs aren't going to shoot themselves.
+1
ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
So not sure if this got addressed earlier in the thread, but I'm in the process of Building a Dakka-Gryn and I could use some help understanding the differences between the 3 different Heavy Stubbers you get access to and what's the best to use.
So if I'm understanding things correctly are the Stubbers laid out as follows? (note this is mostly based on my personal experience and what little I've read online about them):
Aklys - Fastest/Stablest firing gun with generally the biggest mag size, but overall the weakest per-shot stubber. Great for clearing massive light hordes but you'll struggle with armored enemies/specials due to lack of armor pen. Basically designed to suppress the bigger enemies so your teammates can clean them up for you.
Krourk - Middle of the road stubber, hits harder than the Aklys and fires slower but harder to control in Full-Auto, longer setup time than Aklys when going Braced.
Gorgunum - Hardest hitting and slowest firing of the three, but able to deal with Armored/Flak/Carapace armored/special enemies the best out of the three. Also has the smallest drum size of the three as well.
Is that about right? For a general "all rounder" Dakkagryn should I stick with the Krourk or the Gorgunum? Any guidance is appreciated!
Posts
The standard build is good and solid but I wanna experiment...but some of these penances are a long grind.
Psyker to 30 now, working on Zealot.
No idea how the heck I can get the "kill 40 stunned enemies" penance without a group that won't blast down a horde before I can flame them.
Is brittleness better than slaughterer 3 on a power sword?
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I'm far from an expert player, but I'm really not liking the new talents at all. Too many points needed, too many filler talent points, arguably only one good aura, a lot of the good passives nerfed and all this to add keystone talents that really don't seem worth it. The ranged keystone feels like complete junk from what I've tried so far. Takes time to ramp up (the extra stacks seem particularly pointless unless you have really good aim) and the benefits from the stacks really don't seem worth the effort. Worse still, it actively discourages movement. I simply don't think that's viable. The game absolutely demands that you're on the move all the time - either through spawning hordes, trappers, hounds etc behind you, or simply to avoid shooting into your teammates all the damned time. Too many hoops to jump through for not enough reward.
Right now I'd quite happily revert the talents to their pre-patch state.
not the perfect implementation but its very strong with the right setup
if you're not sure try infiltrate instead of exe stance w/ -90% threat for 10s on leaving stealth and it should give you some alone time to get stacked up with the stack gen upgrade if you take that - stealth sniper is actually an archetype now lol
the other thing you can do is, and this sounds tragic, but just run a revolver. revolvers have bullet magnetism and multiple kills with headshots will get you multiple stacks
Weapon Specialist is a bit underwhelming. Its pretty easy to use, you should be swapping weapons pretty regularly.
The attack speed is fine, although not the stat you'd probably care about most when swapping weapons constantly. If you're in melee and swapping to a ranged weapon, you're probably doing it to tag a special a few times then swapping back, so you're looking for maximizing potential in 1-3 shots not somehow sneaking in a 4th attack. The crit bonus is pretty fierce if you can build into it but the lack of reliability means you can't use it to guarantee hitting breakpoints on elites.
The auto reload is weak but nice, can probably save your bacon when dealing with big hordes that have heavy infantry mixed in -- free reloads to your revolver, bolter, or plasma gun can keep you in the fight. Toughness regen is also nice but like the rest of the keystone, feels kind of like passive power for just swapping weapons instead of something you really "play around."
The melee damage buff is nice but also kind of underwhelming, its just some free power for swapping to melee but doesn't feel like something to intentionally play around.
OK keystone but the juice doesn't feel like intentionally focusing on the squeeze, trying to play around the keystone is mostly unrewarding so its just kind of some passive power.
Focus Target is probably stronger than it will get credit for, but it also feels kind something you don't really play around with because the effort required isn't worth the benefit. As free power, 8 stacks of focus gets you 32% more damage to the target, 12% damage for 10 seconds after the kill, and 40% toughness and stamina regen after the kill (buffs to allies in coherency too). That's pretty good, but only at 8 stacks. More realistically, you're probably gonna get the 8 stack activation when you don't need it (long range, start of a fight) and after that marking elites for your allies is higher priority than trying to micromanage a buff that slowly builds over time.
The fact it benefits everyone in coherency and you get it for just playing like you should is nice, but the big weakness is any subsequent target mark overwrites the last one, so you can't safely mark multiple specialists in a fight unless you give up the majority of your keystone.
Like Weapon Specialist, as free power it isn't bad but the only way to consistently get a solid benefit from the keystone is to intentionally hamper your team marks. "Sorry I didn't spot that trapper for you, I really wanted 32% more damage against this Crusher" is the opposite of a good team perk.
Marksman's Focus might be the one I like the most, which isn't what I expected from their description. Like the two other keystones, the activation cost is onerous, "stop moving" is just bad advice in almost every aspect of Darktide. Unlike the other two keystones, the benefit does feel pretty substantial. The bonus Finesse damage is pretty considerable, and was letting me tear through Crushers on Damnation. It also encourages you to build for crit as well, so you can kind of double dip and get really terrifying headshot damage.
Camo feels kind of mandatory, getting free stacks for crouching or standing still helps and unless you're using a fast firing weapon you are unlikely to ever get 15 stacks through weakspot hits alone. Really shines with a Helbore Lasgun, which isn't the most meta of weapons but killing Damnation Crushers in two shots from a laser weapon is pretty spicy.
For now, I think I'm most interested in trying some marskman builds and maybe an infiltrate weapon specialist setup. Will try out Focus Target a bit when I have more time to see if I'm underselling it. The keystones are not weak, but the activation requirements feel a bit onerous for the benefit they give.
https://medal.tv/games/warhammer-40000-darktide/clips/1DQSqm00SrivAW/d1337iA4hEgv?invite=cr-MSx4eVMsMTU3ODYzOTYwLA
also thats a noncrit one tap on a gunner with a mk 1iag without unarmoured but we keep that quiet
Of the three keystones I think Focus Target is the only one I really dislike. Marking specialists as you see them is too important.
Tree feels really clunky still. Should be 10-20% shorter maybe. Lots of questionable talents that don't seem worth taking. 2 out of 3 keystones being fun / usable is a good start though.
but fairly easy to fix that in a bunch of ways so i am optimistic. as ever the first law of anything to do with self-identified vet mains follows this rule
The icon is cool tho.
Marksman can be really powerful but its pretty limited, you really need a fast firing weapon for it to work well (sort of the opposite of the sniper fantasy). Holding still on higher difficulties is just not an option, and you'll be too slow to get stacks with anything that isn't an autofire weapon for the keystone to do much. If Recon Lasgun wasn't nerfed so hard it would probably be a really good weapon for the keystone, but the sniper fantasy just doesn't work because the mechanic punishes slow weapons too hard. With a good autorifle-type weapon its pretty strong, and if you manage to get into a position where you can stack it with a slower weapon it slaps, but if your team can cover you standing still for a long time what talents you take probably doesn't matter, they've got you covered.
Focus Target stacks a bit better than I thought but all the original complaints still stand, its wonky in a bad way.
Weapon Specialist is honestly more impressive as a zealot talent than a veteran talent. Bonus melee attack speed and dodge for a single ranged kill? Sign me up. The attack speed bonus isn't useful on most of the ranged weapons you'd want to swap to, and the crit bonus isn't reliable enough to count on. The secondary benefits are pretty limited, reloading on switch sounds neat but the way the mechanic actually works is punishing and really only gives you a benefit if your weapon is empty, so it requires you to be very unlucky in horde management or just bad at reloading.
That's all just nitpicking though. The big problem is that there's no tree you can take without giving up really important talents, so every build feels like it is lacking some fundamental parts of the Veteran kit. There's just too many bad talents / filler talents / meaningless nodes, so whatever keystone you take you end up sacrificing too much from the other trees for it to feel good.
Vet brings a lot to the table, god knows I wouldn't have been out of ammo for a good third of the last match if we had one with scavenger aura, but fat shark melee feels goooooood.
I still shoot, I've just never been that good at it. I like to blame it's being a lefty who has always used the mouse in the right but feels too late to switch now and hey I got big swings and bigger shotguns to have my fun.
I dunno. I tend to run into Helbore shocktrooper builds (aka, the Krieg build) really often due to the synergy Helbore I/III with the Surgical blessing and the shocktrooper talent, and if they can take down Crushers in 2 shots now... that build is only going to get more popular.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Combined with the slow switch speed I'm actually running just a regular autogun now as nice all rounder.
it's worth noting how the executioner stance instant draw works if you wanna use a bolter/hb3:
https://medal.tv/games/warhammer-40000-darktide/clips/1A22ADucg1ekab/d1337ORgkbBW?invite=cr-MSwxZUEsMTU3ODYzOTYwLA
exe stance alas does not reload any more but the nice thing about the hb3 surgical shocktrooper deadshot setup is that almost all your shots don't cost ammo
Smh my head
On crit effects don't need to hit
if you miss but the shot was a crit - crits are rolled per attack not per target - its FREE BABY
Grossly overestimating my skills and why I favor shotties--except they don't do near enough damage so I am forced to aim.
I'll just be over here ogryn/psyerk/zealoting
A lot of fun, and it’s nice to have an entire new map, the ending event is a lot of fun and really tests teamwork and ability to adapt.
Speaking of my Psyker, I’m torn on how to build.
I tried the Surge staff and Brain Burst, but just didn’t like the surge staff enough.
Right now I’m using brainburst and voidstrike with the left side capstone (soulshard charges?) and the damage is amazing, but I worry that I should swap brainburst for smite to get that CC / swarm effectiveness. The voidstrike staff I absolutely love, the charge attack with some aim just blows through hordes and provides knock down and suppression to whatever doesn’t die.
MWO: Adamski
You can run it with Venting Shriek, which lets you basically get a full extra staff attack in (if you're over max peril but in the firing animation, the full animation will finish before you start to overheat, and then you Venting Shriek to put more soulflame on everything and bring yourself back to 50 peril). Telekine Shield is probably the safer / group friendly option since Purgatus + Brain Burst is going to struggle with huge groups of weak ranged enemies. I'd recommend a sword with deflector if you don't take Telekine Shield.
Empowered Psionics is really good with Brain Burst, and I recommend trying it if you haven't. Getting an empower on every elite kill works perfectly for the ability (although it doesn't seem to trigger 100% of the time). Chaining 0-cost fast cast brain ruptures on high value elites is fun. You can also combo it with Kinetic Resonance for rapid group kills or to use brain rupture as decent monstrosity DPS.
You do suffer a bit from large groups of ranged attackers, and you either need to rely on your teammates for killing them or use a combination of deflection / horde management / hard cover to make an approach.
Fast attack on the Purgatus Staff is underrated too, doesn't do a ton of damage but has solid range, costs almost no peril, can activate Kinetic Flayer, and seems to have pretty good stagger for most enemies. Good way to move forward safely.
Purgatus and the constant supply of soulblaze to everything in a horde helps you clear large groups and get kills on distant specialists you weren't even really aiming at. Can swap in Telekine Shield to cover your long range weaknesses and give better group support in exchange for less soulblaze stacking and less peril shennanigans.
Reddit was saying the targeting on surge staff is wonky right now. It seems to be prioritizing limbs when last patch it would target torsos, and a bunch of mobs take reduced damage on limbs. Something like tripling the number of casts needed to kill a crusher.
it got changed to chain properly from like limb to limb, but they forgor limbs take reduced damage on some enemies. some weapons (like plasma) ignore limb penalties so probs it will just get the plasma treatment, and end up being the same except it will look cooler and occasionally hit weakspots - which means a slight damage boost and an interaction with the weakspot crit talent. just gotta wait
Marksman's Focus itself is hard to evaluate because the left side of the tree feels so bad. When the stars align you can really tear things apart, if you're in something like an Ogryn / Zealot / Zealot team and you can just sit back and shoot things all day while covered you really put out crazy damage. Problem being there are so many situations where things don't work well. Biggest pain point, especially on the new map, is how little defense you have against enemy shooters. No resistance or toughness against ranged anywhere in the tree, so even though you're a long range character you struggle pretty badly against grouped shooters unless you take your time / have a bunch of support. Feels bad to be the "ranged specialist" that can't deal with the #1 ranged threat pinning your team down. Also, the keystone feels bugged because I don't always get stacks on weakspot hits (hard to fully evaluate given how chaotic big fights can be plus I have dad aim).
Weapon Specialist is fun, works great with Plasma or Revolver. Skip the reload perk for plasma, if you can't find time to reload your gun once every 5 or so fights you've gotta change strategies. Reload on revolver is useful so you can shoot once, get a kill, then swap back to your real strategy (slashing / stabbing). The Attack Speed buff on ranged is 100% wasted, but its secretly a melee keystone and the ranged buff is just there to trick people. You run around with your plasma / revolver, get a single kill, and swap to your melee for a bunch of buffs that last 10 seconds for getting a single ranged kill. Works great with a dagger / bleed build if you have the right blessings, with all the attack speed boosts you can get you're basically a blender. Don't really need armor pen when you're attack as fast as the game can animate. Probably one of the stronger builds overall, and dagger + plasma gun is a really fun combo (super fast stab gremlin with a giant fucking plasma cannon). Works great with powersword too, high damage and incredible horde clear. Easy to sneak Voice of Command into the build at basically zero cost.
Tried out some infiltrate builds, but on higher difficulty it feels really dangerous to skip Voice of Command. The on-demand toughness and knockback covers so many of your weaknesses and, perhaps more importantly, fits well on almost any build path. You only really need one upgrade for the ability as well, saving you 1-2 points wasted on bringing Executioner or Infiltrate up to speed when you're already point poor. Did have at least one "infiltrate saved the entire run" moment where it let me flank a group of 8+ gunners and then just murder them at my leisure to cover my team. If the trees weren't so desperate for points Infiltrate would probably feel better.
TL;DR - Marksman really fun when it works but a ranged class weak to ranged enemies feels awful. Weapon Specialist + Bleed Dagger / Plasma Gun is an incredibly fun murder gremlin build that is probably what I'll use for the time being. Highly recommend trying it out if you're looking for vet options in patch 15.
If you can fit the free +2 wounds talent into your build (and I think most builds can find a way to do so), you probably want +toughness / +health unless you're specifically trying to maximize wounds for a martyr build. +Stam isn't bad if you feel good about your blocking / sprinting choices.
Beyond that, +Toughness / +Health / +Sprint Efficiency all seem solid, or you could lean into specialized damage resistance perks if there's a specialist type that's really ruining Christmas. Gunners seem particularly Zealot-hungry right now, so 20% gunner resistance is probably a good perk. FYI, DR perks are multiplicative not additive, so three 20% DR perks doesn't equal 60% DR (still OK to stack them if you want, just don't think you're getting a mathematical extra benefit from doing so).
+Ordo Dockets if you need to pad your wallet.
Cause for some I haven't really seen much different between a 40 and a 100+ (wounds +1) and all the extra slots are just based on the item level and can be refined to better ones sooo...
The toughness and hp curio’s have a larger spread of values that reflect their item level better
I forget if the wound and stamina have fractional values that get rounded and if those have any gameplay implications.
MWO: Adamski
I saw two zealots delete a daemonhost in like under 5 seconds with them.
But whenever I use them they feel really meh.
Teach me obi-wan ke-hammy, or should I just enjoy other weapons on my zealot?
Cause yeah, trying to wrap up level 30 zealot with 3 vets and fail at the end cause they're all afraid of using melee.
So if I'm understanding things correctly are the Stubbers laid out as follows? (note this is mostly based on my personal experience and what little I've read online about them):
Aklys - Fastest/Stablest firing gun with generally the biggest mag size, but overall the weakest per-shot stubber. Great for clearing massive light hordes but you'll struggle with armored enemies/specials due to lack of armor pen. Basically designed to suppress the bigger enemies so your teammates can clean them up for you.
Krourk - Middle of the road stubber, hits harder than the Aklys and fires slower but harder to control in Full-Auto, longer setup time than Aklys when going Braced.
Gorgunum - Hardest hitting and slowest firing of the three, but able to deal with Armored/Flak/Carapace armored/special enemies the best out of the three. Also has the smallest drum size of the three as well.
Is that about right? For a general "all rounder" Dakkagryn should I stick with the Krourk or the Gorgunum? Any guidance is appreciated!
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Thunder Hammer:
Cons-
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