I don't get the argument for chain axes having more dodge distance. What about the axe screams "mobility"? If anything, the chainsword should be mobile, while the axe chews through heavier enemies.
Everything he said about chainaxes is a headscratcher. The Orestes has the unique property of its lights functioning like saw attacks, which means it deals substantial damage to heavy armor like Crushers out of the box. That's a niche by itself. If one really wanted to buff the chainaxes I would have gone for more blocking and pushing efficiency instead of le dodge count. You also got to remember that we don't have 2H axes yet to compare the mobility of the rest of the weapons against, thematically speaking.
EDIT: Now that i've had time to watch, my response: Chaxes: A well made and convincing argument that has convinced me to change my mind. Thammer: I agree adding additional damage for Flak and Carapace and none for unyielding on the special is also a solid change, but I'd argue the addition of an AoE stagger on the hammer would make it too similar to the crusher's special (not saying crusher is bad - its an underrated weapon). Right now we only have 3 two handed blunt weapons in the game and I'd argue its better if each of them have something unique about them for the sake of variety rather than changing the thunderhammers's special to function more like the crusher's. The main issue I (and others) take with the thunderhammer's stun is it feels clunky and odd, and altering the stun to feel less clunky would also be a good change instead of outright removing it (by either reducing the movement reduction during the stun, or allow you to block during the stun in the Mk II's case specifically). Bolter: Overall I agree with the proposed changes (1.3 to 1.5 isn't that much more of an increase, bodyshot buffs are necessary and equalizing limb damage would be sweet) but I think our differences in stances here boil down to a difference in what the perceived role of the bolter should be. I specifically argue its position for an anti armor weapon because 1) the ranged options for anti armor is woefully lacking (revolver/plasma/hellbore on vet with surgical, exe stance and weakspot damage/ripper guns with can opener if you're counting ogryn), 2), the way the weapon handles feels as if it should be an anti armor tool, and is disappointing when it is not (As i mentioned I'm of the belief that fun/enjoyment > Lore accuracy, which I plan to further explore in my next video) and 3), weapon right now best functions as a fineese-esque, headshot weapon which we have more than enough of (which is also why I'm specifically hesitant of asking for increased flak armor damage, because if the ADS jank is ever fixed and its flak breakpoints are improved, the one shot bodyshot breakpoints for flak armor can easily cause it to be another special sniping weapon, of which we have more than enough of) Flamer: I completely agree the flamer should be trash against carapace armor - I forgot to mention that in the original video and failed to catch it in editing which is on me. The flamer should realistically follow the pattern of how it functions in vermintide with it being good against hordes and worthless against super armor/carapace, but I made the argument it should be slightly better versus flak armor (which it technically is now after the slight damage buff, which I think makes it perfectly fine now) due to some of the hordes being protected by flak, and because darktide typically has more enemies on the playing field than vermintide does at high base game difficulties. Good points all around! I enjoy having a healthy discussion with other people from the community, and think that until Fatshark starts to pump out the content this is a great way to interact with each other. I will say that I am of the personal belief that darktide's balance should not be completely centered around the lore of 40k or the weapons within it. I am currently working on a video to explore this topic more in depth (since its a belief I've held for a long time), but table top games are inherently different than video games and cannot be balanced in the same way. I do think that lore should absolutely be considered for the basic functions and interactions of things that exist within a form of media to help establish a living breathing world, but there should be a healthy amount of wiggle room to allow for logical changes that ensures that our enjoyment of the game does not suffer for the sake of lore accuracy.
Hello JTC! Pleasure to have you in my comments. I actually dropped by your stream a little bit ago but couldn't stay for very long. Hope you're well. I'll try to address a few points here and look forwards to your video you mention at the bottom. Thammer: While there is a risk of some similarity, I think that with the continued existence of self stun and the significant damage differences between the thammer and power maul that the thammer will feel sufficiently distinct. Large, slow, Thrust held swings from the hammer with a small AOE and self stun will probably feel very different compared to the somewhat spammable Indignatus Crusher's variable AOE empowered stuns which allow the user to remain mobile. I agree the self-stun feels clunky and odd, but I believe a weakness like that is something to learn around. Back on game launch I learned to play around the stun at twice its current duration and thought it was an interesting drawback to powerful strikes. I'm not sure how to make it feel less weird but I think its acceptable for it to just feel bad as a juxtaposition for incredible payout, which is what it currently lacks. Bolter: 1. I agree we are lacking ranged anti-armor. I think that is mostly a good thing. I also think the way to fix that is to add the weapons we are missing that could do that job, like the leaked melta gun, rather than occupy that space with weapons not appropriate to it. The reason I say its a good thing is because ranged weapons remove a lot of risk associated with certain enemies. Point, click, problem solved is not nearly as thrilling as being forced into melee with a group of crushers. By having more limited options for eliminating packs of armored enemies with ranged we get the opportunity to shine against harder, riskier, melee threats. 2. I think it just feels like a bolter and want to see it perform as one so this is probably just an expectations thing. I never expected the bolter to be especially good against high toughness heavy armor enemies, but I expect it to be competent. A middle ground from lasguns no-damage to plasma guns high damage. Which is about where it sits. 3. I hate that its a finesse weapon, it should be a power weapon and I think our proposals actually more or less align on this point. I do look forwards to your video as I think we agree on your central point that lore is meant to inform the balance but not be the balance and I'll be interested in your framing of the problem.
What I'd like to see is another boltgun variant. They could balance Locke more towards soft targets the way you discussed with JTC and a the new variant could be something slower, more accurate semi-auto only with less ammo and better anti-armor capabilities. 🤔
@@Terentios IDK if there’s any lore precedent for this, but we could make it a pump-action weapon firing .998 cal heavy bolts instead of .75 cal standard bolts. Or just, y’know, give us a damn heavy bolter for ogryn already. C’mon, Fatshark, what’s the holdup?
"Chain axe used to be so bad" Me polishing my Obscurus force sword, after the removal of infinite dodges, when I kept playing "melee" psyker builds without a staff for weeks NON STOP: "What was that? Must have been the wind"
@@Reginald-sc9tk I still love it. For me, Obscurus and/or Deimos are the corner stone of the ultimate challenge playstyle: melee psyker. Obscurus for obvious reasons. The recent slightly buff to the strikedown heavy was welcome. It would be nice to have a more distinct horde clear combo on it. Dodge distance is a bit meh on it, and in some situations that can cost you a game, but you cannot have everything.
@@definitelynotadam Idk how melee Psyker is a "challenge build," unless you're specifically using the Obscurus. Illissi, Deimos, and Dueling Sword are all amazing Psyker exclusive weapons that pair perfectly with right tree Psyker. Deimos has a pretty clear horde clear pattern, the Obscurus doesn't really.
Absolutely the Thunder Hammer special needs to hit hard - much harder than it does now! Keeping the stun is (I feel) a necessary balancing factor to its power, but also because physics - that much power being output into the face of a target means the power is also acting or is being absorbed by the user. This manifests itself as the stun/recoil from absorbing the impact you just dished out (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and all that).
i dont think, that thunder hammer should hit harder. I'd rather have other weapons hit weaker. Talked about it multiple times. But the current balancing has a massive issue of cycling wrongdoings. Fatshark makes weapon. Players use that weapon. Players see, that the weapon cant kill all targets they want. Players whine about it on forums. Fatshark buffs the weapon. Now enemies pose no threat to players, because their weapon perfectly kills any type of enemy. Fatshark throws more enemies at players to balance it out. Which repeats the cycle. A fkin psyker rapier doing better job at killing crushers, than thunderhammer is not because thunderhammer weak. It's because rapier strong. I wont even mention the stupid combat knife, that thing shouldnt even tickle crusher. But here we are, with many weapons oneshotting the most armored enemy in the game. If we tone down other weapons and reduce amount of elites - thunderhammer will be in a perfect place. If we dont want to nerf other weapons and keep waves of 10+ crushers and maulers and bulwarks. Fine, then thunderhammer needs a buff. But i'd rather have something AoE going on for hammers. Like MkIV crusher stagger on multiple enemies. Obviously hammer can charge and hit far slower than MkIV indignatus. But he also deals far more dmg per hit. So both weapons still have their use. One against massive hordes. Another against waves of armored elites.
I think this would be too strong of a buff, but being able to knock a crusher or bulwark down with a charged thunder hammer would feel incredibly good alongside the recoil. Plays into the powerfantasy of wielding something unruly and powerful. The only issue is I can see a zealot casually soloing an entire train of crushers with this change.
The more cleave he's right about, but the stun removal he's right about too. Against a group of specials its basically a death sentence to bother winding up a one shot, if I go for it when I have an opening, im gonna eat a huge amount of damage because of the stun recovery after hit. It's horrible feeling and horrible at its one job
I think the hammer should blow through enemy rather than stun. Like the old space marine game, just a smaller version but still the same power buff in lore.
I always like reading in Guardsmen books how Bolters are set up like machine gun nests, never knew about how often they were used in the Guard before I started reading 40k.
I had many of the same thoughts when i first watched the jtc video. A lot of the suggestions from jtc were just making the items easier to use in most situations instead of balancing the weapons for their niche
Same here, although I do love his videos. The bolter was where I felt this the most. As long as there are ways to manage the weaknesses I would keep them and use them to "buy" strengths in other areas. I wouldn't reduce the ready time at all while zealots have the blades interaction and vets have exe stance (although that is a whole other discussion). Even reload times I would keep as they are with the available talents and techs. I would keep those drawbacks and buff the janky ADS and breakpoints. I'm still getting a feel for their buffed ammo reserve. Also, I do miss the FotF interaction on my zealot so while I agree with the lore roles vs armour I would be really happy if they adjusted the shattering impact blessing to have a faster ramp up and create a scenario where you either bless pinning fire for groups or shattering impact for hard targets.
Even before the buff, jct's comments on the flamer confused me because when I ran with it I didn't have a problem burning away my problems except for ogryns and monsters. Those were for my hammer or evicerator. And while it makes some sense for fire to ignore the armor and go through the gaps and heat the armor to where the wearer is being cooked. It will take a comparatively unreasonable amount of time for either of those effects to pay back dividends. That and we have to remember we're fighting Nurgle cultists, they're infamous for being relentlessly tough bastards by feeling no pain. It doesn't mean the affect of being coated in fire won't happen. It just means they won't care and will keep going and won't be rolling on the ground in pain and then dying
Right, and not just nurgle cultists. Ogryn nurgle cultists. T6 vs S4 weaponry. Not accounting for armor. I also thought the flamer was kinda ok. I'm sure its good now.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I was always a flamer enjoyer. With the right blessing combo you could absolutely clear hordes in seconds and do tons of DoT damage to specials and elites, it was great for the highest level content where massive swarms of enemies would corner you. A melee with high mobility was definitely needed to get yourself the prep time to hose down enemies, but when it went off it went off. it was never bad, but the buff makes it a lot more doable to fit it into builds where you don't need to build around having a flamer!
I don't see why the boltgun shouldn't be good at destroying bosses. Bosses should be the one thing it is GOOD at. Lore-wise it's not great vs carapace, and for most smaller enemies it's very clunky and inefficient to use ammo on them. It practically screams "boss killer weapon", with its massive recoil, high damage, etc.
First I want to say I appreciate not throwing shade add another content creator for this game because the pool of content creators for this game is small. Good to hear another point of view especially from a person that likes to focus on melee talking about the melee weapons. My main character is melee exclusive and your content has helped me out tremendously without me having to put in tons of hours of gameplay testing to make it feel right. I've been able to get straight to the fun being able to crunch heads instead of having to crunch numbers. Keep doing you and I look forward to your next videos.
I agree with you on basically everything up until the bolter. Prior to that you were talking about how we should not just look to lore, but once the bolter comes up you focus entirely on lore. Also, bolters are usually said to have very good armor penetration, they're used against space marines after all. It does change between who's actually writing a story, but generally bolters have better armor pen than any other weapon which we actually see in the game. I also think that tabletop rules should really only be for a basic guide and not as an actual measure of accuracy; in table top autoguns and lasrifles have the exact same profile, while pistols are exactly the same but with shorter range and no rapid fire. Table top and darktide both take liberties to balance their respective games, it doesn't make sense to compare the two. Besides that, i did really agree with your video a lot more than jtc's and thought your balance ideas and experience with these weapons was better, but it's just weird that you seem to switch from concern about game balance to lore accuracy with the bolter, and i also think the lore isn't even as restrictive as you paint it.
Actually I spend some time discussing lore here because people just keep getting it wrong ad nauseum and suggesting bad things because of it. We absolutely should not be informed just by lore. Game feel and balance do matter. But the bolt gun, as I argue, is already just fine against carapace and even decent against ogryn in carapace But we have to remember that ogryn, lore wise, are in a different league of tough. The charonites were neigh unkillable in the face of dedicated space marine firepower in lore. In lore bolters are not used against space Marines, its such a point of contention in the horus heresy novels that both factions develop dedicated armor piercing rounds in specific loyalists develop Kraken rounds, as I mentioned. Fighting a space marine with a standard bolter is like fighting an armored knight with a sword. You gotta find the gaps. Space Marines were designed and armed according to who their enemies were primarily. Most imperial adversaries use little armor as tough as ceramite nor carapace on their troops. It really wasn't until the heresy that ceramite quality armor became a real and consistent threat. We actually broadly agree here that tabletop rules and lore should only be guide posts for this game but I want to at least be accurate on those details before we jump away from them. That was my core intended point. I hope I did a better job explaining my position at least. Let me know if you disagree.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Thanks for the explanation! I do still think as far as gameplay there's not really enough anti armor ranged weapons, especially for zealot, as its really just the plasma gun and zarona, which needs a big nerf carapace damage anyway. Nothing should totally trivialize armor, especially carapace, and I don't think we need more unyielding/boss melters really. But i do see your point a lot better now. Thanks for replying!
@@KingKhalid888 good choice. Tanner did make a couple really really good videos some 5 months ago. Basics, machanics, etc. but the delivery is hampering this „no nonsense, hard facts“ approach. Normally i really like that.
Honestly I was a little anxious about seeing a counter argument to a balance video; I've seen some wild takes and off kilter suggestions (like people insisting that the Bolter should be bad against infested) and was afraid this might be that but this turned out to be a great video. I actually had watched and commented on the JTC video and it was nice to see a genuinely good counter perspective on all the points presented in that video here. I can say that I really agree with the mindset of making weapons stand out by emphasizing their strengths over just eliminating their weakness. I can say that with JTC's suggestions, I didn't have many feelings on their suggestions for the Chainaxe or Thunder Hammer. I've been using and enjoying the Chainaxe since release, despite my peers disliking it, so I kind of assumed that maybe it was widely regarded as a poor weapon but I was just acclimatized to it. Their Thunder Hammer suggestion didn't really click w/ me and I actually like your suggestion a lot more. My big comment on JTC's video mainly revolved around the Bolter and the Flamer, the short of which can best be summarized by a relationship I drew between the Bolter and Flamer versus the Plasma Gun and Revolver. Similar to what you mentioned, I don't think the Bolter should be good at Armor Pen; I'd rather the explosive potential of the weapon be emphasized. To paraphrase an idea from my comment on that video: "If Revolver and Plasma Rifles cut through a hoard to Kill a Priority Target, then the Bolter and the Flamer should be like slamming a door in the hoard's face, growing less effective, but still having the capacity to slow down enemies the higher up in level of armor you go. In my mind, they should be weapons whom's utility lies in making space. While that means they (The Bolter and the Flamer) share that utility, I think the flamer should be even more specialized in that role than the Bolter, in the same way that the Plasma Gun is even better at cutting through a hoard than the Revolver is. The utility of being able to make space on command is balanced by having a weapon that is slower, clunkier weapon with lower ammo reserves than more generalized tools." I'm also glad that someone else is finally pointing out the currently weak place the Headhunter is at. All in all, great video.
It'd be cool if Boltguns on the tabletop got something like Anti-Infantry 4+ (Hell, even 5) because the bullets explode inside targets. That's uhh...definitely going to wound things a hell of a lot easier than pure lead. In Darktide, them being good against unyielding makes perfect sense. Cause excessive internal area damage. Size can't do much against internal explosions.
I was about to talk about the changes the thunder hammer needs, but you just said what I wanted to say. Good points! I'm just posting this for the algorithm.
Boltgun lore got me thinking, in Necromunda tabletop, Enforcers get super cheap bolt guns with drum mags, why not keep the stats more or less where they are and just up the ammo pool?
Id be fine at this point if that was another pattern but id like to see the bolt gun be as boltgunny as possible instead of the inferior autogun it is now
I watched that video and was like what?... this doesnt sound like something Reginald would say.. and he knows Chain Axes! Glad you put this video out GJ!
11:00 IMO the thing the force swords should do is have unusual psi-buffed attacks, such as one that drains your victim’s HP to heal yourself, or one that chucks out an energy wave that pierces enemies in a line.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Thank you. I just wanna see psykers do more weird shit. Also, forgot to mention this earlier, but I 110% agree with you on the ogryn heavy bolter. Give the ogryn a heavy bolter already, Fatshark!
From 2nd edition 40K; which is the definitive edition and the purest ideal of 40K. This is objectively true because I read the core rulebook, wargear book and background book at a bit too young an age back in 1994 and it rewrote my brain. This is the weapons and armour stats from 2E (mostly identical to 1st edition). It was before 3E simplified Armour Piercing to be all or nothing. (Yeah it is odd from modern 40K that lasgun and bolter has identical -1 armour save modifier) Boltgun: Strength 4, -1 Save Mod. Flamer: Strength 4, -2 Save Mod (yeah this is a bit odd given Flak) Autogun: Strength: 3, No Save Mod. Lasgun: Strength: 3, -1 Save Mod. Plasma Gun: Strength: 7, -2 Save Mod.(1 sustained fire dice, needs to recharge for 1 turn after firing). Ogryn Rippergun: Str: 4, No Save Mod. 2 sustained fire dice. Auto hit at short range (0-6") -2 to hit Long Range (6-12") Chain Sword: Strength 4, -1 Save Mod. Parry (can choose to force opponent to reroll their higher attack dice) Chain-Axe: As user +1, Save Mod: -2 (probably strength 4 as normal humans were STR 3 base, STR 4 for Marines) - introduced in Codex: Chaos 2E from 1996. So was more a Chaos SM weapon. Flak Armour: 6+ Save/5+ vs Blast Weapons (anything with blast markers like frag grenades/missiles, flamers etc) Mesh Armour: 5+ Save (only 90's kids and Eldar players will remember this) Carapace Armour: 4+ Save Power Armour: 3+ Save.
Balancing weapons according to how they perform in the lore should be considered, but it shouldn’t be high on the priority list. There’s nothing lore accurate about a team of 4 Astra Militarum dudes taking on 2,000+ traitor guard every mission they deploy on.
Good to see you Jeficus! I think it should be high on the priority list, but the adherence should not be perfect. If its not high enough on the priority list we just get a veneer of 40k on a hoard game. That doesn't make sense. But its not the only factor for sure, internal game balance should matter a lot.
I agree with you overall, Bolt weapons should be killing unarmored enemies as well as infested.Flak should reduce the damge by 15-30% while Carapace (unpowered Ceramite) should have 50-75% damage reduction. It should stagger Crushers at 3+ body shots and only 1 at head shot, anything other than Ogryns and Monstrosities should be staggered in 1 shot. Bolt weapons should be horde clearing, high CC/stagger weapon and should be above to a simple Revolve in regards to damage, especially since it's a miniature RPG/rocket that penetrate and explode inside the target's body. I would suggest to make the Revolver like a shotgun that have damage fall off above 15-25 meters and be the same damage as Vraks Headhunter Autogun, which they need to buff the damage in the first place, but has a close range buff to differentiate vs Autogun. Kinda like a shotgun where the closer the target is the higher the damage and can penetrate Flak but reduced against Carapace by at least 30% instead of 50+% since there's a close range buff (within 10m) and should have higher damage than Bolt weapon, in close range. By having a Plasma weapon in the game, the Bolter shines with its original usage and be closer to lore accuracy. It shouldn't be at the same category as Plasma with regards to its usage (anti-armor vs unarmored) and it will bring its iconic status no shame vs other weapons (especially the Revolver). Now if they add the Hotshot Lasgun, Melta gun and other iconic weapons, they wouldn't have a nerf Revolver (if they do nerf it) to compare against with and wouldn't tranish the lore they took it from. But if they didn't touch the Revolver, many people will be dissatisfied because a simple Revolver outshines all of the iconic weapons of 40k.
I felt a wave of relief when you busted out the numbers. I felt like I had just sat down after a hard day. Damn. Straight credible facts. A wonderful Oasis in this desert. Please carry on.
You've made a fantastic example on how to disagree with someone in a way that is respectful and ushers in further discussion. Thank you for everything you do =) I am not really a WH 40k nerd/fan, but it is very odd to me that the flamethrower in this game is bad against carapace. Hot, sticky fire has, historically, been a fantastic way to deal with armored targets! Both on an infantry level, tanks, whatever. I'm sure it's for game balance, but I would love the primary bottleneck to be something like total ammo or ammo consumption, like you brought up. I recently found your channel, and I think it's folks like you, Jtc, and others that really help keep this games community alive =)
Thanks for your kind words. In 40K the heavy flamer can handle carapace but the flamer itself cannot, and the toughness of ogryn means they can tough out quite a bit of flamer fire but less so the heavy flamer. So that's where I draw my inspiration from on crushers vs say reapers.
Hes evolved into the reaction youtuber. Also your pumping these videos. Oh what are your thoughts on the new helldivers upgrades, I like them but my friends say its to grindy.
Lol, I guess that's technically true. Does this mean I'm officially washed up? As to pumping the videos I got another one should be out tomorrow on Helldivers. I was wondering what would happen if I just giga-ground and pushed out a ton of good quality content as fast as I could. to the point of helldivers - i think the upgrades are cool! I like the mortars one. I don't care too much about the grind because I don't grind games, I get mats organically and just let the new stuff come as it comes. But my feeling is there's a fundamental problem with these upgrades in that it just becomes the new baseline after a while since it permanently alters your gameplay experience and you can't unequip them. There's no trade offs to consider its just BETTER.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I would like more wacky changes and make them togglable, I feel like the new mortar is them trying it out. Also Loving seeing you in my recommend more often just don't want you to over work yourself, ive heard the big tubers get very eppy
@@Reginald-sc9tk I was trying to discuss this on reddit yesterday (with horrible results). I really think they aren't healthy long term. We're either gonna have to keep power creeping everything to stay in line with our upgrades, or just stop having new upgrades (which I'd like, but we need something cool for endgame to use samples on that isn't permanent). But yeah this could be solved by making them all upgrades that give you something good and something bad or have a max amount you can have equipped at a time.
Oh yeah the only 2 DT creators I watch will have beef. Ok to be real I respect you two so much. I dont tink any real beef will ever emerge, but a back and forth discussion would be fun : )
Now that you opened the door for wanting a heavy bolter for ogryns (I do too, this game was my first 40k game and holy shit the amount of lore is nuts) I want a melta gun for zealots, plasma pistol for vet, and I sadly dont know what to add for psykers except another force weapon type
Melta for vets and zealots would be cannon and frankly where is it?! Its been in the files for an age. Plasma pistol! Psykers could have other force weapons beyond what they have and that would be fun. More staff types too.
@@Reginald-sc9tk tbh part of me thinks what's holding the Melta back from being in the game is that noone could agree what exactly the Melta gun does. Like is it a close range weapon like a shotgun that shoots a cone of superheated plasma? Is it a more mid range option that shoots a beam? Is it like the flamer's primary fire where its like a burst of lingering damaging cloud? Who knows? The lore is pretty vague and there were multiple interpretations on how it works throughout the years, with each interpretation changing how it would work in game. I've never felt more like an adeptus mechanicus member than trying to figure out what exactly the meltaguns fire. Someone more versed in the lore might know, but I don't.
@@randomguyblank1616 Anti armour/anti tank single target, close range beam of fusion energy pretty sure its always meant to have been that, i guess you can debate if its a continuous beam or a single burst, i think burst is more accurate to how its portrayed in the tabletop and would be more fun
lore wise the bolter are meant to be good against armor its designed to go through armor and explode inside the target. its not the best at it but it good
I am glad to see such a civil conversation about this game, when i watched JTClive video, my first thought was "what would Regi say about Mark 4 Chainaxe?" and here we are. Ngl i will take a side of a chainaxe cultist on this topic, rather than JTClive's side, it's just makes sense to me. I don't like thunderhammers in general, cos they work more as a "delete boss button" rather than being an actually useful weapon, and stealthknife zealot can deal with bosses really well while still be good against heavier elites, so i will gladly see thunderhammers be reworked in something more useful. About bolters - i am on a side of turning it into a good marksman weapon rather than going for full auto destruction. I think Tanner has a good vet marksman build for bolter, and this is where it should lean to in my opinion. Marksman with fullauto option if situation calls for it. And yeah, limb damage and body damage on trash mobs should be better. AND OF COURSE REMOVE THAT JANK AIMING WHY IS IT EVEN A THING?! It's still leaves a question of "why headhunters and lucius lasguns are bad as marksman weapons?" and i don't have the answer for that. When the patch dropped and i didn't have time to run with flamer i too thought that it will be bad and agreed with JTClive, but then i tried it and a flamer still was very good at what it does - control elites with M1 (and Fan the Flames) and delete hordes with M2. And that before buff dropped. PSA: Flamer video is also a good showcase of a fact that even without rendering flamer still does his job totally fine. However we got the buff anyway, and now flamer is better than it was with rending in my opinion - more power means more stagger with M1, and i am always for that. It was a very good video, Regi, this is what i really wonna see in this community - real balance conversations between content creators on a respectable level.
Bolter needs the limb damage normalization the plasma gun got last year. Even the revolvers and all other range weapons have the limbs hit's causing lost damage and stagger, but bolter just like plasma is a power weapon and needs to by pass that. We had the no self stun on thunder hammers do to a animation cancel bug, and fatshark saw that as OP so removed it. I think it should AoE stun us AND all near by enemies, with a small window in recovery in the players favor like 0.3 sec.
If anything it should be more like explosive weapons in other shooters and just do a lot of damage regardless of where you aim. The revolvers should rely on critical and headshot damage while the bolter can just get body shots.
I remember the first eviscerator and how I became a pro at heavy light light to clear hordes. New one is lol spam light attack. I have to imagine they made it for people who cannot be bothered to learn attack combos? Doom shotgun is the most fun I’ve had this week.
Game design hard. :) My only bit is that if something is going to be unwieldy, it better goddamn do it's designated job or it will be ignored. The Thunderhammer is a great example of a weapon where this happens. While I appreciate the value of a meme pick, having seen demonstrations of their cleave making it useless against hordes I was just baffled that it is implemented that way.
Another bolter mk would be sweet but the one we have now could use slight revisit on damage values against different types. From highest to lowest; Unarmored>Infested>Maniac>Flak>Unyielding>Carapace. Slight improvement in stagger rate against unyielding and carapace. Makes bolter annihilate what you expect, be good against light armor and medium toughness but mediocre with heavy armor and greater toughness. Current reloading and equip speeds are rough but should stay around. Another thing i would love to have is more interesting blessings and some to promote accuracy or quality of fire. Something like: Weak spot hits gaining stacking bleed or Critical kills gain more stagger and damage radius. Oh an totally fix the damn ADS and recoil spaz.
Wondering if you have a video lined up for shock mauls! Been running the Agni Mk la and its been serving me pretty well, just not sure what to build it for nor which mk is better for which scenario.
CHAD chaxe enthusiast DESTROYS youtuber with FACTS and LOGIC. Jokes aside, kudos to you for the respect and restraint while tackling these *interesting* takes. Good points all around!
I wish some of the jank around adsing with the bolter was removed. Carapace dmg is okayish and actually forces you to invest in crits or shattering. After so many hours, the last thing i want is a do-it-all weapon. Finding workarounds, combos and synergies between talents is a minigame in itself. And this is why i enjoy the tac axe rn.
I mean I can kind of understand where they're coming from on the Flamer Armor Penetration front, after all if you breath in fire no matter how well armored you are, you're going to die choking. But the big two Carapaced enemies the Crusher and Mauler also have full helmets which could easily have Rebreathers built in. Personally I would want the Flamer to be able to suppress melee enemies except for Infested, Fanatics, Carapace, and Monstrous, after all if you aren't undead, insane, or mostly immune avoiding walls of literal fire is an instinctive response.
I think one of my biggest gripes with the thunder hammers right now is that the special attack has zero cleave. Nothing feels worse than having a rager or mauler charging you, powering your hammer, winding up a full-strength heavy, and then some poxwalker sticks its elbow in the way, eats your strike, and the rager/mauler kills you while you're stunned. Giving it the ability to cleave through a trash mob or two before catching on an elite like the eviscerators do now would make it feel a lot better IMO.
@@Reginald-sc9tk In my defense when I tried a stock one out in the psykanium its moveset didn't feel meaningfully different from the Crucis; and I already had both a pretty nice Crucis, and a lot of other weapons I wanted to build too.
Honestly Bolter is my curent primary on my Vet for Auric Mealstorms. Sure you need to build around it and its blessings but you need to do that with every weapon. Now Plasma is absolutely better for Crushers etc. but in my experience, marked Crusher and single press of autofire aimed for the head does bring the Crusher down in one click. I enjoy the Bolter a lot because of its versatility and general enjoyment of using it. I don't want to play with "THE BEST" weapons simply because some sheet says they are the best, I want to play with the weapons I enjoy and learn thru trial and error how to make them work depending on the situation. And in this regard Bolter works wonders. Especially with the new Bleed Stack Blessing. Hord clearing, punch thru, elites etc. you can make it work if you want to. But not everything needs to be THE BEST at everything. Even the reload speed isn't something that I ever felt like being too slow. If anything it feels to fast... :D
The Chain Axe has always felt weird to me, but that's because I primarily play with the Eviscerator as my chain weapon of choice. Regardless, I've always felt that the Chain Axe should be the king of single target in the chain weapons, one handed the king of horde clear, with both having marks that make them better at doing single target or horde clear if you so wish. the Eviscerator being the one that want a healthy middle ground between, which surprisingly, the marks for the Evis actually being the ones that are made intelligently with the swing profiles going from the first mark you unlock being overhead lights with heavy sweeps and the 2nd being light sweeps and overhead heavies. I think if we want to give Chain Axe a "niche" it should absolutely fucking annihilate single targets, regardless of what it's attacking. With some minor ability to horde clear to keep it in line without making it effectively useless at dealing with some mobs. Like it should be no contest that against anything single target the other chainswords should be on par or close to it.
The thing is, thats what the chain axe already is. If you take the right blessings its a weapon with the second best TTKs on such targets and available oneshots. The Eviscerator trades mobility for similar effect but better general capabilities.
So lore wise bolters could get a hidden mechanic modifying their damage chart, based on the targets "squishiness". Bonus damage vs. pox walkers and the like, on top of other skills/blessings/etc. But keep the low damage/stagger against carapace UNLESS we use Rending/Brittleness and similar stuff. Simulating bullets (mini rockets) hitting the soft spots through the cracked armour and activating the hidden mechanic of bonus damage vs. soft targets. This way you won't mind the recoil and overall felling of bolter's bulk. Because you are carrying a BIG, explody nut-cracker. Just a fast, unfiltered thought...
although I'd agree that the boltgun doesn't really have any precedent at being good against carapace armor (in the fantasy flight rpgs it had exactly enough to pen imperial guard armor) I would actually like it to be better against those targets as there's a pretty intense lack of anti carapace ranged weapons. Feels like more of a zealot issue but after the most recent patch your ranged options for dealing with armor are so few and that's not likely to change anytime soon as I doubt they'd get access to hotshots and the melta gun may just never come. I do think game balance should be slightly bent on iconic parts of a game, in the same way a fireball in dnd 5e is designed to be stronger because of it's icon status the bolt gun should be too. doesn't have to be horrendously op but it should shine, it is THE 40k gun.
Hey Reginald whats your thought on helbore lasguns? They're my fav las weapon but I just cant bring them to damnation difficulty, always feel like pretty much any other lasgun does their job and more.
So I'm not a great expert on them but I've run them just fine in damnation and aurics. I even did a bayonet only game somewhere in my catalogue (though they patched limbsplitter). TheWileSpice has a build guide for them and knows them better than I do so maybe check out his channel. My main issue with them is their god awful "sights".
@@Reginald-sc9tk Oh yeah, when I use the helbores I toggle my screens crosshair on and ignore the ironsights lol, also bayonet only game??? Absolute madman, respect.
Thank you for mentioning the vraks rifle. the only sniper weapon is helbore and revolver pretty much. It doesn't make sense to me that a revolver is more reliable than a long rifle for long range encounters. The burst fire varients are also pretty bad. heavy bolter for ogryns annnnnnnd autoguns are pretty meh too
Agreed on the subject of lore informing game balance. Realism doesnt balance a game, but a weapon that doesnt live up to its fantasy will always be dead weight Which is why chain axes SHOULD be better on elites. I just hate them personally because in a practical sense, my melee is for clearing and self defense and my ranged weapon is for reaching out at priority targets. Though you make an amazing case for it because Zealot really struggles with Carapace right now.
I think people really underestimate how effective zealot is in melee once you clear the skill cap. I regard crushers and maulers as the most fun enemies. A lot of people seem to be holding onto a notion that the FotF ranged crit nerf was a serious blow to zealot when it was really no big deal.
The thunder hammers really need to be doing more armor damage. Kinetic energy transfers directly into objects that have no give and wont move out of the way. So the fact that they have no armor damage COMPLETELY pisses all over the fantasy of a thunder hammer. It makes ZERO sense for hammers to have low Armor damage ESPICIALLY a thunder hammer which delivers explosive shockwaves in addition to its own blunt force. Personally, I think it should get a small attackspeed nerf, a sizeable "First Target" damage buff, and a sizeable armor damage buff. Make it actually deal damage instead of knocking things down and never killing them, but still be mediocre hoard clear due to attack speed
2:07 the chainsword has wrath and shred, while the chain axe has headtaker and bloodletter, which are the best blessings for boss killing. How do they compare when the chainsword also has bloodletter?
I'm not sure. I would expect the chain axe to still be better by a fair margin based on my experience. However the reason it was done this way was because we chose the best talent build and min-max setup for each weapon then compared their outputs on a body of targets. You can focus a weapon towards other functionality but then you usually lose out a lot on what it's good at for a little gain in what its bad at.
Personally. As a flamer user and lover, I would like it changed in two fold. One, be able to be used on the veteran. Two, personally I dislike the the aim down sights for a stream of flame, I would like it if the special was a switch modes rather than a bash so that I don’t need to aim down sights the rip through a horde with the cleansing fire of the emperor
An idea I've been kicking around in re: the flamer... On top of its weakness in being overspecialized for horde clear, I've noticed that people seem to rarely if ever use its primary fire--which is understandable, since the flamer's longer pullout time and the power of its secondary fire means you usually don't need a little puff of flame that staggers hordes. What if pressing the Special button had your character inject some sort of special sauce into the promethium tank, or placed a modded thingamajig on to the barrel, that made your *next Primary fire hot* place a debuff on flak and carapace enemies that made them take more damage for a short period of time? This Special fire wouldn't itself do very much damage, but I feel like it could give the flamer a use against more heavily armored targets without becoming a game-turn-off button. It also kinda fits with the lore, where certain factions might use alternate fuels or projectiles for their flamers, like the pre-Heresy Death Guard turning their flamers into chemical sprayers. So the lore justification for this Special shot is that the Reject applies like, sticky napalm or some corrosive substance to an armored enemy that melts or compromises their armor for a temperorary period of time.
IMO I like the jank ADS on the bolt weapons. You can get used to it, and it fits the hard to use nature of the weapons. I also like it giving some more function to Deadshot, which the bolt weapons pair well with.
I rarely comment, and tend to play just the video games of 40k, and I play darktide alot and I'm no legend at it either so I have no place making a comment here anyway but Im going to, I just found your channel and watched this on a whim an I agree with ALL of you balance opinions, I'm really shocked someone feels similarly especially about the chainaxes.
Thanks very much for taking the time to comment, if its a rarity for you. I appreciate it. I'm glad we are of a mind on the balance, its also cool to hear from another chaxe fan. Happy slaying out there.
If you have the % each staggered enemy (forgot the name of the blessing) you can throw a granade, stagger/hit 5 enemies and unload the bolter on a monsters weakspot will '1 shot' them. :) Chain axe isn't too good vs hordes agreed but I still have missions with 1m damage while using it. It's still very viable but not easy to use for sure
I dont know if he discovered that trick but TheWileSpice put out a video on it some time back and it was pretty cool. Yeah, its not great against hordes. But its competent. Plus I love bringing it to monstrous specialists. Its strong but not an instagibber.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I usually bring Chain axe on realot in those 'No ammo' missions. If you want to search for 'just4ticks' and see how I run it. It's very effective in those mission :)
Fully agree. I saw JTC's vid and was confused about the chainaxe. Dude use a push attack! The thunder hammer looks even more anaemic with the pickaxes added. My mining ogryn can annihilate armoured elites but thammer can't.
From everything I’ve done in dark tide the side of the story I hear is like it would be nice if they did this, but we have this The flamer is great for hoard clear I don’t really like using it on heavy armor targets because it’s low damage and yes, you could get pen for it, but I don’t really like that When I pick the flamethrower, I bring a hammer for everything else And I focus entirely on holding back the horde And keeping peoples health better than if they had not had me Because I reduce corruption And literally the definition of too angry to die My veteran has four loadouts five if you really think about it, but I don’t use the fourth Backstabber Sharpshooter Sergeant Doom guy Before loadouts name state themselves It’s very fun
Does flamethrowers just in general don’t really care about any kind of body armor? Like the fire will make the Armour burning hot which would burn your skin anyway so it really don’t need to penetrate.
I agree that the bolter shouldn’t be amazing against carapace armor. There’s this weird tendency to treat the bolter as a bigger deal then it is, when even space marines have several specialist weapons to deal with enemies that even heavy bolters can’t. They should be good against everything, they are the main infantry rifle of space marines for a reason, but being especially good against carapace seems a step too far.
Crucis was always bad outside monster deletion memes, but it's been really left in the dirt by the overall power creep of the game, both for the rejects and the enemies. Enemies got more health, so Crucis stopped being able to deliver elite 1-taps, and, perhaps even more significantly, enemy density got cranked out the wazoo. People used to talk about using camera and animation manipulation to "snipe" elites in the middle of a horde with the Crucis special, back in the days when hordes weren't composed of 15 superimposed ragers, but I really don't think that you could reliably pull off such a feat now. And even if you could, it still wouldn't kill the target! Weapons like this frustrate me - realizing that the Crucis can't 1 tap elites anymore and fixing it should take like 15 minutes of work, and instead the weapon has been left to languish for two years. On the other hand, I think it's the only truly "bad" melee weapon in the game, so that's something at least - most weapons are only bad relative to a group of overperformers (combat axe, knife, power sword, revolver, plasma, ciag5, basically any psyker weapon), but still feel good in it of themselves.
I know the vid is kinda old at this point but just wanted to give my 2 cents. Out of all the weapons in the game, I'm sort of confused what should be good against carapace armor if not a high explosive, high velocity .75 caliber, rocket propelled slug. I agree carapace armor should be a powerful tag that requires specialized weapons from a gameplay perspective, and that you're leaning on established rulebooks for your take, but when I think about the type of shot we are talking about, even if it doesn't outright penetrate the armor, getting hit in the helmet by one of these rounds would realistically scramble the brains of any living creature. I do agree with your take on the flamer though, as most common forms are made of ceramite, which is heat-resistant.
Its not that the bolter shouldn't be on the high end of armor effectiveness its just that it already is. Most guns should really struggle with carapace and force you to use specialized gear or melee weaponry instead.
I think the Recon Lasgun needs a lot of love. There's no real reason to use it over things like the Infantry Autogun V or the braced autoguns. A sight would help ALOT for them because then you could take advantage of the low recoil and accuracy at range.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Ah, it seems it got a 20% buff in damage but if you study the numbers its biggest problem is the pitiful weakspot, critical and critical weakspot damage it does compared to almost every other gun. It does like 50% more damage on a headshot crit while a simple autogun does like 300%
Yepp i agree with most of this, however as a hammer user with a one shot build, I dont really want any changes to the crucis maybe some extra stagger. The crucis should stay the bosskiller hammer, and the irohelm should be changed to be good against elites/groups of elites. With this build i can make bosses dissapear, but in exchange im just okay at best in everything else, and constantly low on health. Also with this one shot build my flamer is decent too against armored targets, if im in a pinch and i have to get rid of a mauler or crusher group. Also people tend to forget there is 3 other rejects playing with you, so every weapon should have some downsides.
I respect your position but my feeling is that the hammers kill bosses so fast that its no fun for anyone else. Yes there are tons of downsides to the hammer but I want to play with the big mean monster too.
@@Reginald-sc9tkIm just concerned the one hit build will be ruined if the hammer gets a considerable buff. I just finsihed playing some games with this build and its really fun. I cant help myself to use this build almost every time i play zealot. Just in case, i already started recording some gameplay, bonking a clueless daemonhost never gets old. :D Also i rarely saw someone with a one shot build during my 1200h playtime. But i have to admit im selfish and bias about the hammer and this particular use of it.
A couple of days ago I wrote on a note "chain axe, thunder hammer, bolter, flamer" because those were the weapons I wanted to look to be using. Coicidence?
Fair point, appologies. I made the assumption that people will pause and look if they feel interested. I have another video from a few months back explaining and sharing all the data if that interests you.
Only thing I disagree with: Vraks 7 HH (you said autogun tho) doesn't need to delete maniacs. It deletes everything else extremely well. Other than bosses, Dreg Bruisers, unarmored ragers, and Crushers, the V7 basically annihilates everything in Damnation, limited by your head-clicking ability. Underrated gun. Hundreds of hours with it, and I can barely make myself put it down.
Its a fun gun. BTW the Headhunter's are all Headhunter Autoguns. But guns that aren't good at killing the single most dangerous to a run enemy in the game, specialists, just don't make the regular cut for me. Its what my gun must do well or I don't need it.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I get your point. Although that's why I pair with a Devil's Claw. But on the other hand, if this means all guns are ruled out that can't swiftly kill a maniac, it significantly narrows the range of available balance options.
@@moksound19 well that's my main problem with a lot of guns. I'll use them and get by just fine. You can and should just play whatever is fun, its a Tide game. But from a purely balance perspective the number 1 thing I need a gun for as a zealot, or as any character really, is to eliminate trappers, flamers, bombers, snipers and ideally even dogs. These are targets that can absolutely end a run yet usually strike from some semblance of range. Sure you can run them down some of the time but not always. This is why the revolver is king, and throwing knives are well loved by zealots. For vet the columnus has become the GOAT due to its ability to be shot at most things but also take out specialists quickly. Specialists have an outsized impact on the game so they get outsized attention in a gun choice. Whereas melee I just do whatever I like.
Yeah I don't get JTC's reasoning. I found the horde clearing of the assault CS to be spotty, the charge attacks lacking the oomph and the LMB spam a bit chaotic and inconsistent cuz of the strange swing pattern. The heavy chainaxes charge attacks are so good if you can spam them without getting hit you'll rack up the kills.
I haven't used mk 4 Chainaxe in a very long while - might have to give it another chance heh. btw, could you share the link to the weapon damage spreadsheet you've featuring in the video please?
"He's saying that about the Mk4 Chainaxe and probably the Mk12 Chainaxe" THERE'S MORE THAN 1 CHAINAXE!! When was that added? I've had a Chainaxe Zealot(it's a tossup between Thunderhammer or Chainaxe being my fave) and Vet since the start but I completely missed a second Chainaxe.
As someone who isnt a 40k nerd nor really all that interested in the lore (its neat if i learn some, but im not going to go out of my way to find it), i think in the case of something like the boltgun, even if its not good against carapace armor in lore.... it would be fine thematically to make it good against carapace in game. Its a giant, unweildy gun shooting thick exploding shells as far as i can tell; yeah i can believe that would punch through armor. As for if its a good balance change or needed? No idea. My point is moreso you can look at lore to get a general idea of how something should play for the most part... but you also have room to play with what a player using the weapon would assume it should do without the lore to help shape the gun if need be. The lore being balanced around a TTRPG doesnt necessarily translate into it being balanced for a l4d type game.
buff hammer, remove self stun, as far as being too good at boss killing. I kind of agree about boss killing but when you are dedicating your entire build to one hit, on a tight timing, in melee, easily interrupted or the boss moving away or aoe attacking etc..... i don't think it's too strong, if you take the other three classes and fully dedicate your build to boss killing. In a single skill cd all the classes can delete a boss, psyker being the weakest and needs a buff but can be done so does it really matter if zealots version of it is a difficult combo on a trash weapon in melee range? really?
All the chainaxe needs is just better dodges than 2 handed weapons, and it'll be fine. I'm of the opinion that the thunder hammer stun can partially stay for the feel of the weapon, but it needs to let you defend yourself during that time. Have the stun prevent you from attacking and pushing, but let you dodge and block. Let Thammer players use their defensive tools after a special attack, but keep the lull in offense after one still. It definitely needs to be able to 1 tap all non-boss enemies with a charged special + thrust. That's the point of the weapon, the big enemy delete button. You can force it with a headshot crit from FoF on ogryns and maulers, but you can't do it without that. Whatever direction that they take for the bolter, it needs to not be pigeonholed into a precision weapon role to get reasonable damage. That's how it currently is, and it sucks because of its terrible handling and recoil making it entirely unfun to use, since you need headshots to do good damage. It needs to do more base damage on body hits, and its damage needs to be normalized across body parts so that it can reliable 1 shot regular enemies. Probably have it 1 shot headshot or 2 shot body shot most human sized elites/specials outside of maybe maulers, mutants, and ragers. I've always thought that the agrippina shotgun's regular shells have felt lackluster, and I almost exclusively use it with the slug shot, since it's so good. The only time I use the regular shot is for spamming it at shooter/special heads, since it doesn't have the damage to kill them in 1 shot, even to the head. I've felt like the lawbringer shotgun is outclassed by the kantrael shotgun ever since it's release, and now it's outclassed by the hacker shotgun too. I just don't really feel like it has its own niche, and the other 2 shotguns are just better in almost every way. I really want to love the vraks VII headhunter, but yeah, its damage is so unnecessarily nerfed vs a lot of priority targets that it just isn't capable of doing its job of being a headshot king properly. Modding a scope on it helped a lot, but it would help a ton if it had a togglable magnified scope for longer range shots by default. I tried using the modded magnified scopes, but I couldn't deal with having it for closer ranges.
I love his vt content and all, but I can't help but feel like all the points jtc makes for Darktide is simply parroting the loudest voices from the forums instead of taking a stance on what feels best for the game's identity. I feel like as a tide veteran he would appreciate how lower ttks and weapon specializations lead to a more interesting flow of gameplay, but here we are homogenizing armor classes because the game is balanced towards throwing clown caravans of elites and specials at you (I get that for ratmen and cultists, but plowing through entire battalions of battle-hardened soldiers and specialists is still a niggling gripe I have in matters of tone). 22:33 Given his videos on smite, he'd probably argue for brainswitch weapons to exist on the highest difficulties because PvE games should prioritize accessible playstyles over skill expression. 23:35 I actually quite like the feel of the headhunter mk7.The zoom it already provides is sizeable and functional for the firefights in this game. Scopes can still be pretty cool aesthetically and I'm still holding out hope for the weapon customization update 3 years down the line. Definitely feel like I'm gimping myself when comparing to the other sniper weapons though.
I was hoping they make ogryn gun absolutely op with very low ammo, like a ripper gun having 120 reserve ammo and tge kickback 35 feels wierd, like where does he carry that, another thing i never liked is the way toughness is presented, there isn't explanation whybits there, i did find a mod that give you the refracto shield, only aesthetically, but it made me think it would be cool each class has a lore reason for toughness, the vet has a shoddy refracto shield, zealot has a relic powered with faith and feeds of melee kills while other classes dont, psyker couod use its abilities for a shield and has the most between classes, ogryns can have no bar but have damg resist againts smaller targets but have a ludicrous amount of HP and generate toughness for the team passively while other classes dont do that, idk just a autistic ramble on the side
Make bolter strong against others than flak and carapace and give zealot/veteran a melta! Short range super effective beam weapon that makes holes in flak and carapace. Those things are tank killers along with las-cannons and missiles, not bolters.
I HAAATE the chain axes but I said the same thing when he mentioned the Chain swords I did a double take because AINT NO WAY the chain swords can be considered acceptable clear I have double the clear or ANY chain sword iv seen with my Tac axe and that is NOT a joke. I know im only about +300 zealot but come on theres no way to defend chain sword clear
I don't like the Chain Axes because the sound effects sound bad compared to the Chain Swords, also the Chain Swords feel more versatile. That said, would like to see Zealot get the two-handed Chain Axe the Maulers carry.
Not necessarily. If I remember correctly, they use a larger caliber (.75 cal) of boltgun shell for their bolt-guns-pistols-rifles (and maybe heavy bolters I'm not really sure). Regular humans use smaller shells for practicality and ease of use on bolt pistols and rifles. The space marines do actually use rarer and purpose built boltrounds when fighting specific enemies, more situational.
I to love the chain weapons, even consider myself a eviscerator craftsman agree with most everything you say on this. Also OP is boring, gimme a weapon I can take time to learn and master!
I don't get the argument for chain axes having more dodge distance. What about the axe screams "mobility"? If anything, the chainsword should be mobile, while the axe chews through heavier enemies.
Exactly my thoughts. And, quite literally, exactly how it is now.
Axes might not be as mobile as one handed sword but it shouldn’t be less mobile than a two handed weapon. I gotta agree with that
the logic my brain can string together is, if axes don't out damage then they should out maneuver so that the damage is more reliable.
Everything he said about chainaxes is a headscratcher. The Orestes has the unique property of its lights functioning like saw attacks, which means it deals substantial damage to heavy armor like Crushers out of the box. That's a niche by itself. If one really wanted to buff the chainaxes I would have gone for more blocking and pushing efficiency instead of le dodge count. You also got to remember that we don't have 2H axes yet to compare the mobility of the rest of the weapons against, thematically speaking.
I also thought the chain axe would be a bit unwieldy due to being so top heavy.
Finally, nuclear drama
EDIT: Now that i've had time to watch, my response:
Chaxes: A well made and convincing argument that has convinced me to change my mind.
Thammer: I agree adding additional damage for Flak and Carapace and none for unyielding on the special is also a solid change, but I'd argue the addition of an AoE stagger on the hammer would make it too similar to the crusher's special (not saying crusher is bad - its an underrated weapon). Right now we only have 3 two handed blunt weapons in the game and I'd argue its better if each of them have something unique about them for the sake of variety rather than changing the thunderhammers's special to function more like the crusher's. The main issue I (and others) take with the thunderhammer's stun is it feels clunky and odd, and altering the stun to feel less clunky would also be a good change instead of outright removing it (by either reducing the movement reduction during the stun, or allow you to block during the stun in the Mk II's case specifically).
Bolter: Overall I agree with the proposed changes (1.3 to 1.5 isn't that much more of an increase, bodyshot buffs are necessary and equalizing limb damage would be sweet) but I think our differences in stances here boil down to a difference in what the perceived role of the bolter should be. I specifically argue its position for an anti armor weapon because 1) the ranged options for anti armor is woefully lacking (revolver/plasma/hellbore on vet with surgical, exe stance and weakspot damage/ripper guns with can opener if you're counting ogryn), 2), the way the weapon handles feels as if it should be an anti armor tool, and is disappointing when it is not (As i mentioned I'm of the belief that fun/enjoyment > Lore accuracy, which I plan to further explore in my next video) and 3), weapon right now best functions as a fineese-esque, headshot weapon which we have more than enough of (which is also why I'm specifically hesitant of asking for increased flak armor damage, because if the ADS jank is ever fixed and its flak breakpoints are improved, the one shot bodyshot breakpoints for flak armor can easily cause it to be another special sniping weapon, of which we have more than enough of)
Flamer: I completely agree the flamer should be trash against carapace armor - I forgot to mention that in the original video and failed to catch it in editing which is on me. The flamer should realistically follow the pattern of how it functions in vermintide with it being good against hordes and worthless against super armor/carapace, but I made the argument it should be slightly better versus flak armor (which it technically is now after the slight damage buff, which I think makes it perfectly fine now) due to some of the hordes being protected by flak, and because darktide typically has more enemies on the playing field than vermintide does at high base game difficulties.
Good points all around! I enjoy having a healthy discussion with other people from the community, and think that until Fatshark starts to pump out the content this is a great way to interact with each other.
I will say that I am of the personal belief that darktide's balance should not be completely centered around the lore of 40k or the weapons within it. I am currently working on a video to explore this topic more in depth (since its a belief I've held for a long time), but table top games are inherently different than video games and cannot be balanced in the same way. I do think that lore should absolutely be considered for the basic functions and interactions of things that exist within a form of media to help establish a living breathing world, but there should be a healthy amount of wiggle room to allow for logical changes that ensures that our enjoyment of the game does not suffer for the sake of lore accuracy.
Hello JTC! Pleasure to have you in my comments. I actually dropped by your stream a little bit ago but couldn't stay for very long. Hope you're well. I'll try to address a few points here and look forwards to your video you mention at the bottom.
Thammer: While there is a risk of some similarity, I think that with the continued existence of self stun and the significant damage differences between the thammer and power maul that the thammer will feel sufficiently distinct. Large, slow, Thrust held swings from the hammer with a small AOE and self stun will probably feel very different compared to the somewhat spammable Indignatus Crusher's variable AOE empowered stuns which allow the user to remain mobile. I agree the self-stun feels clunky and odd, but I believe a weakness like that is something to learn around. Back on game launch I learned to play around the stun at twice its current duration and thought it was an interesting drawback to powerful strikes. I'm not sure how to make it feel less weird but I think its acceptable for it to just feel bad as a juxtaposition for incredible payout, which is what it currently lacks.
Bolter:
1. I agree we are lacking ranged anti-armor. I think that is mostly a good thing. I also think the way to fix that is to add the weapons we are missing that could do that job, like the leaked melta gun, rather than occupy that space with weapons not appropriate to it. The reason I say its a good thing is because ranged weapons remove a lot of risk associated with certain enemies. Point, click, problem solved is not nearly as thrilling as being forced into melee with a group of crushers. By having more limited options for eliminating packs of armored enemies with ranged we get the opportunity to shine against harder, riskier, melee threats.
2. I think it just feels like a bolter and want to see it perform as one so this is probably just an expectations thing. I never expected the bolter to be especially good against high toughness heavy armor enemies, but I expect it to be competent. A middle ground from lasguns no-damage to plasma guns high damage. Which is about where it sits.
3. I hate that its a finesse weapon, it should be a power weapon and I think our proposals actually more or less align on this point.
I do look forwards to your video as I think we agree on your central point that lore is meant to inform the balance but not be the balance and I'll be interested in your framing of the problem.
@@jtcLIVE Good to see you two are being so civil in this debate. It’s a nice breath of fresh air from the shouting matches of most internet dramas.
@@Epicmonk117 Couldn't agree more with you. World needs more this kind of conversations and behaviour in all walks of life.
What I'd like to see is another boltgun variant. They could balance Locke more towards soft targets the way you discussed with JTC and a the new variant could be something slower, more accurate semi-auto only with less ammo and better anti-armor capabilities. 🤔
@@Terentios IDK if there’s any lore precedent for this, but we could make it a pump-action weapon firing .998 cal heavy bolts instead of .75 cal standard bolts.
Or just, y’know, give us a damn heavy bolter for ogryn already. C’mon, Fatshark, what’s the holdup?
I appreciate you bringing numbers to the conversation with all your tests it makes you logic easier to follow
In a sad sort of way I am lucky that DT updates its balance so slowly because my numbers from 6 months ago are still valid.
"Chain axe used to be so bad"
Me polishing my Obscurus force sword, after the removal of infinite dodges, when I kept playing "melee" psyker builds without a staff for weeks NON STOP:
"What was that? Must have been the wind"
I shoulda mentioned the obscurus.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I still love it. For me, Obscurus and/or Deimos are the corner stone of the ultimate challenge playstyle: melee psyker. Obscurus for obvious reasons. The recent slightly buff to the strikedown heavy was welcome. It would be nice to have a more distinct horde clear combo on it. Dodge distance is a bit meh on it, and in some situations that can cost you a game, but you cannot have everything.
@@definitelynotadam Idk how melee Psyker is a "challenge build," unless you're specifically using the Obscurus. Illissi, Deimos, and Dueling Sword are all amazing Psyker exclusive weapons that pair perfectly with right tree Psyker. Deimos has a pretty clear horde clear pattern, the Obscurus doesn't really.
Absolutely the Thunder Hammer special needs to hit hard - much harder than it does now!
Keeping the stun is (I feel) a necessary balancing factor to its power, but also because physics - that much power being output into the face of a target means the power is also acting or is being absorbed by the user. This manifests itself as the stun/recoil from absorbing the impact you just dished out (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and all that).
i dont think, that thunder hammer should hit harder. I'd rather have other weapons hit weaker.
Talked about it multiple times. But the current balancing has a massive issue of cycling wrongdoings.
Fatshark makes weapon. Players use that weapon. Players see, that the weapon cant kill all targets they want. Players whine about it on forums. Fatshark buffs the weapon. Now enemies pose no threat to players, because their weapon perfectly kills any type of enemy. Fatshark throws more enemies at players to balance it out.
Which repeats the cycle.
A fkin psyker rapier doing better job at killing crushers, than thunderhammer is not because thunderhammer weak. It's because rapier strong. I wont even mention the stupid combat knife, that thing shouldnt even tickle crusher.
But here we are, with many weapons oneshotting the most armored enemy in the game.
If we tone down other weapons and reduce amount of elites - thunderhammer will be in a perfect place.
If we dont want to nerf other weapons and keep waves of 10+ crushers and maulers and bulwarks. Fine, then thunderhammer needs a buff. But i'd rather have something AoE going on for hammers. Like MkIV crusher stagger on multiple enemies. Obviously hammer can charge and hit far slower than MkIV indignatus. But he also deals far more dmg per hit. So both weapons still have their use. One against massive hordes. Another against waves of armored elites.
I really wish the thunder hammer would have no stun unless you hit something Ogryn sized or larger.
I think this would be too strong of a buff, but being able to knock a crusher or bulwark down with a charged thunder hammer would feel incredibly good alongside the recoil. Plays into the powerfantasy of wielding something unruly and powerful. The only issue is I can see a zealot casually soloing an entire train of crushers with this change.
The more cleave he's right about, but the stun removal he's right about too. Against a group of specials its basically a death sentence to bother winding up a one shot, if I go for it when I have an opening, im gonna eat a huge amount of damage because of the stun recovery after hit. It's horrible feeling and horrible at its one job
I think the hammer should blow through enemy rather than stun. Like the old space marine game, just a smaller version but still the same power buff in lore.
I always like reading in Guardsmen books how Bolters are set up like machine gun nests, never knew about how often they were used in the Guard before I started reading 40k.
I've been lobbying for an AoE stun on hammer charge since forever. Hope to see it soon.
I was won over by the lobbyists
Well yeah, I mean I guess that's it, JTC and Reginald have to fight to the death.
Nah, I'd win.
I had many of the same thoughts when i first watched the jtc video. A lot of the suggestions from jtc were just making the items easier to use in most situations instead of balancing the weapons for their niche
Same here, although I do love his videos. The bolter was where I felt this the most. As long as there are ways to manage the weaknesses I would keep them and use them to "buy" strengths in other areas.
I wouldn't reduce the ready time at all while zealots have the blades interaction and vets have exe stance (although that is a whole other discussion). Even reload times I would keep as they are with the available talents and techs. I would keep those drawbacks and buff the janky ADS and breakpoints. I'm still getting a feel for their buffed ammo reserve.
Also, I do miss the FotF interaction on my zealot so while I agree with the lore roles vs armour I would be really happy if they adjusted the shattering impact blessing to have a faster ramp up and create a scenario where you either bless pinning fire for groups or shattering impact for hard targets.
Even before the buff, jct's comments on the flamer confused me because when I ran with it I didn't have a problem burning away my problems except for ogryns and monsters. Those were for my hammer or evicerator. And while it makes some sense for fire to ignore the armor and go through the gaps and heat the armor to where the wearer is being cooked. It will take a comparatively unreasonable amount of time for either of those effects to pay back dividends. That and we have to remember we're fighting Nurgle cultists, they're infamous for being relentlessly tough bastards by feeling no pain. It doesn't mean the affect of being coated in fire won't happen. It just means they won't care and will keep going and won't be rolling on the ground in pain and then dying
Right, and not just nurgle cultists. Ogryn nurgle cultists. T6 vs S4 weaponry. Not accounting for armor. I also thought the flamer was kinda ok. I'm sure its good now.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Thought it was fine then. I think it's fine now.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I was always a flamer enjoyer. With the right blessing combo you could absolutely clear hordes in seconds and do tons of DoT damage to specials and elites, it was great for the highest level content where massive swarms of enemies would corner you. A melee with high mobility was definitely needed to get yourself the prep time to hose down enemies, but when it went off it went off. it was never bad, but the buff makes it a lot more doable to fit it into builds where you don't need to build around having a flamer!
I don't see why the boltgun shouldn't be good at destroying bosses. Bosses should be the one thing it is GOOD at. Lore-wise it's not great vs carapace, and for most smaller enemies it's very clunky and inefficient to use ammo on them. It practically screams "boss killer weapon", with its massive recoil, high damage, etc.
First I want to say I appreciate not throwing shade add another content creator for this game because the pool of content creators for this game is small.
Good to hear another point of view especially from a person that likes to focus on melee talking about the melee weapons. My main character is melee exclusive and your content has helped me out tremendously without me having to put in tons of hours of gameplay testing to make it feel right. I've been able to get straight to the fun being able to crunch heads instead of having to crunch numbers. Keep doing you and I look forward to your next videos.
Awesome, im glad I saved you time!
I agree with you on basically everything up until the bolter. Prior to that you were talking about how we should not just look to lore, but once the bolter comes up you focus entirely on lore. Also, bolters are usually said to have very good armor penetration, they're used against space marines after all. It does change between who's actually writing a story, but generally bolters have better armor pen than any other weapon which we actually see in the game. I also think that tabletop rules should really only be for a basic guide and not as an actual measure of accuracy; in table top autoguns and lasrifles have the exact same profile, while pistols are exactly the same but with shorter range and no rapid fire. Table top and darktide both take liberties to balance their respective games, it doesn't make sense to compare the two.
Besides that, i did really agree with your video a lot more than jtc's and thought your balance ideas and experience with these weapons was better, but it's just weird that you seem to switch from concern about game balance to lore accuracy with the bolter, and i also think the lore isn't even as restrictive as you paint it.
Actually I spend some time discussing lore here because people just keep getting it wrong ad nauseum and suggesting bad things because of it. We absolutely should not be informed just by lore. Game feel and balance do matter. But the bolt gun, as I argue, is already just fine against carapace and even decent against ogryn in carapace
But we have to remember that ogryn, lore wise, are in a different league of tough. The charonites were neigh unkillable in the face of dedicated space marine firepower in lore. In lore bolters are not used against space Marines, its such a point of contention in the horus heresy novels that both factions develop dedicated armor piercing rounds in specific loyalists develop Kraken rounds, as I mentioned. Fighting a space marine with a standard bolter is like fighting an armored knight with a sword. You gotta find the gaps. Space Marines were designed and armed according to who their enemies were primarily. Most imperial adversaries use little armor as tough as ceramite nor carapace on their troops. It really wasn't until the heresy that ceramite quality armor became a real and consistent threat. We actually broadly agree here that tabletop rules and lore should only be guide posts for this game but I want to at least be accurate on those details before we jump away from them. That was my core intended point.
I hope I did a better job explaining my position at least. Let me know if you disagree.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Thanks for the explanation! I do still think as far as gameplay there's not really enough anti armor ranged weapons, especially for zealot, as its really just the plasma gun and zarona, which needs a big nerf carapace damage anyway. Nothing should totally trivialize armor, especially carapace, and I don't think we need more unyielding/boss melters really. But i do see your point a lot better now. Thanks for replying!
Imagine being able to disagree with someone and not go completely schizo about it. Reginald stays winning.
@@UnkieNic of your talking about tanner that dude needs help like for real
@@Assisted_Living_Draculayeah that tanner dude will scream and wine for 10 mins he’s a massive dork
@@KingKhalid888also resistant to any advice or learning. Everyone else is at fault/wrong.
@@busch_ii7450 I only listen to Reginald, telepots and Ryken
@@KingKhalid888 good choice. Tanner did make a couple really really good videos some 5 months ago. Basics, machanics, etc. but the delivery is hampering this „no nonsense, hard facts“ approach. Normally i really like that.
Honestly I was a little anxious about seeing a counter argument to a balance video; I've seen some wild takes and off kilter suggestions (like people insisting that the Bolter should be bad against infested) and was afraid this might be that but this turned out to be a great video. I actually had watched and commented on the JTC video and it was nice to see a genuinely good counter perspective on all the points presented in that video here.
I can say that I really agree with the mindset of making weapons stand out by emphasizing their strengths over just eliminating their weakness. I can say that with JTC's suggestions, I didn't have many feelings on their suggestions for the Chainaxe or Thunder Hammer. I've been using and enjoying the Chainaxe since release, despite my peers disliking it, so I kind of assumed that maybe it was widely regarded as a poor weapon but I was just acclimatized to it. Their Thunder Hammer suggestion didn't really click w/ me and I actually like your suggestion a lot more.
My big comment on JTC's video mainly revolved around the Bolter and the Flamer, the short of which can best be summarized by a relationship I drew between the Bolter and Flamer versus the Plasma Gun and Revolver. Similar to what you mentioned, I don't think the Bolter should be good at Armor Pen; I'd rather the explosive potential of the weapon be emphasized. To paraphrase an idea from my comment on that video: "If Revolver and Plasma Rifles cut through a hoard to Kill a Priority Target, then the Bolter and the Flamer should be like slamming a door in the hoard's face, growing less effective, but still having the capacity to slow down enemies the higher up in level of armor you go. In my mind, they should be weapons whom's utility lies in making space. While that means they (The Bolter and the Flamer) share that utility, I think the flamer should be even more specialized in that role than the Bolter, in the same way that the Plasma Gun is even better at cutting through a hoard than the Revolver is. The utility of being able to make space on command is balanced by having a weapon that is slower, clunkier weapon with lower ammo reserves than more generalized tools."
I'm also glad that someone else is finally pointing out the currently weak place the Headhunter is at. All in all, great video.
Thanks very much! I do like your analogy to the flamer and bolter compared to the revolver and plasma.
It'd be cool if Boltguns on the tabletop got something like Anti-Infantry 4+ (Hell, even 5) because the bullets explode inside targets. That's uhh...definitely going to wound things a hell of a lot easier than pure lead.
In Darktide, them being good against unyielding makes perfect sense. Cause excessive internal area damage. Size can't do much against internal explosions.
I was about to talk about the changes the thunder hammer needs, but you just said what I wanted to say. Good points!
I'm just posting this for the algorithm.
Thanks friend! Glad we're in agreement.
Boltgun lore got me thinking, in Necromunda tabletop, Enforcers get super cheap bolt guns with drum mags, why not keep the stats more or less where they are and just up the ammo pool?
Id be fine at this point if that was another pattern but id like to see the bolt gun be as boltgunny as possible instead of the inferior autogun it is now
I watched that video and was like what?... this doesnt sound like something Reginald would say.. and he knows Chain Axes! Glad you put this video out GJ!
Thanks much! I spent a lot of time on the bolter because its probably in the sorriest state. But I can't resist a good chaxe conversation.
11:00 IMO the thing the force swords should do is have unusual psi-buffed attacks, such as one that drains your victim’s HP to heal yourself, or one that chucks out an energy wave that pierces enemies in a line.
Thats a sick idea
@@Reginald-sc9tk Thank you. I just wanna see psykers do more weird shit.
Also, forgot to mention this earlier, but I 110% agree with you on the ogryn heavy bolter. Give the ogryn a heavy bolter already, Fatshark!
From 2nd edition 40K; which is the definitive edition and the purest ideal of 40K.
This is objectively true because I read the core rulebook, wargear book and background book at a bit too young an age back in 1994 and it rewrote my brain.
This is the weapons and armour stats from 2E (mostly identical to 1st edition).
It was before 3E simplified Armour Piercing to be all or nothing.
(Yeah it is odd from modern 40K that lasgun and bolter has identical -1 armour save modifier)
Boltgun: Strength 4, -1 Save Mod.
Flamer: Strength 4, -2 Save Mod (yeah this is a bit odd given Flak)
Autogun: Strength: 3, No Save Mod.
Lasgun: Strength: 3, -1 Save Mod.
Plasma Gun: Strength: 7, -2 Save Mod.(1 sustained fire dice, needs to recharge for 1 turn after firing).
Ogryn Rippergun: Str: 4, No Save Mod. 2 sustained fire dice. Auto hit at short range (0-6") -2 to hit Long Range (6-12")
Chain Sword: Strength 4, -1 Save Mod. Parry (can choose to force opponent to reroll their higher attack dice)
Chain-Axe: As user +1, Save Mod: -2 (probably strength 4 as normal humans were STR 3 base, STR 4 for Marines) - introduced in Codex: Chaos 2E from 1996. So was more a Chaos SM weapon.
Flak Armour: 6+ Save/5+ vs Blast Weapons (anything with blast markers like frag grenades/missiles, flamers etc)
Mesh Armour: 5+ Save (only 90's kids and Eldar players will remember this)
Carapace Armour: 4+ Save
Power Armour: 3+ Save.
Insanely based post dredging up the true source material.
@@Reginald-sc9tk
Whilst I did check some very battered rulebooks and less battered PDFS, It's a worrying sign how much I perfectly remembered.
Absolutely agree with all your points. Keep up the great work!
Thanks very much!
Agreed on all points 🤙
Balancing weapons according to how they perform in the lore should be considered, but it shouldn’t be high on the priority list.
There’s nothing lore accurate about a team of 4 Astra Militarum dudes taking on 2,000+ traitor guard every mission they deploy on.
Good to see you Jeficus! I think it should be high on the priority list, but the adherence should not be perfect. If its not high enough on the priority list we just get a veneer of 40k on a hoard game. That doesn't make sense. But its not the only factor for sure, internal game balance should matter a lot.
I agree with you overall, Bolt weapons should be killing unarmored enemies as well as infested.Flak should reduce the damge by 15-30% while Carapace (unpowered Ceramite) should have 50-75% damage reduction. It should stagger Crushers at 3+ body shots and only 1 at head shot, anything other than Ogryns and Monstrosities should be staggered in 1 shot.
Bolt weapons should be horde clearing, high CC/stagger weapon and should be above to a simple Revolve in regards to damage, especially since it's a miniature RPG/rocket that penetrate and explode inside the target's body. I would suggest to make the Revolver like a shotgun that have damage fall off above 15-25 meters and be the same damage as Vraks Headhunter Autogun, which they need to buff the damage in the first place, but has a close range buff to differentiate vs Autogun. Kinda like a shotgun where the closer the target is the higher the damage and can penetrate Flak but reduced against Carapace by at least 30% instead of 50+% since there's a close range buff (within 10m) and should have higher damage than Bolt weapon, in close range.
By having a Plasma weapon in the game, the Bolter shines with its original usage and be closer to lore accuracy. It shouldn't be at the same category as Plasma with regards to its usage (anti-armor vs unarmored) and it will bring its iconic status no shame vs other weapons (especially the Revolver). Now if they add the Hotshot Lasgun, Melta gun and other iconic weapons, they wouldn't have a nerf Revolver (if they do nerf it) to compare against with and wouldn't tranish the lore they took it from. But if they didn't touch the Revolver, many people will be dissatisfied because a simple Revolver outshines all of the iconic weapons of 40k.
I felt a wave of relief when you busted out the numbers. I felt like I had just sat down after a hard day.
Damn. Straight credible facts. A wonderful Oasis in this desert. Please carry on.
I try to be provide some precision considering how complex DT can be
You've made a fantastic example on how to disagree with someone in a way that is respectful and ushers in further discussion. Thank you for everything you do =)
I am not really a WH 40k nerd/fan, but it is very odd to me that the flamethrower in this game is bad against carapace. Hot, sticky fire has, historically, been a fantastic way to deal with armored targets! Both on an infantry level, tanks, whatever. I'm sure it's for game balance, but I would love the primary bottleneck to be something like total ammo or ammo consumption, like you brought up.
I recently found your channel, and I think it's folks like you, Jtc, and others that really help keep this games community alive =)
Thanks for your kind words. In 40K the heavy flamer can handle carapace but the flamer itself cannot, and the toughness of ogryn means they can tough out quite a bit of flamer fire but less so the heavy flamer. So that's where I draw my inspiration from on crushers vs say reapers.
Hes evolved into the reaction youtuber. Also your pumping these videos. Oh what are your thoughts on the new helldivers upgrades, I like them but my friends say its to grindy.
Lol, I guess that's technically true. Does this mean I'm officially washed up? As to pumping the videos I got another one should be out tomorrow on Helldivers. I was wondering what would happen if I just giga-ground and pushed out a ton of good quality content as fast as I could.
to the point of helldivers - i think the upgrades are cool! I like the mortars one. I don't care too much about the grind because I don't grind games, I get mats organically and just let the new stuff come as it comes. But my feeling is there's a fundamental problem with these upgrades in that it just becomes the new baseline after a while since it permanently alters your gameplay experience and you can't unequip them. There's no trade offs to consider its just BETTER.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I would like more wacky changes and make them togglable, I feel like the new mortar is them trying it out. Also Loving seeing you in my recommend more often just don't want you to over work yourself, ive heard the big tubers get very eppy
@@Reginald-sc9tk I was trying to discuss this on reddit yesterday (with horrible results). I really think they aren't healthy long term. We're either gonna have to keep power creeping everything to stay in line with our upgrades, or just stop having new upgrades (which I'd like, but we need something cool for endgame to use samples on that isn't permanent).
But yeah this could be solved by making them all upgrades that give you something good and something bad or have a max amount you can have equipped at a time.
Oh yeah the only 2 DT creators I watch will have beef. Ok to be real I respect you two so much. I dont tink any real beef will ever emerge, but a back and forth discussion would be fun : )
Now that you opened the door for wanting a heavy bolter for ogryns (I do too, this game was my first 40k game and holy shit the amount of lore is nuts) I want a melta gun for zealots, plasma pistol for vet, and I sadly dont know what to add for psykers except another force weapon type
Melta for vets and zealots would be cannon and frankly where is it?! Its been in the files for an age. Plasma pistol! Psykers could have other force weapons beyond what they have and that would be fun. More staff types too.
@@Reginald-sc9tk tbh part of me thinks what's holding the Melta back from being in the game is that noone could agree what exactly the Melta gun does. Like is it a close range weapon like a shotgun that shoots a cone of superheated plasma? Is it a more mid range option that shoots a beam? Is it like the flamer's primary fire where its like a burst of lingering damaging cloud? Who knows? The lore is pretty vague and there were multiple interpretations on how it works throughout the years, with each interpretation changing how it would work in game.
I've never felt more like an adeptus mechanicus member than trying to figure out what exactly the meltaguns fire. Someone more versed in the lore might know, but I don't.
Its not really clear but I favor the heat ray interpretation. Close range hold on target raygun.
@@randomguyblank1616 Anti armour/anti tank single target, close range beam of fusion energy pretty sure its always meant to have been that, i guess you can debate if its a continuous beam or a single burst, i think burst is more accurate to how its portrayed in the tabletop and would be more fun
lore wise the bolter are meant to be good against armor its designed to go through armor and explode inside the target. its not the best at it but it good
You're talking a lot of sense, and I hope Fatshark takes your feedback to heart when making changes. Thanks for the quality Darktide content my guy.
I am glad to see such a civil conversation about this game, when i watched JTClive video, my first thought was "what would Regi say about Mark 4 Chainaxe?" and here we are. Ngl i will take a side of a chainaxe cultist on this topic, rather than JTClive's side, it's just makes sense to me.
I don't like thunderhammers in general, cos they work more as a "delete boss button" rather than being an actually useful weapon, and stealthknife zealot can deal with bosses really well while still be good against heavier elites, so i will gladly see thunderhammers be reworked in something more useful.
About bolters - i am on a side of turning it into a good marksman weapon rather than going for full auto destruction. I think Tanner has a good vet marksman build for bolter, and this is where it should lean to in my opinion. Marksman with fullauto option if situation calls for it. And yeah, limb damage and body damage on trash mobs should be better. AND OF COURSE REMOVE THAT JANK AIMING WHY IS IT EVEN A THING?! It's still leaves a question of "why headhunters and lucius lasguns are bad as marksman weapons?" and i don't have the answer for that.
When the patch dropped and i didn't have time to run with flamer i too thought that it will be bad and agreed with JTClive, but then i tried it and a flamer still was very good at what it does - control elites with M1 (and Fan the Flames) and delete hordes with M2. And that before buff dropped. PSA: Flamer video is also a good showcase of a fact that even without rendering flamer still does his job totally fine.
However we got the buff anyway, and now flamer is better than it was with rending in my opinion - more power means more stagger with M1, and i am always for that.
It was a very good video, Regi, this is what i really wonna see in this community - real balance conversations between content creators on a respectable level.
Bolter needs the limb damage normalization the plasma gun got last year. Even the revolvers and all other range weapons have the limbs hit's causing lost damage and stagger, but bolter just like plasma is a power weapon and needs to by pass that. We had the no self stun on thunder hammers do to a animation cancel bug, and fatshark saw that as OP so removed it. I think it should AoE stun us AND all near by enemies, with a small window in recovery in the players favor like 0.3 sec.
If anything it should be more like explosive weapons in other shooters and just do a lot of damage regardless of where you aim. The revolvers should rely on critical and headshot damage while the bolter can just get body shots.
I remember the first eviscerator and how I became a pro at heavy light light to clear hordes. New one is lol spam light attack.
I have to imagine they made it for people who cannot be bothered to learn attack combos?
Doom shotgun is the most fun I’ve had this week.
Yeaa, shame the mk 15 is such a snooze and also better than the mk2
Game design hard. :) My only bit is that if something is going to be unwieldy, it better goddamn do it's designated job or it will be ignored. The Thunderhammer is a great example of a weapon where this happens. While I appreciate the value of a meme pick, having seen demonstrations of their cleave making it useless against hordes I was just baffled that it is implemented that way.
7:26 and make so if the special hit is a crit the sound is like a 50 cal reverberating into all corners of existence
I've argued in the past that the TH shoulda always vaporize your enemies on kill.
@@Reginald-sc9tk as it rightously should
Another bolter mk would be sweet but the one we have now could use slight revisit on damage values against different types. From highest to lowest; Unarmored>Infested>Maniac>Flak>Unyielding>Carapace. Slight improvement in stagger rate against unyielding and carapace. Makes bolter annihilate what you expect, be good against light armor and medium toughness but mediocre with heavy armor and greater toughness. Current reloading and equip speeds are rough but should stay around.
Another thing i would love to have is more interesting blessings and some to promote accuracy or quality of fire. Something like: Weak spot hits gaining stacking bleed or Critical kills gain more stagger and damage radius.
Oh an totally fix the damn ADS and recoil spaz.
Wondering if you have a video lined up for shock mauls! Been running the Agni Mk la and its been serving me pretty well, just not sure what to build it for nor which mk is better for which scenario.
I'm working on the Agni and then the indy is my plan. I gotta do a lot of testing though.
CHAD chaxe enthusiast DESTROYS youtuber with FACTS and LOGIC.
Jokes aside, kudos to you for the respect and restraint while tackling these *interesting* takes.
Good points all around!
I prefer the Chain Axe (the old MK) over any of the other chain weapons, probably one of my favorite weapons in general.
Its an elite club of chaxe adherents.
I wish some of the jank around adsing with the bolter was removed. Carapace dmg is okayish and actually forces you to invest in crits or shattering. After so many hours, the last thing i want is a do-it-all weapon. Finding workarounds, combos and synergies between talents is a minigame in itself. And this is why i enjoy the tac axe rn.
This guy gets it
I mean I can kind of understand where they're coming from on the Flamer Armor Penetration front, after all if you breath in fire no matter how well armored you are, you're going to die choking. But the big two Carapaced enemies the Crusher and Mauler also have full helmets which could easily have Rebreathers built in. Personally I would want the Flamer to be able to suppress melee enemies except for Infested, Fanatics, Carapace, and Monstrous, after all if you aren't undead, insane, or mostly immune avoiding walls of literal fire is an instinctive response.
I think one of my biggest gripes with the thunder hammers right now is that the special attack has zero cleave. Nothing feels worse than having a rager or mauler charging you, powering your hammer, winding up a full-strength heavy, and then some poxwalker sticks its elbow in the way, eats your strike, and the rager/mauler kills you while you're stunned. Giving it the ability to cleave through a trash mob or two before catching on an elite like the eviscerators do now would make it feel a lot better IMO.
Check out the ironhelm
@@Reginald-sc9tk heh, goes to show how little I've actually messed around with the weapon variants.
@@yautl1 Its not like its easy to do so.
@@Reginald-sc9tk In my defense when I tried a stock one out in the psykanium its moveset didn't feel meaningfully different from the Crucis; and I already had both a pretty nice Crucis, and a lot of other weapons I wanted to build too.
Honestly Bolter is my curent primary on my Vet for Auric Mealstorms. Sure you need to build around it and its blessings but you need to do that with every weapon. Now Plasma is absolutely better for Crushers etc. but in my experience, marked Crusher and single press of autofire aimed for the head does bring the Crusher down in one click.
I enjoy the Bolter a lot because of its versatility and general enjoyment of using it. I don't want to play with "THE BEST" weapons simply because some sheet says they are the best, I want to play with the weapons I enjoy and learn thru trial and error how to make them work depending on the situation.
And in this regard Bolter works wonders. Especially with the new Bleed Stack Blessing. Hord clearing, punch thru, elites etc. you can make it work if you want to. But not everything needs to be THE BEST at everything. Even the reload speed isn't something that I ever felt like being too slow. If anything it feels to fast... :D
Bolter was just buffed more or less along the lines of this video and I think its goated now. It was never that weak anyway.
The Chain Axe has always felt weird to me, but that's because I primarily play with the Eviscerator as my chain weapon of choice. Regardless, I've always felt that the Chain Axe should be the king of single target in the chain weapons, one handed the king of horde clear, with both having marks that make them better at doing single target or horde clear if you so wish. the Eviscerator being the one that want a healthy middle ground between, which surprisingly, the marks for the Evis actually being the ones that are made intelligently with the swing profiles going from the first mark you unlock being overhead lights with heavy sweeps and the 2nd being light sweeps and overhead heavies.
I think if we want to give Chain Axe a "niche" it should absolutely fucking annihilate single targets, regardless of what it's attacking. With some minor ability to horde clear to keep it in line without making it effectively useless at dealing with some mobs. Like it should be no contest that against anything single target the other chainswords should be on par or close to it.
The thing is, thats what the chain axe already is. If you take the right blessings its a weapon with the second best TTKs on such targets and available oneshots. The Eviscerator trades mobility for similar effect but better general capabilities.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I think it should be like that on default, not that you should need blessings to reach it.
@@Ashen_Night116 The game is balanced around blessings, no way around it.
So lore wise bolters could get a hidden mechanic modifying their damage chart, based on the targets "squishiness". Bonus damage vs. pox walkers and the like, on top of other skills/blessings/etc. But keep the low damage/stagger against carapace UNLESS we use Rending/Brittleness and similar stuff. Simulating bullets (mini rockets) hitting the soft spots through the cracked armour and activating the hidden mechanic of bonus damage vs. soft targets.
This way you won't mind the recoil and overall felling of bolter's bulk. Because you are carrying a BIG, explody nut-cracker.
Just a fast, unfiltered thought...
This is the guy who said Smite is useless despite it being the most OP ability the Pskyer has. No offense, just saying they talk nonsense sometimes.
although I'd agree that the boltgun doesn't really have any precedent at being good against carapace armor (in the fantasy flight rpgs it had exactly enough to pen imperial guard armor) I would actually like it to be better against those targets as there's a pretty intense lack of anti carapace ranged weapons. Feels like more of a zealot issue but after the most recent patch your ranged options for dealing with armor are so few and that's not likely to change anytime soon as I doubt they'd get access to hotshots and the melta gun may just never come.
I do think game balance should be slightly bent on iconic parts of a game, in the same way a fireball in dnd 5e is designed to be stronger because of it's icon status the bolt gun should be too. doesn't have to be horrendously op but it should shine, it is THE 40k gun.
I agree with this
Hey Reginald whats your thought on helbore lasguns? They're my fav las weapon but I just cant bring them to damnation difficulty, always feel like pretty much any other lasgun does their job and more.
So I'm not a great expert on them but I've run them just fine in damnation and aurics. I even did a bayonet only game somewhere in my catalogue (though they patched limbsplitter). TheWileSpice has a build guide for them and knows them better than I do so maybe check out his channel. My main issue with them is their god awful "sights".
@@Reginald-sc9tk Oh yeah, when I use the helbores I toggle my screens crosshair on and ignore the ironsights lol, also bayonet only game??? Absolute madman, respect.
Thank you for mentioning the vraks rifle. the only sniper weapon is helbore and revolver pretty much. It doesn't make sense to me that a revolver is more reliable than a long rifle for long range encounters. The burst fire varients are also pretty bad. heavy bolter for ogryns annnnnnnd autoguns are pretty meh too
I love the vraks patterns but they need a little love for sure. Revolver just OP tbh but I love it so its hard to want to nerf it.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Also discourse is good.
Agreed on the subject of lore informing game balance. Realism doesnt balance a game, but a weapon that doesnt live up to its fantasy will always be dead weight
Which is why chain axes SHOULD be better on elites. I just hate them personally because in a practical sense, my melee is for clearing and self defense and my ranged weapon is for reaching out at priority targets. Though you make an amazing case for it because Zealot really struggles with Carapace right now.
I think people really underestimate how effective zealot is in melee once you clear the skill cap. I regard crushers and maulers as the most fun enemies. A lot of people seem to be holding onto a notion that the FotF ranged crit nerf was a serious blow to zealot when it was really no big deal.
The thunder hammers really need to be doing more armor damage. Kinetic energy transfers directly into objects that have no give and wont move out of the way. So the fact that they have no armor damage COMPLETELY pisses all over the fantasy of a thunder hammer. It makes ZERO sense for hammers to have low Armor damage ESPICIALLY a thunder hammer which delivers explosive shockwaves in addition to its own blunt force. Personally, I think it should get a small attackspeed nerf, a sizeable "First Target" damage buff, and a sizeable armor damage buff. Make it actually deal damage instead of knocking things down and never killing them, but still be mediocre hoard clear due to attack speed
2:07 the chainsword has wrath and shred, while the chain axe has headtaker and bloodletter, which are the best blessings for boss killing. How do they compare when the chainsword also has bloodletter?
I'm not sure. I would expect the chain axe to still be better by a fair margin based on my experience. However the reason it was done this way was because we chose the best talent build and min-max setup for each weapon then compared their outputs on a body of targets. You can focus a weapon towards other functionality but then you usually lose out a lot on what it's good at for a little gain in what its bad at.
@@Reginald-sc9tk shred and bloodletter are the best blessings though, wrath is mid.
Personally. As a flamer user and lover, I would like it changed in two fold. One, be able to be used on the veteran. Two, personally I dislike the the aim down sights for a stream of flame, I would like it if the special was a switch modes rather than a bash so that I don’t need to aim down sights the rip through a horde with the cleansing fire of the emperor
Agree with you, Reginald. Heavy bolter and meltagun when??
An idea I've been kicking around in re: the flamer...
On top of its weakness in being overspecialized for horde clear, I've noticed that people seem to rarely if ever use its primary fire--which is understandable, since the flamer's longer pullout time and the power of its secondary fire means you usually don't need a little puff of flame that staggers hordes.
What if pressing the Special button had your character inject some sort of special sauce into the promethium tank, or placed a modded thingamajig on to the barrel, that made your *next Primary fire hot* place a debuff on flak and carapace enemies that made them take more damage for a short period of time? This Special fire wouldn't itself do very much damage, but I feel like it could give the flamer a use against more heavily armored targets without becoming a game-turn-off button.
It also kinda fits with the lore, where certain factions might use alternate fuels or projectiles for their flamers, like the pre-Heresy Death Guard turning their flamers into chemical sprayers. So the lore justification for this Special shot is that the Reject applies like, sticky napalm or some corrosive substance to an armored enemy that melts or compromises their armor for a temperorary period of time.
cool idea
IMO I like the jank ADS on the bolt weapons. You can get used to it, and it fits the hard to use nature of the weapons. I also like it giving some more function to Deadshot, which the bolt weapons pair well with.
I think high and unpleasant recoil is fine but unpredictable jank looks like warp disease
I rarely comment, and tend to play just the video games of 40k, and I play darktide alot and I'm no legend at it either so I have no place making a comment here anyway but Im going to, I just found your channel and watched this on a whim an I agree with ALL of you balance opinions, I'm really shocked someone feels similarly especially about the chainaxes.
Thanks very much for taking the time to comment, if its a rarity for you. I appreciate it. I'm glad we are of a mind on the balance, its also cool to hear from another chaxe fan. Happy slaying out there.
If you have the % each staggered enemy (forgot the name of the blessing) you can throw a granade, stagger/hit 5 enemies and unload the bolter on a monsters weakspot will '1 shot' them. :)
Chain axe isn't too good vs hordes agreed but I still have missions with 1m damage while using it. It's still very viable but not easy to use for sure
I dont know if he discovered that trick but TheWileSpice put out a video on it some time back and it was pretty cool.
Yeah, its not great against hordes. But its competent. Plus I love bringing it to monstrous specialists. Its strong but not an instagibber.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I usually bring Chain axe on realot in those 'No ammo' missions. If you want to search for 'just4ticks' and see how I run it. It's very effective in those mission :)
Fully agree. I saw JTC's vid and was confused about the chainaxe. Dude use a push attack!
The thunder hammer looks even more anaemic with the pickaxes added. My mining ogryn can annihilate armoured elites but thammer can't.
Poor thammer ;(
From everything I’ve done in dark tide the side of the story I hear is like it would be nice if they did this, but we have this
The flamer is great for hoard clear
I don’t really like using it on heavy armor targets because it’s low damage and yes, you could get pen for it, but I don’t really like that
When I pick the flamethrower, I bring a hammer for everything else
And I focus entirely on holding back the horde
And keeping peoples health better than if they had not had me
Because I reduce corruption
And literally the definition of too angry to die
My veteran has four loadouts five if you really think about it, but I don’t use the fourth
Backstabber
Sharpshooter
Sergeant
Doom guy
Before loadouts name state themselves
It’s very fun
Does flamethrowers just in general don’t really care about any kind of body armor? Like the fire will make the Armour burning hot which would burn your skin anyway so it really don’t need to penetrate.
Its the difference between a flamer and heavy flamer on how it handles heavy armor.
I agree that the bolter shouldn’t be amazing against carapace armor. There’s this weird tendency to treat the bolter as a bigger deal then it is, when even space marines have several specialist weapons to deal with enemies that even heavy bolters can’t.
They should be good against everything, they are the main infantry rifle of space marines for a reason, but being especially good against carapace seems a step too far.
the camera yank of the light attacks kill this weapon for me
Perfect strike and shred makes chainswords horde cleaner, I guess that was what he meant
Chainswords are brutal AF, thats enough for me. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
Crucis was always bad outside monster deletion memes, but it's been really left in the dirt by the overall power creep of the game, both for the rejects and the enemies. Enemies got more health, so Crucis stopped being able to deliver elite 1-taps, and, perhaps even more significantly, enemy density got cranked out the wazoo. People used to talk about using camera and animation manipulation to "snipe" elites in the middle of a horde with the Crucis special, back in the days when hordes weren't composed of 15 superimposed ragers, but I really don't think that you could reliably pull off such a feat now. And even if you could, it still wouldn't kill the target! Weapons like this frustrate me - realizing that the Crucis can't 1 tap elites anymore and fixing it should take like 15 minutes of work, and instead the weapon has been left to languish for two years. On the other hand, I think it's the only truly "bad" melee weapon in the game, so that's something at least - most weapons are only bad relative to a group of overperformers (combat axe, knife, power sword, revolver, plasma, ciag5, basically any psyker weapon), but still feel good in it of themselves.
I still enjoy the bolter, its a oh shit i need a quick crusher delete button before im turn to dust, unload, stun grenade, reload, unload.
I know the vid is kinda old at this point but just wanted to give my 2 cents. Out of all the weapons in the game, I'm sort of confused what should be good against carapace armor if not a high explosive, high velocity .75 caliber, rocket propelled slug. I agree carapace armor should be a powerful tag that requires specialized weapons from a gameplay perspective, and that you're leaning on established rulebooks for your take, but when I think about the type of shot we are talking about, even if it doesn't outright penetrate the armor, getting hit in the helmet by one of these rounds would realistically scramble the brains of any living creature. I do agree with your take on the flamer though, as most common forms are made of ceramite, which is heat-resistant.
Its not that the bolter shouldn't be on the high end of armor effectiveness its just that it already is. Most guns should really struggle with carapace and force you to use specialized gear or melee weaponry instead.
i love the hammers i would love for some small buffs
I think the Recon Lasgun needs a lot of love. There's no real reason to use it over things like the Infantry Autogun V or the braced autoguns. A sight would help ALOT for them because then you could take advantage of the low recoil and accuracy at range.
Didn't they just got mega buffed?
@@Reginald-sc9tk Did they??
@@Reginald-sc9tk Ah, it seems it got a 20% buff in damage but if you study the numbers its biggest problem is the pitiful weakspot, critical and critical weakspot damage it does compared to almost every other gun. It does like 50% more damage on a headshot crit while a simple autogun does like 300%
@@Acesahn I think you just run infernus and it slaps is how I see people doing it.
Yepp i agree with most of this, however as a hammer user with a one shot build, I dont really want any changes to the crucis maybe some extra stagger. The crucis should stay the bosskiller hammer, and the irohelm should be changed to be good against elites/groups of elites. With this build i can make bosses dissapear, but in exchange im just okay at best in everything else, and constantly low on health. Also with this one shot build my flamer is decent too against armored targets, if im in a pinch and i have to get rid of a mauler or crusher group. Also people tend to forget there is 3 other rejects playing with you, so every weapon should have some downsides.
I respect your position but my feeling is that the hammers kill bosses so fast that its no fun for anyone else. Yes there are tons of downsides to the hammer but I want to play with the big mean monster too.
@@Reginald-sc9tkIm just concerned the one hit build will be ruined if the hammer gets a considerable buff. I just finsihed playing some games with this build and its really fun. I cant help myself to use this build almost every time i play zealot. Just in case, i already started recording some gameplay, bonking a clueless daemonhost never gets old. :D Also i rarely saw someone with a one shot build during my 1200h playtime. But i have to admit im selfish and bias about the hammer and this particular use of it.
A couple of days ago I wrote on a note "chain axe, thunder hammer, bolter, flamer" because those were the weapons I wanted to look to be using. Coicidence?
Just a pointer, when you show excel sheets on your video please explain it a little because I had no idea what you where taking about with them.
Fair point, appologies. I made the assumption that people will pause and look if they feel interested. I have another video from a few months back explaining and sharing all the data if that interests you.
Only thing I disagree with: Vraks 7 HH (you said autogun tho) doesn't need to delete maniacs. It deletes everything else extremely well. Other than bosses, Dreg Bruisers, unarmored ragers, and Crushers, the V7 basically annihilates everything in Damnation, limited by your head-clicking ability. Underrated gun. Hundreds of hours with it, and I can barely make myself put it down.
Its a fun gun. BTW the Headhunter's are all Headhunter Autoguns. But guns that aren't good at killing the single most dangerous to a run enemy in the game, specialists, just don't make the regular cut for me. Its what my gun must do well or I don't need it.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I get your point. Although that's why I pair with a Devil's Claw. But on the other hand, if this means all guns are ruled out that can't swiftly kill a maniac, it significantly narrows the range of available balance options.
@@moksound19 well that's my main problem with a lot of guns. I'll use them and get by just fine. You can and should just play whatever is fun, its a Tide game. But from a purely balance perspective the number 1 thing I need a gun for as a zealot, or as any character really, is to eliminate trappers, flamers, bombers, snipers and ideally even dogs. These are targets that can absolutely end a run yet usually strike from some semblance of range. Sure you can run them down some of the time but not always. This is why the revolver is king, and throwing knives are well loved by zealots. For vet the columnus has become the GOAT due to its ability to be shot at most things but also take out specialists quickly. Specialists have an outsized impact on the game so they get outsized attention in a gun choice. Whereas melee I just do whatever I like.
Yeah I don't get JTC's reasoning. I found the horde clearing of the assault CS to be spotty, the charge attacks lacking the oomph and the LMB spam a bit chaotic and inconsistent cuz of the strange swing pattern. The heavy chainaxes charge attacks are so good if you can spam them without getting hit you'll rack up the kills.
here before the drama gets reacted to by big twitch streamers
amogus
that would be the funniest thing to happen on this tiny corner of the internet.
I haven't used mk 4 Chainaxe in a very long while - might have to give it another chance heh.
btw, could you share the link to the weapon damage spreadsheet you've featuring in the video please?
Check my video catalogue. I have a video from like 2-3 months ago with a title like data for the data God and there's a CSV available there.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Nice one, thanks!
"He's saying that about the Mk4 Chainaxe and probably the Mk12 Chainaxe" THERE'S MORE THAN 1 CHAINAXE!! When was that added? I've had a Chainaxe Zealot(it's a tossup between Thunderhammer or Chainaxe being my fave) and Vet since the start but I completely missed a second Chainaxe.
Lol, like patch 15 I think. So just two patches and five months ago.
You two need to settle this in the jello wrestling ring.
As someone who isnt a 40k nerd nor really all that interested in the lore (its neat if i learn some, but im not going to go out of my way to find it), i think in the case of something like the boltgun, even if its not good against carapace armor in lore.... it would be fine thematically to make it good against carapace in game. Its a giant, unweildy gun shooting thick exploding shells as far as i can tell; yeah i can believe that would punch through armor.
As for if its a good balance change or needed? No idea. My point is moreso you can look at lore to get a general idea of how something should play for the most part... but you also have room to play with what a player using the weapon would assume it should do without the lore to help shape the gun if need be. The lore being balanced around a TTRPG doesnt necessarily translate into it being balanced for a l4d type game.
where do I find the data sheet you showed for weapon DPS against enemy types?
My video catalogue. Look for Data Time/data for the data God.
buff hammer, remove self stun, as far as being too good at boss killing. I kind of agree about boss killing but when you are dedicating your entire build to one hit, on a tight timing, in melee, easily interrupted or the boss moving away or aoe attacking etc..... i don't think it's too strong, if you take the other three classes and fully dedicate your build to boss killing. In a single skill cd all the classes can delete a boss, psyker being the weakest and needs a buff but can be done so does it really matter if zealots version of it is a difficult combo on a trash weapon in melee range? really?
Gun Psyker with Columnus, Scriers gaze, and Disrupt destiny stacks will absolutely dumpster a boss. It's the staves that are bad for it.
The only thing I agree with is the flamer. Yes, please. God. It needs that armorbuff.
They always nerf weapons and forget about them.
I found this drama more entertaining than the actual story of Darktide 😂
There's a story in darktide? ;^)
Can we get a new discord link sometime? Love the content big dog, still watched even when I took a break from Darktide ❤
Here tou go friend. discord.com/invite/xUzMaDsz
All the chainaxe needs is just better dodges than 2 handed weapons, and it'll be fine.
I'm of the opinion that the thunder hammer stun can partially stay for the feel of the weapon, but it needs to let you defend yourself during that time. Have the stun prevent you from attacking and pushing, but let you dodge and block. Let Thammer players use their defensive tools after a special attack, but keep the lull in offense after one still. It definitely needs to be able to 1 tap all non-boss enemies with a charged special + thrust. That's the point of the weapon, the big enemy delete button. You can force it with a headshot crit from FoF on ogryns and maulers, but you can't do it without that.
Whatever direction that they take for the bolter, it needs to not be pigeonholed into a precision weapon role to get reasonable damage. That's how it currently is, and it sucks because of its terrible handling and recoil making it entirely unfun to use, since you need headshots to do good damage. It needs to do more base damage on body hits, and its damage needs to be normalized across body parts so that it can reliable 1 shot regular enemies. Probably have it 1 shot headshot or 2 shot body shot most human sized elites/specials outside of maybe maulers, mutants, and ragers.
I've always thought that the agrippina shotgun's regular shells have felt lackluster, and I almost exclusively use it with the slug shot, since it's so good. The only time I use the regular shot is for spamming it at shooter/special heads, since it doesn't have the damage to kill them in 1 shot, even to the head.
I've felt like the lawbringer shotgun is outclassed by the kantrael shotgun ever since it's release, and now it's outclassed by the hacker shotgun too. I just don't really feel like it has its own niche, and the other 2 shotguns are just better in almost every way.
I really want to love the vraks VII headhunter, but yeah, its damage is so unnecessarily nerfed vs a lot of priority targets that it just isn't capable of doing its job of being a headshot king properly. Modding a scope on it helped a lot, but it would help a ton if it had a togglable magnified scope for longer range shots by default. I tried using the modded magnified scopes, but I couldn't deal with having it for closer ranges.
I use your builds almost exclusively
That's high praise. Thanks!
I love his vt content and all, but I can't help but feel like all the points jtc makes for Darktide is simply parroting the loudest voices from the forums instead of taking a stance on what feels best for the game's identity. I feel like as a tide veteran he would appreciate how lower ttks and weapon specializations lead to a more interesting flow of gameplay, but here we are homogenizing armor classes because the game is balanced towards throwing clown caravans of elites and specials at you (I get that for ratmen and cultists, but plowing through entire battalions of battle-hardened soldiers and specialists is still a niggling gripe I have in matters of tone).
22:33 Given his videos on smite, he'd probably argue for brainswitch weapons to exist on the highest difficulties because PvE games should prioritize accessible playstyles over skill expression.
23:35 I actually quite like the feel of the headhunter mk7.The zoom it already provides is sizeable and functional for the firefights in this game. Scopes can still be pretty cool aesthetically and I'm still holding out hope for the weapon customization update 3 years down the line. Definitely feel like I'm gimping myself when comparing to the other sniper weapons though.
I really agree with the idea of less clowncar elites and more dangerous elites.
Good one Reginald. :)
Thanks much!
I was hoping they make ogryn gun absolutely op with very low ammo, like a ripper gun having 120 reserve ammo and tge kickback 35 feels wierd, like where does he carry that, another thing i never liked is the way toughness is presented, there isn't explanation whybits there, i did find a mod that give you the refracto shield, only aesthetically, but it made me think it would be cool each class has a lore reason for toughness, the vet has a shoddy refracto shield, zealot has a relic powered with faith and feeds of melee kills while other classes dont, psyker couod use its abilities for a shield and has the most between classes, ogryns can have no bar but have damg resist againts smaller targets but have a ludicrous amount of HP and generate toughness for the team passively while other classes dont do that, idk just a autistic ramble on the side
Make bolter strong against others than flak and carapace and give zealot/veteran a melta! Short range super effective beam weapon that makes holes in flak and carapace. Those things are tank killers along with las-cannons and missiles, not bolters.
I HAAATE the chain axes but I said the same thing when he mentioned the Chain swords I did a double take because AINT NO WAY the chain swords can be considered acceptable clear
I have double the clear or ANY chain sword iv seen with my Tac axe and that is NOT a joke. I know im only about +300 zealot but come on theres no way to defend chain sword clear
Chainswords, these days, actually do have incredible clear. To the best of my data set the chainswords are well double whatever taxes have on offer.
I don't like the Chain Axes because the sound effects sound bad compared to the Chain Swords, also the Chain Swords feel more versatile.
That said, would like to see Zealot get the two-handed Chain Axe the Maulers carry.
We need mauler chain axe.
Doesn't space marines also use a more rare type of ammo for boltguns?
Not necessarily. If I remember correctly, they use a larger caliber (.75 cal) of boltgun shell for their bolt-guns-pistols-rifles (and maybe heavy bolters I'm not really sure). Regular humans use smaller shells for practicality and ease of use on bolt pistols and rifles. The space marines do actually use rarer and purpose built boltrounds when fighting specific enemies, more situational.
Well, there is the Deathwatch who use special types of ammo. Then again, they use xenotech to enhance their already deadly capabilities.
I to love the chain weapons, even consider myself a eviscerator craftsman agree with most everything you say on this. Also OP is boring, gimme a weapon I can take time to learn and master!
This dude gets it